Me and Jonah
Jeff Weston
for Liza
The water is cold, cold enough to break the skin of the boat,
the skin of me, oh, it’s a little too much. We started days ago.
That was good, when we started out, leaving port the way
you do with the engines throttled full and there were good
skies and I was saying to myself, we’ll get lots of fish this
time out and I think I was planning to take the money and get
a new truck. One time I made seven grand on a trip after it
was said and done.
Oh, I hear such beautiful music, it makes my heart
break, like the ship, was broken, across the rocks.
If I could move my leg along the slick deck, if it weren’t
already gone to the place where legs go, when they’re sick
and tired, I would move along the deck and examine the
possibilities.
One needs possibilities.
Occasionally I listen. I listen very hard, straining, no,
harder than that. I can hear a whole lot of things. Sometimes
I hear the engine sputtering. Like it’s going, I think, excellent,
then we’ll continue on to the Banks and nab fish and I’ll be
out with nets and I’ll have my gloves and this is very
important, I’ll be looking out over the bow and can see the
ripple of the surface of the water as waves come towards us
as if we were cutting through the lines of a great symphony,
like the one on the radio at the moment.
The light of 12 Pound island is a laser. I shiver every
time it slices across us, and am slivered into pieces the way
you take an egg and sever it into equal sections with wire,
the wire in an egg cutter like they have in kitchens. I try not
to look at the light. Then I look at the light, trying to fathom a
purpose. I remember its purpose, to guide, that’s what it
does. Everything is being cut. Time, I have seen, by waiting
for the swivel of the light of the light house, is a paradox.
Perhaps everything cut up is a paradox.
I remember once, I was traveling the length of the
coast, in a car, a nice car I had, it was a 2002, one of the
older ones, and in driving I could sense that the ocean was
cut up into pieces from my view in the car. The landscape in
the winding road slid into view, then broke to allow the
ocean. It was cold, like now, very cold, and the ocean
doesn’t freeze, not like lakes and ponds, but around the
edges it did, and steam rose from it, as it struggled to remain
in motion. There I was, in motion, struggling to remain in
motion. I think I was running away from something, from
some situation. I don’t believe I was running for ever, like,
trying to actually escape, I was running for the sake of
running, to clear my head. And the water, as I wound around
the road of the coast, puzzled me with its distinct personality.
I must say I felt fear. So large, so much. Like now. Except I
don’t want to think about that exactly, I’m just going to try
running, in my head, until my head clears. If I could reach the
radio down in the galley, I would turn it up. Although it’s
pretty loud right now. It was left on before we went belly up
on the rocks. And the rocks cut too, oh yes, I found that out.
But we didn’t sink, that we would have, we were speared on
the jagged points. It is useless to mention this. Even if I had
grabbed the log book from the cabin, in some miraculous
foresight, of the time at hand, and a pen too -- I speak for the
fishes who taunt me. I am telling them. You then, are the
fish. You are listening safely in the tide, warm enough with
your fatty insulation from the icy salt.
Blasted radio I hate you I really hate you! Why don’t
your batteries run low so you can stop tricking me and
keeping me listening as if I were tethered to you, with long
cords of stainless steel cable never capable of rusting,
always closer to the infernal speaker and the commercials,
ugh, I think it’s the commercials which get me. I would like to
go down to Demario’s for some new vinyl house siding! I
would like to open an account at the Cape Bank! But I can’t,
you see? It’s very simple. No need to get upset about it.
I think it was an argument with a girlfriend.
When the spray comes in over the railing, I can feel it
against my face, but it seems to have calmed down, the
water and the fish are quietly listening.
I always liked when, in the summer, you went into the
freezer and it made your whole body tingle. That was great,
although it does occur to me that there in the winter, in the
snow, when the snow gets caught between your gloves and
coat, just at the wrists, it burns. I guess I liked that too. I’d
take either right now to be quite frank.
If I were named Frank, I would no longer be named
Mikhail.
My father named me this, you see, and my mother
grudgingly agreed. She wanted to name me Frank. No, I
believe she wanted to name me Boris. I don’t think I would
have liked to have been called Boris all my life. There is
something absolutely grainy about it, the sound of it, in my
ears, with the sound of the water constantly moving, the
sound Boris does nothing to please me. My parents say
they’re from Moscow, but I know they’re really from the
Ukraine. Just like them to name someone Mikhail rather than
Boris, not Frank, not Joe. But I’m from Leicester, not from
where they’re from and even having to carry around a name
like Mikhail, although not Boris, has always been a heavy
load. I was ruddy cheeked. Maybe the cold is in my blood,
and it fires the area below my eyes with constant streaks of
red. I have no mirror now, but if I did, I would check this tidbit
of a thought, to verify it.
Let’s see, if I were speaking to salmon how would the
story differ from one told to tuna?
I have given up on the fish. I don’t think they’re
listening. I’m speaking now to the lighthouse, yes, it will
surely listen. My words will be absorbed by the light, and in
being absorbed, redistributed over the whole water. I am
imagining other sailors have done this too, so that there are
layers on top of layers. The waves bump them so they mix,
and we have one story mixed into another, like paint spilled,
or like something else, something I can’t remember at the
moment.
There are many things to remember. I have tried to
remember them all, but have settled for select things, pulled
out at random.
Let’s see, there are so many. Here’s one.
I am seeing that place I’d rented right on Agawam
Beach. It was a cabin, sort of a cabin, that was open to the
air, I had it for the summer, it was open like it had no
windows. It had slats which were hinged at the top and held
open at an angle by a pole, you could lower them if you
wanted, when it was raining or whatever. I had the place all
summer. And there was a small foot trail down to the beach,
and I spent time drinking wine and playing guitar and I would
sometimes build a fire on the beach and cook what I’d
caught. I had this girl, Maria, who used to come to the cabin.
And we had great sex there, in the cabin, on the beach, the
kind of slow sex that went with the tempo of the waves, like
we weren’t in any hurry. I spent a lot of time thinking about
things then. Oh, what sort of things did I think about? I wasn’t
a teenager, but I wasn’t grown up either. I guess those sorts
of things. Why is insurance so important to everybody? Why
did peasants pour vodka down Dostoyevski’s father’s throat
so he died? If I were Nietzsche, and I walked into a bar, how
would I explain my philosophy without being beaten up? Why
did I say those cruel things years ago to Boris? Why don’t
people say what they mean, or why don’t people keep it to
themselves, or why don’t people spend more time laying on
the beach with a guitar smoking some weed? I really felt I
was getting to the bottom of enormous burning questions. I
imagined I could impart this knowledge to my fellow man. I
told Maria and she laughed. I didn’t mind. People are always
saying, oh, these are the best days of your life, like, since
you were like, three. Maybe those days on the beach were
mine. I don’t know. They kind of embarrass me too. Those
days, the best ones, which I look at now. Now. Not now. I
don’t want to think about it right now. The fire inched over the
wood as if it were alive. That’s what I remember. I thought
the fire was alive, those nights. And I thought the ocean was
too. I could understand, rolling sand between my fingers and
toes, why the four elements were chosen. I tried to play an
Earth, Wind, and Fire song on the guitar for Maria but I was
never very good. My fingers just don’t seem to be able to
move around in a musical way. It’s as if they’re glued
together. I can only strum in a dirge sort of way. Maybe it’s
my Russian blood. I’ve heard my Uncle warble out some
terrifically mournful Russian songs. I’ve forgotten a lot of my
Russian, but I remember the songs were always about some
worker for the people sacrificing something. Ah.
What I would like is something to do. When you’re
doing things you don’t have to think so much, and it would
take my mind off the ocean.
When you have bad thoughts, like very bad thoughts
about hurting or being hurt it’s sometimes best to let them
flow right through you, as if you were transparent.
So I’m opening my eyes again, although the lids are
hurting quite a lot on my eyes, and the eye balls themselves
are aching with the cold, I look at the water, as if I were
transparent.
Like the fire. Every bit is moving. Every tiny jutting bit
of it is moving of its own free will. This is an enormous animal
I am surrounded by. It is angry, maybe it is angry with me,
oh, tell me, what have I done wrong, won’t you tell me, why
go on punishing me this way! The radio is good. I like the
radio, it takes away my attention from the water. I’m listening
to the announcer’s voice, I know the announcer, I mean, I
know every thing about him because of each subtle
intonation. I know where he went to school, what he had for
breakfast, who he’s sleeping with, what his goals and pet
peeves are. He doesn’t like the toilet paper roll put on so the
sheets hang close to the wall, I can tell that. And he has
trouble sleeping, and he has a few bills he can’t seem to get
around to paying, and he sits in the morning and wonders
sometimes why he doesn’t just pick up and move in with his
cousin who has this great place in North Carolina, where he
can finally get time to paint and maybe even sell some of the
paintings of forests and portraits in a small gallery. That’s
what he’s always wanted to do. His dog is very sick. He’s
worried about him, he doesn’t want to have to put him to
sleep, after all, he’s had him since he was a teenager. I hope
he plays a song I like. Even if he doesn’t I forgive him. Oh,
why doesn’t the water forgive me and transport me to the
shore so I can get that vinyl siding?
Wait, I think I rushed my interpretation of the radio
man. I mean, I believe I was thinking of different tones, in his
voice, and now that I’m listening harder I can tell some stuff I
didn’t have right in the first place. No dog, first of all. He is
not the sort of person who has a dog, maybe a cat. Maybe
not even a cat. Certainly not fish. I don’t want to conceive of
fish at the moment, who don’t even have the decency to
listen to me. A cat would. A dog would. No, the Radio Man is
indeed sleepless, an insomniac. That much was correct. He
does not paint ideal scenes. He is not an artist. But he does
dream of escape. Like me. And why does he? That is a good
question.
Maybe he is trapped by forces beyond his control, as
if he were bounded in by a huge raging expanse.
When I was traveling across Alaska, with a backpack,
and working for a while at the fisheries there, hoisting huge
salmon onto conveyor belts, I was distinctly aware of many
hedgings and expanses. Becoming conscious of the gravel
beneath my feet, and the mosquitoes, and the north winds, I
sought to follow the footsteps of Jack London and see the
whole wide world. My eyes, so pained now, had wings. I
wanted them to fly the entire way around. Tagging behind, I
could pick up the pieces of my journey. But there were large
chunks of time when I was only concerned with solitude I
was never able to find. I was continually interrupted from
more than a half hour of aloneness. Once I was out in the
woods in Alaska, and I had walked three days out of Juneau,
and I thought, my god, I am going to get away from things
now, I’m actually going to be alone like I’ve never known
before, and then maybe I’ll get to the bottom of myself, and
I’ll be like the Indians and have known and be visited by
Mother Nature herself and understand everything I need to.
