by ML Gardner
“It’s colic.” I recognized Hubert as he leaned on the doorjamb with a look of sympathy on his slightly reddened face. “You had it something awful when you were about this age. Seems to be when it starts. I think you cried for two months straight, didn’t get a wink of sleep.” He shook his head, reminiscing.
“Well, I’m sorry I was such a difficult child, but how do you fix it? There has to be something we can do.” He looked down anxiously at the baby whose little red face was quivering with one piercing cry after another.
“Well, if I remember correctly, the only thing that quieted you down was a ride in the wagon. Damn near drove two of my best horses to an early grave from exhaustion.”
“Again, sorry I was so much trouble,” he said sarcastically. “Maybe I could try that.”
“Can’t. Got rid of the wagon last year. Maybe you could take her for a horse ride, though.” Hubert wiped sweat off his brow with his sleeve. “Sure is getting hot,” he mumbled.
“You feeling okay, Dad? You don’t look so good.”
“Just getting a cold.” He lumbered back to the kitchen. “Maybe I’ll turn in early tonight,” he called.
“Mom’s not back yet?”
“You know how she gets when she and the other hens get together, Caleb.” He flapped his fingers to his thumb several times and I laughed. “The gossip alone could go on for hours before they ever get to playing cards. I’m just glad they have their meetings over at June’s house.” Caleb stood at the back door, staring out through the screen.
“Maybe a walk outside would calm her down. We’ve got that old pram.”
“I’m willing to try anything. You want to take her or do you want me to do it?” his wife asked.
“Why don’t both of you get some fresh air. I’ll stay here with Jean and Samuel,” Hubert offered, leaning over the table to light the oil lamp.
The wick took to light and then faded as Hubert lowered it; the amber light from the small flame brought out the shadows and sallow color in his face. “C’mon, Jean, I’ll show you where Ethel hides the cookies,” he said.
Hubert reached to the top of the pantry and pulled out a jar. He smiled with effort, his face glistened with the sheen of a cold sweat, and his breath was hard and short. The sky darkened as storm clouds gathered overhead.
“Here you go. I think I better sit down,” he panted while groping for the chair in front of him. “Think you can manage the milk from the icebox?” Jean nodded and skipped to the icebox, having to move items around to get to the round milk pitcher.
“Jean.”
Jean turned toward his grandfather’s empty whisper. Hubert’s mouth was open in a silent scream, his hands clutching his chest. He was rigid and silent, exactly like the statue I had envisioned. I watched the statue free fall onto the table, tipping it over. He landed on the floor with a meaty thud, eyes wide open, but perfectly still. The oil lamp skidded across the room, spraying oil in a circular pattern as it spun on its angled side. The fire quickly jumped from the wick and chased the oil in all directions. I looked back at the little boy, who stood frozen in fear for a moment and then we both turned our heads at the sound of an infant’s cries coming from upstairs.
Fire, a foot tall in some places, stood between him and the stairwell. He watched frantically as the fire jumped to the curtains of the back door, and the kitchen quickly filled with black smoke. He still held the ceramic pitcher of milk, petrified. I knelt in front of him and put my hands over his, guiding it up, dumping the milk over his head, hoping the wetness would provide some protection from the fire.
“Go. Get upstairs to the baby!” I told him. I saw the thought register in his eyes, and he ran, jumping over fire in spots as he raced up the stairs. I followed Jean as he stood on tiptoes to reach him in the crib. He could barely touch him, so he dropped to his knees to reach through the bars and pulled him close to the edge. Back up on toes, he grabbed two fistfuls of Samuel’s sleeper and pulled, but wasn’t quite strong enough to lift up the well-fed baby. The fabric of his sleeper slipped out of his grasp and he cried out in aggravation, his little face scrunched in fear as the baby slipped out a second time. Without looking to see if the parents had returned to search for their children, I reached into the crib and put my hands under the baby, supporting its body as Jean pulled it up and over the railing. He nearly dropped him as the baby came over and landed in his arms. I kept my hands under the baby as Jean shifted him, trying to get a good hold.
