old acquaintances. When he was nine, Bach lost both his parents. (As a member of the local chorus musicus, he was obliged to sing as their caskets were lowered by ropes into unmarked graves.) He later lost three brothers, his first wife, and twelve of his twenty children before they reached the age of three. If anyone could accuse death of slacking off, it was Bach.
Soon my joyride brought me to Nantasket Beach, where the decrepit carousel and ice cream stands were still boarded up for the winter, waiting to be resurrected on Easter weekend.
I parked and walked cautiously onto the glowing beach. It was empty except for a black lab who trotted by, grinning and dripping seawater, dragging his leash in the sand.
For about ten seconds, it was nice.
Then a wave of darkness swept the beach. I looked up. Someone had blown out the sun; it smoldered behind a veil of clouds like a snuffed wick. A complex chemical reaction took place as the Atlantic frothed, then purpled. A raindrop hit me between the eyes.
I trudged back to my car and peeled out of the seaside parking lot, my speakers blasting a plea for divine mercy in B minor.
SO MUCH FOR going out like a lamb.
This week a blizzard interred Cape Cod, sending tailwinds to flog the Greater Boston area. The gales brought down branches and sent trucks fishtailing on the highway. They woke everyone in the middle of the night with otherworldly moans. On Wednesday, as if blowing on a campfire, they accelerated a blaze on Beacon Street. Two firefighters were tragically killed. It felt like anything could happen.
All this howling weather makes me think of the Santa Anas, the “devil winds” that afflict Los Angeles this time of year. They are notorious for fanning wildfires and, according to local legend, making people temporarily insane.
I have never personally felt the hot breath of the Santa Anas on the back of my neck, but I have encountered them time and again in my reading life. They’re always blowing through the hardboiled fiction of Southern California.
The novelist Raymond Chandler, whose famous detective roamed the streets of his beloved and behated Los Angeles, captured the phenomenon better than anyone. His early story, “Red Wind,” famously opens:
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks.
While many of Chandler’s stories became fodder for mid-century film noir, Hollywood producers refused to touch “Red Wind.” I don’t blame them: how could you ever reproduce the subcutaneous angst of the “devil winds” on film?
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