The Divers and Other Mysteries of Seattle Read online

  The Divers and Other Mysteries of Seattle

  (and California, but Just a Little)

  More Mostly True Stories

  Books by Jerome Gold

  FICTION

  The Moral Life of Soldiers

  Sergeant Dickinson (originally titled The Negligence of Death)

  Prisoners

  The Prisoner’s Son

  The Inquisitor

  Of Great Spaces (with Les Galloway)

  POETRY

  Stillness

  NONFICTION

  The Divers and Other Mysteries of Seattle

  (and California, but Just a Little)

  The Burg and Other Seattle Scenes

  Paranoia & Heartbreak: Fifteen Years in a Juvenile Facility

  How I Learned That I Could Push the Button

  Obscure in the Shade of the Giants: Publishing Lives Volume II

  Publishing Lives Volume I: Interviews with Independent

  Book Publishers

  Hurricanes (editor)

  The Divers and Other Mysteries of Seattle

  (and California, but Just a Little)

  More Mostly True Stories

  Copyright © 2014 Jerome Gold. All rights reserved. Some of the characters in this book are fictitious. For fictitious characters, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover photograph by Willa Gold.

  A shorter version of “Les Galloway” was published by Chronicle Books as “Les Galloway and the Forty Fathom Bank,” the afterword to The Forty Fathom Bank and Other Stories by Les Galloway. “All Air is Finite” and a small part of “The Divers” were originally published in Prisoners by Jerome Gold (Black Heron Press). “I Stepped in Some Shit” was originally published by The Friday’s Egg Calendar Company in its 2006 calendar, later in Moon City Review and The New Verse News. “Runaway” was also published by The Friday’s Egg Calendar Company, in its 2011 calendar.

  ISBN 978-1-936364-08-4

  Black Heron Press

  Post Office Box 13396

  Mill Creek, Washington 98082

  www.blackheronpress.com

  Contents

  End of the Rainbow

  Liar

  The Silence of the Tides

  Mary

  The Power of Love (I)

  The Power of Love (II)

  Les Galloway

  Gravity

  Oh, Those Prankster Angels

  Runaway

  I Stepped in Some Shit

  The Divers

  All Air is Finite

  End of the Rainbow

  Driving home on I-5, I pulled off at the rest area at Federal Way for a cup of coffee and maybe a nap. I had finally gotten past the rain and the sky was beginning to open so that it looked like the drive the rest of the way into Seattle would be comparatively easy. I was coming from Corvallis where that morning I had been interviewed about two of my war books. My PTSD had kicked in, though nobody could see it, and I was feeling both tired and hyper alert. Slanting to the right into the exit lane, I noticed a rainbow that appeared to end in the leftmost lane of the interstate about fifty yards ahead of me. I tracked its arc, but lost sight of it behind the evergreens that interceded between the rest area and the freeway.

  I did not at first believe I was seeing the end of a rainbow. I would have thought, if ever I thought about rainbows, that they did not end, but simply disappeared; they dissolved into the air, perhaps evaporating with the moisture they lay on. But this one did end. There was no pot of gold, and there were no leprechauns, there was only the leftmost lane of the freeway as you drove north and the rainbow that touched it.

  I could not be certain whether or not the pavement was illuminated where the rainbow met it. It seemed to me that it was, but I was aware of the human propensity for self-deception, so I doubted myself. Then I saw a car drive through the rainbow and it appeared to become enveloped in a golden light. Again I doubted what I had seen. Then another car went through it and the same thing happened—the same light. Then a van—the same.

  Each vehicle, as it passed through the rainbow, was illuminated for perhaps a second and a half before driving out of the light. I was watching from behind and to the right from where I had stopped at the side of the exit ramp, so I cannot really know how much depth there was to the light, but it took measurable time for each vehicle to drive through it.

  I wonder what the occupants of the vehicles experienced. Did they see the rainbow? Were they irritated by the light in their eyes? Did the light seem to them unusual or unusually intense? Did a driver say to the person in the passenger seat, “What the hell was that?”

  Now that we know that rainbows have ends, I wonder if this knowledge sheds light, so to speak, on the origins of the myth about rainbows. Certainly it gives credence to the idea of gold, even if not contained in pots, to be found at a rainbow’s end.

  Liar

  Late that afternoon I was driving into the University District from Lake City to pick up my friend Maureen. As I was going up 35th the rain suddenly ended. One moment everything was wet, I had my wipers on, water was running downhill along the curbs, and the next the streets were as dry as the Mojave in summer and I could see shreds of blue through the clouds.

  When I got to Maureen’s I told her about the rain. She didn’t believe me. At her house there was hardly a cloud. “Liar,” she said, laughing.

  “It’s true,” I protested. “Just up the hill from the high school, the rain stopped.”

  “You’re lying. You’re always lying.”

  It was true, in a way. I liked making up stories to tell her because I knew she enjoyed hearing them, and she always laughed when she discovered, or I told her, that I had made it up.

