White Horse

I close my eyes and I can see the scars of life in real time etching themselves across my body and mind. I relive the moment when I made the conscious decision to be what I am and was fooled by the cruel joke that I knew what I was doing. I was given ample time and numerous roads to turn off on…I used it and I did turn, more than once...just not the right way. I open my eyes and I can still see the beginning, my beginning, and my White Horse travels. I hang my head, shiver and remember.

The storm hung to the sierra foothills like heavy fog, not moving just dumping its quarry with what seemed like hatred. Inside my family’s small white Spanish style ranch house there was nonstop movement. The women were in the kitchen, cooking the two wild turkeys my dad and his younger brother had shot earlier today. The men were in the small dinner nook, drinking our homemade wine and telling stories of conquest from years before. Grandma sat in her favorite chair, grandpa’s chair, next to the fire in the tiny family room, barking out orders for the cooks and yelling at my dad and his brothers to watch their mouth because kids were around. We kids were bouncing around the house like pinball’s wanting to be a part of everything, spilling stuff in the kitchen, carefully and stealthily wandering by the nook in hopes of catching a curse word we didn’t know yet, bouncing on grandma’s bed until we were told to stop from the other room, by my all seeing, all knowing grandma. In the end we became a bother and were coated and ushered outside which gave us free reign to do whatever we wanted to do.

It was Easter, 1977, and this was my 10th Easter at the ranch…I loved it here. The 100-acre horse ranch was set on and in between two foothills with a creek, a man-made water way, trees, barn, stable, garden and horses. My brother and I with our six other cousins set out into the midday downpour to see what we could see again.

The horses were Laurie and Lynn’s favorite; they were both older than I was and were already riding in competition, and so they stayed with the horses and had the youngest female cousin Alicia stay with them. Paul, me, my brother and our youngest cousin Justin went around to the barn. Paul was nearly 18 and the oldest of all the cousins, so we followed him like a pack of wild puppies. He led us into the barn and pointed up. “You guys see that?” He kept pointing until we all saw it. A great skull that looked ancient with big fangs, hung up on the cross beam of the rafters. Whoa, what is that? My brother Andy asks. “That was a wolf named Mordaz, Grandpa killed him a long time ago.” Paul says. “That’s cool.” I say in wonderment, never seeing an actual wolf before, let alone a skull of one. “Yea, pretty cool.” He agrees and leads us off down the hill that had a lone stable that you couldn’t see from the house. “You remember Bellaco, the horse that died a couple years ago?” Paul asks us. “Yea, kind of…but didn’t he stay with the other horses?” I ask remembering a little. “Yes, he did, this was his grandfather’s pen…his name was Malvalo…see, look here.” And he showed us an old carved out name that said Malvalo. Why did he stay here?” Justin asks. “That’s a story for another time.” Paul says and smiles. We meet up with the girls and explore the forest in the dell, tracking whatever animal had been there before. That moved on to a contest of swords with branches from nearby trees which progressed into just bugging the girls. “OH, look…wolf track!” Lynn says, and then she snaps up. “Did you show him?!” She asks. “What?! Show who what?” Paul says and stares her down. “Nothing…and that’s a dog track anyway.” Lynn says correcting herself.

Then a gunshot from up on the hill, which signified dinner, rang our ears. With a jump we all start running up the hill forgetting about everything we had done. Paul slaps Lynn in the back of the head, which, to me, didn’t have any meaning…but I laughed anyway. The rain is still pouring down on us madly when we reach the road and at the top all you see are trees with a little wisp of smoke escaping into the rainclouds. We get closer, still running, when you can see the warm glow of the inside and smell the food cooked. We try to enter the front of the house and are immediately stopped by grandma at the door. “Uh huh, you troublemakers go around to the side of the house and take those filthy clothes off!” She orders, so we do it…without question.

The table is set in the middle of the kitchen and the nook is reserved for us kids, so the parents can keep an eye on us and make sure we eat and not just fool around. But we always eat, and tonight is no different. The two wild turkeys are set in the middle of the table surrounded by all sorts of vegetables from grandma’s garden. Squash, zucchini, eggplant, potato’s, and even the cranberry sauce is homemade, grandma even adds a little more sugar for us. The sun finally sets, but the only way we can tell is because now the grey outside the windows is black. The rain is relentless in its attempt to drown us, but the house is old and strong made by men when it was a matter of survival and not money. So, no leaks, no drafts, just the smell of food and the familiar sounds of merriment waft through the house. Paul and Laurie get a glass of wine each because they are the oldest, while the rest of the kids are stuck with milk, water or tea…because grandma didn’t allow soda in her house. “If you want something sweet, I’ll put sugar in it for you, I don’t trust that soda pop!” She would say when we rolled our eyes. The night moves on and begins to slow down. The parents and Grandma retire to the family room while the cousins, my brother and I clear, wash, dry and place the dishes, pots and glasses. Another couple of “vintage” homemade wines are brought in from the bunkhouse and as soon as they enter the room, grandma comes in the kitchen to put the old coffee pot on the stove. “Ok, you kids get ready for sleep!” She says to us. “And no fooling’ around!” She finishes as we walk down the hallway. The two-bedroom ranch house is small, smaller when the kids are squished together in one room. The parents opted for the bunkhouse where the party could keep going without the eyes or ears of Grandma on them. We can hear the parents and Grandma re-arranging pots and pans, another wine bottle pops open and the low murmurs of family trying to be quiet…it lulls me to sleep, but before I fall, my dad pops his head in the whispers. “Paul, Laurie, Lynn, Chris…come on out, we’re ready. “What’s going on…are we in trouble for something?” I ask Paul worriedly. “I don’t know…just go.” He says. I look at Laurie and Lynn and can see some sort of smile on their faces which makes me even more confused. I’m the last to enter the family room, everyone is there, and the only light is from the fire place. “Dad?” I say quizzically. “Shhhh.” He says and points at grandma. She motions for me to sit in front of her, I can smell her favorite tea on the stand next to her chair. “Christopher…your ten years old now, this is when you hear the story of Mordaz and Malvalo.” She says. I quickly look back at Paul who nods and motions me to turn back around. “This story has been told to all our nieces, nephews, cousins, friends, fathers, sons for the last fifty years. Everyone in this room has heard it…” I look around the room and see my family in fire swept shadows, they looked spooky. “…It was raining like this that night, no lightning, and no thunder, just black, wet and loud. We had already finished dinner and had put your dad and your aunts and uncles to bed in the room you just came from. That when the dogs started barking, ravenous barking. Your Grandpa was up with his rifle in hand before I could move, stopping at the laundry to fetch his pistol all the while muttering Mordaz…Mordaz…Mordaz. When I heard that name I quickly…and quietly rushed to the cupboard and got the shotgun, because if it was THE Mordaz, he would need all the help he could get. I stopped to get my coat, your grandpa was out the door and already halfway down the road to the main stable already.

Back in the late 1920’s, early 1930’s there was a rumor…or legend about a great black wolf that no rancher, farmer or hunter could kill. Few had seen him and his pack and even less had gotten off a shot, but he always left carnage, and his unmistakable paw print. Old’ man Begovich said he actually hit him once and the story he tells is that Mordaz didn’t even drop the calf that was in his mouth, just staggered once and leapt into the black berry bushes alongside his farm. But your grandpa had a knowing about things that not a lot of people did, and if he thought it was Mordaz, then it was. I stopped at the door and said a prayer before I started after my husband. “Let the dogs out!” Grandpa yelled through the rain. And each dog I released, knocked the gate out of my hand and bolted towards your grandpa’s voice, disappearing into the rain and the dark. I ran again and as I got closer, I could now hear the horses terrified screams through the rain, I’ve never heard them this way, it must be Mordaz…I ran faster trying to pinpoint the sounds of chaos. I was fifty yards away from the stable when I heard grandpas rifle report, it was loud and echoed through the valley, I was relieved for a second until I heard his pistol fire that made me run even faster because the only reason, he would use the pistol is if something was too close to him. I began to cry, hoping to hear more gunshots, needing to hear more, but there weren’t any…I ran even faster. When I got to the main gate all I heard were our dogs viciously yelping at something, then I saw grandpa on the ground, but the dogs were all around him barking at the side of the barn. “SHOOT HIM!!!” Grandpa yells from the ground, startling me into a smile. “AT WHAT!” I scream frantically, relieved that I can still talk to my husband. MORDAZ! At the side of the barn!” Grandpa yelled. So, I look…and I see him, he is three times the size of Pablo, our biggest dog. I freeze trying to see, and see more when one of our pups, Rey, is thrown at me, she is dead as she slides past me. I fire both barrels at the eyes and teeth of Mordaz, he takes a step and then leaps back into the stable pen, clearing the six-foot fence.

The dogs stay with grandpa and I realize they were protecting him, I fall next to him, he has a bite on his arm, but he is up and leaves me sitting in the mud, he stops briefly to pick up his rifle and pistol and leaps the fence, chasing down this evil. It takes me two beats to get up, reload and climb over the fence. I hit the ground to see two dead horses, savagely bitten around the neck. But I also see a dead wolf, smaller than Mordaz with half his head missing. Gunshots ring from the lower end of the pen…then… “LET MALVALO OUT!” Grandpa yells through the rain again. I do as he says, knowing that we’re not supposed to do that. Only grandpa can control Malvalo…I do it anyway.

It takes a lifetime to get to his separate pen during which all I hear are gunshots, horses screaming, dogs mindlessly yelping and a guttural growl that makes my skin crawl. I get to the pen and Malvalo is waiting, impatiently for me to let him out. Now, Malvalo, like I said, could only be controlled by grandpa, so as I looked up at this great white horse, I was scared, so I fumbled for the lock…Malvalo was done waiting for me and pushed the gate open with his muscle, the latch flew off and hit me in the head. With three long gallops he was out of my sight, headed towards the fray…I followed, scared yes, but a little relieved into the blackness.

Running, always running, I am almost there when the sounds of symphonic chaos erupt. The rain acts as a moving filter drowning out certain sounds at certain times. I get to the lower stable and all I see are shadows as a bullet from grandpa’s pistol whizzes past my ear. I scream and fall hearing more gunshots, dogs, growls and a new sound, yelps…wolf yelps. The moon finds a sliver between the rain clouds and what I saw, I will always see when I close my eyes on nights like this. Grandpa is on the ground again with his pistol in his hand, the remaining dogs are around him, barking, protecting, there are two dead wolves at his feet, two dead dogs are on his left and another dead horse is on his right next to the fence. I look to the left in this creamy rain dream and see Malvalo send a wolf thirty feet with a kick, it slides in the mud dead. Mordaz is somewhere, but I can’t see him…then a low growl, like Lucifer himself from behind me…another pistol shot drops another wolf as Malvalo hooves the last of Mordaz’s pack into the ground. I scream for grandpa, but he can’t get up. I turn to see Mordaz, teeth bared, head down just looking at me. He knows I shot at him, he knows his pack is gone, he’s not going to kill me for food, and he’s going to kill me for vengeance. I scream for Malvalo and I hear him whinny. I can feel nothing but fear and Malvalo hooves on the ground. I say another prayer as Mordaz leaps for me, waiting to feel his teeth all I feel is something brush against my head and then an ugly crunch, like old wood. Mordaz has bitten my skull I think and I open my eyes as the moon loses its sliver but before it disappears I see Mordaz’s head crushed on the right side, eyes dead and lifeless, teeth still barred in some ugly last attempt to frighten me…then all I hear are the dogs and grandpa yelling for me, calling my name frantically asking if I was alright, I can’t answer…I don’t know why, that’s when something brushes my hair again, Malvalo is running toward grandpa again, dogs barking loud and fast again. I all I hear are yelps, thuds and grandpa yelling at Malvalo. Then all is silent, except for grandpa, weeping for his dogs, Malvalo happily whinnying and rain. I am grabbed by your father’s brother, who sends the rest to help grandpa.

