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chapter
one "¡¡Mother-Fucking-Fucker!!" He said it like he had time. The maverick, a veritable monster, was seven foot taller than the largest wave in the set. And he was inside. He pivoted and brought the nose of the board, a nine-six lime-green "Gregg Noll Big Hawaii," to face the wave. Zero plus three seconds; He was in the trough, paddling furiously at the maverick. The lip was pitching out, but holding. He took an unaffordable half-second to glance at it and utter the keen and useless observation, "¡Is no wave, is the Tsunami!" Zero plus two seconds; He started paddling up the face. Time slowed down, a sports cliché yes, but is good, time is what he needed. Zero plus one second; Six feet below the peak, the lip starting to break, five feet to his right and pealing towards him. The sound of a freight train. Plus one-half second; He gave a tremendous thrust with his arms and poked a hole in the face. He followed the nose into the wave. He was one foot shy of freedom when there was a horrible tugging at his legs. The wave wanted to pull him back out over the falls, but it was just a tug. X broke free and exited through the rear and kept paddling till he was outside. Way outside. "¡Jesus Fucking Christos on a bike. That was the big wave!" Yet another keen observation. X had been in Mexico for nine days. After just three of those days, he started to insert the "¡" into his exclamations, and the "¿" into his queries. He was a guest in this country and he thought it was the polite thing to do. After five days, very bad faux-Spanish syntax started to creep in and out of his speech, like an earnest method actor in the role of a sombreroed and bandoliered Mexican bandido with a shabby dialogue coach. "¿STINKING BADGES? ¡WE DON'T HAVE THE NECESSITY FOR THEM!" He was six foot one inch tall, 260 pounds, some fat, a lot of muscle and huge bones. He had shoulder length, kinda blond hair, soul patch and chin beard. His body awash with colorful esoteric tattoos, The Eiffel Tower, a cat, a piano, many varied skulls, a coffee cup (steaming), green, red, blue and black biomorphic lines and their requisite accompanying polygons. All of this acoutramentation however, did not improve his surfing. X had just pulled off a fairly good duck dive, but that was his best move. It was theoretically possible for a man of his grand size to paddle once with the right hand and once with the left and stand up and ride. But to do this would require some sort of natural athletic ability, X was not of this kind. He would sit outside and wait for the mavericks that were by far more dangerous but easier to catch. Legs akimbo over Gregg Noll, he watched the incoming. His father had taught him to body surf in Lake Erie. Were there a storm, the lake would boast modest three-foot rideable waves. X had body surfed until he was fifteen when peer pressure had forced him to stop in order too entirely devout himself to taking mas LSD. Then for no discernible reason, on his thirty-fifth birthday, X bought a log and taught himself to board surf off Ditch Plains in Long Island. By now, X had seen hundreds of thousands of waves. They were, in fact, all different, like fucking snowflakes. It was a big day, not a huge day. Average eleven foot (from trough to peak!) The Mexican sky was tremendously blue and tremendously large out there. It was blue blue. The waves were the same blue and very glassy, just a hint of gentle undulation on the surface. If you went right at the trough, you could see your reflection looking back at you as you surfed merrily along. No wind. Most people think that the wind causes waves, but this swell was being generated from a storm a thousand miles away, maybe even in Boston. Rested and ready, X paddled further inside and started watching. He was on top of a mousy little ten footer when he saw an incoming set, seven waves further out. The first wave was nice, virtuous enough, but it wasn't thee one. On top of the second wave of the set, he saw it, a sixteen-foot maverick with excellent form. And it was "Way-Zen." He turned his board and started to paddle hard, but he was a bit encumbered in his effort. The day prior had been flat, so he had managed to eat both Pedro and María, resident guzanos of 2 bottles of mescal with their surrounding nectar and washing it down with an appropriate amount of cerveza. He had eaten Jorge denizen of his last bottle, with the nectar, for desayuno this morning. X didn't have a drinking problem. He had no problem drinking. The "Zen" lifted him. The elevator to the top where he paddled furiously and made the wave. Locomotive sound. His colleagues on the inside started whooping encouragement as he flew down the face. He was surfing pretty good, for him. He made the trough and slid right. Very