The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove(8)
Estelle signaled Mavis for a refill and turned to watch Theo try to make peace. Catfish Jefferson sang a sad song about a mean old woman doing him wrong. That’s me, Estelle thought. A mean old worthless woman.
Self-medication was working by midnight. Most of the customers at the Slug had given in and started clapping and wailing along with Catfish’s Blues. Quite a few had given up and gone home. By closing time, there were only five people left in the Slug and Mavis was cackling over a drawer full of money. Catfish Jefferson put down his National steel guitar and picked up the two-gallon pickle jar that held his tips. Dollar bills spilled over the top, change skated in the bottom, and here and there in the middle fives and tens struggled for air. There was even a twenty down there, and Catfish dug in after it like a kid going for a Cracker Jack prize. He carried the jar to the bar and plopped down next to Estelle, who was gloriously, eloquently crocked.
“Hey, baby,” Catfish said. “You like the Blues?”
Estelle searched the air for the source of the question, as if it might have come from a moth spiraling around one of the lights behind the bar. Her gaze finally settled on the Bluesman and she said, “You’re very good. I was going to leave, but I liked the music.”
“Well, you done stayed now,” Catfish said. “Look at this.” He shook the money jar. “I got me upward o‘ two hundred dollar here, and that mean old woman owe me least that much too. What you say we take a pint and my guitar and go down to the beach, have us a party?”
“I’d better get home,” Estelle said. “I have to paint in the morning.”
“You a painter? I never knowed me a painter. What you say we go down to the beach and watch us a sunrise?”
“Wrong coast,” Estelle said. “The sun comes up over the mountains.”
Catfish laughed. “See, you done saved me a heap of waiting already. Let’s you and me go down to the beach.”
“No, I can’t.”
“It ‘cause I’m Black, ain’t it?”
“No.”
“‘Cause I’m old, right?”
“No.”
“‘Cause I’m bald. You don’t like old bald men, right?”
“No!” Estelle said.
“‘Cause I’m a musician. You heard we irresponsible?”
“No.”
“‘Cause I’m hung like a bull, right?”
“No!” Estelle said.
Catfish laughed again. “Well, you wouldn’t mind spreadin that one around town just the same, would you?”
“How would I know how you’re hung?”
“Well,” Catfish said, pausing and grinning, “you could go to the beach with me.”
“You are a nasty and persistent old man, aren’t you, Mr. Jefferson?” Estelle asked.
Catfish bowed his shining head, “I truly am, miss. I truly am nasty and persistent. And I am too old to be trouble. I admits it.” He held out a long, thin hand. “Let’s have us a party on the beach.”
Estelle felt like she’d just been bamboozled by the devil. Something smooth and vibrant under that gritty old down-home shuck. Was this the dark shadow her paintings kept finding in the surf?
She took his hand. “Let’s go to the beach.”
“Ha!” Catfish said.
Mavis pulled a Louisville Slugger from behind the bar and held it out to Estelle. “Here, you wanna borrow this?”
They found a niche in the rocks that sheltered them from the wind. Catfish dumped sand from his wing tips and shook his socks out before laying them out to dry.
“That was a sneaky old wave.”
“I told you to take off your shoes,” Estelle said. She was more amused than she felt she had a right to be. A few sips from Catfish’s pint had kept the cheap white wine from going sour in her stomach. She was warm, despite the chill wind. Catfish, on the other hand, looked miserable.
“Never did like the ocean much,” Catfish said. “Too many sneaky things down there. Give a man the creeps, that’s what it does.”
“If you don’t like the ocean, then why did you ask me to come to the beach?”
“The tall man said you like to paint pictures of the beach.”
“Lately, the ocean’s been giving me a bit of the creeps too. My paintings have gone dark.”
Catfish wiped sand from between his toes with a long finger. “You think you can paint the Blues?”
“You ever seen Van Gogh?”
Catfish looked out to sea. A three-quarter moon was pooling like mercury out there. “Van Gogh…Van Gogh…fiddle player outta St. Louis?”