“Get out of the house,” I told him. Locking one of his little fists onto the other to hold the baby under its arms, he walked quickly, but couldn’t run as he struggled with his heavy little burden.
I followed him outside and watched as the mother grabbed them up, sobbing with relief. I looked around for the man, but he was nowhere to be seen. It was only this small family, crying with relief and fear; horror at watching their home burn. Shortly, neighbors appeared to help battle the blaze.
“You there!”
I didn’t think anything of it when I turned to look at who was calling. Hubert stood, staring at his body, confused. When I acknowledged him, he began toward me, scarcely taking his eyes off the barn where the children were accounted for and safe.
“What happened?” he asked. There was sadness and pain in his eyes as he surveyed the scene. He knew. But he needed confirmation. He glanced around with a helpless look on his face as his family and friends raced, trying to save the house. Two cars tore into the muddy drive and swung to a stop. One man jumped out of each, wearing no protection from the rain, and I recognized one as the man from my visions. What did the old sailor say his name was? I struggled to remember. Aryl, that’s right. The old sailor had called him Aryl. He didn’t walk into the burning house, though he picked up a bucket to join the effort. He wasn’t the reason I had been called. This time. I glanced at the baby in its mother’s arms and smiled, feeling peaceful for the first time in ages. I looked back at Hubert.
“Let’s go for a walk,” I suggested with a friendly smile. “I’ll explain everything.”
He nodded, still looking dizzy and confused and I took him by the elbow, leading him away from the scene into a patch of trees.
Two weeks later, I woke with a start next to Elizabeth from the most vividly colored and detailed dream I had ever had. I looked over at Elizabeth’s peaceful face, deep asleep and safe. I sighed, brushing the hair out of her face and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
“It’s time,” I said. “After this, I have to go.”
Charles was already awake, sipping a cup of coffee at the table, reading the newspaper. It was early and light outside, warm already, and I knew deep down I had little time to spare.
Feeling driven with the meaningful work of saving another life ahead of me, I felt energized, almost jovial.
“Alright, Pops–You don’t mind if I call you that, do you, Pops? Since your daughter and I are soul mates and all.” He cleared his throat and adjusted his paper. “So I’ll get right to the point. I know you have a weak mind, so I know you can hear me. I need your help. I have to do something today that I can’t do without you.”
He continued to read, seemingly unaffected by my words. I wished briefly that I had Anna’s help. “What I have to do is for Elizabeth. You have to help me help her.” His eyes flickered past the edge of his paper. I felt a surge of excitement at his acknowledgment. “I knew you could hear me! Now get up and get your rain coat.” He rose from his chair and walked slowly to the hall closet. Opening it, he rummaged through several coats and started to pull one out.
“Not that one. Your rain coat.” He shook his head with a frown, put it back and pulled out a dark raincoat. “Now tell your wife you’re going into town. You’ll be gone for a while.”
He walked to the washroom and opened the door. “Cecile, I think I’m gonna meander into town for a while. I’ll be back by supper.”
She stood by her pile of laundry, looking puzzled. “But what about the work today, Charles?”
“I’ll get to what Elizabeth can’t do tomorrow,” he said casually. He just stood there, sort of lost and staring at the floor.
“Now, go get in your truck,” I said.
When we were in the old beast, sputtering down the dirt road toward town, I told him, “Drive to the beach access about a mile down from the marina.” He hummed a tune to himself with a light smile, quiet and serene. The wind was picking up, and the distant sky, thunderheads black and purple with deep green veins, threatened a vicious storm.
Once he parked, he settled back with his hands in his lap as if waiting for instructions.
“Alright. Normally I’m not one for stealing. In fact, I just did my part in running off that thief you had hired. But we can’t do this without a boat.”
“I wonder where Daniel went,” Charles wondered quietly, looking out the window.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” he repeated.
“We’re going to have to steal a boat. Not steal, really,” I corrected myself quickly. “Just sort of borrow it. We’ll give it back.”
