"THE KAYAK"

by Fran Holt.

..

Mostly true

To some, it was a tin can down by the river, where a homeless person might camp. It was actually a double-wide trailer, 20’x 60’, perched diagonally on a hill next to a ravine. One third of an acre, dense with bramble bushes and apple trees, faced southwest toward Yakutat Harbor. Trees blocked the few neighbors and the Pacific Ocean sparkled in the sunlit distance. A little-known county park, James William Thornton County Park, was two blocks from the trailer, non-descript and decrepit. It was nothing more than a crumbling, concrete boat launch and an outhouse but it provided free access to the beach. No one knew about it and no one ever came. I considered it mine. Huge warning signs said Private at either end of the one hundred meter stretch of sand, stating that this private property extends to the lowest of the low tideland flats KEEP OUT. If you wholly wanted to feel free you kept your eyes on the water and didn’t try to follow the seagulls’ footsteps too far along the sand. The rich people in their mansions at either end probably had the water police on speed dial.

James William Thornton County Park was the scene of the crime, my first crime. I waded into the freezing cold water that gave you hypothermia and death in less than five minutes, and climbed into my kayak. My kayak—how sweet a sound!—my dear sweet bucket list item from Craigslist. It rocked violently back and forth. As it turned out, getting into a kayak was the hardest part. I knew nothing about kayaks, had never even been in one, but was going to match myself to the picture in my head; a serene Pacific Northwest tribal seer paddling along as dolphins crested, all communal, guiding the kayak while eagles soared overhead, calling out their encouragement, echoing off the pine trees. I was an old, white, entitled, educated female, without a drop of Native American anything; and I would kayak and paddle all day. I would never get cold, no goosebumps on my skin. I had dark brown hair all long, thick and flowing, casually tossed to look sexy. My mental image of myself was a bucket list image, fifty years in the making. I would make reality conform, even if my hair was short and skunk-striped gray.

The following account of art in the fast lane may feel like a pinball wizard. I don’t think linearly and never did; why should I try to be straight in telling it?

The weight of mom was heavy. The weight of me, heavier. My own brain was crushing me, thoughts followed by doubts. I had never in my entire seventy years been free of everything, and I didn’t know what to do. Nothingness was eerie, and addictive.

First things first, I cut my hair. No need to hold on to the hippie chick nor free-spirited artist ideal; long covid had made most of my hair fall out anyway, and with so little hair it wasn’t much of a statement, but still. My back slowly healed from lifting mom in and out of bed. Left hip was taking longer. Right leg shin tendon from that old motorcycle accident didn’t deserve the attention it was getting. Someday I wouldn’t dread Buy-Mart’s parking lot but right this minute it was all I could do to walk with a swishy-butt, tits pointed straight ahead, not bending over or dragging my leg, its default position for the last three years.

I thought he was joking when he nervously looked into the field and said be quiet. It was pitch black and late at night. We had flopped onto the side of the dirt road to rest, exhausted from bicycling in the heat all day, still hours from the next town and food and water. How could there be anyone here, in the middle of nowhere? I was flat on my back, me and the ants, and breathed slowly. Armando stiffened. We got on the bikes and rode, glad the moon had sunk. Much later I learned that Medellin, Colombia was in the middle of a cartel war and, at that time, according to Time magazine, the most dangerous city in the world. That dirt road we were travelling led to FARC,  paramilitaries, kidnapping, cabals and assassination. Youth has no experience and no fear. I loved the velvet black night and the thousand stars overhead, and didn’t think about AK-47s or what a prize a white, American female would make.

     * * *

I loved punctuation, commas, capitalizations, the beauty of correct spelling. Everything. What a shame the art form didn’t survive the twenty-first century and computers. Now I hardly punctuate at all, delighted to small-case everything, a small-but-mighty rebel yell. I cut my hair some more, unevenly, so it would spike up in places like Billy Idol's. Every time I washed my hands I dried them in my hair, the minerals slowly contributing to that stiff straight-up look. My look peaked at four days pretty regularly and I took a selfie.

