planks. As the tide crashed against the pylons, I could feel the deck swaying back and forth. I switched my “waterproof to 200 meters” Timex to the stopwatch feature, timing the waves as I walked forward, the wind cutting at my eyes every time I looked up. The wind blew so hard I felt as though unzipping my jacket and holding the corners of the nylon might actually lift me up into the clouds and back to shore like a human kite.
As I got closer and closer to the turn, the waves were bigger than I had anticipated. I waited seventy yards from shore. I tried not to look back but when I turned my head I could see the misty foggy green trees, the rectangular stucco buildings, and the melted outline of the people in their different colored raincoats huddled together on the shore. Each jacket, each thrashing plant was like an impressionist painting. If Winslow Homer and Monet had painted this canvas together it would have been a masterpiece.
The wake of the breaking wave splashed around my knees. I waited until the big wave came and I went forward thirty yards still to go. All I could muster was a stiff, frantic walk my shoulder turned into the wind. Seven seconds. I breathed as fast as I could, storing oxygen for the moment. When I came to the corner I turned as the wave came crashing down on the pier. I went to my knees, the water pushing me like a bully, and then lying prostrate on the soaked decking, I wrapped my fingers around the first plank I could grab. I hoped the steel nails would hold me secure.
Jeannie, my oldest, is taking soccer lessons at two hundred bucks a summer. During her U10 game, she actually took the time to pet a dog on the sidelines…while she was playing. As the other team was dribbling the ball to the goal, her coach asked me, with a livid expression somewhere between a rabid dog and a police interrogator on six cups of espresso, what the hell she was doing as though I were some sort of bad parent. I didn’t have a clue; I guessed that she just like dogs more than soccer. Mix that in with her braces, their mortgage, and my son Jeremy’s karate lessons and I have about a hundred dollars a month to spend on myself.
In our kitchen, we had a stainless steel range with a pizza oven and a grill for cooking kebobs. I redesigned the entire kitchen just to fit it into the plans. When my wife went shopping she would bring home food like rack of lamb, shrimp for scampi and designer ice cream. Now, I eat fast food and drink cheap beer to fill the rest of my stomach. I miss that Jenn-Air like it was a pet. If only I could get rid of the mortgage my life might be livable again.
The big wave hit me almost knocking me off the deck. I tried to hold on but an inch long splinter pierced the palm of my hand as I slid into the huge pylon. I opened my mouth to scream, but there was no sound, the water trapping my voice and clogging my ears. All I could do was hold on to the pylon, gagging and coughing as the water entered my open mouth. I told myself not to breathe, and I wrenched my stomach muscles as hard as I could so my diaphragm didn’t move. When the wave water was replaced by rainwater I almost didn’t realize it. I tried to get to my feet and I slipped banging my knee against the wooden decking. When I got to my feet, I saw the blood pouring from my palm. I staggered forward trying to make it to the wall of the boathouse spitting and coughing the frigid, salty water out of my lungs so I could breathe.
When I got to the boathouse, I leaned against the sea-worn robin’s egg blue paint on the clapboards. While I gagged and coughed, I picked the splinter out of my palm, the blood thinning quickly with the rainwater. A modern motorboat was rocking furiously against the wooden pylons, but big rubber balloon buoys cushioned each blow. I walked forward, grabbed the tarnished brass knob and opened the door.
Standing under the light of a single lantern were the other relatives of Shamus O’ Donahue. They wore fisherman’s raincoats that looked like wool sweaters coated in tar. Their rubber hats were turned up at the brim. On an old wooden block table in front of them, leftover fish scales reflected the light between four piles of hundred pound Irish notes.
“Congratulations,” the oldest man said. “You’re the first one to make it here in quite some time.”
“I’m going to pay off my mortgage,” I said, quietly not sure if an American accent would mess up the deal.
The man pulled an old three-inch thick iron pipe from under the table. Like a fat pipe bomb, ten and 7/8’s inches long, I marveled at their ingenuity and generosity in supplying me with a means to get the money back to shore without it getting wet. He rolled the money in a tight wad and plopped one stack at a time into the pipe. The bottom was soldered shut. He took a tube of plumber’s caulk and a monkey wrench and as his kin held the iron pipe like a vise he tightened the other end with an iron cap until it was waterproof. Next he threaded a rope, a small modern climber’s rope, through a hole on the top. He added a double hitch to secure it.
Then, he did a thing that startled me. I had assumed that I would be able to go back to shore with them on the boat. Instead, he pulled a metal detector, like those they carry along the beach at Cape Cod, out from the corner and ran it over the pipe. A staccato beep erupted every time he crossed the iron.
“In case you don’t make it back,” he said. They placed the rope over my head, the pipe dangled there pulling my neck down. The mortgage was heavy.
“Everything comes ashore in due time,” he winked. They took the lantern, closed the door to the boathouse, got in the boat and drove back to shore. I could see them staring back at a man who would never go home.
The End.
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An Irish Nor'easter Page 3