So there I am, having pitched tent for the night. I’d put out
the fire. I laid down on my sleeping bag and was so very
much at peace and content like I’d never been able to know
before, when I can hear this sound in the distance. It’s this
whizzzzing sound. It’s the sound of bombs falling in
miniature. Then a great big BOOM, and laughter. Oh Jesus,
what the hell almighty Christ is going on? Out of the tent with
my flashlight I walk over a rise and see below me a truck and
a few kids -- oh I don’t know, they were my age -- and they
were drinking and yelling and shooting fireworks. Out in the
middle of nowhere. In the middle of everywhere. In the
middle of my god-damn solitude and peace and quiet and
diplomacy with Mother Nature. I was mad. I was livid. I
shouted WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? and the guys
they stopped and they looked up at me, and one of them said
Hey dude, what are ya doing way out here? And I said
TRYING TO GET SOME PEACE OF MIND. Hey, they said,
come on down we got some beer and some good tunes. And
I went down and had a beer with them, and we talked and
they were working with a logging company. I liked them, we
got along. I suddenly understood that seeking this solitude
was impossible, that it wasn’t meant for me, and you know I
just sorta gave up then, seeing them there. So isn’t it sort of
ironic, I think, that now I’ve got it, when I don’t want it.
The captain went over the side in an inflatable lifeboat
on the first day. He said he was sure he could make it to 12
Pound Island and the light house.
I mean what’s it about?
I have questions. I’m not sure what they are exactly,
but I feel them in there, nudging the insides restlessly. Often I
like to sit outside, on the porch I have, and drink a beer and
smoke some, and the questions go away for a while.
Sometimes they get so big and so bad, that I feel as if I’m
slowly being swallowed, like Jonah was in the whale. Maybe
he was swallowed up right away, so I’m more like being
digested. That’s what people imply, I guess, when they say
‘what’s eating you?’ Questions, I have some. I would tell you
what they were if I knew them.
What was the story, the one about Jonah, being
swallowed by the whale. Wait. Let me think. Yes, God told
Jonah to go to Ninevah as a messenger, to tell Ninevah it
had gone sour and that God was going to punish them. But
Jonah didn’t do that. He ran away, he got on a ship, going
somewhere, a place whose name is too long and too biblical
for me to remember at the moment. Oh that I could. That the
tiny details would come to me easily. I could be on Jeopardy
with an ability like that. Anyway, I don’t recall where Jonah
was going, but the important part was, he was going there on
a ship. God was pissed off. Made a storm. And Jonah lay
sleeping in the ship, and a sailor shook him awake saying,
Why are you sleeping? We’re about to be smashed by the
storm, don’t you have a God to pray to? Oh yes, says Jonah,
I have a God to pray to, the one that made the land and yes
the storm too. Made the storm? they said. Well, tell him to
make it go away. I can’t do that, Jonah said, he’s got to
punish me I guess. Punish you? They conferred. Sacrifice
him, the sailors said, throw him out where his God can get
him and so we can survive. So the sailors said prayers and
took Jonah and threw him overboard. And in the water a
great beast waited, sent by God, who swallowed up Jonah, in
whose belly he stayed three days and three nights. It was a
great beast, OK, let’s get that straight, it does not actually
say a whale, but I prefer to think of it as a whale, so abide
me will you? Jonah prayed and apologized I guess.
Afterward, he was vomited up and went to Ninevah to preach
the end because they had been very bad. But everyone
listened to Jonah, in Ninevah, when he said God was going
to destroy them in what, forty days. So everyone in Ninevah
went and fasted, and threw away their clothes and wore
sackcloth. And they repented. God saw that Ninevah was
changed, and he forgave them and didn’t destroy them. But
Jonah was upset. I guess he really wanted to see Ninevah
leveled. And this is the part I don’t understand so well. The
thing I can’t figure out is the gourd. I can’t figure why Jonah
wants to die either, but I’m going to put that aside, at least
momentarily. Let’s just say Jonah wants God to kill him. But
instead of killing him, God makes this gourd, which hangs
over Jonah, which shades him from the sun. Can you figure
this out? A floating gourd? Out of his gourd? And this isn’t all.
Jonah still wants to die, and he gets used to the gourd being
there, and Ninevah being there, so God creates a worm that
he places in the gourd, which makes it shrivel up. End of
story. Does this make any sense whatsoever? It starts nicely,
with the part about the whale (how I started on this whole
thing) and ends up with a floating gourd and a worm.
Maybe Jonah wanted to die because he could not
escape God. He was, in a sense, stranded. He sat out in the
desert after saying what he had to say, and God wouldn’t
leave him alone, bothering him with floating gourds.
I should take some time to explain my position, to you,
on the radio. That’s who I’m addressing, I’ve given up on the
fish. The guy on the radio will listen to me, as I’ve listened
patiently to him. But he’s not exactly in the same situation is
he? He can probably leave whenever he likes. He could put
on a very long album and walk outside the station and look at
the sky and sit on some stairs, and maybe even drive down
into town for a little while before he has to return. I would too
except for this leg. What happened. When the waves started
coming over the sides, and the engine went kaput, and we
began drifting, I sloshed around on the deck unhooking the
lines, in hopes we could gain some control, and then with a
crack we were impaled on the rocks, and everything went
crazy like the sounds of screams and the metal hull
crumpling and that’s when the winch came down and
smashed my leg. I don’t see much left of either. I would like
to think that the leg hurt the winch as much as the winch hurt
the leg. The pain was bad for a while. I mean, when I’m
talking about pain here, I’m talking about excruciating bone
wrenching flame rocketing around the whole surface and
inside of the body. I squirmed. The captain tried to move the
thing off, the winch thing, but he couldn’t budge it. No
choices, he said, very few choices, I’ve got to try and make it
to 12 Pound island and then send somebody back. There
was a survival suit in the pilothouse, along with the wrecked
radios (the one’s that broadcast, oh why am I tormented with
one that only receives? One out of reach at that) and the
shattered glass and busted electronics must’ve been quite a
stab at the captain’s heart, what with how much money he’s
put into this boat. There was a brief moment of him debating
about the suit, which is a sort of orange bunny suit for low
temperatures, and of course I couldn’t have gotten the thing
on what with my leg and the winch being so intimate.
But I don’t feel so much pain now, I get real sleepy,
but I know I shouldn’t fall asleep, cuz that’s what happens
when you get too cold.
How long has the captain been gone? I could fathom
large blocks of time that were, well, near forever. I have been
here forever. There was once a class I took, in school, a
physics class, about how time and space are connected.
This always excited me, and I often thought about it, in a
playful way, when we left port for six weeks when going on a
big trip, how if we were moving the speed of light when we
got back more time would have elapsed than what we had
experienced. Everything would’ve changed. Everyone
would’ve grown old and passed on, and their children too,
cuz that’s what happens they say, when you mix up time and
space like that, by going so fast. Perhaps, now I muse, I am
experiencing the opposite reaction: I am not moving in
space, not one inch, not one less than one inch, and so time
slows down for me while it progresses at the same rate in
Leicester. So that when I get back, it’ll seem to me like I’ve
been gone for years, decades, and everyone’ll say, oh, back
so soon? How was the fishing? I like to think about this.
What would happen to space, for instance, if you moved
through time at a different rate? I mean, this isn’t possible I
know, to time travel, but if you could, what would happen to
the space around you? If I were a physicist I would know the
answers to these things.
I believe what is playing now is a Curtis Mayfield song.
When I was young certain songs had an effect on me.
I would sit in the back of my aunt’s VW bug (she was a
hippie, who wore bell bottoms and braided her hair and
decorated herself with flowery patterns) and the songs would
make my whole body vibrate. The hook, of the songs, the
pop songs. It was radio then, playing stuff I hear again once
and a while but those songs don’t make my whole body
vibrate anymore, instead, they seem to hook the hook. You
know what I mean? Like the reflection of a reflection of
yourself in a mirror. It’s removed, and yet it has a sort of
effect. It isn’t exactly reminiscence. I’m not specifically
reminded of specific times. I don’t travel in time. The songs
don’t do that. It’s more like being poked, in the head, with
something you’re not really conscious was there. This is not
entirely coherent. Let me try saying this another way,
because this seems very important at the moment and I
would like to get to the bottom of it.
Certain songs remind you that you remember.
There, I think that’s it. That’s like one of those
drawings, by that guy, oh shit what’s his name, the one who
does the drawings of staircases that ascend into themselves
and of endless patterns and waterfalls that go down and up
at the same time. I think it’s Etcher. Something like that. I
guess he did etchings, that’s not really his name. Those
drawings have always been some of my favorites. There was
one, a poster of one, in Sabina’s house when I knew her,
right above her couch. And I would sit there and stare at it
a lot. It was of a tower, and stairs going around the tower, and
men walking on those stairs, and they were walking up and
down at the same time, all together, forever. There were
columns, and a fountain too, and looking at it, I would get
glimpses of thoughts I never knew I had. Like they were
buried very far back, and only occasionally would they shift
and show up -- but never fully, they never came out all the
way, which often disappointed and frustrated me. And I
would say something, about one of these thoughts, but
stammer and it would make me very frustrated and people
would laugh. Well, don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame them
for laughing. My tongue gets worked up, and then I realize
I’m not actually saying anything. Like one of those men
walking on the stairs and not getting anywhere.
I have often wondered about illusions too. I think since
the captain’s been gone I’ve gotten to the bottom of some
things. I’m not only thinking of getting back to Leicester, I’m
thinking about what it means to get back to Leicester. I can’t
help it. It’s out of my control, to make some meaning out of
some things.
You need to have some meaning.
Perhaps I will be like Jonah, and after the three days
are done I’ll be deposited back home, vomited up by the
ocean. But if that is true, if that is the case of which we are
speaking, that means I’m here because I’ve done something
wrong. I’m asking you, Radio Man, what have I done wrong?
The Radio Man tells me I have forsaken him, done him
ungodly wrong and when I should’ve been listening I wasn’t
and when I shouldn’t have been listening I was. I’m sorry OK,
I’m sorry about that, and now that I’m in the belly of the
whale I’m gonna prostrate myself (that sounds worse than it
may be, I dunno) and everything’ll be OK and the Radio Man
and I will be right as rain. Radio Man! Listen to me! I want to
sing you a song, about my leg, about the winch, and about
what Jonah found in the whale’s belly!
The huge jaws of the whale gulped water in and
Jonah, who struggled in the webs of the baleen, flailed
around terror stricken. Pushed by the rushing water, he rolls
head over heels swept down the very gullet of the beast.
Spinal bones above his head, under a thin veneer of red slick
flesh, a cavern before him stretches half a mile. Small waves
subside around his feet. He walks on resilient ground. There
are smells of rotten fish, and something else, blood and oil.
