“You hurt your leg, and you lost your mask? Where are your people? Who’s watching you?” I asked her as calmly as you can while balancing on sharp coral in the middle of the ocean (sort of).
In the back of my mind I recalled how quickly we had reached the little cove, and wondered if that had been part of a rip current that I hadn’t noticed. At the same time I finally spotted what I thought was Reg’s snorkel sticking up out of the water, about fifty yards back the way we had come, but coming closer. Yeah, that was his; I recognized the pirate duct tape he had wrapped around the top. It was definitely him. He’d know what to do. I’d just have to get his attention. Just him being there made me feel strong, like he—or I—could handle whatever had to be done. The girl was calming down but still crying. “My leg hurts and I’m scared! I want my Daddy but he’s—lost. Stupid Daddy! He was supposed to be watching me! Mommy is going to be so mad!” She grimaced and her cute little face was still adorable. Her hair was probably blond and curly but right now it looked like seaweed plastered all over her head. Somehow that too only added to her charm.
I almost laughed. Parents and children again. Just like Reg and I had been saying. Eternal conflict. I reached down to where her little leg was wrapped around my waist and felt along until I came to a place that she screamed at me for touching. The skin felt raggedy there and of course it was wet, but it was warmer. Blood? Yep. I could see the water near me staining slightly with it. Shit. Shit shit shit.
Then something grabbed my arm and I shrieked myself, setting the girl off. We were both still screaming when I realized it was only Reg, bobbing up beside me, taking out his snorkel.
He wasn’t letting go of me. Finally he stopped gasping and got out, “Fricking charley horse in my ass!”
My other passenger said primly, “You said ‘ass’.”
“Holy shit!” swore Reg. “You’ve found a mermaid!”
“No I amn’t! I’m just a little girl! And you said ‘shit’.”
“A pirate girl though? Are you a pirate girl?” Reg was quick. I was amazed. “Pirate girls swear and they are very, very brave.” He tried smiling, but then he looked like a pirate.
The girl gave a little nod. Maybe.
“Pirate girls can do whatever they have to do. You know that, right?” Reg was wonderful with her, even though he was still making faces about his painful muscle cramp. But what the hell were we going to do? Was it all up to me? We had to get back to the entry points somehow. It’s not like we had a boat or anything, you know? While this was still part of the island, there was no way you could walk from here to there, on dry land, barefoot. Your feet would be cut to ribbons, and we neither of us had the kind of fins you wear rubber slippers with. The pseudo path didn’t even come near here. ‘Here’ was also a very rocky, steep entry if you could even call it that, and the path had turned inland a long way back. It was all just pure lava field. Sure it was from the last flow which was hundreds of years ago, but it was impassible. We had to go back the way we’d come, by water; and all there was to do it was me, with a bleeding terrified child and an old man with a cramp in his rear end. Could he even swim?
“Shore’s back that away,” Reg pointed out to the child. “My name is Reggie. I have a pirate ship. Maybe after we get you back to shore, we’ll let you see it. Would you like that? It has ice cream…”
Reg winked at me.
Another wee nod from the pirate girl. I didn’t know what to do, so wisely, just hung there keeping all three of us afloat, kept quiet, and tried to pretend I was calm.
“Okay. Here’s what we’ll do.” I couldn’t believe how fast this old man could think. “Yon man holding you—you do like pirates, don’t you? You’re not afraid of a pirate, are you?”
No. Vehement. She shook her head so hard it almost unbalanced us. I tried to scowl like a pirate.
“Okay then. Now being an old pirate captain,” I knew Reg was now addressing me, “I can swim with one leg or even no legs with no problems. They taught us that in pirate school. Honest,” he added, as I caught his eye. I had to believe him. I couldn’t save both of them and I felt like he probably did, youth before, um, age or something. He’d have to make it back on his own, and he was telling me he could.
Reg was still flowing strong. Or rather, his life-saving bull was. “Pirate Drystan here, I mean, Captain Drystan, will swim you back to shore. Where you can yell at your daddy for being an old fool, okay?”