Then she stops the story, the eerie light from the fire seems like moonlight as I am stuck in my grandmas yarn…then movement catches my eye from outside on the porch, I look and see a big black wolf at the window, I jump up and hide at the side of grandma’s chair, thinking it was Mordaz, even though I’ve seen his skull, that’s when my dad pulls off the wolf pelt and fake wolf skull, he walks in and stops three steps into the family room. “What’re going to do with that?” He says with a smile and points to my hand. My grandma’s arm is around me, she is beaming. “He’s going to protect me from Mordaz.” She says matter of factly. Here, Christopher, give me that.” She says and takes the fire poker from my hand. I don’t remember grabbing it, but when grandma took it from me, I felt like Malvalo. Before I could say anything… “The story isn’t done yet, sit.” And she continued.

After we had gotten back from the hospital that next morning, we all went to see what exactly happened. Grandpa had shot the first wolf, but Mordaz, being cunning, attacked grandpa from the side, that’s when the dogs got there, thank god for the dogs. The wolves killed three horses, 2 dogs, grandpa killed one more wolf while Malvalo killed 3 wolves, Mordaz and in his madness, killed the rest of grandpa’s dogs. So, the next time you hold a poker in your hand, make sure you can stop.

She took a sip from her tea and the kitchen light snapped on, signaling the end of the rite of passage. Dad came over and patted me on the head. “That was fast.” He said and went back to the nook. Mom came and walked me back to the room. “It’s ok to put the poker down, too.” She said, not ever liking this rite of passage crap. But it was too late for me, that night I dreamt of being a great white horse, killing wolves…and trying to stop.

From that weekend on I was fascinated by the power of the white horse, roaming through the years learning more and more, I rode that white horse, rode it to school and became a soccer star, rode it during baseball and became a feared catcher. I rode it to dances and always had a date. I would draw pictures of Old Malvalo, already gone for decades, and became an artist…I would tell stories of him to my friends, changing it many times, and became a writer. For eight years, I rode his ideal, following others with like minds that came before me. Leaders, rebels, thieves and nobody’s, whomever got a taste of the power…the prophecy…the confusion…the wickedness…the rebelliousness…the unimaginable chaos, it was an impossibility to just stop and get off, you had to be thrown. I was bit by him a couple times during school and it did sting but then I lost my balance and was thrown my senior year in high school, but instead of walking away, I tied myself to the saddle, not scared anymore of being thrown, breathlessly awaiting the ride, wanting only to stay away from his deathly kick.

The day is perfect.  My friends and I had begun drinking since we got up mainly to chase away the oncoming hangovers that we had facilitated by the shenanigans the night before in Sutter Creek.  The breakfasts of choice that morning were Bloody Mary’s, that weren’t as red as they should have been, followed by “Red Beers”, which were our Olympia, Budweiser or Hams Genuine Draft beers mixed with tomato juice and drowned with Tabasco Brand pepper sauce.  It’s not because we like those types of “Old Man” drinks, it is just the only alcoholic drinks we have left, and having already drank everything else during the multi-gamed fiasco that ended only four hours ago.  We are all in our early twenties and Dan, Steve, Mike, Ashley and I are driven by the stories from last night to make today epic.  This want, along with the booze was working quickly on our young brains, so the hangovers leave us quickly.  But being young and excited we don’t stop when our heads stop hurting because the embedded battle-cry in all young men’s heads screams “Let’s Keep Drinking!” which continues our early morning party while we search for ideas of how to make today “The Day”.  Finally deciding to head down to the local lake, where my Dad’s 1969 “Star Fire” boat is docked, is agreed upon as our libidos wake up, take over and want to see girls in bikinis.  Bear River Lake Reservoir is a perfect picture of serenity today, the cloudless pale blue sky seems fake because it looks too perfect. On the road down I continue to look up amazed at the clarity, wondering why everyone doesn’t live up here.  We clear the trees and catch our first glimpse of the lake.  It is lit with a soft yellow hue that the sun rains down upon it, bouncing off the water, making it sparkle while the majestic green mountains hold us close to her bosom shielding us from anything harsh.  We are quick to park our truck and move our cargo to the boat doing it in about seven minutes.  Our excitement fades once we reach our goal to get on the lake, not really planning anything after. So we sit, drink and drift, letting the movement of the mountain water take us where it would.  The midnight blue mountain water lapping up against the side of the boat is almost lulling us into a coma like state that is dragging on so slowly I can count the seconds between breezes.  We continue to lazily revisit the argument of who won what drinking game last night, which has become an ongoing battle between us about who is better, simply better, letting the generality of the trophy loose itself in between the lines of the argument.  It becomes a fight for the fights sake, but we don’t care, we love the battle.  The argument, battle, fight continues warming our complacent blood until we remember who and what we are…we are young men who follow the mindset of all young men who want to tear down the world, like they did in Graham Green’s “Destructors”.  It is too beautiful not to make our mark on it, it is too serene not to shake the monkeys out of the trees, and it is too big not to want to resurrect it in our own image.  The mountain air is still, terrified, almost waiting for our next move.  Then a momentary slight breeze that carries the heavy scent of pine blows over our heads bringing along with it the cat-like chatter from the Girl Scout camp on the top of the northern hill.  The beer is flowing like wine in Cana and our bullshit stories about girls, drinking and fights, that has peppered our ongoing battle, that were beginning to peak, suddenly stop.  The four of us snap our heads in unison directly towards the female sound of hope.  Nothing can faze us out of this new state of mind that pops up out of nowhere, the mental list of things to do on the lake quickly and drastically changes.  Even the hypothermic water that ebbs and flows underneath us magically became warmer.

The millennium had started its death rattle, eight years away from flying cars, androids and Prince’s song “Party Like it’s 1999” finally being appropriate, but it is still too soon to care.  We don’t care anyway because all a drunken twenty-something male is thinking about is getting laid and that is exactly what we are.  So now with our heads snapped and ears open we try to pinpoint this new goal.  While we search our stories turn to the teenage camping movies and all the loose female camp counselors that would skinny dip at midnight just before they are carelessly killed by the protagonist monster or maniac.  We try to picture what these counselors look like and if they like to skinny dip.  After a ten minute search we find them on the north side of the lake.  We wave and yell and try to get them to come down to the dock but being drunk and young and boating up and down the lake isn’t enough to impress our princesses up on the hill so we figure what’s a little bodily injury matter in the pursuit of happiness.  So with our thinking caps firmly secured between our legs, only wanting to be noticed by the faceless females, we go looking for the biggest mother-fucking rock we can jump off of.  “Right there!  That one’s perfect”, says Ash, almost jumping out of the boat as he says it.  “You’re high, look at the top…it’s rounded off, you’d have to run down the front, THEN jump.” I say.  “We can make it, we’ll just do that, run down the front.”  Danny is always hyper-optimistic.  “You better check it first, dumb-ass.”  Mike says, because during our search we had run across some other rocks and there was always some kind of underwater demon waiting to send us to the hospital…or in some cases the morgue.  I pull the boat closer to the behemoth rock which is right next to the dock of the camp.  Danny jumps in the lake before I can stop the boat, and swims over to this beast.  I half expect the rock to suck him down, chew him up and spit out the parts it didn’t like…but it doesn’t.  “It looks fine.” He says unaware of the danger he was in.  “See that?  Swim down and see how far from the surface that one is.”  Steve says, pointing to yet another man killer.

The water is mountain runoff, which is why it was so god-forsakenly cold.  And even with all the action on the surface in the middle of the lake, the shore is usually calm and clear, so as we get closer to the rock shore we can see down to the bottom being able to pick the place to fall and miss anything dangerous.  But being able to see the bottom didn’t make it less scary, in fact it gives the places, this one included, all the more menacing look on the rocks, like they want something…if that is possible.  At this point something snaps inside of me and I say to myself “I’m not that drunk.”  So I state my case.  “You guys are fucking idiots, you can’t even get up there.” I say.  Danny drags himself back into the boat explaining his point of view.  “You’re a fucking pussy, drive over to the side of the rock with the bush and I’ll show you…Jesus!” He says, giving jabs where jabs are due.  Danny leaps from the boat, crawls through a hole in the bushes and is gone.  Unfortunately we aren’t the only ones of the lake that day, there are the assorted city folk with their boats and skis and inter-tubes, pretty much doing the same thing we are, just with less intent.  But when I pull back from the rock, it is the first time I notice them.  A couple of boats had stopped already and are waiting, with morbid curiosity not unlike us, for Danny to jump.  It happens so fast I don’t know what to think.  He runs down, jumps, and floats for what seems like a second or two then shoots down, like he is hit on the head with a big cartoon mallet.  There is no sound on the way down and it seems to me that Danny is in shock, which would explain the look on his face.  The jump only takes about five seconds and the splash is awfully anti-climactic.  There is no big plume and no cracking boom when he hits the water, but the small crowd that saw Dan’s departure, ascent and fall loves it nonetheless.

 It takes him twice as long to surface then it did for him to fall, but we can see his little shadow braving the dark shadows underneath the surface, making for the boat.  He pops his head out of the water right by the boat but the first thing we see are his teeth curved into a big “Danny smile”, much wider than the usual ones he gives.  “That was fucking awesome!”  Danny gurgles out with water still in his mouth.  “You are one crazy mother fucker.” I say, as we pull the hero into the boat.  Slight sounds of applause can be heard as soon as the two boats see that Danny is still alive.  “Are-you-ready-to-go-again?”  Ash’s words run together like he had been waiting forever to say them.  Unfazed by the almost six story plunge and willing to seek death out to slap its face yet again Dan answers. “Sure, let’s go.”  I pull over to the rock and the brothers jump off and disappear into the same hole in the bushes.  I barely get back to the front of the, now, five boat audience before I hear a fan from a different boat yell “Here they come!”  I watch as they fall, a muffled unintelligible sound bounces off the side of the rock and I think to myself, ‘These two should drag race, lion tame or get married if they want this thrill and danger cocktail so bad.  We pull in to pick up the boys and as they break the surface you can tell that they have been talking or screaming underwater because all we hear when they break the surface is “…do it again!”  Maybe I miss something in their translation but whatever Dan and Ash say convince Steve and Mike that jumping off a six story rock is easy and suddenly they are ready to test their mettle against this piece of the world.  “You guys are idiots” I say.  Trying to keep at least one friend safe so I’m not drinking alone tonight.  “Come on Chris, don’t be such a wimp.” Steve says.  “Let the little baby stay here.” Mike says, letting his usual harshness overshadow Steve’s pseudo kind retort.  “It’s not that big.” Ash finishes.  I look at Ashley after he says that and wonder if we are still looking at the same rock.  I take another look to be sure, following the granite monster from the bewildering underwater deathly depths where all the mountains dead things live, up the blue-gray face which is pock marked like it has been through countless battles old and new, until I hit the crest in the crystalline blue mountain sky which it seems to touch.  I skew my view looking at the mid-morning sun, and then at my beer wondering again if I have any reason to do this.  Arriving at the answer “I will stay in the boat and get them to a hospital after they jump.”  Strangely embarrassed about my choice, I try to cover my fear of the jump.   “You guys are fucking idiots.”  “Fuck You!”  They say in unison, uneasily turning their gaze back towards the rock.