  “Rain has to stop somewhere,” I said. “It doesn’t rain everywhere in the world all at once.”

  She laughed.

  “I was in Florida once when the rain stopped in the middle of the street. On one side of the white line it was wet and on the other side it was dry.” It was true, but I knew even as I said it that I was defeating myself.

  Maureen was delighted. “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

  “Is there anything I can do to convince you about the rain?”

  “Nope.”

  She looked at me expectantly, her smile waiting to expand at whatever I said next.

  “Well, let’s go to dinner. Let’s go to that Indian place in Lake City. Maybe it’s still raining there.”

  “It isn’t,” she said, and laughed.

  The Silence of the Tides

  We were walking along the sea wall at Alki Beach, Mary and I. It was the first time we went out, though months later when we went out again she would not remember our having dated before.

  We would walk for a while, we decided, and then we would have lunch at Spud’s. It was one of those pleasant days in early summer when it might shower or it might not, but even if you got wet you would not be overly cold. We talked quietly, neither of us passionate about what we were saying. I enjoyed the sound, the texture of her voice. I noticed that when she used a contraction that had a “d” embedded in it—didn’t, wouldn’t—she pronounced the letter instead of gliding over it or substituting a glottal stop. (I had taken a linguistics class not long before we met.)

  For a moment we were silent. Then, in that silence, I heard a larger silence. I looked around—the horizon; the shops and restaurants and beach on the land side—trying to figure out what it was, and then I looked down into the water. It was st
ill. There were no wavelets as there had been a few minutes earlier. It was as if we were standing outside of time. The tide had been coming in and now it wasn’t, but it wasn’t going out either.

  And then it was. There was the noise of moving water again, of Puget Sound withdrawing, of time reversing. I had never noticed those few minutes in the movement of the tide when it is at perfect rest, although since that day I have seen it happen again. But this first time was, I think, the moment when I began to fall in love with Mary.

  Mary

  A couple of years after my divorce I began seeing a woman I had met in one of my classes. The class met on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, but I almost always missed the Monday session. I saw my children on weekends and returned them to their mother on Sunday evening and it was hard for me to leave my house on Mondays. My ability to think about anything but the causes of my sadness on that day was nil. Eventually I learned not to take classes that required Monday attendance, but before that I met Mary.

  She had noticed my absences and, without asking why, offered to lend me her notes. I thanked her and explained about my weekly depression. Even now, recalling this, I am surprised at how open I was with her without knowing her. She said she knew something was going on with me but hadn’t wanted to pry. I thanked her again.

  We went to a movie. When I asked her to go, she hesitated but then said she’d like to. I don’t remember what the movie was, but there was a scene in it that was filled with violence and I anticipated it and as it began, I put my arm around her and turned her head so that she could hide her face against my shoulder. I asked her if she wanted to leave, but she didn’t.

  Over coffee, she asked me how I knew that scene was coming up. I didn’t know; maybe it was the music or the sudden lack of it. How did I know it would upset her? I didn’t know that either; I just thought it would. She thanked me for helping her. That was how she put it: I had “helped” her.

  She was small and wiry and she had small breasts. She had dark brown hair and it gave off a rich scent that made me want to protect her from harm. She was matter-of-fact about her body, neither ashamed of it nor liking it much. She said her breasts were beginning to sag. She was twenty-five.

  When she was seventeen, she was a fashion model. Once, after a photo shoot, she and some girls she worked with went out to a restaurant. She caught an older man staring at her and she pulled the top of her dress down, exposing her nipples. Telling me, she laughed about the man’s reaction, how embarrassed he had been. She compared her breasts now to what they were then.

  Once when I went over to pick her up—we were going to see a movie or maybe just out for coffee; there was a wonderful little coffee bar down the street from her apartment building—she said she didn’t want to go; her period had started and she needed to stay in. We went into her bedroom and she sat down on a pad she had made of white towels. She didn’t use anything to absorb the flow, but bled onto the pad. She was wearing a tee shirt and a loose denim skirt that she had hiked up to her hips to keep it from getting stained. If I was put off, she said, she would understand and we could see each other in a few days, but if I didn’t mind it, I could sit with her and we could talk; she would appreciate my company.

  She sat with her knees up and I could see the dark hair on her mound and her swollen lips. I could smell the blood as well as the natural scent of her vagina, which I loved. I was aroused, but more than that, the intimacy she allowed me by revealing herself at one of her most vulnerable times prompted in me such tenderness that I could have wept.

  As we talked she occasionally checked the towel beneath her. When the blood began to seep through she would get up and put it in a hamper in the bathroom and then return to her bedroom with a fresh towel and sit with me again.

  A short time before we started seeing each other, she had ended a five-year relationship with a man she had cared for. He had two children and she missed those kids badly. She missed him too, of course, but she especially missed the children. She talked about her life with them and their father, and said she would have stayed with them forever, but something inside her had changed and she felt she had to leave.