I had become a stalker of my own work, and a triangle of MiaCiaos, set like a compass around Seattle and connected by fast, smooth highways—what could be better. Sometimes the loneliness was suffocating and driving around seeing my work in public spaces took the pain away. The paintings were lit up and hung gallery-style and even from a distance through the big windows you knew they were unusual. If I wasn’t me I would think MiaCiao had deluxe, first-rate art. Sometimes it was hard to remember I had painted them, especially when my throat became constricted, so fine and museum-like were they. Once, I even went in, and just stood there, to the consternation of the wait staff.

Girl with Bird was sold to a quiet man, an accountant, small and fragile-looking. He would be the bird in that bird-and-girl painting. His top-floor condo was neat and orderly, and in desperate need of some flagrant color. The view from the expansive windows was stunning, all of Seattle and Puget Sound spread out below. I got dizzy looking down at the skyscrapers. Mt. Rainier with its high altitude clouds blowing sideways hovered to the south, a space ship in the sky. The art patron probably never held a hammer in his life so I offered to hang the painting. We moved his cool-gray sofa forward to get to the wall, and he helped hold the painting up. He wasn’t as frail as he seemed. The large 48" x 60" oil on panel depicted a girl sitting on a beach, red towel over one leg, with a brightly colored parrot on her shoulder. It was ideal in size and color, vibrant yet somehow contained. It was just right for his space. We slid the sofa back. The viewing distance was perfect. The wall with its shades of gray dramatized the reds and yellows and made me ridiculously giddy with glee. He moved to his cubbyhole office and wrote a payment check in small, cramped handwriting, his bony shoulders scrunched in concentration. Then he stood, me a full head taller, as I thanked him and started for the door. A little lightheaded from the beauty of it all, I laughingly said the girl in the painting would have a wonderful time looking out his big windows. He looked at her, over the sofa, her green eyes gazing across Puget Sound, then at me in fear-tinged astonishment. That turned into fright. His mouth dropped open, formed an Edvard Munch scream. It was so unexpected I gasped, my mouth imitating his, a mirror image of horror. Maybe he never played make-believe. I hope he doesn’t have nightmares about the suntanned, pretty girl in his living room. She was bigger than he was, and already full of life.

* * *

I could swim. I was a certified scuba diver. I got married underwater. It was the sixties and we were collectively out of our minds. Before pollution, before climate change. Mary and Louis Leakey were discovering humankind’s australopithecine ancestors at Olduvai Gorge. There is a photo of me at age five, sitting in a chicken pen, sketchpad in lap, drawing the chickens with a look of intense concentration. I was going to be a great artist.

The marriage was shot-gun and didn’t last. Divorced one year later, ignominiously, in the breakroom of the restaurant where I worked as the handy-dandy, all-purpose dishwasher/kitchen cleaner. The French maître d’ of the exclusive, private golf club in Boca Raton, Florida had taken a chance on an eighteen year old runaway with no prior job history. I was earnest and convincing, convinced him of my worth, that I was the "man" for the job. The health inspector said it was clean as a hospital, the cleanest restaurant he’d ever seen. They hired me as a groundskeeper on the golf course during the summer, when it was too hot to play golf and the club shut down. I pulled weeds in the heat so I would be there to resume washing dishes in the fall, a good dishwasher apparently hard to find. It was my first and last job. The divorce papers-serving guy looked like he might cry so I cried for him; then laughed, hoping to cheer him up. He ran for the nearest exit.

* * *

The problem with kayaking was planning. You couldn’t just jump in the boat and sail away. As long as your gas tank was full or electric engine fully charged, you could sail away and not have to think, provided you had one of those types of craft. If your craft was powered by something other than—what the advertisements called human power—you were good to act on your wildest, most hair-brained impulse. Jump in that boat and let’s go to Cuba. Kayaking, on the other hand, required premeditated calculation, particularly regarding tides, sunset times, hydration, carbs, and how much sleep one got the night before. There was no one to bail you out if you miscalculated. You had to turn around at the half-way point, too, not easy when there were so many variables that could constitute half. Half your miles traveled; half your energy; half daylight remaining; half your cheerful good will. It was dismal. If one more person cruised by and asked, Need any help? I would throw my paddle at them. I was just resting, enjoying the silence and the smell of cedar, both heightened when one’s eyes were closed. Maybe I should wear a sign, Don’t call 911. I’m meditating.