One by one, like lemmings, they disembark the safe boat for certain death and I half-say to myself, “this is a reverse mutiny.”  “You’re all going to fucking die.” I say and pull away from the rock.  The crowd that has gathered now number around twenty people sprinkled into 8 or 9 boats, it looks like the spring break parties you see on MTV.  Surprisingly, they are up the rock and poking their mutinous heads out over the crest in two minutes. I hold my position about fifteen feet off the rock face, I can’t completely see them over the crest they have to run down, but I can hear them discussing the future and life insurance plans.  “Are you sure, I mean…are you sure?”  Steve asks Danny, with the question, “Am I sure?” repeating in his head over and over.  “This is stupid.” Mike states while the last preparations for the jump are discussed also repeating his statement in his head. They finish their discussion and yell down to me.  “Where are we?”  “Pioneer, you’ll be going to the Amador County Hospital. I already called the helicopter rescue team.”  I say, still feeling jaded about the reverse mutiny.  “Shut up Chris.” Mike says, and I can hear the fear in his voice.  “You suck, dude!”  Steve says sounding just like Mike.  “No, asshole, you need to place us directly in the middle of the two rocks on the side.”  Danny yells down, then he turns and tries to comfort his friends.  I think about his question and look down into the water.  “Uh-oh.”  I say, seeing something I hadn’t seen before.  On either side of this ancient thing, almost buried by the lake bottom mud, I see the other rocks.  The bad ones.  The life changers.  Now I know why they need to be directly in the middle, because if they weren’t, my imagined trip down the hill to the hospital would become a reality.  They had to run down the face of a sixty foot rock, then jump outwards to miss the crest into a twenty foot wide by eighteen foot deep area at the base of this crazy challenge.  Now they were four across instead of two, while being drunk, and they were scared, which usually plays a part in body movement.  Now I may be a pussy-wimp little baby, but at least I can tie my shoes and don’t need to re-learn English.  I was having problems seeing them so I ask for some help.  “I can’t see you, throw a rock down, so I can position you.” I say not seeing any danger in asking.   But due to the nature of these animals and the condition they are in, I should really expect some errors in judgment and what could happen if I ask them to throw a rock down.  I let that thought go, finally trusting my friends.  Looking down again through the mint tinted water I can see the want of human flesh in the deathly underwater rock shelves, they begin to move when I hear what sounds like a labored oxen grunt.  I look up to see if I can discern what made that sound like that but all I see is what looks like a basketball heading for the bow of the boat at about sixty miles per hour.  I stand awestruck by this chunk of heaven thinking about what “Chicken Little” must have seen, while awaiting to sink after this rock rockets through my Dad’s boat.  I guess we have different definitions of rock, Dan and I, because this “rock”, as Danny would see it wasn’t a rock at all, but a boulder.  It smashes in the water three feet off the bow, making a monumental splash that drenches half the boat and me.

Still in shock I hear the muffled laughs from the crowd.  But he is centered in his endeavor so while cursing under my breath at him, I start the boat and pull back, not wanting to see what the collective weight of four hairless monkeys could do to the boat, whether they hit it or not.  “You’re on.” I yell back up the rock and ready the camera for what I think will be a great picture.  How am I going to explain this to the authorities and not sound, careless, stupid or guilty in some way?  How would I keep from being arrested?  I phase out, still looking up.

 I can see the interrogation room and being asked the same questions for hours before I eventually crack and confess to their murder, leaving the truth to wander through my brain, eventually becoming some sort of inmate’s dream that the prison psychologist calls guilt-transference, or some other long unpronounceable medical definition.  I can see the street “cred” I’d receive when the other inmates whisper, “He killed four guys…with a fucking BOAT! Shhhh, he’s looking at us.”  I can see conjugal visits by broken and disturbed women that always ask me the real reason why I did what I did while riding on top of me, hoping for some sort of gory recollection while they come.  Finally I can see me finding God and coming out with a book explaining that my jealousy of my old friends was the driving force behind my heinous act and giving all the proceeds to their families in hopes that before the state puts me to death they will forgive me.

In between coming up with alibis and trying to figure out where I should bury the bodies, there are a couple of long moments when I think I hear them coming over, but they don’t appear.  I begin to rest my camera-holding arm when with a loud rush of noise, ran down the face and jumped off.  Surprised and shocked by the suddenness of the event I almost take the picture right then.  I overcome my shock and wait until they were halfway down the rock face.  Time slows for me as I watch them “slide” down.  It looks to me like Dan and Ash are trying to talk to each other while Steve and Mike just looked frozen.  There is something anachronistic about their bodies pressed up against something that has been there since the beginning of the world.

 As a part of nature, I feel like we are the new priest the church hires after the death of the old one, who doesn’t follow the same progression of churchy things, pissing the parishioners off.  Or the new weird neighbors in the community that has rotten kids and a loud dog that never stops barking, pissing the neighborhood off.  Or more like the terrible two year old using new words that his uncle teaches him to say to his Mother when she asks us why he’s not eating his vegetables, pissing her off.

It was a straight out challenge, balls to the wall, if nature wants to make a rock like this, we’re not going to respect its place in the universe, because we are self-aware and think we have more claim of dominance because we are man.  Or by acknowledging it’s beauty by painting pictures of it, writing poetry about it or even thanking it for even being there.  No we are the baby race that needs to be the only thing and use our world as we see fit.  So today we were going to jump of the motherfucker in hopes of carnal pleasure.  Bad or good, young things challenge old things it is how they make their mark in our world.  But in this realization I see the wrongness of this act, but can do nothing about it accept watch and hope that we can be forgiven. In between the feelings of embarrassment for us as a specie and elation for us as the young, my friend’s second scream finishes and immediately followed by two distinct sounds that happen a second apart.  The first was like putting an M-80 explosive in a coffee can which makes a hollow deep resonance sound that echoes low in the sound waves levels, with a slight slapping that is the sound of something entering water at a high speed.  I watch the huge splash grow, fail and fall back towards the lake, marveling at the size and structure until a high pitch sound snaps my eardrums loose.  It reminds me of taking a flat pine paddle and smacking it against marble, it made me squint and hurt my ears.  I watch the ripples and displacement of water make some good sized waves while I wait for the moving shadows, which is a good sign, squirm towards the surface.  Dan, Ash and Steve were the first to hit the water, they had done what they had discussed and followed the rules they talked about in the pre-jump discussion, running straight off the rock following the trajectory of movement.  Logical.  Mike was the second splash…and the second ear-splitting sound.  Taking their jump, literally, not following the trajectory of the fall, but jumping up in worried hopes of clearing the crest, Mike ended up higher than his fellow jumpers.  His miscalculation was not logical.  But, I guess, to see your three friends six feet below you while falling sixty feet at around sixty miles per hour would have to be cool.  Unfortunately Mike’s gaze did not find any of that, being completely focused on the landing area.  He was so completely focused that he forgot about the other point of their discussion, which was not where to land, but how to land.  The price for his forgetfulness was pain as his body position was more like he was sitting down, creating more area to be hit when he entered the water and the pine/marble crack that echoed across the lake was the sound of Mike’s arms and legs hitting flat against the surface.

The roar of the crowd is tremendous, even the camp counselors came down to their dock to watch the show.  I pull up and pick up the “Flying Wallendas”.  All have great big smiles, mixed with a tiny bit of shock as they break the surface and as they climb into the boat they high five and wave to their fans and talked about the moments in the jump.  “Why didn’t you answer me?” Ash says to Dan.  “I didn’t even know you were talking.” Dan says.  Steve after the high fives and waves to the fans, he sits down, wraps the towel around him uttering, “Oh, man.  Oh, man.  Oh, man.”  Acting like he just escaped a wild animal’s maul.  They went on and on about how you’re supposed to hold your arms in and point your toes and follow certain rules of physics when we heard a yell from the water, breaking the moment into reality.  “Hey, pull me in.”  Mike screams.  “Shit, we forgot Mike.” Steve says, half laughing like he always did.  “Get me the fuck out of here!” Mike screams again, clearly hurting and mad.  “Ok, ok, keep your panties on.” Dan says, mimicking Steve’s chortle.  The laughing stopped briefly when we finally landed Mike and assessing the damage.  His underarms and back of his legs were red, like they had just been spanked.  “Shit, Mike, are you ok?” Ash said with actual concern.  “Does it look like I’m ok?”  Mike said with fire in his eyes ready to fight anything and anyone. “No.”  Ash said with complete honesty.  A second passes before we all laugh uncontrollably, there was no stifling that kind of hilarity.  Even Mike smiles and laughs a little bit before wincing in pain again.

 The boats depart with scattered applause and thumbs ups.  But the counselors, who usher the campers back up the hill to continue whatever activities they were doing before we showed up, do not come back down for our autographs or phone numbers or anything. We watch them fade into the beginnings of the forest, but today it’s alright, today it doesn’t sting or leave us wanting, because we are filled with something else, replacing the young wants of flesh and feeling with glory.

Its midday now, but the day ended with the jump.  The mood on the lake reverts back to a boring calm as we sit in the cove, waving at the passing boats that watched the event.  Bored at the knowledge that we beat the biggest thing out here today, we decide to motor back to the lodge, have a celebratory drink and get our food for the nights feast.  The mountain air is telling us to go away and light a fire somewhere, something we already know.  We pass the rock, which now has a late afternoon shadow across it, glaring its cold and angry glare, but it doesn’t hold the same power it did before, it is not ominous, it is now just a rock.  It does not tempt us again because it had been bested on a cosmic scale by something surprisingly young and resilient.  The sun sets slowly trying to nurture its bested friend, but we have already moved on and are off fighting other battles against tougher foes.  I burn this weekend into my memory, knowing that if I ever lost my way in life, if I ever faltered in my personal endeavors, I could look back at this point and bask in the moment when my friends and I were together and together we won the fight.

Through the years, I tested and tempted people with my credo and through those years only three answered the call.  I met Dan in 1980, he was the all-American football jock, track star, level headed father figure for us.  He was never at a loss for something to do, someone always wanted him for something but somehow, he liked my madness enough to ignore the others.  

Dan and I logged the most time together finding trouble, and then getting out of it.  Being in the middle of fights without being in the fight was always the most exciting.  We would videotape each other doing stupid things like toilet papering our friends’ houses, stealing their hubcaps and then turn it in as a school project.   We were also best men at each other’s weddings.  Dan is the kind of friend you want with you when your mouth is talking without your brain.  I’d probably be in a Mexican jail or more likely cemetery if it weren’t for Danny slowing down my ride.  

Steve and I go back the furthest, he drove me to school in 1982, before I got my license.  We had to be there by 8am for first period, so Steve would show up ten minutes before first period, then backtrack ten blocks to find the cheapest gas so he could put four bucks in the tank, but his great blue beast miraculously always got us there on time.  Steve was a relentless comedian and with me working the "straight man" position, every night was wall to wall laughing.  Our birthdays are two days apart, we had the same exact Lincoln, we both played soccer together, we dated the same girls and we had a knack for finding the worst possible trouble we could get into...which was usually within our own group.  

Mike…to explain Mike you need four shots of tequila, four double vodkas and $60 worth of Jack in the Box in your system.  Mike was the outsider/warrior of the group, he went to the public school down the road, while Dan, Steve and I went to the private one…but he fit in to our group so perfectly I would almost ask where he was on Monday’s at school.  In his fighter days, Mike would be the antitheses of the evening, always getting into confrontation whether it was his misunderstanding or a misunderstanding on his part.  But even with his hot head, in warlike situations, he is invaluable.   Mike is white horse chaotic, live life to the fullest, spend $100 at a fast food place, put your new car on your credit card, shave your head and grow your beard…to hell with what people think, if you want to do it, then do it.  

