dates and disaster

The motorcycle was broken. I picked up the carburetor from the bike shop last week, breaking up the knot of burly salesmen and making them nervous by thumbing through a sluts-on-wheels calendar while the mechanic brought the part up. Yesterday, my mom wiped the grease off her hands and handed me my helmet instead of offering to test drive the bike with me. "Go for a ride with your husband." I no longer bother reminding people that he's not my husband; it's like complaining that your relatives still call you "baby". 

It's been a few years since I've been on the back of the bike. Mike patted my leg as we pulled onto the main road, and for a moment I imagined him patting his Bakersfield girlfriend's leg and had the sudden urge to grab him by the collar and throw him off the bike. Tipped back my head and smelled the wind, instead; barbecued chicken, horses, fields of cows, winter, ocean. We pulled off at the beach and walked onto the sand to look for the resident seal and pup. The beach was eerily empty, and the moon sat above Alau island like it had been hung there.

We drove on, and pulled over up the road where people with cameras stood behind a white rope. The seal pup was resting its nose on a log, its mother having just left it for the first time in seven weeks. "There are only a hundred in the islands, this is the first live birth we've had in 12 years!" The naturalists were excited, but the lonely baby made me anxious to return home. We drove back over the roaring river as the sky went pink and starry.

Then I learned that two of my patrons had been washed away during the rains on Thanksgiving night.

Article here.

Their vehicle was found mangled in a river bed near our house, their bodies lost. The same flooded river that claimed their nephew 10 years ago - also on a Thanksgiving night.

I had an intrusive thought, imagining the onlookers back at the beach, documenting the return of the mama monk seal, their happy whispers turning to screams as they zoomed in on the human arm in her teeth. Oh god, I'm a ghoul, I thought.

Today I returned my mother to the airport. Drove away alone, feeling sad. The roads were wet, and the dark spots on the pavement looked like an enormous skull as I passed over them. A tree had fallen across the road into the left lane, just by the sea cliffs. I nervously drove under the trunk, into high winds that broke branches and bamboo. The waterfalls were raging, and a fog rolled in. It smelled like snow, and I unrolled the windows to listen for landslides, grateful for the moon through the scraps of fog. Frightening weather. I thought about my lost patrons and their grieving families. I hope they find them soon.