Peatrick – A work in Progress

I know thee, salvation boat. For we have performed upon thee, thou abramanation, who comest ever without being invoked.

this gray wilderness – no moon – the endless heave of steel ice wave, salt sting, the urgent whump of my mammal heart blood draining dark into cold water

so cold

wait wait

not yet

swooping tide through a narrow pass of stone pillars leads to a wide-open space. I am swept into a deep bay. The water; black. Mist hangs heavy under the full moon. My sorry eyes are dazzled by blue light on dark water. I blink into sight.

As I transit the stony entrance, a whirlpool catches me, roundaround swinging aroundround, bow to stern, stern to bow. Twirling into vertigo. I gulp back the rising bile to swallow, like a codfish inhaling a hook, my bitterness.

A centrifugal swoosh sends me sliding backward. Crunch. My stern impacts the rocky shore.

At rest.

I want out of my beaten kayak. I brace my hands, feeling the familiar grit of cold basalt. I struggle to emerge from my boat. My legs, cramped and cold, are useless. I cannot leave my fiberglass shell. I lean the boat over and pull myself out in stages: chest, waist, legs, feet. I lie helpless – a new-legged mercreature, gasping on the dry.

I am in a piece; nothing broken. I am cold of course; my drysuit has long since stopped keeping me dry. The patches and stitches that hold it together give me a Frankenstein appearance. I rub my hands across my face, pressing hard to feel my thin cheeks beneath the salt strands of my beard. My hair, that which remains, is a mat – dreads thick as tangled kelp.
Hidden beneath the false armor of my drysuit lurks a ghastly creature. My skin: red, salt specked, scale crusted. No fat anymore; my veins show through translucent flesh like blue and red cords. My muscles are taut; sustained by nothing.

My beard flows over my chest, absurdly strengthened through constant paddling, to merge with the tangled curls covering the concavity of my belly. A sudden puff of pelt explodes between my stiff thighs, sheltering the shriveled nose of a penis barely peeking through the matted hair. My knees – a mess from bracing against the sides of my kayak. Bonelike shins. Feet chapped – red splits between my toes. Toenails – curling yellow talons.

Even monsters need a den; I set out to search for a place to sleep. On a full moon, on a night like this, it is not so hard to find a bed. Even in this place with no beach, I make do.

I search in silence; here, there is no one with whom to speak. After an hour of probing, I find a stony shelf covered with thick mats of seaweed. I pull my boat up past the high tide mark then burrow like a crab into the decaying wrack. The iodine smell is a balm to my fatigue; I fall into sleep.

A sudden voice, “Peatrick! Awake!”

“Here I am!” I say.

I sit up to find not kelp but golden fields of silken sand. The cold of the northern sea is gone; a gentle sweet-scented warmth flows over me. Blue sea glistening under a glad sun. Light perfume breeze ruffling my hair. My reddened chapped skin, the scabs, and scars that beset me – gone. Healed. Where now my wounded, wrinkled body?

How I’ve longed to feel the warmth of that sand. To feel the heat of surging life again. To let the grains slip, jewel-like, through my fingers. Golden grains, hot as gledes, falling like stars to merge into that vast infinity of glowing tropic youth.

I reach for the sand but as my fingers claw into the surface, I find it is changed. Hard as stone. Cold as seaweed. I awaken slowly. I am in my dank crab’s nest, curled up, knees to chin. Burrowing out, I see nothing but a misty gray-black expanse of basaltic rock, fading indefinitely into a sullen gray sea. The soft slap of waves, the punctuation point of gull cries, the ammonia stench of the multitude of birds.

Home.

I have work to do.

This is how I live. The ocean, the rocks, the sky, they provide for me. This place is thick with life. I scrape off leathery mats of gooseneck barnacles from the rocks. They betray one another; each individual’s holdfast culpable for the death of its neighbor. Death for them; life for me. Sucked from their tubes, they are sweet and succulent.

With my rust spot-stained knife, I pry off the armadillo-form, algae-covered chitins which cling to the rock. In my palm, I cup the curling naked creatures and with the point of my knife, I scoop out the crinkled yellow, vaginal interiors. They crunch brittle between my teeth like tongues of bitter sea-marinated plastic. Better are the giant black limpets. They surrender to my bite with a soft seabed sigh.

Sometimes I trap fish, small or large, in tidal pools. I eat them raw, whole, if they are small enough, filleted if they are large and bony. At times, I will hunt for something large – lingcod are the best. They are voracious feeders; their greed serves me well. They rise to my jigged bait, impale themselves on the bent wire and sharpened shells I use for hooks. Their flesh is a verdant blue-green.

Walking the tidepools, on the prowl for food, I find a stick. It is sound, heavy wood, almost my height, and thick as two fingers. Absolutely straight, it is a rare find.

It will make a good spear. I fashion a point out of an oyster shell I hone to sharpness on a stone. I secure the point to the shaft but only at the cost of slicing my fingers on its edge and staining the shaft ochre with my blood.

I pick a pool a few feet deep. The bottom is littered with boulders. I toss crushed mussels in the water and stand, my arm cocked, spear poised. Still as stone. Suddenly a flash of silver! My tensed muscles release. The spear slices through the salt air with a pftjschute of arckinetic purpose. I hit the fish broadside. Impaled on the oyster shell point, it writhes and jerks splashmodically. A silent whoop of triumph then I run over to grab my meal before it escapes.

Grasping the spear, I feel the death spasms of the fish run through the shaft, up my arm to enter the deep chamber of my heart. I grab the writhing silver flash only to feel it jam its dorsal spines into my palms. Pain. I drop it to the ground. The fish flaps futilely then lies still, gasping in suffocation.

I fall to my knees on the cold black basalt. Blood streams from two open wounds in my hand and a hole in the heartplace of my chest. “How?” I ask. My inner voice, not true speech.
No voice answers. Just the endless gruambbmmm of swell meeting broken shore, the ssllipppp of wind on stone, the staccato Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! of sea birds.

I sit the remainder of the day in this place. As the day wears on, death-rigor curls the fish in an inverted arc of surprise. Cold fish blood mixes with the warm red recently released from my pierced palms. Red, rustbrown, black. Flies flock black; hungry as ghosts to a feast.

I stare out at the dark-steel horizon. I watch the wind play across the water. Whitecaps build. As the wind lessens, they disappear. Seabirds of all sorts fly across my field of view. Flocks of ducks skim low; they light in rafts upon the water, lumps of coal floating on a crenelated seaplane. Gulls circle high, riding endless aerial gyres. Slowly, the light fades and the gray horizon darkens. Still more. Dark, darker, black. Stars rarely shine here through the constant cloud cap though the moon breaks through to shine its reflection all ringsome on the aquaface.

I awaken to the familiar scent of decaying kelp and the tickle prickle of sand flies. Something happened the day before. I am not sure what. I will scavenge for food then set out again.

I grab a handful of rotting seaweed and cram it into my mouth. The soft ooze feels like nourishment; it is profoundly soothing. Wandering over to the edge of the tide pool, I pull up rocks looking for crabs.

My hands are wounded! Saltwater sting; new blood trickles down my fingers. How did that happen? I am searching for something other than crabs; I think. Something is lost. I will find it. At some point, I will. I will stop. I will but not yet.

* * *

This is as good a time as any to clear up one thing – I’m not a storyteller. That’s not why I’m here. It’s not what I do. And do not pretend I don’t know you’re there. I do. If I were a tale-teller, if this were a tale, if I wanted to tell you anything, to share with you (the very term nauseates me), then perhaps we could find our way together. It is appealing. Indeed, I have lost track of so much during my solitude. Where am I? How long have I been here? Years? Decades? Longer? I do not know.

So maybe, a connection to you?

But no! That is not for me.

Still, I can’t prevent you from eavesdropping. From spying on me – on my long struggle. Yes, my struggle. Perhaps you will find a way, even before I do. Continue then! Peer through my eyes; watch on.

H ere’s the plan team. We’ll do that trip we’ve talked about. This summer. We’ll do that Bering Sea thing – a kayak circumnavigation of Cungagnaq Island.” We are at the Starbucks Cafe in downtown Cascadia. Brian sits across from me. Is Grace there? Yes. All three of us are here today. Brian leans forward, across the stained wooden table separating him from Grace and me. His hand curls a white paper cup. He looks skeptical even as the face of the green mermaid peers blandly between his thick fingers.
It is a typically cold Cascadian spring morning. Outside, northern cold hunts under the tall grey skyscrapers, chasing any fugitive pockets of warmth hiding in the forest of concrete pillars.

But in here it is warm. We are sitting in a booth at the back of the cafe – a wooden clamshell embracing two opposing benches. Grace and I are not quite touching but close enough that I feel the heat of her body – a faint tropic caress. I am aware of the perfume of her vanilla shampoo and the subtle sebaceous scent of her scalp. A buzzing electric charge sets the hairs on my arm bristling. My yearning. The pull of her presence. Grace.

“Peatrick, you’ve been talking about a trip like that for years. Dude, you’re talking about a major expedition. I’m not sure any of us have the chops for that. None of us have done anything approaching that scale before. It will take a ton of planning. So not only is it risky, I’ve my doubts that you’ll be able to get it all done. I know you,” he says.

He has a point. Something always comes up. My projects. I have lots of them, one piles up on the other till they all fall by the wayside. Not that I never finish anything, I do. But not always. And the incomplete outweighs the complete till I am bowed under a burden of looming tasks.

“And what’s with Cognac Island? I’ve never heard of that. What is it? A place to get loaded?”

“It’s not Cognac, it’s Cungagnaq, as I’m sure you must know. It’s an island in the Bering chain, or near it. I don’t think anyone has done a circumnavigation. I’ve done a lot of research on it. It’s about 200 miles around, even with bad weather, which I’m sure we’ll get, it should be doable in three weeks – that’s only 11 miles a day, more or less. It’s got pretty good take-outs, I mean for the region. It does have hazards, there’s at least one section of about 25 miles that’s pretty committing -steep cliffs down to the sea. We’ll have to make sure we’re in a good place before we do that but we could do it in one long day. It’s also not far from an airfield, so getting in and out should be not so bad. Lots of crab fishermen pass through -some of them will do a shuttle. If you pay them enough.”

I was pretty much looking at Brian the whole time I was talking. I’d already spoken to Grace about this. She was skeptical but I’d won her over. And the trip was a stretch even for Brian and me, let alone Grace who was not nearly as hard-core (or even desirous of being hard-core) as Brian and I. I’d shown her the charts though, and my correspondence with the Bering Native Authority, the shuttle services, and such. I’d gone over the satellite phones we’d carry, the transponders, and other safety equipment. In the end, she’d given her assent.
Now my mission was to convince Brian. Odd though, it was usually Brian trying to convince me something was safe (enough) to do. And I knew that his hesitation was not due solely to objective hazards but also due to his reluctance to trust me.

In fact, he was still probing.
“OK, you’ve done some research -I can see that but, still, why Cognac, I mean Cungagnac Island. I’ve never heard of it, there are literally hundreds of small islands up there. Why that one in particular”

“I told you,” I said, “It’s just right. The right size, not too committing. Close to shipping traffic. It’s good. Goddamn it. What do you want?”

