End of the Ocean Read online

  END OF THE OCEAN

  Matthew McBride

  The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in an entirely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Matthew McBride

  Cover and jacket design by Mimi Bark

  ISBN 978-1-947993-55-6

  eISBN: 978-1-947993-77-8

  Library of Congress Control Number: tk

  First trade paperback edition June 2019 by Polis Books, LLC

  221 River St., 9th Fl., #9070

  Hoboken, NJ 07030

  www.PolisBooks.com

  For her

  The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.

  —Ernest Hemingway

  Buy the ticket, take the ride.

  —Hunter S. Thompson

  Rainy Season

  Galungan Days

  Amed

  Kerobokan

  Thailand

  Rainy Season

  Rings of thick white froth carried on salt water waves blew through the air and became mist that sprayed his shirtless back, as he, sitting in a low-slung chair, took in all he saw and heard: the people and the sand and the ocean and the waves, and as he sat there, content for the first time in as long as he could remember, he recognized the beauty of that moment, that never in his life would he know such splendor in a sunset as he saw that first night in Bali; alone, watching and thinking beside a small wooden hut on a white sand beach by a green-blue sea that would soon become his home.

  Waves smashed sand banks and birds of various shape and size walked the beach beside him and flew above him, floating in gusts of wind that lifted from the swells in great bursts of sea-salt foam.

  Sage had a lot of work to do. Figuring out his life and adjusting to the decision he’d made that brought him there. A decision he still, even now, could not believe he had made: moving to Indonesia—to find himself—or to lose himself. Whichever came first.

  To leave everything he had ever known for a world he could not have imagined.

  It was very warm in the evening shade, well veiled by a burnt orange umbrella attached to a bamboo stick driven into pallid sand that was twice the size of the umbrella they once owned, still in the backyard of their former house, which she now owned, free and clear, which she shared with her new husband and his three kids and their two dogs—his and Bailey’s—the dogs she had also kept, along with the umbrella and the table it was attached to, from the marriage which ended six months ago when Sage was still her legal husband.

  Before she cheated on him and left him for a man she’d just met and barely knew.

  He opened a bottle of Bintang and took the first drink and swallowed hard. He’d expected the beer to be bad, but it was worse than he’d expected. He set the bottle on the wooden table. It was a table hand-cut from sandalwood, lacquered with oil and covered in a glistening sheen.

  It had been a long trip from the States. Sixteen hours sitting in an upright position next to a man who, the entire flight, farted and drank beer and ate peanuts. His name was Wayne Tender. He was tall and bony with a sharp nose and a dimpled chin, with black hair slicked back in thin strips until it disappeared behind his head. He was a consultant from Australia and Sage hated him for the first ten hours but those last four or five had been okay. Because Sage started drinking after that, and even that late in the game Sage made a valiant effort to put as much distance as he could between his first drink and his last.

  It would be a strange journey, of this Sage was convinced. Turned out Wayne Tender had been a professional boxer when he was a younger man. That’s what he’d said. His record: 16—1. Four by draw and eleven by knockout; except he told Sage they’d been knocked the fuck out, driving one bony-knuckled fist into the palm of his other hand to better demonstrate the effectiveness of his punch.

  “Even broke a man’s orbital once,” he said, pointing to his cheekbone. “Ever do that, mate?”

  Sage said he hadn’t. He’d been in a fight or two in his time. Given a black eye or two in his day—and he’d taken a few as well—but he’d never broken anyone’s orbital.

  “Eye goes black soon as it happens.”

  Wayne snapped his fingers and nodded then took a drink. Going on to regale Sage with further stories of badassery and brutality, all of which had captivated Sage and forced him to pay attention. Wayne was a strange one. But he was also Australian, though, according to him he’d actually grown up in England, which could explain it. Sage had never met an Englishman. Or an Australian. Maybe they all drank beer and told stories and farted freely amongst strangers?

  Sage had a lot to learn about people.

  “…I had ta stab this bloke in the back, I did,” Wayne said.

  He’d gone on to tell Sage it was a matter of self-defense. “He was comin’ at me,” Wayne said, though, hours after their plane had landed, Sage still wondered how Wayne could have stabbed a bloke in the back who’d been comin’ at him.

  Remembering the flight, Sage leaned back in his chair on the beach and got comfortable. Took another drink of beer. Still as bad as it was the first time, but he’d been assured by others, Wayne Tender among them, Bali beer gets better with each drink and by the end of the bottle he’d be used to the taste. By the end of a six-pack he’d be in love with it.

  That’s what they said.

  Sage set his beer down and cringed. He could never get used to this, much less love it. To his right, the sun melted into the water: orange and blonde and perfect. Like the ocean was on fire and he was the only one who could see it.

  He thought about Wayne Tender. How he’d parted ways with him in Denpasar.

  “Ya better come see me over there’n Ubud, mate,” he’d said.

  Sage agreed he would, but did not plan to. As far as he was concerned, Wayne Tender was soon to be a distant memory; a passing moment shared between two strangers on a sixteen-hour plane ride filled with reconditioned air and habitual flatulence.

