Defining Childhood

by Jeanne Powell

A motherly looking woman shuffled slowly along the hall ahead of me, herding five children of varying ages towards the school registration office. The sound of her walk was a “slide, slide” rather than the “clunk clunk” of most moms at school. She didn’t seem to know or care that her pink striped top was strikingly mismatched to her yellow floral skirt. Seeing her, I instinctively knew which style of shoes she wore even before I saw them poking out from her long hem. Our whole school called them “Cambo shoes”, so I did too.

Puzzling words were a constant part of my everyday life as a kid. Teachers gave weekly vocabulary assignments with instructions to define each word and then use it in a sentence. When new words appeared in life, just like in school, my young brain set out to define and assimilate them.

Cambo shoes: Simple rubber sandals with a V-shaped strap at the top. The new students and their families wear Cambo shoes even when it’s cold outside.

Stockton, California was a typical suburban city, sprawling with new development in the early ‘80s. The Southeast Asians who took refuge in Stockton were just another group to assimilate and bring novel concepts into my world. There were many cultures and races around me, but given that had always been my experience, I never saw it as anything but normal. I believed that surely every town was as colorful as mine.

Southeast Asian: A way to sum up all the people who came from Cambodia, Laos and other faraway places that I’ve never heard of. The Southeast Asian kids at my school are super good at art.

My parents did not speak racist words, nor did they bring it to my attention that other people did. People looked and acted differently than I, but I understood they were mostly like me in every other way. Growing up, I don’t remember being aware that I should consider anything about a person besides whether or not they were kind.

And so, in 5th grade, when the disheveled, quiet, dark-eyed students with unusual names started filling our classrooms, I saw it as a promising opportunity to make some new friends. They arrived in groups, enrolling all at once. “Refugees” was the word my teacher used. I deduced its meaning and other new words that arose from their arrival from the context of my experience living among them.

Refugees: Children from Southeast Asia who don’t speak English, have scars and old clothes, and are shy but nice. The refugees left our classroom every afternoon for ESL class.

ESL class: The pretty room with the really friendly teacher where new students go to learn English. Helpful schools have ESL class for students who just came from another country.

Although there were many races at my school, differences besides coloring were hard to spot in kids I’d been with since kindergarten. Most of the student body spoke English and dressed similarly. The new kids wore their clothes many times before washing them and were often sent home for having head lice. I understood the troubling scars on their bodies to have a backstory, but my realm of experience could not grasp how or why. All I comprehended came from news’ snippets about Cambodia, Pol Pot, and the Khmer Rouge, overheard as I set the dinner table.

Pol Pot: A certain type of pole and pot which a bad king uses to hurt people in Cambodia. The mean fighters hit people with a Pol Pot.

The images I glimpsed on the six o’clock news became more real to me as I got to know the refugees. Those being hurt on TV looked like my friends. I sat, eyes glued, awareness expanding, purposely listening to Peter Jennings for the first time in my life. I began to pray for the Southeast Asians every night as I lay in bed, wondering why anyone would want to kill good people.

Correction: Pol Pot: The name of a terrible man who leads soldiers called “Come Here Rouge” to kill people in Cambodia and make the whole country communist. The terrible fighters hurt people because Pol Pot made them.

Communist: A kingdom where everyone listens to the king. Pol Pot will be glad if Cambodia goes communist and he is the king.

Certain “old” students, who weren’t well-received themselves, made jokes about our new students. They were mean to the refugees the same way they were mean to everybody else, pointing out anything which was unusual.

It was true that the Cambodian kids behaved differently than the rest of us. They sometimes squatted in an odd sitting position as they talked and didn’t look adults in the eye. They forgot to add an “s” onto words to form plurals, received a “free lunch” ticket in the morning and got to ride the bus to some far-off place called “Government Housing” after school. The important thing to me was that they wanted to be friends.

Government Housing: Big, fancy houses where government officials used to live.  The refugees needed a place to live, so Congress said they could have their Government Housing.