way-cool. Then there was a waffling movement, very much like the space shuttle CHALLENGER before.... X started pearling and stepped back on the skeg to try to pull the nose up. But it didn't come up. To no one, "¡Fuck! Is, I think it is now for the time of pain." He was sucked under and did the washing machine through a twenty second spin cycle. Now he was drying, flat on the sandy ocean floor, the "Big Hawaii" was on the surface still caught in the wave and still surfing sans rider, . . . straining at the end of its 15 foot polypropene leash, . . . pulling with great force at his ankle where it attached. "Boards are like horses," X thought, "no loyalty." He tried to lift a finger from the sand. He couldn't, the immense pound-force of the wave wouldn't allow it. "OK, I wait." Exactly where X was immobilized was 15 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, 150 yards from the Hotel Santa Fe, at beautiful Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico. Surfer Magazine rated Puerto E's Zikatella Beach, first class. "When it's working, Dudes, it's a barrel similar to Waimea, but with just a bit more power." "Jeeze, that's great, a bit more power. Just what I need." He was watching the scene from five feet above his trapped body. He noticed that his eyes were closed. Twenty-three seconds and the wave finally broke, Time to head for air. X swam to the surface and hit foam. Problematic. You cannot swim above foam and you cannot breathe it. "¡Foda-se!" (Sometimes it's very useful to know how to say "Fuck-me" in Portuguese.) He felt the leash go slack at his ankle as his board finally stopped surfing. The ensuing wave broke on him and sent him back to his Watery-Wonderland with nothing to do but not breathe, or panic, and if you panicked in situations like this, you died. He felt, when ordering lunch for instance, panic became necessary, even germane, but he would dine later. Well, maybe he would dine later. His board, surfing alone again, the leash stretching, clawing and pulling on his ankle. If he could lift his left hand, and if he had a watch, he would have seen he had now been without the benefit of oxygen for one minute- fifty-three seconds, and he had burned quite a bit of fuel swimming up to the foam, and would anybody hold his breath for two plus minutes if he didn't have too? He had at least another fifteen seconds down there, so he had the time to muse. And he mused thusly. As certain circumstances prevailed upon his arrival at Mexico City Airport. . . unforeseen and beyond his control . . . X had been forced into buying The International Herald Tribune. A way-interesting article remembranced to him just then about these minute Super-robots that the Israelis had invented (using several stolen Japanese technologies) to dismantle bombs. As it turned out, these super robots proved so versatile that there were multiple applications possible aside from de-bombing. Hotel valets, hatcheck persons, stockroom clerks, atendantes de la abattoir, and sweeping up old hair in the barbershop. "Wow! These little babies are gonna send oodles of the marginally employed back to swilling 40's out of paper bags in front of the bodega first thing in the a.m.!" A consortium made up of two recently retired Israeli Army Colonels and a Mexican engineering firm had been formed and now "Karni-son Inc" (73.6 on the Nasdaq) was busy producing the tiny robot-units in a converted tire re-capping plant, seven kilometers south of Tijuana. The labor in Mexico was dirt cheap, but the primary purpose behind the partnering with the Mexican Engineering firm was that the manufacturing process created a profuse plethora of toxins. And disposal of such byproduct is no problema en Mexico. The musing ended as the Miss. Liza Minelli, in a stunning black sequin evening gown designed by Bill Blass, deigned to sing him a selection from "Cabaret" in his head. "Maybe this time, I'll get lucky, maybe this time I'll . . .die. . ." Lack of oxygen caused a black void that started filling in from the periphery of his internal vision screen. "Oh Christ, It's The Big Fucking Sleep!" He then addressed the bemused chanteuse with what he thought might be his last words. "Pardon my French, Liza, but I DON'T FUCKING . . ." Then . . .the wave released him and X stood up in five feet of water and filled his lungs with air! Each successive wave had been pushing him closer to shallower water and the shore. "I'M ALIVE! I'M ALIVE!" He couldn't see the "Big Hawaii," it was still surfing solo, hidden by the wave in front. But he felt the GREAT pull his ankle, the leash, which was stretching, and stretching like a giant (red) rubber band. It felt so good to breath again, he thought he'd repeat it, "I'M ALIVE! I -AM -ALI..." The wave in front released the board and the way stretched leash suddenly became way unstretched. WHANGO! Blackness. Nothing. MOLE