  If he never saw Wayne Tender again that was fine. In fact, it was better that he didn’t. There was something about him Sage deemed untrustworthy. Something about the way he presented himself he’d found suspect. Or maybe it was just him. Sage had a habit of being suspicious. At least that’s what his wife had said, that Sage didn’t trust her. But she said a lot of things. Like: I love you. I need you. I promise not to fuck anyone else because we’re married.

  Sage, raising his Bintang, drinking the last half of that terrible beer in one gulp and, standing quickly, rammed his head into a metal support rod for the umbrella. He cursed and dropped his empty in the sand. Bent to pick it up and stood again in the same spot as before and drove the same metal support bar into his head.

  He winced and cursed and walked from his place beneath the umbrella to the small shop at the edge of the beach for a second beer. It had been a long three days—it had been a long year—perhaps Sage had a six-pack in him after all.

  Surely by the third or fourth bottle the taste of its contents would improve.

  He walked to the shop and grabbed a metal bucket and filled it with ice and Bintang, and after paying with much more rupiah than was required, of that he was sure, returned to his spot beneath the umbrella. He sat in the chair and set the bucket in the sand, removed a bottle, held it toward the sun, and watched long thin drops roll down the side and cling to the bottom then fall to the sand.

  Opening the bottle and leaning back, he dropped the lid in the bucket and listened to the sounds of paradise.

  His jetlag was br
utal. It overwhelmed him. He finished his beer and dropped the bottle to the bucket; he drifted toward a deep siesta, ten thousand miles from home, in a world of untainted bliss.

  * * *

  Wayne Tender, slightly annoyed, all business, sitting at a wooden table in a small cramped room behind a restaurant that served Padang food with a man named Ngyn Suterma and his Balinese bodyguards, talked about psilocybin mushrooms and cocaine.

  Wayne asked Ngyn if he had ever done mushrooms.

  “This very dangerous conversation Mister Tender,” Ngyn said.

  Wayne agreed.

  “Indonesian government no play game with drug.” Ngyn drew a short finger across his neck. “Death penalty we get catch.”

  “Caught,” Wayne said. “Yes, I know. But we won’t.”

  “How you know?”

  “Because we’re not going to get caught, that’s why. I’m going to pay them off.”

  Ngyn nodded his head and relaxed.

  “Very good idea.”

  Wayne turned his palms up. “Well, you have no choice. You have to.”

  “Better safe or sorry.”

  “Better safe than sorry, that’s right,” Wayne said. “We gotta pay to play the game.”

  Ngyn looked confused by this aphorism but nodded anyway.

  The drug trade in Indonesia was delicate and complicated. But it was also thriving. People, especially Westerners, mainly tourists, wanted drugs, and while hallucinogens were popular, most vacationers wanted marijuana and cocaine. But the laws in Indonesia were draconian, with the harshest penalties in existence. You did not want to get caught, and if you did get caught your life was over if you did not have enough cash to buy your way out, and most people didn’t.

  Kerobokan Prison was full of them. They called it Hotel K and it was filled with people who got caught smuggling drugs for Westerners. The Balinese made more money on one drug deal then they made in five years doing anything else, which was the appeal, why a man like Ngyn Suterma got involved. Money and security for his family. Who were now provided for. They would buy what they needed and hide the rest in a place hard to find. This was the Balinese way. Poor people in a poor country finding ways to get by. Because one deal was all it took to give your family a better life.

  And then one deal becomes two.

  After concluding their business, Ngyn Suterma left the restaurant through the back door and stepped into the back alley and stood in the dust. Withdrawing his wallet, he paid each bodyguard 100,000 rupiah, which they gladly accepted, nodded and thanked Ngyn for.

  They said they’d see him at work the next day.

  He returned their nods and climbed on his motorbike. 200,000 rupiah: A lot of money. Almost eight USD a piece. Almost half a week’s wage for a half-hour meeting. But Ngyn had to do it. He had to put on airs to look legit. And hiring, not one, but two of the biggest men he knew to play bodyguards was legit. Even though they were guys he worked with.

  This was what it took to get the part and play the role, the willingness to take risks. To appear larger and more important than you were, and Ngyn was a master as this character. He’d been performing him all his life.

  Ngyn Suterma was Balinese: a short, pot-bellied man with a round face void of expressive features that drooped slightly and always looked confused but seldom was. He knew people; it was insight that served him well. Sometimes he pretended he was less than he was to gain people’s trust.

  He’d grown up very poor. At times, impoverished to the point of starvation. His father was a fisherman and his mother cleaned houses. She tended Ngyn and his two brothers and two sisters. Life was hard. A sister died. A brother disappeared. The youngest sibling was a guest at Hotel K and it was hard to say when he’d get out, though one thing was certain: not until his family came up with the ransom money, which Ngyn was still working on—because in Bali everything was for sale, even freedom, and sometimes you were held prisoner until you could afford to be released.

  Only his sister, Shatar, remained, and the two of them were not close. They never had been. As far as Ngyn was concerned she did not even like him.

  “I know what you do,” she once told him.

  “I work,” he’d said. “At factory.”

  But his sister knew better.

  “I don’t speak it out loud, Ngyn, what you do ...I dare not breathe word of it. But I know. And I pray for you.”