There is very little light. What little light there is makes Jonah
wonder, and he’s looking to where it seems to come from,
and it comes from, get this, from a boat! And Jonah walks to
the boat, through the slush of fish parts and mucous, and
when he gets to the boat who does he see sitting there with
a lantern? It’s you Radio Man! You’re there in the whale, with
Jonah. And he sits in the boat with you, and you both look at
the lantern, running on whale oil, and then you start, the way
you started a little while ago, before playing that song,
saying, "It’s quarter of eleven, and it’s a nippy thirty five
degrees out, and we’re sitting in the belly of a whale, I’d like
to play you a song, this is going out to everybody working on
the docks, maybe just to warm you up a little bit." Then from
your mouth Radio Man comes the sound of the radio, of a
song, I think it’s a Paul Simon song, Kodachrome or
something, and this is like when they have freak occurrences
of molars with fillings tuning in to radio. And Jonah sits and
listens. His head is downcast, the song doesn’t cheer him up.
After all, he’s sitting in the belly of a whale. You have to
admit it’s hard to be cheery in a situation like that. When you
are done with your song Radio Man, Jonah tells you his
troubles, and you listen intently, nodding your head bottom lip
jutting out a bit and face drawn in sympathy. You can identify
with Jonah. After all, you are in the whale too.
This does nothing to speak of the leg which has
begun to beg me with icy air, slowly climbing up my hip like a
poison, or from the winch, into my leg, up my hip, into my
chest, where it squeezes my heart. Like a cold hand.
But you have the same trouble too Radio Man, in the
boat, in the belly of the whale, with Jonah. You are trapped
by a fallen winch. Jonah tries to move it off of you, but it is
too heavy. Occasional shreds of day light come from the
blow hole far above both of you, when the whale surfaces.
Like, this magical whale has no insides, just a huge cave.
Jonah tries to lift the winch off with an oar. This doesn’t work
either. All the while Radio Man you have your mouth open
and out comes music.
I’m concentrating on the light house again.
I went there a couple of times. Who hasn’t?
I imagine John, Billy, Joe, and Sal in their bunks
sleeping peacefully, under the water of course, under the
cold water, peacefully, wrapped up in blankets and snoring. It
would be nice to sleep, but I know I shouldn’t. I believe I
have already stated this. It’s remarkable, noticing the broad
loops which certain elements continue to surface. The leg.
Sleep. The captain. The water. The radio. That’s all there is.
No, there is more. If I want to really get to the bottom of
things, there is always more. I’ve changed my mind, the
basic elements are in fact only other things in disguise. Do
you see this? Wait, I want to make sure I have this right. If
one thing, like the leg, actually means another, then the leg
itself can no longer be a source of pain but merely reflection.
I think I was closer to the truth with the drawings that never
end than I gave myself credit for. And when I was thinking
about space and time too. Why do I sell myself short like
that? The leg means nothing, but it hints at everything. It
does not move, I do not move. Have I ever moved?
I am determined to make some sense of this new
thought. It seems to me that movement is not possible, and
that the reason the physicists have so much trouble with
space and time is cuz they don’t exist. They are an illusion.
Everything is static. And I’m sure Radio Man would
understand me when I say everything is static. What is he
doing anyway, but moving tiny pieces of static around so that
it forms words and songs. He doesn’t change the static,
nobody changes the static, just shapes it momentarily. But
what is static molding static? More static? OK, I must admit
the idea seems to have gotten beyond me. Better to watch
the ocean than think about things like that. The ocean is
good. The ocean is always changing. The ocean is always
moving. Like the world is a glass globe and shaken up by
some very large child standing out by the moon.
Oh! I want to shout and scream!
When I was five I pushed another kid down the stairs
and he was hurt pretty badly. He was, his name was, Bobby
Something, Bobby Palmer. I didn’t push him cuz I hated him
or anything. I remember it very vividly. Like it was yesterday.
Of course it isn’t. I was wearing this awkward pair of overalls
which I couldn’t stand cuz the straps were always slipping
and consequently the pants themselves almost falling each
time. Funny how kids can’t stand of being thought of as cute.
I didn’t like having my hair ruffled by some idiotic adult
guffawing at my preciousness. Cooing bothered me as well.
OK, so this gives the impression I was a mean little bastard.
Maybe I was. But that’s not why I did it, pushed him down the
stairs. We were playing in the neighbors backyard where
there was a pile of sand being used for god knows what. The
sand was damp and cool. We were out there digging tunnels
and caves and roads for our matchbox cars. We made this
whole town. Over a couple of days. Each day we woke up
excited, we couldn’t wait to get back out there and expand
the thing, making more elaborate tunnels supported with flat
sticks, and roads that wound around and up the sand pile,
and secret tunnels and storage places for the cars.
Sometimes there’d be a cave-in, and we liked that too, cuz
we imagined all those tiny people in the tiny cars being
trapped under tons and tons of earth. Nobody actually died
or anything, they had like air tanks in their cars which could
go under water too of course. And we could do this day after
day after day. We were doing it that day, the day I pushed
Bobby Palmer down the stairs. He was my best friend. It was
late in the day, the sun had started to descend. We went to
the bulkhead of my basement, I don’t know for what, we had
to go down there for some reason. I know, it was to get a flat
broad piece of wood, we wanted to make a huge secret area
under the sand to keep the cars in over night. And Bobby
was standing in front of me, at the top of the stairs going
down to the basement, and I wondered, what would happen
if I pushed? Not like I didn’t know or couldn’t visualize it. Not
see what would happen entirely, which is why I guess I did it.
He went down. Split his head wide open. Immediately I felt
resounding guilt. I’d never felt it like that, I mean, he was my
best friend right? What was I going to say? So here’s the
worst part. I ran and told my mom he’d fallen. And they found
Bobby down there with his head spilt and they called an
ambulance, and he was in the hospital years and decades
and forever. That’s what it seemed like. When he came
around he had no idea what happened, oh, he said, I must’ve
fallen, oh, they said, you must’ve fallen. And I said, yeah, he
fell, just like that. I didn’t tell them. Never have. And that
stayed with me, oh yes it did, and now if I get back to town
I’m going to look Bobby up and tell him, Bobby, you
remember that time you fell down the stairs, well, I pushed
you Bobby, I pushed you down them because I wanted to
see what would happen.
So sometimes you carry stuff around with you, for a
long time. I’ve been keeping it all in my leg. Just filling up the
leg, year after year after decade. And now that it’s smashed
open, I can see all of that stuff, jammed in there. Well, I can’t
see it with my eyes or anything, since the winch is taking up
a chunk of my majestic view. If you could crack open people,
the way you do with a nut or a lobster, you’d find alot of lost
things there, stuck and encased by sacks like cocoons.
You’d find old pictures, alarm clocks, baby dolls, shoes, nails,
oh all sorts of stuff. You’d find light bulbs like lost ideas (that
once floated above your head the way the gourd floated
above Jonah) and bits and pieces of other people you’ve
been selfishly stashing.
I’ve got a book at home about freaks, and there was
this one part about Siamese twins. Well, they weren’t entirely
formed Siamese twins, the way Chang and Eng were, the
most famous of the Siamese twins, no, these were jutting out
of the person’s body like, not quite done. They were called
One-and-a-Halfs. There was one man who’s twin’s head
came out of his chest and grew whiskers and everything, but
the small thing never opened his eyes or spoke or anything,
and they had him baptized anyway since they thought he
possessed a soul. Sometimes I feel guilty about being
interested in this sort of topic. I’ve hidden the book and a
couple of others from people because from what little
indication I’ve seen they seem terrified not by the freaks
themselves (or Prodigies, as the freaks wanted to be called
in a strike against Barnum) but more frightened by someone
interested in it. But there’s something there. Something very
powerful. Something that says a lot about getting to the
bottom of the questions I can’t quite get right. Let’s see, I
think the medical way of describing the One-and-a-Halfs is
Autosite and Parasite. It’s easy to remember stuff you’re
interested in.
I would have liked to have met Koo Koo the Bird Girl.
Me and Jonah and Koo Koo and Radio Man could get
together and hang out on the beach for a while, waiting for
that whale. Maybe Melville could be there too, after all, it
wouldn’t really be a party without Melville. I’m thinking now of
two pictures of Melville: the first was painted around the time
he was thirty, when he was probably working on Moby Dick,
and the last was a photo taken in old age when he was
working at the customs house, working a regular old job. In
the first picture he looks like a lion, very arrogant, and the
last he looks like an old toothless lion, very defeated. Maybe
he made a big mistake presuming people would like Moby
Dick. I mean, it takes people a long time to figure things out.
Like now. I’m just starting to figure some things out.
The main observation I have right now is that there
seems to be a fog forming. It starts with a gray, a gray which
rises up out of the water, imperceptibly, to grow and congeal
around me, and what’s left of the boat, and the leg, and the
winch, and the distances between me and the water is
becoming fuzzy. Not fuzzy, that’s not the correct word.
I’ve got one foot in the spirit world, I know.
What is now has been before, of that I am sure. It has
become remarkably clear for the moment, like the fog, is in
one sense remarkably clear. Here’s how that works. When
everything is evened out, becoming a plane in which ideas
and objects are equal, you have no need to measure things
against one another.
The steel of the hull creaks along, in time, with the
song on the radio. Radio Man has left for this second of
absolute understanding. That is good. It makes sense to me.
The light house is obscured so I have one foot there and
another here, trapped under the winch. What does a winch
do, but pull. Pulling, winching, falling on legs. You know. The
steel of the hull and the steel of the winch, with droplets of
water, from the ocean. That’s what’s around me. I can see
that now.
And there was this one time, I should say before it
might no longer be able to be said, to those to whom I’m
speaking, that I once figured everything out. At least I felt like
I did. For many years, and years, and decades, I worked in
construction near the sawdust that was particular in scent
and dull white covering the floors the beams of walls level
and the glorious sound of hammering and drills and saws
and yelling. It was kind of exciting. I mean, we all wanted to
get off work, but when we were working we were really
working. It’s that way fishing too, except you can’t go home
at night, you get cooped up on a boat with a few other guys,
and after a while you just want to finish and go home until
you do go home and you can’t wait to get back out. But in
construction we built. It was a slow process and when you
were away from the building you would think about building
and how soon it may be something complete. Making
something whole and complete and how you can touch it and
live in it, or whatever. I would satisfactorily re-check the
joints. Satisfied that everything was right. But I didn’t have
that job for very long. Not that particular one. Although I’d
done that sort of thing for a long time, it seemed. I don’t know
how long, just a long time OK? And I wasn’t fired, but I simply
became sick. Not sick like the way you sit in bed with a fever
coughing and sneezing and wishing you could get out of bed.
