The Dividing Line Ch. 02

"I would have given anything..." her voice trailed off. She pushed down the anguish that wanted to flood out of her dark place. "Well, Eddie. You sure know..." her voice trailed off again.

"Hey darlin'. Let's eat, then we'll take a walk, maybe go down to the water or something."

"Would you order for me, Eddie?"

"Do you want to try fish?"

"Had tuna fish before, a sandwich. Will it taste like that?"

"No, probably not, at least if we're lucky it won't. Leave it to me, darlin'."

Sara watched the boats putting up sails and catching the wind, heeling over, and soaring out over the water like magic birds. There were a handful of boats running toward the distant horizon; these Ed MacCarley watched intently.

*

After lunch Ed took Sara down to the main marina walkway, and they meandered slowly along, drifting in their own currents among the rich and the not so rich, the pretenders and the old salts. Ed pointed out this type of boat and that type of rig; he knew it meant nothing to Sara, but he wanted to fill the silence that had enveloped her; keep her mind focused on the present.

The piers that went out to the boats were behind locked gates. Sara wanted to look at some of the boats, pointed to one every now and then, saying they were pretty or cool or "wouldn't that be nice..." Ed just held her hand in his as she rambled, then he would tell her what kind of boat it was, read the name on the transom aloud. Sometimes he would have to explain what a name meant; and there were names he had to admit he had no idea what they meant. They came to a spot where they could look down at a pier, and Ed pointed out a nearby white sailboat that had a deep green stripe along the top of the hull. There was gleaming teak all over the boat, and it had teak decks that made it look like a little ship, brass portlights in sleek oval shapes, and green canvas over the sails and on the cushions in the cockpit.

"What do you think of that one, Sara?" Ed MacCarley asked.

Sara Wood stared at the little ship, at all the gleaming brass and chrome and the glowing teak that accented the lines of the boat and covered the deck. "Ooh, Eddie, ain't it pretty. What's it called?"

"Well, lets look at it for a second. You see the letters on the side, near the back? See if you can say them along with me. A- W- A - K - E - N. That spells awaken, which means to wake up after sleeping, or to be reborn out of an insane existence. Kind of a neat name for a boat, huh?"

"Ooh, I wish we could see it inside. I wonder what looks like inside there."

"Well, let's go and see if we can take a look." He walked down the ramp toward the gate and took out his keys; then he opened the gate. Sara Wood looked truly lost as she followed Ed MacCarley down the ramp.

"What are you doin', Eddie? You're not, you didn't pick the lock, did you?" Eddie was now holding the gate open for her, and he motioned her through. They walked to the boat; it was the first one on the pier, and he stood there looking at her, a quiet smile of private amusement on his face.

Ed MacCarley walked over along the side of the boat until he came to a gap in the lifelines; he un-clipped the line blocking the way and let it fall.

"Eddie, Jesus, what are you doin'? We're gonna get in trouble."

Ed MacCarley stepped on board. He held out his hand to Sara.

"No way, Eddie. I ain't going to jail."

He just kept his hand out, enjoying this little moment completely. "Come on, honey,"

Sara Wood looked at Ed MacCarley. Suddenly, she got it. She flew across the space and into his arms.

"Welcome to my home, Sara Wood. Our home. Sara, my love." He held her trembling waif-like frame in his arms and accepted the gales of kisses that flew into his soul at the speed of a sigh. He whispered, "Oh, God, Sara, I love you so much, so much..." into her ear over and over. The young woman in his arms went very quiet and still after a moment, then looked up at him.

"I love you to, Paul Edward MacCarley."

"Then spend your life with me, Sara Wood. Marry me."

Sara Wood recoiled from the shock she felt. Ed just held her, caressed her face, watched in awe as a tear formed in her eye, watched the tear swell and roll down her cheek. He moved his face to hers and kissed away the tear, held her face in his hands, smiled into her eyes.

He took a little light blue box out of his pocket and opened it up, showed her the simple white gold wedding band he had chosen for her. "Marry me, Sara Wood. You'd make me the happiest man that ever lived."

"I...I'm not...good enough...for you...Eddie," she said as a wave of tears engulfed her.

He continued to hold her face in his hands, stroking her cheeks and her tears with his thumbs. He looked at her with a different expression, spoke in a different voice, "Sara. Listen to me, listen very carefully. When two people say they will marry one another, it is a solemn promise before God that they will protect one another, that they won't run away from one another, or do anything to hurt the other. That's what I'm promising to you, Sara. That I'll always be here by your side. That I'll never leave you. That I'll love you as much twenty years from now as I do right this very moment. And one last thing."

