The Water Is Wide

by Pat Conroy

  As I pulled in view of the dock and was making the final elaborate preparations for landing, I spotted George Westerfield, a teacher at the high school and a solid regular in the Skimberry bull sessions. He was sitting with his feet dangling over the dock, chewing tobacco and periodically spitting into the river. On his left sat a startling, exotic man, slender and well over six feet tall, who was staring intently at my boat. The man did not have a single hair on his head.

  They helped me tie the boat up and George introduced me to his college friend, Peter Walter. I learned in the ensuing conversation that Peter and George had anchored a strong soccer team at the University of the South during their undergraduate days. Peter was on a break from a private school where he taught in New England and had brought several of his students with him on a leisurely tour of the South. He spoke rapidly, a machine-gun patter of words and phrases that flew out of his mouth like small, harmless cartridges. I liked him immediately. He professed a genuine interest in the island and the children I was teaching and asked me what methods I was using to improve the kids’ reading ability. When I had carefully explained the cabalistic ritual of my teaching secrets, he affably informed me that those methods were all wrong.

  “Pat, I teach with this fabulous man who has developed a foolproof method for teaching kids to read. He takes kids who can’t read a word and has them reading on a third- or fourth-grade level by the end of one year,” Peter said.

  “Come to the island tomorrow and show me your stuff,” I said.

  “You’ll take me to the island? That’s great. That’s simply fantastic. Can I take the kids I brought with me? They would love it.”

  The next morning the boat was filled with Peter and his three students. Zeke Skimberry, who had also fallen under Peter’s spell, went along with us to fix the inscrutable water pump. Peter talked incessantly during the entire trip. He had joined the Peace Corps but dropped out during the training sessions because he could not tolerate authority figures controlling his life. He switched to the Teachers Corps, but opted out once again during the training sessions for the same reason. To make the cycle complete he planned to join the Job Corps and the Marines, wash out during both preliminary trainings, retire to the wilderness, and write a definite confession on life in the American Corps. His enthusiasm infected everything he touched, magnified life about him; his students worshiped him openly and laughed convulsively whenever he cracked a joke, no matter how corny.

  When we entered the classroom, Peter’s hairless head and tall form striding gracefully to the center of the room froze my critical bunch for several moments. I waited for Prophet to utter some endearing salutation like, “Man ain’t got no hair on his haid,” but the gang contented themselves with staring and whispering when Peter first made his entrance. One of Peter’s students was from Hong Kong, so I had him go to the map, pick out his country, then let Peter tell about the country. (The boy from Hong Kong spoke English about as well as I spoke Cantonese.)

  It did not take Peter long to capture the attention of my entire class. He had a way of talking, gesturing and bouncing along—hypnotism by words and movement—that fascinated my group even though, at first, they nudged each other with their elbows and flashed each other amused glances. Peter remained oblivious. He gathered everyone in the room around him, including me, and initiated math games, word games, and geography games.

  “Take the number five. Add seven. Subtract two, and multiply times three. What do you get? Think now. We have to learn to think fast on our feet. We have to be quick and bright. We’ve got to enjoy learning. Enjoy doing. I’ll do it again. Slower this time, but not too slow. Take the number five. Add seven. Subtract two and multiply times three. What do you get?”

  “Don’t get nothin’,” whispered Richard.

  “Get thirty,” said Frank.

  “Great. That’s right. That is great. Who are you?”

  “Frank.”

  “You are really smart, Frank. Any other smart kids around? Sure, everybody’s smart. Everybody’s smart. They just need a chance to prove it. They need to find something they like.”

  Peter worked these games for half an hour. The kids never took their eyes off him during his entire, spirited performance. His hands moved beautifully as he spoke and his hands were very important to his teaching. They were like twin batons controlling the mood and tempo of an orchestra. When he tired of this, he called for a volleyball. Oscar retrieved one from the closet, a spongy, deflated ball, which Peter claimed would be good enough. He then launched into the history of soccer, told us how it was the world’s most popular game, how its popularity was limited in the United States, and how the game could be played with ease in the Yamacraw schoolyard.

