"Maurice," said the preacher, "what exactly is a nautical haiku?"
Maurice sat beside him in the co-captain's seat and said, "An ancient writing form, among the most disciplined types of verse."
Asbury increased our speed. "And how long has it been around?"
"Ever since late last night when I was struggling to think up a name."
Nine miles out, our bright teaser-baits speckling behind us, the ocean was a deeper blue, clean and unspoiled. I felt small.
We passed another boat-its sailfish flag waving-and ten minutes later another. Asbury said that one had the flag for tuna. Their crew waved; Steve and Ransom saluted.
Soon we came upon a small nation of anglers, like a secret club congregated upon familiar water, all making slow, trolling paths through blue seas in a quiet, measured game of waiting.
But not for long.
"Fish breaking water at 2:00," yelled Maurice, peering across the bow.
"Fish on starboard side!" said Asbury.
"There's another one!" yelled Ransom, standing, excited now.
Asbury cut the wheel as three long V-shapes burrowed just under the surface, trying to eat the yellow teaser. Steve whipped open a tackle box, tied on a humongous gold lure, and reared back to cast.
"Turn us to the left, Preach," he said, leaning over the side.
"Somebody get the outriggers extended!" yelled Asbury.
"I'm a little old to climb up there," Maurice protested.
"I don't know squat about fishing," said Ransom. "But I'm willing to learn."
"I'll get it," I said, climbing up the outside of the cabin.
A slow, magnified sway tilted me left, then right, then left again. The view was fantastic. Fifty yards away, strapped into the fishing seat of another boat, a woman battled who-knows-what as if the fish had hold of her only child. She leaned back and pulled on the rod, leaned forward and reeled the slack.
"Look at the muscles in that woman's arms," said Steve, pointing with his rod tip.
"I wanna catch me a fish, dudes," said Ransom.
"Looks like we found 'em, boys," said Asbury, steering us through the frenzy.
Maurice put his hand on the gaff. "Come to Poppa."
Steve's gold lure skipped across the water, tailed by three long shadows dark-finned and piercing the ocean. I hurried to reach the outrigger, and from my elevated perch I saw the V-shapes rise and break the surface. I had no idea what species they were, but they were long and dark and so very hungry.
I stretched to extend an outrigger, and the boat lurched.
I woke in room 521. A nurse and a doctor stood over my bed, talking in hushed voices.
My eyes struggled to focus. Doc left the room in a smudgy cloud of white. Then he was back, handing something to the nurse.
They were talking again, but it was a murky, medicinal dialogue.
My skull throbbed. I mumbled something about a recap. Doc and nurse glanced at each other.
They said I'd fallen over the side and hit my head, but I did not remember.
They said Steve had jumped in the Atlantic without a life preserver and kept me from drowning while Maurice hooked the gaff through my shorts and dragged me in, but I had no recollection.
They said Ransom, who didn't know squat about fishing, apparently did know how to stop a head wound from bleeding, but my memory had left with my blood.
They said Preacher Smoak had nearly burned out the engine getting us back to the marina, and that Clayton Beaufaine had been waiting on the dock and sped us in his Mercedes to the Charleston Medical Center, but it was all a blank.
They told me it was Tuesday, that eventually I would be fine, and that a transfer had been completed to Greenville Memorial Hospital-which was news to me 'cause I could've sworn my room had a rudder and I was circling Fort Sumter; but my head hurt and I no longer trusted my brain waves or sense of geography, the crisp smell of ocean now replaced with a sanitized whiteness that depressed me to no end.
Jamie Delaney, wife-with-child and role model for all things female, baked me a loaf of cinnamon bread. Ransom brought it to my room, but Doc said no snacking till Thursday. I spent Wednesday staring at it over on the table, thinking maybe this was reverse gear in the five-speed of life's momentum, and that, once again, I had landed in my very own Tarshish.
My very own nurse was named Sonya. She had the confident demeanor of a veteran, her light red hair and soft features combining in a package I would normally describe as pretty, although in my current state, judgments of appearance were cloudy at best.
