BIG SUR by Seamus O'Connor
All night the wind-borne sheets of rain had howled in from the Pacific—Furies clawing at the windows screens. There was no sleeping on a night like this, not with the sea-god throwing the ocean itself at him—no point even trying. And in the past half-hour he had unleashed thunder and lightning bolts as well. It was enough to bring any sinner to his knees.
“Come on you bastard! I dare you,” Holland muttered.
This monastery was situated on the mesa, high above the coast road that runs through Big Sur. And Holland’s room, sitting as it did at the western edge of the monastery grounds, was buffeted more than any other by the full fresh force of the many storms that charged ashore between November and March.
He had been awake, tossing from side to side, ever since midnight when the storm had first come ashore. The older he grew the more bothered he was by these tantrums of what some called Nature. As a young man he’d been strong and fearless; had welcomed storms; loved defying them; enjoyed listening as they howled their frustration. He would snuggle down then, warm beneath an eiderdown and send his imagination off to the snowy Russia of palaces and sleighs, of Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov. But now, now he had grown old and weak. High winds frightened him, and the rage of the gods set his stomach quivering. A tethered goat, awaiting the footfall of the cat.
He felt his way around the metal table in the center of the kitchen floor to the bank of great commercial refrigerators humming contentedly in that large still space. He took a bottle of Heineken from one of them. He lighted the first of the fifty or so Marlboro’s he would smoke that day.
Out of the east-facing windows the faint outline of the monastery buildings was dimly visible through the sheets of driven rain that swept the center quadrangle. A few of the monks had turned their lights on—nervous old men like himself. Pathetic, the lot of them! Sitting out their lives on this bleak mountaintop searching for the god.
“Haven’t you heard: He’s skipped, left no forwarding address—paring his fingernails in another universe.” He shouted at them. He shrugged and took another pull on the cigarette. Shouting at the night like a madman.
They hadn’t come of age in that bitter, godforsaken island, these monks, so how would they know the kind of god they’re dealing with? Yanks and their sentimental daddy-god. Good for quieting peevish children. Swift was right, that pagan island bred either universal disrespect or paralyzing piety—nothing in between.
He took a long draft of the beer—the blood was starting to circulate at last. He’d have to start looking around for a job and a room in the next week or so.
Thoughts of his session with the psychiatrist-monk flitted about in his head. He tried relegating them to that holding tank where he quarantined unpleasant realities. But the tank was leaking badly.
It was the Prior, he was the real problem. Damned bully. Though only second in command in the monastery, he had the old Abbot wrapped around his finger.
“This reprobate will be a source of scandal for the younger monks,” the Prior had told the Abbot, right there in front of him that first day.
And the Abbot, sentimental old Rhinelander, had his own agenda: he was determined to save Holland’s soul from eternal damnation and reinstate him in the priesthood.
“I haff good friends, Jack, in high places in Rome, you know,” he’d say and wag a kindly finger at him.
Rome would rather legalize abortions than have Jack Holland within a hundred miles of a pulpit.
Though he was more or less paying for his keep by baking for them, it smelled far too much like running home out of fear—home to mammy. He was horribly embarrassed when he thought about it. He, who’d been so defiant, so adamant, that no matter what befell him: sickness or poverty—on his deathbed, even—he would never crawl back to her. And here he was, snuggling up and sucking like a bastard.
It was getting on towards five o’clock. He drained the last dregs of the beer, near time to move if he was to bake anything for their breakfast. He measured a few heaping tablespoons of fine-ground Sumatra into the coffeemaker and while it was dripping, he went into his room and washed his face and hands.
Lavabo inter innocentes manus meas . . . The face in the little stained mirror pulled a grimace at him. ’Innocent my ass!’
From one of the refrigerators he pulled the tray of croissant dough that he had prepared the previous afternoon and upended it with a slap onto the table.
“The three men I admire the most, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost… they’ve caught the last train to the Coast…” He hummed as he worked.