Ed was visibly shaking now. "There is one thing in the world that I am afraid of, Sara. That's the thought that I might wake up some day and find that you've gone, that you've left me. When I think of that, Sara, it feels like I can't breathe. If you leave me I think I'll die... My love, you are the most important person in the world to me, oh my sweet Sara. I just love you with all my heart." Ed MacCarley was crying now.

Sara Wood clung to Ed MacCarley through the gales of his passion, felt him tremble as he came to blows with his own doubts and fears. "Oh Eddie, oh Eddie," she said as she felt with her own awakening sense of wonder the power of love to rule the human heart. "Eddie, I love you too. I do. You've been my savior, my..."

Ed MacCarley pulled away from Sara Wood, pulled back far enough to look into her eyes. "Oh, Sara, I don't know how to tell you this...I'm not your savior. You are my savior...you saved me from..." He fell to his knees, hugged her thighs, his face buried in her hips. He felt the release that comes from understanding a critical event in life, of moving beyond the pressure of doubt. "Oh, please, God. Sara, don't ever leave me."

She felt his hold on her heart and she embraced it. She knelt beside him, cradled him, rocked him in the sway of her body. "Oh, Eddie." She kissed the top of his head. "I'll never leave you, Eddie. If you really want me...Oh, Eddie, I Love you and I'll marry you and I promise I'll never leave you." She felt his shaking sobs throughout her body. 'How did I save him?' she thought to herself, lost in the terms of the equation. 'That doesn't make any sense at all...'

They sat in the cockpit of the little sailboat for hours, holding each other tightly. As evening returned the man held his woman to his breast, cradled her in the warmth of his need and his passion. As darkness enveloped them, he opened the companionway that led down into the little boat, into their home.

*

October 9^th

Awaken motored out from behind the stone breakwater and turned into the breeze. Ed MacCarley quickly hoisted the big main sail above the cockpit and cleated it off. He turned off of the wind a bit as he shut down the engine, and Awaken bit into the wind, heeled ever so slightly to the gentle breath of the Earth. Ed next unfurled the big sail, the genoa, on the forward part of the boat, and just as suddenly Awaken bolted as if she had been spurred in her flanks. She heeled dramatically and tore into the wind. Ed dashed back to the wheel and took the helm.

Sara Wood was huddled in a calm corner of the cockpit, wrapped in a cocoon of sweatshirt and fleece pants. Her arms were outstretched, holding onto grab-rails, but she was laughing with the sudden exhilaration of flying. She stood up, holding on to the railings which seemed to be everywhere, and stuck her face squarely into the full force of the breeze. Her red hair stood straight out from her head, parallel with the surface of the sea, her eyes began to swell with tears, not from anguish or joy, but from the simple force of the wind. Awaken dove down into a trough between waves and threw a huge wall of spray into the air.

Sara watched the airborne water arcing through the air as with outstretched arms, daring it to find her. This was not, however, a particularly wise move, as the wall found Sara with little problem. Ed heard her squeal as the water cascaded down onto her, into her clothing, drenching her almost completely. Ed laughed as she turned around; she looked both surprised and happy, like a wet floppy-eared puppy. He bore off the wind a bit, ease the sails out, eased the motion of the boat. He switched on the autopilot and dashed below to grab Sara a towel and a fleece lined wind-breaker, he wanted to keep her from getting chilled.

Sara toweled her hair as dry as she could, and wrapped the towel around her neck. She sat back again, looked out over the rear of the boat as it danced away from the shoreline. Ed kept the autopilot engaged, magically produced a mug of hot chocolate, and handed it to her. She took a sip, surprised at the heat of the liquid.

"What is this?" she asked.

Ed hid his surprise, but caught himself. "Special sailor's brew, darlin'. Secret recipe. We call it hot chocolate."

"It's a secret? Why, Eddie?"

"'Cause every body would want to drink it all the time, darlin'. But don't worry, we got plenty." He remained at a loss sometimes at her vulnerability to humor; what might have been funny in one set of circumstances to one person could be painfully uncomfortable for her, bring on the set of reactions that would unsettle her. He despised the paternalism of his lie now, tried to will his own shame away at the innocent deception.

Sara sipped the hot chocolate, lost in the complexity of the brew and the world around her. It was all so unreal. One day slipping from the shadows, taking care to remain out of sight as she dug through garbage cans looking for food or some useable piece of clothing. She remembered one day, the day the pissy-smelling guy had tried to beat her, the guy whose shrimpy little dick had stuck in her mouth as she fell. She had gone to the hospital, then to jail. Then she was back on the streets, and all she knew was that an Officer MacCarley had kept her from going to prison.

She had gone from police station to police station looking for him, but had never found him. She had slipped back into the shadows by then, slipped back down into the world of hunger and dumpsters and the prison of the shadowlands.