“That’s him,” Estelle said.
Catfish snatched the pint out of her hand and grinned. “Girl, you drink a man’s liquor and lie to him too. I know who Vincent Van Gogh is.”
Estelle couldn’t remember the last time she’d been called a girl, but she was pretty sure she hadn’t liked hearing it as much as she did now. She said, “Who’s lying now? Girl?”
“You know, under that big sweater and them overalls, they might be a girl. Then again, I could be wrong.”
“You’ll never know.”
“I won’t? Now that is some sad stuff there.” He picked up his guitar, which had been leaning on a rock, and began playing softly, using the surf as a backbeat. He sang about wet shoes, running low on liquor, and a wind that chilled right to the bone. Estelle closed her eyes and swayed to the music. She realized that this was the first time she’d felt good in weeks.
He stopped abruptly. “I’ll be damned. Look at that.”
Estelle opened her eyes and looked toward the waterline where Catfish was pointing. Some fish had run up on the beach and were flopping around in the sand.
“You ever see anything like that?”
Estelle shook her head. More fish were coming out of the surf. Beyond the breakers, the water was boiling with fish jumping and thrashing. A wave rose up as if being pushed from underneath. “There’s something moving out there.”
Catfish picked up his shoes. “We gots to go.”
Estelle didn’t even think of protesting. “Yes. Now.”
She thought about the huge shadows that kept appearing under the waves in her paintings. She grabbed Catfish’s shoes, jumped off the rock, and started down the beach to the stairs that led up to a bluff where Catfish’s station wagon waited. “Come on.”
“I’m comin‘.” Catfish spidered down the rock and stepped after her.
At the car, both of them winded and leaning on the fenders, Catfish was digging in his pocket for the keys when they heard the roar. The roar of a thousand phlegmy lions—equal amounts of wetness, fury, and volume. Estelle felt her ribs vibrate with the noise.
“Jesus! What was that?”
“Get in the car, girl.”
Estelle climbed into the station wagon. Catfish was already fumbling the key into the ignition. The car fired up and he threw it into drive, kicking up gravel as he pulled away.
“Wait, your shoes are on the roof.”
“He can have them,” Catfish said. “They better than the ones he ate last time.”
“He? What the hell was that? You know what that was?”
“I’ll tell you soon as I’m done havin this heart attack.”
Five
The Sea Beast
The great Sea Beast paused in his pursuit of the delicious radioactive aroma and sent a subsonic message out to a gray whale passing several miles ahead of him. Roughly translated, it said, “Hey, baby, how’s about you and I eat a few plankton and do the wild thing.”
The gray whale continued her relentless swim south and replied with a subsonic thrum that translated, “I know who you are. Stay away from me.”
The Sea Beast swam on. During his journey he had eaten a basking shark, a few dolphins, and several hundred tuna. His focus had changed from food to sex. As he approached the California coast, the radioactive scent began to diminish to almost nothing. The leak at the power plant had been discovered and fixed. He found himself less than a mile offshore with a belly full of shark—and no memory of why he’d left his volcanic nest. But there was a buzz reaching his predator’s senses from shore, the listless re-solve of prey that has given up: depression. Warm-blooded food, dolphins, and whales sent off the same signal sometimes. A large school of food was just asking to be eaten, right near the edge of the sea. He stopped out past the surf line and came to the surface in the middle of a kelp bed, his massive head breaking though strands of kelp like a zombie pickup truck breaking sod as it rises from the grave.
Then he heard it. A hated sound. The sound of an enemy. It had been half a century since the Sea Beast had left the water, and land was not his natural domain, but his instinct to attack overwhelmed his sense of self-preservation. He threw back his head, shaking the great purple gills that stood out on his neck like trees, and blew the water from his vestigial lungs. Breath burned down his cavernous throat for the first time in fifty years and came out in a horrendous roar of pain and anger. Three of the protective ocular membranes slid back from his eyes like electric car windows. allow-ing him to see in the bitter air. He thrashed his tail, pumped his great webbed feet, and torpedoed toward the shore.
Gabe