Then there is me, trying to show these three what I had seen before, but they already knew, just in their own way.  I am the poet, prognosticating, pain in the ass Jesus-want to-be.  Being parts and pieces of the three, shoved down into a Chris sausage casing.  I have learned different ways to be me from my friends and that has made me stronger, smarter and a tad crazier.  Scary but true, but I am not here to blame my friends for the job they did raising me, my faults are my faults, my wants are my wants, free will sucks for the addict, especially when the chaos of life is your addiction. We have played the part of the drunken Ward Cleaver howling at the moon and chasing our tails until the sun surprised us by rising.  We’ve been prophetic, rebellious, powerful, confused, wicked, and heroic.  Always living in rebellion, we laugh at God and we spit at the Devil, living life to the extent of almost overdosing on it.  We four have done so many things together that I do not want to ever forget.  Every act we executed either condemned us or deified us, I know this because we have ventured down that path more times than not, even the road less traveled has eroded away from our use.  For the most part condemnation has won out over deification and even after my failed crusade to convince my friends that I was the actual second coming of Jesus Christ, I still hold the reigns tightly, prattling and pandering, half drunk on my own ego, trying year after year to simply stay in my white horse’s saddle.  

The 1990 crusade that would infuriate my still Catholic friends stirred another memory from the famed lake.  THE memory that set the completion of my personality in stone.  Bear River Lake Resort is in the Sierra’s, 20 miles shy of Kirkwood Ski Resort on Hwy 88.  It was built in the mid 40’s by Mokelume Power to power the region.  My grandma won a lot on the East Ridge of the basin in a lottery and mom and dad built a cabin on that lot.  They finished it in 1965.  Back then, the woods were thick, and the lake was almost always full, but time waged a war against the lake and like all things that go up against time, it lost battle after battle.  The deforestation got progressively worse year after year and the water level, with the growing needs of the area, was never constant.  That is why the lake is so special because even with all its skeletons and unsure ties with its populous it remained beautiful surviving all the attacks against it.  It’s a place where good ideas pop like popcorn and epiphanies are so commonplace, you’d think they were a herd of deer tramping through the meadow, far away from the confusion and dysfunction of the city. 

The 1990 crusade that would infuriate my still Catholic friends stirred another memory from the famed lake.  THE memory that set the completion of my personality in stone.  Bear River Lake Resort is in the Sierra’s, 20 miles shy of Kirkwood Ski Resort on Hwy 88.  It was built in the mid 40’s by Mokelume Power to power the region.  My grandma won a lot on the East Ridge of the basin in a lottery and mom and dad built a cabin on that lot.  They finished it in 1965.  Back then, the woods were thick, and the lake was almost always full, but time waged a war against the lake and like all things that go up against time, it lost battle after battle.  The deforestation got progressively worse year after year and the water level, with the growing needs of the area, was never constant.  That is why the lake is so special because even with all its skeletons and unsure ties with its populous it remained beautiful surviving all the attacks against it.  It’s a place where good ideas pop like popcorn and epiphanies are so commonplace, you’d think they were a herd of deer tramping through the meadow, far away from the confusion and dysfunction of the city. 

I burn this weekend into my memory, knowing that if I ever lost my way in life, if I ever faltered in my personal endeavors, I could look back at this point and bask in the moment when my friends and I were together and together we won the fight.  Then I think back to the night before and remember all the stories, all the mishaps, pitfalls and adventures that were recalled in drunken glory that night.  Every time was hilarious in its own way.  Every drunken memory etched in my mind included one if not all my three of my fellow horsemen.  I woke up one morning there after a white horse type party ready to quit everything from eating meat to peeing in the shower.  “I’m going to make a change, so I can be a better man”, I say with hung-over conviction.  “No more drinking milkshakes with breakfast, no more playing computer games at work, no more watching star trek until midnight…I will change, and people will be impressed!”  If I told them I was going to be a changed, if not better, they’d throw a beer at my head and tell me to shut up.  I lit a Carlton, sat on the deck in the crisp, almost cold, mountain air remembering and reliving all the old parties and road trips, giving in to all the hedonistic heritage that was mentally laid out in front of me, I get up fix myself a milkshake and come up with a yearly getaway called “The White Horse Classic.” It took ten years of tip toeing around my growing family, ripping one if not all my brethren in wickedness for short nights out, but that sometimes leaked into our lives, and it did cause problems.

With my partially functioning brain, I thought that was the perfect way to be that young caveman without sacrificing the respect of our families, in-laws, wives or co-workers.  One weekend a year was all that I was asking.  To go away with the three guys that I knew wouldn’t care if I made a fool of myself, wouldn’t call the cops if I took their car and would laugh off any verbal assault I pressed, regardless of how heinous an attack it was.

With visions of the new yearly getaway fresh in my head I let all the plans slip until Christmas 1999.  But I had got caught up in the moment and was thinking like a young caveman, not a husband-father type person, so when I broke the news about the “The White Horse Classic” in May, I got: “Have to check that date” and “I don’t know if I can work it, I need more time.”  More time!  That was five months of time…I used to plan a trip on my way home from work on Friday.  “Hey, we’re having a party tonight, Chris, you should come down.”  Danny would call me from San Luis Obispo. I’d make a left and get on the freeway to see Danny without going home first.  And in 3.5 hours I’d be drunk with Danny making fun of the other drunken people.  But now I was getting, “need to check with the wife.”  Even Mike thought about it for a minute before he said O.K.  I was astonished, but then I got home and was reminded of my present situation and now Mike’s answer seemed a bit fast, I needed to check with my family first also… another young caveman flung off the cliff of life by a responsibilitysaurous.  In the end, the four of us decided to wait and make 2001 our inaugural year, a year and a half away, that should be enough time to fix the slice and build up my tolerance again.

But the world has no patients for our minor wars against it so it moves on taking us unwillingly with it.  We four heathens are no longer young, and our responsibilities have changed along with our lives, but one thing remains the same…we are horsemen.  Our friendship gave us the taste that designates us to be loud, pain in the ass, drunken troublemakers.  Look at our homo-erectus brothers, “the cavemen”; this is where all the trouble started.  The way the world was justified our brother’s behavior.  Running around bashing things with clubs, not bathing, staking our territory…it was all just standard operating procedure.  A couple hundred thousand years of evolution was good for us physically, but our mental evolution was slowed by our own want of things to stay the same.  I have heard, that women think we need to cook a little bit longer and I agree, so give us a thousand years to mature and if we don’t then you can yell at us, but until then…let us be.  Shoot, if you gave a caveman an I.D. and some cash…he’d be at the bar getting in a fight.  Nevertheless, we can’t be that young caveman anymore, bouncing off the walls and setting things on fire, wives and in some cases, maturity have curtailed that part of our psyche.  But as God, wives and several police agencies know, given the chance to ride that animal again…we will.

The excitement and anticipation for the trip was overwhelming, we needed to make it real, so we could justify the entire lost time thinking about it so our first meeting on this freeing endeavor was a barbeque at my house.  So, I sat on my side yard and waited for my fellow monkeys to arrive.  It was a cool, very crisp late January night, I had started the fire pit to take the edge off, but the bourbon and coke was already doing that for me.  My mind was awash with ideas for the new ride.  Grandeur ideas…

“We’ll have contests…and prizes…and a pre-party…and post party…and…and…” and then I got lost in my own mental minutiae.  But maybe my confusion wasn’t the bourbon, I think back now and maybe it was the chemical wash I was in.  Because the night was crisp, I had gotten some of those “real life” fire logs in hopes of turning tonight’s meeting into some sort of campfire, the way it was when I thought of it… I should have known better.  The log company said right there on the package, along with the instructions on how to use the log, that it would sound and smell like a real “outdoor” fire.  All my mad fire creation did was beat down the pleasantness of the night, it didn’t quite catch the smell of wood burning it was more like a cross between the thick heavy smell of lighter fluid drenched charcoal and pine air fresheners thrown into a fire.  The sound missed the subtleties of wood being split by fire and replaced it with a gunpowder cap gun noise, which is what they probably used.  All in all, it was a bad attempt at re-creating nature, but perhaps I was being too critical, I mean, the dark black molten smoke that rose from the fire kept all the insects away…and a few birds…and re-routed the flight path for San Jose International.  But even with my failure at playing Mother Nature my mood was not diminished, there were beautiful fire swept shadows on the side of the house and my bourbonesque near buzz attitude was as mellow as the Cheshire cat.  I think it was Steve that showed up first, but then after a couple of drinks, if I don’t concentrate, I don’t remember…and Cheshire cats don’t concentrate.

By 9pm Mike and Dan showed up and were already having a heated conversation about the trip.  Once again, the beer and bourbon were flowing, along with our mouths and egos.  Our train of thought was more like a four-man raft smashing down the Colorado River, turning and twisting, sometimes submerged, waiting breathlessly for that fatal rock that would rearrange our faces and make us talk funny.  I had a little problem with the trophy and whom it was for.  My ideas were different from my fellow rafters.  I had the impression that this was a public event, not private, trying always to distance myself from the elitist spell hold that I had been allotted in life.  Mike and Steve were unimpressed by my “everyone’s equal” speech and I was not going to change my mind anytime soon.  I spat and spewed, reiterated and regurgitated, threatened them with violence and vowed that no tournament of mine was ever going to become elitist, then ended my lecture with a resounding, “Fuck you”.  Mike and Steve rolled their eyes like they were saying “there goes Chris again, which spring-boarded me into yet another tirade.  I discussed, at length, their mother’s sexual preference and I suggested several body parts they could put into each other’s orifices, along with other lacerating attacks on their person.  We continued to argue but Danny just sat there and laughed.  Steve and mike, finally tired of listening to me, ask Danny what we should do.  “I don’t care, I just like to watch you guys fight…but I do think we should keep the trophy to ourselves.”  And I thought I was just going to miss that fatal rock.  Floored by Danny’s submission, I give up throwing my hands into the night air and leaving the patio to make another drink.  It was now 11pm, the thick black smoke from my fake logs was somehow comforting now or maybe it was just my mood.  My wife comes out and asks us why we haven’t started the barbeque yet…we had no good answer.

Now that I had been converted into one of the boys, we moved on to the rules.  But why do we need rules on a trip created to break them?  Horsemen we may be but when it comes to winning something, we need our chaos to be less chaotic just, so we make sure the smart don’t overpower the strong.  The rules were basic for any “guy trip” but because of my friends and THEIR trophy I knew we were headed for problems.  The first part of the bylaws went by smoothly: no wives, no girlfriends, and no guests we didn’t all know and like and if you couldn’t go a cash settlement of five hundred dollars was in hand before the boat left.  But we all secretly waited for the final rule, how would we determine who would keep the trophy and pick the next years location, that was the cherry on this class-envy tournament.

We all agreed that the golf score should be the determining factor for the prize since we were all close in game.  I suggested a drink off, but they would have none of that knowing my proficiency at idiocy.   All was about to be closed when Steve, who was rarely the voice of reason, wasn’t it again.  I guess Steve considers himself some sort of pro golfer and through his contacts on the tour, he picked up a fancy way to score.  Steve starts in on this “new math” kind of scoring and after his first couple of points, Mike jumps right in and start picking apart his lecture.  If I was Mexican and they were speaking Spanish I still would have no idea what they were talking about.  I glance over to Danny and I see he’s in the same fishing boat trying to count on his hands how many points we are supposed to be playing for.  Five minutes of these two fighting over percentage points along with other sorts of variables, I phase out into a night time daydream.