  “Soccer is a game played with the feet,” he said, controlling the ball expertly on the floor. “All of us are so conditioned to use our hands when we play sports that it is very difficult for us to use our feet only. It takes lots of practice. Now get these desks out of the center of the room and I’ll show you some real footwork.”

  We shoved the desks to the corners of the room, leaving the center entirely bare except for the wood stove.

  “Now, some of you boys and girls try to steal the ball from me using only your feet.”

  Naturally all eighteen of my students surged forward, kicking and booting their feet at the ball. Peter took about thirteen direct hits on his shins as he maneuvered the ball through the gauntlet of shod feet. After his legs could take no more punishment, Peter led the thundering herd to the playground.

  Mrs. Brown went crazy when she saw my babies swarming over the playground before the time designated in the sacred rule book. I convinced her that Peter was a scholar of some renown, a gifted wanderer who traveled the country demonstrating the joys of soccer to rural children. He would even teach her class if she so desired—but she insisted indignantly that her class studied more important things than games. “You don’t learn a thing by having fun. You gotta work. You gotta work.”

  By this time Peter had miraculously divided the class into two opposing squads, put Lincoln as goalie at one end of the field, Ethel at the other, and was leading a hopelessly chaotic pack of soccer neophytes up and down the field. Saul kicked at the ball, missed by two feet, fell to the earth, and was immediately trampled by Sidney and Richard. Cindy Lou tried to boot the ball and kicked Anna instead. Samuel and Sidney chased after the ball, kicking conscientiously, until finally they stood on the perimeter of the field, kicking the hell out of each other.

  “Cut it out, man,” I yelled.

  “Boy kicked me,” whined Sidney.

  “Who you call boy, boy?” answered Samuel.

  They resumed kicking each other. Meanwhile, Peter broke loose from the crowd and was heading expertly toward Lincoln’s goal. Lincoln, a passionate defender of his imaginary net, saw Peter approaching formidably and decided that it was better to retreat than to face Peter’s kick with resolution and courage. Lincoln fled from his position and Peter rolled one home. The game lasted a half-hour. Peter then rallied the entire troupe, marched them into the classroom, and demonstrated his control of the ball. Without using his hands, he bounced the ball off his shining head fifty straight times, then repeated the performance with each of his feet.

  His soccer was excellent, but what impressed me more was his communication with the kids, so natural and spontaneous. They followed him around the entire day, pawing at him, talking to him, laughing at his jokes, and trying to hold his hand. He listened to their stories, laughed at their jokes, and answered every question they directed to him, carefully and with enthusiasm. This guy Peter was a natural teacher, I thought later, one of those rare human beings who loved and responded to children more than to adults and who could draw children to him as effortlessly as a magnet gathering iron filings. It rained on the trip back, a slashing, driving rain that limited visibility to a few feet, and it was interesting to note that Peter entertained the entire miserable boatful of us the whole way back. Soaki
ng wet and shivering, we pulled the boat up and Peter said, “Wasn’t that a magnificent ride?”

  By far the most successful visitor, according to my students, was Richie Matta. Richie was a stocky, powerful, and irrepressible Italian who had entered my life with a flourish the last year I taught at Beaufort High School. He crashed a party at my house during the middle of winter, made friends with everyone there the first hour, then took over the whole party during the second. When one nostalgic group commenced to sing old rock-and-roll favorites from the fifties, Richie startled the entire burping, beer-sodden chorus by stepping back from the record player and singing like a deep-voiced seraph. He was a songbird amidst insects and frogs. We eventually gravitated next door, where Tim Belk, another friend, banged away at a piano while Richie traced the history of rock and roll in the previous decade. His repertoire seemed unlimited, his energy seemed boundless, and he sang for three hours.

