Mr. Sozinho
Neoprene which has been put away wet and dried in the back of a car has a very particular smell. For me, it is the smell of my early adolescence. It is a bit of rubber, a bit of salt, and perhaps a touch of mildew, mixed with a hint of diesel fumes from my dad's old GM van. Dad pulled out the two back seats and replaced them with a high wooden platform, topped with a thin foam rubber mattress at the height of the windows. Always a good Boy Scout, Dad stashed all manner of strange and useful kit under the platform; socket wrenches, jack stand, crow bar, dive gear, and of course our wetsuits.
Dad was never very talkative. He tended to marry women who were instead. All he really had to say about the dissolution of his marriage to my mother was that he loved her, and he loved my brother and me, and it wasn't our fault, but he just couldn't live with her any more. My brother could drive and had his own car, and had his own priorities. Wandering up the coast and free diving for abalone was something Dad and I did together, on those alternating weekends when I was his responsibility.
One of our favorite places to go was a little cove a bit north of Año Nuevo. We'd park the van and dig out our wetsuits. Hiding ourselves from the passing traffic on Highway One, we'd scrunch, pull, tug and yank them on up to our waists. We'd put on wetsuit booties, gather up our fins, masks, snorkels, mesh bags and dive knives, and start the long trudge through the dunes and out to the sea.
Within a few yards of the highway, the dirt and gravel gave way to a pebbly, tan sand. Ice plant grew on either side of the narrow, then thorny brush and thin green grasses, all ruffled by the wind coming from the Pacific. In summer, the marine layer would push wet, cold fog up against the coast like a sopping blanket. Even when the surfers were in springsuits, the water was cold enough to make your feet numb in minutes.
We'd walk in about three-quarters of a mile to start, out through the tall dunes. Where the dunes opened up to the ocean, we'd occasionally run into a fisherman or two casting their lines into the surf for sunfish and perch. The path led back up the dunes, to a high bluff where we'd have to climb down to the cove. At the base of the cliff, we would finish gearing up and back into the ocean in our fins. We'd spend the next several hours bobbing around in the water, attempting to pry those wily but tasty mollusks away from the rocky bottom. Invariably, we would fail, and walk away with empty mesh bags.
After one fruitless trip, exhausted, cold, and wet, we were coming back up over the bluff when Dad stopped and put down his gear.
"Hmm," he said, "That's odd. That looks like bone."
Entwined in the roots, the wind had revealed a long, red-orange bone. Dad bent down and brushed away a little more sand, revealing the bone's end.
"Yep, that's a human femur," he said, straightening up. "We're going to need to call the police when we get back."
"Should we take it with us?" I asked, hoping that he'd say yes.
"No, let's not disturb anything. We'll let the cops sort it out."
The hike back went quickly. I usually complained about walking in the soft sand, wet, cold, and without a single abalone to show for our efforts, but not that day. We got back to the van and Dad retrieved his keys from the hide-a-key under the rear bumper. We headed down the coast to the nearest payphone, all the way back in Davenport.
I sat in the front seat of the van and played around with Dad's mascot, a Mr. T action figure Dad kept hanging on a cord on the dashboard, while he and the policeman stood next to the policeman's patrol car and talked. While they talked, the officer took a few notes on a clipboard sitting on the hood of his car with one hand, while he idly unsnapped and snapped the flap holding his service revolver in its holster.
Dad shook hands with the cop and headed back towards the van. I heard the officer say "Thanks for calling us, doc. Like you said, better safe than sorry."
Dad looked a little bemused. I asked him, "So what? What did the cop say?"
"Apparently, that was Mr. Sozinho."
"Who?"
"Portuguese fisherman. His family got permission to bury him there, about forty years ago," Dad said. He turned the key to turn on the van's glow plugs, then fired up the diesel. We sat there for a few minutes as the engine warmed up. "He said they get called out every couple of years, whenever the winter storms have been bad. Wind blows off enough sand for the bones to surface."
The next weekend I was at Dad's, we headed back up the coast to our favorite dive spot. This time we didn't take our dive gear. Dad had dug a couple of shovels out of his garage, and we hiked out with those on our shoulders.