  She was only nineteen when she went to live with them. Essentially she had raised those kids, at least until the younger one went into grade school. She didn’t regret any of her time with them, but sometimes she thought she was a bad person for having left them. She asked me if I thought she was bad. No, I did not.

  Her mother thought she was bad, but that was because of something else. When she was sixteen she began sleeping with a boy she had known all her life. They were always in the same class and hung around together after school. When they began having sex, it was just another thing they did together. She would sometimes spend the night with him. His parents didn’t mind that they slept together.

  One day her mother asked her where she slept when she spent the night at Mark’s house. With Mark, Mary said. At first her mother couldn’t believe it, and then she was outraged. And Mark’s parents? she asked. Do they know? They don’t care, Mary said. A slut, her mother called her. A little whore.

  Mary was hurt. She had not seen herself as a whore. What she and Mark did was just… She didn’t know. It was a way of enjoying each other. She confided in her friend Juana. Juana was a cheerleader and she turned Mary’s mother’s accusations into a cheer like you would do at a pep rally.

  A slut, a slut

  All you do is rut

  Spread your legs

  Spread your legs

  Yaaay!

  Listening to Juana sing that made Mary feel better, and she and Juana remained best friends. Even today, sometimes Juana would sing it when Mary got blue about herself.

  Did I remember that time when I forgot to buy condoms and she said it was all right, don’t worry about it? I remembered. Did I think she was on the pill? Yes. I knew you would think that, she said; men always look for an excuse not to use a rubber. Why? Is it so different when you use a rubber? I can’t feel as much, I said. I’ll use one, but physically it isn’t as good.

  I’m not on the pill, she said. She didn’t use the pill because she didn’t like its effect on her body. When I asked what method of contraception she was using, because I had stopped using condoms altogether, she said she was not using anything. She wanted to have a baby. “I’d make one hell of a good mother,” she said. That was why she left Robert; she wanted a baby and he didn’t want any more.

  She waited for me to respond.

  I didn’t know what to say. Suddenly there was in my mind a question about how much I could trust her, about how far I was willing to go with her. Until this moment I had not thought about limits; I was in love with her.

  I was silent.

  She had started seeing a counselor about her feelings at having left Robert and the kids. It had taken her a while to find one who could help her because they tended to feel uncomfortable when she cried. Men did; she didn’t want a female counselor. But finally she found a psychologist she liked. She asked me if I would wait for her until after this period of her life had passed, then said before I could respond, “No, you won’t. You like women too much.”

  I may have said, “I’ll wait,” or I may only have thought to say it, but in either case she turned away from me and I thought then that I had lost her.

  Her family lived in Santa Clara and she went there for the holidays at the end of the year. She called me once. During our conversation she said she hadn’t slept with anyone since she arrived there. I hadn’t thought about her sleeping with anyone but when she said that, I was certain she was either lying or that she intended to go to bed with someone.

  When I picked her up from the airport she was distant. She didn’t respond to my attempt to hug her and she insisted on carrying her own bags. At her apartment I helped her with her suitcase and then I left.

  I didn’t call her. She called me twice over the next few weeks but each time the conversation ended without either of us suggesting we get t
ogether.

  I ran into her seven or eight years later outside University Book Store in Seattle. She had two daughters now, about four years apart. I tried to talk with them but they were shy and clutched at their mother’s skirt. We told each other what we were doing now and she brought me up to date on a couple we had known—separated now, but still friends, she said—and then there was nothing more to talk about. For me there had been a number of women since I had last seen her, and for her there was a man she had met soon after we stopped seeing each other. When I went home I felt again the tenderness I knew when we talked that night as she menstruated onto a white towel, and I mourned the shortness of our lives.

  The Power of Love (I)

  Saul

  I was a gambler. I loved the horses. Not that I made a living off them. Hell, they made a living off me. Oh, sometimes I’d win, and sometimes I’d win big. But then I’d play big. Until the money was gone. Then I’d be back to five- and ten-dollar bets. Humiliating after I’d won thirty thou, and worse after I’d lost forty.

  Some men were after me. Threatened my wife, my sons. Told me they would hurt them unless I made good what I owed. But I couldn’t. Where was I going to get twenty thousand, thirty thousand dollars, I don’t even remember what it was now. So I grabbed Sarah and the kids, took what we could load in a truck overnight, and left Chicago and went to L.A.

  I was a butcher. Butchering was how I supported my family and my vice. This was in the days when you still had butcher shops in your neighborhood, produce stands, fish markets. This was before the superdupermarkets killed them all. So I got a job in a butcher shop, gave up the ponies except for the occasional two-dollar bet, saved my money, went into partnership with a guy and bought a shop. Sent the younger son to college, for as long as he wanted to go, anyway. The older one had some problems and one day the Sheriff’s Department let us know they’d found his body beside a freeway ramp. OD’d. The people he was with just dumped him, probably afraid of being found with a body in the trunk. Broke Sarah’s heart.