When The Bough Breaks

Japanese tourists snapped pictures, nudged each other, pointed and laughed. Shabby bums loitered against the guardrail that separated the crumbling bluff from sheer space. They smoked behind cupped hands and regarded the world with distrust and fear. A surprising number of them were young men. They all looked as if they'd crawled out of some deep, dark, unproductive mine.

There were students reading, couples sprawled on the grass, small boys darting between the trees and a few furtive encounters that looked suspiciously like dope deals.

Melody and I walked along the outer rim of the park, hand in hand, talking little. I offered to buy her a hot pretzel from a street vendor, but she said she wasn't hungry. I remembered that loss of appetite was another side effect of Ritalin. Or maybe she'd just had a big breakfast.

We came to the walkway that led to the pier.

"Have you ever been on a merry - go - round?" I asked her.

"Once. We went on a school trip to Magic Mountain. The fast rides scared me but I liked the merry - go round."

"C'mon." I pointed out toward the pier. "There's one here. We'll take a ride."

In contrast to the park, the pier was nearly deserted There were a few men fishing here and there, mostly older blacks and Asians, but their expressions were pessimistic, their buckets empty. Dried fish scales were embedded in the aged wooden planks of the walkway, giving it a sequined effect in the morning sun. There were cracks in several of the weathered boards, and as we walked I caught glimpses of the water below slapping against the pilings and retreating with a hissed warning. In the shadow of the pier's underbelly the water looked greenish black. There was a strong smell of creosote and salt in the air, a ripe, raw fragrance of loneliness and wasted hours.

The pool hall where I used to hide while playing hookey had been closed down. In its place was an arcade full of electric video games. A solitary Mexican boy intently pulled the joystick on one of the garishly painted robots. Computer noise emerged in blips and dreeps.

The merry - go - round was housed in a cavernous barn of a building that looked as if it would collapse with the next high tide. The operator was a tiny man with a potbelly the size of a cantaloupe and flaky skin around his ears. He was sitting on a stool reading a racing form and trying to pretend we weren't there.

"We'd like to ride the merry - go - round."

He looked up, gave us the once - over. Melody was staring at the ancient posters on the wall. Buffalo Bill. Victorian Love.

"Quarter a spin."

I handed him a couple of bills.

"Keep it going for a while."

"Sure."

I lifted her up onto a large white - and - gilded horse with a pink plume for a tail. The brass rod upon which it was impaled had diagonal stripes running across it. A sure bet to go up and down. I stood next to her.

The tiny man was buried in his reading. He reached out a hand, pushed a button on a rusty console, pulled a lever and a rheumy rendition of the "Blue Danube Waltz" piped out of a dozen hidden speakers. The carousel started off slowly, and then it began to turn; horses, monkeys, chariots coming to life, moving in vertical counterpoint to the revolution of the machine.

Melody's hands tightened around the neck of her steed; she stared straight ahead. Gradually, she relaxed her grip and allowed herself to look around. By the twentieth revolution, she was swaying with the music, eyes closed, mouth open in silent laughter.

When the music finally stopped I helped her down and she stepped dizzily onto the dirty concrete floor. She was giggling and swinging her purse in joyful rhythm, in time with the now dissipated waltz.

We left the barn and ventured to the end of the pier. She was fascinated by the enormous bait tanks teeming with squirming anchovies, amazed at the bin of fresh rockfish that was being brought up by a trio of muscled, bearded fishermen. The reddish fish lay dead in a heap. The quick ascent from the bottom of the ocean had caused the air bladders on several of them to explode and extrude from their open mouths. Crabs the size of bees crawled in and around the motionless bodies. Gulls swooped down to plunder and were waved off by the horned brown hands of the fishermen.

One of the fishermen, a boy of no more than eighteen, saw her staring.

"Pretty gross, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Tell your daddy to take you to prettier places on his day off." He laughed.

Melody smiled. She didn't try to correct him.

Someone was deep - frying shrimp. I saw her nose wrinkle.

"You hungry?"

"Kind of." She looked uneasy.

"Anything wrong?"

"Mama told me not to be too grabby."

"Don't you worry. I'm going to tell your mom what a good girl you've been. Have you had breakfast?"

"Kind of."

"What'd you have?"

"Some juice. A piece of donut. The white powdery kind."

"That's it?"

"Uh - huh." She looked up at me as if expecting to be punished. I softened my tone.

"I guess you weren't hungry at breakfast time."

"Uh - huh." So much for the big - breakfast theory.