Up on the bluff we stopped, and Dad looked around a bit until he found Mr. Sozinho again. A few feet up there was a patch of dune grass and wild buckwheat. We carefully cut away a section of the plants and put them aside, and started digging in the loose sand of the dune.
For the next hour and a half, the only sounds were the surf, the wind, and our shovels. When Dad thought the hole was deep enough, he said, "Okay, that's enough digging. Let's go get Mr. Sozinho."
Dad assessed the bones we could see. "Okay, that's his left leg there. His feet should be towards the beach and his head should be towards the path." We cleared away the sand, starting at the bones we could see, like archeologists, on our hands and knees, exposing Mr. Sozinho's weathered bones. As we found them, Dad would name the bones; femur, tibia, fibula, a few metatarsals, "Hmm, looks like he had arthritis. That must have hurt. We're definitely missing some though." Moving up, pelvis, vertebrae, ribs, radius, ulna, humerus. Finally to the mandible and skull, all completely defleshed, bare, without a recognizable personhood, but still and utterly what is at the core of all of us.
Once we were satisfied that we'd found all there was to find, we arranged Mr. Sozinho in his new home. Dad put his skull in last, empty eye sockets facing out over the sea. "There, that ought to do it, for a few more decades at least."
Again, all was quiet, except for the wind, the sea, and our shovels. Once the hole was filled, we did our best to replace the plants . With luck the sand would be anchored, and Mr. Sozinho might get a longer slumber this time before curious hikers or industrious beachcombers disturbed him again.
Dad and I went out to the cove at least once, sometimes twice a month for the next three years. When the mood struck us, we stopped and spent a few silent minutes together with Mr. Sozinho, out on his bluff. And even though we never in all that time managed to catch any abalone, I didn't complain.
C. Charman was never really fishing for abalone, anyway
It was the best fucking chicken I have ever tasted. In my entire life, I have never had chicken this good. It was tender and succulent, soft enough to cut with a fork, but firm enough to have an excellent feel in the mouth. Breading and a bath in boiling oil encased the morsels of flesh along with their juices. The spicy, orange glaze provided just the right touch of sweet, hot, and hint of sour. 
able to come stay at her house after her exploratory surgery? My older brother would be taking her to the hospital, but she needed someone to stay the night afterwards, to make sure she didn't have any trouble recovering from the anesthesia. I'm not sure why, but she seemed surprised that I was willing to help. On my brothers advice, she had told no one outside of the family. We didn't yet know what it was, and she didn't want the burden of reassuring everyone else who would ask until she knew for certain.
When we arrived, my brother waited in the outpatient loading area while I went in to collect Mom. Mom was groggy and annoyed, and really just wanted to go home and get in her own bed. She was anxious to go, but still too nauseous to get to her feet. I talked with the nurses, who were all relentlessly up beat and cheerful, and who cheerfully gave Mom an IV shot of some sort of anti-nausea drug, then enthusiastically helped her to the bathroom. When we were all satisfied that Mom wouldn't pass out or throw up, the nurses got her unhooked from all the tubes and wires, helped her into her clothes, and put her in a wheelchair.
Walking back from the pool, it was as dark as twilight, even though it was only late afternoon. I hurried, trying to stay out of open spaces and under the trees. The insects droned on, and in the far distance there were flickers, followed at some length by a subdued boom. The air was filled with the smell of the approaching storm. As I understand it, the smell comes from ozone, created by the masses of charged particles colliding and interacting as the cloud's masses of hot and cold air slide into each other. If you have ever smelled it, you know exactly what it is like. If you haven't, try pouring water on the sidewalk on some hot, sunny day, and you'll come close. Or you can try a sharp blow to the face, which seems to induce a similar smell for me at least. Hot sidewalk is without a doubt the less painful way to experience it, if you can't manage a trip to the mid-Atlantic or the South during summer.
Cleaning out the place after we finally evicted them was a challenge. They had lived there for at least a dozen years, and I doubt they opened the drapes in all that time. The apartment was musty and dirty. We decided on a fresh coat of paint, a new range for the kitchen to replace the one that perpetually smelled of natural gas, and a new toilet seat, since they left one which had clearly been in use for the entirely of their occupation.