The Cambodian girls shared their favorite game called “Chinese Jump Rope”. It quickly became very popular with all the girls. Set was one of the best Chinese jump-ropers, outgoing and confident in her expertise. I was lucky that our teacher placed her desk right next to mine. As it turned out, we were a good team. I assisted her in class and she helped me advance my skill on the playground. We became fast friends, getting by mostly without words.

I memorized the songs full of foreign words which were to be chanted as precise jumps and turns were taken. I didn’t even try to understand the meaning of those words. They were just fun.

The new girls skillfully showed us how to weave rubber bands together to make the rope. Come recess, the blacktop, which had once been filled with Four-Square games, now had classmates standing in groups with a rubber band rope stretched around ankles, knees, and hips to create differing heights. The Cambodian girls were inarguably the best at it, but we American girls were having a ball trying to improve.

Chinese Jump Rope: The best game in the world! I would like to play Chinese Jump Rope all day!

Many Southeast Asian boys proved to be great, agile athletes, spending recesses on the basketball courts with the other boys, engaged in “Americans” verses “Asians” game. It was a quick way to pick fair teams. No one seemed to mind the politically incorrect team names because each group was proud of its nationality.

My mom said she was pleased that I had made friends with the refugees. I noticed that her smile was always a sad one, lips closed and eyebrows furrowed in sympathy, when we spoke of the new students.  

“I’d really like to meet Set someday,” she said. So I knew that when I asked Set to come to my house, Mom wouldn’t mind.

Set asked permission, but the next day she returned with news that her mother wasn’t sure. I didn’t understand. At home that night, my mom explained to me that Set’s mother must be very nervous to send her daughter, with strangers, to a home she’d never seen. Mom reasoned “It’s hard to trust people with your precious children when you come from a place of cruelty and war.”

I should “give it time because they just got here,” she said, but I was still perplexed.

War: Good guys fighting and killing bad guys in another country. Also, a card game to play with Grandma. People will be happy when the war is over.

Set begged her mom for several weeks until she finally gave the excuse that there was a logistics problem. “My mom no car,” Set told me one day.

I offered that she could walk home with me, and then my mom could drive her home later. There was no communication between our mothers because neither could understand the other’s language. We girls planned everything.

Set and I couldn’t stop smiling as we walked to my house. The path home was lively as always, with dozens of kids on either side of the street. Many went out of their way to say hello to Set. She responded kindly to each. I felt honored that she was going to my house. We joyously sang Chinese jump rope songs with a literal hop in our steps as we passed manicured lawns and freshly painted tract homes.

We were mid-song when a sixth grade boy, who always walked alone, yelled at us from behind, “Go back to where you came from, Chink!”

Suddenly concerned, I walked faster, unsure of what to do. Set matched my speed.

We were rescued by a group of boys walking on the other side of the street who played “Asian verses Americans” basketball. They, stopped and faced us as one shouted back at the bully from across the street, “Shut up and leave her alone!”  

I knew we were safe because the insulting boy was far outnumbered by peers with integrity. Set looked at me. I rolled my eyes and shook my head so she’d understand to ignore him. I hoped Set hadn’t understood his rude words. I didn’t even comprehend that last part myself. We started singing again as we rounded the corner to my street.

Chink: A word someone with no friends calls a person who does have friends, when they want them to leave. The strong boy punched him for yelling “Chink” at the nice girl.

I pointed to my house and together we ran up the lawn to our porch. Set stopped at our front door to remove her Cambo shoes. “You can leave your shoes on,” I assured her.

Panic and confusion crossed her face as she quickly shook her head no. “Ok, that’s fine,” I shrugged as she slipped them off and placed them neatly on our step.

Mom was waiting with new pack of rubber bands and cookies as a treat. “Hello, Set! It’s so nice to finally meet you!” she said with her usual cheery tone to my barefoot friend.