I see the four of us in a New York art gallery many years in the future.  The black marble floor is polished to a high sheen, which sets off the flat white walls, there are pictures of us, golfing on various golf courses in the world.  The greens are blinding.  We all stand around the centerpiece of the room.  The old trophy sits atop a three-foot black lacquer podium, replaced by the now etched platinum replica, the original looks cheap, almost like some kindergartener’s lunchtime project…but history is history regardless how cheap it looks.  We sip our martinis from outrageously big coffers and talk like Dukes and Duchesses.  “Oh, they chant have our trophy, they’re not good enough”.  “You want to play with us…what does it feel like to want?”“Who are you?  Wait…don’t know, don’t care.”  By the time my little fantasy is over, Danny has joined Steve and Mike, trying to add some random sense to the conversation.  My tournament has been defiled by the same thing that created it.  I was no longer in the saddle but walking alongside my white horse.

Midnight rolls around, the crisp air is now cold and damp.  The logs have been exhausted and the bourbon is gone.  The three others are done for the night and say their varied goodbyes.  It was a good night, we progressed with our plans and had the mind to write it down.  I am supposed to copy this to the computer and get out all the kinks.  I think to myself that the paper itself is one big kink.  I sit on the cold, wet lawn chair, the light from the last log gives me just enough light to read the paper.  I notice that not only is it torn, tattered and monkified, but also there are rules there that I don’t remember discussing let alone agreeing to, but, but being of sound mind I did recopy and send out the bylaws with no mention of the new rules.  Immediately I get a response from Steve, saying that he’ll rewrite them and give me a copy.  I apologize for not being able to get the rules etched in platinum, he tells me to shut up and laughs.  The next year is very long, waiting for our new trip.  It is what facilitated the year of the e-mail vacation.

The e-mails everyday about the trip WAS like a mini vacation.  Every time I got an e-mail it reminded me of some shit we did in the past, before debt and before girlfriends and way before wives and worry about the future.  It was refreshing to say the least.  I would make personal bets with myself on what would be said next in response to my e-mails, or I would try to envision what we would be like on the 10th hole when Steve and Mike would be at each other’s throats, arguing about the rules.

The night of the barbeque, when we didn’t barbeque, I picked Visalia for our inaugural trip.  Danny and I had played there ten years previous, in fact that was my first-time golfing for real, and it was good.  We had a blast, we golfed, we watched sprint races and bet each race, and loser would buy the next round.  We swam in the indoor pool and drank at the most popular bar in Visalia, which was all right there and the holiday inn, but the look on Steve and Mikes faces were akin to squirting lemon juice in their eyes.  “Why the hell do you want to go to Visalia?”  Mike said, “There’s nothing there,” Steve added.  “No, dude, pick another place.”  They spoke to me like psychiatrists talk to their raving patients.  Now when I thought of this trip, I was thinking about all the good times we had together, not where we were when it happened.  So, I quickly relented, again, knowing that Steve and Mike were as fragile as a couple little girls and I didn’t want to see them pout.  I picked Avila beach, figuring that everyone loves the beach and I was right.  We voted and that was that, we were on our way.

The turn of the century, which was also supposed to be the end of days, flew by on rails, and there was no global meltdown, no end of the world, no chaos...unless you counted the people who needed it to be.  Our e-mails on rule changes, suggestions of restaurants and bars and just all-around fights and folly about who were the coolest of us four hit our computer screens daily.  Then in the middle of its Dan had to move up to Spokane, which didn’t affect us much, but I got the feeling that he felt like an outsider.  September rolls around and the little mini vacations began to slow down.  I got bored with nothing whizzing around my head every second, I needed that little vacation every day just to keep from going sane so to break the boredom I sent e-mails to everyone on why we had to change the date of the trip now, it was a scathing letter that got immediate response.  They all freaked out blaming each other and me on how this happened and who started this.  If Mike or Steve were e-mailing me, I would tell then Danny had to change the date because it landed on his son’s birthday and Danny wasn’t sure if he could get there on time, if at all.  So, I can imagine that when Danny turned his computer on in the morning, there would be at least two e-mails from Steve and Mike asking why he didn’t mention this at the barbeque.  Then Danny would e-mail me, and I would tell him that Mike was being an idiot and that Steve didn’t like the venue.  Then when Mike and Steve got their e-mails they would freak and e-mail me, asking me what everyone was talking about.  I would sit at my computer every morning for about a month and smile at the confusion.  For some reason I never really got blamed for it, they all came to me and said why did you change the date?  “I never changed the date, you guys did”.  I laughed and laughed and laughed…and Malvalo whinnied. 

        I finalized everything on my thirty-fourth birthday.  Rooms, tee times, dinner reservations, everything was set, and everybody knew the game plan.  I drank that night without my friends, and I missed them, but in four weeks we would, more than likely, be getting tired of our like minds.

Thursday night I pick up Danny at the airport, it’s good to see him again.  Somehow when he lived near to me, I’d never see him, now here at the airport, I start to feel guilty for not seeing him more.  But that all that feely-schmeely crap passes like fast food through my colon.  Nothing was planned for tonight, mainly because we were leaving early Friday morning and there would be enough drinking in the next 36 hours to kill a goat.

Our house was warm; it smelled like incense, my wife had made the house a home and as we relaxed on the couch, having a little wine and a little bourbon, Mary and Dan get into one of their conversations.  This one is about relationships and why the people make the decisions they do.  Between my eye rolling and forced coughs of bullshit, I caught parts of what they were saying.  It was all very down to earth but it didn’t mesh with the special on serial killers I was trying to watch.  In the end they bothered me more than I bothered them, so I turned off the TV and started on the radio.  I played old songs that, I thought, would break Danny out of this woman like trance he was in.  Not for me, mind you, I wasn’t bored or anything, I was doing this for his own good…I mean I wouldn’t want it to get out that he had a touchy-feely estrogen laced enema that night…that would suck.  But the old songs didn’t work either, he was listening to my wife, so I had to rely on one of my old standby distractions…repetition.  Ry Cooder played for at least thirty minutes before Mary and Danny said…

“God! What is wrong with you? PLAY THE NEXT SONG.”  Mission accomplished, I commend Danny on his patience or interest or whatever.  Talking to a female about female type things for a long period of time has been known to turn some notably strong men to mush, but Danny survived, albeit with a better understanding of women, which no man really needs.

The night moved on and the three of us went to bed and there in the darkness I found an old friend.  Childlike anticipation welled around me and it felt like I was going to Disney Land for the first time, or my very first soccer game or like having a Clown at my birthday with everyone on the way.  So, with visions of past trips with the crew, I fall asleep…with a smile.

The next morning, looking like it is still last night, comes too soon for me.  I wake up to turn my alarm off, and then notice that it hadn’t gone off yet.  I crack open my sleep encrusted eyes to see that it 4:59am.   “Shit, why do I have an alarm anyway?”  I say to myself and lay my head back down.  As soon as my head hits the pillow, my alarm reminds me why.  Danny and I have an hour before the other two get here, but he’s up and dressed and ready to go.  Steve and Mike show up in Mikes royal blue mustang GT, bat car, rail type thing.  Steve climbs out and is already complaining about his kidneys hurting from Mike’s racing suspension.  The morning air is light and breathable, the commute hadn’t ruined it yet, it was still too early.  The sun, still behind Mount Hamilton did not want to rise, almost like she was holding out on a bad bet against the night on who would have to work today, but like always she lost her bet and relented with a prize more precious than free beer…a perfect sunrise.  With the sun shining on the wet grass, not having to go to work and my three best friends already giving each other shit, I still felt wanting, then my wife comes out and asks us my we haven’t left yet?  Once again, like the barbeque, we have no good answer.

Back in the olden days Danny and I would surprise each other with new music especially when we lived far from each other, which was the late eighties and most of the nineties.  Dan would buy me Sam brown and I’d come back with Charlie sexton among others, but we don’t need to tell you about the entire one hit wonders and the all-embarrassing “wham” stories.  The last music he bought me was Johnny Lang and Kenny Wayne Sheppard, both of which were fresh Stevie Ray Vaughn types.  But then for whatever reason we stopped, so when he got into the car that beautiful crisp morning, we were both surprised that he had never heard Kid Rock before.  He had heard the radio version of “Cowboy”, but he was not privy to the rest of that album or his third album “History of Rock”.

Now some music is good to listen to, but some music is truly traveling music…kid rock is traveling music.  After we hit hwy eighty-five I started “Devil without a cause” and by the time we got to “Cowboy” we were both laughing at Steve and Mike.  “They’re probably listening to the eagle greatest hits or Billy Joel's greatest hits,” Dan says.  “No, Steely Dan or maybe Fog hat.” I say half laughing.  We continue laughing at them and naming off groups they would have in their musical repertoire.  “Journey and Foreigner.” I say.   “But ‘cold as ice’ was pretty cool” Dan says defensively.   “But not for a road trip.” I say.

We get done laughing at them as we hit 101 south, and just like that…Mike was gone.  Magic is the only way to describe how Mike jumped that blue beast into warp.  My ticket, if I were caught, would have been equal to a reckless driving ticket or around about $370, just to try to catch this Mesozoic caveman speeder.  I always thought that Mike’s car looked faster than it really was, well, I was proved wrong that Friday, very wrong.

We caught up to them about Morgan Hill, fifteen miles south of San Jose.  I really had to push my stock Chevrolet Lumina to keep Mike in my crosshairs.  Thank God I looked like a cop trying to catch him, otherwise I probably wouldn’t have had such a clear shot at him.  So now we are traveling at Mach two and with our cruise control set at ninety-five mph and something pops into my mind.

Mike is slow at about everything he does, eating, dressing, showering, golfing, and now my little car is smoking at the wheels just to keep up.  “Mike Time” was created while playing golf one day.  I forget which time but after many we decided to time him to see why we were always waiting for him.  We did and were surprised to find that he took almost exactly five times longer to do things that normal people do.

Our tee time is at eleven o’ clock at Avila beach and from the looks of it was going to be very early.  Were through Salinas before I even knew we were in Salinas madly galloping our way into the flatlands of mid-state California.  The Gabilan Mountains in the east are holding up the morning sun about six inches over the peak from my vantage point.  We streak past the desert towns of Chular, Gonzales and Soledad like they were parts of a large picket fence, then into the marshland cities of Greenfield, King City and finally San Lucas.  Mike pulls over there, to get more caffeine pills and I wonder what “Mike Time” would translate into without them.  Steve slowly gets out of the blue rocket, not complaining, but looking like he wants to. The sun shining off Mike’s hood makes his car look like something Nagle would have painted, it makes me feel artsy, so I look across the highway and breathe in the air.

The stop is brief, and I load up on smokes.  Unbelievably it is still early morning in the mid-state area and Salinas’s valley air is musty with a heavy earth smell as we hit the road again and take off through the rich deep California air.  We pull back onto highway 101 and you can see the Mustang Ridge rising where the Gabilan’s failed, running ten miles to the east along the famous San Andreas Fault line.  From this side of the hill you can see how the fault pushed up the flatlands to create the Mustangs.  But for Californians it is all the same to us, which is why we build towns on the fault line like Pacines, Bitter water, Loan oak and Park field willing to be sucked down into the magma, just so we can hunt on our own property.