  That was the last time they’d spoken. She said she would pray for him, but he had not known what that meant. Would she pray for his success? For his safety? He still did not know, after all this time, what I pray for you had meant. Even though it had been a decade since she had said those words, he always hoped it meant, I pray you don’t get caught, and not, I pray that you get shot.

  With Shatar you could never tell, and Ngyn did not know how much his sister knew or where her loyalties lay, but in the ten years since that conversation, at their father’s funeral, he had yet to be arrested. He had not been gunned down, which was the penalty for drug trafficking in Indonesia: they would blindfold you and tie your hands behind your back and shoot you in the heart.

  Getting caught was to be avoided at all costs. This was why you greased the wheels.

  ***

  Wayne Tender sat uncomfortably in the back of the taxi and listened to the driver talk about Michael Jackson. In fact, that was how he had introduced himself. He said his name was Michael Jackson. He stuck his hand out. He wore one glove.

  “You like Thriller?”

  Wayne frowned. He could not believe his luck. Of all the cabs in Indonesia he’d picked this one.

  “Come on mister, Thriller classic.”

  Wayne shrugged.

  “What ‘bout Jay Z? From America? Do you like the Jay Z?”

  “Who the fuck is that?”

  Michael Jackson switched lanes carelessly and talked about rap music.

  “Sean Carter, that Jay Z real name. From New York,” Michael said. “In America.”

  Wayne shook his head. “I know where it’s at, you wanker.”

  “You like Johnny Carson,” Michael asked. “John Wayne?”

  He eyed Wayne Tender in the rearview mirror. “Ah, yes, you like’a John Wayne, yeah?”

  “Take me to hotel Nikko.”

  Michael nodded. “Yessir mister, you look tired. Need relax, eh? You want Michael Jackson find you girlfriend? You get massage? Make sex?”

  Wayne perked up. A massage would be nice. Some sex would be nice.

  Michael Jackson, steering with his left hand, opened a plastic container filled with a collection of trinkets and hair clips and odd assortments of jewelry and, removing a cassette tape, pushed the tape in the radio on his dashboard.

  After snapping the lid shut on the container he turned up the volume.

  “We hear Michael Jackson now,” said Michael Jackson. “You like Beatle? Beatle sing with Michael Jackson. Paul McCartney Beatle.”

  Looking in the mirror, he adjusted his udeng, pleased with an opportunity to demonstrate his knowledge of music history.

  Wayne said, “Just take me to Nikko.”

  “What about find you girl for sexy time? Make boom boom?”

  “Awe bloody hell, Michael… I’m tired for fuck’s sake.”

  “Michael Jackson know that why he get girl. You relax. Have sexy time.”

  Wayne leaned back in the seat. It was no use. The Balinese were hustlers, this one in particular. But Wayne also knew a good employee when he saw one, and he could tell a guy like Michael Jackson had potential. He was resourceful. A man like that might come in handy.

  Halfway through The Girl Is Mine the tape stopped, to Michaels’s chagrin, but Wayne felt immediate relief, until Michael started yelling then swerved from lane to lane. He tried to eject the cassette, but failed. It had been eaten, the tape now strewn about. A thin line of black crinkled ribbon hung from the deck and Michael strugg
led to remove it.

  Cursing in Balinese as Wayne laughed, Michael Jackson looked at him in the rearview mirror, as if his lack of sensitivity had offended him.

  “Sorry, can’t help it, mate,” Wayne said insincerely, overcome with more laughter.

  “Tell ya what, sport,” he said, “be back in a half-hour with a girl no older than twenty. We make sex, go boom boom. I pay you two million rupiah for your trouble, OK? Buy you some new Michael Jackson, OK?”

  What Michael Jackson paid the girl was between the two of them.

  “You bring young girl.”

  His new employee grinned appreciatively, though still devastated by his loss. He told Wayne Tender he’d be back in half-hour. He thanked him. Said John Wayne would not be sorry.

  “No,” Wayne said. “No, no. Not John Wayne—Wayne. It’s Wayne.”

  “You make good decision,” he said. “Trust Michael Jackson.”

  “Right. Now go find me a whore.”

  “Yes, Michael Jackson come back with girl. You make sex. Boom boom.”

  Wayne, walking toward the hotel, dragging his plastic-wheeled suitcase behind him, yelled for Michael Jackson to hurry up and get going.

  “Just beat it,” he yelled, entering the building, impressed with his own quick wit and inspired by his craftiness, even if it did go over the cab driver’s head.

  ***

  At some point in the night Sage opened his eyes to nothing but cool darkness with shimmering pinholes of light above him and sounds of ocean to his right. He had been dreaming, and for once it had not been about his w̶i̶f̶e̶ …ex wife. He would have to get used to that. Even in his dreams he still thought of her that way—as his wife: The one he married at the same small church out in the woods where her parents and grandparents had both been wed. So long ago. When life had been perfect and they had been young and the future in front of them waited patiently.

  If only they had not rushed so quickly to see it. If only he had known then what he knew now—but then, he asked himself, what could he have done any different? And, in the end, would whatever he changed have even mattered?