Daisy awoke at\nfirst light. Rain had stopped. She exhaled and could see her breath.\nShe got out of the Volvo to stretch and smoke and heard two distinct\nsounds\u2014the churning roar of the ocean and a saxophone playing what\nshe recognized as a Christmas Carol but couldn’t recall its title or\nany lyrics. Daisy knew the ocean was behind her, but the exact source\nof the saxophone mystified her. It was apparently coming from one of\nthe rigs and was obviously not a recording. Someone was playing right\nthen! A Christmas carol! Who does that? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some 30 quail\ndarted across Daisy’s path as she walked to the restroom. A couple\ngulls flew overhead. She saw morning doves and blackbirds. blue jays\nand crows. Perched in a shore pine was a chipmunk nibbling what\nappeared to be a mushroom. A short distance away, two deer bolted\npast one of the RVs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAngels We\nHave Heard on High.\u201d That was it! <\/em>Daisy remembered the name of\nthe carol and found herself singing the\nfalalalalalalalalala….gloria<\/em> chorus in an exaggerated choral\nvoice that made her chuckle. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n After using the\nrestroom and washing up, Daisy saw a Beach Access<\/em> sign and\nfollowed it. Not long thereafter, she descended a cliff with the\nassistance of a rope and landed on a beach populated by thousands\nupon thousand pieces of driftwood. Daisy walked and walked, never in\na straight line. (No one at the beach ever does if you’re\nexperiencing an existential crisis.) She pocketed shells and rocks.\nShe kicked at foam and played with kelp. She breathed in the brine.\nAt one point, Daisy surprised herself by jogging. She’d never jogged\nin her life. She stopped 75 yards into the jog and lit a cigarette.\nShe smoked and stared at the ocean and saw a tiny boat out to sea.\nI’m never going back to Coos Bay, <\/em>she said to herself.She\nsaid it twice. It sounded good. It sounded like a damn good country\nsong about a faded, jaded, junky nurse who let it bleed. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n After her walk,\nDaisy grabbed a cup of coffee and some beef jerky from the store and\ndecided to check out the laundry room and lending library for no\nother reason that she had absolutely nothing to do and was living out\nof car. Who knows? She might even find a book to read, something she\nhadn’t done in years. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n She opened the door\nand beheld more of a thrift store than a laundry room or lending\nlibrary, although a dryer was drying and a white-washed shelf listing\nat five degrees held an enormous amount of books. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Daisy entered and\nwhat struck her first was all the apparel hanging from the exposed\noverhead pipes. Several rows. About half of it was still covered in\ndry cleaning bags. Several seconds into her inspection of the\napparel, Daisy knew she had stumbled across perhaps the greatest\ncollection of vintage women’s Western wear in the country. Shirts.\nSkirts. Vests. Boots. Hats. Jackets with fringes all the colors of\nthe rainbow. And here the collection was in an RV park laundry room!\nFor free! Daisy didn’t even wear this kind of fashion. She would now!\nYee haw! <\/em>She ripped off her coat and sneakers and began trying\non items as if it was Black Friday. Everything fit perfectly,\nincluding a rhinestone-encrusted leather belt with a buckle the size\nof a dollar bill. The buckle was pewter with an inlaid design colored\na shiny gold. The design was of a woman in pigtails wearing a cowboy\nhat riding a horse. The horse was jumping over a barrel. The text\nread MOLALLA BUCKEROO CHAMPION. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n It dawned upon\nDaisy that all this fantastic Western wear had belonged to one person\nand that person was gone. She was unbuckling the belt when Bruce came\ninside the room. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Daisy awoke at first light. Rain had stopped. She exhaled and could see her breath. She got out of the Volvo to stretch and smoke and heard two distinct sounds\u2014the churning roar of the ocean and a saxophone playing what she recognized as a Christmas Carol but couldn’t recall its title or any lyrics. Daisy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5639,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5641,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5638\/revisions\/5641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}