spirits and stay out of the cooking pits and the split-long amphitheater. The trail ends at a sand cliff. From there you can watch the Klamath rage into the sea, battering the tide. Waves break in every direction, foam blowing off like rising ghosts. Sea lions by the dozens bob in the swells, feeding on eels flushed out of the river.
My boyfriend and I made our way down to the wet-clay beach.
The sky was every shade of gray, and the Pacific looked like mercury.
We were alone except for five Yurok in rubber boots and checkered flannel, fishing in the surf. We watched them flick stiff whips of sharpened wire mounted on pick handles. When the tips lashed out of the waves, they had eels impaled on them. With a rodeo windup, they flipped the speared fish over their shoulders into pockets they’d dug in the sand. We passed shallow pits seething with creatures that looked like short, mean-faced snakes.
We continued for maybe a quarter mile beyond the river mouth.
We climbed some small, sharp rocks to get to a tall, flat one midway between the shore and the cliff. From there we could see the fisher-men but not have our conversation carry down to them.
Our topic of the day (we go to the beach to hash things out) was if we wanted to get married. Because it was a big, intimidating topic, we’d driven almost four hundred miles to find the right beach. We’d had to spend the night in a tacky motel, but this was the perfect spot, no question.
Patrick uncorked the champagne — we had two bottles; it was likely to be a long talk. I set out the canned salmon and crackers on paper plates on the old blue blanket. I kicked off my shoes so I could cross my legs. I watched Pat pour, wondering where we’d end up on the marriage thing.
When he handed me the paper cup of bubbles, I tapped it against his. “To marriage or not.”
“To I do or I don’t,” he agreed.
The air smelled like cold beach, like wet sky and slick rocks and storms coming. At home, the beach stinks like fish and shored sea-weed buzzing with little flies. If there are sunbathers on blankets, you can smell their beer and coconut oil.
“So, Pat?” I looked him over, trying to imagine being married to him. He was a freckly, baby-faced Scot with strange hair and hardly any meat on him. Whereas I was a black-haired mutt who tended to blimp out in the winter and get it back under control in the summer. But the diets were getting harder; and I knew fat women couldn’t be choosers. I was thinking it was time to lock in. And worrying that was an unworthy motive. “Maybe we’re fine the way we are now.”
Right away he frowned.
“I just mean it’s okay with me the way it is.”
“Because you were married to Mr. Perfect and how could I ever take his place?”
“Hearty-har.” Mr. Perfect meaning my ex-husband had plenty of money and good clothes. Pat had neither right now. He’d just got laid off, and there were a thousand other software engineers answering every ad he did.
“I guess
Aha. Here we had last night’s fight.
“With Mr. Perfect you didn’t even have arguments.
Me and Pat fight on long drives. I say things. I don’t necessarily mean them. It was too soon to call the caterer, I guess.
I held out my paper cup for more. “All I meant was he had more experience dealing with—”
“Oh, it goes without saying!” He poured refills so fast they bubbled over. “I’m a mere infant! About as cleanly as a teenager and as advanced in my political analysis as a college freshman.”
“What is this, a retrospective of old fights? Okay, so it takes some adjustment living with a person. I’ve said things in crabby moments.
On the drive up—”
“Crabby moments? You? No, you’re an
“Reality’s just more
I felt my eyes narrow. “I hate that, Patrick.”
“Oh, she’s calling me Patrick.”
Usually I got formal when I got mad. “I’m not in the best mood when I write. If you could just learn to leave me alone then.” Like I said in the car.
His pale brows pinched as he flaked salmon onto crackers. I made a show of shading my eyes and watching a Yurok woman walk toward us. When she got to the bottom of our rock, she called up, “Got a glass for me?”
Usually we were antisocial, which is why we did our drinking at the beach instead of in bars. But the conversation wasn’t going the greatest. A diversion, a few minutes to chill — why not?
“Sure,” I said.
Pat hit me with the angry-bull look, face lowered, brows down, nostrils flared. As she clattered up the rocks, he muttered, “I thought we came here to be alone.”
“Hi there,” she said, reaching the top. She was slim, maybe forty, with long brown hair and a semi-flat nose and darkish skin just light enough to show some freckles. She had a great smile but bad teeth.
She wore a black hat almost like a cowboy’s but not as western. She sat on a wet part of the rock to spare our blanket whatever funk was on her jeans (as if we cared):
“Picnic, huh? Great spot.”
I answered, “Yeah,” because Pat was sitting in pissy silence.
She drank some champagne. “Not many people know about this beach. You expecting other folks?”
“No. We’re pretty far from home.”
“This is off the beaten path, all right.” She glanced over her shoulder, waving at her friends.
“We had to hike through Yurok land to get here,” I admitted.
“Almost elven, and that wonderful little amphitheater.” I felt embarrassed, didn’t know how to assure her we hadn’t been disrespectful.
I’d had to relieve myself behind a bush, but we didn’t do war cries or anything insensitive. “I hope it isn’t private property. I hope this beach isn’t private.”
“Nah. That’d be a crime against nature, wouldn’t it?” She grinned.
“There’s a trailer park up the other way. That
But as long as you go out the way you came in, no problem.”
“Thanks, that’s good to know. We heard about this beach on our last trip north, but we didn’t have a chance to check it out. We didn’t expect all the seals or anything.”
“Best time of year; eels come upriver to spawn in the ocean. Swim twenty-five hundred miles, some of them,” she explained. “It’s a holy spot for the Yurok, the river mouth.” A break in the clouds angled light under her hat brim, showing leathery lines around her eyes. “This place is about mouths, really. In the river, the eel is the king mouth. He hides, he waits, he strikes fast. But time comes when he’s got to heed that urge. And he swims right into the jaws of the sea lion. Yup.” She motioned behind her. “Here and now, this is the eel’s judgment day.”
Pat was giving me crabby little get-rid-of-her looks. I ignored him.
Okay, we had a lot to talk about. But what are the odds of a real-McCoy Yurok explaining the significance of a beach?
She lay on her side on the blanket, holding out her paper cup for a refill and popping some salmon into her mouth. “Salmon means renewal,” she said. “Carrying on the life cycle, all that. You should try the salmon jerky from the rancheria.”
Pat hesitated before refilling her cup. I let him fill mine too.
“King mouth of the river, that’s the eel,” she repeated. “Of course, the Eel River’s named after him. But it’s the Klamath that’s his castle.
They’ll stay alive out of water longer than any other fish I know.
You see them flash that ugly gray-green in the surf, and thwack, you get them on your whipstick and flip them onto the pile. You do that awhile, you know, and get maybe fifteen, and when you go back to put them in your bucket, maybe eight of the little monsters have managed to jump out of the pit and crawl along the sand. You see how far some of them got and you have to think they stayed alive a good half hour out of the water. Now how’s that possible?”
I lay on my side too, sipping champagne, listening, watching the gorgeous spectacle behind her in the