“Need a boat,” he mimicked, almost childlike.
“If I had known you were this easy to talk to I would have started talking to you long ago.”
“I get lonely,” he whispered, looking down into his lap. I had a surge of pity for him then, at his life and how broken his mind really was to hear me so clearly. I imagined him leaving years ago as a strong young soldier, returning with a damaged mind that carried the personality of the best friend he couldn’t bear to part with. Heavy sadness filled the car and I sighed and looked out the window.
“We just wait, Charles. That’s all we need to do right now is wait.” He settled back and closed his eyes.
When the rain began tapping the window, and the sky had grown several shades darker, I had an urgent feeling that it was time.
“Let’s go, Charles. Time to find a boat.” He exited the car and began walking down toward the beach.
We walked a while before we found a small rowboat tied to a short pier on someone’s beach house property. Without instruction he jumped in, untied it from the pier, and rowed with a blank expression.
“Toward the storm, Charles. We need to go straight into the storm.”
After a long time rowing, Charles extreme sweat was masked by the driving rain and mist from the waves crashing all around us. He panted with exertion and stopped to wipe water out of his eyes with his sleeve. I wasn’t sure what time it was, but it was as dark as evening as the storm intensified with every passing minute.
Before long I had to yell for Charles to hear me over the wind, and his eyes squinted against the storm.
“We wait here!” I yelled. After a moment he pulled the oars in and set them on the floor of the boat, leaning over his knees to catch his breath. I stood and could barely make it out in the distance. Maybe one hundred feet away a fishing boat was tossed violently, helpless against the power of the squall. I could see two figures running about. Any minute now, I thought to myself.
“Charles, we have to get closer.” He either didn’t hear me or ignored me, keeping his head bowed between his knees, taking deep breaths. Suddenly scared and frustrated, I grabbed the oars, and it took every ounce of concentration I possessed to use them. Charles didn’t notice the oars suspended in midair, working autonomously. After some strokes, a flash of white blinded me. When I turned my eyes toward the boat, I saw that it was partially on fire with no sign of the two sailors. I rowed furiously, the oars slipping out of my grasp due to lack of concentration. I could barely make out the name “Ava-Maura” painted on the side of the boat.
“Charles! You have to row! Elizabeth needs your help!” He snapped his head up, took the oars, and rowed against the force of the powerful waves. Looking over him, I realized telling him to get his raincoat had been pointless as he was soaked to the bone. I heard a rumbling roar and turned my head slowly toward it. I stared in awe and fear at the largest wave I had ever seen barreling towards us. I closed my eyes as the edge of it lifted the small boat and pushed it along before engulfing the Ava-Maura just as a second explosion ripped the boat in half.
I saw him thrown off the deck into the water. A moment later, a large wave threw debris over both men.
“Charles, stay right here.” I said and went into the water. I came up to find Aryl gone. I looked around wildly for him and put my head down into the water.
He was sinking slowly, unconscious with his arms limp above his head, gliding toward the bottom of the sea.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” I said, diving. I grabbed his hand and stopped his sinking, but pulling him back up was a struggle as he was dead weight in the water. I fought my way to the surface, towing him away from the murky depths of the ocean that wrestled fiercely to claim him. My head broke the surface and I screamed for Charles. I was barely holding on to Aryl, still trapped under the surface, dying. I reached the edge of the rowboat and yelled for Charles again. He snapped out of his daze, and I pulled Aryl’s arm up with all my strength and concentration, holding the tips of his fingers above the surface of the water for Charles to see. His eyes opened wide and he groped wildly for the lone hand which was stiff and tinged blue from cold, gripping it and pulling with all his strength.
Leaning far over, he managed to get under Aryl’s arms, but struggled with getting him over the edge and into the boat. Finally, Aryl landed in the small rowboat with a soggy thud, unconscious with water pouring from his mouth and nose.
