My heart cried out for you

There's a place on the Pacific Coast Highway where the road cuts the rock, and a large monolith juts up on your left as you drive north. The steep hills of the west coast steady you on your right, hills that appear to be pushing back against the rest of the country, keeping it from leaping into the Pacific. This stretch of road has become part of our collective image database, used in car commercials and travel brochures. In September we saw it for ourselves. The sun was setting over the road as we approached, forcing its rays through the crevice, screaming all shades of yellow onto the road and the hills beyond.

I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life, I said.

I had just collected J at LAX. The flight was delayed, and I found myself sitting in a vinyl seat next to a Hungarian man who was there to greet his daughter on her return from a summer in Africa. I had been planning on taking the 405 to the 101 straight up to Santa Barbara, but he put his finger on my map and traced a different line, his accent punctuating the proposed route.

Through Maleeboo, he said. Maleeboo is so be-yooteeful as the sun sets.

We stopped just beyond the clapboard-backed houses in Malibu for apricot and almond granola bars from the pharmacy. The supermarkets were all shut. Families piled out of minivans and into strip mall restaurants; the sounds of car doors closing and rubber shoes on tarmac scored the calm turnover of day shift to night.

Further north, crouched behind camper vans, they lit bonfires on the beach. There was a hum — in the road, in the air — as the sun tucked itself over the horizon. The hum and crash of waves. We hit the crack in the road and the sun fell, and then the only lights were the oil rigs in the distance. To my left.

To my left. I had to keep reminding myself that I was driving north, being so unused to water on that side. I remember having a distinct fear that it would be so easy to turn the wheel the wrong way and steer us into the Pacific.

Now what would you want to go and do that for.

We hit Oxnard at dark. The fields opened up. These flat fields, covered at night with tarps. I lost the ocean. The traffic veered off to the left, but for some reason we kept to the right. Access roads and semis. Wide lanes and the noise of distant traffic. The 101 up ahead.

Behind us we dropped the crumbs of apricots and almonds. The hum and crash of waves.

(Written months too late, inspired by late Tuesday night, when, like the rest of the country, my mind was in California.)

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.