BILLY RAY’S DAY TRIP AT NINE I
Nine-year-old Billy Ray will remember the day he couldn’t recall its afternoon. It began like many cloudless summer days playing in the Big Sur tide pools. Just after breakfast, seeing nine on the clock, he bounces out the screeching screen door, jumping over the steps, landing on the ground with a stomp, Billy begins honking his hellos up to the redwood community, standing guard near his small house. Beyond those trees, a flock of elegant white seagulls glide through the powder blue ether like guardian angels. He jumps on his bike and heads west toward the shore, inhaling aromas that seem to recharge his body, making him peddle faster. Along the familiar path the Monterey pines bristle with goosebumps, happy to see him speeding by. Stretching his open hand out, he deftly caresses each of the low-running chaparral that cheer him on toward the sea. At the tide pools, he began his routine of greeting each of his pals, usually the youngsters first: the shy mollusks, poker-faced barnacles, hermit crabs and creeping limpets. Billy reverently saluted the old-folk veterans, the black shale and the white chert resting in the sandy areas dotted with quartz. To each he gave a respectable “Good Morning!” loud enough for the mothering fault lines deep in the earth to hear him, and to feel him it seemed. Returning his attention to the surface, he heard the garnet and jade pebbles whispering a soft, “Hiya Billy!” Questions swirl in his mind as he remembered seeing the TV commercial for Fruity Pebbles on their black and white set while eating oatmeal for breakfast. Mother Earth continued folding the California coastline often over the eons, replenishing all these current residents and their relatives, all of whom had become his friends. Billy felt small but content in the middle of this congregation at the beach. Looking up, he smiled as he heard his dad with whom he could almost always talk — that voice, he would swear, was a source of knowledge, encouragement, advice, and comfort. Looking down, his face brightens as he sees a blushing sun flower sea star lifting up a few rays of suction cups toward the surface of the pool in an effort to connect with Billy’s hand. Sea otters stop squeaking and start growling impatiently for Billy to swim out and frolic in the kelp. Beyond the waves an orca surfaced, waving a fin. It was another fun day with so many friends to talk with and so many wonderful revealing scents to smell. He mouthed silent words while focused toward the horizon as if he could command all things, because he could talk with all things. At his young age he had yet to experience any rejection from any thing. There was no ion, molecule, element, organism, or object he hadn’t bonded with emotionally, mechanically, physically, or spiritually. He began to have an inkling that he could actually control things if he wanted to, with help of course, from that voice. Grinning with a deliriously beaming face, he was strangely recharged, feeling all powered-up to a level of positive rage and ecstatic fury. He felt bold because he had his friends all around with whom he could speak and share thoughts. But it was that voice providing him power. In a confident stance, chest out, furrowed brow, he was now daring anything to approach, welcoming the worst to come. The worst was indeed on the way toward him. Lifting his face to the clouds and preparing his lungs with a huge intake of air…. he releases a primal yell! II His little friends, sensing something was about to happen, began cowering, hiding, scanning for predators. Some began running for cover. Billy felt this tension, too, but he was becoming eager to confront it. Unbuttoning his old shirt, he felt a strange vibration in his chest when something on the horizon caught his eye. From that once cloudless sky, a hot white vertical plume suddenly protrudes, launching upward from the sea miles away. Huge billows of woolly boulders roil toward him like a sandstorm tsunami spreading its flanks outward, preparing to encircle him. Tectonics shift. Landslides rumble. Sea surfaces vibrate, belching bubbles like boiling water. Powder blue skies dissolve into black and gray negative exposures. It was almost noon but the tidal pool area was nearly void of light, the massive clouds curtain the sun. Now and then sun rays beamed down in bright patches like random search lights warning that peril was approaching and soon to arrive. Billy took no heed, but grinned in satisfaction at the peace he felt inside, despite the coming chaos of nature. He felt an aura around him, a strange friction all over his body. Suddenly three zealous gulls appear, wings beating the air, hovering in front of him. They look so different up close, not like the angelic flock he’d seen that morning. These three were rude, squawking imps with sleek, white heads, puffed-out gray chests, and a blood red spot stained on their lower beaks. They balance mid air with their neon yellow webbed feet, the ugly feet you never see when they fly so gracefully up high. Focusing their unblinking eyes on a helpless spotted cusk eel squirming in a shallow puddle, desperately writhing in a panic to escape to safer water. Billy glared his harshest glare at the three gulls who immediately dispersed upward. The air heats up as the pressure increases. His chest starts to throb as