Sturdy nods. She liked that idea.
“Daddies can be very dumb at times, as you know. Well, he’s only a landlubber so it’s understandable. I mean, even daddies make honest mistakes, you know?”
As my little pirate nodded, almost smiling, I thought, somehow I would do this. Somehow, I had to do this. Should I give her my mask and snorkel? No, it would never fit. Could I keep her head above water somehow? Could she ride on my back all the way back to shore, holding onto her semi-deflated unicorn-decorated life ring? She’d have to. That is, if I could swim that far with her on me, holding on, probably choking the hell out of me. Plus there was that current, and the um, blood trailing off her leg. Well, I wasn’t in too bad a shape, and I was just a dumb teenager; you know how indestructible we think we are.
Reg added quietly to me, “Staying here is not an option. Look at those clouds.” He nodded over my shoulder. I didn’t want to look. I knew what storms could be like here.
Reg winked at me. “Drystan strong like horse; smart like same.”
“I like horses and unicorns.”
I didn’t. I hated horses. They always tried to kill me. I’d only ridden three times, and each time, well, never mind. I had to be the horse—or goat—or goat fish, ha-ha—this time. With a kid’s life in my hands and sharks probably trailing after the blood scent…oh shit. I wanted to pee myself but was afraid the water would be warm and the other two would notice. Face it, man, I was now scared as badly as the little girl must have been.
“What’s your name?” Reg asked.
Her chin went up (knocking the top of her hard little head into my nose, which hurt); “Princess Chakra!” she pronounced, apparently having had prior knowledge of having to be a princess. “I’m a pirate princess!”
“Sharks?” I mouthed, getting the idea from her pronunciation, I think. Not that it wasn’t already firmly in my mind.
“I’ll be there,” Reg said quietly. And I knew he would. I trusted this man so completely. I took a deep breath, and nodded, though my true feelings probably showed up clearly through my quivering lips and shaking hands.
I put my mask and snorkel back on. We got Princess Chakra settled onto my back, holding her little ring between us. I think it was more for her comfort than safety. Reg told her to hold on tight, which she proceeded to do. I could hardly breathe, but Reg patted my shoulder and said quietly, before donning his own mask, “It’ll be all right. You can do this. I’ve seen you overcome things before. I already know this about you.”
Strange words, but I didn’t have time to wonder about them. As absurd as it sounded, it worked. I didn’t really think there were any sharks around. Well, it turned out I was wrong, but it didn’t matter because I only found out about it later, and it didn’t bite us. Reg said if it had tried to bite any of us he would have hit it on the nose until it swam away. Princess Chakra only got dunked a few times, by larger than usual waves, but she hung on and snorted water and snot all over me instead of panicking. I was proud of her. Hell I was proud of myself (eventually).
After a while I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I figured it was just the girl’s arm (no) or Reggie (no). Then I saw the jawline…and what happened next I couldn’t really believe. It—and I think it really was a shark—opened its mouth and—still swimming toward me—swallowed what I think—was my porcupine fish, or another just like it. This one was all puffed up with its spines out. I remembered that they can be full of toxins too. I wasn’t sure the shark was going to enjoy that meal as much as…well, anyhow, I probably just imagined
it, right? I never saw either of them again anyhow. I’d never even seen the fish until it showed up between me and the hungry-looking shark, right when I needed it—just what I’d always wanted to see.
We were almost to Reg’s entry point, and I was getting exhausted. I could see the shore easily whenever I managed to look up. There was a shore break now that hadn’t been there when we had come in. I didn’t have the energy to be picky and wait for a break between wave sets, however.