Kid Rock is now singing “early morning stoned pimp” as Dan and I, caught in mike’s tailwind, fly down the freeway, past the San Ardo oil fields, past Bradley AFB mortar range and I think to myself that mid-state is beautiful, wide, open and seemingly untouched by the necessities of the Bay Area housing market.  Even the oil fields felt like they belonged there like a herd of frozen dinosaurs.  We come up on the heart of the mid-state cities like Paso Robles, Templeton, Atascadero and finally San Luis Obispo.  Dan and I begin to reminisce about old times…we have spent a lot of time in this county fighting, falling and failing.  “I’m sure Steve and Mike are fighting about whether or not to play Eric Clapton or a Doobie Brothers compellation.”  Dan says, eliciting a laugh from me, as Kid Rock sings his last song on his second album.   “I need somebody, won’t you help me, I need somebody won’t you tell me who I am!”  I scream in Dan’s ear and somehow it hit home.  Our time spent in this county was confusing at best but driving through it now was therapeutic...almost like the act itself of driving through the cities with new breath was erasing the things we’d done before.

         We pull off the freeway and follow the signs to Avila beach.  It is nice not to be going ninety-five mph, I can see things now.  Then everything comes rushing back to me …this road was the flashpoint to a lot of my college fiascos.  Danny is there with me… “Remember the night we came out here, drank all that wine, then crashed your brother’s car? “He asks looking for a reaction.  “Yea, weren’t you supposed to be navigating.”  We rehash the argument we had that night, not getting anywhere now either.  “Isn’t that the night you fell off the cemetery pyramid too?”  Danny says half laughing, trying to bolster his argument.  “Yea, same night.  Why did you climb it in the first place?” I say, trying to show that he was way drunk too.  “I don’t know, why did you follow me?” Stalemate, we were both out of our minds that night, three earnest and Julio Gallo jugs took care of that.  We make the right onto the “No Outlet” road that leads to Avila Beach.  If we made a left the San Luis Obispo hot spring resort is right down the street.  Danny and I both smile and look down the street as we turn thinking about all the times, we had coerced some unsuspecting coeds into a night of drinking and nudity.  “I never thought I’d we would get all of them to go.” I say. Remembering a particular night, we had gotten eight girls to go with us. “Security in numbers, my friend, they knew we couldn’t grab all of them, so they sacrificed a couple for the good of the group, and a free hot tub excursion.”  Dan says and shakes his head remembering.

It seemed like the day had stopped and we were held in that early morning time when people are just waking up.  We hadn’t passed another car since we turned off the freeway, so it still seemed like six am.  We make a sweeping left around the mountain that closes off Avila beach to the rest of the outlying communities.  The green is blinding as we drive along the back nine, following the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth holes up to the open waterway to the pacific.  I remember playing this course before and everywhere on the course there is the faint smell of saltwater in the air.  That along with the background noise of the ceaseless crashing waves lulls you into a Zen-like golf state making you feel halfway professional, even if you are double bogey daredevils like we are.

Our hotel was a four-story Spanish style building at the top of the once town of Avila.  The clay color matched the hill it was perched on overlooking the now defunct town.  The death of Avila was unsettling at best.  The oil company had set their tank at the top of the hill but didn’t catch an underground leak that had sprung years ago.  The oil seeped down into the city, underground, and contaminated the whole area.  Someone lost his or her job and the city was dug up.

We are early for our tee time, so we decide to check in first.  Mike is so relaxed that he takes a short bathroom break.  Still an hour before tee time, we stop at the bar for Bloody Mary’s, a shot for mike, a bourbon and coke for me, Steve and Danny want to eat something first and I wonder what the hell is wrong with them.

The way we play golf, when we’re around each other, is how jesters would play…wait, no, the mentally handicapped…ah, no, we play the way blind monkeys would play.  All normal golf etiquette is forgotten, undoing another player’s bag from the cart is ok, hitting onto other players is ok, and asking questions of the hitter on the tee box when they are in mid back swing is ok.  Steve is the king of the golf joke, he is always the one who starts the ball rolling, but I was going to beat him this year.

Done with breakfast the monkeys and I were up on the range, hitting balls, exchanging clubs, bullshitting about how our swings were better than shanking our shots into the #1 fairway.  I had Steve pegged, he was paying more attention to his backswing than what was going on behind him.  This was my chance to out-Steve Steve.  I slowly move up and right at the top of his back swing I lob my three wood at his feet.  I knew as soon as I let go bad things were going to happen and the sound that followed was proof.  It sounded like the devil sneezing.  Titanium smashing through fiberglass at thirty mph is surprising enough when you’re expecting it, poor Steve was in golf mode and didn’t see any of this coming.  The look on his face as he stood there in the fiberglass rain shower was priceless.  He went from bewilderment to shock to anger to relief in one and a half seconds.  Luckily, I was already buzzing so it really didn’t faze me.  I was pissed that I was stupid enough to do that, but I knew that it would translate well onto the page when it came time to write and those kinds of things make me happy.  Plus, if I had tried to go through that many emotions in such a short time, my heart would have failed.  But the time was had, I lost my club, we rode on.

The first four holes went by in a flash.  The reason being that we were all playing pretty good golf, usually one or more than one of us is tanking it hard, but not today. The smell of fresh cut grass with the waves crashing in the background seemed to help elevate our game.  I think we all pared the first couple of holes and then just a bogey or two on the second couple holes, but with Mike and Steve, along with alcohol and golf, we all knew the peace was about to go away.

Mike and Steve are harbingers of doom when it comes to golf.  You know as soon as they start fighting your game is in the bag and you won’t see it again until the next round.  Today it went a record five holes until they started in on each other.  By then I was drunk and didn’t care, Danny and I have learned to ignore them when they get like that, but it is entertaining albeit distracting to the game.  Not that I was expecting to shoot a seventy-two that day, but I was hoping to break one hundred, but as soon as they started in on each other the game got progressively worse.

Birdie putts missed the cup, par putts ringed the hole, lose a ball in the rough, lose a ball in the water and drop five.  It came down to some miraculous shots for some bad scores like chip in for a double on the thirteenth and making a twelve-foot putt for a triple on sixteenth.  It all ended with a lost club on the eighteenth and three balls in the water, one with help of my throwing arm.  But even though my score didn’t break one hundred, I wasn’t angry or disappointed, I felt good because I was out there with my friends.  Score, rules, fights, none of these diminished the afternoon, and I felt good and was ready to ramble on.

We get back to the hotel and as soon as Mike and I get into our room, he’s out and I turn into Dr. Gonzo…“You took too much, man, too much too much”…“I think I’m getting the fear”…“You drive, I think there’s something wrong with me…”…I was out of my mind but right before Mike could tell me to shut up and throw something heavy at me, Steve and Danny drag me off to go exploring in Avila.  The last time I was here with Danny, we closed the bar that used to be here.  Unfortunately for me it was a Sunday and I had to be at work in the morning…or three hours from when we left the bar.  That drive home was filled with shadow cars and bunnies and all other sorts of early morning highway gnomes.  But in the immortal words of Raoul Duke... “Wait till you see the goddamned bats!”  In no way was I as bad as that today…yet.  We walk around the now ghost town of Avila beach hoping to find signs of life, and like a mirage in the desert there is one building left on the ocean side…and its a bar.

 The place was full of people.  It had a living room like feel to it, the cool sea air permeated the room and as we walked in, we were met with looks of concern and doubt.  Feeling like cops walking in on an illegal gambling parlor, we sit at the bar.  The bartender looks at us as if to say, “Who the fuck are you?”   “…this is a private bar, if you are not a member or a guest you can’t drink here.”  Is what the bartender finally says.  Then like a wizard, Mitch appears.  “I know ‘em.”  He says with half closed eyes, and with knives in his eyes the bartender stares at Mitch.  “What’ll you have?”  The bartender says, still trying to murder Mitch with his gaze.  “Bourbon and Coke and whatever Mitch is having…give him a double. “I say and smile my goofy drunken smile.  We sit at the bar and schmooze the bartender, like we always do, and find out that he doesn’t have a license to sell booze but if you have a club with members and membership dues you don’t need one.  I sit and talk to the bartender while Danny and Steve work the room.  All in all, it was a nice bunch of people until I go to order another drink.  “Time for you guys to go.”  The bartender says, I quickly look around for Danny and Steve, but they aren’t doing anything wrong.  I swing my head around to the front door looking for the local cops, but there’s nobody there.  Finally figuring it out, I start looking for Mitch… he is gone.  The mood of the room changes and suddenly, we’re the outsiders again, and nobody wants to be Mitch’s replacement friend.  As we left, I kept my eye on the crowd, waiting for any sudden moves or torches, suddenly I was afraid for Mitch the next time he popped his head in there, but we make it out without incident.

We leave the bar/club and start walking up the hill.  As we did this it started to get cold and the sun began to say goodnight to us, hiding behind the oil-refinery tank at the top of the hill. We pass the dock and hear a faint cry, “Steve!”   The three of us turn to see a lady with two dogs and two kids waving at us.  With our curiosity piqued and no bar to run off to, we turn and walk down onto the beach to find out who this mystery woman is that knows Steve.

Trying to focus, as we get closer, going through the mental mug shots of girls we know, nothing matches.  We get closer and there is still no recognition and with ten feet between us she looks at us.  “Steve, is that you?”  She says looking directly at Danny, then the mood changes.  With the realization that she just called over three strange men you could smell the fear build on her?  The question rolling around in her fear-stricken mind, ‘do they know it was a mistake?’  You could see it in her eyes, quickly finding the kids and dogs and calling them over, she stumbles through her apology trying not to say the wrong thing.  “Don’t worry, were not weirdoes.”  I say in my most calm convincing tone as to not scare her anymore.   And as I repeated that, interrupting her apology, I’m sure that in my drunken state it came out like…’hey, baby…hic…don’t worry, we like you…hic…we’re not weird…but we…hic…like you!’   Joyce was her name and she did know Mitch, said he was a trouble maker and had been kicked out of the club a week before for pulling something similar.  But she didn’t care about anything we had to say, she was acting like a rape victim, not struggling, just saying enough not to enrage her perpetrator and keep things going until it was done.  After a couple minutes of torture, the sand e and Danny that we should go wake up Mike and get ready for dinner, they jump at the idea, so we say our goodbyes to Joyce and as we turn and walk away, I could just make out a sigh of relief escape her lips.

We get back to the hotel and Mike is still passed out.  I jump at that idea and get into the bathroom before he can get up, considering “Mike time” and all at least this way one of us will be on time.  I brush my teeth and as I finish, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I look like a serial killer, bloodshot eyes, circles around my eyes, pasty white skin, knotted hair.  Poor Joyce, if I had known I looked like this I would have turned around immediately instead of torturing her for fifteen minutes.  Now I know why she looked at us the way she did.  I suddenly felt bad about scaring her the way we did, whether we meant to or not.  “Fuck her.  Life is scary.”  I say to the mirror.  I walk out onto the veranda into the cold offshore breeze, I look for Joyce, but she had scampered off when we let her go.  I try to get into her head and wonder what I would have done it I had made that same mistake.  The idea rolls around in my head for a moment, rolling in and out in unison with the waves crashing on the beach.  “I would have kept my mouth shut.”  I say to the pacific, because even though I still enjoy the ride the white horse gives me, I don’t intentionally steer him toward the cliff.  I stand, looking down at the street, then I look out at the end of the dock…the lights are going on at the restaurant, it’s almost time to…CRASH!  “What the hell is going on?”  I yell back into the room being interrupted by the sound of breaking glass.  I hear Steve and Mike yelling at each other.  “You’re an asshole, Steve!”  Mike screams.  “You broke the window…it was just ice water!”  Steve yells back at Mike through the broken window.  “You know what…I don’t care, just get out of here!”  Mike yells, then another crash, this time the door rattles.  “Great, a thrasher and a basher…would you guys quit it?!”  I scream at the front door, in time to see Steve with the ice bucket, head back towards our bathroom window.  “AAAAAAAA...STEVE!”  Mike screams again.  I see Steve pass by our door again with a big smile on his face as I hear Mike laugh.  I leave to go downstairs and pick up some movies, all the time listening to the ongoing war that is happening upstairs and by the time I get back the noise had stopped, and Mike was getting dressed like nothing happened but the window in the bathroom was broken and there was a hole in the bathroom door.  I don’t ask because I already know, we’re almost late for dinner anyway and I could feel something on the horizon coming…something wicked.