Now in the boat, I helped Charles roll him onto his back. With his hands on Aryl’s stomach, he pushed hard, causing him to spew an enormous fountain of seawater from his mouth. Charles was shaking, terrified and looking very lost.
“Start rowing! Get to shore!” I yelled over the storm. I looked back just in time to see the bow of the Ava-Maura disappear below the crashing waves. Just beyond that, a fishing vessel’s sailor hoisted the other man up and over the edge of their boat. I could make out his arms, flailing and pointing toward the depths, begging for his friend, I assumed; I couldn’t hear his screams over the wind and the rain.
When I looked back down at Aryl, I realized he was very badly injured. Blood was flowing from wounds on his head, chest, and back. It mixed with the seawater, sloshing back and forth around him. It was a gruesome sight.
He coughed and sputtered, but never regained consciousness. Charles started rowing madly and I held my head in my hands, the memory of emotional taxation engulfing me as I pondered what I had just done.
Cecile watched in mute surprise as Charles burst through the kitchen door. He gripped Aryl under the arms, pulling him across the threshold, the deadweight of his legs dragging the floor, leaving a wet, muddy trail.
“Grab his feet,” Charles said, panting for breath. Cecile, confused and slightly scared, did as she was told and they both grunted with the exertion needed to lift him off the floor. It was a slow and clumsy climb up the stairs, but eventually they got him into the vacant bed of Elizabeth’s old room.
Charles sat down hard in the small chair in front of the vanity, breathlessly wheezing. Small pools of water formed under the chair from his soaked clothes.
Elizabeth burst into the room, looking from her father to the stranger in the bed. A loud, wet gurgle grabbed everyone’s attention, and Cecile moved to roll him onto his side.
“Elizabeth, help me,” she said, and they gave a great push, rolling him to his side where a steady trickle of water ran from the corner of his mouth. Cecile rubbed her forehead and her hands alternately, visibly shaken and fretting.
“Where did you find him, Charles?” she asked finally.
“The ocean. He was drowning. Something happened to his boat. I pulled him out. I couldn’t think of what to do besides bring him here.”
“What were you doing out on the water in a storm like this?” she asked as a loud clap of thunder rumbled overhead, shaking the house. The lights gave a hearty flicker. “You’d best ge
t the lamps,” she told Elizabeth.
“What were you doing out there, Charles?” she asked again.
He shook his head pitifully and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
The lights went out and it was pitch dark. Elizabeth returned a moment later, an oil lamp illuminating her way into the small room.
“A lot of good it did spending all that money to wire the house for the lighting. We have to use the oil lamps every time it even threatens to storm,” Cecile huffed with irritation. Charles and Elizabeth ignored her, staring at the unfamiliar person in the bed. His short and erratic breathing was interrupted by the last wet bubbles of the seawater.
“Well, what are we to do with him?” Cecile asked.
“Nothing, until the storm passes. Just try to keep him alive, I suppose. You can make him better, can’t you, Cecile?” His voice was juvenile, like a child asking a mother to repair a teddy bear. She looked bewildered and stammered for words, finally uttering a meek, “I’ll try.”
“I’ll get him some dry clothes,” Elizabeth offered as she left the room. Her mother began to strip off his waterlogged clothes, covering him discreetly as she dropped each piece on the floor.
Elizabeth returned with a pair of her father’s pajamas and set them on the bedside table. She helped her mother roll him from one side to the other, placing dry bedding underneath him. She towel dried his hair, making it stick up in clumps of curls from his scalp. When it came to dressing him, Cecile turned to Elizabeth, but avoided her eyes.
“This is nothing for a young girl’s eyes,” she said discreetly. Elizabeth stayed motionless for a moment and then turned to leave, holding her hand out for her father’s as she went.
When the door latched softly behind them, Cecile crouched down and fished out the man’s wallet from his pants. Fingering through the contents, she found identification and a few pictures, wet to near ruin. She slipped it all into the front pocket of her apron.
His eyes fluttering now, he coughed and sputtered, uttering a low and raspy moan.