Set lowered her eyes and gave a slight, unsure smile as she put her hands in front of her like she was praying. Mom smiled back, “Thank you.”

I gobbled three cookies while Set nibbled one half as we sat, cross legged on the floor of my bedroom, adding an extension to our current rope. “I like you house,” Set told me.

“Thanks,” I responded without considering hers might be different.

“I like you bedroom,” she added.

“Thanks,” I said again as I looped rubber bands.

“I like you mom.”

 I looked up, beaming, “Thanks. I’m really glad you came over.”

With our rope long enough, we headed out to start our game. Outside, we easily gathered up some neighborhood girls and my sisters. Time flew. Set wowed us all with her expert moves until the sky dimmed and neighborhood dads began to pull into their driveways. I reluctantly gathered up the rope as our playmates said goodbye.

Mom drove us to the other side of town, where Set lived. It was a run-down apartment complex, situated in a series of apartment complexes. As we pulled up, I was shocked by the number of people packed into the small area. Grown men were squatting with their rears almost touching the ground, engaged in animated conversations. Very young kids were running on sidewalks and patchy-brown grass and dirt areas. It seemed that no one was watching them. Some people were napping right there on the sidewalk. Everyone was disturbingly thin.

Correction: Government Housing: A crowded place where hungry people live in small apartments that look old.  I’m glad I don’t live in Government Housing.

Set beamed as we pulled up. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure. Mom put the car in park, took a deep breath, and smiled back at us. “We’re here,” She said, more sing-songy than usual.

I took Mom’s lead and reluctantly got out of the car for my friend’s sake. The men’s foreign, loud conversations sounded like yelling and were high-pitched for male voices. Their words were like noises from the backs of their throats. Mom stood with her shoulders back, smile fixed, as her eyes darted around. “You girls walk ahead of me.” Her happy tone sounded more relaxed than she looked.

We followed Set as she wound around the unkempt building, through groups of men, who occasionally paused to stare. We climbed up dirty, outdoor, concrete stairs. I saw a few boys I recognized from school and felt more at ease.  We passed dozens of Cambo shoes lined up next to doors. I marveled that every pair of shoes represented a displaced resident of that apartment. They were tiny and large, wide and narrow, all well-worn and precisely placed. Set stopped next to the row of her family’s shoes, slid off her own, situated them neatly, and opened the door.

A woman gasped with excitement before she appeared right in front of us, obvious relief on her face. She gathered Set up in her arms and held tight. Set gently broke her mother’s hug and introduced us, in Cambodian. Her mother smiled slightly, lowered her eyes and prayed with her hands like Set had done at our house. Mom returned the gesture, so I did too. Set turned to us and said, “You meet my family,” and ran inside.

I started to follow her in, but Mom’s hand stopped me. I looked up as Mom nodded her head to the side towards the shoes and motioned towards my feet. She slipped off her own shoes. I stepped out of my penny loafers and placed them neatly next to Mom’s.

Stepping inside, I was shocked at the mass of people in the small space. There were no chairs or table or couch or TV. Many people, even elderly women, were sitting on the floor. A make-shift additional kitchen of electric skillets was set up, sizzling with food which didn’t look like nearly enough for that big group. The scent of overpowering spice and fish was like a punch in the face. It took all I had to maintain my polite smile.

Set proudly pointed to her cousins, siblings, and grandparents as she said their names. Each prayed their hands at us, and we returned the greeting. Sleeping mats were strewn about the floor. Set proudly pointed to hers, “This my bed.”

Mom and I both commented on how nice it was. It was obvious by the way Set’s face lit up that she was so pleased we were meeting her family. And, it was more obvious, by the awkward silence, that all the adults in the room were uncomfortable with us inside their home.

After a few uneasy moments of staring at each other without speaking, Mom said we needed to leave to “go get dinner started.” We put our shoes on and said our goodbyes. Mom held my hand tightly and maintained a polite smile as we walked quickly back through the dozens of grown men chatting loudly in their squat position circles.