“Man, Peatrick. It’s not like it’s an odd question. Look let’s work on it. I’d like to see the charts and the other info. It’s not strange. And moreover, I mean how many times have you started down similar paths and then we found something wrong or you just decided that it no longer works or that it violates some principle I mean -It’s not strange to do due diligence. Ask Grace, she’s the lawyer. She’ll tell you I’m right. Right, Grace?”

Grace didn’t say anything. She was looking at her phone pretending not to hear the endless Brian-Patrick show I guess.

“Drink your fucking coffee and fuck off. We’ll do it this time. Leave it to me, my skeptical friend!” I say with a flourish and laugh.

I laugh but I feel the blush of red anger rise in my cheeks. Not for the first time. Brian and I have known each other forever. Best friends at one point, I guess. But despite the passage of years, we are both in our mid-thirties now – adults, in theory, we have never shaken off the issues that continue to dog our relationship. A major issue is the one I’m feeling now – my anger. Anger at Brian’s unrelenting put-downs.

I say, I’m sick of your constant harassment. Brian. You’re not half as put together as you come across. I know things that could devastate you. If you push me too far. You phony . . .

I mean, I say it silently. In my inner voice.
coward

Brian laughs. He is not a large man, at least not tall, but solid. He’d been a gymnast as a kid and that strength never left him. He carries his strength easily – it is just part of him. He is not particularly graceful though. A bit of a bear.

I’m a good six inches taller.
He does not have my coordination, nor my speed.
I could take him – if I wanted to.
Not that I do.
But I could.

“Hahohah. Peatrick man, calm down. I’ve seen that look before. Don’t be a mad-dude. Let’s just say this trip will be your redemption. From all your strategic retreats. If it happens.”

His hair, falling from under a sage green watch cap, orange-red, hangs straight down to his collar. His beard, also red, is beginning to show a few, surprising, strands of grey. It makes him look older than his years but even more like the Viking he is.

His laugh. His Viking berserker laugh. It used to attract me. It was so different from the cold steel silence of my home.

But now. He’s laughing at me.

Just for a moment. Just for once. What if I let myself go?

I’m standing up. Brian startles. His eyes open wide and then, suddenly, go blank as my fist collides with his temple. He falls face forward onto the table, upsetting the steaming cups. A rising coffee tide spreads in brown pools across the plane of the table and then cascades onto the floor. Grace looks up at me, her eyes wide. Wide in horror? No – wait. Have I gone too far? But no. As I look closer, I can see that her eyes are not wide in horror, but wide in wonder. She knows; Brian deserves this! She understands!

“Peatrick! Peatrick!”

It is Grace. My vision of mayhem disappears.

Me. “What?”

“It’s time to go,’ she says. “I need to get to work.”

Brian is sitting upright, hand still cradling the green mermaid’s breasts. His mocking grin – wider than ever.
Grace reaches under the table and squeezes my palm. The warmth of her hand is immediately and profoundly calming.

“And Peatrick, Brian has a point. It will be a very hard trip. I’m sure you can make it happen, though! Just let’s take it slowly – and support each other.” She glances at Brian. More than a little fire in her eyes.

“HoHaHo. Ok. We’ll see. Goodbye, Grace. Goodbye, Space Cadet,” Brian says, looking at me.

As Brian gets his last dig in, she tightens her grip; I can feel the pulse beat of her blood. It is a rhythm of shared tide; the flow of it travels from her heart to my core. Grace.

Grace stands to leave; I follow.

“Yeah redemption for me maybe,” I say. “But we’ll see how you do a week out with sharp teeth cruising for a snack under your boat.”

Brian is scared on the open seas – despite his bravado. Thalassophobia. Fear of the beast lurking in dark water.

“Haha. Yeah, I hate sharks but I’m not as scared of them as you are of your old dad Dude,” he says.

Grace grabs my arm, firmly, and steers us out of the cafe and onto the street. It is misty cold. The ground fog is so thick that it is hard to see to the end of the block, yet the morning sun shines through – all is illuminated in blinding golden haze.

Grace. “Peatrick, I’m going. I have to get to work on time. Don’t let Brian get to you, he’s a good friend.” She peers up at me, her green eyes are shot with gold and also with odd violet tones. Her eyes, framed between her high cheeks and beneath her dark thick brows, lend her face a severe intensity that belies her caring and optimistic nature. I know her. She’s trying to fathom how I’m reacting to Brian’s teasing. I smile. She kisses me.

“I love you,” she says.
“I love you too,” I say. “I’ll see you later.”

I watch Grace walk away. Whenever she leaves, I try to memorize how she looks. What if I never see her again? Today, she’s wearing a long black wool jacket almost to her ankles. Dark green, almost black, high-heeled boots. She has a knitted green scarf around her neck. Her brown curly hair bounces in thick confident cadence to her step. The hem of her coat sways. She disappears into golden light before she turns the corner.
Would it be too strong to say that Grace is my life? No, it would not.

I stand, uncertain, on the sidewalk outside of Starbucks. The air here in the Great Northwest feels thin as if we were on a high mountain. I inhale an icy lungful. I consider going back inside to continue the conversation with Brian – maybe make some plans. But no. I pull my cap down tight, zip up my fleece jacket, and jam my hands into the pockets. I don’t really have anywhere to go.

I awaken from a vague dream of tall towers and steel caverns to low fog, clinging like icing on a cake to my sleeping place of salt and stone. The slow dawn arrives without shadows. Nothing is distinct- all is constrained in the thick quiet – the small cries of birds, the hollow crash of waves, the mutter of flowing water- muted by thick mist. I break camp, assemble my scrabble of possessions, and stuff them in my kayak. I feel my matted hair clinging lank, small beads of condensation swell in tight tangles till they run down my forehead, free and cold.

I savor these days; encased in the fog. In such conditions, I lose sight of the bow of my boat. All is obscure. I cannot gauge distance or the passage of time. I paddle the whole day, without stopping. In the cold mist, my fingers swell – red as salmon eggs – my lips are numb. Mucus runs out of my red ice lump nose and into my mouth.

I paddle in white space. I cannot tell a distant object from one near. How many times have I set my sights on a far island, aiming to reach it to scrape food from the rocks? I increase my stroke until it seems that I am flying across the water, that the island is approaching at breakneck speed, until I realize it is no island at all, merely a rock diminishing as I reach it to insignificance. How many times have I thought the opposite, paddled towards a “rock” half the day only to come to a towering black-faced island cliff, watched over by the abyss eyes of nesting seabirds?

Sometimes I paddle through the night. Especially in a fogtime, when the line between day and night blurs when I am suspended without gravity, time, or space. When my travel becomes uncertain.

On such a night I met her. A shadow at first, the moon low, and I, a dark projection of my boat. After so many days alone, what wonder is this? Could it be? A human? In fact, at first, I am certain she is a hallucination, a phantom of my thought and loneliness.

But there! A dark flicker danced over the swells. Rising and falling in the moonlight – disappearing into fog and then reappearing, wraith-like.
I must approach her. But how does one approach a phantom? How do you talk to a dream? A nightmare?
I call out to her.

“Grace!”

A name I remember but I’m not sure why. That’s what I call.

“Grace!”
“Grace!”

My voice. When was the last time I heard my own voice? Croaking like a bird. A broken recording.

“Grace!”

No voice at all.

“Grace!”

But she does not come nearer, paddling just out of clear sight in the fog. Is she unfriendly or just timid?

I stick to her like a pilot fish. When she turns I turn. But she remains shy; I cannot approach her, even as I shadow her every move. So we wander, together and apart.
Somehow, despite the thick fog, I keep her in my sight the entire night.

Then wait. At some point, it seems, I must have stopped paddling. For I am now just awakening. To the summons. I hear it – the voice again.

“Peatrick!”

“Here I am!,” I reply. Dutiful always.

I stand. My feet sink into sand – warm as blood, soft as a sigh. I am naked. My skin – smooth and golden – free from blemish. Clear. I look for my new friend. Ahh, to feel warmth again. Her sweet breath. She is not to be found.

The beach slopes steeply to the sea. I stalk down, awkwardly, ungainly, like a long-legged shorebird. I sit down, carefully, stork legs crisscrossed in the sand. The water is crystal, clear as a dream. The warm sweet sea is in gentle motion. Each lap of a wavelet washes a pastel surge of small, bright cockles – lavender, lemon, orange, cinnamon – on a curl to the shore. I reach for the bright shells but they flutter away like tiny moths to sink back into the warmth of the sand before I can grasp them.

Looking out to the horizon I see a bank of clouds – thick fog. I watch as it rolls in – inexorable. The Fog is dark, dark as a moth’s wing, thick as night. I shiver in the chill it brings. It clings to me, sucking the tropic warmth out of my core. I am bedewed with icy water-drop jewels. I shiver, then creak upwards on my stiff knobbled bird legs. I have been lonely out here in the fog, but now, but now, I may have a friend. If I can find her again.

S
o that is Brian and Grace. And me too. I guess I should tell you the story of how we met and all that. OK. Hang on. Where to begin? How about this? Brian brought us together, twice, and then drove us apart, and Grace once thought she loved Brian but she really loved me, and that after losing touch for years, we fell in love after I left Grad school. And how about this? When I sleep, Grace comes to me. She is my dream.

First of all, before you start sounding like Brian, let me set the record straight. That grad school thing. I did not actually leave grad school, grad school left me. Or to be more precise, a certain faculty member, a certain Professor Gardiner-Nesbitt, Ph.D., MD, began to actively sabotage my work. She forced me out – forced me into one of my “strategic retreats” as Brian so aptly puts it.

I was pretty far along, pursuing a doctorate in clinical psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. The Sweet Sunny South. I can’t say I liked that part of the world – I missed the compelling chill of the Northwest but it was a good school. I was a bit of a star. I had a way with words, quick on my feet, able to turn a phrase. I was a pretty fair therapist too. My clients needed me. In fact, things were going pretty well.

My advisor, Dr. Reynaldo Lake, was a good guy. By good guy, I mean he basically let me do what I wanted. He was about my dad’s age, mid-fifties, and did not seem too concerned with much except that I be his friend. I was good at that. He’d read my reports, ask vague questions about my classes, and chat a bit about my cases. What he really liked to talk about was his kayaking. Yes, he was also a kayaker, not hard-core like Brian and me but he’d get out on the local rivers and creeks. He loved to tell me about this or that drop, learning to boof, and other watery esoterica. He began to call me Boyo. I liked that.

“Heya, Boyo,” he’d say.
“Heya, Doc,” I’d reply.

We were corny. Like characters out of an old movie.

I came as often and as regularly as I could. After a while, it felt like something nature had determined. Like the ebbing and flooding of the tide. His tidy office. The white couch. The steel desk with a leather writing pad. Not too many books but plenty of pictures on the wall. Doc Lake in a kayak. Doc Lake in a canoe. Doc Lake looking spiffy going over a small set of falls on a raft. I’d tell him about my latest adventure. We’d share a conspiratorial laugh and sit back to chat. Sometimes we even talked about my coursework or my thesis.

I’d show him what I’d written.

“Good work, Boyo. You’re doing great.”
“Thanks, Doc.”