Not like that. I was sick of the job all of a sudden. It was an
impulse not to do the job anymore. Maybe I only wanted to
get back to fishing, even though I knew fishing was much
more dangerous and lonely and fisher’s wives leave them
cuz they’re out so long and it’s not unusual for fishers not to
come home at all. I guess I quit cuz I was thinking I would
wait for my ship to come in. I mean that literally. I would
spend a lot of time going in the woods and drawing trees and
stuff. I can draw about as well as I play guitar, but it’s
something to do you know? I never had a class but
sometimes on boats I would draw and give them to people
and people seemed to like them, so that was good. There’s
this one day I’m out there, in the preserve, not really woods
in the old sense, and I’ve drawn a couple of squirrels and
birds and rocks and I swear to you it was like being hit over
the head with a two by four. Just was. I stopped and looked,
and looked, and at the same time I could sense this feeling
slipping away...
When the captain left he was sitting in the life boat
and it was rocking around in the waves and my God I don’t
think I was ever so upset to see someone go even though
the captain has always seemed a big SOB to me. Isn’t the
captain supposed to go down with the ship? Maybe this rule
falls apart cuz the ship isn’t actually sinking. The captain, the
skipper, although, it’s funny, whenever any of us ever called
him skipper instead of cap’n, we always thought of TV. You
know what I mean little buddy. So it’s funny how TV has
changed something that was common for so long. Makes it
just laughable. Sometimes we would call him skipper, and he
knew what we were alluding to, and he would grumble about
it. Not like you can take charge when you’re being compared
to TV. For a while we all took titles to make the skipper part
easier. I was the professor, I guess cuz I could monkey with
the engine and cuz they thought that I was thoughtful. But I
never believed the professor on TV to be real thoughtful, just
handy with coconuts and wire. Maybe cuz they thought I had
been raised with class. At least my parents always thought
they had class. Even though they lied about Moscow. Maybe
when they visited Moscow they’d gotten it into their heads
that they were part of the city somehow. My mother was in
the theater, but believe you-me that does not automatically
give you class. It wasn’t even in Moscow, I know this from
my Uncle who breathed it in my ear, but in the Ukraine, and it
wasn’t even theater like Shakespeare and stuff, but more like
TV. I don’t begrudge them their fantasy. They got out in the
early sixties. Heard the story a hundred, a thousand, a million
times. Mother was visiting France in some respects in a
theater way, and my father was in Poland doing something
statistical, and they both jumped the hammer and sickle and
met up in Normandy where they scooted over the channel
and in London had a friend who got them over here on a boat
with a bunch of IRA guys and when they got here they just
stayed and stayed and stayed. They’ve been here longer
than they were in Russia but they pine, oh they pine. They
gave me books and music and I guess they wanted to give
me class that I never wanted cuz I wouldn’t feel right having
to plow through Tolstoy when all the other kids were
watching Battlestar Galactica, or listening to Tchaikovsky
when everybody else was cranking ACDC. None the less,
some invariably seeped in. So I guess I’m thankful, I don’t
know. Sometimes it’s not easy to be thankful for events out
of your control.
And there was a time some friends and I were on the
howl, partying hard like spending our lives as if they
were endless, and the nights seemed much warmer than
now, how has it grown so cold, we’d lounge with comfort on
the rocks, having split up for some frolicking, there on the
island, and we had the whole thing to discover, like brand
new, and it was exciting and maybe we felt a little too alive.
Route 1 curves around the edge of the island, and we ran up
and down it, tickling the road, from cove to cove, roaming
with nothing to do and it seemed like with everything still to
do. I’d hang my arm out the window and it would be pushed
by the force of moving. I had long hair. It whipped around in
the car. We had beer under the seat. Somebody rolled a joint
as we swerved potholes. We drove past haunts and ruins,
those estates on the nub of the neck which rotted after the
prosperous period of rum running in the twenties, old
Romanesque columns and vines and windowless mansions
full of trash, spray paint, and blackened by fires we’d start in
trashcans to make heat and light. Driving without headlights
was scary and daring. Dom was always telling me to slow it
down for god’s sakes, and then I would and he’d say what’re
you gonna do jump off a bridge if yer friends tell you to? the
way my folks would say, but making fun of it, in a reverse
manner. And Charlie was usually laughing, oh he’d laugh at
anything, until sometimes he’d laugh so hard we’d get
worried, as if we were still kids and the milk would shoot out
of his nose. I think Charlie had some kinda problem. And
once we started this scavenger hunt, which really caught on
with everybody else, until there were maybe fifty of us in on
the thing, and we made this most ridiculous list we could,
figuring, my lord, nobody is gonna be able to get these items.
A brick from the Garret ruin. A plastic lobster and a lobster
bib. A motel registry book. A sign from a mortuary. A laundry
cart. A Jesus Christ bird fountain. An ashtray from Spark’s,
which always had Spark’s printed on the bottom so that when
you put out your cigarette it went right in the eye of the
fisherman. A golf ball washer, the kind you find on the
course. A copy of Mrs. O’Heany’s poems, that she printed up
herself and always tried to pawn off on people. A photo of
John Norton, head of Norton fish. A bunch of other things.
Whoever got all of them won. The ashtrays and plastic
lobsters turned out to be difficult, because after a dozen
ashtrays were swiped Spark’s had a keen eye out, as well as
Ship Ahoy, whose collection of plastic lobsters that hung in
fake nets from the ceiling was decimated after a week. And
there weren’t that many golf ball washers, but you could go
far to other towns for those. A whole wall of the Garret ruin
was broken up. Motels panicked when their lists
disappeared. And! With fifty people sneaking around tailing
Norton not only were the police called by him, repeatedly, to
the police’s skeptical amusement (they thought he was a
paranoid coot anyhow) but there were several photo’s
snapped of him rendezvousing with his mistress -- which was
no great secret anyhow. There was an uproar! What
hooligans are running the town looting? All the plastic
lobsters gone! The no-parking signs at the mortuary, dug up!
Along with the very plaque on the door, ripped off! Anarchy,
destruction, are we being invaded by a new criminal element,
the Leicester Times claimed. A rush on O’Heany’s fucking
poetry! Was it the end of the world as we know it? They
seemed to think so. I was determined to win. There was one
thing on the list that no one dared swipe. We were pretty far
in, a couple of months, and no one had dared. I’m talking
about the ship’s bell on the stoop of City Hall. Supposedly
this brass bell was brought on the very first ship -- although
that has been disputed again and again, that actually the
founders of Leicester came in a beat up skiff, not even a
sloop, too small and inauspicious for such a fancy bell, no,
they were criminals escaping the oppressive air of Plymouth.
But no one had stolen it. Consider the difficulty. It was well lit.
It was the center of town. Even at night, so close to the
police station. And it was fairly secure, hanging on a steel
pole bolted in either side of sturdy wooden posts big as
railroad ties. The problem to get the bell off the pole and not
be seen besides. I didn’t think I could do it alone. There was
only one bell, that was the problem. So I’d been asking
Charlie about how he was doing with the whole thing, and he
wasn’t too much into it, like, he laughed in the funny way he
would, and I think he was something of a simpleton. But he
agreed to help me. What we did was drive up and park a few
blocks away, not too far away, between the cops shifts. They
were usually making a circuit of the island, and we all knew,
had timed it, so that at about one thirty in the morning we
knew they were always bound for the north end. They were
pretty regular about it. So we figured we had maybe twenty
minutes before they swung back down. Even better if they
found some trouble and were delayed and we’d thought, all
right, I’d thought that if we could get one person to create a
distraction on the north end then we would have more time,
but I couldn’t find anyone else to get in on it. And they’d
probably have to spend the night in jail anyway, for whatever
distraction it was they made. Charlie laughed when we
parked the car and took our saw and crowbar and wrench. I
wanted to win something fierce maybe partly cuz this was
also a wanton action against the false symbol of the town. It
was cool, a brisk wind, and there were high clouds made of
ice obscuring the quarter moon, when we snuck around
corners, dressed in black, to the side of the city hall which
was bright and sterile. The bell hung from its place, very solid
and quietly, like it’d been waiting for us to come along. The
rope dangled out of the bottom. I told Charlie he would be the
look out and he could hand me tools when I needed them, as
if it were a sort of surgery. Maybe it was. Charlie grinned and
glanced around dramatically. I told him to cut it out and just
look natural. Everything goes right in old movies if the
criminals just look natural. We were what, sixteen? So I get
up there on the steps with Charlie, and I start going at the
bolts with the wrench, and man are they rusted in, fixed there
by the salty air of years and years. Gimmee the crowbar, I
say. Charlie hands me the wrong thing a few times and this
makes me even more nervous. But I think I’m making
headway with the crowbar. Shit, but I’ve stripped the end,
and then I just take the saw and go right for the metal loop
holding the bell to the pole. It cuts quickly, and I kick myself
for wasting so much time already. How much time do we got
Charlie? And he looks at his watch and I can tell by his
snickering that we’re real near the time when the cops come
back down. I yank hard on the bell, trying to avoid making it
ring any, and the metal loop snaps right off freeing the bell.
We hustle back to the car. I’m wired with elation. All of this
thrill is pumping through my blood, like the same when you’re
on the boat and you’ve got a problem pulling in the nets or
something, and you have to fix it fast or the take could be
ruined. We stash the bell under the back seat of the car,
where we’d taken up some of the cloth (no, vinyl) and dug
out a spot where we’d keep beer or whatever, cuz when
you’re out after midnight the cops always stopped you no
matter what, and walked up slowly to your car, with the
sound of their shoes in the gravel and they’d hang their belly
in the window then shine a flashlight around the inside of the
car while they make small talk, asking about your dad or
similar tactics. But thank god they didn’t see us, making our
way home in a straight fast line, as fast as we could, cuz
either they would’ve already noticed the bell was gone and
search us, or see nothing, but remember us when they did
find out the bell was gone.
We set up the bell in my basement, an object of pride.
And I won.
The papers went bananas the next day. They knew it
was kids at that point. They were zeroing in. All it’d take is
somebody to squeal at school or be overheard. And I was sort
of a hero cuz I’d gotten the bell. It was whispered. But I also
knew that they’d get me after some time, and I treated the
while thing very seriously, as if I were a secret agent. So
what could I do? I decided to bring the bell back. But I
couldn’t bring it back to city hall. They’d get me then for sure.
What to do? I was worried Charlie would say something cuz
he was so scatter-brained, he’d probably already forgotten
that you weren’t supposed to take the friggin thing. He was
like that. So what I decided was to bring the bell back to the
kind of ship it would’ve belonged. I mean, it came from a
bigger ship, and maybe if they found it on one, everybody
would be happy in some way. I wanted them to think lots of
different things.
