Chapter 9 - The most recently written!

Chapter 9
It was difficult to think of Clarity after reading the letter. I couldn't imagine in what manner it was that she now existed, nine years later. She was broken, confused in her words. Her mind clearly drifted to and fro, concerning her state of being, her future, me, my future, and the inextricable maze of grief and eternal change that had been woven into our lives the night it all came crashing down.

I could not find it in myself to venture into imagining what nine years of fermenting grief had caused her to become. And so my mind went to the time and place when I had first seen her at her best. I of course didn't know it at the time, but the grace with which she watched life unfold before her eyes, the grace with which she carried out her own story, it would be something that would continually save me from myself.

You see, she had it all wrong when placing blame upon herself. Nothing, could be further from the truth. It was only I that was to blame, in the end.

"Did you find what you hoped to find?"

I looked up from my own little maze-of-a-world, in anguish, to find that Cal had returned. And with food. He stood above me now, looking down in a genuinely curious way.

"I didn't have any idea what I was going to find in those letters, Cal. So, no."

It was true. And the letter had changed nothing about that for future endeavors of the like.

"So you did find what you were looking for! That's great news, Ansel."

"What the hell are you talking about, Cal?"

The letter had been emotionally draining, to say the least. It had taken me back first to the day I had gone to prison, and then beyond, to the day this whole thing had first started. Cal's playful semantics were the last thing I had energy for at this point.

"You read the letter, Ansel. You weren't hoping to find anything on the pages, that much was clear. You feared their contents, obviously, and when you fear something, Ansel, you can in no way find the hope concerning it. You had hoped for the courage only to open the letters. You had hoped to look your fear in the face. And judging by the shredded top of that envelope right there, and the unfolded papers in your hand, I'd say you found what you had hoped for! It was more of a rhetorical question, I suppose."

He sure had a way. Not that I was used to it yet. That's what nine years in prison will do to a guy. Dull down his once sharpened ability to keenly pick up on the styles of different folks. Out here, we were all in different realities. On the inside, there was either one or none, depending on how you looked at the predicament. Nonetheless, he was right, I had found what I was looking for. The problem now was, it had only left me looking for other things, things that I didn't necessarily hope to find. Things that I feared, the same as I had in opening that first envelope, that Pandora of the past.

"Got us some grub. Claaaaam chowda! One of the richest pleasures of being at the foot of the Pacific. And you best be getting some of it in ya. You're shakin', Ansel."

That was the nice thing about Cal, I was finding. He could sense when I wasn't going to carry on the conversation. He could sense when it was time to stir things up, and when to lay them down.
As for the shaking, I looked down upon my trembling hands, the papers jittering excitedly in them, and I could not be sure why they were doing so. The long lack of food and proper rest could certainly have something to do with it. But as I looked upon them, both the letters and my hands, that is, I thought the shaking to be caused by something far worse than an impoverished body. I thought it to be fear as the cause. Fear of nothing in particular. And that was the point. Fear of what might come next. In the next of letters. With tomorrow's sunrise. With the rest of my days in this god-forsaken reality.

So I folded fear up. Folded up Clarity's fragmented past just as nice and neat as it'd been when I unfolded it, gently put it back in the envelope, put the envelope in the satchel with the rest.

"Get some of that in ya. Hell of a good meal. Hell of a lot better than that horse shit they were feeding us. And marginal horse shit at that!"

He handed me a to-go bowl and a plastic spoon, and immediately, the wafting scent of clams and spices and potatoes and all of the other wonderful ingredients in that bowl put the fear straight out of my mind. For how long? I did not know. Nor did I care, in that particular moment.
I took a big bite of the chowder, or 'chowda' as Cal's roughneck accent would have it, and held it on my tongue for quite a long moment. There was salt, and spice, and sweetness, and an obviously honest effort to combine them all in an enjoyable way. And, oh! How enjoyable it was.
I swallowed and quickly refilled my mouth with another generous bite. This one was filled of potatoes. Hearty potatoes. Steamed down long enough so that they'd mush with minimal effort. The combination of the potato mushing and the clam chewing and the thick broth slushing, it was all a rather incredible experience for my mouth.

As I consumed bite after bite, I thought back to the prison food. And oddly enough, I could not readily recall the tastes or the textures or the composition of the foods I had eaten. But it wasn't just the food. I could see myself eating in the cafeteria, but I could not recall the details of the cafeteria. There were fellow prisoners all around me, eating as well, but I could not recall any of their faces or names.

