I Should Be Laughing: Harry and Wyatt Arrive In Beal's Landing

By the time Harry’s rented Neon left the highway above Mendocino, slipping past the Chevron where he caught a glimpse of Roger Dailey, awash in florescence, tallying the day’s receipts, the sunset released an amber glow over Beal’s Landing. It created a picture postcard of coastal life and Harry envisioned a cartoonist’s handwriting spreading across the Forever Fields: Greetings From Beal’s Landing!  The brilliant mustard greens of the meadows and the deep azure backdrop of the Pacific beyond, the dollops of whipped cream topping the tiny waves and the pastel cottages and pristine white church, all appeared to be Walt Disney creations, albeit for a more sinister film than say, Snow White or Pinocchio. The sun turned The Landing into a painting, done up in pinks and oranges, greens and blues, a purple dusk tinting the town a rainbow of unreality.

The Methodist Church practically glowed, much like the neon beer signs crowding the windows of the fast houses, which hadn’t fallen into the sea much to Harry’s surprise, and chagrin. The Mixed Bag, Sara Ever’s gift shop, was still around, filled with silk spring flowers, a row of multicolored flags flapping from the porch roof. Dawson’s Market; an apple barrel full of rakes and brooms guarded the door, and the delivery bicycle—looking very much like the one Harry rode through town all those years ago—with the twin wire baskets up front, leaned against a post. It was all too ‘Mayberry’ for him, too much illusion, the pain he’d endured here swept from the streets to backyards and storerooms for his visit.

“It’s actually very pretty, Harry,” Wyatt said as they cruised through town.

“It’s the sunset,” he said dryly. “Wait until morning when it’s all gray.”

Rounding the corner, Harry aimed the car at the Shoreline Highway and noticed they hadn’t changed the name. It should have been Skeleton Road by now, especially today, given what happened at the end of the street. Holding a hand above his eyes to shield them from the sun, Harry drove straight for the cliffs, into the sea, Wyatt thought. Watching the sun burn a hole into the water, readying itself for its evening disappearance, Harry turned the wheel at the last moment and the rental car, the plastic dashboard wincing from the rutted roadbed, entered the bone yard.

The chimneys stood, still, the foundations nesting in a cradle of weeds, porch steps climbing to nowhere and granite columns welcoming no one. “Skeleton Road,” Harry muttered to Wyatt. “We’re the last house…the only house.”

Sure enough, pulling his eyes from the serenity of the sunset over the sea, turning to gaze through the front windshield, Wyatt saw it; the house at the end of Skeleton Road. It sounded like the title of a particularly awful horror film, perhaps starring Jamie Lee Curtis and a man in a hockey mask, Wyatt thought. The sunset dyed the south wall a mild, buttery yellow; the west wall, the one receiving the brunt of the setting sun, was luminous in pinks and oranges. By contrast, however, blackness smeared the front of the mammoth house; it was as dark as the night slinking across the highway toward them. Wyatt, the artist, viewed the painting of this house as a suggestion that they turn around, that entering it would lead them into blackness, and leaving would land them in the light.

“Still think it’s pretty?” Harry asked, expecting no answers and receiving none. He drove past the house—Wyatt thought he wouldn’t stop—then swung around widely in the road and parked near the fence. Even in the dusk, he saw his mother’s big Pontiac in the driveway, as it had been since her last ticket nearly fifteen years earlier when the Highway Patrol took away her driver’s license; secretly, she would drive through town, up and down the coast on those nights she couldn’t sleep.

“Well, looks like everyone’s here.” Harry parked behind a dirty blue car and a new Toyota. He cut the engine, clicked off the lights and yanked the emergency brake up. He wasn’t looking at the house, or Wyatt, the fields or the other cars. He was studying the dashboard as though he’d only just noticed it.

“How do you know they’re here?”

“That has to be Jimmy’s car,” Harry said, shaking his head at the battered wreck. “And I’m guessing that Renny’s is the new four-wheel drive.”

“Could be a friend of the family maybe, or a—.” Wyatt began to say.

“Haven’t you been listening?” Harry bellowed, ramming his hands onto the steering wheel and pushing himself deeper into the seat. “There are no ‘friends’ of the family. My mother died, alone in that house. She had no friends. No daughter. No sons!”

Reaching over, hoping to touch Harry’s arm, to make him relax, Wyatt missed him. Harry was out of the car, the door slamming after him, and then lifting the trunk to retrieve their bags. As the trunk banged shut, Wyatt got out slowly and walked back to Harry. He put his hands on Harry’s face and, while neither man could see the other one, their felt their eyes meet.

“Let’s just get this over with,” Harry said sadly before Wyatt could say a word.  He moved away from Wyatt, beyond him, up the path toward the dark side of the house.