Love and Glory by Parker Robert B

Author:Parker, Robert B. [Parker, Robert B.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-03-15T17:29:48+00:00

Chapter NINETEEN

"Conduct," Scott Fitzgerald had written, "may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes." The phrase was with me as I woke at sunrise. I sat smelling and crusted, with sand layered over the dirt and vomit, the nasal drainage and the dried semen, and thought about the phrase and about The Great Gatsby and marveled at how it could come back through the years since I'd read it, just like that, as clear as if I'd read it this morning. "Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes." I got to my feet unsteadily with my body shrieking for a drink and my throat clenched with the desire for a cigarette. In front of me the Pacific was calm in the early light and entirely empty to the horizon. I felt my stomach turn. I sank to my knees, then hands and knees, and vomited. There wasn't much down there, so not much came up. But it took a long time. When it was over I felt dizzy. I crawled toward the ocean and then got to my feet and walked toward it and into it. There was night chill to it and the shock of it centralized me a little. I kept moving as the water came up over my thighs and then sat down in the water, neck-deep a yard from shore. The silence seemed to stretch up to the arch of sky and echo back. My wet clothes seemed to be shrinking in on me and I tore them off and threw them from me toward the open sea, shoes and all. I had a sort of a festered sore on my stomach and the salt water stung it sharply. The sensation was one of the first I'd felt, and I liked it. I began to take handfuls of clean, fine sand from the sea floor and scrub myself with it, scouring my face and hair and body with it, and as I felt the faint tingle of it where the sand scraped my skin and the salt water worked on it, I began to scour harder, all over, everywhere, again and again. I sank my face and head underwater and scrubbed it with the sand and then rinsed it with violent rubbing. For maybe an hour, until the sun was full above the horizon, I scrubbed and rinsed until my body was sanded clean. I gargled with seawater again and again, and finally dove beneath the sea and stayed under as long as I could, rolling slowly in the water. When I could stay under no longer, I stood up with my wet hair plastered to my scalp and the water streaming off my body. Conduct had been too long in the marshes. I stared at the shore and beyond it, eastward across the almost endless range of the republic toward Jennifer. I will get you back, I said. You will he the rock.

To my right was a small pier and on one of the pilings someone had left a bathing suit to dry.

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