I thought we were going to just ride the wave in, but a larger than usual wave blew up behind me and broke right over top of us. It knocked me into either a mound of coral or an outcrop of lava, I don’t know which, and the girl lost her grip on me. She still had her little ring and that saved her from the worst of the rocks. I got tumbled and lost my mouthpiece and mask and got scraped along the coral, upside down and all over, banging into rocks and trying not to breathe. The rip in my shorts got snagged and I hung there, getting torn up even worse by the coral as I was thrown about like I was in a washing machine. Almost immediately Reg was right there, grabbed the girl from near me and swam toward shore with her, yelling for help. People ran down and came into the water and took her—and Reg came back for me. He and another guy who had been on his surfboard found me still stuck underwater, out of air and ready to give up. In fact almost the last thing I remember seeing was Reg reaching for me. They pulled me free and dragged me onto the board. For the briefest of moments I had enough sense to realize the guy was Chris, Chris, who I had thought had been at Steve’s party, but no, he was here, and he had me in his arms. The bliss from that one short second cut through my panic and fear like a ray of sunshine through a dark cloud of rain.
Once on shore people were tending to the little girl, putting bandages on her leg and wrapping her in towels, and then there I was, thumped and turned onto my side, half-naked, puking sea water like a dying fish, and bleeding from various parts of my anatomy, some of which shall remain nameless. On the plus side, I no longer needed to pee. Someone put towels over me, and I passed out again, but not before I saw Chris bending over me, kneeling beside me, holding my hand. I threw up some more. Classy. I didn’t give a shit. Everything was all jumbled up in my mind, the same way I’d been jumbled up in the water just as we came in. But I was safe on shore, the girl was all right, and Chris, dear, sweet Chris, was there for me, as I had been for him.
I have a vague idea of the ambulance ride—siren and lights, though on that narrow, dirt road they really couldn’t have been going over twenty mph anyway. So many first responders had shown up we each got our own ambulance. I didn’t know it, but I was in worse shape than the girl.
Princess Chakra refused to speak to her father, but the officers chose to believe he really was her father and not just some random stranger. When I heard about that, I laughed out loud. Good for her! Plus it gave me some ideas about courage. Not respect, though; just courage. And I sort of needed that in the emergency room when I came around, because there was my father as well and both of them, the fathers, were sputtering and muttering. I wasn’t doing much better than Princess over there, whose real name was Becky. I thought I saw her mother giggling but she might just have been crying weird. Her parents were divorced and it was the dad’s weekend to have her. Her mom was pretty damn pissed too, just like Becky had predicted. I thought it was funny. And then my dad turned from the cops that were there to me.
Dad is about six foot tall and well built, not having gone to flab at all. He’s a gym bunny, as well as an attorney. He and Steve Durant’s father, Douglas, share office space and are close friends as well as colleagues. My dad was talking to me and I was trying not to vomit, but also trying to hear what he was saying. Mostly it was wah wah wah, but then I got it. “What the hell,” he asked like a lawyer, “were you doing at the beach when you were supposed to be at Steven’s party?”
I blurted out, “I wasn’t invited,” before I remembered how easily Dad could turn anything, including the truth, to his own purpose.
“Don’t lie to me. Steve told his father he did invite you and you told him to go screw himself, that you wouldn’t be caught dead at his stupid party.”
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. Over against the wall I could see Reg, standing out of the way, but watching and listening. Next to him stood an angel, I mean, Chris, half dressed and still dripping water. Right now Chris was breathing hard in a very pleasant way, and Reg had one eyebrow up to his non-existent hairline. His eyes were narrowed and if he’d been a gunslinger, he’d have had two pistols in his hands, cocked and ready. I wanted to laugh but had to throw up again instead. I didn’t remember drinking half the ocean, but I must have because it was all inside me, wanting out. I got it all over Dad’s suit. It felt great—well, satisfying anyway, and then I passed out again.