I was beginning to realize I did not have a planner’s personality. It was still an hour until the tide turned and carried me back to my car. My sunburned face was bright red in spite of the sunscreen; my chin-strapped hat, probably still on the floor of my car. I tossed the anchor and took a nap in the shade of the cedar and pines, fell asleep listening to the burbling marine life and rustle of branches. There were minnows playing under the kayak in a foot of water, and tiny crabs shed sand from their backs as they shuffled away. I would check the label of the sunscreen as soon as I got home. What kind of sunscreen wasn’t waterproof?

Mom’s ashes, in an urn in a box in a brown paper bag, were still on the front passenger’s floor of her car, mine now through inheritance. I hadn’t been able to cope with anything so instead kept throwing fast food wrappers, grocery receipts and junk mail on top of  the brown paper bag. One day I tried to put the new car insurance papers in the glove box and couldn’t open it. My brain was finally ready to deal with the perplexing problem of death, but as I hated religion and rituals even scattering ashes seemed sanctimonious. I had asked the cremation company to dispose of the ashes but they said it would cost one hundred forty-five dollars, state regulations, so that was that. I dug out the urn from under the junk mail and dumped the ash on the kitty litter pile of dirt in the yard. I made it clear to myself that it’s over, stared at the kitty litter, ridiculous to talk to gray dust. Skittish Kitty appeared—she never appeared, always hid in the bushes, shy and afraid, only working up courage for dinner if it was put outside near her hidey-bush. She ran to the mound of ashes atop the kitty shit and gleefully rolled in it until she was gray. It was a perfect ending for my mother, who didn’t get to see her body donated to science because of covid restrictions, gave a feral cat a spa treatment instead.

The thing growing in my closet—in a beat-up old suitcase, one dollar ninety-nine cents at Goodwill—was becoming uncomfortably real. I wanted my innocence back, did not want to worry about fires or earthquakes or how much I had toiled to earn all those neatly banded one hundred dollar bills. I had cashed every painting's payment check, had requested one hundred dollar bills until the bank tellers probably thought I was a drug dealer. It had taken years to accrue so much money, by now most likely flagged by the DEA. So I gave six thousand dollars to my friend, who had lost his job and was about to lose his house; creatively, I thought, over a period of time, telling him I’d be his Seattle art dealer and to send artwork. I would pay five hundred dollars per painting and all shipping costs. The fact that nothing ever sold, and all twelve works, lovely paintings, every one, had been on exhibit at Lux-Spa for over a year seemed irrelevant. Seattle wasn't ready for small paintings of colorful flowers unless it was a Matisse; the rich had wrapped themselves in serious art. It was a dismal lesson, but my closet was restored and he remained in his house, three thousand miles away.

Shortly after that, he got a job as a prison guard, a state job with benefits and pension. My talented friend, who at seventeen had won a Maryland Distinguished Scholar scholarship, had joined the high IQs of MENSA, who had won a full MFA scholarship to American University, now stood with rifle in hand in the middle of a cold field at midnight, watching for escape attempts by ruthless murderers. This was same the person who had made drawings of classical Roman cast statues side by side with me at midnight, when The Maryland Institute College of Art was silent and empty. We were convinced of our glorious futures, had practiced drawing as the true path to greatness. He was fired from his senior graphic design job at Whitehaven State University—after twelve years and many accolades—new boss, creative differences, always opinionated and never could keep his mouth shut. He didn’t even pretend to make art after that. The prison guard job drove him further from creativity, but he wanted a job with a pension so gave up his life to get it.

He drank a six-pack a day, and things went downhill from there. Both his parents had been alcoholics but I thought he would rise above it since he had risen above everything else. He had applied for, and put himself through college in the big city of Baltimore against his parents’ wishes. They had no use for education, were high school dropouts, pregnant with Tommy at fourteen years old, and wanted him to be an auto mechanic like his dad. He had bootstrapped every single thing in his life, including coming out as gay two decades before it was socially acceptable.

After a year of emailing resumes to every conceivable art-related job opportunity with a pension, he gave up. He is now an end-of-life medical billing accountant for the state of Maryland, working out of a hospice; the constant smell of death offset by the smell of stale coffee. He papered over his office window so he wouldn’t see the dead bodies being wheeled away, turns up the radio so he won't hear the patients moaning in pain. I thought of all the art he hadn't created, and couldn't imagine what had led him to this.

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