So, it was a shock to me when he told me he’d be leaving. He decided to take early retirement. It seems that his easy-going style was not appreciated by other students, there had been complaints, and that finally, as he was without tenure and so more or less at the mercy of the faculty committee, he retired.

The last time I saw him, he was packing things up. His boating pictures were gone, his always clean desk was even cleaner – there was nothing on it at all. Packing cartons were stacked against the wall in perfect order. Doc was a perfectionist. Everything was always flawless. Well, not everything, I guess.
We sat at his bare desk. Across from each other for the last time.

“Heya, Boyo”, he said.
“Heya, Doc,” I said.

We sat silently for a while.

Finally. “Well Peatrick, my lad. I’m sure you’ll do fine. Just keep up the good work.”
“Thanks, Doc.”

We shook hands.

“Have fun on the waters Doc”
“I will. Thanks”

And that was the last time I saw him
Is that all there is?
What do I do now?

My new advisor was not so much to my liking. Professor Gardiner-Nesbitt, MD, Ph.D. We started out OK actually. I’d taken seminars and courses with her – she liked my work and liked me.
The problems emerged when she began to get reports from my clinical supervisors. She paid a lot more attention to my work than Doc Lake ever did.

Her office couldn’t have been more different than Doc Lake’s. Her walls were covered with plaques – degrees from impressive universities, pictures of her with even more impressive personages, but nary a picture of anything not having to do with work.
Where Doc’s desk was tidy and clean, her’s was a catastrophe. Piles on top of piles. Boxes of files on the floor, the detritus of her academic life on the shelves.

I’d come in, sit down. Then she’d just smile at me. Waiting for me to speak. Like she was my goddamned therapist.

Sometimes, I’d try to wait her out. We’d sit for quite a time. Beaming at each other, till I began to feel the lockjaw settling in at the top of my smile.
I broke first.

“How are you, Professor?”

“Fine, Peatrick. Thank you for asking. So, Peatrick, your coursework looks as good as ever. You must be pleased.”

Me. “Yes, I am, Professor.”

“But Peatrick. Your clinical work. Could you tell me how you’re progressing in your understanding of the therapeutic process?”

“My understanding? I think my understanding is pretty clear. I delivered my paper last week, to you in fact. “The Origins of Attachment Theory.” I argued, successfully I think, on the different theoretical tasks that lie ahead. I argued that human motivation derives from the interplay of familiarity and novelty-seeking systems. I argued that this needs further exploration, as does the notion that the human personality can be conceptualized as a hierarchy of interlinked systems.”

“Peatrick, I know how smart you are. I know how much you read. My question is really a different one: What is the task of the therapist?”

“The task? To heal.”

“To heal. And how do you heal?”

“You heal by providing guidance; either you provide a direct role model or, if it is required, you shatter the shell of neurotic attachment and defense, the lies if you will, that armor the lost.”

“I see. The lost. That sounds rather dramatic.”

As if she could understand drama. Except for the drama of the unrequited. Her unrelenting mess of a desk, her unrelenting mess of a life. Why doesn’t she have pictures of a partner or children or even a dog? This is all she has.

“Life is a drama. Love is a drama professor. Without drama, what do we have?”

I stopped to see if I had scored a point. I wanted to see cracks around her smile, she always wore too much makeup.

“Well, that’s an interesting question, Peatrick. And guidance, that sounds rather a demanding term.”

“It needs to be demanding. It is as it should be.”

“Is this the direction of your supervisors?”

This is what it boils down to I guess. She wants me to surrender my mission.

“No. I mean yes – not exactly. I mean, I am the one in charge of their treatment. They are present to help me. If I need it.”

“Peatrick. Listen to me. To work with patients in a clinical setting – is a trust and an honor. You have been granted an opportunity not afforded to many. It is also a great responsibility. Your supervisors are here to guide you. If you violate that trust, the opportunity will be rescinded. You must follow the guidance of your supervisors.”

I stopped showing up for our consultations.

After a few weeks of missed sessions. I received a rather urgent summons from her.
I was to come to our next scheduled session without fail.

It was another hot and sticky June day when I set out from my apartment to her office. I navigated the maze of red brick pathways, and the tall greenleaf poplar groves, till I was standing under the doorway of the Health and Human Services Building.

The always too cold air conditioning of the South hits me as soon as I enter. I can’t stand the thought of being confined to an elevator. I take the stairs. White stairs. I’m wearing flip-flops. The snap of the soles against my feet echoes in contrapuntal rhythm to my step. I walk up two flights. Push the heavy glass doors open and turn right down the hallway. Fourth office on the left. A deep breath. I knock and enter.

She is in that beat-up leather swivel chair. Her grey shoulder-length hair, framing a tired face. Heavy features, sad aardvark eyes. She’s put on too much lipstick – trying too hard again. That dress that she always wears. I mean, not a single dress, but the type. A bit too loose, a bit too slovenly. It brings too much attention to her body. It exposes too much. Too much leg and too much knee. I feel assaulted.
The damn dress, it drove me crazy. The longer I had to look at it, the worse it became. I’d slouch down in the wooden chair I always sat in. I never choose fabric chairs. Too soft for me. I stare at her cluttered desk. The stacks of papers, the clinical journals. The inevitable plastic container of half-eaten lunch. What is it today? Tuna fish? Of course!

“Peatrick, I received a letter from your training supervisor. He would like me to convey in his words, ‘Deep concern over repeated failure to heed supervision.’ He says that he, ‘no longer maintains faith in your ability to care for your patients due to your unusual, erratic and inappropriate behavior, generally condescending attitude, and inadequate care for their well-being.’”
She pauses, waiting for me to say something. But I am not going to. Never give an inch.

“Peatrick, this is serious. You are at risk of being asked to leave the program. Maybe you could tell me what is happening. How can I help?”

Looking at me with her sad eyes. As if I needed her pity or concern.

“The worst part, Peatrick, is that you are not like this. When you came, you had such promise. I can truthfully say I have seldom read papers as insightful, smart, and frankly, so full of compassion and empathy as those you produced for me in our seminars. Peatrick, what happened? What is happening?”

I didn’t say anything. What could I say? If she didn’t realize the difference between the seminar room, between theory, and the consultation room where I faced these people who were lost. Who were losers, not to put too fine a point to it. Who need truth, not theory. Who rely on me to demonstrate to them that truth. Well, I couldn’t help her. Truth exists; she did not have it.
She with her mess. Her crappy dress. Her veiny legs.

So I listened to her. I nodded a few times. I did not argue, though I could have devastated her if I had wanted. I said I understood and looked a bit contrite. She said she would help me draw up a remediation plan. And that I’d work with her to bring me back to good standing. As if I’d consent to such a plan.

Of course, I left.

I left her, I left my patients with no warning and no farewell. That is a truth. People leave.

I donated my clothes and furniture to Goodwill. I pried open my computer and drilled holes in the hard drive. I logged onto the server, deleted all copies of my work. I nuked the backups. I let my thumb drives slip one by one into the grinding maw of the disposal in my apartment – the scream and rattle of the blades celebrating death to my old life. I burned hard copies of my thesis. There was nothing left.
I left Chapel Hill and returned to Cascadia. Clean.

My dad was waiting for me when I returned. He was standing in the doorway in his grey-blue glory. He looked older than I remembered. He was thinner than when I had left, a little more hunched. A slight transparency to his skin. He’s been fighting prostate cancer for years. A slow growth feeding on the source of his strength – turning steel to rust.
“Well dear,” my dad said. “What will you do now?”

“I’m through with the hypocrisy of grad school. I’m done with the useless therapeutic pandering. I cannot help people who have no capacity to be helped. I’m through with pretense. I’m going to switch gears. I’ll go to business school,” I said.

My dad stood silent, looking at me with his expressionless eyes. So hard to know what was going on with him. I’d spent a large part of my life trying to decode his enigmatic gaze. Linear B. A spiral of symbols cascading to an unknown core. There must be meaning there. Surely there was.

I waited for a short infinity.

“Well dear, there is nothing wrong with making money. It is an honest path.”

Was that approval? He’d never liked me studying psychology. Maybe even pride? Like when I returned from my boyhood absences in the forests outside of Cascadia?

“I’m going to make it work Dad!”

“I know you will, dear,” he said.

He took a step forward, raising his arms slightly.

Was he going to hug me? I can’t remember the last time he held me.

I raised my arms as well. Too quickly. He startled for a second, then checked his step. He put out his right arm, to shake my hand.

No embrace.

As he clasped my hand in his, I could feel the strength there. Under his calloused skin, despite the cancer, steel wires.

We looked at each other.

Then, slowly, he brought his left hand up and laid it over both of our clasped hands. Just for a moment. But there it was. Warmth. For an instant. Heat. And as I looked into his eternally distant, cold eyes, maybe, just maybe – there at the corners, a slight softening. The hint of a tear.

He released my hands and we walked into the house.

I am not a talker anymore, at least not out loud. Though there are always voices in my head. A constant yammering. But when I want to speak out loud, I cannot – the gulf between thought and speech is too vast. It wasn’t always this way. I used to talk. There was no stopping me till the words ran out. I’d categorize the people and things in this life. I’d try to bring order to all around me; It was a vain exercise.

You may not believe it but there was a time when I was a giant – I’d walk with my head above the treetops, like Paul Bunyan in the forests of the Great Northwest. Like an eagle in the clouds -soaring -invincible. My feet were on the earth but my head and my heart were far, far, above.

I had a dream once, I was floating above the sea. The sun was out illuminating an infinite tesselation of green and white spreading across a measureless horizon. Turning my gigantic gaze from the horizon, I looked down and saw far below me, a great whale in distress. He was striking the sea with his flukes and spouting frantically. Still far above the surface, I extended my leg, and slipping my big toe under the whale, I lifted him to safety. The whale in his immensity barely covered the nail of my toe – a tadpole on a rock.

I dream here too. The voice that wakens me. I always obey it. But it disappoints me – there is no resolution. You may think that I have given up. That I am resigned to remain lost forever. No. That is not so. Stay with me a bit longer.

Did I tell you how I fell in love with Grace? I don’t think I did. Here’s how it happened. My dad and mom sent me to Catholic school, Cascadia All Catholic. It was a Jesuit boy’s school with male teachers, priests in robes, and the only females the older women who worked in the office. Absent were girls who were, of course, our chief topic of discussion, concern, and attention.

Once in a while, we’d share common events with St. Mary’s, the all-girls school across town. My favorite events were the debate tournaments. I was on the debate team, not the captain, but I was pretty good with preparation and quick on my feet. I was also pretty shy with girls. Debate gave me a chance to confront the girls, confront them without having to follow up.

There was this one girl on the St. Mary’s team. Grace. Yes that Grace, my Grace. But she was not my Grace yet. Listen.

Grace was the captain of St. Mary’s squad. There was something about her that attracted me. She was quick, one of the few opponents whom I couldn’t best. She was also beautiful. Dark hair, slim but strong. She wore the de rigueur Catholic school white shirt, plaid skirt, and high socks but after school, I’d see her wearing tight jeans riding low on her hips held up by a thick buckle as was the style of the day. I guess I kind of obsessed with that buckle.