When I next surfaced, so to speak, I was in a quiet room and not in the emergency room anymore. A black mood came over me like the lights had just dimmed out. My dad, my own father, someone I should have been able to trust with my life, let alone my feelings, someone who should have known me well enough to know I didn’t lie, I wasn’t mean or vicious or even stupid, had let me down right when I needed him most. Little memories came to me of all the times this had happened to me - a teacher crossing out my ideas and highlighting all my errors, my mother laughing behind her hand when I made up a story that wasn’t funny, times other kids had laughed at me for wearing something different or not liking the same television shows or movies. At that moment I could not dig up a single one of what must have been thousands of happier incidents. All those were gone, as if a huge shark had chased all the pretty fish from the sea. Then a light came on and I saw that Reg was there, and had just turned on the small bedside lamp. As he stroked my cheek I felt tears come. I had to try to smile at the thought of him getting right up there in the way of evil and ugly thoughts, just like the porcupine fish who had stopped the real—if it had been real—shark, in the sea. I thought of Mano, and was grateful for him teaching me to respect the sea.
Yes, all those ugly things had happened, and yes, maybe people and family didn’t like me, but here was Reg, living proof that I was not completely unworthy, but then, did I really believe that of anyone at all, let alone myself? I knew me; I knew I was good inside and that I’d never really had a truly mean thought in my life. I was too young, too inexperienced, and yes, too naïve to, though perhaps if I dwelt on the bad I saw coming at me, I too could become that way—or at least see myself that way—but Reg was living proof that that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to be like Reg.
Which meant, I realized, that I couldn’t shut my father out of my life either, like Reg’s kids had done to him. I don’t know exactly how you do that, but maybe there would be ways to learn that, people to learn it from, like Becky, I mean, Princess Chakra.
Hadn’t I just saved a life? Hadn’t I had a princess ride me like a magical unicorn? Now I was getting silly. Tears and laughter, perhaps like hatred and understanding, love and fear, could both swim along side by side together, as long as you were willing to give it a try. Maybe nothing is all black or all white—except, perhaps, sharks.
And of course, there was Chris. Chris hadn’t gone to Steve’s party either. Maybe he was even out after all; a boy could hope, right?
Reg smiled at me as if he could read my thoughts, and I smiled back. This one man had changed my life. I didn’t understand why his own children didn’t love him to pieces. Perhaps they had just chosen not to. Perhaps like the shark, they had let something inside them that instead of nourishing them, choked the life out of them. I think you have to be careful what you let inside you, be it fish, thoughts, or decisions.
Reg bent over and kissed my forehead. Once again I felt six years old, safe, loved, and good.
It was kind of funny, actually, that the same thing that had choked the shark, had saved my life as well. The same person his kids hated, I loved. Families; love them or hate them, you can’t choose how they treat you, but you c
an choose how you treat them.
There was still Chris, too, even though he wasn’t Andrew. Not that I cared.
I went home two days later. There was no fanfare, no reporters, no limo, no parade. It was if it had never happened. I found out later Becky’s mother had wanted to send flowers but she couldn’t get them delivered in time. Becky wrote me a thank you note and it was sent, but my dad intercepted it and threw it away unopened. Luckily I didn’t find that out right away or I might have ended up in prison. I forgave him, but I also learned that it takes both sides of a fissure to come together, to heal. Reggie’s kids weren’t willing, and neither was my father. I had tried though, I really had. Reggie’s lessons weren’t wasted.
But when I came out—out of the house, out as myself, out as Chris’s future husband and present lover, I ended up physically separated from my family anyhow. “I know you’re not eighteen quite yet,” my father pronounced. “But get out of my house. Take your clothes and go. I don’t know you. Maybe you’re not even mine.” My mother had turned ash white when he said that, and had dropped into a chair, so I wondered. She said nothing though, not to protest, not to stick up for herself, and not to stick up for me. Chris helped me pack, and drove me to Reggie’s, where I’ve been staying ever since.
The three of us make it a point to see Becky on her birthday and Christmas and buy her outlandish presents, gifts that her own family can’t afford. Her mother thinks it’s sweet and Becky, of course, loves it. Through us, she’s learning to trust again, particularly to trust men. I think her relationship with her father may just turn out all right. And later, when we got married, down at that same beach, she was our flower girl.
Chapter 5: Hal and Reggie: Back to Today
After Chris and Trey had left on their honeymoon, Reggie and Hal shook hands and Hal said, “That went well, didn’t it? But I wish it could have been us.”
Spring Tide Love Page 4
