by Jacob Beaver
“I’m done,” Steve said. “I’m ready to go home. But first, I want a drink. Let’s get drunk tonight.”
* * *
As I write this, I see more and more clearly what Steve was up to, or thought he was up to. I also sense, or think I sense, the movement of God’s hand.
That line Steve spun about faith trumping fact—he said something similar on the plane to Atlanta, and I bet that’s what he told the people at the BBC. I can just imagine Steve pitching his film to a bunch of trendy, postmodern TV producers, all sipping mineral water through their designer beards. I’m sure he told them that he’d keep it nice and balanced, that it would contain respectful interviews with pious locals, to show how Lee Buckner changed the lives of the simple people around him. Did it even matter, in the end, if he was a fake? That was the gist of the finished film, how Steve wasn’t out to expose anyone—which he obviously was—but rather to show how one man affected his small community through the power of their belief in him.
“What is truth?” Steve says to the camera. “It’s what people believe. It’s what you believe.”
And so the viewers had to make up their own minds about the “miracle on the lake,” aided by some heavy hints from Steve, who explains at length why he never got the miracle on film—but, of course, doesn’t mention that he outright accused Lee of faking it, and that this was on film.
My brother is an idiot, as I said at the beginning. He’s a clever idiot, I’ll give him that, but his cleverness only heightens his idiocy, in my opinion. I’m not nearly as clever, thank God. So let’s talk plainly. Steve missed the point. He had the whole thing upside down. Whether or not a man walked on water doesn’t matter in the end, I agree. The world is full of more pressing issues. But it does matter if the man lies about it. It especially matters if that lie is the foundation of other people’s belief in him, of my belief in him.
* * *
When we got back to the motel, the parking lot was empty. So was the office, and the door was locked. The other three went straight to the bar. I said I’d join them soon, but I didn’t really want to. I wasn’t in the mood to drink, which was a first for me, though it seems long ago now. These days I hardly ever drink. It’s not that I disapprove of it, and I don’t look down on people for drinking. I just don’t do it myself. I don’t need the distraction. There are other things in my life, things that interest me and make me feel good, better than any drink. That evening it was Summer. All I wanted to do was find Summer.
I sat on my bed and looked at the picture of the lion and the lamb. Every few minutes I’d open the curtain and check the parking lot. Now the light was fading, the trees losing color. Should I go to her house? I knew where she lived, and I had a car—but Steve had the key.
As I approached the bar, a truck pulled into the parking lot, its headlights sweeping the row of cars. I saw a white flash at the end of the row, and I went over to look. It was the long white Ford. Just then, a woman walked out of the bar. Summer’s friend, Kendra. She saw me and waved.
“You better get in there,” she said. “Summer needs looking after. She is drunk.”
“Already?”
“Your brother’s been buying shots, and Summer can’t handle liquor. Your brother can’t neither. He’s getting kinda frisky.”
They were sitting around a table near the door, with Tino and Dave facing me. Tino was in the middle of a story, I could tell. He had his arms up, palms flat in surrender, and his little egglike head was quivering with amusement. Steve’s arm, I noticed, was draped over the back of Summer’s chair. When Tino greeted me, the arm withdrew.
Summer grabbed my hand. “Hey, John! Where you been?”
“Where you been?” I said.
Tino left his story hanging and went to the bathroom, and Steve walked over to the bar. He called back to Dave, something about whiskey, and Dave got up too.
“Let’s go,” I said to Summer.
“But I have to say goodbye!”
“I’ll tell them for you,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s go. Now.”
Outside it was almost dark. Summer fell against me, and I steered her towards her car. The doors weren’t locked and I got her in the passenger seat, but then she couldn’t find her key. She searched in her bag. She searched again. She started dumping things out, and that’s when I saw the key. It was in the ignition.
As we drove off, Summer said she’d spent the entire day with Diane Shelby, who was on her ass and was a bitch. Finally Diane left and Summer took off early, but I wasn’t in my room, so she called Kendra, since she hated going to bars alone and didn’t know if I’d be there. And now she was buzzed. No, she was more than buzzed. She needed to sober up. There was water somewhere in the car. She bought it yesterday and . . .
“Here it is!”
I don’t remember saying much, apart from asking Summer the way. Driving those mountain roads at night was a new experience. There were no streetlights and very few houses, and each curve seemed to jump out of the darkness. It was exactly like a film jumping, a scary film full of tree trunks and big drops.
