Port-a-let (Part 5)

It was a good 40 miles to Mount Neahkahnie and Jones and Michael talked about teaching as they headed south on Highway 101. They passed Seaside, Cannon Beach, and then climbed Arch Cape, bored through the tunnel, and entered a foggy haze of one hue of gray that disallowed any views beyond 500 feet. On the descent into Oswald West State Park, the sun’s rays pulverized the fog into a bright day with vistas of towering green conifers and limitless dreams floating in from the ocean. The weather had instantly changed and if it was sunny like this every day on the Oregon Coast, there’d be millions of residents, no wildlife, and espresso stands on the beaches. The perpetual gray and rain and mold and rust ended any developer or Chamber of Commerce booster’s hope for that future. But they never stopped trying and thankfully a vacation house or condo built on sand overlooking the ocean would occasionally slide into the sea, reminding everyone what always ran the show at the Oregon Coast.

“Pull over!” Michael yelled. “There’s a something moving in the ditch!”

Jones didn’t want to stop, this was a date after all, but he complied and brought the Subaru to a halt some 30 yards past a brown writhing mass off the road.

It was a deer.

They got out of the vehicle and walked wordlessly over to the creature. Michael led the way. Jones had never been this close to an animal in the wild before. He smelled something strange, something sweet and acrid. Michael knelt down by the deer and Jones saw the left side of its body caved in by the impact of a high-speed vehicle. He also noticed a creamy velvet fuzz on stubs that would never be antlers. Jones heard the rumble of a creek below. The deer gave up a huge gasp and died right there, its eyes going still and black. Michael sat down in the shoulder and put her hands into her hair. They still hadn’t said anything to each other.

A log truck blew by and honked its horn. Michael stood up and went to the Subaru. She retrieved the Polaroid camera and walked to within inches of the deer. She shot away, kneeling, crouching, circling the body, emptying a cartridge and then loading another out of her coat pocket. She emptied that one too and never bothered to separate the prints as they churned out of the camera.

Jones watched all of this and didn’t say a word. He’d never witnessed this kind of attention to detail. He’d never done anything with this kind of attention to detail. Back in the car, Jones asked Michael what she was going to do with the photographs.

“Give this deer some dignity.”

“How will you do that?”

“I don’t know yet.”

They resumed their journey to Mount Neahkahnie and didn’t say anything else about the deer. They were quiet for a while until Jones started in about school. Michael interrupted and insisted on a moratorium on “teacher talk.” Instead, she tuned into a station broadcasting a histrionic evangelist and began perfectly mimicking his mellifluous voice conferring salvation on some heathen who had called in, expecting a flogging, then redemption. Jones barely got in a word during her performance and couldn’t stop laughing.

They drove along for 15 minutes and Jones saw a trailhead down the highway, and it headed west into the trees and presumably ended at the ocean.

“Let’s go to the beach before we hike,” Jones said. “What do you think about that?”

“That sounds perfect. We should eat something there.”

Jones turned the Subaru off Highway 101, into a small parking lot.

“I’ve been here before,” he said. “On a youth group outing in grade school. Christian. We took a bus here. This trail leads to Short Sands Beach.”

“You were in a Christian youth group?” said Michael. “You don’t seem like someone who was in youth group.”

“Remind me when we get to the beach to tell you about the girl I made out with on that trip. It was pretty sexy for grade school. Her name was Shelley and she wore a sea shell necklace.”

“I can’t wait. I’ll mimic the preacher after I hear it and condemn you to hell.”

They entered a cathedral of Western red cedar, Western hemlock, Sitka spruce, and walked single file down a dirt path with a creek rushing by on their right. Water dripped from the branches of the trees. If you listened closely, you could hear it.

Michael led the way and brought along her backpack and cooler. The trees were enormous, explosively green, some towering straight to the sky, some bent at bizarre angles, a few with their tops blown off and cauterized by lightning. Some of the biggest trees rested on the ground, their massive and gnarly root wads still intact, with dangling fibrous tentacles poised to ensnare an unsuspecting child. The trees may have been rotting on the ground but they weren’t really dead. Hundreds of ferns and seedlings grew from their trunks. These logs nursed new life in sporadic ways that didn’t conform to any pattern. This was not a plantation that most Oregonians identified as a forest.

“God I Jones when things are asymmetrical!” said Michael. “I want a crooked bumper sticker that reads Down With Symmetry!”

Jones realized he’d never heard anyone use the word asymmetrical in a sentence before.

“This light is perfect for painting. I’ve got to bring the kids here,” she said. “And by the way, never use the word ‘dappled’ in my presence. It’s at the top of my shit list of words and things I hate.”

“You have a shit list of words and things you hate?”

“Yes, at home on a chalkboard.”

“What’s another word?”

“Resonate.”

“I hate ‘component.’”

“I loathe ‘plethora.’”

“Myriad is worse. What are some of the things on the list?”

“McDonald’s. Monsanto. Budweiser. Advertising.”

They kept walking down the path exchanging words and things they despised and Jones could see how Michael might have clashed with administrators. She had opinions and an aesthetic. Jones had never met a principal with the latter.

Every 30 seconds or so, they passed drenched mutts and surfers returning from the ocean, carrying boards and discussing the waves. Everyone sort of nodded a greeting.

The path ended at a clearing overlooking a beach with thousands of pieces of bleached driftwood interlocked together. It was a raft of driftwood waiting to launch with the next big gale. Children could build a thousand forts here and their parents would never have to pay a cent for the privilege of using this beach because this was Oregon.

In the distance, a couple hundred surfers bobbed in the sea. The foreground held more surfers and their entourages lounged about playing hackey sack, football, drinking beer, tending fires. At that moment, they were pretty much the most beautiful people in Oregon.

“I can’t believe I’ve never been here. This is 90 minutes from Portland,” said Michael. “This is incredible. It makes me want to learn to surf. Should we learn to surf?”

“I’ll watch you,” Jones said.

“C’mon! Isn’t the ocean calling you? We’re at the beach, you know.”

He didn’t want to surf; it held absolutely no interest for him, although he did like watching surfers. He didn’t tell her that, but she was right about the ocean.

Michael started jogging down a gravel path to the beach. Jones watched her leave the path, leap onto a makeshift driftwood bridge, and tiptoe across it while simultaneously extricating the Polaroid camera from her backpack. It was all performed in an undulating motion that was more of a dance than practical human movement.

They played on the beach for an hour and ate lunch from the cooler. She asked him about his family. Her family was all gone, a Dad she never met killed at the tail end of the Vietnam War and an indifferent, medicated mother lost to the New Age. She had no siblings. Jones had an older sister, also a teacher, science, or was it math? Everyone in his family was a teacher; it was all he had ever known growing up.

“When are you going to tell me the story about the girl and the youth group?” said Michael as she petted a misshapen cattle dog that had come over to them.

“How about the next time we visit?” he said.

“That sounds fine.”