Highway i.
When he reached Highway i, he swung north, driving rapidly and with full concentration. He followed the winding, two-lane highway for several miles. The night seemed almost completely deserted; once, when headlights flickered briefly in the Dodge’s rear-view mirror, Conradin tensed and his hands gripped the wheel more tightly; but after a short time, the shine of them retreated and then disappeared completely.
A few minutes later, Conradin came in sight of a thin strip of state road, attached to a wide circle of macadam, which wound off to the west. The right forward curve of the circle touched the highway and was designed for cars coming in from the south, or coming out to the north; the left forward curve did likewise, designed for cars coming in from the north, or coming out to the south. In the middle of the circle, imbedded in gravel and cement, was a large redwood sign with gold letters that were almost obliterated by the fog. It read: GOAT ROCK.
Conradin nodded to himself, slowing, putting on his directional signal. He turned into the right curve of the circle and entered the state road. Walled by shale bluffs on the right and steep cut-away cliffs heavily overgrown with anise and thistle and sage and wild strawberry on the left, the road dog-legged and twisted its way seaward; Conradin knew it well, had traversed it hundreds, if not thousands, of times, and he had no trouble negotiating its precarious width, even with the roiling mist shredding in his head lamps like fine gossamer cobwebs.
Exactly one mile from the highway, there was a graveled turn-out area and another redwood and gold- lettered sign; this one read: BLIND BEACH. Conradin brought the Dodge in there, nosing up to one of the black asphalt bumpers at its far edge. He sat there for a moment before darkening the car, and then stepped out into the frigid night.
A numbing sea wind blew in across the turn-out, and Conradin felt it billow his clothing and slap wet fingers across his face. He walked to the seaward edge and stood looking out. On his left, now only a vague outline, a shadow slightly grayer than the fog, was a high flat rock covered with nests and lichen and bird droppings—the home of thousands of seagulls and cormorants; and on his right, perhaps a mile away by the state road, was the huge eroded visage of Goat Rock, with a gaping half-moon cut in its back by man in search of raw materials, and beyond it the village of Jenner, where Russian River empties into the Pacific Ocean. But none of these were discernible from where Conradin stood, not on this night.
He let his eyes drop to the inclined dirt side of the short slope below him. Even though he could not see it, he knew the exact location of the narrow, meandering pebble-and-sand path that led down the face of the cliff to Blind Beach. The beach itself—a circumscribed strip of clean white sand, extending for perhaps a quarter mile—was so named because even on the clearest of summer days, it was hidden from view by the convex proportions of the cliff side.
The path began at the far end of the turn-out, near where Conradin had parked his car and near the twin gray outhouses which served as public rest rooms; but instead of taking that lengthy, if somewhat safer, route, Conradin made his way carefully down the short dirt slope. He intercepted the path some one hundred feet below the turn- out, in a narrow ledge-like area. He paused there, looking down at the growth of sage and tule grass and bleak, clustered stalks that would be wild dandelions and purple lupins in the spring—all clinging to the side of the precipice: amorphous green-black shadows in the fog.
Slowly, carefully, Conradin began to make his way down the arduous path to the beach. When he reached it, some time later, in a driftwood-choked crescent sheltered by the cliff walls, he turned diagonally to the south and the black line of the sea.
He walked the length of Blind Beach for over an hour, listening to the sonorous lament of the winter wind and the crash of the angry foaming black waves hurtling again and again and again upon the passive white sand, like an ardent lover with a frigid mate, evoking no response except that of infinite tolerance, growing more angry with each thrust, and more frustrated and more determined, all for nothing except to come, and to rest, and to begin again— futilely, eternally.
“I wish I knew what to do,” he said aloud, and the wind swirled loose sand against his body and swirled the words away almost as soon as they left his lips. “I wish to God above I knew what to do.”
But he didn’t know; he knew only that he couldn’t go on this way, being slowly torn apart from within, the guilt growing more unbearable with each passing day, seeing Helgerman’s face just as clearly now as on that day eleven years ago; and now this new fear: Helgerman not only as a ghost but as a real and imminent danger, Helgerman as an insane purveyor of vengeance born of a senseless act he, Conradin, had committed out of fear, Helgerman smiting him down as he had smote Helgerman, an eye for an eye, a blow for a blow . . .
Yes, and Kurtz and what he saw when he looked at his own soul and what Jim Conradin was beginning to see in the examination of his soul.
The alternatives were clear, of course.
He could, somehow, through some means, find peace with himself.
He could very easily end up suffering a complete mental breakdown.
He could commit suicide.
The latter alternative was not a new one to him. The idea of taking his own life had first occurred to him two years ago, during a particularly bad winter—constant rain, too much time for the thinking. But he had rejected it, exactly as he had rejected it this afternoon. It was not that he lacked the courage, that his fear of death was inordinately strong-no, it was because of Trina, of what such an act would do to her; he could not sacrifice her happiness and her well-being for his own jaded salvation. Still, with the pressure building now, building almost intolerably, all hope of ever finding an inner peace gone now, death or madness were the only ultimates which he could look forward to—and death was by far the more preferable of the two.
Long walks along the beach here, where he could smell and taste and feel the sea near him, usually served to calm him; but on this night Conradin felt even more strung out than he had before leaving the house in Bodega Bay. The cold had begun to reach him too, sending prickles of ice moving, slithering, across his shoulders, and he shivered and began to walk rapidly through the damp sand toward the pebbled path. A mug of coffee, laced with a little mash, and the warmth of wool blankets and soft sheets and Trina lying close to him—perhaps he would make love to her tonight, perhaps he would find some degree of quietude after that; he might be satiated, relieved momentarily of some of the tensions, yes, yes.
He reached the path and began the ascent, eyes cast on the surface barely discernible beneath his canvas shoes. He climbed steadily, surely, feeling the wind tug at his body, clinging to rocks and craggy overhangs, breathing deeply through his mouth. Finally he reached the ledge-like area at the foot of the dirt slope; he paused there, his back to the path’s edge and to the gray nothingness, drawing air into his labored lungs, not looking up.
Green Tuesday and Wednesday
8
On Tuesday, the rains came down.
The storm which had been threatening the Bay Area since Saturday broke with vehemence at six o’clock of that morning, and by noon San Francisco and its surrounding counties lay sodden beneath the steady deluge of cold,