Sleeping mat: A thin, hard blanket to use like a bed. My dad would not want to sleep on a sleeping mat.

I had so many questions for my mom on the way home that evening, but mostly I worried that my good friend lived in such spare conditions. Mom explained that Set’s family came from an even worse situation, and it was a good thing that they got to live there. She told me that even though it wasn’t perfect, they were safe and they had family.

“Didn’t you notice how happy Set was?” Mom asked. I told her I had. But things seemed so unfair.

Correction: War: Fighting which makes people have to live in another country with almost nothing except their clothes and hopefully all of their family. I pray there is never a war in America.

The plight of those caught in war was no longer about names in a newspaper but about people whose homes I could enter. They were friends of mine who had shown courage and kindness at school, trying hard to learn lessons in a language they barely understood. My friends were in the midst of a lifelong struggle. The group of people in my circle, the “us”, I was accustomed to, expanded. Set was in my “us”, and since she loved her family, now they were too. My innocence cracked as I struggled to process the distressing reality.

Set stopped coming to school suddenly, and a few days later our teacher told us that her family had moved. I had no warning, and I’m pretty sure Set didn’t either.

Decades later, I recognize the unintentional imprint she left on me, and I am grateful. Diversity comes in so many forms, shifting perspectives and linking people in big and small ways, changing the strange to the familiar.

It’s hard to believe I once called those sandals “Cambo shoes.” I wear flip flops almost every day now, too.

Jeanne Powell is a rookie writer who, at forty-three, is finally finding time to finish the book that has been building momentum in her head for decades. She has written various essays over the years, which are now being dusted off and polished. Jeanne lives in the beautiful Texas Hill Country with her husband Randy, teen kids AJ and Amber, two dogs, and abundant wildlife all around. A former elementary school teacher, Jeanne’s degree is in Child Development. She is also a certified Reiki Master and Life Coach. “Defining Childhood” is her first publication.

Set in Stone

by Cathy Warner

The old stone wall bordering the street had long reminded me of the English countryside, stretching as it does, nearly a thousand feet along the road. Above it extends a gentle slope green with bracken fern and full sun in our otherwise heavily wooded mountain town. I had walked to this property often from the local library and dreamed of flapping a blanket under the giant Live Oak like others who had used the land illicitly until old Mildred Johnson died. A granddaughter of homesteader John Bonebrake—who’d once owned a hardware store in Oklahoma and travelled west, settling in this lumber town in the San Lorenzo Valley with his wife Elvina—Mildred, was the last of three spinster sisters to call the place home.  

Without an heir, the property—one of the first settled in Boulder Creek, California—left the family for the first time in over one hundred years. Four acres of pear and walnut trees, a prolific persimmon, a creek, and farmhouse on one side of the road, redwood groves, sandy expanses, and seven spacious acres with rock-terraced hillside on the other, were deeded to the Historical Society and Park and Recreation District, jointly.

The agencies, unable to agree on whether to build a museum or a park, decided to sell, and my once innocent desire to picnic on the knoll swelled like ripe persimmons to full-fledged longing. I lived nearby at the bottom of a sunless ridge, runoff flooding our basement and septic tank most winters. My neighbors were living in their own derelict states: one about to be arrested for child abuse, drug dealing, and tax evasion, the other camped in a trailer while his house, a burned out shell, yawned behind him. I was home all day with my children. We needed out.

My fellow townsfolk were abuzz with offer talk, and I expected tight competition, but our full-priced offer was the only one made. Perhaps the others felt as I had—unworthy of this land, inadequate in light of its history. And yet it became mine.

Walter Remus Swain Rock Walls

Not until my husband and I signed escrow papers for our claim to this part of Swain’s Addition to Boulder Creek, did we learn that the five-acre hillside overgrown with brush was terraced to the top with stone walls, as evidenced in the Historical Society’s 1880s photo. The picture depicted twenty-nine terraced rock walls on an otherwise bare hillside, and a small man, probably Remus Swain himself, wearing a large hat and sitting halfway to the top of the ridge, dwarfed by the rock-scape.