Grace took debate seriously. She had two voices – one small, girlish, the other deeper, with more obvious authority. I think she used the small voice to lure the unsuspecting into complacency before she’d move in for the kill with the stronger.
Grace doesn’t really remember me from that time. She was the center of my desire, I was some guy on the other team who was pretty good. You know, the guy with the funny name.

I never told Brian about my interest in Grace. I was notoriously awkward with girls and I thought he’d just tease me. So I held my desires close and that closeness made them pure. I didn’t want to dirty them with speech. Grace remained my secret.

But that is not the end of the story. Really, I fell in love with her because of Brian. Here is how it happened. It was on a perfect Cascadian afternoon. Brian and I had been working on a rock climb at Clark Point, down where the Merriweather River undercuts the bank, eroding a basalt headwall and leaving a series of inverted steps formed out of the hexagonal lava columns.

I had scouted out the climb from my kayak. In fact, the only way you could get to it was by boat. It was a climb that only Brian and myself could approach. I had worked out a mental map – a way to climb through the intricacies of crack and column. I was sure it would go. I brought Brian down so we could work on it together.

I was belaying Brian who was trying valiantly to complete the climb. He kept falling but each time, he got a bit higher. I can’t say I was upset that he was falling – I wanted him to fail.

“Peatrick man. Slack! Slack! Jesus Fuck! Are you trying to pull me off the holds?”

“I’m trying to help you! If you’d listen to me, I could help you!”

“Hahah. I listened to you but you keep sending me the wrong way. If you’d be quiet for half a second, I could snag the crux. Peatrick man, you may be a fuckup, but this is an amazing climb. It’s a beautiful line. Seriously dude. If you like, I’ll come down. Lower me and you can finish it. You found it, you made the line.” Brian said.

But I let him finish it. I don’t know why exactly. Maybe I wanted him to think I wasn’t jealous of him. Maybe I was ashamed at wanting him to fail. Anyway, I let him complete it.

After we finished the climb, we went back up the river a ways, closer to home. It was evening. We were lying on the swim docks down by the old submarine parked as a memorial and museum on the east bank of the Merriweather. Brian was busy lying. He’d met a girl at a party. He was telling me an absurd story of sexual conquest. As if. As if he wasn’t any more at sea regarding girls than I was. Despite his attending public school whilst I was ensconced at All Catholic with hundreds of other boys under the tutelage of the eunuchs by choice priestly sect.

He was describing his adventure to me in detail, some real, some (I was later to realize) completely imagined.
“She let me,” he said. “She just let me slide my hand under her sweater. I felt her skin. Her bare skin. I was sure she’d stop me but she didn’t. And then. And then . . .”
At this point, he sat up in his excitement and leaned forward. He reached his right hand out towards me and cupped his palm as if holding something. He stopped and stared at his empty hand.
“Peatrick, dude. I touched her breast, her whole breast. Her tits. They filled my hand and they were soft and hard, and the nipple tickled my palm.”

“You’re full of it,” I said.

“I’m not! It’s the truth,” He said. “And Dude, her lips when she let me kiss her, were sweet.”

“You are so full of crap,” I said. Laughing.

“Wait!” he said. “Then . . .then. Then, I slid my hand under her sweater. She was lying down, I was kind of crouched next to her. I slid my hand underneath. Her stomach was flat. Soft, but not. I could feel her contours as I slid my hand down past her waist. Between her fucking legs. I felt her pubic hair and then I cupped her. One finger went inside of her. It grabbed my finger. It sucked it in like a fish.”

He fell silent for a second. Contemplating the enormity of the experience he was describing.

As he was speaking, I, lying on my back on the swimming dock, in the warmth of a summer’s night, with the river flowing warm as blood under my yearning body, surrounded by the funk of water, mud, and decay – I felt, suddenly and strangely lost. Lost like black night, lost like the flowing of warm water. Lost -was it love?

I felt the river carry me away. The slowflowing Merriweather River, the sad muddy stream that divides Cascadia, winding under docks, freeways, bridges, carrying barges down from the desert laden with wheat, carrying salmon heavy with eggs back to their spawning beds, carrying the sewage and runoff from Cascadian lawns and urban chicken coops.

At the same time, I felt a swelling as insistent and terrible as the rise of ocean tides. Unstoppable. I wanted beyond all hope of ever experiencing it to be inside this girl Brian was describing. To feel my thrust meet her unyielding response. To melt into her.

“Dude! Hey Peatrick!”

“What?”

“I was telling you something.”

“Hm? Here I am.”

“What? I know where you are. Listen, Dude, I was kind of surprised really. I mean she’s not the kind of girl I usually get. She’s kind of a nerd like you. But when I unbuckled that big belt she was wearing and slid my hand in, she just moaned,” he said.

Wait! Me. Silent but screaming.

“Peatrick! Peatrick. Space Cadet!”

“What? Wait, Brian, what was her name?”

“Her name? I dunno. Grace. Yeah. Grace I think. I think she’s on a debate team. Do you know her?”

Wait! That sweet floating dream, the dark water . . . What? What?

“What? What were you saying?” I said.

“I was asking you how you’d do her. How would you fuck her? If you could?” he said.

“What? Shut the heck up Brian. Jesus Fucking Christ. No. Shut the fuck up! What a messed-up thing to say.”

I am filled with rage. How dare he? Brian is making it up. I had never touched a girl in the way he was describing. Had he? Grace?

“What the . . .? What’s wrong with you?” he asked. Genuinely startled.

“Just Fuck you, Brian! That’s all. Just fuck you!”

And I leave. I walk home. Up Clark Boulevard from the river, past the strip clubs and the 24-Hour Pancake House, past 39th, up towards Tabor. Where I live on the flanks of a volcano – yes really.
I come into the house as quietly as I can. I don’t want to wake my I’m so angry though I pretend to be calm, father nor my I’m not interested in you enough to be angry with you though I’ll bite your head off if you wake me, mother.
I slip upstairs, discard my clothes, still smelling of river and rot, and climb into bed. My mind is still racing with Brian’s description; my body is still tingling with desire and fury.
And though I slip into bed, I’m not going to sleep.

My magazines, six of them – three Penthouse, two Playboys, and one whose title I am too embarrassed to name, were under my bed, neatly rolled and pushed up into the box springs. Hidden but accessible.
So, I take them out and open them to my favorite pages, still tossed by clashing waves of anger and desire. As I conjure the body of Grace before me, her soft skin and the heat of her breast filling my cupped hand, I gaze at the images of women whose breasts indeed whose every crevice and contour lie open and exposed.
As my desire reaches its peak, as the images of those women embedded flat on the well-worn pages take on the face and vitality of Grace, as I swell and then explode with the force and heat of the lava from the very volcano upon whose slopes my bedroom is built, I lose all awareness of danger. I do something impossible; I shout out loud, “Grace! Grace!”

Then I cringe. What if that shout awakens the demons? But all stays quiet. I collapse.

I can’t put it into words. Please. Not now. I don’t want you in my head today.  I’m the only one left.  I lost things, lost them in a fog.
I don’t remember much. I woke up, the was fog was heavy on the water. I remember that. It subdued the waves and sound in a muffled thickness of damp grey. We decided to launch anyway. I didn’t want to. I told Brian that we should stay until the fog lifted. But Brian insisted.  I wanted to put in, to get out of the enclosing mist, but Brian didn’t want to.  He said, with some justification, that going in could be more dangerous than staying at sea.
So we stayed out and all too soon, we were under tall black cliffs -massive basaltic pillow lava flows, shot through with green and red streaks of schist and jasper. They fell straight down to the sea -black monoliths plunging into dim water. In such a place, there is no way to exit your boat in an emergency save swimming.

It was committing. And the sea in such places is chaotic, the incoming bounce and refract of the cliff-face, soon instead of regular rolling wave-forms, you are paddling in a chaotic

So you can see how hard this is for me. To talk to you about those moments, when I saw my dearest friends slip away. As I sat helplessly. I mean, to be clear, I did not see them-rather they slipped away while I could not see them. I could not save them. I did not.

I called to Grace.

“Here I am! Grace. Here I am!”

But the fog took her.

You can call me Peatrick. Everyone does. It’s not my given name. My dad started calling me that; it meant something to him. He’d laugh if I asked him how he came up with it. He never gave me a straight answer. Everything with him was twisted, turned into a mean joke. I spent my life confused about everything – so why not my name as well?

Early on, I’d do my best to get away from him. As a kid, I’d not quite run away but I’d try to get away – into the deep forests that surrounded Cascadia. I’d bike or just set out walking with a backpack. I’d straggle home a few days later dirty and tired. My father never seemed angry about my disappearances; I think he liked the independence it demonstrated. What he didn’t like was what he considered my lack of care about work of any sort. He was a contractor. He had opened his own business. He had made quite a bit of money. He took pride in being a provider. He did not see that in me.

Here’s a story. Back a ways. I’m in High School. I’d spent Saturday and Sunday studying for a math test. Pre-calc. The test was on Tuesday. I needed to ace the test to get an A in the class and then, the plan went, to get into the advanced math track in my senior year.

That was my plan. Or rather, our plan. Our plan being my dad’s plan. He wanted to see me as an engineer. He had the trajectory all laid out, advanced math and science in high school, then Caltech, then a major engineering firm. So, I spent the weekend studying. I wrote formulas on the whiteboard in my room. Haha. Yes, the whiteboard. Dad installed it. He spent hours with a spirit level, a notepad, and a little stub of a blue pencil drawing lines and drill points on the wall. It was a good whiteboard – hung straight and true. I covered it with formulas, then I’d slide the cover over to recite from memory.

During the day, if he wasn’t working, he’d sit and watch. Watch may be the wrong word. He’d sit poised, bolt upright on the edge of the chair, and fix me with his gaze. Silent. His was a tight, taut, muscular body from years working in construction. But there was something else. A projected tenseness, as if he was waiting for something dangerous. He tried to keep his face expressionless. I could see what was underneath; anger most often, or concern, or contempt. Sometimes I felt he was jealous of me, jealous of my youth, which he no longer had, jealous of my opportunities, which had been denied to him. But whatever complex stew of emotions animated him, there was always an aura of menace.

Still, he was proud – proud of me. I knew that. I wanted to know that.

“Tell me how to help dear. Let me quiz you,” he’d say.

“No, dad. Thanks. I don’t think it will really help,” I’d reply.

My father had never made it past high school, and though he definitely had a math brain, he couldn’t really help me with the problems.
Once, I made the mistake of trying to talk him through concepts he couldn’t understand. But the challenge of that was too much. He seemed to desperately want to help me. It had been a disaster.

“I’m offering to help you. If you’d just listen to me, I could help. It’s all too typical that you refuse. Do you think you’ll embarrass yourself? With a dumbass answer? It’s better to get past those here rather than screwing up during your exams. Your problem Peatrick dear is that you let your pride get ahead of you.”

It only escalated from there.

“If you don’t stop acting like a little shit-stain smart alec, I’m going to knock the sense into you!”

“Dad -wait. I was wrong. wait. Let me just rewrite it. What should I put?”

“What should you put? Put the god-damn answer that’s what. Are you trying to catch me up? Are you trying to make me look bad?”

I guess you get the idea. Finally, he stormed out and left me, now well and truly frozen, to contemplate the long journey to Plan’s end.