She pulled back my covers, saying it was time to attempt a few steps. The tile floor felt cold when my feet touched down. She gripped my shoulder. I tried one step, but half my cranium was made of lead and the other half cotton candy; I teetered like a drunk, the walls bent, and down on the bed I plopped.
"Equilibrium still off?" she asked, still holding my arm.
`Just a bit. Back of my head throbs."
"The cut is stitched tight," she said, examining my skull. "And fortunately it's on the back of your head, so the hair will grow over the scar in no time."
"Pitiful ... can grow hair but can't walk."
"Let's try one more time," she said, a firm grip at my elbow. "If you can make it to the window, there's a gorgeous view of our parking lot."
I was on my feet, teetering. "You smell nice, Nurse Sonya."
"I smell like antiseptic. One more try?"
I felt slobbering drunk. Needed to lie down. "What if ..."
"Hold on to my arm."
"Thems really fine shoos."
"Will you stop it and take a step?"
"That was a poor excuse for a step, wasn't it?"
"We'll try again later. Lie back down. Can I get you anything?"
"No, thanks."
She was nearly out the door when she stopped, turned to face me. "Can't wait to hear the rest of the story, Jay."
"And what story might that be?" I asked, thoroughly confused.
"Well, when they brought you in last night, you were mumbling something about an octopus surfing on waves of flour at Wrigley Field. The attending doctor couldn't even finish the examination ... had tears in his eyes."
Okay, now I was embarrassed.
Pride and independence aren't worth much when you're laying unconscious in seawater, bleeding from the head nine miles out in the Atlantic. For the second time in four months, the ocean had tried to swallow me. I was now fearful of the ocean, cautious of deep water, and a bit concerned that I did not know what would've become of me had I died.
Death, like dry oil wells, was always an unpopular topic in Texas.
But very popular that Thursday morning as I considered my surroundings: people suffering, bodies wearing out, and several floors below me, death lingering in that cool, quiet room with sheet-covered bodies, white tags hung from gray toes.
A new thought, death. A new reality for hospitalized Jay, mired in the sanitized muck of room 521.
Maurice brought me the captain's hat on Thursday. He was decked out in a purple golf shirt with the North Hills logo embroidered on the pocket. He looked like a member of the Senior PGA Tour. I placed the hat on my oblong head. Oblong, that's what I'd nicknamed myself. Because of my injury, I couldn't wear the hat in a normal fashion; the back rode high and loose, the brim tilted low over my eyes.
"Oblong?" said Maurice, taking the guest chair. "Yeah, I've heard worse names. My old neighborhood had a guy we called Mr. Pink. Wore lots of fur."
"I feel much better now."
Maurice handed me two get-well cards, the first one signed by the pastor, the assistant pastor, and the music minister, in that order; the second one signed by him and his wife.
We pray for your swift recovery and trust God to heal you. Grateful for our friendship. Blessings to you, Maurice and Roberta Evans.
P.S. Sorry I scratched your fanny with the gaff.
We dined on Jamie's cinnamon bread while discussing offshore boats, old Cha
rleston, and why the wealthy spent more time in the marina docks than sailing the high seas. Soon he rose and pulled a second slice from the loaf, then returned to his chair. "I don't understand it either, Jay. With a boat like that, I'd sail it till I ran out of places to stop."
"Me too, Maurice."
"I'd be in the Caribbean and the Azores and the Metaranium."
"The Mediterranean?"
"There too."
Refilling my juice glass, Maurice informed me that Preacher Smoak had sent an open invitation for more deep-sea adventures. And Beaufaine was bulldozing the house.
I set my glass on the bedside table. "I need to ask you a question, Maurice."
He played with the TV remote and said, "Uh-huh?"
"How do you know for sure ... you know, if ya die?"