To prevent the house we built from damage by runaway boulders, the County geologist required us to install a heavy-gauge fence with twinned cables extending out twenty feet and posts anchored ten feet deep, with a sign reading: “Rock Barrier Fence May Not Be Removed & Must Be Maintained.” 

But these walls, made of individually stacked stones placed without mortar, had survived two devastating earthquakes: the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. The Loma Prieta struck one afternoon while I stood on a friend’s deck, holding my toddler, while her daughter turned cartwheels, until the ground began heaving in waves before us, the epicenter a scant few miles away. Ten homes were destroyed in my old neighborhood two miles from these sturdy walls.

Warner home under construction: terrace walls

Exploring my new backyard terraces, I found a sandstone monolith engraved with graffiti, modern day petroglyphs carved by hikers and campers on their way to Big Basin State Park. My fingers slid over the roughly etched names and an eye inside a triangle. I discovered charred fire-pits ringed with empty cans of beans and beer, moldered tents and sleeping bags, decomposing clothes. The day the bulldozer came to dig our foundation a homeless man emerged from a redwood grove roused from sleep by the noise.

How many men had these stubborn walls and overgrowth of eucalyptus, juniper, and Scotch broom sheltered over the years, and where would they go to pitch tents away from prying eyes?

Remus Swain was the first settler to make his home here. He pushed east with others from Santa Cruz into the forest. They forged wagon trails along the San Lorenzo River into big stands of Coast Redwoods, and cut the giants to stumps, paving the way for hard-working, hard-drinking men and the scattered towns that followed: Felton, Bonny Doon, Ben Lomond, Lorenzo, Boulder Creek.

Swain owned a sawmill, and my hillside isn’t the only one he denuded. Of course, he didn’t do it alone, Swain hired loggers, muscled and rowdy, and who kept the sixteen taverns and brothels in Boulder Creek in business. The Sequoia sempervirens—alive since the time of Christ—were two hundred feet tall with circumferences big as dance floors when they were felled, chopped, milled, hewn into boards, and freighted to San Francisco by rail to build houses and stores. Swain, and others like him, became rich, until the lumber ran out.

The redwoods are second and third growth now, but the stone walls are original. One lines the street, and another twenty-nine snake across the mountain flank. Nearly a thousand feet in length, they terrace five acres. Each piece of granite and Zayante sandstone was carried, stacked, and fitted into place, one at a time. Between the walls, which are roughly ten feet apart, the dirt was tamped flat and planted with eucalyptus trees and shrubs according to the nursery receipt in the Historical Society archives.

It’s undocumented but asserted in the area’s slight historical volumes, that the hands building these walls belonged to the Chinese who made their way to the greater Monterey Bay to build railroads that chugged lumber and other necessities through the treacherous Santa Cruz mountains—where dynamiting tunnels proved deadly—to the Santa Clara Valley and beyond. Some of these industrious men (how many, I have no idea), living in camps segregated from the Europeans, were diverted to the more domestic and aesthetically pleasing task of shoring up my mountainside.

After years of laboring in this yard myself, sweating and swaying in the summer heat as I planted flowers and harvested vegetables—I thought of those men as more than historical trivia: men with bruised legs as they hefted boulders, bloodied fingers as their gloves wore through, throats scratched dry with dust and grit accumulating in their water buckets. I thought of their long trek to the creek in the afternoon swelter. I imagined their cooking fires in the terrace now occupied by my house, swimming pool, and garden. Could they imagine their toil on this naked hillside would one day anchor living quarters so enchanting and comfortable?

