by Chuck Crabbe
Ezra used his shoulder to push himself up so he was sitting. One of the police officers saw him do this and he was sure he had alarmed him and that the cop, thinking his prisoner was about to escape, would resume his beating. Instead, the grounded angel of the law only continued to take survey of and note the evidence on the table.
The others were the same. None of them seemed to be paying any attention or bothering with Ezra at all. He felt as if his oppressors had ruined him, haphazardly, like he was an insignificant casualty that was killed and forgotten on the way to some much more important gain. And that was why they ignored him now, silenced and tethered and beaten as he was, as they continued across the sea. But he saw, watching the indifference of his father, his church, his school, and all the other guardians of his imprisonment, that it was he, the prisoner, that had allowed this. He had allowed it through his meekness, his deference to the paths and beliefs they had so forcefully laid before him, the value he had placed on their blindness, and his refusal to heed the forbidden song calling upon him to be his own shepherd. Ezra stood up in his chains. His movement finally caught the attention of the strange assortment of pirates that had taken him, and with one voice they yelled for him to lie back down.
"I will not!" Ezra said, and felt a strange sensation in his feet. Pastor Mark turned away from the ship's wheel, smiled, and then nodded encouragement. The pirates hurled insults at him but did not move to strike him or throw him back down.
"Thief! Criminal! Judas! Monster, freak and foreigner! Pervert! Liar and betrayer and coward!" The words came like weather from the four directions.
"I am all those things...and others, all to my greater glory." The answer came from his stomach without being shaped by his mind.
"Lie down in your shame!"
"I know, shame is your great weapon. But I will not be ashamed before you any longer."
At the front of the boat his father turned away from the sea and faced him. With measured eye and step he walked across the deck toward his son. When he reached him he took the chain that bound his hands. His father lifted Ezra's hands up in front of his eyes. His left hand was bleeding again, just as it had been that day they had broken into the church.
"Do you see your hands, son?"
"My eyes have never left them," Ezra answered.
"Then you know that they are my hands?"
"That was my fear."
"And what can cursed hands ever accomplish?"
"Your hands have been a curse to you, Dad, but a blessing to me."
His father laughed. "A blessing, eh? Women have turned you into a fool. Those hands are a blessing?"
"The trauma they have laid upon my head has opened the seals of the mystery."
Has the power of flight ever visited you as you slept? Who gives wings when our eyes have been closed? Ever taken off from the broken ground you stood on and looked down upon all you had left behind as if it, and not your flight, was the illusion and mistake? Or perhaps the powers Morpheus delivered to you were of a different order. Objects became yours to touch and bring to life as you saw fit; the earthy mud became the balm by which you healed the blind; you held the candle in mid-air above the crowd in the darkened theater. The lyre of that great seducer of the underworld was given to you and now you surprise yourself and the world with music neither you nor they thought was hidden inside your broken heart. But what became of Ezra as he stood on the deck of that ship on the wine dark sea, in the midst of the oppressors and pirates of his freedom, was something different.
In the very hands his father had just been speaking of he found Olyvia's staff, the one with the pinecone on the end that she had used to stir the must every vintage. With it as a weapon, a wand, a crutch, a gift, a curse, a paintbrush and a pen he drew the magician's circle around himself. Certainty and ecstasy ran like new blood through his veins and flooded his brain. The stones, chains, and wounds of his attackers fell outside of his circle like raindrops outside a window, and casting the eye of the god who had been pursuing him all his days into the sky above them, Ezra lay claim to his soul's freedom, fall, the beauty of her sins and graces, and the lifeblood for which her beautiful fingers now reached deep into the soil. For her treasure was not in the skies, but in that subterranean world of guilt and shame and sorrow that Ezra had wasted so much of his vitality trying to escape from. He found roots in his moment of power. Liberation lay in turning what he had been fooled into believing would be his destruction into a voluntary act.! Ducunt volentem fatum, nonlentem trahunt.
Deep in the bowels of the ship Ezra planted his seeds. And then, his bare feet on the ground, he called them up. Two mighty vines, like snakes hungry for the sky, shot up around the ship's mast. The music of the flutes came from the sea, and as if called out of some long sleep tigers, panthers, a lynx, and the old goat came out of the entrance that led below deck and lay down at Ezra's feet. Other vines shot up between the deck boards and seized onto what they would. His father, Mr. Pentheus, and all the others looked as if they had turned mad. Mr. Deshamps, now as red as a great fat lobster, sprang up from his sunbathing and leapt overboard. But, just as he took to the air, absurd and oily as he was, he changed. His feet became a crescent tail, his hands turned to fins, and he disappeared under the water. Ezra's father ran to the side of the boat, and seeing what had happened to Deshamps, turned to question Ezra, but as he did, his own odd metamorphosis began. His nostrils expanded and his mouth widened and he too jumped overboard. Alex DaLivre reached desperately for an oar, thinking he could row them away from whatever was overtaking them, and his hands turned to fins and he joined his fellows in the sea. One after the other they leapt over the bulwarks and into the water until only Pastor Mark was left behind the wheel. Terrified, still human, he looked at Ezra standing in the middle of the circle with strange symbols scrawled inside it, the animals lying lazily about his feet.
