Ocean Rain

Michael O’Brien

There’s this story I heard about a boy who found his favorite album and vanished into the air not long after. His name was Billy; he was around fifteen and lonely. The friends he had he’d lost by this time because they went off to be popular and things, and the house he lived in was nice according to relatives and neighbors, but killing him too, because it felt like a TV set from Full House or something: a mimic of life, but actually dead and soulless and ugly inside. Dad worked, but drank when no one was looking. Mom kept the house in order, and took pills to keep up her energy. There was a younger sister who was good at everything and held up on a pedestal. You know how it goes. All the shiny things were dirty underneath.

The one thing that muzzled the world, and cleared Billy’s mind enough to make sense of it, was his cassette player and his tapes. He would put on a big pair of headphones, and play whatever music he could find around the house—mostly stuff belonging to his dad, hair-band shit like Def Leppard and Whitesnake: all decent-enough noise to block out the high, devilish frequency of his hometown, but nothing that spoke to his heart.

It went like that for a while. There were record stores around, and Billy would walk to them and look through their boxes and racks for something that felt like his, but it was always Paul McCartney-this and Joni Mitchell-that. The Temptations, Sam Cooke, Elvis. He didn’t know exactly what he was after, but he knew it wasn’t anything his parents might like or that could be heard on the radio. He kept looking, walking everywhere.

Now, this next part I’ve heard told in a few different ways. There’s one version covered in mist and clouds and destiny, floating Billy all over like some prophet along a predetermined path. There’s another version that’s too grounded, too caught up in chance and cynicism, making what happens next not seem as important as it really was. I don’t know which one is the real truth, or which one I’d like to tell; the important thing to say is that on one of Billy’s walks, he found another record store previously hidden from his view. It was tucked away down some stairs in a basement and its door was dark purple. Maybe there was a sign that said “Records Here” or something like that which led Billy inside, but I can’t say for sure. All I know is Billy was going through the boxes and racks of tapes like usual, his gaze fell on something called Ocean Rain, and his heart immediately swelled and contracted. He pulled the tape from the shelf and studied the cover, which showed a dark, purple, shadow-y world, and four people on a boat stranded in the middle of it all. Billy read the title again: Ocean Rain. Ocean. Rain. The cover, those words, hinted at everything he couldn’t say himself, everything he knew true in his bones. He had to have it, the tape, but didn’t think the crunched-up dollar bills in his pocket would cover what Ocean Rain was really worth. So, when the clerk behind the counter told Billy the tape would only cost him $2.50, he was excited and confused and offended all at once. But mostly happy. Just happy.

Nothing changed much after that on Billy’s outside, but things got better inside. He didn’t make any friends, his family still ignored him, certain parts of the world still felt hollow and lifeless to him. But now he went on walks in the woods with Ocean Rain talking in his ears, and looked at the trees, whether dead and leafless, or bright and blooming, and cried at the textures of things: the way the light hit the branches, the way the treetops stretched forever into the sky. He would press his head to the ground and watch ants carry pieces of his world into theirs, or two squirrels fight over a nut in the tall grass, or birds hop along in the mud and take small sips from a rain puddle. Billy’s body felt real to him for the first time, like it had its own weight, like he was a force that could move and change and grow.

This, I guess, is what led Billy to leave, to disappear from the known parts of his story. For two years he worked at a local supermarket, bagging things, stocking things, saving as much money as he could, and he bought a car. Billy’s invisibility made all of this easier. Nobody noticed whatever he was planning, and nobody expected it when he’d gone, so there was nobody to tell Billy what he was going to do was stupid or naive or poorly-planned. He was allowed to escape without detection, and follow the thing inside him that told him to become something new, something that looked more like himself.

I hope he has. I hope he’s found someplace whose pieces fit better with his. I believe he has. You know, I get this funny image sometimes of Billy barefoot on the beach, staring out over the Atlantic, or the Pacific maybe, his pants rolled up around his calves, and heavy rain pouring down across the sand and turning it into mud, and Billy there smiling, as the rain soaks through his clothes to the skin. I see him happy and alive and free. It may be a corny kind of image, but I believe the true place within me it comes from. I try to listen to that place as much as Billy did, all that time ago, and when I do I can feel the change welling up in me. Then I remember.

You should never doubt the power of Ocean Rain.

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