  Richie’s life history was revealed to me after we became friends that night. He came over frequently to talk. He was raised in New Orleans in a fragmented, rather chaotic childhood. He had sung professionally on Bourbon Street. He had gotten a good break in music, cut a few records in Memphis, and become a minor rock sensation in the Delta region. Then the Marine Corps intervened, drafted him, and sent him to Vietnam. His musical career had died the moment his draft notice arrived. He had come to Beaufort with the Marine Corps and planned to get a college degree when he was discharged. He envied Bernie, Tim Belk, and me because we had been to college, received degrees, and spoke with phony authority about the contents of a sophomore literature book. Richie, a lesser man, could tune a car, tear a motor boat apart, plaster a ceiling, build a house, and sing an aria from Carmen. But Richie wanted to be a teacher. He was a boat mechanic for his last year as a Marine and he had tired of a life whose trademark was grease under the fingernails. He longed for a life of scholarship and contemplation of Greek urns and things. Bernie and I used to gag when we considered the possibility of the hairy, swarthy Richie, sipping sherry from a fragile glass, dressed in rumpled tweeds, reciting poetry from a frail leather volume. The vision was so out of character—like Attila the Hun wearing ballerina shoes. We preferred our own mythology of Richie Matta.

  I brought Richie and his new bride, Aldie, to Yamacraw in early spring during the season of the fog. Richie held to the common theory that I could not zip my pants, much less navigate a boat, and I wanted to demonstrate the skills of boatmanship acquired over the year. I wore my official winter wardrobe with the flashy scarf and impressive boots, and the wool hat tilted rakishly on my seasoned head. I coveted Richie’s respect and played the Admiral Nelson role during the preparation for landing. I even dismissed the fog, which was starting to rise thickly and ominously, as a minor irritant and one that would not deter a master seaman. We left Zeke and entered into that strange world of swamp and fog, Nelson at the wheel, Aldie sitting prettily on the passenger seat, and Richie asking me if I was sure I knew where I was going or what I was doing.

  “Of course, Richie. Just shut your big mouth and let Admiral Conroy do the driving. I know this run like the palm of my hand.”

  Midway we were hopelessly lost. We crossed the widest stretch of water on the trip, turned when we reached a familiar oyster bank, and hit a sandbar that was not supposed to be there. Richie pulled us off the bar, I retraced my path, figured out what I had done wrong, embarked on a new direction, and hit the same sandbar again.

  “Hey, Admiral Conroy,” Richie said mockingly.

  “O.K., Rich. Do not say a word. Promise? Don’t ever bring this up to Bernie and wipe it out of your own mind, son. It’s all a mistake.”

  We finally found the right shore line and followed it unerringly to Ted Stone’s dock. Driving to the school, I asked Richie what songs he would sing.

  “Any song they want to hear, son. I know them all.”

  His performance that day was indeed notable. Top Cat whispered, “Oh Gawd,” when Richie warmed up with Otis Red-ding’s “Dock of the Bay” and ended with “Proud Mary.” He sang for a solid hour, singing soul and folk, traditional and rock. He told the kids about New Orleans, about singing in the clubs, about the underworld and crooks. He briefly described his experiences in Vietnam. But mostly he sang. When he discovered their love of church and gospel music, he lit into “Down by the Riverside.” Ethel responded by singing “Blue Burying Ground” accompanied by Anna and Cindy Lou. Soon the whole class erupted in sounds of feet clapping and feet stamping and voices singing. Mrs. Brown poked her head in the window, her face a portrait of disapproval, and grimaced in displeasure. Richie did not see her and at the precise moment she appeared, he roared out his highest glass-shattering note of the day, which caused Mrs. Brown to jump, the kids to go into convulsions, and me to scurry into the hall with apologies to the highly offended principal. Later on in the day, Richie distributed records he had made in Memphis to every kid in the class. I put one of them on the record player and we listened to a much younger Richie crooning the top song of his aborted career, ‘Time Out for Love.’ ” Each day at recess, after Richie’s appearance, the girls gathered by the record player and danced to the voice of Richie Matta. One of the California boys, on first arriving at the school, asked one of the girls if she had heard of James Brown.

  She replied, “Yeh. You hear of Richie Matta?”