He looked at me like I had just professed to be a martian. "Don't tell me that," he said, his voice rising. "Don't go and tell me after you done fell off a boat in the middle of the Atlantic and near bled to death, now you're about to up and move to New York City without your salvation. Please tell me you ain't gonna tell me that."
He put his hands on his knees and glared at me.
"Okay, I won't. But how would I know?"
He glanced at the half-eaten loaf for a moment, then contorted his face in a whimsical half-frown. "You know what? ... I ain't gonna tell ya."
"You're not?"
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"Because."
"Because you're selfish? You sound selfish."
"Not selfish. I just got a better plan, what I think you deserve. I'm gonna let you get an earful from a man who can teach it, preach it, even make it stand up and do a pirouette."
"A pirouette?"
"It's a ballet thing. My wife likes it. Anyway, I gotta find a pay phone. Youyou relax. Just lay back there with your lump-headed, unsaved self."
At 5:00 P.M. the Reverend Tyrus Williams walked into my room, looking much larger than when I'd seen him in church from pew twenty-three. He wore Clemson-orange sweats and white sneakers. Perspiration covered his forehead.
"Just left the gym, so please excuse my appearance," he said, taking the guest chair under the television. I had no idea where Maurice had gone. Maybe he'd gone home.
"No problem, Tyrus." Then I told him all about falling from the third level of an offshore fishing boat and whacking my head on the starboard side and I could've drowned except for Maurice gaffed me in the pants and scratched my fanny then dragged me in with an assist from Steve and Ransom, and for the first time in my life I realized I could die in an instant, although pardon me, Tyrus, but simply saying I have faith sounded awful trite.
But I could've died. And at twenty-seven, that's a scary thought.
"God gets our attention in many ways, Jay," Tyrus said, allowing himself a plastic cup of juice. He seemed very at ease about the whole thing.
"So how'd he get your attention, Tyrus? Surely you weren't born pounding on podiums. Ya know you really do mistreat a podium."
He smiled, took a breath, then talked to the window as if in remembrance. "I am one of only three boys from a gang of twelve who are still alive."
"You? In a gang?"
"A gang of stealers, not murderers," said Tyrus. "But sin is sin."
"And now you guest-preach in clubby white churches?"
"God can do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine, son."
I pondered this thought a moment, then applied it elsewhere. "What about Maurice? How'd God get his attention?"
"Aww, who knows. Maurice hasn't changed since he was eight years old. He still plays cops and robbers in the church hallway."
I told Tyrus I wanted to get right with God, but he said getting right with God sounded a bit like the vagueness he preached against.
"You mean I'm vague like the Universal Force?"
"Well, not quite that vague," said Tyrus, "but still vague."
"So, I'm not a true waffle. I'm a circular grid of battered substance?"
Tyrus cleared his throat and continued. `Jay, the chasm is wide between God and man, and only if Jesus were fully man could he die, and only if fully God could he die perfectly to close the chasm; and for all these centuries of digging and searching, no one ever found his bones."
"I've always wondered about those bones ..."
"Lemme finish, son," said Tyr-us, wiping his forehead. "Now you done gone and ruined my rhythm."
"Sorry."
He breathed deep and regained his rhythm. With volume. "The reason no one found his bones is because the tomb was empty. The tomb was empty because he conquered death. You're searching for peace, right? Peace comes through faith, young man, and faith comes through hearing, and if you think you are looking for God then think again because it's actually God who came looking for you. There is one mediator between God and man and that is Christ and those aren't my words they're his words and the living words and the eternal words and those are the only words you're gonna need."
Maybe it was just my head wound, but I had visions of an orderly shouting amen, he and Nurse Sonya doing a charismatic dance, arms shaking in spiritual conniption.
"No one ever explained it like that, Tyrus. Or that loud."
"The explaining of it is one thing, Jay. But are you ready to accept it?"
I thought of myself floating in the Atlantic, unconscious, with blood pouring from my skull.
I was Custer again, surrounded by myself.
It was time to surrender.