Dinner was conveniently set at the end of the Avila Pier about a half mile away.  We get there on time and order some martinis while we wait.  Two more orders later our table is ready for us and we get seated.  We must have still looked a bit gamey from the look that the host gave us as he walked away.  I still question his decision to put us right in the middle of the restaurant because we weren’t exactly quiet when we walked in and any “smart” host would have thought to put us in the outside seating. 

We sit and bullshit, Steve gets the wine list and starts giving us names of wine we don’t know.  Our table was cool.  The restaurant had put lights underneath the pier to light up the underside, and then they cut holes where the tables were and put glass windows so while we ate, we could see what was going on underneath us.  I lift my head from the show to find two martinis and four bottles of wine meaning that Steve couldn’t make up his mind.  We sit and drink and talk about how Mike and Steve always cheat on their scores, Danny and I let them in on some of the stuff we used to do when we went to school down here.  It was very comfortable.  Then dinner came, and things got fuzzy.  All the alcohol and I hadn’t eaten since the tenth hole today so as soon as I finished my lobster, from what they tell me, I start my sailor act.  Being loud and obnoxious was the purpose of the trip, but I guess the rest of the group forgot about that.  Nonetheless, my memory starts to fade about the second time the host comes to tell us to be quiet and that there were families around.  I recall nothing in-between then and when he came to tell us that we had been moved outside.  For some reason being told what to do and not having a choice in the matter sent me into a drunken tirade that lasted all the way until I went for a smoke after they sent me and my un loud friends to the outside dining area which is where we wanted to be seated in the first place.  Outside the patio area of the restaurant, I lit a smoke and walked to the end of the pier, trying to rectify why we had been moved outside…I found no good reason.  As I’m walking back inside one of the hosts tells me that I can’t smoke on the pier.  “I can read the signs!” I spout back at him.  I was on the brink…pissed off about something I couldn’t remember doing, coming close to threatening the help and now a fantastic idea growing in my head. 

I figured it would be in both party’s best interest if I were to leave this place.  But not just leave, if they were going to kick me out of the restaurant, then don’t expect me to pay.  I grab Danny and tell him my drunken plan.  He comes outside with me to have a smoke and tempt fate again and before he could light his cigarette, I take off running down the pier.  I get to the car with one lung left and can’t figure out where the other guys went, “Didn’t they understand the plan?” I say to myself, trying to figure out where the getaway car is parked.  Danny didn’t follow me because I never told him about the plan nor did I tell Mike or Steve.   Dan just thought I was going off to get sick somewhere. 

Steve goes to pay the bill and Mike walks outside to find Danny and me.  I am running down the pier at that point, tripping over my feet while Danny’s sits there having a smoke, waiting for me to trip and fall into the ocean.  “I think Chris took off.”  He tells Mike in a monotone, vanilla accent.  “What?  Why?”  He says.  “I don’t know what goes through his head sometimes?”  Danny tells the truth, so Mike turns to go back inside to tell Steve about my flight when the people that complained about us finish their dinner and walk out.  In perfect horseman posture Mike confronts them about it.  “Hey, why did you guys get us kicked out?”  He says, pointing at the two middle aged men and their two middle aged wives.  “Do you guys even know what you were saying?”  One of the wives spouts off.  “Yes…No…”  Mike answers and turns around, already bored of the conversation.  “You know what…you guys are Jerk offs.”  Mike says, shrugging then turning back around before he walks inside.

Steve is inside at the host’s desk waiting for someone to help him out with the bill.  Mike says that I dined and ditched in front of the host and that he and Danny had no money.  Steve lets out a resounding “Fuck!” as the two guys from outside walk back in to confront Mike.  “You need to apologize” One of the jerk offs says, eyeing Mike for a reaction.  “For what?” Mike says like he truly doesn’t know.  “For calling us jerk offs in front of our wives.” The other one says.   “Mike, what’s going on?”  Steve asks gingerly.  By this time the tension in the air was thick.  First the host was not pleased with the phrases ‘dined and ditched’ and ‘have no money’, and second there was about to be a fight.  The bar and bartenders were on every look and word, waiting for the worst so they could go home and tell their friends about the fight they saw.  Without missing a beat Mike in all his wisdom searches his brain for a response.  “That’s alright, your wives are jerk offs too.”  He says and smiles.  The bartender laughs as Mike stands there, eyes half open, not moving, just waiting to get hit so he can tear these guys apart.  The two jerk offs stand there for a second then, knowing that they would not make it through the night without some major dents in their frame, turn around and walk out.  Steve quickly gives the guy his card, scribbles something down on it and we all go home.  I’m not sure if they did anything after we got to the hotel, but I hit the wall, not caring that I had to sleep next to Mike and pass out ass up.

Saturday morning comes way too early for me, and I’m on a couch…a short couch.  My mind races trying to remember where in my house did I have a short couch?  I can hear the waves crashing from Santa Cruz, something I didn’t think was possible, so I sit up and look around this alien setting.  “Where the hell…”  I start to say, then I hear Mike’s snores, or growls and everything comes rushing back to me.  I forgo my want to figure out how I got moved off the bed because it’s really not important.  My watch says seven o’clock, my memory clicks and I remember our tee time is ten forty, so being early worked so well yesterday I thought I’d try it again.  I try to rouse the troops.  Mike is like a sleeping pit bull and snaps at me, so I walk over to Danny and Steve’s room.  I walk in, the door is unlocked, and I find Danny and Steve sleeping in the same position.  Visions of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” with Steve martin as Neil Page and John Candy at Del Griffith roll around my drunken skull as I creepily stare down at them.  “Those aren’t two pillows!”  I say loudly but I only get a half snicker from Steve and no response from Dan.  They half way wake up and rummage around the room for a bit, but my attempts to motivate them further get me thrown out of the room.  Feeling defeated and a little bit like Mitch I walk back to my room and go back to sleep, knowing that in a couple of hours it’s going to be a fucking Chinese fire drill.  The two hours come, and Steve and Dan are now saying that we got to get moving.  I say nothing like “I told you so” because they’d just tell me to shut up. 

We all get ready, Mike, like usual, is the last one down to the car.  But it is still reasonably early, and I think that we might actually… “I’m hungry!” Mike cries.  My eyes roll as I look back to Steve and Dan to see their eye’s roll, but they don’t.  “Yea, I got to get something to eat, I feel terrible” Steve states. “I could use something too.”  Dan says.  “What?!   We don’t have time, and you’re just going to feel worse after you eat…you know, that right?” I say.   “We can eat at Fat Cats, its right down the street.”  Dan says, not listening to me.  “You guys know what time it is?”  “What’s up your ass this morning, didn’t Mike treat you right last night?”  Dan says.  “Yea, Mike, don’t be stuck up…see what happens.”  Steve says trying to hide his smile as Mike laughs and shakes his head.  “Jesus!  Let’s go…we would have had more time if you shitheads got up earlier.”  I say almost under my breath.  Much to my chagrin we go to Fat Cat’s to get some instant heartburn to go along with our hangovers.

Biscuits and gravy that sits in your stomach like led, bacon with a side of grease, runny eggs that ooze off the fork when you eat them, all of this is usually good eating, but not in the condition we were in.  I order a chocolate shake, Mike and Steve look at me, again, like a mental patient, but Danny is there to support and orders one too.  We sit and shovel this food down our gullets, talking about last night, mostly about me and my mad dash to the car followed by Mike’s harrowing experience with the jerk offs, and their jerk off wives, which I was sorry to have missed.  “I think I fucked up last night.”  Steve says.  “What happened?”  Dan says while Mike and I are concentrating on our breakfast.  The sounds of the diner are suddenly louder, and Steve’s silence is disconcerting, so we all stop and look at him.  Steve, who is holding last night’s dinner receipt, has a confused and shocked look on his face as he studies it closer.  “Oh man, that can’t be right.”  He says and tries to rub the fog from his face.  He gives up and hands across the table to Dan.  The same shocked and confused look appears on Danny’s face.  “What did you do, Steve?!”  Danny says like he’s scolding his dog.  I snatch the bill away from Danny and look for myself.  I can feel the confused and shock look roll across my face as well.  “How much of a tip did you give them?!”  I say.  “I don’t know!”  Steve says sounding worried now.  The bill was for $364, but then in the tip portion of the bill Steve scribbled something, like he was ordering meds for his office, and then added them up and wrote in the final payment box $764…and then he signed it.  Mike then snatches the bill from my hand.  “You gave them a $400 tip?!”  Mike screams.  “I don’t know!”   Steve cries.  Mike starts busting up.  “You are fucking idiot.”  Mike spits out part of what he’s eating, which is the shock eraser, so we all start laughing, except Steve.  “Where the hell did you go?” He yells at me.  “Yea, what the hell were you thinking, Chris?” Danny backs Steve up.  “Your stupid ass.”  Mike adds.  “Wait…why is this my fault?”  I say slowing down my laughter.  Whether I’m right or wrong I will defend my actions, I do not apologize for anything I do, because then I would be apologizing nonstop.  “They kicked me out of their restaurant because they didn’t want me there disturbing the other patrons, so I left.”  I say.  “They only moved us out on the patio.” Mike says.  “Your ignorant fuck, how much did we have invested by the time they figured out their mistake?  $400 worth of food, and they embarrass us by moving us out onto the patio, which was empty…and requested BY us.”  My mood had done a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.  “The patio was empty, why not move the other people out there if they couldn’t handle adult conversations, why the fuck do they even leave their homes if they’re so scared of the real world…and now your railing me about a bone head move that Steve made…a bone head move that you all made, your all a bunch of pussies, you let them walk all over you, then you paid them to embarrass you!”  I stop my tirade, noticing a slight change of mood in the diner.  “It would have at least saved this poor bastard $764,” I say, pointing at Steve, and we all laugh…except Steve.

Eating was a mistake and now the other boys are regretting it too, but as soon as I walk outside into that clean, overcast morning air, I feel invigorated…so I light up a smoke and blow it in their faces.  “Let’s go moron’s, were going to be late.”  I say.

It’s ten fifteen when we take off from the newly nicknamed ‘Mad Cows Diner’ and now we must make a forty-minute drive turn into a twenty-five-minute drive, but that’s never a problem.  The problem was that none of us had been there before, so we had to follow the directions.  Ten thirty-five all we need to make is one more left and we’re there…ten thirty-six, just one more left…ten thirty-seven, only one more left and we got it…ten thirty-eight.  “We better turn around, I think we missed it.” Danny says.  So, I make a U-turn and as we turn, we can see Steve making an animated head-slap gesture.  Dan and I look at each other and laugh.  “At least we didn’t pay $700 bucks for dinner last night.”  He says.  Ten forty-three and we make, the now, right hand turn we missed before.  Ten forty-four, we jump out of the car, I go pay for everyone as Dan sets up our bags.  Shoes on…gloves on…tees in pocket…driver in hand…ready to go…where’s Mike?  The three of us tee off, and then wait for Mike.  None of our drives hit the fairway and the foursome behind us can barely keep from laughing.  Mike WALKS up, five minutes later, and slowly begins his warm up routine.  Almost in unison, the three of us yell at Mike to hurry up, but if you’ve ever tried to push a rhino, you know what it’s like to try to hurry Mike.  The rhino won’t budge then gets angry and starts to charge…so we wait.  Finally, Mike’s drive fly’s off to the right and I can read the thoughts of the players behind us, ‘all that time for that shot?’  We drive off completely embarrassed, hoping that our balls aren’t out of bounds.

