The Traveler: A Walk Along the Shore Becomes Dangerous

The Traveler, or, Meditations of a Company Man, illuminates the inner life of an assassin trained as a child in the art of murder and employed by a shadowy company whose national allegiances are forever cloaked in mystery. The short pieces that make up The Traveler weave in and out of time in an organic pattern more akin to music than to narrative fiction. Its pleasures lie in the joy of words heard and felt for their own particular, undefinable magic.

Transcript

I took it slow walking along the shore. A problem was working its way through my mind, indistinct, murky. Some threads leading into a haze, a room full of voices whose words I could not make out, that kind of thing. I turned to look back at my footprints in the sand. There was someone back there, far back, like a phantom in the salty mist. His figure would emerge as I rounded a bend in the shore and then be gone. It didn’t concern me. I had come to a certain understanding, that when death came it would come. I didn’t need to think about it or try to evade it.
When I looked forward again I found my feet were falling in the footprints of someone who had passed already before me. How interesting. Bigger feet, a bit splayed, as mine are a bit pigeon-toed and small for my height.
I had experienced enough. I did not need to analyze. I admired the old timers who had seen so much that now they ran on instinct like jazz musicians. Those old timers are gone now. I think of Coltrane, devising an architecture of harmonies, a modal helix, a spiral staircase for his horn to climb, and I wonder at what point he broke free of the launch vehicle of ratiocination and began to soar without wings or written notes, totally in the realm, like those old-timers with their old rifles and garrottes, trusting instinct.
Coltrane poring over scores in his youth, doing the numbers, mastering the theory so he could soar unaided, not looking down.
I will never be there, not like Coltrane. But I have stopped worrying about consequences. I have the courage now to leave the planned trail on nothing but a scent of a burger or someone’s barbecue, letting the calculation work itself out, careful not to nudge it toward a classroom model, knowing each kill would be unique, each bullet its own argument for existence.
The beach comes to a point where rocks jut out, forming a cove that is impassible at high tide. Certain periodicities are second nature, and I could see that in another few minutes the cove would be neck-high and impassible, and whatever figure it was, back there three quarters of a mile or so, would have to turn back.
The cove was knee deep when I entered and waist deep by the time I reached the collapsing sandstone bluff on the other side; I nearly had to swim the last hundred yards. But as I clambered up the bluff I got a better view behind me, and I could see that the figure had paused, perhaps checking his watch, a good watch I hope, a Seamaster or other good dive watch, something to serve in all the elements — water, air and land. When I got to the top and looked again the figure was gone, but the footprints I seemed to be following seemed fresher and more distinct than ever. This filled me with elation, and I quickened my pace, foolishly I now know, as following can be as costly as being followed.
The footprints ahead of me matched my stride at first but then they lengthened and I stretched to keep up and plant my feet there as the wind came up and whitecaps appeared offshore and the pleasant breeze grew insistent and the bluff grew steeper and more sheer and the path narrower and the limestone more crumbly, where I could see where those footprints I was following had crumbled and slipped and yet whoever it was had kept going, running now apparently, as I tried to keep up, thinking what a stride, what strength of legs he must have had, and why I was following I did not know except the sea air was dropping in temperature and the wind was coming up and as I turned to see one more time if that shadowy figure had disappeared he had not, he was in fact entering the cove, apparently to swim across, which was risky as once the tide turned the cove became a river that swept everything out to sea, but he was coming too, and I was in a kind of trance now, nerves tingling, a bit panicky. I ran full tilt now on the narrow path, nearly leaping each stride to place my feet in the feet that had gone before me until like awakening from a nightmare I stopped.
Why? What has happened to me? I stopped and found myself looking down from at least one hundred feet. Into what trap had I fallen, enjoying my serene state of mind? It was indeed like a dream from which I must awaken. I slowed down. I looked for a path back down to the beach. I didn’t care about the figure behind me, but I could see the tide turning and the cove beginning its twice-daily riverlike wash out to the sea, which deepened abruptly and every year claimed many lives, many who didn’t calculate the hypothermia, the depth, the strength of the currents.
I slowed my pace again. I had to think. I had to figure out what was happening. Instinct was not enough now. I needed my brain.
As I stood there trying to think, trying to understand the situation, the sun went down. Sunsets have always calmed me. To think of how long humans and even pre-humans have watched the sun set gives me a feeling of belonging to something bigger, some common thread. The sun was red and sinking into the sea. And then, wanting to get off this narrow ledge before dark, I hurried along.
Soon it grew dark. There was not yet a moon. I was placing each foot carefully; the path sloped down but was still quite high above the rocks. Then I heard my name called out from below. There was a flash, and I saw illuminated below a collection of tents, and bright lights, and gantries for movie cameras, and my comrades, all of them, standing in a group shouting my name. I stopped and leaned back against the rock wall.
“We’re coming up! Hang tight!” Raoul, the best climber among us, was clambering up with a rope ladder. He reached me in no time, and secured the rope ladder.
“I think there’s somebody following me,” I said when he arrived.
“We’re having a party in your honor,” Raoul said.
“What about the guy?”
“He’s been dealt with.”