Pilfered relic appears on the Ageyev! 100 plastic
lobsters recovered in Church’s shed! Youth interviewed by
detectives, in spectacular crime wave! Owner of local diner,
Sparks Lockridge says he counts cost of stolen ashtrays at
over ninety dollars! Mrs. O’Heany speaks tonight about
young peoples’ appreciation of the arts, at eight in the
gymnasium! "What we have here," says mayor Bleaker
interviewed earlier today, "is a group of very determined
mischievous individuals who have no respect for this town’s
heritage." The mayor was commenting on the theft of the
Powle Bell hanging outside City Hall, which was brought here
by Leicester’s founder more than 400 years ago. The bell
disappeared one week ago, and mysteriously reappeared
last night on the Russian ship the Ageyev, docked at Norton
Fish Company for repairs. Sources of this paper have
information that a snapshot of J. Norton was found along
with the bell. Police chief Williamson says he has no
comment on this information, and that Norton is in no way
implicated in the theft. "We’re looking at pranksters, that’s
who we think did it, sick jokers," says Williamson, "and
maybe even sympathetic to the communists." Well, that’s
when there still were communists.
I see a thousand ships rise up and float about me.
They breach the water and glide, along with the music from
the busted galley, slipping over my leg into the expanse, from
the start, going to the end, and staring hard at them, I see
sailors and fishermen waving distractedly, with chiseled grins
accustomed to months yes even years away from home in
the cavernous belly of the whale. Radio Man tells me they
are fixing a hole in the ocean. No, maybe not him, somebody
singing through the mouth of the speaker, through the
waves. I think it’s the Beatles. Not on the ships, on the radio.
The ships, my god, look how many, a swarm, and they’re
playing games on the deck like shuffleboard and craps and
monopoly. And they’re not fishing anymore, not that they
need to, once you’re dead you don’t need to fish anymore.
The risen ships drag up seaweed, coral, treasure,
bones, tires, broken lobster traps, abandoned bales of drugs
and ancient crates of whiskey (both dropped in fear),
rejected manuscripts, motor homes, pompons, frozen fish
sticks, union leaders, and subscription magazines with
Gibson girls. All of this and more.
I’m lying with my head to the north, which is said to be
very good.
When I’m listening to voices, like now on the radio,
and I’m sleepy, nearly dozing, like now on the boat, I can
hear the concert voices make, bending together in a
masculine-feminine duality, the way famous piano pieces are
played with left and right hands, black and white keys,
alternating major and minor scales. Let me tell you, I had to
take piano lessons at a certain point. Part of what I
mentioned as that middle class idea of sophistication, shit,
we all know the piano is civilized, enough to soothe a savage
blue collar, right? That’s a bad topic to get on. I don’t want to
get on that topic. Piano is better. Piano is not so much a
topic as an instrument I suppose. I have always had a great
fondness for pianos. I don’t mind admitting that. I envied
masters, like I would keep a picture of Glenn Gould in my
room for a while (even though my folks hated him, but you
see he was a sort of piano rebel) until I grew out of the piano
or the piano grew out of me. The bench was always very
slick, so that you could slide across it, and the fact you could
lift the top of the bench and find sheet music gave me
pleasure on afternoons when I’d have to practice Joplin’s
Ragtime (no, not Janis), or the theme to Doctor Zhivago as
preludes to the true work, those indomitable fortresses of
piano, Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart, as well as the Russian
composers my parents touted proudly. And sometimes I
would hammer thoughtlessly, imagining I were going to be a
new Thelonius Monk, cuz, really, I could play with clunky
elegance. But I was too young to grow a goatee.
I’m thinking of other things. Drifting, I guess you could
call it. What’s wrong with that? There are places which are
hinted at, in retrospect.
You know when I first toured the Witch Museum in
Salem I was disturbed and shocked by the guy, yes the only
accused male of the atrocity I think, who was slowly crushed
to death with stones. I had a recurring dream, no, nightmare
where popular cartoon characters slowly crushed me with
stones and I would wake up in a sweat. I’d had a bad bout of
bronchitis. That’s a good reason not to fall asleep, this place,
that dream, I think I could have that dream again, but I’m too
tired for the bronchitis. (I can see Deputy Dawg putting
pressure on the winch, that bastard.)
In the start we drifted after the engines flooded and
the scuppers were jammed by netting and jackets and drop
cloth, so the water seemed to pile up, you know? Nowhere
for the water to go but into the hold, and down into the
engine, and into the other places deep in the boat, in the
crevices and places men cannot fit. Oh there are places,
although people don’t speak of them often, and why should
they? When this happens, with the water, a boat is doomed.
As we were. But! A giant wave picked us right up, as if we
were a model ship like not a real honest to god twenty ton
ship and dropped us on the barbs of a rocky pin cushion. If I
could pluck out the granite pins I would use them to sew the
boat together. Everything would be OK again. Bow and stern
are lonely so far apart, the way fishermen get lonely on the
land, which is funny and doesn’t make much sense, but I
think you’ll have to accept this even though it may seem trite.
So many things seem trite these days maybe cuz of that
damn radio! Oh I can’t take one more minute!
If this were funny it would be laughable, if this were
laughable I could rumble with a huge rolling guffaw. Instead,
I’m looking at the deck, averting my eyes from the water,
away from the radio, although with the fog everything is
indistinct, as if detail were a quality you could lower. But the
deck is close enough to make out. One of the rough thin
rubber tiles that kept us from slipping on the wet shell is
curling up and I see a peek of metal below: there’s the boats
solid shiny self. And when I feel I’m becoming acquainted
with some interior formerly covered, decorated, I feel a rush
of well being, knowing that I’m getting to the bottom, and
don’t doubt me when I tell you that I scrape the paint absent
mindedly off whatever I can cuz my curiosity is somewhat
insatiable. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to claim that
this sort of absent minded scraping can apply to people as
well. Rubbed raw. When someone’s angry you see who they
really are, you know, it’s a sort of unrestrained nakedness.
Maybe saying nakedness is misleading cuz even without
clothes many folks can still be living under layers and layers.
Like strata. I remember that from Earth Science, strata is the
same kind of rock in a layer, among other layers. But you
know what? I looked that up one day and it also means a
layer, in society, of people who are similar. So I don’t think
my analogy is off the mark. Because, if you have rock strata
and people strata, then you’ve got to have personal strata
don’t you? Well admit it, I’m right aren’t I?
This is the sort of thinking Sal made fun of me for,
God rest Sal, he didn’t have too many strata if you get me,
and that’s one of the reasons I always liked Sal. In off times
on trips Sal and I would play cards, gin rummy, first we’d play
to 500, then 1500, then 5000 points, we’d fix it so the whole
trip was a huge game of rummy and we’d bet too. At first
we’d go a buck a point, so if he were at 500, to my 350, well,
you see what I mean. The difference was important, and
costly. Then we’d start betting more valuable things, like,
money isn’t too important in the 4th week out, you’re thinking
more like cigarettes and cheap novels, those things we could
pass the time with, and we’d certainly already watched all the
video tapes 3 times over, although one of my favorites was
The Killing by Stanley Kubrick, and I could probably be
content watching it over and over. The movie is about a
bunch of guys who rob a race track. It has Sterling Hayden in
it, who was so very good in Dr. Strangelove. I’ve heard he
liked to sail too. Anyway, Sal and me used to like to argue,
oh we’d argue about Sterling Hayden, we’d argue all the time
about anything. And I’d play it smug after a while, when Sal
was getting hot under the collar, he had no problem yelling,
that’s for sure. I’d say, Well Sal I think you might be right on
this one Sal I think you’ve got the bull by the horns fer sure I
mean work camps for people on welfare is a great idea you
should run for office Sal you really should you’re wasting
those damn fine ideas on the fish Sal nothing we need more
than herding up already mad people and forcing them to
work for less than minimum wage Sal. And he’d go berserk,
trying to show how he was right about this that or the other.
And if I changed the words a little and argue the same thing
he was arguing, but against him, he’d change around
completely just to keep it going. Then I’d bring this reversal
up, that I’d trapped him, that he was simply arguing because
he was a stubborn old mule, and he’d deny that too. Sal was
a great knucklehead. His wide set eyes and curly black hair.
And he was short and usually smelled bad and he had a way
of rolling his own cigarettes which was a ballet of fingers.
I hope to make great returns, on the island, catch or
no catch, I am, after all, ambitious and still young, relatively
young, one has to go out into the world champing at the bit,
bite the bullet, go to the beat of one’s own personal
drummer, oh there are many more ways of saying it, some
which elude me right now. I would like a procession with
flowers, a red carpet, adulation and girls and old women
weeping in hysterical fits of joy, men shrieking with thanks for
my rescue, when I step back on the island. My leg thanks
me, I thank me, the boats in the harbor sound their horns
thanking me. The light house gleams in celebration. Birds
alight on my shoulder and that whale of Jonah’s jumps
waves in girlish glee.
If I’d only been keeping track of time. They give time
over the radio, but as I’ve mentioned, there is a certain
amount of relativity involved in my not moving.
If I’d been keeping track I could calculate... No, this is
ridiculous. There is a kind of down-to-earth wisdom that says
a watched pot doesn’t boil, and the more often people in
uncomfortable situations check the time the slower time
seems to go. When I was working in a factory, for a couple of
months, assembling little red wagons (this is unquestionably
true, as funny as it may sound) putting on the wheels, I would
be listening to a walkman, which was absolutely the wrong
thing to do. You know why? Because time gets split into 45
minute increments, when you’re listening to ninety minute
tapes, with each flip of the tape I became aware that only 45
minutes had elapsed. I looked at the other workers, with their
sunken eyes, barely conscious, and thought they were nuts
for not keeping entertained or something -- that they didn’t
please themselves with a little music while making the little
red wagons. Well. After a month I knew they were right,
indeed, because the only way to work an assembly line is to
turn your head off. I wish I had a switch, in back, like a
toggle, with a small green and red light, so that I could flip it
back one way then to the other, from the red to the green,
the green to the red. It is possible that I would flip it to the red
side, here, on the boat. This is not an uncommon thought,
people sometimes have this imaginative switch in terrible
situations. Not to say this is really terrible, hell, I can
conceive of worse. But it’s just bad enough that I think of the
imaginary switch. So what gets me about this idea of the
switch is, when you’ve turned it to the red, so that your brain
is ‘off’, how on earth would you ever turn it back to green? I
mean, look, everybody knows you need your brain to work
your arms and legs and eyes and stuff like that.
My leg has washed away, has become a fish and
swims happily in the endless waters of cold and warm
currents, chopping waves of bitter salt, gulls navigating their
own empire staring into the vast place of once easy catches,
and I can hear an accordion, like a soundtrack, as the leg
swims south to bask on the decks and wharves of Florida,
being fed tidbits of popcorn, peanuts, ham sandwiches, by
tourists who amass on the shore and are ready to dive in like
lemmings. I can’t feel a damn thing.