The next morning my dad knocks at my bedroom door. One thing about my dad, he respects privacy. He’d never just come in. In fact, if I didn’t tell him it was OK, he’d wait patiently outside my door for who knows how long. Thank God, for it gives me time to roll up the magazines and stuff them under the springs.

But now I’m up. He is sitting in his accustomed place the chair next to my bed. If he is still mad from our stormy session of the day before it does not show. I’m hard at our task: fulfilling the plan. Sometimes, I lose myself in the work. I forget where I am and concentrate on the problems. At times like this, I even enjoy myself. Then I look over at the wire and stick figure of my dad, bolt upright in his blue jeans and denim shirt, his long graying hair in the inevitable ponytail. Cold, gray-metal glasses, expressionless blue-grey eyes swimming in icy slush. His eyes, so dead. Piercing, remorseless, yet dead. Like a predator. But cold-blooded – a shark. A study in steel. The only colors a clutch of bright markers exploding like flames in his hand. Poised – waiting for me to meet my destiny. A destiny he’d will me to achieve.

After our morning session, I come down to the kitchen. My mom is laying out breakfast stuff. Dad is already there, sitting silently over a cup of herbal tea – he never drinks coffee. He is reading a book on Buddhism. I pour a bowl of my favorite cereal – Cocoa Puffs. I pour the milk into the bowl until the brown spheres float like chocolate icebergs in a sea of Cascade Farms 2% Milk. I’m turning my attention to the Rusty Nails the Clown cartoon on the milk box – Rusty Nails’ Parade of Fun! Suddenly a demon voice intrudes.

“Peaty, your room’s a disgrace. It’s actually disgusting,” my mother says. She says it in a joking tone – but no.

“Yeah. I know. I’ll get to it.”

“You’ll get to it when?” A menacing tone. No joke now. Why am I pushing her?

“When I can,” stubbornly, not meeting her gaze. Focusing on Rusty’s frame-bound adventures on the milk carton.

“You’ll get to it now.”

“I can’t. I’m going to school.”

My mom had big arms. Perhaps they had once been firm but now they were meaty, soft. When she moves them, the skin beneath her biceps sways. It is mesmerizing – the swing of that loose flesh. I was still doing my best not to look at her at all. She brought her arms and hands down with a heavy crash on the table in front of me. She leaned hard into my face. “If you don’t do it, I will,” she says.
“You will not! Stay out of my room!”

Meanwhile, my dad is not looking at either of us. His face buried in the book – Christian Zen: The Essential Teachings of Jesus Christ and the Buddhist Masters. He is fighting his own battle, the Buddha/Catholic battle. As my mother and I sparred, I watched the red climb in his cheeks till it reached his eyes, then the red receded, replaced by pasty white. His eyes went blank. Uh Oh. Where would the shark strike?

“Your problem, Peatrick, is that you don’t actually do anything, as far as I can see. For anybody or anything. Let alone for yourself. I call that being a loser. You wander in circles. Is that how you plan to spend your life?” he said softly but with menace.

I knew better than to answer but somehow, I found it hard to stop myself.

“You call me a loser? You’re the loser here, Buddha. I’m the one trying to find something. You don’t really care about anything. Why are you sticking up for her? She hates you. Anyone can see it. You’re just too fucking stupid.”

I didn’t see the fist coming but come it did. From across the table. Those rebar and wire arms could pack a punch. The shark’s strike was well-aimed for the next thing I knew, I was on the floor. Warm blood is streaming into my mouth from a broken nose.

“Bastard!” I screamed over the banshee shrill of my mother’s laughter. “I’ll fucking kill you both!”

Actually, none of that happened. My mother shouted at me. My father was silent – as always. I said nothing. I got up and left for school.

My room was clean when I returned home. My mother, true to her words, had cleaned it for me. The whiteboard was sparkling white. All the formulas, sample problems, and examples I had spent so many days developing were gone. The bouquet of markers was set neatly side-by-side on the desk. My bed was made, the sheets laundered and fresh, and the pillows fluffed.

Also, there on the desk, six magazines: two Penthouse, three Playboy, and one copy of Savage Flesh. Neatly fanned out, as if they were part of a set-piece for Better Homes and Gardens. It is a beautiful set piece, except for the fact that the magazines were wrinkled from constant surreptitious reading, though perhaps reading is not the right word. The covers were lined with white veins where the folding and rolling had eroded the ink. And the pages were warped; corrugated and grooved from seabrine ejaculate, which had deformed and glued them together. They were clear tokens of my secret guilt. They were a wound – raw and open.

Reader, perhaps you’ve experienced that particular mixture of rage, helplessness, and humiliation. A chill of ice as the blood drains from your face and chest, a tightening of your muscles, a clenching of your hands. The lonely, empty feeling in your bowels combined with a clutching, churning fire; a raging storm in your heart.

What can you do? Here is what you do. You roll up the magazines. You place them back where they belong in the box springs under your bed. She will not bring them up again. He will not even know. You pack your tent, a sleeping bag, and an air mattress. You leave. Just for a while. A night maybe. You pedal your bike up Sherman Street to Mount Olive. There is a small copse of trees that you know up top with a view to the West Hills. You find your place. A den. You watch the sun set in red fire over the City of Cascadia, now starting to glow with strings of lights like the bioluminescence of plankton on the sea. You let the night take you as it always does. You will dream dreams of violence and release but in the morning nothing remains save the blood congealed on your lips from the sanguine storm of your wet dream.

I

am still here. Despite it all. Despite the fog. Despite the loss. I lost my friends, you know. You have been so patient. I think I was rude to you when we first encountered each other. I am sorry. We’ve come quite a ways since then. Don’t get me wrong; I still wish you’d leave. But still. . . Maybe I’ve become used to you.

Anyway. Let me tell you a story. It’s rough. A bit rough. But this is a hard place, these seas we are traveling on.

The fog had lifted early in the morning and I was paddling across a choppy sea under a hard cold sun. The wind was quartering; I had to work hard to keep to my course. Unlike many days when I just paddle without a clear destination, I was going somewhere this day. Ahead of me, some miles distant, was a rocky island. A small island, an islet really. It was an islet, like so many others here – all greyblack, all sharp edges, all tortured spines. What made this one unusual, and why I was bothering to fight the cross-winds to reach it, was that on its top was a shape that I had not seen in a long time. So long that it seemed I had forgotten its name. A square. That is what it was called. It was an islet with a square on the top. In fact, it was not just a square, it was a cube. What’s more, it had what looked like a conical spire rising above it or perhaps directly behind it.

These shapes -so strange in this place where nothing is regular, brought back, in a rush, an awareness of memories. Stronger  – a taste! I tasted something on my tongue, a sweet, tart flavor. A jagged taste of memory. My mouth even started watering. Such a taste, so foreign. Nothing out here is sweet, nothing is sour -everything is bitter, or salty, or bland, or fishy and everything is soft, chewy, and slimy.  But these tastes, what is the word? Sharp. Like citrus. I remember – fruity, crisp. But I’m digressing as usual.  These shapes – I knew their names: square, cube, cone.

So I set out for them. Immediately, the quartering seas and beam wind became a challenge. I leaned hard to edge my kayak into the forces arrayed against me. You have to do this. If you give in, they will sweep you away. And as I fought my way to the island, the shapes slowly became more clear – the square slowly resolved into a building – more than a building – a house. Perhaps even, I do remember, yes – a home. So there must be doors, and windows, and a path and, and a garden, and a fence. And inside – people. A family? Could it be?

But what kind of house could there be in this place? As I neared the island, I could see that it was indeed a house. It looked like it might have been painted white at one time, it was still too far to see clearly, but the tower also looked white and it was topped by a dark structure. A lighthouse! A lighthouse keeper and his family?  Here? In this place? Yes. Why not? And as if responding to a summons, I knew that I must reach the island.

Even before I came near enough to see details of the lighthouse I began to hear something  – something that was all too familiar – something that I did not want to hear – the raucous baying, snarling, and groaning of a sea lion colony. But this was no standard colony with a few dozen or even scores of sea lions. This noise was the product of many hundreds if not thousands of voices. The sharp staccato dog-like yelping might be familiar to you if you have ventured to the shores or perhaps if you have visited the sea lion enclosure in the zoo. But there was a different voice here – the bull roar of the large males -great beasts that are many times as big as my kayak, and which weigh a thousand pounds. A bellowing groan, from deep in their chests, amplified and multiplied by their numbers, carrying over the choppy sea to strike me in my kayak, miles distant, with an almost physical force. I fear them.

As I closed on the Island, I saw a broad sloping shelf tipping towards the sea. Normally, this would be an ideal place to land, I could haul my kayak up off the water and make my way to the lighthouse. Ideal but not. The shelf was covered with sea lions thick as sea palms swaying on the surfline. Already I could see that I was noticed. Already, even though still distant, I could see them performing their odd threat displays. Rocking from side to side on their flippers, swaying their heads, and curling their massive necks. There was no way I could approach through this throng. If I was to reach the island, to find out the truth of the house, I must be strategic. I would swing back to sea, let the damned quartering winds carry me away from the Island, and then arc back to a point on the backside. Hopefully, that far shore would not be infested with these great beasts. Turning, I let the wind find me and rode it out of sight of the Island.

I was riding the wind some miles distant from the Island when I saw something floating in the water –  a large white patch on the surface. As I paddled closer to investigate, I could see what looked like shark fins piercing the surface. Was it a shark circling a dead fish? As I closed on it, I realized it was not a dead fish but rather a living form -an ocean sunfish.  Sunfish are odd, shapeless fish that often swim on their sides at the surface.  They can be huge, well over a ton. They wallow along, sustaining their great bulk on the most insubstantial of all ocean creatures -jellyfish. They have neither the shape nor definition of sleek fast-moving fish, fish that have somewhere to be. They are rather flat blobs. Until you get very close to them, it is hard to tell the difference between a living sunfish and a fish corpse.

They cruise slowly, their dorsal fins, which I had mistaken for a shark fin, waving absurdly in the air. They are in fact quite helpless, even pathetic. Swimming on their sides, one eye stares up perpetually up to the sun, the other peers down into the inky depths. The black eyes staring straight up, their mouths spasmodically gaspings water, the effect is that of startled ignorance. Yet, they are unafraid; despite or perhaps because of their utter helplessness, they make no effort to swim away. This one was not so large, maybe three feet across, but was a great find. A fish like this could provide me with food for days. I easily paddled up close enough to stab the creature with a sharpened spear I carried strapped to my deck. But a funny thing happened. I could not bring myself to hurt this creature -so vulnerable, so sad, despite my need for food and the protestations of my always hungry flesh.

“Go on with you then,” I said. “Good luck.”

I sat still in my kayak watching the sunfish trace his random path across the water. Then, as I was preparing to paddle away, I saw what I had paddled so far from the Island to avoid – a pod of young male sea lions heading my way. The young males especially can be aggressive and I do my best to keep out of their way. I was once chased for miles by one such sea lion after I had ventured too close to a rock where he sat lord of a small harem of shapely females. He followed my boat, I paddling as hard as I could, he sinuously snaking through the water behind me. Every once in a while, he’d surface just off my stern and expel water and air through his nostrils in a great huff. After some time, when I had been properly humiliated, he disappeared.