Near dusk one August day, after I watered my potted roses, I pulled weeds near the for sale sign we had erected and wondered who would buy this land from us as we planned a reluctant departure from our dream home. An economic recession had drained our resources, just as the lumber had run out for Remus Swain and labor demands elsewhere carried the Chinese workers away. Would the new owners care at all about its history, about Remus Swain, the Bonebrakes, Mildred Johnson, or the Chinese laborers who built these walls?

Hawks glided overhead on thermal currents, the sun slipped low. That evening bats circled, feasting on mosquitoes as dark fell and an owl called. I slipped into the hot tub, a modern luxury, steam rising off my body like fog, and watched meteors from the Perseid shower streak across the sky. I imagined a dozen braided Chinese men, cracked hands laced together behind their heads while they stretched out on wool blankets in this exact spot looking heavenward at a similar sight 120 years ago. Was it too late to thank them? For surely they paid the price for my desire.

Cathy Warner moved from her historic California property to Puget Sound, where she writes, edits, blogs, leads workshops, and renovates homes with her husband. Cathy holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University and has authored a poetry volume Burnt Offerings. Her poetry, short stories, and essays have appeared in dozens of literary journals and anthologies. Visit her website.

Finding Henry Miller

by Cathy Roy

“Honey, Clark’s here,” my mother yelled from the kitchen. The white curtains blew gently over the avocado countertop. 

“You didn’t tell me he had a van,” she said with a concerned voice. My father had just shuffled into the living room. “You know what boys do in vans,” my mother said to my father. I wanted to pop up and tell them that Clark and I had sex everyplace in the world but the back of van, but I didn’t think they’d appreciate this coming from their 17-year-old daughter.  It was disgusting in the back of that van.  Too many parties combined with a leaky sunroof left it dank and moldy.  At one point, there were so many pot seeds on the floor, some actually started to sprout. The plants never got too big, though, because someone always picked them and tried to smoke them.  I never tried it. They gave everyone a headache. 

My mother opened the door.  “Clark, how’s Stanford going?” she said and winked at me.  I think the wink meant he was a keeper.  Clark was tall with long blond hair.  He looked like a surfer, but he played lacrosse. “The only true American Sport,” he would constantly tell everyone, since it originated with the American Indians.  I wondered what the American Indians would think of the Stanford team.  He definitely had muscles and a tendency to make girls swoon.  I couldn’t believe he was having this effect on my mother.  I was ready to go away to college next year.  “Hey, Mom Roy,” Clark smiled with his perfectly white teeth. He really belonged with some model in Vogue, not with me.  I was cute, but completely insecure.  My school was full of beautiful California blondes. I was brunette and curvy. 

“There’s coffee in the kitchen – you kids be careful driving over to the coast.”  She and my dad, who mumbled hello to Clark, went out the door. 

Clark promptly sat down and pulled open a magazine.  He dumped a large amount of green stuff onto the magazine and started rolling joints.

“Can’t you use an album cover from my room?” I asked. “My parents read that magazine.”

            “It’s a long trip.  We need a few for the road.  What did you tell your parents by the way?” He widened his beautiful green eyes. 

“I told them we were watching some of your friends surf.”  I wasn’t about to tell my parents we were driving a few hours down the coast to see some author named Henry Miller. Clark was an English/Drama Major at Stanford and had read about the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. Rumor had it, if you just showed up you could hang out with Henry.  I was too embarrassed to admit I hadn’t read anything by Henry Miller. At the time, I was struggling with Shakespeare and Homer. But Clark was crazy about meeting Henry Miller, so I just nodded and pretended I knew what he was talking about.  I didn’t want him to think I was some stupid high-school girl, even though that’s what I was.  I was completely out of my league dating a Stanford student. What was I thinking?

“You might want to grab a jacket,” he told me as we started to leave. “There’s a bunch of fog on the coast and the heater is broken again.” 

“Big surprise,” I mumbled under my breath.  Maybe I was more like my father than I thought.

Clark had a loud stereo system, so I just sat back and listened to Steve Miller play “Keep on Rockin’ Me.” 