if in a vice. His head is like a coal engine with a roaring blaze. He feels as if he is on fire. His body chugs, lurches and then he is pulled, almost jettisoned, toward the oncoming torrent. The air pressure in his lungs releases as he howls a chilling laugh. Suddenly he was cool again. Rain falls on him in bucket dumps of cold water. The sea spits spray at him as the temperature falls and the winds intensify. He tastes the salty sea brine as his eyes water. Windswept grit scrapes him like a sandblaster. Hail becomes shrapnel from all directions, shredding off most of his clothes. Shoes, socks, shorts now gone, his white briefs flap like torn sheets while his body quivers from the cold and wind. Driftwood missiles fly overhead. A red gingham tablecloth, soiled and soaked, whooshes around him. Then as if in a slapstick horror scene, the same three gulls return, passing in front of Billy, struggling feverishly to tighten their beak grip on the eel they had spied earlier. All three tugging against each other while the helpless eel stretches and twists into contortion still trying to free itself. Billy doesn’t notice, unaware of any of this as he focuses on the storm bursts about to maul him. Lightning strikes around what appears to be a plasma globe containing his body. The storm reaches in and grips him with multiple hands. Simultaneous slams of thunderclaps implode in his ears and send him into a delirious shake. They hit him like trains colliding from all directions, one after another, over and over. Each impact sounding like the warring of Japanese taiko versus kettledrums versus marching-band bass drums, all battering his brain. No sound is louder than this. Then a shrill of silence. He hears nothing momentarily. Gradually a biting high pitched, dog-whistle tone increases. It pierces his ears like a tuning fork, reaching in scraping the inside of his cranium. Suddenly Billy can’t get his breath. The air condenses to liquid, choking him, as if trapped in a fishbowl of floating water, he is pulled down by an undertow, he is fully submerged, but he could still feel his feet, as if standing in the sand. Chest pains, lungs locked, throat clogged, no air is getting in. He somersaults upward… Now in the air, his chest bloats full of pressure, drowning him in oxygen, he’s gonna pop. Nostrils flared, mouth wide open, he panics. Billy abruptly falls backward slamming his spine into the sand. His body frozen rigid in a pose of a gunslinger, elbows firmly tucked into his sides, as if having just drawn six-shooters to open fire from the hips. Index fingers extend pointing toward two unseen targets, with thumbs extended at right angles from trigger fingers, the remaining three fingers gripping at air. Now holding his breath, his eyes transfix on his hands, his face goes blank as his mouth opens preparing to scream. The shriek is never released. No vibrations felt. No pain. His eyes have rolled back inside the top of his head, searching to see into the abyss of his brain. In a relaxed peace, his eyelids fluttered shut. III Hours later in the dark, Billy is suddenly conscious as he stumbles, falling against the door of his home. Energized and feeling hyper, he mentally awakens from a sudden creak, then he opens the screen door more slowly. It’s dark inside the house as well. His mom, fatigued from single motherhood in a small town during the 60s, had put faith in the fast talking salesman who disappeared. The man, whose voice is always there for Billy, is not the man she stopped hearing from a decade ago. Billy, knowing his mother is frantic with worry, sees her shifting nervously in a chair at the kitchen table, looking at the clock again. Nine o’clock. She stands up, starts to pace, one hand scratching the elbow of the hand pulling at her hair. Without thinking, he blurts out, “Oh, hi Mom.” “Billy! Where are your clothes? You're soaking wet! Your underwear’s gone? Where’ve you been? What happened? Who did this? Oh God! Billy?” Looking down, during this grilling, he recognized he was wet, shivering, and naked. Confused, he manages to shake his head as in “dunno”. His eyes blink intensely. His face is a blank. Naked, soaked and clueless to what had happened, but not a scratch nor hair harmed. How had he gotten home? Muscle memory, unaware he was following that voice. None of the afternoon was remembered. Not forgotten. Never input. He’d remember that. |
BILLY RAY’S DAY TRIP AT NINE
Copyright © 2023 November by Leland Madren Disclosure of language contained, design, illustration, all Copyright © 2023 Leland Madren for November, 2023 digital release. The events, characters, incidents, firms, and entities depicted in this work are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or firms is purely coincidental. The author’s moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. Ownership of this work is protected by copyright and other applicable laws. No part of this writing or publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the author currently or of a publisher to be announced. Any unauthorized duplication, distribution and or exhibition of this work could result in criminal prosecution as well as civil liability. A CIP record, for this work as a sample segment included in the completed book is available from the British Library, London. US Library of Congress CIP data registered. |