At the factory what I did was take a metal pole, slide it
through the holes in the bottom of the red wagon, and then
take two wheels and put them on the pole using small cotter
pins, and finally hammer on tiny hubcaps. You’d think one
would be proud to have helped make a little red wagon, but I
couldn’t have cared less. The pay was bad, and the coffee
worse. I don’t think they wanted us to have too much
caffeine, so they cut their break room coffee with something
uncoffee -- you don’t want anybody to get the jitters there out
on the factory floor, shit, there could be an accident, one of
the tiny wheels might go flying outta my hand and poke
somebody’s eye out. It could turn into a Rube Goldberg
machine of disaster. (Do you know who Rube Goldberg was?
He was a cartoonist. He designed silly machines like you see
in loony tunes, where say, the cat is finally pulled through a
small hole in the fence by a distant door opening, which spills
a pail of water, which fills a cup on wheels on a track, which
runs down by gravity to a platform, where the water fills a
cup on a lever, and the lever moves to strike a match, and
the match ignites a candle, and the candle burns a rope, and
the rope holds a twenty ton block which comes crashing
down, and the block is attached to another rope, which has
been secretly tied to the cat’s tail by a mouse or a dog or a
small yellow bird. Boom! Cat gets yanked through fence and
up a tree through the pulley that held the weight, and onto
the candle or into a bottle, or a meat grinder or even hit by
the twenty ton weight or some such thing. What I always
liked about these devices was the slow way they worked,
while the cat was unaware. Not only were they intricate, but
they were irrevocable. That might be part of the phrase,
Rube Goldberg machine, like dominoes collapsing, the cat’s
fate is sealed as soon as the rope is tied.)
There was a song I remember, about rain, sung
whenever the weather got bad. "It’s raining, it’s pouring, the
old man is snoring -- he bumped his head, went to bed, and
couldn’t get up in the morning." This goes through my mind
every time it begins to rain. Yes, every single time. And the
point is, it has started to rain. Nothing better than a driving
cold rain to soothe a ship wreck. Perhaps you, Radio Man,
have sensed my facetious air. If this were an air then you
must have smelled it, but being on the radio, I doubt you can
smell through such a small speaker. No matter. When I’m
holding my head up, out of the crook of my arm, which has
comforted me the time my leg pained me, before it was gone,
with my head up I can drink some of the rain, and I’ve
realized I am very thirsty. Unfortunately, this rain seems to
have some spray too, some ocean mixed in. Now one of the
first things you learn is not to drink salt water. It screws up
your whole body, the salt I mean. But I was so thirsty, and I
don’t think there was too much ocean in the rain. (What if
things were turned upside down? What if it rained salt water
and the ocean were a huge lake, what then?)
I lay on my back and let my face soak up the water
and I feel like I’m drowning. Do you know what it’s like to
drown? To have the water around you as an infinite blanket,
to have it melt and move slightly with you, as if your every
cell were crying out to it, to the water beyond a temporary
barrier called skin, and seeking reunion, a sense of euphoria
sweeps through the bones and muscle and your head gets
quiet. The image of drowning has been as appealing to me
as the small switch. Many nights I’ve wanted to swim out as
far as I can, farther than I would be able to swim back. This
strange desire for annihilation didn’t come out of misery, but
out of a kind of nothingness, out of boredom and a need for
adventure, cuz, when you get to it, that’s the biggest
adventure there is right? Like, adventure is confronting what
you don’t know, so that you can know. Radio Man
understands this tack, I can tell. There is a certain tone in
people’s voices, a subsonic cadence that relays this
understanding. And once I almost did drown, when I was
very small, once when swimming off a dock near my house,
and maybe those couple of minutes laying on the bottom in
the sand is what I’ve always been trying to get back to,
traveling around looking for some impossible solitude. I’ve
frightened myself with that thought, but not too badly. Like a
Rube Goldberg machine, there is a certain absurd order. The
rope is pulled by the weight of water poured from a genetic
cup, sliding down a track, freeing fish, pushing me around
the island, onto a ship, and into the belly of a whale. The ribs
of the whale form a cathedral of bony beauty, light
occasionally flashing through the sinews as if stained glass,
the incessant pounding of a heart the size of a Cadillac, a
tattoo for invisible oars. The rhythm makes us go faster.
Feeling it up through our feet, the thumping, through the
ends of our fingers, yes, the monster lives and careens
through the waters, and I rescind my earlier belief a whale
swallowed Jonah up, by looking now I see it in full view as
something much more devilish and uncommon, no belly
could be as wide and alien, a fantastic landscape of deep
flesh, a leviathan, the end consequence of Rube Goldberg,
an invention of necessary intricacy.
I’ve heard the noise it makes, out in the fog.
The beast that swallowed Jonah did come back, Sal
told me about it.
He said in 1817 a society in Boston, a society that
studied the fishes and the water, formed a committee to
study the sea serpent seen repeatedly in the harbor of
Leicester. Twelve witnesses! REPORT/ of a/ Committee/ of
the/ LINNEAN SOCIETY OF NEW ENGLAND/ relative/ to a
large marine animal/ supposed to be/ A SERPENT/ seen
near Leicester, Massachusetts,/ in August 1817,/ Twelve
Witnesses! Their names: Amos Story, Solomon Allen, Eppes
Ellery, Wm. H. Foster, Matthew Gaffney, James Mansfield,
John Johnston, Wm. B. Pearson, Sewall Toppan, Robert
Bragg, Wm. Somerby, and Elkanah Finney. Sal gave me the
little book, that’s how the book started. The beast was seen
for twelve or thirteen days, one creature only, one witness a
day I guess, before it moved northward. No legs, fins, gills or
mane were observed. It slithered I tell you, that’s what they
told us, in the book, that it undulated, that it had smooth skin
(two said rough but forget them), and it was nearly a hundred
and twenty feet long! There was great unanimity of opinion
as to the monster’s extreme lateral flexibility. A-ha! Flexibility
is important. Let us take close note of that fact. They dubbed
the new creature, the serpent, something scientific and Latin.
That makes it authentic. New names make hard to believe
things more acceptable. The committee stood over a
portfolio of drawings done with a fine point and hues of
brown. But there were developments. Better the beast
remain testimony of twelve witnesses than thoroughly
investigated. I know what it was despite developments. What
else could it have been? There is only one. Whether or not it
lived or not lived. What lives in the water? What undulates?
When at rest, sometimes in rapid motion, it was seen to have
eyes like an ox, bright and unbiased. Terse and vigorous
beyond description. Evidence of very serious consideration.
What it was, was not a whale. No, I’m sorry. So to speak. It
was the beast with cavernous belly. And there, inside, Jonah
sat, Jonah and me. Me and Radio Man. Two kids poking and
fluttering around Loblolly cave found a 3 foot snake, a black
snake. Were they scared and shocked? They called their
father who killed it with a pitch fork. Anomalies without new
names, in the guise of older things, killed with a pitchfork in
late afternoon, are snakes or serpents, or savage.
Regardless, someone wanted to buy it, dead even, maybe
hoping this serpent and the monster of the waters, Jonah’s
former home, were blood brethren. Surely local pothouse
pundits speculated between songs of Cape Cod Shanty (oh
Cape Cod girls they have no combs, heave a-way, heave a-
way, they comb their hair with cod fish bones, heave a-way,
heave a-way, oh Cape Cod boys they have no sleds, they
slide down hill on cod fish heads...) and these drunkards and
ruminators decided, yes, the sea beast had come to
Leicester to drop eggs and this snake was a mere babe of a
sea serpent. Here’s the part I like. Not that it changes my
mind any about the monster, but only tells of strange
reasoning endemic to the island; the smaller snake was
summarily dissected and a report written, speaking of the
obvious similarities to its supposed mother, and this report
sent off to shock the civilized world. It was quickly seen by
several smug European doctors who said the new species
was nothing but a common black snake. Scoffing ensued.
Doubt was fostered. Testimony forgotten in the face of the
found snake, by the boys, killed by the pitchfork of the boys’
father, in Loblolly cove one afternoon. Yet one conniving sea
dog, a Cpt Rich of Boston, fitted an expedition to set out to
track and kill the great monster. As proof of the island’s
integrity. For several days they skipped along the coast into
the bay without seeing it. Why, they had to bring back
something, don’t you think? So they snagged a 700 pound
tuna, advertised it as the sea serpent caught, and charged
people to see the thing. Word spread. Rich claimed he had
no part in deception. Unfortunately for his reputation as a
fisherman this was completely believed by the public.
Couldn’t tell a tuna from a monster. Combined with the boys
snake, opinion of the islanders intelligence went pretty low.
Not that it hadn’t been low before. Like the rhyme, Lynn Lynn
city of sin never come out the way you went in. Cuz you
could do all sorts of things in Leicester, all sorts. Really, it
was founded by criminals and pederasts, murderers. So not many
thought of folk from Leicester as real bright if you follow me.
Not in a way the more civilized world appreciated anyhow.
The sea serpent, monster, beast, wasn’t seen again in the
waters, or out, and if it was, never spoken of for fear of
ridicule. Well, I would’ve listened. Intently. The way I’m
listening now and have heard I don’t know what. To listen to
them not simply cuz I like those kinds of stories, but I do.
Plus, I want to hear people’s voices dip with the fantastic
notions. Can you believe it? Stranger things have happened.
Me and Jonah and Radio Man and Koo Koo and Cpt
Rich and Sal sit waiting. We’re always waiting. So much
waiting. When I think of the amount of time I’ve spent in my
life waiting I am staggered. We could work it out with some
simple math. I must admit I’m waiting to be rescued, picked
up by the whale, the serpent, the monster, what have you. If I
could throw off the damn winch I could leap into the jaws.
Jump off the boat, off the boat into the water, cold, waiting
for me like I’m waiting for it. Nope, hold on, I think I could be
misinterpreting. I am waiting for the captain, yes, that’s right.
He’s coming back. I’m sure of it. How can I be so sure, Radio
Man asks. I’ll tell you. You’re playing Devil’s advocate on this
aren’t you? I can tell cuz I’ve got a gut feeling. That’s right. In
my gut, right above the pancreas. That’s where sureness is
felt. It’s pumped out. Sureness flows upward. Maybe not
above the pancreas, maybe it’s right near the appendix. I still
have mine. When you have your appendix removed you can
no longer tell with your gut. OK. Got it? Since Eng and
Chang were connected by a tube from gut to gut, they could
tell twice as much. I trust my instincts. You have to. Alright,
you don’t have to, but I think it’s better to. Wait. I’ve had an
awful thought, that comes over me not from my appendix but
from the place in my skull. The place in my skull, don’t get
me started. I’m thinking of the fog. You’ve got to understand.