"Don't be afraid," Ezra said to him and beckoned the pastor to the side of the boat. Just beneath the surface of the clear blue sea the pastor saw a group of dolphins swimming together. Here and there one rose to the surface and shot a spray of water into the air.
"Are those men?" the pastor stuttered.
"They are." Two vines shot up around the pastor's feet.
"No, please..."
Ezra put his hand on the man's shoulder. "You have nothing to worry about, my friend," Ezra said, and then summoned the vines up around the pastor's body until a thick cluster of grapes flowered in front of his face. "Relax, eat. I will steer the ship from now on."
"But you don't know how."
"I no longer fear discovering, by night or by day."
"To where will we sail?"
"Naxos," he said, filled with the joyful paradox of knowing nothing about his destination, and yet knowing everything.
Darkness was all around Ezra when he awoke. In his stupor his eyes struggled with the unfamiliar outlines of the chairs and tables in the room. He had an odd feeling headache. The place had a strange smell that told him he was in a hospital. The door to the room was halfway closed, and the hall outside was lit with fluorescent light. People in hospitals always seemed to have tubes coming out of them somewhere so he checked his arms but there was nothing there. All the machines around his bed looked like they were turned off.
In a few minutes he heard footsteps coming down the corridor and saw a blurry figure cross in front of the door. "Excuse me," he called out. A heavy woman in a nurse's uniform opened the door.
"So you're awake," she said with a heavy Eastern European accent.
"Where am I?"
"You're at Leamington District Memorial Hospital. You had poisoning from carbon dioxide. Don't you remember?"
"I remember being inside the wine vat. But I was wearing the gas mask."
"Maybe your mask does not work so well. Your grandfather brought you in with a little Indian man." She waved her hand over her face as if the action would change her skin color.
"Oh, Ruiz... He's not Indian, he's Mex
ican." The woman shrugged her round shoulders as if the distinction was meaningless.
"Then your mother and father came. They stayed very late."
For a minute the distinction between reality and the dream he had just stepped out of became hazy, and he thought that perhaps his mother and father had been there. "That was my aunt and uncle," he coughed, and sat up in his bed.
"In the morning the doctor will be in to see you again. Now you should rest. Do you want anything?"
"I'm okay...some water maybe."
The nurse left and came back with a pitcher of ice water and a glass. She filled the glass, handed it to Ezra, and set the pitcher on the table beside his bed. "I'm at my desk in hall. If you need anything press the button and I will come." She passed him a small device with a button in the center.
Ezra laid his head back on his pillow. His dream was still more or less clear in his mind. But when he woke in the morning, all that remained were murky remnants, both of the nurse he had spoken to, and the ship and sea journey he had made his own.
Elsie and Gord arrived early the next morning. He was already awake and staring blankly at the ceiling when they came into the room. She hugged him and asked how he was feeling and then proceeded to berate her father for putting him in danger. Ezra explained to her that it had been his fault and that he had gone to clean out the vat without anyone knowing. They had shown him the proper way to do it, but he had done otherwise. Elsie was not convinced and insisted that he come home with them and that his summer on the island must come to an end. But Ezra would have none of it, and after he had gone out for breakfast with his aunt and uncle he called his grandfather's house and asked to have Ruiz meet him at the ferry station with the truck. Gord and Elsie said goodbye to him for the second time.
His grandfather made little of Ezra's accident. The old man spoke to him sternly and rudely about the reasons behind the things he told him to do. His daughters hadn't listened to him either, and look how things had turned out for them. If Ezra intended to go on that way, he could get back on the boat and go home. Ruiz and the other vineyard workers mostly made fun of him.
"I tell you now, you were lying there looking as dead as Lazarus when I found you. And there was no getting up for a laugh at Ruiz this time, Cabra," Ruiz told him. Apparently, Ruiz had gone to his window and called up to him when he hadn't shown up at the living quarters. Not finding him in his room he had asked the other workers and one of them said he had seen him going into the barn (the Mexicans called it the barn because that's what it looked like to them). Ruiz had gone to check it out, and seeing the lights on in the cellar, had gone downstairs to look for him. "And what do I see? I climb the ladder and see you lying like one dead at the bottom of the vat in a big puddle of dirty mop water."
Early in the morning, before breakfast and work, he went out to run. Within him a fire began to burn. He was bold and named the flames 'redemption' and 'return'. Because when he returned home, to football and to school, he would not lie down for them again. He had spent enough time in silence and was not a small fatherless boy any longer. It was time to leave those things behind.
As he ran he imagined all the things he would do on the football field. He saw himself breaking tackles and making acrobatic catches, and even laid down a mental soundtrack to his fantasy. As he ran he allowed his awareness to move through his inner body and into his nerves and muscles, and his faith in it grew.