It was only a few months earlier that I had met Clark at the Stanford radio station. I was still in high-school but was a deejay there. We had a station meeting in the new Business School. The room sat 100 people and looked pretty plush compared to any classroom I had ever been in. It smelled new and was filled with loud college students and a few adults in their twenties. A gorgeous blond youth dressed in a three-piece suit with a fedora hat was at the end of one row.   

   “Who’s that?” I asked Barbara in a casual, I’m-not-really-interested way. Barbara was a teacher’s aide and one of the few women, besides me, at the radio station. 

“That’s Clark,” Barbara said.  “I’ll introduce you to him. You guys would get along.”  Barbara was always trying to fix me up with someone.  Her nickname was “the Burnout,” so I wasn’t really sure I trusted her decision-making skills.  Apparently she was a leftover Stanford student who had taken a lot of acid during the Summer of Love.  

After the meeting, everyone piled out into the quad for a beer party. Roses were in bloom.  Barbara waved me over to where she was standing with Clark.  For a fall night, it felt like summer. We perched on a stone bench talking about school, religion, music and travel. The smell of roses combined with beer wafted through the air. It was obvious he was flirting with me. After a couple of hours I confessed I was still in high-school, but he didn’t seem to mind.  I was supposed to be home at midnight, but I got home at 2:00 a.m.  Trouble. The next day he showed up at the end of my radio show with a few roses and asked me out to coffee. I was hooked.  No one had ever brought me flowers or asked me out for coffee. (Years later a friend would tell me he always stole roses for me in the middle of the night from the Stanford Rose Garden). Before I knew it, we were spending all of our time together.  Every day he waited in the high-school parking lot for me to get out of class.  My friends thought this was cool. 

The first time I got a love letter from Clark, he wrote, I think we’re still young, you know? It’s exciting to be young and in love too.  It’s a feeling I want to explore with you – and I want to bathe in it with you and play with it and stretch it and then one day look at it and the next let it go like a wound up rubber band and then sing it – and dance too and laugh, of course laugh and smile , smile a sweet smile and it’s just love – the name of a feeling we all want to feel. What?  I couldn’t imagine anything lasting for a long time – except maybe my youth. I was going to college soon and would probably leave the Bay Area. Clark was too good-looking and too smart.  It was just a fluke that I got him as a boyfriend.

Now here I was in his van, going only Clark-knows-where down the coast.

Clark had an uncanny sense of knowing when my mind was wandering. He snapped his fingers in front of me “Where are you at?” he asked.

“Nowhere,” I replied. “I’m with you.”  I widened my eyes at him, which I knew had an effect on him.

Usually when I was this stoned, I was paranoid, but something about this day seemed right.

About an hour later, we were deep in the redwoods. We appeared to be the only car on the road for miles. I had no idea what time it was or even where we were.  I stopped smoking and rolled down the window. We continued to drive out of the redwoods when I noticed the ocean view on one side of the car and pointed it out to Clark.

We pulled over and stared at the big expanse of blue. Clark pulled me slowly to him and kissed me with his tongue. I braced myself. Clark kissed liked my neighbor’s Saint Bernard. It wasn’t like I was expecting Robert Redford, but it seemed like he was a human tongue.  Was this is how it was supposed to be? I’d ask my girlfriends, but they were all so envious over Clark, I couldn’t tell them he wasn’t nearly as perfect as they thought he was. The first time he had kissed me, a few months earlier, I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, I looked for the sponge he had just used on me. Then, when we had sex, I discovered that sex with him was less messy than kissing.  He was great at sex. The problem was how to have sex without the kissing part?  I hadn’t figured it out yet, so I had learned to let my imagination go wild during the kissing part or try to pretend slobber didn’t bother me.

I pulled away, demurely wiped my mouth and chin, and told Clark if we started anything we’d miss Henry Miller. He started up the car and focused his high-IQ lacrosse-playing mind back on finding the library. 