NEGRO
He saw some well manicured fingers on a hand, that were attached to a rather short, powerfully built surfer waving in the air in front of his face. "Dude? Can you hear me? How many fingers do you see, mate?" "Fuck! That's a hard one. Let me see . . . three and . . . plus one more I guess." There indeed were four fingers. "Do you know your name, mate?" "Call me . . .ah? . . .Call me Ishmael." "Okay, Ishmael, do you know who your president is?" "Could you be more specific? I mean, for instance, there's Carl 'The Battlin' Canook' Carlton, C.E.O. of 'Krazy Karl's Kollapsible Kayaks of Canton,' arguably Ohio's largest distributor of Kleper® brand folding Inuit water-craft including the 'You Would Not Believe The Incredible Compressible Umiak I Just Bought at Krazy Karl's.' Then we have Bill Gates of Microsoft, but, alas, not an alliteration anywhere." The surfer smiled, "You're OK Ishmael, but you're gonna have one hell of a bruise on your forehead." X painfully rose to a sitting position. "The accent, you're Kiwi?" The surfer smiled, "Naw, Christ no, I'm from Oz!" "Sorry, I know how you people get. Hey! Where's my board? Is it okay?" "It's still attached!" X's eyes followed the leash from his ankle to the board, now playing tag with the waves in the shallows. "That log of yours is triple glassed, your noggin couldn't hurt it. You think you can stand mate?" The Ozzie helped him up and put his arm around his shoulder as they walked down to the shore where X tried to pick up his board and couldn't. "Here, mate, I'll do it. This fugger's a heavy one. Where's your gear Ishmael?" He walked X to his towel and bag. With everyone on the beach watching, X did his Actor's Studio version of a drowned man for their benefit and he felt the part. "Here you go Ishmael." "Listen, I ah . . . I told an un-truth back there. My real name is Sterling. Xavier Sterling Morgan." (It was the name on the passport he was using and yet another un-truth, but it was closer to his actual name.) "Everyone calls me X. And like thanks for saving my life." "Pleased to meet you, X. I'm Sam." They shook hands. "You don't owe me thanks. I just picked you off the beach, you arrived there yourself, but tell me, mate, you were under for a very long time. Did you think you were going to buy it out there?" "Well to be frank, unlike James T. Kirk, I always felt I was gonna die surrounded by scads of prophylacticly garbed medical personnel suffering the last throws of Creutzfelt-Jakob Disease contracted as a result of eating a toothsome steak that unbeknownst to me contained infectious amloid rods thirty -five years earlier. And all the Doctors, RNs and similarly prophylacticly garbed well wishers would gather round my death-bed from whence I would issue my muddled and hallucinatory exit valedictory." "Could you say that again in English mate?" "Too lazy to look it up in the glossary? O.K., Mr. Lazy Bones, since you saved my life. Unlike the stoic Captain of the USS Enterprise on the original Star Trek series who would endlessly go on about knowing he would die alone, I always thought I'd expire surrounded by a large crowd in a hospital bed suffering from the human form of 'Laughing Cow' disease which I contracted 35 years earlier from eating a toothsome but prion encrusted steak. From my death-bed, I would say my final pre-written-sound-byte to the smattering crowd." "You already wrote your last words? Isn't that a bit unlucky, mate?" "You got to write them out, cause you never know when the Grim Reaper is going to win at chess and you most certainly do not want to shuffle off this mortal coil being remembered as saying, 'That was a great game of golf, fellers!' " "So what is it, mate, what's your exit valedictory?" "And I quote Sam, 'You know, Ms. Minelli, I JUST DON'T FUCKING NEED THIS TODAY!'" "I like it, mate. Simple and directly to the point." Sam turned and looked lovingly at the break, then back at X. "Listen, if you're all-right, I'm going to hit the waves before this wind blows it out." "I'm fine, Sam. Thanks." And Sam left. When the energy transmitted through fluid, in this case the fluid being the Pacific Ocean, starts to encounter resistance like a gradually rising of the sea bed a set would be born. These leviathans would slowly rise up on the surface taking their exact form articulated in a complex algorithm describing wave mechanics with a lot of "Peking Butterfly" fractals thrown in. Gaining greater and greater height whence the upward force equaled gravity This is the point where the wave would break. Sam was correct, an onshore was blowing, but what it did for about twenty minutes was to blow on the face of the wave, hollowing them out and forcing the lip to protrude far in front of the face until it finally