  “No.”

  “He sing ’Time Out for Love,’ “ she explained.

  I also taped Richie’s performance that day and periodically when boredom settled in, I would flick on one of Richie’s brighter moments.

  “Lawd, that man sing good.”

  “Not as good as me, Saul,” I said.

  “Shoot, mahn,” said Oscar. “You sing like a frog.”

  “Oh, that boy say Conrack sing like frog,” cooed Ethel.

  “I sing good,” I insisted.

  “You sing so bad, Conrack! I laugh so hard when you sing.”

  “Man hurt my ears,” someone said.

  “ ‘Time out, time out for love,’ ” I crooned.

  “Gawd, stop.”

  “Gawd, that sound so bad. Man dyin’,” said Cindy Lou.

  “I taught Richie to sing.”

  “That not so,” said Frank seriously.

  Then we would settle down to listen seriously to Richie’s legacy to the classroom for one of the world’s most appreciative audiences. Richie Matta, whose career sparked brightly then faded like memory when he left the Delta, made his comeback and made it big with eighteen kids on Yamacraw Island.

  Lincoln forced me back onto the kindness-to-mute-animals platform when he told me he hog-tied his dog every summer to pick ticks off him. I once more railed against cruel bastards owning animals, and if he could not treat a dog right, why in the hell did he have one anyway? Lincoln giggled and said he was going to tie the dog up again next summer and do the same thing. There were many times when my sermons fell on ears of stone. The kids could not understand my concern for animals. They loved their dogs and cats, but treated them with far more cruelty than I thought was necessary. Ethel gave me the clue that this attitude toward animals was a pervasive part of the island culture when she told me about her uncle. Her uncle’s name was Charlie and was rather well known around the island for his prodigious drinking. Ethel told this story about Charlie and her aunt.

  “They had this ole cat, Mr. Conroy. Lawd, that cat could ate anything. Anything you put out that cat snatch ’em up before you could look around. One night Uncle Charlie say, ’Man, this liver I buy sure look good. So red and fine. Honey, fick this here liver up tonight so I can eat it tomorrow at lunch.’ So my aunt fick up the liver with salt and leave it on the table. In the morning she wake up and look fo the liver and found it nowhere in the room. She look all around and never could see that liver. So she say, ‘Charlie, did you eat that liver? I don’t find it nowhere,’ and Charlie say,? don’t know. That goddam cat musta eat it during the night.’ So he say, ‘Here, kitty. Here, little kitty, you
want some good food.’ The kitty hear Charlie callin’ and comes runnin’ out from under the bed. Then the kitty follow Charlie out the door and Charlie grab a hoe and chop kitty’s head clean off.”

  With this magnificent punchline, the class laughed hysterically. I stood there hoping that an appropriate sermon would form on my lips.

  Then Ethel said, “But Gawd, that cat sho’ could eat.” And Oscar said, “Cat don’t eat when it ain’t got no head.” Spurred by the success of her story about kitty’s decapitation, Ethel continued in the same vein. “One time Charlie didn’t like this little chicken-eatin’ dog. Dog pop chain many times and gobble up one, two, maybe three biddies before we catch ’im and chain ’im up again. Once he get himself four biddies before we see ’im. Charlie go get ’im but dog see ’im comin’ and run under the house. He peek his head out a few minutes later and Charlie grabs him around the neck. He gets the chicken-eatin’ dog by the tail, and swings him round and ’round and then breaks dog’s head against tree. Eye pop out and brains bust. Dog dead when Charlie let ’im go.”

  “What a nice story, Ethel,” I intoned.

  “Dog bad,” Prophet said. “He eat biddie.”

  “Would you kill a dog that ate biddies, Prophet?” I asked.

  “I shoot ’im daid,” he replied.

  “I shoot im in the haid,” Oscar added.

  “Dog that suck egg is bad, too. I shoot ’em daid,” Jasper said.

  “Oh Gawd, egg-suckin’ dog suck all egg up. Gotta kill ’im or you don’t get no eggs,” Lincoln said.