In the evenings he went down to the cellar to lift weights. At first he went by himself, but before long either Ruiz or Nectario were there to spot him. Sometimes Nectario worked out with him. Ezra liked it best when Nectario came, because Ruiz joked around too much. One day he would do chest and triceps, the next back and bicep exercises, and the next legs. On leg days he did sets of squats, sometimes as many as eight or nine, until he felt like he was about to pass out. Some evenings, after Ruiz or Nectario had gone back to the living quarters, he ended his workouts sitting against the wall, shaking and dizzy with exhaustion, the sweat dripping off his face. Alone in the cellar and completely exhausted, he felt his mind come to a complete stop. He was awake and alert, yes, but it was also as if some great gust of wind had come along and swept all his thoughts away. So he would sit there, eyes open but staring at nothing in particular, and simply feel the emptiness. He remained there until he felt his body had recovered enough for him to walk home.
He still went to drink and dance with the Mexicans at night. He knew them all by name now. Nectario taught him small bits on the Spanish guitar, and another of the workers, a very plain man named Joe Dark (a very strange name for a Mexican) showed him how to throw knives. Ezra enjoyed getting drunk and dancing with Maria. She flirted with him but it never went further than that. He got the feeling that Ruiz had warned her off.
The suspicion the workers had originally held him in was gone and, for the most part at least, they treated him as one of their own. But then there were other times when he felt like they would suddenly hold him at arm's length again. Oddly, this was most pronounced in Ruiz. There were times when he would suddenly ask Ezra to leave a conversation, and others when, as soon as Ezra approached, the conversation would stop suddenly in an effort to keep whatever was being said from him. Though he noticed it, none of this concerned Ezra very much.
On nights when he was tired and did not go to drink with the Mexicans he read Demian. But he did not continue as he had that first night, reading large amounts in one sitting. On some nights he would read only two or three pages. Often, however, what he had read in those two or three pages would be on his mind for most of the next day as he worked in the vineyard.
Most nights when he wanted to work out he would wait for his grandfather and Nectario to finish boxing. He kept time while they fought, and sometimes, when his grandfather's mood seemed agreeable, asked questions. Though he would never have admitted it, Nectario almost always seemed to get the better of the old man, so Harold's humor depended not on whether he'd won, but on how many solid punches he had been able to land. Sometimes Ezra would borrow Nectario's gloves when they were done and hit the heavy bag as a warm up before he lifted weights. The gloves were new and black and slick. He liked the feeling of wearing the gloves and hitting the bag and the way the bag gave a bit in the place where he hit it.
One evening his grandfather was doing particularly well after the first few rounds. The old man was breathing heavy when he took his chair.
"Ezra," he said between ragged breaths, "do me a favor. Go and fill up my water bottle in Edward's office."
"Is it open?"
"Fish my keys out of my bag. The water cooler is in the corner."
"Okay."
"Make sure you lock up," Harold called after him.
Ezra opened the door and felt along the inside of the wall for the light switch. He had never been inside the winemaker's office before. The overhead light revealed a meticulously kept room and laboratory. He walked to the back of the room, stopping briefly to look at some of the beakers and chemicals that Edward stored on the shelves. On the wall behind the cooler was a picture of Harold Mignon and his wife as a young couple. They were surrounded by their daughters and what looked to be the group of migrant workers from a vintage long past. The picture was so old that Ruiz wasn't even in it. All of them were standing in front of the house together with Sarah, Elsie, Olyvia, and his mother, the girls kneeling in the front and looking very happy to have been included with the grown-ups. Ezra searched the faces of the people in his family, looking for some trace of the violence and discord that he knew went on between husband and wife, father and daughter, but found none. Would his grandfather have been a different man if he'd had a son?
Ezra filled the water bottle with cool water, shut off the light, locked the door, and walked quickly down the corridor to the back of the cellar again. Harold was still sitting, rubbing and rotating his left shoulder.
"This arm's gone out on me again," he groaned.
"You okay, Grandpa?" Ezra asked.
"I hurt it badly when I was a boy, and it's never worked properly since."
"How did you hurt it?"
"Oh, that's not a very pleasant story."
"Alright, Gallo," Nectario broke in, "that's good for tonight. Best not to push your luck."
"You see, Ezra? Take note now, these Mexicans are always looking for an easy win, or an easy buck."
Nectario smiled and shook his head at the old man.
"Come on. Gallo. Today the victory is yours."
"Not so fast! Ezra will do the last four rounds with you."
Ezra looked over at his grandfather in shock. "I don't know what I'm doing...and I don't have gloves."
"Mine will do. They're old but they're a fine pair of gloves. A little big for you, maybe."
Ezra looked over at Nectario. "Are you up for it, Ez?"
"Come on now," Harold scolded as he unlaced his gloves. "Young guy like you. If not now, then when?"
