Chapter 4
Sympathy for the Devil
Alex Kramer drove toward the ocean, following memories more detailed than any map. In the morning fog, he passed down narrow roads in the Marin headlands, where craggy rocks met the sea near the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. At “vista point” turnouts showing postcard views of the bridge and the San Francisco skyline, rubberneckers stretched for a glimpse of the spreading blackness below. It made him sick.
All night long, Alex had been transfixed by news of the spill, sitting with one light on in the empty ranch house and watching the same footage over and over again. It seemed like a parallel to the disaster that had smothered his own life.
Out on the Bay, smaller tankers pulled beside the Zoroaster and tried to offload oil in desperate lightering operations; boats wrestled to deploy booms around the slick as it spread. Hundreds of people scurried about with equipment, but it seemed futile. Most of Oilstar’s effort seemed to be directed at telling people the spill wasn’t as bad as it looked, that they had everything under control.
Alex passed old Fort Baker and Fort Cronkhite with their crumbling batteries and gun emplacements high on the bluffs. The landscape was a drab but striking range of deep green from the stands of flattened cypress, dry yellow-brown of gasping grass, and brilliant orange of wild California poppies.
He and his son Jay had spent some of their best times hiking out in the headlands. He had thought never to come here again because of the ghosts he might find along the trails; even the water reminded him of the time he and Jay had sipped from the same canteen and splashed barefoot in the rocky surf. The Coast Trail had been their last decent outing together before Jay followed his unit to Saudi Arabia.
Now Alex drove downslope to the end of the road in Rodeo Cove, an isolated section of coastline just north of the Golden Gate, with rough surf suitable only for wet-suited divers and daredevils. He parked on the cracked asphalt and got out of his pickup, unable to tear his gaze from the shore. He held the truck’s open door for support. Foul hydrocarbons permeated the air, masking the salt and iodine smell of the ocean. His eyes and nose burned.
The current of the outgoing tide had sucked the Zoroaster’s crude oil back out to sea, where it had spread farther. Then, with the tide’s returning flow, the waves had splattered the dark ooze against the coastline in an ever-widening stain.
Alex wanted to turn from the horror. His stomach rippled with the leaden weight of brewing nausea. But his feet moved of their own accord, stumbling toward the beach. Five people, dressed warmly in jeans and flannel shirts, stared and said nothing to each other.
Hastily erected DANGER, NO SWIMMING and CONTAMINATED WATER signs dotted the beach. Normally rich brown, pebbled with black and tan rocks, the sand was slathered with an opaque slime of crude. Viscous waves licked the shore.
Seagulls, smeared with oil, chased the waves, looking for something to eat; they circled in confusion at the strange new consistency of the ocean. Farther out to sea, buoys clanged. Normally, fishing boats would have bobbed with the swells—but not today, and not for a long time. At the tide line, algae clustered against the rocks among other shellfish, already dying.
A few years before, Alex and Jay had started a long backpacking trip here. The Coast Trail wound along the headlands for miles, and the two of them walked in the cool air all day, looking down at the crashing surf from the crumbling edges of horrendous cliffs.
Jay had labored for a year at the University of California, San Francisco, though he had little interest in school. During their three-day hike, Jay finally broke the news to Alex of his decision to join the army. Jay had rubbed his short red hair, looked at Alex, then away, then back at him again. His pale skin had flushed a deeper red as if embarrassed to be changing his mind about what he wanted to do with his life.
“I know it’s not what you wanted me to do,” Jay had said. He took a nervous sip from the open canteen, offering it to Alex, who shook his head. Jay looked away again as he screwed the metal cap back on. “But college just isn’t what I want to do, at least not right now. I want to challenge myself in a different way, and I think the army can do that for me.”
Alex had been surprised, but not unduly upset. He and Maureen tried to keep a light hand on the children. Both Erin and Jay were intelligent and sensible; they made their own decisions. “If that’s what you think will work best for you, Jay. It’s better to change your mind than to keep going along with what you know is a bad decision.”
Jay, who had not hugged his father since eighth grade, clapped an arm around Alex’s shoulder, gave a brief squeeze, then struck off down the trail at a greater speed, embarrassed.…
Alex still remembered the visit from the two Army officers, informing him that Jay had been killed in a nighttime skirmish on the Saudi border in one of their oil wars.
Now, the roar of the surf sounded like distant, booming gunfire in his ears.
Alex stood unmoving at the tide line. Dark blobs clumped on the beach. The waves had churned the crude and water into a frothy, gummy substance, “mousse,” that stuck to everything.
A seagull flew overhead with mouth wide open. The waves crashed in, bringing the oil closer, and Alex skittishly stepped back.
Cold wind blew in his eyes. The same oil slick would paint the Bay, wrap around Alcatraz Island, Angel Island, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Embarcadero. San Francisco had been called the most beautiful city in the world—and it had just been brutally raped by the Zoroaster. Seeing the effects up close, Alex felt the walls surrounding his anger and despair rattling, crumbling.
Right now, Oilstar officials were desperate for any public-relations coup. They would leap at any hook Alex Kramer could offer, though the barbs were plainly visible. Panic removed all common sense.
Alex breathed deeply, trying to ignore the pain in his side. Mitch Stone was probably correct in thinking the Prometheus microbe could help clean up this spill. This was a wound that could not be ignored.
Trembling, Alex squatted and dipped his fingers in the blackish-brown ooze on the shoreline. His fingers came away soiled and greasy, covered with a stain that looked like blood.
Blood and oil. In his life, the two had so much in common.
***