RUSTY JAMES FINDS THE OCEAN

He finally arrived at the ocean his big brother never got to find. It certainly felt more liberating to Rusty James than his brush with death in a street fight back in Tulsa where his out-of-body experience forced him to realise he just might not make it out of his teenage years in one piece.

The warm, sea air of the Pacific Ocean felt exotic to him, just like how he felt sharing his first kiss with a girl, that giddy sensation you get when you find a physical connection with someone you like in the neighbourhood.

Looking back on events just before his brother, The Motorcycle Boy, got shot by the cop, he could now see the purpose of his big bro coming back to Tulsa to prick the illusion of his street rep before his young, rose tinted eyes. He wanted Rusty James to fall out of love with the idealised version of him that he held up to be the ultimate role model, more than James Dean, more than Elvis.

Trouble was, Rusty idolised The Motorcycle Boy even more now in death than when he was alive. Thundering along Route 66 with tears streaming down his gaunt face, Rusty felt a deep pain in his heart now thinking of the despair his brother possessed on his final return to Tulsa. It was only now in memory, thinking of those last days hanging out together in a meandering dialogue, did he see the true sadness of his big brother's situation. If the Motorcycle Boy was experience and Rusty James was innocence then experience won in an unintentional act of self-sacrifice, bleeding out just by the river, saving those damn rumble fish.

What was it with those crazy fish, Rusty James thought to himself as the foamy waves crashed against the sandy shore by his feet. He would never understand what it was about them that made The Motorcycle Boy risk so much for so little. It would remain an endless mystery for Rusty James. In some ways he felt comforted by not knowing the answer. Perhaps, he thought, it would be something for him to contemplate, like the idea of God for others that he would roll around in his brain for as long as he was still breathing. Whenever he needed a distraction from the pain of not being able to talk to his brother again, he would think about those fish and wonder why they meant so much. The cynical answer might have been heroin, but even if The Motorcycle Boy was high, he was never stupid; he always had a reason for something he said or did.

Those fish meant something. Rusty James was certain of it.

Watching the shimmering, neon blue sea in front of him, Rusty thanked his brother in his head as if he was saying a silent prayer. He thanked him because he had given him the gift of freedom from a life where he might have been the one that bled out needlessly, though he would have sacrificed himself for his brother if he could have. If a cat had nine lives, so did Rusty and he knew he must have already damn nearly used each one of them up.

And if he was to hold onto his last remaining life, then he would make sure to find their mother so he could tell her the news about The Motorcycle Boy. He wondered how she would even react to hearing about it, having barely had a relationship with them.

Struck by a sudden and deepening empty feeling and wishing he hadn't lost his ex girlfriend Patty to Smokey so easily, Rusty James yearned for her to be with him right now, by the silver sea. What was the point of anything in life if you didn't have someone to share it with? Was it always going to be this way, that the women in his life would desert him to be alone by himself in the end?

Then he remembered Patty had said that he was smart, "just not word smart". He liked that she had seen his potential somehow, a potential he couldn't see for himself.

Maybe it was the energetic sea that suddenly made Rusty James a poet in his mind, but as he stood there in a near trance, he realised he could just hear the familiar sound of The Motorcycle's Boy's voice whispering inside his head, similar to that one time he held a conch to his ear at a friend's house convinced he could hear the sound of distant waves just like those he'd heard in the movies.

"I almost made it to the river, but you, little brother, finally made it to the sea."

And with that, Rusty James kick started his bike into roaring life and turned back onto the highway in search of a place to rest for the night, a place where he could dream of being reunited with The Motorcycle Boy once again so he could ask him, just what was it with those damn fish?