carlsbad
Rosalia Rodriguez Mattern

Duncan sucked in the cool ocean air—finally, his old friend, the Pacific. The deep breath overwhelmed the last functioning cells in his lungs. Reflexively, the hacking and mucus followed. His weary eyes soaked in the sapphire horizon. The other beaches of his life crowded the fringes of his consciousness. Duncan crumbled into the metal chair on the hotel’s patio and surrendered. Seventy-three years would be all for him. Time to make peace.

A few hours earlier, his Uber made the two-hour drive from his inland home in the foothills of Los Angeles to Carlsbad, his favorite beach town in northern San Diego County. He knew he would never return. Cancer took so much away from him: health, independence, dignity, and soon, life. Duncan was determined to decide where. And how. On the coast. And easily, like falling asleep. He hoped. 

The bitter taste and grit from the medication lingered in his mouth. The label on the bottle warned, “No more than five pills a day.”  He’d diligently followed the instructions for two years now, maybe a remnant from his training in the Marines? Maybe he was afraid of dying. What if he was making a mistake? Now, the self-discipline and fear yielded to the unrelenting waves of pain. Nothing remained except his failing body. 

Instead of unpacking (why bother?), he pulled a still-cold Bud from the mini Igloo he brought with him and methodically swallowed the chalky-white capsules, one after another. Duncan lost count at thirteen. He grabbed two more beers and made his way to the patio balcony.

His oozing consciousness took him back to the beaches of his childhood, not the grand ocean in front of him now but to the soft sands along Lake Michigan. A handful of summers in Chicago were organized meticulously by his Japanese mother and tolerated by his White father. Looking back, tension and discord had always been part of life within his family and outside of it, not being quite Asian or White. But in those first beaches, Duncan remembered only the long, hot, glorious days romping around North Avenue, Montrose, and Rogers and those times when even Dad succumbed to happiness and ice cream at Navy Pier.

On the balcony in Carlsbad, Duncan squinted from a flash of the midday sun. The salty spray from the waves carried him to his first California beach. Dad’s transfer to LA, spending his teen years at Topanga, the poor man’s beach a little south of the more famous Malibu. Tim Ryan. Mark Jones. Bobby Hansen. The four of them, seemingly halves of every ethnicity, a rainbow of brown skin to match his own. One last surf with his best friends before graduation, the draft, and Vietnam.  

“She’s hot for you,” Tim nodded at the blondest blonde in a gaggle of bikinied goddesses. Her easy, beachy smile reminded him so perfectly of California and home that he would conjure it hundreds of times to combat the decades of darkness that followed.

Duncan reached down to the oxygen tank hissing on the patio next to him and ticked the dial up two notches to seven. He cradled the O2 mask against his nose, coaxing a few more moments. I think I’m ready now, he prayed.

He recognized the dank, earthy smells of Manzanillo, Zihuatanejo, and Acapulco and pulled down the mask for a moment but knew the scents weren’t from the O2 tank. Fear again, not of dying, but of letting anyone in. 

“Marry me, or I’m gone,” Sandra said. “I’m the best thing that will ever happen to you.”

Duncan knew she was right, but he never felt worthy enough for the best. He spent the next summer and half of his thirties in Mexico, forgetting her and his cowardice with a parade of tanned strangers, mezcal, and the drug du jour. He never left the coast. Fishing at dawn, siestas in the afternoon, fucking at night, and obliterating memories in the long dark hours until sunrise. Repeat. Another day of numbing. Another night of haunting.

The afternoon Carlsbad breeze jerked Duncan back to the patio. He covered himself with the throw blanket from the back of the chair. These resort hotels think of everything, he thought. But he needed very little now. In the past weeks, food lost its taste. Even his favorite Bud was like piss in his mouth. The can on the patio table next to him was more of a comfort. “Comfort,” the hospice buzzword. 

He spent his forties and fifties in and out of rehab, walking the pristine beaches of Malibu, searching for sobriety. And now the irony, at seventy-three, he had stacks of prescriptions and permission to be numb. 

Duncan ticked the O2 tank to eight. The breaths were quick and shallow now. The beach he spent decades forgetting was the last place he’d see as the memories of Vietnam engulfed him. The air weighed heavy with humidity. Dread washed over him as he recognized the metallic stench of human blood. Back in Da Nang, overrun with flies, bullets, and dying boys screaming for their mothers. 

“Run,” the corporal screamed at Duncan. “Fucking run or you die!”

Duncan froze in shock, and his boots felt cemented to the shore. A couple of soldiers from his company pushed him a few steps, then sprinted past to the dense safety of the jungle. They never learned each other’s real names. Stretch, Spike, Gomer. He was Bud, of course. There were only nicknames, so when they went home, they could leave the monikers and nightmares behind. That was theory. That was the hope.

An explosion ripped Duncan loose and knocked him on his back. He searched the dirty brown sky for God but couldn’t find him. He wondered if Tim, Mark, and Bobby were dying on another piece of jungle. Pieces of disembodied flesh rained down from above. Duncan rolled over, ripped off his helmet, pressed his face into the wet, bloodied sand, and let the memory he fled from for decades finally catch him. He was too exhausted to keep running from it. Forgiveness, he prayed. I was too afraid to die. Forgive me.

When he lifted his heavy head, Duncan realized he was no longer in Da Nang. A shift in the air signaled to him that it might not be Carlsbad either. He dropped the O2 mask and turned off the oxygen machine. He wanted his last breaths and sounds to be the ocean. All his limbs cooled. Duncan felt the blood slow in his veins.  

On the beach across from the hotel, a crowd formed and waved. The day grew dark. The sun was disappearing into the horizon. Duncan was losing consciousness, but he recognized them all. His old friends and some demons, his mother and father, calling him. Ethereal arms beckoning him over. Slowly, he rose from the chair and waited for dread and anxiety to overtake him. Instead, a wave of calm enveloped him, the peace he’d longed for his whole life. The blanket dropped from his shoulders to the ground. I want to go home. I’m ready now. Duncan walked one last time into the alluring waters of the Pacific.