For the territory was nothing man could conquer on his own, though the journey had been scenic. I was suddenly back on the sandy south end of Pawleys Island, seated next to Allie with our feet in the current, me about to be date-stamped like that gallon of milk in her poem.
How much better that my stamp read "eternal."
The dull, throbbing pain at the back of my head did not diminish with my repentance, but something did feel different. A bit vague-like a slowrising air bubble of a thought-but I felt like no matter how many times I plunged unconscious into a roiling blue ocean, I'd never truly drown.
Maybe this was that peace-in-the-present-tense thing I'd been trying to figure out.
Hard to comprehend that all of my twelve million, nine hundred and four sins were washed away, forgiven in an instant. Seemed too good, too undeserved. Seemed like there should be a longer process, like writing on a chalkboard for each indiscretion until the sum total was recounted and confessed. But recounting twelve million sins would require a great memory, not to mention a great supply of chalk.
Like most Americans, I had heard the phony-sounding soliloquies of people who had come to faith and claimed that all their problems had vanished, all their desires purified.
I now concluded that to be so much southern-fried hogwash.
Because my head still hurt, my thoughts still ran the gamut, and I still wanted to trade my old Blazer for a jag. But the overriding reality of what lay ahead, of moving to New York with my salvation, was that I didn't have to earn it.
Tyrus returned from the men's room, sat again, and began probing into my vocation.
"I've been a broker for six years, Tyrus."
He crossed one leg, nodded knowingly, as if he'd done this before. "You ever use your talents to benefit the community? I mean, like explaining money and investing to people outside the loop?"
"Outside the loop?" I parroted, placing the captain's hat back on my head. Ouch.
"You know ... people from the other side of the tracks, and I'm not just talking about poor black people, though we have many on the west side. Financial ignorance knows no color."
"True, but is all that use-your-talent stuff a requirement for the newly converted?"
He rubbed his calf and said, "No, no you won't get any points for it; it's just figuring out how to give back, how you can be of use."
Yet another new thought, this giving back. I wasn't even finished with my first new thought, the one on death. Seemed my life was just going t
o be spilling over with new thoughts; I hoped I'd still remember to call my mom in Fort Worth.
Tyrus tugged on his sweatshirt sleeve, checked his watch, rose to leave. With his index finger, he thumped me on the ankle. "I got a wedding rehearsal in less than an hour, Jay, but think about what I said. God can and will use you. You just got to be willing." He shook my hand and turned for the door.
"Tyrus?"
"Yes?" His back was still to me.
"Do you know if Jesus would drink a brew on the beach?"
With one hand on the knob, he stared into the door inches from his nose, then turned to face me. "Mercy, son. Let's tackle that one when you start maturing in the faith. For now, you do the drinking. Drink of the living water."
"That would be the Lord, right?"
"My, you're a quick one."
Tyrus left me then, and as he walked the hall, I could hear him whistling.
Nurse Sonya hinted I would go home soon if I could take five steps without help.
I took ten. Even with that, they wanted to observe me for one more night.
But this night felt different than the previous two. Alone in room 521, I considered what Tyrus had said about God desiring to know me. Somehow I didn't think God wanted me to die in the Atlantic Ocean. And now I felt myself wanting to know God.
Instead of communing with the Almighty, however, I got a visit from Steve Cole.
At 9:00 P.M. he strolled into my room, bearing gifts of chocolate drink and MoonPies. "Cubs are playing," he said, grabbing the remote and finding the game.
I finished off the cinnamon bread; Steve ate his gift.
"Appreciate your diving in the ocean to get me."
"Don't mention it, bro," he said, adjusting the volume.
I wiped cinnamon from my chin. "You coulda died."
"Never thought about it. Just reacted. Say, are these the monthly rents in New York?" He had reached over and pulled a stack of papers off the dresser.
"Yeah, the office sent those printouts over to condition me. Shocking, eh?"
"Unbelievable," he said, shuffling them in his lap.
Flabbergasted: A Novel Page 21