When we reached Summer’s place, I turned off the road and stopped. The driveway had a slight bump in it, and from here we couldn’t see the house. I switched off the engine and hit the lights, and now I couldn’t see anything at all. It took a second for my eyes to adjust. Then I saw that the sky was full of stars.
“I missed you all weekend,” Summer said.
I turned and found her in the darkness, and we kissed, and kept kissing, and soon I was overtaken by the passion of my life.
I won’t be more specific, because Summer wouldn’t like it. Besides, you don’t need specifics. We all know what people do, and saying it doesn’t say much. The most I can tell you is that the moment came in waves, great waves that pushed me out of myself, beyond the reach of words, and then the waves broke over me and rolled away, and the two of us floated back to the long white car and the starry sky.
We talked a little. Summer said she didn’t want me to leave, and I said I wasn’t leaving yet. I’d have to pick her up in the morning and take her to work, wouldn’t I? Yes, I would, and she’d make me breakfast. Seven o’clock? Seven it is, and I started the car. I drove over the bump in the driveway and we saw the lights of the house, and then we kissed and said goodbye.
I drove back to the motel and went straight to bed. The others were still drinking, I think. I remember hearing their voices later, or maybe I dreamed that, because I dreamed a lot that night. The last part of the dream has stayed with me all these years. Steve and I were at our grandparents’ flat. I was young and Steve was just a toddler, barely walking. Our grandparents lived high up in a tower block, and Steve was always fascinated by the lift. In the dream, Steve sneaks out of the flat and I chase him into the lift. We ride down together, watching the green dot light up at each floor, and then the doors open and I forget about Steve, because there is Summer in her car.
“Well, can you?”
“I suppose I can,” I say.
And I take the wheel, and I drive us through a sunlit meadow. Summer’s laughing and eating an apple, and I’m so happy to be here. Green apple, green grass, green eyes. And then the mountains loom ahead, and I follow the road up into the trees. Up, up, up. We can smell the air, and now we can see. We’re out of the trees, on top of the world. Everything is soft and blue. Mountains meet sky in soft blue waves, one after another after another. We ride those waves in our long white boat, heading ever further from shore, until the waves crash over us and—
I woke up.
It was dark outside. I didn’t know what time it was, and I didn’t check my watch. I was still half in that dream. But I got up and felt for my clothes and pulled them on. I stood by the door in the darkness, wondering what to do next. Then I opened the door.
I walked across the parking lot and set off up the road. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was just walking. I was just a man shaking off a dream in the early morning, and as I wen
t along, the sun came up. Soon I noticed puffs of whiteness behind the trees, and I realized where I was. One more bend in the road and I’d be at Lee Buckner’s house.
The lake was covered in dazzling plumes of mist. I stopped by the big sign and looked down.
And I saw someone.
A man was standing at the top of the ramp by the house. He was only a black shape against brilliant white, but the shape was quite clear, and I knew that shape. Now the man started walking down the ramp.
I took the camera out of my pocket, set it on video and pressed record.
* * *
I am a slow person. I might talk fast, in my English way, but I do other things slowly. I learn slowly, I think, and I certainly write slowly. I started writing this in spring and it’s now August. The afternoons are smothering hot, as they say around here. I like to write early, in the cool of the day. I make coffee and walk across the yard to my workshop, and then I open the laptop, reread a paragraph or two, and tap tap tap.
But this is the last morning. I’m almost done.
Sitting beside the laptop is the camera that Steve gave me ten years ago. It contains the photo of Goose and the video I shot. The video only runs for a minute, but it’s perfectly in focus. I used to watch it over and over, until I could close my eyes and see each second. I still can, but I’m going to watch it again today. When I’ve finished writing, I’ll watch it once more, and then I’ll delete it.
I have never shown the video to anyone. Steve didn’t ask for his camera, and I didn’t offer it. After I shot the video I put the camera in my pocket, walked back to the motel and went about my day, which was a long one and ended in a different time zone, at the top of my parents’ house, crashed out on my old bed.
I haven’t seen much of Steve since then. The BBC aired his film, and they let him make a longer one, about American soldiers under fire in Afghanistan. Then CNN picked him up and he became the Parachute Reporter. I’d see him on TV, dropping into the middle of battles out in some desert, a bit slimmer and without the bouncy shoes, but the same old Steve. Recently my mother told me he’s given up the parachuting, which may be a sign of age, or perhaps he had a bad feeling about ISIS in Iraq. Anyhow, that’s history. Or it will be one day, when Hollywood makes the biopic.