fell seaward far in front of the face of the wave, forming the surfers' nirvana: tubes. The line-up of Mexican, American, Ozzies and others numbered only about fifteen, the immensity of the day culling out the barneys in Darwinian fashion. All those left were clambering to be "tubed." He watched the tall and awkward American surf bum named Jim, the ever-mysterious "waiter of mystery" pearl, but unlike himself earlier, Jim recovered miraculously in the trough. Then he saw Sam get rudely "dropped in" on in a tube by his younger doppelgänger, Jerry. At this distance he could only visually tell them apart by their boards, but their surfing style spoke miles of difference. According to the rules that govern surfing etiquette, Sam had every right to yank Jerry's leash and sent him over the falls, or worse, ram him with his much heavier 9' Hanson, but Sam just held off and let Jerry pass in front of him. Sam surfed a naturally graceful "soul surfing" style with tactics that were simply beautiful to watch. He was, by far, the most outstanding athlete of the seventy-five or so international surfers present at Escondido for this swell. Jerry surfed "Nazi-hard-core" with all the boring, aggressive esprit de corps that went with the appellation. The onshore was finally wrecking havoc with the waves and was now forcing the lip back against the face making for increasingly unridable crumbling walls. But as Dostoevsky insightfully put it, "(. . . But more about [crumbling] walls later.)" X removed "Swann's Way" from its protective plastic bag. It was the only book he had brought with him on the trip, thinking it would force him to finally read it. And read it he did, the same line over and over eleven times. "Fucking Frog!" X didn't know when he went to sleep, but he did know what woke him. Water was dripping on him. "¡What the fuck!" It was Jerry, fresh from the ocean, supplying the drips. Jerry was (like Sam) a short, inverted triangle, the perfect body for surfing. The resemblance uncanny. He was Sam the Ozzie surfer maybe 15 years prior; long blond hair, a thin face with pale full lips, small pale blue eyes that one could describe as piercing under a promontory brow that bespoke an earlier age in humankind's development, but the similarity with Sam ended when Jerry spoke. "Wow X, that was some gnarly friggin' wipe out haole dude!" Jerry spiked his red, six-one tri-fin in the sand tail first, like a conquistador just arrived to annihilate the locals. "¡Please, step back, sir, you are getting Marcel wet!" "Huh?" "My book man, you're dripping on it. Great palindrome by the way. My favorite, useful in a myriad of situations." "Huh? . . . Huh?" "¡Oh stop it Jerry! ¡Now you're just showing off!" Jerry wasn't sure, but he suspected he had been insulted. "Dudeness, that was way-pearl dude! Pearl Ultimo. Hey dude? What's the bottom like out there? Never been down there myself. I saw you was get in trouble and I did a 360 on my board and started to paddle to you, but then a way-gnarly-assed set was coming in and you know what they say dude, 'You gotta get laid while the sun shines.' 'Sides, I was pretty sure one of the other dudes would go out" "Thanx[nks] for the rescue effort, it is the thought that counts." "No prob brudda! . . . What a wipe out maximus! Like I'm watching you pearl, and I think like whoa . . . the dude is gotta pull the nose up, but no-way It was like barney-way like all-the way! You went right down haole. Hey? The bottom sandy? Never been there! That the gnarly-worst! Did you know what an Ab-frigging-lutely gnarley-way wipe out that was man? Like, wow, was that a wipe out and a half or what?" "¿You make up these questions Jerry, or do they write them down for you?" "Huh?" "Never mind. I'm happy to see you. . . . Well, perhaps 'happy to see you' isn't the most German expression I could avail myself to vouchsafe my feelings, but any-who, I have a business proposition I'd like to discuss with you. Can you meet me tonight at La Posada for dinner? It'll be my treat." "Free dinner? Yes-way! How about eight o'clock?" "Make it 7:57." X did not like the number eight. No-way-ness!! "O-K your Dudeness! 7:57 it is!" Then back to his usual tract, "Wow, haole man, you know I heard Ziketella was sandy though I never been there. Was it? I mean like sandy? I really thought you were gonna 'catch the farm' out there!" X sighed theatrically and then cast his eyes heavenward and said, "In a way, 'catching the farm' might have proved advantageous, it could have precluded this particularly painful parlance." "Huh?" "Nothing, Jerry, I'll see you at 7:57." " Jerry left, and if he had actually comprehended the last insult, he would have left in a pique, but he was much more pleased at finding out that the old adage, "there's no such thing as a free dinner!" was wrong.