I tried to think back on prison in general, to that time of my life that had began nine years prior, and only ended just the morning before. I looked for my cell. For my three walls. For my barred doorway. For my bed. But I could not so clearly see the walls that I'd stared at hour after hour, day after day. And the between the bars of my cell door, I could not so quickly reconstruct the scene beyond. And as for the bed, the bed that I knew I'd spent 3285 nights struggling to sleep in, I could not feel the way my body had felt upon it.

Nine years I had spent in that place, though it now seemed as if it's entire existence had been a fuzzy dream. It wasn't like the way I could go back to that first time Clarity and I had crossed paths and relive the entire scene, as if it were happening just then. And then I realized something, that quite honestly, stirred up one of the most uncomfortable feelings I can imagine knowing. Those bites of chowda, those moments of taste and excitement, that memory of Clarity and the deer and that day, these were the first moments I'd really felt much of anything since that night. For nine unknown years, I hadn't really been much of anything at all. The world, hadn't been much of anything at all.

Worst of it all was, upon realizing this, I suddenly felt fairly certain that I wasn't ready for the world to be much of anything at all.

I looked over to Cal, he enjoyed his clam chowda, that much was certain. He had finished, his bowl sitting empty next to him, as he gazed out across the Pacific, the last of the surfers looking for one last wave to ride back toward solid ground. He was content. It was all over his face. He was alive. It was in his posture. Kicked back and at ease, his legs spreading out their full length on the rocks. By his account, he'd been locked away for over thirty-nine years. Thirty-nine. He was responsible for the death of two people. Two lives. Two lives. And he'd had nothing to do other than think about that, for thirty-nine years. I'd been in for a quarter of that time, and I was finding out that I no longer had any idea who or what I or the world was.

How could he be so pleasant, so sure of himself and the world around him? Did he not have a conscience? Was he not weighed down by the lasting consequences of his actions?

"How can you live with yourself?"

He continued to stare out to the endless west, seemingly unaffected by my question. There was a long pause, during which I angered slightly. Angered with his presence. His existence.

"Did you happen to catch the sunset, Ansel?"
He smiled as he spoke, which angered me further. Here we go. The Cal Run-Around. Only this time, I couldn't handle his bullshit.

"What? No, Cal, I didn't watch the fucking sunset. I was reading a letter. Now, I asked you a question, and a pretty damn important one at that."

Angry, I certainly was. And no longer in a slight fashion. It was the first time I'd actually gotten vulgar with Cal. And he didn't seem to care, which angered me further.

"I watched the sunset from the beach, over there just below those cliffs. I climbed down to it and found myself a nice and right soft spot on the sand just above the area where it was hard and wet from the breakin' waves. I sat there and I watched as this little corner of the world slowly turned its face away from that big ball'a fire. Same thing that happens once a day, everyday since there ever was a day. And I felt good, as I watched the sky turn from blue to yellow to orange to flaming red. It felt good, just watchin' time do it's thing to this place."

That was it. I wasn't going to spend my time with some callous old man that wasn't sorry at all. He disgusted me, still sitting there and grinning out into the void as if he never did have anything more desperate to fill his mind with than simple pleasantries. I stood, and began to leave, quickly walking east with purpose.

"Where are you going, Ansel?"

Now, of course now, there was some sign of concern in his voice. I didn't need to turn back to let it be known that me and Cal would be having nothing further to do with one another.

"I'm not going to sit around with some old fool, who's done the things you've done, and still thinks the world is all cake and ice cream."

"Well, what about these here letters? You're just going to leave them?"

I'd left the satchel next to my half eaten bowl of clam chowda, unintentionally. Damn.
I stopped walking and turned to see Cal now standing and facing my direction, the bag of letters dangling in the air below his grip on the strap.

I started back to get them, not planning to say a word during the exchange.

As I approached, Cal extended the bag in my direction, what his face was showing about his demeanor in the whole situation, I did not know as I intentionally avoided any unnecessary contact with him.

I arrived and hastily grabbed a low part of the shoulder strap, but Cal did not let go. I looked over into torridly intense eyes, just as he spoke with an equally intense tone seething out.

"Where are you going to go, boy?"

I didn't know how to answer, so I didn't, which I suspect he knew would happen all along.

"That's right. Who else is going to bring you a hot bowl'a clam chowda? Who else is going to understand you're more than a damn conviction? Who else is going to help you out, Ansel?"

Again, I had nothing to offer, because he was right, there was nothing else.

"Do not judge me, Ansel. You do not know me, just as I do not know you. Do not mistake our little exchange here for more than it has been. You don't see me firing off about the way your handlin' things, do you? Now for everything you seem to have assumed, I am not a bad man. Do you consider yourself to be a bad man, Ansel?"