Me, I went back to North Carolina a month later. I stayed with Summer, though I slept in a different room, and I didn’t leave till my visa ran out. Then I returned in the spring and we married. We had the wedding in a field behind the house, beneath a dogwood tree full of white blossoms. Lee Bucker married us. A year later he baptized me in Watauga Lake, just before Summer gave birth to our daughter, Annabelle.
Lee and I became friends. He’s taught me a lot about building work and helped me get jobs. In the South, where most houses are made of wood, a carpenter is a builder. My proudest achievement is our church. Three years ago, soon after my father died, Lee’s congregation grew too big for the barn and he decided to tear it down. I argued with him, of course, but Lee said he’d keep the best wood and use it for the new floor, and I said no, I’d do the floor. We ended up doing it all together, apart from the pulpit, which I made here in the workshop. I found some old planks of chestnut and black walnut, and spent many hours working with the tools that Summer’s father left me. I say “left me” because that’s what Madge once said, shortly after the wedding. She was giving me her approval, and ever since we’ve got along well, mostly. Madge can be kind of abrupt, but I’m abrupt myself, according to Summer. She doesn’t say “abrupt,” though. She says “nervous.”
My own mother has visited twice, and we’ve taken Deedee and Annabelle to England several times. The last time was my father’s funeral, which was also the last time I saw Steve, and met his girlfriend. She is a news anchor in LA and talks with huge excitement, as if she’s always giving you a news flash. Summer found her puzzling, but she likes my mother. Summer really likes my mother. Sometimes she talks about moving to England, since my mother won’t move over here. Lee talks about it too. He has been encouraging me to establish my own church somewhere else. Maybe that’s why I’ve taken to writing, as a way of sifting my memories, of remembering where I’ve been and deciding where to go. But I don’t think I’m going anywhere, at least not to England. My duties are to my wife and two children and our church. Now and then I stand in for Lee at Sunday service, but I am not an inspiring pastor. Being inspirational is what Lee does—and what Steve does, come to think of it. They’re both great at firing people up, but not so interested in follow-through, in life’s little details. I’m more like my father. I mind the details. I notice all the things that no one wants to hear about, like moss on the roof and wild onions spreading in the front yard. That’s my line of work.
Now, I know what you’re probably thinking, because I’ve often wondered about it: why didn’t I show the video to Steve? Lee wouldn’t have been pleased, but that’s not the answer, and neither is the fact that Steve would have been just too pleased. Before I started writing, I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t have an easy one, but I’ll do my best to explain myself.
Life is miraculous. You are a miracle, and I am a miracle, and so is the space between us, which in this case is the page that I am writing and you are reading. Isn’t that a miracle? I believe it is, and that miracles are all around us. If the word “miracle” bothers you, replace it with “beauty.” Beauty is all around us. We don’t see it much of the time, because we’re too busy hiding from it, or looking for it elsewhere, but it’s right in front of our noses. And occasionally we do see it. Something happens and our eyes open. Suddenly we wake up. When the plane touched down in Atlanta and that little kid started screaming, and the tough guy turned around—to me, that was a miracle. I thought he’d say something to the mother, or even the child, but he didn’t say a word, and yet the child stopped screaming. When something like that happens, we’re astonished. Then, in time, we forget. I said I’d never forget that moment, but I will. Having written about it, I can feel it starting to fade. Why? Why do we forget?
Because we change. Each miracle changes us, and as it does, it loses its importance. The miracle itself ceases to matter. In a sense, it stops being a miracle. It becomes part of who we are, what we see. Miracles are everywhere and miracles are nowhere, like the hand of God.
I didn’t show the video to Steve because it wasn’t meant for Steve. It was meant for me. And now I have to let it go. I have to close this laptop and turn on the camera and watch the screen.
About the Author
JACOB BEAVER was born in Kenya in 1964. He grew up in England and lived in London for twenty years, working in publishing and as an editor at the Royal College of Art. In 2007 he married in East Tennessee, where he now lives. His writing has appeared in the London Review of Books and British magazines. Find him online at jacobbeaver.com.
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Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
the man who walked on water. Copyright © 2017 by Jacob Beaver. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
first edition
Digital Edition JANUARY 2017 ISBN: 9780062664563
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