"Sub-fucking-rosa! . . . fuck those God damn big assed niggardly Athenians! I can no longer read this . . .maybe it's this translation. . . . maybe it's the rabies . . . maybe the guy ate one snail too many . . . speaking of snails, I go eat!" The restaurant of the Hotel Santa Fe was three steps up from the white sandy beach proper. Fundamentally a large porch running 75 by 75 feet, paved with red terra cotta tiles with a 3 1/2 foot white stucco balustrade on three sides that was interrupted every 15 feet by a square white stucco pillar that held up the red (you guessed it) terra cotta tile roof. AC would have been redundant as a cool sea breeze was always upon it. An outdoor bar (white stucco with a red tile counter) on one side and opposite, on the lee, was a white stucco wall that evinced it was the kitchen by the two stainless steel doors with round "look out" windows at fenestrated at face height. They served traditional Oaxacan fare, Tender octopus in tomatillos, a way-garlicky cerdo mole negro, chiles rellenos de sardinas. Salads with raw vegetables that you could fearlessly and gallantly eat, as they were soaked in spring water with chlorine drops to kill whatever else was on them. There were two venues where X took his dinner in Escondido, only one where he lunched, so he climbed three steps up from the white sandy beach proper to restaurant of the Hotel Santa Fe and the panic washed through him. His table, the only "right" table in the restaurant was occupied by something so vile he felt physically nauseated. He had seen her before and he harked back to that visceral moment like a flashback in a cheap noir novel, presaging and foreboding. She had been standing behind a huge black jeep at the hacienda privado the Santa Fe rented out to the well off. 35-ish, with her blond hair swept back in an athletic ponytail, white sweatband with requisite beads of perspiration glistening at her temples. Drinking fucking stupid Evian water out of a plastic liter bottle like a stupid fucking television ad while, under her direction, a Jamaican amah and Mexican houseboy were furiously unloading more fucking cases of Evian, French and Italian wine into the house. She had apparently been jogging. ¡Jogging in Mexico! And now, there she was again occupying his table, the zen table, If only she were a fictional character, she would not merit more than a cursory fleshing out before the plot thankfully called on her to die some infamous and ignoble death, Yet here she was in verity requiring so very much more. Rounding out this vile vignette were two "adorable" twin girls, maybe one year old with rather cross eyed looks and three white rat-haired terriers yipping (incessantly like) at her feet. It was as if the CIA or some Mexican secret agency had sent them purposefully to both harass and spy on him. Maybe she was in fact CIA. It spoke, "Oh girls, I think Abigail looks very hungry. Do you think she would like to go back to la casa and eat? What do you think girls? Should we take Abigail, Mitzi and Frieda back to the casa for some puppy chow?" Being of a pre-verbal age the girls didn't say anything, they just looked more blond and more cross eyed. Finally she left with her horde, leaving a filthy Evian bottle on the table with three or four lukewarm ounces of frog- water left in it. The white plastic cap unattached and lying obscene on the table. While Juana removed the offending vessel and otherwise cleaned the table, X decided to stop by the farmacia later to purchase a can of travel size anti-bacterial spray. When he sat down the solution to a complex problem swept into his head as a satori. He smiled and exclaimed aloud, "There is no way Meursault acted using free will! No fucking way at all!" "Buenas tardes, Señor Sterling. ¿Como esta ustedes?" Juana handed him the menu. "Bien gracias. I believe I shall start with a little drinky while I peruse the lunch menu, Juana. A double "Guzano" and a cervesa Pacifico por favor." "Sí." Then she ran back to the kitchen as quickly as she could so she and María could giggle as always while they watched "Gringo Peligroso" agonize over what to have for lunch from the oval window in the kitchen door. "Gringo Peligroso," that was the name they had given him on his first day in Escondido and it had subsequently spread throughout the pueblocito among the taxi drivers, waiters and waitresses, pharmacists, bellhops and anyone else that edged on the tourist industry. X looked at the menu. Now it was the proper time to panic. "¡My God! ¡It all looks so good! ¿Where is my drink?" He looked at the next table. "¿I wonder what they're having?" Requisite beads of perspiration glistened at his temples. X's real name was not X or Gringo