But my fears of an assault were not born out. Indeed, the sea lions showed little interest in me at all; they were intent on the slowsad sunfish. As they neared it, they began barking excitedly. They spent a while diving around and beneath the sunfish. If the sunfish was perturbed, he didn’t show it. His one startled eye that I could see continued its heavenward gaze. His faux-shark fins waved pathetically above the great platter of his body.

After a while the sea lions circling of the sunfish took on a more aggressive aspect -they started to bump and I thought even nip at him. It soon became clear that they were indeed biting him. But the attack was not against his main body which is heavily armored with bony plates. Instead, they were slowly eating away at his fins. The tail was the first to go. It barely existed to begin with, just a caudal fringe at the nadir of the indistinct mass of his body. But soon it was shorn off and red fish blood leaked into the dark green water along with white chunks of his flesh. When the tail was gone, the sea lions began attacking his fins. They could not reach his upwaving dorsal fin but they must have bit off its twin underwater for the sunfish began to list on its axis. As it slowly flipped over in the water, I could see the bloody stump of the severed fin. If it planned to swim away on its remaining fin, that plan was soon thwarted when a sleek sea lion dove underneath the floundering fish to emerge with its remaining fin in his mouth.

I had thought that now it was made helpless, that the sea lions would begin to feed on it. But that was not their intent. Instead, they began to treat the crippled fish as a group of dogs might treat an old rug. They grabbed the poor fish in their mouths, they shook it from side to side, some of the larger ones were even able to toss it like a frisbee. If the fish was suffering it was hard to tell, the eyes were perpetually wide to begin with. Its mouth though seemed to be working in a silent fish scream.

And what did I do? I wanted to rage at the cruelty of the sea lions. I wanted to paddle forward to use my spear to drive them away from the sunfish -it was too late to save it but at least I could help end the torment. But I did none of that, I sat and watched -silently.

After a time, the sea lions tired of their game. With nary a glance at me, they regrouped into a tight pod and took off back to the Island. The sunfish – now crippled but alive slowly sank below the surface. I watched it descend. Soon it was a white blur, then it was gone. I hoped it would die before it settled to the bottom to be consumed by sea stars and crabs.

Brian, Brian! Get up you lazy sluggard of a Viking!” That is me shouting exultantly – a week out and things are going great. Contrary to Brian’s negativity and my own flawed history, I had pulled it off. It had not been easy. Brian was correct on one issue; it had been a lot of work. Permits from the Native Protectorate of the Bering Islands, coordinating schedules of Brian, Grace, and I, food, airplane tickets, shipping the kayaks the list went on and on. In the end, we took the long flight from Anchorage into Hieromartyr Juvenaly  Airport on the shores of the Bering Sea and then a shuttle courtesy of a crab fisherman to Cungagnaq Island.

Our plan was to stick to Cungagnaq Island, attempt to circumnavigate it if we could. We had prepared for storms of course. The seas here are notorious for high winds that often blow for days on end. We decided that if we could not reasonably complete the circumnavigation, we’d find a sheltered place to camp in order to wait out the weather. If worse came to worse, we’d use the base camp as our home, returning to it each night rather than face the consequences of the stormy seas. We had a rendezvous planned with our fisher shuttle in three weeks with contingencies to change the date if we needed to through radio contact.

“Get up Third Wheel. Get up Shark Bait!”

We’d arrived late at night to this campsite, well, actually in the almost twilight that passes for the night in the Arctic summer and set up camp.  Grace and I as usual in one tent and Brian in another. Grace and I wake up earlier than Brian and set about fixing breakfast – oatmeal and sardines, with coffee.
Grace and I are standing over the stove – water’s boiling; we’re leaning against each other and over the stove trying to maximize our shared warmth on a cold morning. I’m feeling good and I’m thinking that my happiness makes Grace happy.
“Hmm. What? What’s up Peatrick? What time is it?” That is Brian from inside his tent.

“It’s oatmeal time you lump!” I say. “Time to get up. The weather’s finally changing I think,” I add, with a bit more seriousness.

Brian, perhaps sick of my taunting emerges from his tent. He actually looks good, a bit bleary-eyed but chipper. “Hey Dude'” he says to me and ambles over towards the steaming pot to pour coffee into his cup.  I take mine black -just the straight stuff. I like it bitter.  Brian spends a while fiddling with spoons of sugar and dried creamer till he gets it just right for his taste. I wonder how he can stand it. It tastes like a hot milkshake to me.
Brian, joking I think, worms his way between us.

“I just love you two,” he says.

He puts his arms around both of us.

“Bri!,” says Grace in mock horror and laughs. But she startles too. She was not expecting that.

“Dude!” I say, “Back off.”

Brian laughs and disentangles himself from us. He is soon busy spooning the fishy but nourishing oatmeal and sardine concoction that is our daily breakfast. I didn’t like Brian’s coming so close. Touching so much. I can feel my sunny mood darkening a bit. I think that Grace senses this for she pulls away as well.

Grace is sipping her coffee. She is drinking it from an old-school Sierra Club cup. It is a bit beat up but on the bottom in still legible black letters are the initials JBM -Jerome Brand Martin. Her dad. He was a backpacker when he was younger and he imbued all of his daughters with a love of nature. He had three girls. Grace was his youngest. He was not a risk-taker though, not like Brian and I. His daughters weren’t either. Even Grace, though she was the most adventurous of the lot. She came on our kayak journeys more because of her connection with me, and with Brian too, I suppose then for any outright desire for adventure.

I don’t know why I even brought up the old cup. I mean, random. But I guess I really haven’t introduced Grace yet. I mean, I’ve told you that I love her. And I’ve mentioned her connection to Brian. And her as a kid but not so much as an adult. Actually, I think Grace is the only adult on the trip. Brian just seems to trip through life. I mean, nothing wrong with that, and he always seems to do pretty well for himself but he never develops any sense of gravity – all is lightness with him. His life, his loves, his kayaking. The maddening teasing. He seems to float above it all.

But while Brian is ultimately inconsequential, Grace has gravity. But lightness too. I mean, different in a way that I find hard to describe. So, I’ve given you a view of my home life. Maybe I’ll tell you more later but here’s a snippet from Grace’s home.

We’d been friends now for a while, it was our last year of high school. Grace was working hard to get into a good college -she had her sights set on law school someday. You know what I was doing, still trying to follow the plan. But wait. Grace. I’m sure it won’t surprise you when I say that Grace was a good student. She was smart of course, I mentioned the debating team I think, but beyond that, she knows how to get work done -she was efficient. Brian kind of worked when he liked, then didn’t but somehow managed to get through his classes with good grades and the affection of his teachers. I’d well, let’s just say my relations with my teachers could be fraught – I was smart enough but I could not stand their hypocrisy. They never met up to my expectations.

Anyway, Grace. (I’m having trouble staying on track here. This is Grace’s story. Stay true). Every Sunday, Grace, one or more of her sisters, and her dad would decamp for an outing- sometimes they’d go to hear music, sometimes to a museum, sometimes just mundane things -shopping expeditions or trips to the mall. But the signature events were the long hikes in the forested hills and mountains surrounding Cascadia. I’d often be invited along when we were in high school.  I was the boyfriend after all.  Or, well truthfully, not her boyfriend. Rather a friend who was a boy. The friend-zone. I’m not sure Grace’s dad really liked me too much. I mean, we got along, but we were not at all on the same wavelength. But I liked him, or at least, I liked being around him. I guess I’ve bored you enough with descriptions of that dry well of anger that was my dad’s emotional reservoir and that ever tempestuous teapot that was my mom’s so I’m sure it would not shock you if I said that spending time with Grace’s family was a relief.

The particular Sunday found us hiking up the Falcon Creek Trail. It was one of Grace’s dad’s favorites. The trailhead was about an hour outside of Cascadia. We drove out in Mr. Martin’s blue Volkswagon Vanagon which always felt like freedom to me. The nice thing about the Northwest is that the cities end quickly. There is not so much of the soul-sickening sprawl that blights so much of the North American landscape. I watch eagerly for the last mall to rush by the back seat window and then to cross over Salmon Creek which signified the entrance into the Hurricane River National scenic Area. And it is a pretty damn scenic Scenic Area. A monumental basalt valley, thousands of feet high and hundreds of miles long. Formed by millennia of lava flows then blasted by Ice Age floods, the walls are precipitous with towers of black basalt, huge amphitheaters of rock, and endless waterfalls cascading down ramparts and precipices.

Mr. Martin was talking as he drove, “It’s hard to imagine girls,” he said, “It’s hard to think of the immense forces that carved this place. Do you know that when the ice dam broke, more water than all the rivers in the world combined poured through here? It’s amazing.” He paused to let the wonder of his statement sink in. If he was expecting a reaction, he didn’t get one. Grace’s sisters, sitting in the back next to me were deep in a private conversation, Grace sitting next to the dad was looking forward, lost in her own thoughts. And me? Well, you can probably guess.  I was sitting directly behind Grace, concentrating my attention on her. I was willing her affection for me to grow into love. Afraid as always that she would fade away like a ghost, like a dream in the morning.

When we arrive at the trailhead, we pile out of the car. The trail parallels Falcon Creek for a few miles. It is a bucolic scene with cottonwoods and alder around the creek. Moss and wildflowers on the wet banks. It is loud here too; the creek rushes over river-rounded stone and tumbles over small steps as it cuts further up the canyon. But as you hike along, quite suddenly actually, you realize that the riversound is gone and that is quiet. The rising ground brings on a deep silence as the creek sinks lower and lower beneath your feet.  Soon the sylvan landscape is gone and you are climbing a narrow path carved into the vertical lava cliff. As the trail continues to rise, it becomes even narrower. Soon, you are walking nearly sideways to the cliff, holding onto an old braided steel cable anchored in the cliff at intervals by steel pins.  This is one of my favorite trails near Cascadia. Of course, we are in single file. I am behind Grace so I can clearly hear her conversation with her dad.

“I don’t know Dad. I really don’t know.  Maybe I should try for law school later but now, I’m not sure I’ll even get into a good enough college,” she says.

“Good enough for what? Good enough for you? That should be the criterion, ” Her dad said. “It does not make any sense to set a goal for someplace based on reasons that might have nothing to do with your reality by the time you arrive there.”

“But I don’t want to disappoint you,” she says. “I’m trying my best.”

“Gracie, I’ve told you this before. It does not matter. I love you and your sisters because you are who you are -wonderful sweet girls. Girls with good hearts and beautiful souls. I couldn’t care less if you get into the best college or if you become an attorney or not. I mean, of course, I care if that is what you really want to do if it means something to you, but not because of some arbitrary idea of what you think you need to do, or worse if it is because you think it is what I expect you to do.”

So why am I telling you this? Not because it is earth-shaking, not because it is remarkable. It is mundane. At least mundane to Grace’s family. It was not mundane to me. I mean, I don’t have the words. I craved that support. I craved that steel wire on the steep cliff, the cliff I had to scale every day, with no trail, no certainty other than the certainty of danger.