We learned a valuable lesson that day.  If we are going to tear it up on Friday, make the tee time in the afternoon on Saturday.  The first nine holes showed our inept thought process.  But after the turn, the beer started kicking in again and our game came back.  That’s when we all started thinking about the trophy…and that’s when the fighting began.  “Long ball” shots that are out of bounds, “Closest to the Pin” slots that aren’t on the green, and Steve’s point system were the topic for the rest of the day.  A lot of the rules got revised and since Steve made the biggest stink about everything pertaining to the rules, we relented and gave Steve the trophy.

A short ceremony at the nineteenth hole where we awarded Steve the trophy was unceremoniously chincy.  But the infamous picture of “The Jump” covered by Plexiglas on a wood plaque with twelve years of bronze nameplates was a surprise to everyone.   I had had it for the past year, hidden from my friends and now Steve would have to put it in a place of prominence regardless of what his wife thinks, at least I think that was one of the rules.  But the trophy quickly got put on the bar, so Mike and Steve could fight about the rules and points some more.  “Let’s go get some lunch, I have the perfect place.”  Danny says, staying the argument until later.

We drive into Pismo and park a couple blocks away from this eatery.  Dan tells mike about the place and how they serve their clam chowder and mike is amazed that they don’t use any bowls.  “Wait, they put it on the bread?”  Mike asks.  “No mike, they hollow out the loaf and put it in the bread.” Danny explains.  I look down while listening to mike finally grasping the bread “bowl” theory, I see that I’m still wearing my golf shoes.  “Fuck it, bucket.” I say out loud, I am drunk, but the guys seem to understand and don’t ask for an explanation.

Pismo Beach being THE beach town in mid-state was in the middle of spring, almost the beginning of summer, and it is always moving. The cars, full of teenagers, driving up and down the street screaming the new catch phrase of the season scares the business men and women opening their doors to let the warm spring air into their shops. Elderly couples are walking their equally elderly pets in the afternoon sun trying to keep them alive until they die and then there were the horseman.  Like a scar on a supermodel we walk down the street with no idea that we didn’t look like we belonged.  People that pass us try to figure out whether we are drunk, hung over or mentally unstable because I am still wearing my golf shoes. We make it to the place and as we enter, people turn around and take a look.  We get our order and Mike is amazed at the “bread bowl”, and I think to myself… ‘I wish I could see things like that again’…but my wish didn’t come true, never comes true.  We finish our food and our eyelids begin to drop, we all need naps.

The hotel was bathed in afternoon sun and everything smelled like it just had been washed.  Mike, Steve and Dan hit their internal snooze buttons and went directly to sleep.  I had picked up “Lake Placid”, the crocodile movie that really didn’t get much notoriety in the theaters but was a good move nonetheless.  I couldn’t stop watching it, it was riddled with sarcasm and dry wit, but I completely lost it when sweet little old Betty White says, “If I had a dick this is where I would tell you to suck it.”  I wake Mike up with my laughter.  “Shut the hell up.” Mike whines from the bedroom.  I finish the movie and watch the sun lower itself behind the oil tanks at the top of the hill again. It’s six o’ clock, and dinner is at eight, so I fall asleep to Betty white and her great one liner.

I wake up at seven thirty with a slight hangover, the rest of the crew is already up and getting dressed.  It’s Saturday night, but it feels like a Tuesday night due to our relentless partying.  McClintock’s steak house is the busiest place on the planet when we arrive.  Steve checks with the hostess and even though we have reservations, it’s still going to be about an hour, so we troll around the lounge, checking out pictures and their gift shop while waiting for a lounge table, which is full also.  There are about forty other lost souls, damned by the fact that they made reservations here too and if they leave now, they know they won’t be able to get in anywhere else.  We finally get a table in this restaurant limbo, accepting our fate and ordering drinks.  No bourbon, no shots and nothing fancy because beer is about the only thing that would stay down.  My liver felt like it was on strike or maybe in negotiations with the rest of me, with its chief concern being the consumption of bourbon.  “Ok, ok…I’ll accept beer, but only if he promises to stop for a week and only drink cranberry juice.”  My internal voice for my talking liver says.

The stuffed bear standing behind me was mocking everyone in the bar, laughing at the fact that he had seen people like us countless times, sitting with him for an hour or more, even though they were promised less time to wait…reservations or not.  I grew to dislike the bear, he was too smart for his own good, he was going to pay, and I was going to collect…our waitress breaks me from my mentalness to tell us our table is ready.  Its nine thirty now an hour and a half later and we finally get seated…I can hear the bear laughing from the other room.  We were the last in lounge and now it seems like we’re going to be the last to eat dinner.  My buzz is going again, I can tell with my fight with the bear and Steve and Danny are right beside me, but tonight we have a man down.  Mike decides not to drink tonight.  I am embarrassed for him and he makes me feel guilty for all the cool drinker things I say about him.  We Horseman wouldn’t hide behind responsibility to mask our fear of being a pussy, we would suck it up and get drunk again, or find someone with drugs for a different kind of high.

Dinner is good, even though it’s ten o’clock now.  Steve and I are hitting on all cylinders, talking to waiters, talking to the other patrons, basically making fools of ourselves.  I can feel Mike’s stare and I know he’s thinking he hopes he doesn’t look like us when he’s drunk.  Steve and I get to the point to where he fucks up a line from a movie that we can’t remember, but it’s so fucking funny that we can’t stop laughing.  “Get em Sea biscuit!”  We keep saying that one line over and over, cracking ourselves up to the point of tears.  The way he says it and the fact that we can’t figure out what they really said because we can’t figure out the movie it came was just so ridiculously, outrageously, can’t breathe ably funny the people at the next table ask the waiter what kind of drinks we’re having.  The line, we found out later, was from “Dumb and dumber” when Seabass’s friend yells… “Kick their ass, Seabass!”  But somehow, it’s not as funny as “Get em Sea biscuit!”

We finish dinner, laughing like hyenas, wiping away the tears and looking for a “final final” for the night and the trip.  “The Sea breeze is pretty cool.”  Danny says.  “Get em Sea breeze!” Steve and I say in unison, which sparked another laugh fit that lasted all the way to the Sea breeze.

The last time I was here at the Sea breeze Hotel was for an old girlfriend of mines wedding.  That was the only time I’ve e ever seen a fight between wedding parties while the reception was still going on…they were divorced four months later. 

But as far as bars go, this one is swank.  As you walk in you pass the dining area, all beige and white, then you get to the staging area where the couches are set up with a big TV to stare at while you are picking up.  The ‘T’ shaped bar had all the fancy schmancy glasses hanging up, with a mahogany bar top and brass bars to accentuate the plain wood physique of the bar.  Neon lights were everywhere giving the place and unnatural aurora about it.  Cute bartenders and a sunken dancing floor looking out over the pacific, all the average young American wanted in a drinking establishment.  We were older by at least ten years than anybody there so nobody paid attention to us when we got our drinks.  We head out to the patio so as not to stampede the herd but from our seats we can see everything that’s going on inside.

We sit on the patio criticizing the approach of the young male’s trying to get the young females to dance, laughing and reminiscing about how we used to do it…and how we used to fail.  Song after song, drink after drink, Danny and Steve clean out the bar of Smirnoff ice and I finish the well bourbon.  Midnight rolls around and we’re now a topic of conversation.  “Who are those guys out there and why aren’t they dancing?”  Mike says, in his weird female voice.  Because of our inaction, we became mysterious, just like Danny and I used to do at parties.  “Why try to make a play, when you can have fun and wait for them…shit, half the battles over when they come over and talk to you.” I say noticing our present situation.  The night sea air wafts up from the ocean and pierces every exposed part of my body so we slide the standing heater over to our table like we owned it.  We sit and drink and make fun of the guys who are dancing now.  “I hope I didn’t look that goofy when I was their age”. I say looking at all the new dances I know nothing about.  “No, you looked about the same.”  Danny says smirking at me.  “Well, at least I don’t dance like Jean Claude van Damme.”  I say, making fun of his patented move.  “What’s so bad about that?” Danny asks.  “Your knees aren’t supposed to touch when you dance, Danny, you are a guy.”  I say.  “Hey look at that.”  Mike says interrupting our mini argument.  I look over and three girls are now dancing for us in the windows, obviously drunk because they’re showing off for us.  “Don’t scare the fish.”  I quietly yell to Mike, who is staring at them.  “Maybe they think we’re rich.” I say.  “Nah, it’s got to be Mikes good looks.”  Danny says choking down laughter.  “Well, whatever it is, I think they’re going to regret it in the morning.” I say.  “Becky, can you believe we danced for those fossils last night.”  Steve says with his mock girl voice.  “Eww, no I can’t, did you see their tongues hanging out all over the place.” I say in my girl voice.  “Yea, they were creepy…but the fat one was kind of cute.” Mike says in his regular voice.

One o’clock rolls up and we figure we better leave before the cops arrest us for lewd and lascivious acts in public.  We walk back inside and catch a glimpse of the girls trying to get our attention.  I guess they thought we were coming in the claim their prize. But to their surprise we just walk out.  I look back and see them see us, there was a palpable sense of disappointment in the air as I turn around.  Whether they were disappointed about not meeting us, or disappointed about not getting to humiliate us I couldn’t tell, but we were out the doors like ramblers and would never see them again.

Mike drives us back to the hotel, his is amazed that I had twelve bourbon and cokes and could still walk.  I was amazed that he was counting my drinks…I was also amazed he didn’t count the ones I had inside.  I try to stay up after we get back, but it’s no use, the ruination of my body is complete.  I was no slacker this weekend and Mike’s the only one that took a night off, but he was officially pickled the day before, so it didn’t matter.

The next morning is an experience. Hung over from drinking, sore from two days of golf and broke from both.  I have just enough money to get some beef jerky for the ride home.  You could see it in their eyes that my friends were done also.  Steve decides to ride home with me not wanting anymore bruised internal organs.  Danny had told us the night before that he wanted to fly out from San Luis Obispo on one of those eggbeaters’ planes.  We were all thinking about going home anyway and agreed to parole Danny early from our mobile prison.  We waited for Danny in the airport parking lot, a cool breeze kept me from puking, and the sun was shining too brightly in the sky.  I couldn’t get over the feeling that we were abandoning Danny, like some Cuban refugee.  He walks out and over to the car, he has his tickets in his hand, he looks used, says his goodbyes, and then is gone, disappearing into the airport.

Drained, Steve and I take off, forgetting about Mike who said he had to do something first, eat probably, but he said that he’d catch up to us up the road, which I had no doubt.  About Salinas Mike calls Steve and wants us to pull over and wait for him. Like brain dead zombies we do as he asks.  We sit there remembering things from the weekend in the parking lot adjacent to the Union 76 gas station.  “Why are we waiting for Mike?”  Steve asks, his eyes are closed.  “Fuck…I don’t know?”  I say, so we take off.  Mike catches us anyway at the north side of Salinas, as he passes, he waves and then, in a blue flash, is gone.  Steve and I don’t say much after that, our bodies already slipping into detox.

It’s good to be home, I drop Steve off and must remind him to get his clubs from the trunk.  “Thank God we only do this once a year.”  He says emotionless.  I say nothing and drive home.  I pull into my driveway and comment on Steve’s epiphany.  “No, shit.” I say and walk into the house and straight to bed.   As I drift off to sleep, the white horse sleeps too, completely satisfied.