Ben Soul

imperfections,” Dickon went on in a lowered voice. “I run from things that might hurt me, from people who might hurt me. I trusted once, trusted with all my being, was betrayed and trusted again, and betrayed again. Excuse me if I’m not dumb enough to trust a third time.”

  “For every action,” Dickon went on, “there should be an equal reward. Justice demands it. For every good deed or pure thought, a good thing should happen. And so I loved that woman, Vanna, and she betrayed me and pursued me with hatred. She still pursues me to punish me. I put it to you, Deity of the Universe, this is not fair.

  “And your church, your pious bunch of slavish servants, prattling of goodness and rectitude, they persecute me and cast me out for being the human being you seemed to mean me to be.” Dickon performed an elaborate shrug. “For being the gay man you made me, I should be an outcast? This is your justice?”

  And the wind blew, and the surf foamed, and the killdeer danced. Dickon slumped, staring moodily at his hands. He idly noticed the damp sand on them.

  “Tell me what I have done so wrong,” he said. “I loved Vanna and the church with all the honesty I could find. I dealt faithfully with them. They dumped me. Put me out with the molding orange peels and cold coffee grounds to go to the landfill. I’m more than trash, I know that. Why have you let them do me this way?” Dickon looked up at the brass and blue sky. A lone gull wheeled above the surf and sand. It screeched once, plunged to the waves, and rose with some small scrap of food.

  “Is there any purpose under the sun?” Dickon said. “Is all we are allowed, to submit to the great ‘what’s so is what’s so’ of things?” Dickon shook his head and stood. “Excuse me if I’m disappointed in your answer.” He brushed the wet sand and grit from the seat of his jeans.

  The gull flew up coast and out of sight. The wind sang and the surf whispered across the sand. The killdeer danced up the beach toward the cliffs and back down the wet sand chasing the surf.

  After the Flood

  The winter rains fell without letup for ten days. The rivers and creeks along the Coast swelled, escaped their banks, and swelled again. Pueblo Rio was underwater for a week. The River Road to Las Tumbas disappeared, washed in asphalt chunks down the river to the sea. Even Martyr’s Creek was a raging torrent. From some long-forgotten homestead upstream, the creek dislodged an old icebox and pushed it onto the beach at the cove. Just back from the beach, two propane tanks, washed up from somewhere, and leaked their old and rusty residue into the cove. The sea life avoided the upper end of the cove for the rest of the winter.

  DiConti Sharif and the rest of the sheriff’s department worked double shifts rescuing the stranded, and keeping the traffic moving on detours around ravaged bridges. Notta had become accustomed to seeing him two or three times a week, and missed his company more than she had thought possible. She took to walking long hours on the rain washed beach, watching the waves whirl and dance in the storm winds. On the morning of the eleventh day, as Notta was about to slip into her plastic poncho to prowl the beach, Emma stopped her.

  “Notta,” she said, “Please don’t go out for a little while. I have something to talk with you about.”

  “What is it?” Notta asked, hanging her poncho back on its hook.

  “Do you want a cup of tea, or coffee?”

  “No, Mama, I’m already sloshing. I had three cups at breakfast.” Notta sat down across from Emma.

  “I’ve told you, ever since you were old enough to understand, that I got pregnant with you from a one-night stand.”

  “Yes, on the afternoon of the big temblor.” Notta gestured with her hand, as if she were brushing crumbs away.

  “And I told you that I had tried to find your father, and couldn’t?” Emma searched her daughter’s face for reaction.

  “Yes, Mama. What are you leading up to?”

  “I’ve found your father.” Emma’s throat suddenly thickened, so she had to force out the words.

  “You’ve what?” Notta asked. Emma coughed to clear her throat.

  “I’ve found your father,” she said. Notta stared at her for a moment.

  “Where?”

  “Right here, under our noses.” Emma sat back, savoring the surprise she had sprung.

  “Here? In the Village?”

  “Here, in this house. Our convalescent guest is your father.” Notta stared at her mother for a long moment.

  “Have you been downing the cooking sherry?” Notta asked her mother.

  “Nothing like that, child.” Emma took a deep breath. “When he came here to recuperate, I thought I recognized him from somewhere. You’ll remember, I’m sure, that he mistook you for me, called you by my name.”