I began to think, what if one of Grace’s sisters was to fall. What if they were hanging by their hands on the edge of the cliff and that I was the one to rescue them. What if Grace were to fall? What if I saved her? What if her dad was so grateful that he said to me –Peatrick. You are the most amazing boy. Would you come live with us? Could you? We need someone as strong as you in our home.

And I would say nothing. My gaze would tell Grace’s Dad all he would need to know. He would open his arms and I would fall into them. And his embrace would be as warm as a soft tropical breeze, and as clear as golden light shimmering on sunlit seas. And as the golden light would surround me, I would know I was home.

So that is a glimpse of my relation to Grace when we were in high school. It all came back to me when I saw that cup.

Not that Grace’s family was perfect. It wasn’t. First of all, There was not a mother there. (Not that that seemed a bad thing to me!) But Grace’s mom had left. Departed one day while Grace, her baby, was still small. She had left with the local Rabbi. Haha. I know what you’re thinking -here goes Peatrick off into one of his fantasies. No. Not this time.  It’s the truth. Grace and her family were Jewish, not religious but Jewish. And I wasn’t present of course and Grace as a child had no memory of it, but I heard, that her mom and the Rabbi, who himself was married, had somehow got together and wound up running off.  They settled in Hawaii where he had managed, somehow, to find another congregation, and there they were and that was that. So Mr. Martin was left to raise three girls alone and he did a good enough job -I mean, I’ve given you a glimpse haven’t I? And he did a better job than my parents ever did with the one son and no randy clergy interrupting their lives.

Of course, no one fell off a cliff. And soon the trail leaves the cliffside and exits into a high pine forest. And we continue till we reach a decline, like a stone stair, which brings us to the Cauldron –  a natural bowl, a huge space, in the lava now open to the sky with a stream gushing through the opening, falling over shocking green lichen-covered columns of basalt crystal. The bowl is filled with snowmelt from the high mountains above. After the heat of the hike, the girls strip off their shorts and t-shirts  -they are all wearing swimsuits underneath. I’m doing my best not to stare at them -I’m sitting with their dad after all. I keep my clothes on. I also don’t feel like swimming with them. It will be . . . it’s hard to describe, but it will be too much. I am not interested in being seen by them and their dad unclothed and wet.

So instead of swimming I sit down next to Mr. Martin and talk.  “I don’t know,  Mr. Martin. I’m really not sure what I want to do. I think maybe I’ll go to medical school. I think I’d be a good doctor. I’ve always been interested in how things come apart – I think I’d be good at making them come back together again. You know, I think sickness is often a sign of something more than germs. I mean germs are important and everything, I believe in science. But maybe sick people also need guidance – a way to heal their soul sickness. I mean, I think sickness points to a sickness of the soul. Umm. This is not entirely my idea – Thomas Aquinas, and I don’t want to sound pretentious, like one of these priests at All Catholic, my High School -of course, you know. We learn about him there. But he said something like that and you know. My dad, he sometimes says that we are born to follow a path, and we cannot get off of it. You know my dad’s a Buddhist right? I mean kind of a Catholic Buddhist if you know what I mean. It’s confusing. But he says we’re born into a path and you have to follow it but also that you have to leave it. If you don’t, you’ll be born again on the same path or worse, and then what?”

Mr. Martin didn’t say anything but he was still looking at me.  So I just continued. I mean wouldn’t you?

“And Mr. Martin, I was reading a book by Nikos Kazantzakis. Have you heard of him? He was a Greek author; not from ancient Greece, but a while ago, and he said that we are trapped not by past lives but by birth, in our own bodies which are monstrous, and that we need to transcend those bodies. And he said that people who can do that are saints. And so I started reading about saints. And I came across an Eskimo saint! You know I like kayaking and it was started by Eskimos. And anyway, he’s not actually an Eskimo but an Aleut – I mean, it’s pretty much the same. He lived in the Aleutian Islands. and his name was Cungagnaq but the Russians, who controlled the islands, changed his name to Peter. I mean that alone must have been confusing, not to know his real name. But he was a hunter – he hunted sea otters for their fur. Or I mean, pelts, that is the right word to use. They were worth a fortune in Russia. So the Russians would take the hunters, literally take them -they used to hold their wives and children captive so they wouldn’t run away.

So they carried Cungagnaq or Peter or whatever I should call him and his friends on a boat and sailed all down the west coast of America. And they’d launch the Eskimos in their kayaks and they’d hunt sea otters and bring them back to the Russians.

Somewhere in California, Cungagnaq and other hunters were captured by the Spanish. They took them to a Mission, maybe Monterey or maybe San Francisco,  and they tortured him. The Spanish priest brought in California Indians, who were also basically slaves, and had them torture Cungagnaq. First, they cut off his toes, then they cut off his fingers. Supposedly they wanted him to convert from Russian Catholic to what do you call it, from Russian Orthodox to plain old Spanish Catholic. And supposedly he wouldn’t do it. But maybe they were just pissed because they were taking the sea otters the Spanish wanted or who knows? But anyway, when they were finished cutting off his fingers and toes they disemboweled him and then he died. Then they were going to torture the rest of the Eskimos but instead, they decided to just let them go. So when the word got back to the Russians, they said – Cungagnaq is a martyr! -and they made him a Saint.”

Mr. Martin was silent for a while. I’m sure he was wondering what to say to this odd boy, this friend of his daughter’s who was so intense but must have seemed so needy to him as well. But I think Mr. Martin also respected him.

Mr. Martin put his arm around my shoulders. I didn’t flinch which was not always the case -I don’t really like to be touched too much. But he put his arm around my shoulders and I let it stay there.

“Hmm, Patrick, ” he said. “What do you make of this story?”

“Well, it seems like they screwed him over. He died for nothing. Is that what makes a Saint? I mean basically, what did Cungagnaq die for? Sea otters? There are no more sea otters. And basically, all the Aleut Eskimos are gone too; the Russians killed them.  I mean, what the heck?!” I said.

“It is a tragic story. A horrible story. It can be hard to know how to respond to so much pain, so much tragedy, ” he said.

“Yeah. They never should have made him a saint,” I said.

That made Mr. Martin pause.

“Patrick. Why is it important that he was or was not made a saint?”

“Well, you need to live for a purpose and you need to die for a purpose.  But there was no purpose there. Just a bunch of useless pain and then nothing. It’s like I was saying before. We need a plan to live by and we need to follow that plan. And that’s why I’m thinking of medicine. My dad wants me to be an engineer but I think medicine might be better. I think I can help people who lose their way.”

“Patrick, one thing I’ve learned over the years is that you can’t demand too much from yourself or others. It’s wonderful when you meet someone and they are so driven by their passion that they do amazing things. Sometimes people like that are able to motivate others to do amazing things. And that can be wonderful as well. But sometimes, zealotry can lead to not-so-good things, for themselves and others. You have to be able to tolerate weakness, not judge it. Because people can be both very weak and very strong. You have to forgive it in others and forgive it in yourself.”

So a couple of things here.

First, and I don’t know if you caught it, but Mr. Martin always called me Patrick. He insisted on it and I let him. Second, I no longer wanted his arm on my shoulders. What he said, that was not the point at all.

The point was, and this was my fear, the point was, what if there is no getting off of it? I mean, no way to break out of the circles. What if we are born lost, and then we just wander? And we are forced to repeat everything, without even realizing we are doing it? Like slaves, slaves in chains. And slaves live these same pathetic lives until they die. Until they go extinct. But some people, people like saints, these people, these saints, they can break these chains.

But I did not say anything. I guess I wanted Mr. Martin’s arm still if you know what I mean. And I wanted Grace’s love. So I just shrugged and we sat more or less in silence watching Grace and her sisters swim.

Funny, that cup brought back so much. Anyway, that was a long story. But here we are back on the island. And I guess you see now that this island meant something to me. Somebody had named this island after Peter, Cungagnaq the martyr. I never told Brian about this. This kind of thing, martyrs and saints -he wouldn’t have understood. But I told Grace. Grace always understood. She did not always agree but she understood that it was important to me.

After breakfast, Grace and I break down our tent. Grace packs up our belongings into dry bags. I walk down to the water’s edge to clean the dishes and get our boats ready for launch. Grace comes down from camp and I begin to sort and stow the drybags into the hatches.  As I stow them, I look out at the sky. It has been oddly calm for days. The calm weather, as well as the endless Arctic days, made the first week something of a blur. Almost an anticlimax -the sea so flat. We had prepared for the worse yet now it is almost like we are back on the Merriweather River in Cascadia. Except for the endless horizon of course – and the odd landscape. No Cascadian forests here -rather bleak lava shores guarding green tundra interiors. Sometimes, tall rime-covered mountains are visible – volcanoes all. Sometimes just swift rolling hillsides. And water everywhere – gushing and flowing across the spongy tundra or pouring in sudden cascades over the black cliffs.

But now the weather is definitely taking a turn. Now I see thick clouds – scudding in from the Southwest. The sea appears to welcome their coming; it turns a darker shade of steel-blue to mirror the dense clouds. The waves are breaking -whitecaps as far as the eye can see. We consult our charts before we launch. What’s our heading today Brian?” I ask. Brian calls out, “20 degrees North Northeast.”  Brian always calls the heading as we depart.  We launch through a rather imposing shore break to continue our pilgrim’s way around Cungagnaq Island.

After we launch the wind continued to build but as we are paddling North and East and the wind was coming from South and West it was more of a help than a hindrance. Still, while expected, it was not welcome. Storms here tend to come from the Southwest. And after such a long quiet period, well I just felt that we were due for something more violent. It was almost as if I felt we deserved it. So many calm days, such easy paddling. Of course, I’m not saying we wanted it. That would just be weird.  Still, the tension. Sometimes it was better just to face what’s to come rather than endure the agony of waiting.

Soon we are fighting our way through a thick wind and tangled sea. It’s not scary, not yet, but it requires concentration. I’m finding it hard, to tell you the truth, hard to concentrate. Suddenly and stupidly, I lose the rhythm of my paddling and am almost knocked over. I brace hard to forestall the capsize. Do you know what bracing is? You might not. I guess I should tell you. Bracing means using your paddle to keep from tipping over. You always brace when you paddle – in fact, paddling really should be called bracing because that’s what you do – moving forward, backward, side-to-side, rolling -it’s all a brace. And it rapidly becomes second nature, you really aren’t aware that you are doing it, stroke, and then a gentle tap, just to correct that mild off-center tilt that if allowed to continue unchecked, would lead to disaster.
When the wind blows, especially from a quartering angle, that is obliquely, the fact that you are bracing creeps more clearly into your consciousness. A cross-wind, something coming up, from the side, or from behind. Odd quarters. Those are dangerous. They force you to think. You need to be aware of the situation.

Say you are sliding down a wave but quartering seas propels another wave to come at you unexpectedly from the side. So you brace! Hard! But then maybe your lap fills with water and another large wave submerges your stern and your bow shoots away from true and you are going over backward then brace deep at your rear – counter the force! The pull under – you must not go there.

But sometimes, despite the bracing, things creep in. Small things. Forgotten. I begin puzzling over what I thought I heard Grace say. I mean, did she call Brian, Bri? Rhyming with my as in my love. I mean, why would she use that word? It sounds so intimate. She never calls me Peaty.