When you can’t see, you can’t see. What would happen if I
were the captain, in that little dingy, and I was paddling
toward shore, away from the boat, in the correct direction,
using the light house as a point of reference, and then the
fog rolled over me? If I were the captain I would continue to
paddle, hopefully continuing in a straight line. But this is
ridiculous, because you can’t paddle in a straight line in so
small a boat, with so small a paddle, with so many waves, so
large, and pushing you here and there, out of line, out of
reference. Like going up when you think you’re going down,
going east when you think you’re going west, Jesus, the
captain could’ve paddled right by me on his way to the
Banks. Out into deep sea. Towards the middle of the
Atlantic. Hah! This would seem to be a sobering thought. It
would appear this kind of thought takes away hope. But I am
not deterred. I think the captain would use his compass, at
least I believe he had a small compass, that he took with
him. Who would leave without their friggin compass? What
idiot would paddle off in the open sea without a stupid
compass? Oh Christ. Oh Jesus. He would. If anybody would
it would be that moron. He’d forget. He’s probably out there
right now, miles to my east and panting away thinking only a
few more miles now and then I’ll bump right into the island.
Sure. That’s what the buffoon is doing right this second. I
can’t believe it. And you, on the radio, you’re mocking my
defeat aren’t you? I can hear it, don’t deny it. All this time
you’ve been keeping me distracted from what’s really
happening, the full impact of my plight. I can’t believe it. I
swear on somebody’s grave that when I get back to
Leicester Radio Man I’m gonna punch you out man, I mean
it. Fucking radio.
When my friend George had his appendix out he
didn’t feel anything worth mentioning. It was as easy as a
tooth, maybe easier.
There was a story I’d heard about some guy who
made a raft out of dead bloated bodies, and I don’t
remember where I heard it, but that image gave me a kind of
morbid thrill. So here’s what I was suddenly thinking. Of
taking Sal, Joe, Billy, John, and tying them up together and
using some flat long thing, something, as a paddle, and
going for shore. Fuck the compass, I have my gut. And I’d
have theirs below me. Of course this won’t work. There are
other grisly scenarios I’ve been contemplating while talking to
you Radio Man. Do you want to hear them? Sure you do.
Nothing like being squeamish to make the grisly that much
more enticing. I mean, morbidity is not mere fascination at
this point with me. OK. I was thinking of getting rid of the leg.
The pain seems to come and go, but doesn’t let me out from
under the winch, what I’m saying is, removing the leg
altogether. I’ve thought about it. I’ve got this small buck knife
in a pouch at my belt see, and, well, you get the picture.
There are far more extreme examples. Much more far, much
more intense. Done by people more desperate. Would I saw
off the leg to be instantly transported back to the island so I
can drink beer and punch out you Radio Man? Maybe I
would. That’s a difficult question, if it were posed to me, what
would I do. How far up would I have to cut. Would I pass out.
You know, those sorts of things. Maybe I shouldn’t be
thinking about those things. Maybe I should be thinking of
something nice, something harmless, something hopeful and
yes maybe being cheery would do me a world of good. Let’s
see. Something cheery. Nope, sorry, can’t think of a single
cheery thing. I’ve only been laying here contemplating
making a raft out of corpses and pushing my best friend
down the stairs and some poor slob swallowed by a great
fish. Think of something happy, he says, why are you so
glum, he says. Radio Man I thought you understood me, I
thought we had an understanding, that we came from
different directions, sure, but we met in the same place. In
the center. Somewhere, wherever the center is. On the radio
maybe. I could be on the radio, I could do what you do. But
now there’s no point since you have betrayed me, our
understanding is not an understanding. I don’t think it’s quite
a misunderstanding yet. I believe it hasn’t gotten to that
stage. But it could. Why are you insisting I think happy?
What is it to you anyway, like, what’s in it for you hunh?
There are certain facades. They make me tired, like I want to
lie down in the street with my head in the crook of my arm
and a winch on my leg and I want to moan, oh I want to
moan about it like an old woman. Do you ever feel this way?
When you’ve had enough of it? Then I would like a drink.
Perhaps this should be addressed. When you get a pocket
full of money, cold cash, in your pocket, and you’re waiting to
go out again you really want to spend it as fast as you can.
There is no facade in this, in spending money drinking. The
situation is cut and dry. You could end up laying in the street
anyway. Sal has, I’ve seen him. Radio Man has, but would
he admit it? Do you drink to moan, or do you drink to forget,
or do you drink to recall, or do you drink cuz there is an
oppressive boredom bearing down, or do you drink cuz
you’re excited. When I was working construction there was
this guy, a writer, named Henry, and he and I got into this
habit. We were not thinking cheery. Not happy. But we were
happy. Every Monday we would name a famous death. A
death that out-did other deaths. He named the deaths of
famous writers, since he said, writers have the best deaths. If
either of us couldn’t think of a counter death to the said
demise, we’d have to top it later. So it was a sort of game.
Dylan Thomas drank 50 or 60 Guinnesses and almost as
much whiskey, went home to die, decided he should go back
to the bar for more, afterward he crawled into bed and slowly
slipped away. Didn’t Sylvia Plath gas herself? The Japanese
writer Mishima gutted himself and then had his head clumsily
chopped off after taking a general or something hostage.
Hemingway was always fascinated by guns. Didn’t Kawabata
gas himself too? Malcom Lowry chased his wife around the
house with a broken bottle, and after she ran away he took
pills. Rimbaud had syphilis and his leg was amputated, and
he died. Camus, car crash. Kerouac bled wine
spontaneously. No one really knows what happened to Poe,
maybe he just got real sick. Maupassant died in a madhouse
thinking the flies were licking the salt out of his brain. Gogol
starved himself after realizing he was not the Russian
messiah. Shelly drowned in a boat accident. We’d do this for
hours, we would, and Henry was very good at it, the writers
being his favorite but he’d stray. And I couldn’t keep up with
him, was fascinated by his fascination. And I wonder how I
got on this topic, was either the fact of nothappy thoughts,
which sometimes make you pretty happy, and that damnable
topic of drinking. You see a pattern? Well, take it from Henry,
there was one. But whether it was chicken or egg first, I can’t
tell you that, and for all of Henry’s morbid tidbits I don’t think
he could tell you either. Who could?
When I think of water I see forms and motions and
places taking shape to be eradicated in only a second as if
they never were and never could be, yet, I have kept them
with me, the people places and things, as they rise and fall
over the eternity I’ve been on deck, here, with my dear friend
the winch, and I’ll tell you something, but you have to
promise to keep it low key, that is, to yourself to a degree,
I’m not denying you anything. What happens, as the waves
rise and fall, and the songs on the radio begin and end, and
the fog wanes and thickens, and the light house lights and
spins, and the captain paddles and paddles, and the fish bite
and swim, and when I’m holding my face in my hands with
my eyes shut I feel a large space that’s decaying like greasy
sandpaper, as if my feet were being bent backwards so they
touched the top of my head, and I could go away for a long
time to a cold place, where the birds chirp and fly and the
trees grow imperceptibly and telephones rot on piles of trash
and I wouldn’t be bothered. I have certain obligations and I
intend to fulfill them. After this, the water of forms and places
and motion which tickles a rocky harbor far distant keeps the
people and places solid and intact best way it can, as chords
strumming away from me, no longer near me, possibly I
could be safe from the decay of people and part of natural
decay that is a much more noble way of going far away.
I have gone far away but I keep coming back. You
may not consider going far away in a boat going far at all.
Like, you have to go to Nepal or something to be thought of
someone who travels. Cuz then it has foreign qualities that
you can bring back in token forms, loose change, trinkets.
But when you go across water, the shapes and forms are
what you take with you, and you leave them in the water, and
you leave them in you, but you can’t exactly hand this over to
anyone and say, See I’ve gone far away and come back.
I have often dreamt of the ultimate going away.
There are moments here when I am sure.
I often looked forward to going away. My parents
never wanted to, still don’t. Although my father finally did.
The big going away. I’ll ask this gull to deliver a message, I’m
positive it can fly that far, up or down, sideways or to the very
dark bottom of the water, underneath me, that’s right, under
the boat, not under the rocks, I don’t think he’s gone to hell,
he’s gone to what is it, purgatory. Mmm, there’s a concept
I’ve always enjoyed. I’ll write a small note on the back of a
crumpled receipt found in the bottom of my pocket, a receipt
for something, yes, bought weeks, months, years ago. I’ll
give the note to the gull. No, I’ll tie the note onto the gull’s
leg, like they did with carrier pigeons before they went
extinct. Or was that homing pigeons? Some damn pigeon.
And this will be fitting, to tie the note to the pigeon, and have
the pigeon deliver the note to my father in purgatory because
he always hated pigeons so much. But it’s not a pigeon, it’s a
gull! What will the note say? Aw, it doesn’t matter I guess.
The gull goes, laughing, and I can see its wings
moving in the air, struggling against the wind, which pushes
and pulls the water, much the way a winch would with rope,
or cable, or something else. That’s what waves are, wind for
your eye. If they hit the boat hard enough the boat will fall off
the rocks and sink down like tons of steel, which is what it is.
At the bottom I would be safe from what’s up here, and no
more radio, as far as I know, radio underwater makes no
sound, or very little sound I imagine. Take that Radio Man!
Your grasp cannot clutch, through waves and fishes, and I
do believe the electricity of you would become quite
extinguished.
I am afraid if the water touches me I will be
electrocuted. Every time it swoops over the edge, I flinch.
There’s a pulse that goes right up my spine, oh, my poor
spine, I think it would like a little vacation, somewhere warm,
somewhere with no water, inside the country, in the middle of
the desert, with other spines, and I believe I could simply
divide myself into parts to disperse, this whole experience
seems to be about dispersal. I’m being pulled apart. Soon
there will only be a quivering brain left on the deck.
Flattened. White and smooth. Pecked at by gulls.
I vacillate on this topic.
The air I breathe has become smoke, congested, full
of particles. They could crystallize, the way it happens with
snow, tiny bits catching ice. I know this shouldn’t distract me.
If I get distracted at this point where would I be?
Look, everyone has bad days. Nothing seems to go
well, as if the day were sabotaged by unseen forces. I’m not
suggesting a conspiracy, of hushed planning, or organized
destruction, just that, hmm, it often seems that way. I’ve had
a few. Now, these days don’t make me suspicious, they’re
simply something you have to work through one frustrating
step at a time. That’s what I’d like to think anyhow. There
was one bad day, and this was one was sort of exemplary.
Not like there was anything tragic, not to me, but little things.