  “Yes, he did. I wondered at the time how he knew your name.”

  “When he knew me, I was only a little older than you are now.”

  “So, why do you think this man’s the one you slept with over a quarter century ago?” Ermentrude came in and leaped into Notta’s lap.

  “Because he remembers the afternoon, too.”

  “Convenient. I suppose he’s looking for free room and board.”

  “I don’t know whether he is or not.” Emma looked at the window for a long moment. Prime Pussy leaped into Emma’s lap.

  “Where’s he been all these years?”

  “At La Lechuga.”

  “Some recommendation for fatherhood,” Notta said wryly. She grimaced. “I suppose you’ll expect me to love him, anyway.”

  “Whether you love him or don’t love him is up to you,” Emma snapped at her. “He was wrongly imprisoned.”

  “Most convicts are, at least if you listen to them. That’s what DiConti says.”

  “He knows you are his daughter. I told him that some weeks ago.”

  “And you’re just now telling me about him?” Notta’s face was stony.

  “I kept waiting for a good moment. This is the best one that’s come along.”

  Notta struggled to keep her voice even Her anger put an edge on her words anyway. “Mother, I’ve gotten along all my life without a father. I don’t want one now.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve got one, will you nill you.”

  Notta pushed back her chair and stood up. Ermentrude snarled as she dropped to the floor. Notta ignored her, so Ermentrude snarled again, and stalked off toward the hearthrug in the living room. By terms of the truce between Prime Pussy and Ermentrude, this was Prime Pussy’s turf. Prime Pussy leapt down from Emma’s lap and raced to the front room to re-establish her claim. Notta took her poncho from the hook.

  “I’m going out, Mother,” she said. “I have a lot to think about.”

  “Wear your rain boots, dear. I don’t want you to take a chill.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Notta said, with all the sarcasm an angry daughter could load into two little words. She stopped on the porch to put on her rain boots, and stomped off into the light rain.

  The storm winds had blown quantities of kelp onto the beach. The usually pristine sand, marked by no more than the feet of killdeer, looked like a giant’s weed patch. Notta walked along, her head down, pondering her anger, and discovering a melancholy under it. Two or three times she nearly tripped over the kelp.

  DiConti found her in a brown study. She did not look up, and so did not see him approach. He stopped to admire her trim waist and hips, remembering the full breasts that he could not see because her back was to him. He noticed next the slump of her shoulders, and her bowed head as she plodded along. His heart went out to her, and he suddenly realized he loved her. He quickened his pace to catch up to her.

  “Notta,” he called, when he was in earshot. She looked up, her face almost lost in the hood of her poncho. “What’s wrong?”

  “DiConti,” she said. Her smile warmed DiConti’s world. She stopped and waited for him to close the distance between them. He came to her and kissed her, long and hard. After her first surprise at the shy man’s sud
den passion, she responded in kind. Above them the clouds swirled. On the mountain the unicorn with the unique horn stopped her grazing to sense the joy on the wind. Had she been able to, she’d have grinned in triumph.

  What Belongs to Daddy?

  The fine mist the winds whipped from the clouds and the cove went unnoticed. DiConti and Notta were seeing no one but each other. It was that wondrous moment in time when two people who had grown to love each other suddenly knew it. Arms around each other’s waist they walked the wet sand and did not see the wheeling gulls and dancing killdeer. The surf foamed and broke upon Obaheah and Obadiah. Notta let her head lean down on DiConti’s shoulder. She told him all Emma had told her about Haakon. DiConti murmured comforting words and listened.

  They might well have walked this way all afternoon up and down the beach, but the weather chose to pour down more rain. It was a small squall that the creek scarcely noticed, so swollen it was. It was, however, enough to break the lovers’ mood and bring them back into that reality we all must function in most of our time.

  “Shall we run for it?” Notta asked.

  “Yes,” DiConti said. He started at a slow lope. Notta soon outpaced him, and he raced to catch up with her. They both stopped at the point where the trail went up the hill to San Danson Station. They were laughing too hard to run any more. The rain had let up, as well.

  “Coffee?” DiConti said.

  “Lunch?” Notta countered.

  “Yes,” DiConti said. They walked up the hill to the Café of the Four Rosas. Rosa