Baking, by which he had supported himself through the years, he’d learned from a kindly Swede during the three years he lived anonymously in San Francisco after his disgrace. Bo was not much of anything when it came to religion, but he’d kept Holland’s secret—though he’d admit after a drink that he loved having a defrocked monsignor working his ass off at a baker’s bench.
An hour later the oven and the croissants were ready for each other. As he set up the percolators for the monks’ coffee and tea in the refectory, dawn was breaking faintly over the monastery roof. It was a gloomy, watery dawn with the sky still full of storm clouds. But the heavy rain had let up.
When he was satisfied that the monks seated around the long tables had all they needed, he went into his bedroom, pulled on his swim trunks and exchanged his apron for a plaid shirt.
In the carport his ancient pickup was cleaner than usual after the pelting it had taken from the sidewise-blown rain. With a shoulder to the doorframe he pushed the truck across the gravely yard to where the narrow unpaved lane plunged abruptly off the western face of the mesa. He ran alongside as the little truck gathered momentum and timed his leap aboard to the last possible second—saving the battery, his father had called it. He got the gearbox to accept third gear then let out the clutch. As the wheels bounced over the ruts, gravel loosened by the rains flew up and attacked the undercarriage in a deafening barrage. At the coast highway, Holland let a solitary early-morning car go by on its way to Monterey before turning south.
A beautiful, lonely stretch of road this that squeezed its narrow shoulders between the sheer rock face of the mesa on his left and the cliff’s edge on his right—a breath-taking hundred -foot drop to the ocean-pounded rocks.
After his nightlong assault, the storm-god was catching his breath—the rain had stopped completely. Holland rolled the window down as he drove and inhaled the freshness of the juicy ocean air. He’d never liked that skinny-assed desert air in Minerva—scorched and wizened like a raisin by the baking valley heat.
The storm and its promise of rowdy seas had enticed a good scattering of surfers from the warmth of their beds and into clammy wet suits. He could see them off to his right as he drove, bobbing out in the breaks, sleek and black like sea otters.
He continued south about a mile beneath the steep brown cliffs, vibrant with yellow broom and the electric blue of ceanothus, before pulling in alongside a low stonewall that separated the beach from the highway.
Throwing his clothes on the driest part of the seat, he stepped onto the stonewall where he paused for a moment each morning to stiffen his resolve. He dropped then gently onto the grainy sand below—no heroics!
Holland broke into a stiff-kneed trot and let the momentum of it carry him into the water where the force of his will propelled him through the first cold shock. Scrotum-wilting! Fuck! It helped to curse it at the top of his lungs—helped keep his mind off the arctic cold numbing his legs. He pulled on his goggles and settled the eyepieces firmly to his eyes as he went.
Sunny California? Silly bugger! Any sense, you’d get a wet suit. It’s colder than Bundoran!
He strode high-kneed through the shallows out to where the water became intolerable as it crept icily up his flanks. There he finally plunged in and charged straight out through the breakers.
Takes your breath away, the cold, the shock of it. And the sand all stirred up too this morning from the storm, getting in your mouth. The shortest way past the high towering breakers was head-on. Plunge into each of these behemoths as they came at you, hold your breath ‘til you come out the other side, do it again and again ‘til you’d finally got past the last of them—out into the swells. The worst part of the swim was getting out there.
Cuss enough and you’ll get through it. Come on ye fuckers! He managed to shout before another wall of ocean collapsed on him. Grab a breath, quick!
Finally, he’d made it through to where the deep swells were running, then caught his breath briefly before turning right and swimming parallel to the coast.
There was sand in the water even out here. It would float up unexpectedly in slow-moving, billowy clouds—a gritty bloom.
His body was becoming looser and his mind was free to drift off into the meditative trance that was a bonus of open-water swimming. He settled into the loose, efficient stroke he could hold for hours.