That’s what I think makes it bad, they’re are many small
moments. So I wake up, on a Sunday, I like to sleep late,
and I’m gonna make myself coffee and it’s all gone even
though I’d bought it the day before, and I look in the filter of
the machine, and there’s a 1/2 pound of wet and used
coffee, which my roommate must’ve drank, but I’m thinking,
that’s almost a couple of pots of coffee, coffee for like 10
people, in one day, between the time of buying it and the
next morning. You’d get a seizure drinking that much coffee,
really. But he must’ve cuz the coffee bag is empty on top of
the trash, and I have no coffee to drink now and I feel very
grumpy. So I’ve got to go to the store, on Sunday morning,
which I hate to do. I don’t want to sit somewhere and have
someone make me coffee, I wanted to make it myself. I go to
the store. The aisles are maddening. I’m grumpy. Very fat
people seem to be everywhere, like, this store, it has aisles
and aisles of cookies, soda, chips, frozen pizzas, cakes and
pies, crackers, cosmetics, stationery, but not much in the
way of real food you know. This makes me more angry. I’m
not sure why, but large stores have always made me mad.
But I want to get out of there, quickly. I get the coffee, some
other things too. The lines are enormous. I’m disheartened.
I’m mad that I’m here in the first place. And of course the
express line I’m in has a problem, some kind of screw up, a
mile away from me, down the long line. I glance at my watch,
but try not to. 10, 15 minutes go by me in the line. I take a
chance, cuz I want to, need to go; I have to get out of there
or I’ll go nuts, I think. And I feel a bit guilty, thinking some
things in line, that everyone there is so fat and ugly and they
smell bad too. I’m thinking what a miserable lot humans are
in general. But I’m in the line so long I don’t even feel guilty
about this anymore. I jump to another line which appears to
be moving faster. This can be a big mistake sometimes since
there is this pattern, especially on your bad day, when, like,
cosmic forces have aligned to make you regret getting up at
all, a mistake since you know when you go to another line
the problem will get there ahead of you. So I’m standing in
the new line, and the line is moving, and I’m thinking, oh,
maybe I’ll get out of here, when a searing pain shoots up
from the back of my heel, the Achilles tendon I guess. Some
woman has just run her grocery cart right into the back of my
leg, and I turn a bit, and I scowl, she hasn’t even noticed. I
stand still, waiting. The cart moves up again this time with
less force, but still it’s now steadily pushing me forward. This
enrages me. But being stupid, I only kind of lean back
slightly, well, assuming she’ll noticed the cart is being pushed
back a bit and realize that she’s grinding my calves with her
cart. Nope, she doesn’t. She starts fumbling with her
groceries, I can hear, to get ready to put them on the
conveyor belt that’s got milk slime like a long snail trail or
snot. As she does this she moves the cart back, then slams
it into me again, and at this point I’ve had it. I turn and I grab
the cart with my hands on either side, stopping it from
moving forward and I look her in the eyes and quietly say
Please Stop. She glances up, wide eyed, noticing me, and
you know what the fat bitch says, Oh I’m sorry I didn’t see
you. Like, what’s up with that? But I say, It’s OK. I always say
this, and I don’t know why. You can cut me off, hit me, take
advantage of me, and I always say, Don’t worry about it, it’s
OK. Then maybe I’m hoping it is. Sort of a dumb act of will,
which is ridiculous, don’t you think? It’s OK don’t worry about
it. I’ve said it a million times already I swear. Why not yell,
Look you stupid cunt you’re hobbling me with your fucking
cart full of Ho-Ho’s and Coke and don’t even think your
gonna buy this stuff for your fat ass with food stamps. Maybe
that would be a step too far. Maybe I said nothing other than
Please Stop cuz I am unable to draw the line, it’s like, all or
nothing right? I’m afraid that’s the way it is, I found out, right
after that, in the store with the woman, when I walked out. I
left the store, brow dark and shoulders drawn up as if they
led me forward by the tension of a spring. A cigarette, I
believe, will make it OK. So I’m standing outside the store,
with my single bag of items and digging for a smoke in my
jacket, and out of the corner of my eye I see this guy. You
know what I mean, here’s a guy who’s trouble in my bad day,
un-hunh, I can tell that the same way the mysterious organ
above or below my pancreas acts like a compass -- I can tell
and I’m saying to myself, no, no, no, I can’t take any more of
this. The guy is dumpy, mid-fifties, thick spectacled, buck
toothed and has a mean look on his face. He’s also holding a
rosary, a large blue beaded affair. He walks right up to me,
and I stand with cigarette, I’m staring at some invisible point,
trying to ignore him. Do you know about this? He says
pointing to the rosary. Yeah, I say, I know all about it. I’m
holding my hand up in a stop motion. I’m lifting my groceries,
going to move on. I start moving. Then this guy hisses, he
hisses I’m telling you, saying, You’re a fool. Oh, I couldn’t
step anymore. I went back to him. I’m a fool? I say, You’re
the one praying in the parking lot, I say. He opens his mouth
and out comes scripture, very predictably. I hold my hand up
again, Stop! I’ve read the bible, I know scripture, don’t even
start with me. He’s getting closer to me, still snarling, upset
I’ve stopped his brainwash recitation and he says, You’re an
asshole! So I push him. Yup, he was so close what I did was
throw my arm out, not really even that hard, but I also
grabbed at something, with the other hand, not even thinking
about it. I’d grabbed his rosary. There was, I recall, either an
expression of horror or bewildered anger. I don’t think he
knew exactly what had happened, I’m not sure I did either.
But I held the rosary and he looked momentarily powerless,
looking at me with no comprehension, then it flooded into his
face, deep hatred perhaps. And here’s the thing, I was mad,
so mad I lifted the rosary over my head and threw it to the
ground. I did more. I took my foot and stomped on it, grinding
it, saying Fuck you and fuck your god. I grabbed my bag and
walked, very quickly, cuz as soon as I’d done it I worried if
there was a law against stomping on rosaries, but I felt good
regardless, well, pretty good. The guy yelled at me,
frantically, with the scourge of his relentless preachery,
Unrepentant Sinner! Unrepentant Sinner! Unrepentant
Sinner! I felt fairly relieved though, I mean it was good to get
some stuff off my back. I could even say I was thankful in
some sense.
So sometimes you have bad days, and I believe I
could be having a worse one. There’s stuff that could’ve
happened to have made this one much worse. There is a
way you know when you’re going to have a bad day before it
even begins. But you can’t do anything about it. The same
way with fishermen. There have been eerie predictions and
dreams that plague sailors before going on a trip. They see
women in white hovering out over the water. They have
nightmares of storms. There are documented cases of this
happening. I had a friend who didn’t go on this very trip, this
very voyage, the one I’m on right now. He just didn’t go, and
this made the captain a bit nervous, but what could we do?
We could hope he was wrong, that’s what. But I guess he
wasn’t. Although we never heard from him, or through him,
why he changed his mind at the last minute. Shame. I would
like to compare one story with another, it would give me
something to do. That’s what I need, something to do. You
know I’ve counted all the bolts within my sight on this side of
the boat while I talk to you Radio Man? It comes to 255.
That’s a good amount. Just right. It’s right simply cuz it
makes sense, to me, I think. Why? Well, I counted them
didn’t I? That means I’ve invested a certain amount of time
and energy into the project. Not that this alone makes it
interesting, I don’t want to suggest this.
But what else can you do?
I can look up, into the froth, the muddled atmosphere.
And I know I have a secret. Something to admit. I didn’t want
to tell you Radio Man.
I’m hesitant to tell you Radio Man cuz I know, or at
least believe, that you feel dominant in sound, that you are a
master of your realm, that competition is a nagging
disappointment. The rush of water and the air and birds, well,
granted, these are natural and beyond your speaker, the
ever present jingles and snippets. But man made sounds, I
don’t want to suggest there could be something other than
you I listen to Radio Man, yet there could be, has been
something. This is how I am being honest now. I’m not
denying you anything. It was a kind of TWAP TWAP sound.
You know? Sort of TWAP TWAP TWAP TWAP. There are
very few things which could make this sound. One thing I’m
thinking of is a helicopter. That’s right. But as my face, nose,
eyes, head is pointed up into the lush fog, to scan back and
forth occasionally, I saw nothing which could have made a
TWAP TWAP sound. I didn’t smell one either but then I don’t
‘spose you can smell a helicopter. At least from not far away.
I heard it though, quite undeniably heard something which
made that sound. What are the other possibilities? The first
and most obvious is you Radio Man. You have devised a
cunning trick. I can’t conceive of how exactly you could do
this, but I know you have tricks up your sleeve. Why would
you, with me and Jonah in the belly of a whale, wish to
deceive me? Or us? I’m speaking for Jonah here, he has
interests in this too. I’m presuming this sound would get his
hopes up. Yet, we have seen nothing. There may be other
possibilities. Hmm, it could have been a natural
phenomenon. The same as ball lightening and the aurora
borealis, only with sound. A sort of sound mirage. Like when
you’re out in the desert and there are waves of heat that look
like water, maybe waves of fog sound like helicopters. I find
this difficult to swallow.
What else? It could be the trick of gulls, although,
again, I don’t believe so -- gulls have an inborn stupidity and
greediness that denies that kind of plotting. I am at my wits
end. Whatever that is, I’ve never known.
There could have been many things but I believe it
was a helicopter. And do you know what that indicates? The
belly of the whale convulses, the surfacing of Leicester’s
mythical leviathan, the time Jonah sits and waits with me,
playing gin rummy betting fish bones, with an absurd
soundtrack coming from Radio Man’s teeth -- I think it is now
Barracuda by Heart, oh God, is there no end to the popularity
of bad taste? Let’s see, I think the sound of a helicopter
snakes through the blow hole, alerting us, Radio Man’s chin
chomps shut, our faces so darkened and smudged with
smoke from our whale oil lamp, turn upward to the savior
whirlybird, to men there wearing rubber suits with zippers and
helmets colored, oh what’s the color? survival orange,
nuclear pink. You know, you can see it a mile away. For a
time many things had these colors, luckily they faded, faded.
In a thrilling comic book style these helicopter men dangle
down into the cavernous belly, on ropes, bouncing off the
sides of ribs and pumping secretory organs. There is an
exciting sequence of removal, and then a happy laughing
finale, no, a tearful farewell as Jonah, me, Radio Man, go our
separate ways. Jonah to Ninevah. Me to my house to take a
shower and drink a beer. Radio Man to eternal Goddamn hell
in his station, broadcasting atrocities to humanity in the form
of pop music. You see how I’ve changed my tune about
Radio Man? I thought the radio was fine, great, before my
incarceration in the belly. I didn’t know then, did I know what,
nothing could’ve been known before I started getting to the
bottom. As I am doing now, with gumption. Him, what he’s
done, is inexcusable. But I may change my mind again, I
leave myself enough room for that, although I still plan a
punch to the nose once my leg is free. I don’t mean my leg
will do the punching, only that you need to move around for
that sort of action.
Most certainly a helicopter. Perhaps I will take a nap,
a small nap, not entirely sleep, until it comes.
copyright 2.98 by Jeff Weston
Last Updated March 25th, 1998
For more information contact: Jeff Weston