But maybe she didn’t say it. She was laughing when she said whatever it was she said and it’s hard to hear what with the wind and the roar of the stove.But if she did, then that  . . . No. That can’t be. But. No. Stop.

I paddle on. Paddle, slip, slide, brace. Paddle slip, slide, brace. With all this thinking, I have lagged behind Brian and Grace. They are paddling together. Maybe I should paddle a bit faster. A few strong strokes and I could get between them, just like Brian did this morning when he . . No, we’re fine.

Let me tell you something more about us. Brian and I. I guess I haven’t talked too much about these things we do together. These adventures I mean. As I think I mentioned, Brian and I have been adventure partners from way back – we’re pretty evenly matched in terms of abilities. I guess I’m more of a natural athlete -coordinated activity comes easy to me. Brian is not such a natural but he is immensely strong – despite his size. . . Saying that though, there was another difference. I was was always scared. A fear that lurked just on the edge of whatever activity we were doing -mountaineering, rock-climbing, whitewater, sea kayaking. I felt I was being chased by that which I had chosen to do. Brian was different. Sometimes I thought Brian was immune to the fear -like if you had done a brain scan of him, the part of the brain that lit up under stress would just show black. That there was nothing there. But, I’m not sure that was right. I had seen Brian stressed; he felt fear. Perhaps it was that he had no fear of the fear. As if fear, like everything else in his world was weightless. Fear was as light as a feather, as light as his actions with grace, as light as his friendship for me.

Brace! A faceful of icy cold water brings me back to the present. I haven’t been able to catch up to Brian and Grace -they remain ahead of me -in sight but out of earshot. Brian and grace ride a swell up till they are far above me, ten feet at least, I see them crest and then slide down out of sight into the trough behind. Suddenly they are above me again, then they fall away. It reminds me of something odd, well not an odd thing in and of itself, rather an odd thing to remember out here. It’s me and Brian’s meeting. In high school -does everything of consequence happen in high school? It seems that way sometimes.This is how I met Brian. Almost every day after class, I’d pedal my bike up to Stoneman’s Quarry on Adam’s Butte on the north side of Cascadia. I went up there to go climbing – it was a bouldering practice area -there would always be other climbers there from around Cascadia. It was set in an old gravel pit on the top of a hill. You had to ride your bike all the way to the top and then walk down a rough set of stone stairs into the Pit (as we called it). The Pit was always populated with a bunch of us -from different schools and different ages but all united in the pursuit of working the lines on the rock faces on the exposed walls of the quarry. It was a practice area, so the climbs were short, nothing above 25 feet, but the climbs were intricate.

Actually, we followed two pursuits there, the first was climbing, and the second was hanging out. Honestly, the order should be reversed. We hung out more than we climbed. One day, I was sitting on top of the quarry wall. It was evening, I was watching Cascadia fade under the gloaming. It was summer so it must have already been late twilight but not yet dark. I was smoking a cigarette. A guy walked up to me and sat down nearby. Lots of folks liked to come to the top of the quarry at twilight to watch the lights come on over the city, so I      ?

And thus it will happen one day that a man will be born again, just like me, and a woman will be born, . . . only that it is to be hoped that the head of this man may contain a little less foolishness-and in a better land they will meet and contemplate each other a long time; and finally the woman will give her hand to the man and say with a tender voice, “Let us be friends.”

“So Grace, I have to admit it, Peatrick really pulled it off.”
“I knew he would Brian,” I say. I give Brian my widest smile. “He worked hard at it and believed in it.” “Yeah maybe,” Brian says. “But we both know that he folds more hands than he plays.” “Brian, that’s not right. Peatrick went way out of his way to make this a success. He carried it off despite all the issues. And without much help.”

Brian looks long at me, I can see his mind working, he will think of something biting to say. To my surprise though, he stops short. He laughs. His big Brian laugh, which I’ve always liked, and says “Three cheers for our captain, Peatrick!” Hahah.

“I’ll cheer for Peatrick anytime,” I say.

“Where is the boy anyway?” asked Brian.

“Oh, you know how he is. He like being alone sometimes – he’s gone off on one of his walks.”

We’re sitting in my tent. My and Brian’s tent, I mean. I’m still in my sleeping bag. I’ve been reading a book I brought with me –A Confederacy of Dunces, I’ve read it before but I love rereading it. Especially on trips like this. My dad gave it to me the first time. It’s so funny I laugh out loud. Sometimes the main character Alyosha reminds me of Peatrick. He’s so earnest but so prone to falling into the same problems. Not Alyosha, Ignatius. Funny mistake. Ahh, they’re both so earnest and so at sea.

It makes me think about the first time I met Brian, I mean Peatrick. That’s also a funny slip. Peatrick, I meant was a party at Brian’s place, I was kind of stoned and hanging out with Miranda I think. And this incredibly tall guy walks up, I like tall guys, and he tries to chat me up. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, because he was so awkward. He was talking to me about debate club. And he was talking about this time we were debating a local school and some incident which I had completely forgotten.

Finally, I said, “Were we on the debate team together?”

He flushed. I guess that was the entire point. Oh my, I flushed too because I was embarrassed that I had forgotten him.

“No, I got to All Catholic, ” He said. “But we’ve debated a lot.”

I must have still looked confused because he got a bit redder.
Finally, my friend Miranda stepped in to grab his hand.  Miranda’s good in a pinch. “Let me read your fortune, my man. First, of all what’s your name?” she asked.

I’m so glad she asked because if I had to admit that I did not remember his name after he reminded me that we were on the same debate circuit I’d be embarrassed and he would be hurt.

“Peatrick,” he said.
“Patrick?” asked Miranda.
“No, Peatrick.”
“Well. That’s a funny name,” She giggled. She was a bit stoned too.

“And when were you born?”

“1975.”

“Month, day, and time please”

“October, 18. 5:00AM. I think. But, I don’t believe in astrology and why are you asking?”

“Well, you may not believe in it but it believes in you. And, I’m asking because you’re here hitting on my friend and I want to see what kind of creature you are.”

“And?” he asked.

I laughed but he looked uncomfortable.

“Now then,” Miranda said. “Hold on a minute. Your hand,” she said, “is cold. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were scared of something. It can’t be me, so it must be Grace. Are you scared of Grace? A big guy like you?”

At this point, I just wanted Miranda to stop, she was kind of being mean. Still, I thought it was interesting – how would this guy respond? And I must admit, I did like him -he was so tall and he seemed sensitive as well. And at this point, I did remember him. He was a good debater -quick and sometimes subtle. And I must admit, I snuck a look at his hands and fingers. I like a man’s hands. His hands were strong, his fingers were long. And you know what they say about correlations between fingers and other parts. O gee, I don’t want to come across as like that. Sometimes I just don’t know what to think about myself.

“Well, my girl, what did you say your name is?

“Miranda.”
Well, Miranda. I’m not scared of you that’s for sure. Though you do a pretty good job as gatekeeper for Grace. So if you’re through with the keeping the gate, maybe Grace can say something to me – unless she’s scared.”

He looked at me with lots of confidence, though I think he was still nervous -I wasn’t sure at the time. I was sitting on an old couch in Brian’s basement, he sat next to me. Pretty close -I was surprised but I liked it. I don’t remember the conversation anymore but I know he talked about kayaking and mountain climbing a lot. I wasn’t into either of those things but my dad was and I told him about some of our more regular hikes. He told me a lot about stuff he and Brian did together – I wondered if he knew about that time Brian and I had hooked up

Then, while I was talking about a hike in Hurricane Gorge, he took hold of my hand -funny, despite what Miranda said, it wan’t cold at all- in fact it was positively hot -on fire even. I realized then that he was shaking a bit.

“You have my hand.”
“Do you mind?”

“Actually, not too much.”

The fog is heavy on the water when we awake. It subdues the waves and sound in a muffled thickness of damp grey.

Grace, Brian, and I go through our morning rituals of oatmeal and sardines washed down by coffee. Then we pack the tents and stow the gear. The tents are heavy with condensate from the fog outside and our breath inside. It is a constant challenge to get the bags and other gear in and out of the tent without soaking them. We pretty much lost the battle, on sleeping bags, by day two – they remain damp and swampy. When it is sunny, a rarity these days, we air them on rocks or string them across our We shake them to dislodge as much of the water clinging to their fabric as we can but it is pretty much useless and only

I wanted to put in, to get out of the enclosing mist, but Brian didn’t want to.  He said, with some justification, that going in could be more dangerous than staying at sea.

I knew at once what I must do.. I must kill a whale.  It made sense. It was some time after Brian had died and a day before I noticed my Companion.

But the whale. Living as I was on kelp,  barnacle, and chiton,  I was hungry. Craving meat.  Red meat.  Meat with blood on the bone and fat under the skin .  .  . I knew what I must do.

But how?  I needed an implement, a killing tool.  Something that would pierce the thick skin, that would thrust its head, snake-like through flesh and blubber and cartilage, till it reached the heart and then – release.  The whale would die.  At my hand!  I would clamber atop its body – exultant.  I would dance on his carcass.  He would join me in a dance, then a feast.  Indeed, the spirit would consume itself, with me, Ouroboros.  Complete.

Perhaps, even perhaps something I used to wish for, something that I forgot even existed.

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Perhaps when I slit the whale open and crawled inside its warmth, I would find a way home

And then, on a day, paddling, alone, in a wilderness of sea, I saw a black slash in the water.  What was it?  Paddling forward, I came to it.  A hard piece of finished wood.  At least as long as my boat, maybe 18 feet long.  Afloat, at sea, for how long?  I paddled up to it and grasped it.  It was slimed, covered by a soft gel – protoplasm maybe?  It covered the black stick, yet it was still stiff, sound, and flexible. It had come to me for this purpose – one purpose alone – to be my harpoon.

swift strokes to the prize. I lean over and grasp it.  like an electric jolt, I can feel the coursing energy flow from the cold sea into my warm blood.  Eureka.

I start collecting the tools I need. At first, I try to make blades out of the old nails and spikes I find from time to time in the driftwood current-carried into my waters.  I find that I cannot easily make anything worthwhile -if I flatten them they bend and break. Better, I discover are the many oyster shells I find in the shallow mud flats between – I begin to collect bits of old line and rope.

this is how I make my spearhead – I shape oyster shells into leaf shapes, bevel the edges then sharpen them into razors

I saw the spouts in the morning. Puffs  – three, four, five! Barely discernible over the swells, but there they were.  This morning I would do it.  struggling into my drysuit was a matter of a moment.  But this morning, in my heightened and exultant state, the sensations were exquisite.  The funk of the suit was almost overwhelming -sometimes it is strong enough to make me retch, but today not so -the deep odor of my body, the ocean debris scent of that which nourishes me, the scent of fear, hope, resolve my emotions made olfactory. then the feel of the salt-crusted fabric -rough as sandpaper, the stick of grit in the zipper.  Finally, the tight squeeze forcing my head through the silicon sphincter of the suit’s neck. A moment of rebirth.

I check my equipment – I am shaking:

paddle

spear

Spear-line and float

Lance

I am ready to kill.

June

Swift strokes brought me

Puffins, auklets, gulls, storm petrels, cormorants, terns, kittiwakes, murres, pigeon guillemots, and murrelet What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again