I'd never really given it thought before. Truth was, I didn't know what the hell I thought of myself.

"I'm not sure what I'd consider myself to be."

"Well you wouldn't want someone makin' up their own opinion on what you are without proper consideration, and treatin' you so, would ya?"

"No, I suppose not."

I suddenly felt the difference in our ages. It was as if I were receiving a lecture. As if I had been wrong all along.

"Then get a hold of yourself and have a seat. You remember what I said yesterday? There isn't any place out there for people like us. We have to stick together."

He continued to burn right through me with his stone-hearted stare long after speaking, until I finally sunk to the ground. I no longer had any sort of take on Cal. This was the side of him I had not yet seen. A rough and tumble, 'don't mess with me' streak. I was suddenly a tad afraid of the man. But then he spoke, still in a direct manner, none of the curved prattle, but without the fiery tone.

"Now, here's the rest of what I was going to say, before you aimed at storming off into things you can't control. There have been a hell of a lot of nights in my life where I wasn't so happy about time just doin' its thing. There have been a hell of a lot of nights that found me and time the worst of enemies, matter'a fact.

So tonight when it was time, for time to do one of the things it does best, aesthetically speaking that is, when I had the freedom, the choice to sit back and enjoy time's company for once, you can bet your firecracker ass I did so. Does that mean I don't put in my time with the devil? Figurin' out just how ugly I am? Nah. I'll always put my time in. What you have to wrap your steamy little head around, Ansel, is that we've all got a past. Even all those folks who aint ever seen the bars. And the thing about havin' a past is, you can't have one without also havin' a bag full'a mistakes. And the thing about havin' a life, bein' a person, is, you can't do any of it without a past.

So everyone's made mistakes, Ansel. Everyone has regrets. Even those fool-roosters who'll tell you they have no regrets, nothing they'd like to go back and do differently, they're not weighing the whole lot of things.

Now, you've made a mistake or two. Some, you know, where the devil caught up with ya. And he said, 'you and me, we're gonna have a nice long talk about this.' And sure as the moon is comin' up just now, that's a conversation that you'll be hard pressed to ever find an end to. Sometimes, you see, we'll talk it out enough so as to find an end to the conversation. Once in awhile, we'll forget about the conversation altogether as time withers its relevance. More often than not, however, we just find a way to put the demons to rest each night, knowin' full well that one or two of 'em will stir up again, as likely as not, before the sun finds its way into the next day."

I found myself staring out into the darkening sky, to the low and deep red aura filling the smallest of portions of the black void on the western horizon. Listening to the crash of the swaying waters against the cliffs, chiseling them a new face fleck by fleck, moment by moment. By talking of the very demons that incessantly clawed at my surface, Cal had magically suppressed them back to the depths of my awareness.

Gradually, I came down out of the 'it all will make sense in time' cloud Cal had wrapped me into with his sensible, lyrical swaddling, and I took note of the chill of the nighttime November air, which in turn reminded me of the complicated mess life on the outside offered forth.

Where would we sleep?

How would we stay warm?

For what, would we rise with the sun on the next of mornings?

Conversations that, despite the topical unavailability of my psyche due to the devil's relentless calling, needed to be hashed out.

"You know, Cal, we can't stay here."

I hoped not to come off as too 'devil-may-care,' but indeed, he did care, very much so in fact, and we needed a place more to our own suiting than Sunset Cliffs in order to have it out with him.

"I know. But it was a destination that needed to be arrived at. For us both."

Always stoic, he seemed to know what was coming before I did.

"Where will we go?"

Clearly, there was no longer a need to play the game of 'who's in control here.' I was on Cal's terms, for now.

"To the Inland Empire. San Bernardino. There's a program there, that will set us up with jobs and temporary housing. Freedom is not, and will never be, free, Ansel."

On this, I had to disagree with Cal. Though I would say nothing, for I assumed that whatever it was he had done in 1969 that was more important to see through than to chase after the love of his life, must have been in the name of freedom. I had decided some time ago, some time before finding myself in prison, that I had never been free. That freedom was an illusion. We were all trapped, and always would be.

Tonight, it looked as though we would be heading back to prison.

It did not occur to me, at the time, to question how Cal had acquired our clam chowda dinners, or how it was that he had charmed a girl thirty years his younger into believing he'd lost two tickets for the Amtrack to San Diego, without any record of said tickets.

It was certainly true, right then as we stood to leave Sunset Cliffs, that I had handed control of my own fate over to Cal with two eyes closed. But what other choice had I been given?