Peligroso or even Xavier Sterling Morgan the aka he had given the Ozzie, Sam. His real name was Sterling Xerxes Moran. Shortly before his birth, X's mother had seen the film, Johnny Guitar and fell in love with Sterling Hayden, and as a consequence X got his first name. Somewhere in the names of all the male members of his family was the letter "X." His great-grandfather, Rex William Moran, his Grandfather, Jinx (born on Friday the thirteenth) and his father Alex. Besides giving him birth and naming him, X's mother did things that would later lead him to think of her as rather a pioneer in the field of posttraumatic Stress Disorder. The practice of it. If she were wont to give him a manicure, she made sure to cut the cuticles deep enough to cause bleeding. After all, 'No pain . . .no gain.' If he were to do something really horrible, like get crumbs on the floor at lunch, he would have to kneel naked on the hot air return for thirty minutes (forty-five for spilt milk) until his knees bled. But heck, it wasn't always bad at the Moran domicile. When Mom had the occasion to indulge in a postmeridian libation, like every postmeridian everyday, her kind and loving side was apt to appear. "Time can't erase the memory of these magic moments filled with love!" Perry Como was singing in his head. X would always recall a winter afternoon he came home after school when he was ten. All the lights in the house were off. The closet door slowly opened. It creaked and there was mater, naked as the day she was born. "Hello, Sterling, my sweet!" He could smell the vodka, his own choice for the past two years. His mother came to him and held him in an embrace. "Sterling, my dear sweetums!" She stroked his cheek slowly with her finger tips, "Sterling, my sweetums, the time has befallen . . .it is time for me to reveal my true identity to you. . . . I, am not your mother!" At this, Sterling started to cry. "STOP IT!" She shook him violently and the crying ceased. He stood there mute. More caressing from Mom. "That's better, my darling. I am not your mother. I am the GODDESS DICTYNNA, ruler of the undersea kingdom of UTU. I have been raising you all these years as my own child so that when the time was ready, and that time is now, you will come to my kingdom as emissary of the LAND PEOPLES. We must journey the ROAD OF THE SEA-URCHIN, through the perilous OCEAN OF THE OTHERS in order to reach my domain. It will be a very dangerous journey fraught with many perils! Very many, very very dangerous perils. In order that I may provide aegis, you must rid yourself of all vestiges of the LAND PEOPLES. The evil ones of THE OCEAN OF THE OTHERS can smell the LAND PEOPLES and will do everything, everything to stop us. You must rid yourself of vestiges. Here, darling, let me help you." She undressed him. "Come, come hither, and enter my embrace. Begin the journey!" Sterling stayed with his mother until she passed out. The first time X tried heroin was at a party. Heroin said to him, "I love you, darling, I'll take care of you forever! I'll be your Mommy!" Juana finally came back with his drink order. He swallowed the double Mescal in a gulp and immediately felt better and made his decision. He would have the "Mole Negro" with a refill on the mescal. "Sí, Señor Sterling." Juana giggled silently, because she already had put the order in with the kitchen. It was what he always ordered. The mescal glass had un-asked for ice in it and with the humidity it immediately described circles of condensation on the white plastic tabletop. X printed a series of them. Like, very Robbe-Grillet. "A good day to you, sir." "And good day to you, sir." The portly gentleman sat down at the table next to X. Just the best seersucker suit, straw panama, gold wire rim spectacles, an unlit Monte Christo #4 in the side of his mouth. He pulled a gold pocket watch out of his vest and regarded the time. The portly gentleman (like X) always lunched at this hour at the Santa Fe, sometimes with his wife, sometimes without. Today alone. The old gent must have been somewhere in his late seventies. He always made a point of wishing X a proper good day. Juana served X lunch. A 'good morning' eye-opener. A little surfing. Lunch of way-garlicky Mole Negro at 2:00 p.m. with liberal lunchtime libation. The portly gentlemen's kindness and the breeze. The ocean will change. That's about it. With the food and alcohol, X had pretty much recovered from his sans oxygen ordeal, so he grabbed his board and walked the single kilometer along the water back to his tent in the campgrounds on the beach. The ocean Prussian blue and surging neap tide on his right. As he walked, visions of sugar plums danced in his head.
© 2002, John D. Morton |