Clark had aspirations to be a writer.  “Maybe one day I’ll write a story about this,” he said. “I’ll call it Finding Henry Miller.”  Back in the redwoods I spotted a shack and as we drove past I read the sign in front of it: “Henry Miller Library.”  Clark hit the brakes and pulled in. There were no other cars in the lot.  Some books had gone flying from the back to the front seat, so I picked up a copy of The Tropic of Cancer that Clark had brought with us so that Henry Miller could sign it.  I looked at the black-and-white book-jacket photo and a young bald man with glasses stared back at me.  “He looks studious,” I told Clark.

We got out of the van.  Redwoods towered over us as sunlight poured through the openings.  It reminded me of church.  All we could hear were chimes and birds.  It felt peaceful.  We reeked of smoke. What was Henry Miller going to think?  I tried to smooth out my hair and halter dress so that I looked somewhat presentable.  I’d smoked way too much and could barely walk.  As we came up the stairs, an older gentleman came out the door. 

“Hello,” he said, and seemed to look me up and down.

“Mr. Miller, such a hon-hon-honor to meet you,” Clark said.  I must have been really out of it and paranoid, because it appeared that Henry Miller was staring at my breasts. I stuck out my hand for a shake, but instead he gave me a hug. I could have sworn his hand touched my butt.  From everything Clark told me, he was a distinguished writer, but I was beginning to think he was a dirty old man.  He wore old jeans and a very crumpled shirt.  It looked like he wore the same glasses that were in the picture.  He had been years ahead of the John Lennon look, I guess. 

I looked at Clark to see if he had noticed anything, but Clark just looked happy. Okay, I must have been imagining things.

“I’m just about to close,” Henry said, “but I have a few minutes for you two.” Then he winked at me. Why was everyone winking at me today? The face that stared back at me was nothing like the picture on the book.  I wondered what had happened to that young fellow. Was I too going to get all old and wrinkled-looking – just a ghost of my youthful self?  Realistically, how could I avoid it? Unless I died young.

I decided I was pretty out of it by then, so I let Clark take the lead as they talked about authors I didn’t know. I let my mind wander out the window and thought about an essay I had due on Shakespeare. I don’t remember any of the conversation between Henry and Clark, but Clark did get his book signed.

            Fifteen minutes later we were back in the van, and Clark was bouncing up and down, pounding his fists on the van roof. “Cool.  We met Henry Miller. Everyone in class is going to be SO jealous.  And you know what? He said I could come back anytime and bring you too!” He was smiling ear to ear. 

This time we drove up the coast listening to the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The sun was setting in hues of orange and pink. 

“We should have brought a camera,” I blurted out, thinking we should have somehow captured this day, this moment, this time. Clark smiled at me and told me to remember to bring one next time. I just looked out the window at the deep blue ocean.

There would never be a next time. Clark would take a semester in England in another month and then run off to join a religious cult. He wrote me a few letters about his life in Europe, but we lost touch. I fell in love with another Stanford student and never got around to writing back. In college when I read Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, it confirmed my impression of him– he was a dirty old man. 

Over the years I became everything I thought was uncool when I was seventeen. I have a house, a large mortgage and a job in the corporate world. I’ve travelled to the places Henry Miller wrote about – New York, Los Angeles and Europe. My world, which seemed so limited over thirty years ago, expanded like the opening of an old book. Now I leaf through The Colossus of Maroussi, as if trying to divine the spirit of Henry Miller into my writing. The feel of the book works like a time machine. I write obsessively about California, Stanford boys and rock and roll. With all the sex and drugs going on back then, maybe Clark and I were more like Henry Miller’s characters than we imagined.

Cathy Roy grew up in Northern California and now resides in Colorado.  Her first novel Tasty Girl, about the mythical San Francisco radio station KTST (a.k.a. - Tasty), came out in the summer of 2010.  She writes humor, paranormal, and food reviews.