And how all of a sudden he had been there, right in front of her, and then he had taken her to lunch. Oh, sweet Jesus, she thought. How could she ever explain to him that she been searching for him all over the city, walking, looking, hoping. She had felt his caring embrace as she wretched and heaved her guts up in that alley, felt him pick her up and carry her to the ambulance, how he followed her to the hospital, saw to it that people helped her. He had cared. Cared - for me?! That's what it feels like! She thought of sleeping on the streets on summer nights, how she would look up at street lights, watch bugs circle the pale yellow glow. That's what being cared for was like. Once you had felt it you were drawn to it like those bugs.

She looked at him sitting beside her in the little world of his sailboat, felt her love for him, saw his love for her in his every gesture, in every thing he did. He had tried to explain to her last night, but she couldn't understand, really, why he thought of her as his savior. What had he meant when he said he had lost his humanity, that he had lived in a sewer for too long, and that he would have fallen into darkness had she not come to pull him back into the world of the living. It hadn't made sense, but she believed him. Then he had made love to her so tenderly, with such soft reverence, she had felt her soul glowing, she had felt her body dissolve. In the warm glow of Awaken's belly she had felt the ropes of her insane existence fall apart. She had felt some new being emerge from within her, felt an awakening.

"Eddie?"

"Hum?"

"Why did you name the boat Awaken?"

He nodded his head, thought a while. "You like music much?"

"I guess."

"Awaken is the name of a song, a pretty old song I guess, by today's standards. From the 70s, by a group from Britain called Yes."

"Why that song? Why not, like, a Beatles song, or, well, I don't know too many music groups. One of the foster homes I lived in, well the mother played Beatles songs all the time. I remember a song called The Long and Winding Road, she played it all the time. I can still hear the music."

"Oh, Sara, I'm not sure I can explain it. There was a time when I believed in the goodness of men, and that song seemed to explain all of the infinite possibilities of what our world could be if people embraced love, explored the connections we share with everything in the universe. Anyway, the song lasts forever, and you know, most people just loose interest in a song after a couple of minutes. Awaken was to me like a sailboat; it drifts along through currents of time, and then it builds into this explosion, pulls all of the various themes within the song back together, makes it whole. I kinda hoped this boat would be that song for me, that she would help me pull all of the pieces of my life together, make it whole."

Sara thought a minute. "I think you explained that real good, Eddie. Sometimes when you talk to me it sounds like you're trying to protect me from something. You don't have to, you know. I'm pretty strong."

"I love you so much."

"Could we listen to the song?"

"Yeah, I'll play it tonight. Sometimes the words are kinda hard to understand, you need to be in a quiet place. And you have to play it kinda loud." He just smiled.

*

They sat in the cockpit, watching the sun set through a wall of distant purple thunder heads. Awaken sat at anchor in a small secluded bay; there was only one other boat sharing the little hideaway. Ed had made a dish he called spaghetti carbonara, made with eggs and bacon, and cheese and cream, he said, and she had wolfed it down. She sipped her first glass of wine, a sweet wine from Germany. They sat after dinner playing with their wine, taking small bites of apples and cheese. Soon Sara leaned back, leaned so that she was using Ed as a chair. He enfolded her within his arms, and they sat in silence as the sun crept down toward the sea, as the air grew cool. Little darts of lightning shot across the distant clouds.

Ed and Sara had come to that special place lovers share where words lack the capacity to convey the specificity of meaning within a sigh - but the soul understands perfectly. They had found the place where you go when you lean against your lover's back and feel their heart beating through your chest, feel the pulse of life beating through the airs of time.

Oh, just in silence, silent waves curled through time in abeyance of their love.

Ed pulled a blanket up over her dreamlike form, felt her breathing slow as soft darkness made it's way into the heaven-sent air. He felt her relax, fall, fall deeply into sleep.

He felt the tears building in his heart, felt his prayer reaching from the depths of his soul toward the heavens. 'Thank you God. Thank you for bringing her to me."

A little before midnight she stirred, woke up. She looked up into the night and gasped out loud, waking Ed from his light cops-sleep.

"What is it, honey?" he said, his voice full of sleepy concern.

"What are . . . are those stars?"

Ed sat up and looked at the dome of the heavens. It was totally clear; the distant thunderstorms had evaporated with the setting sun. High in the October sky the Orion constellation blazed in distant fury, Betelgeuse and Rigel like fiery beacons reflecting off the still waters of their little secluded bay.

"Yeah, darlin'. Those are stars. And a couple of planets, too."

"Really!?"

He started pointing around the night sky, took her to Jupiter and Mars, showed her the big dipper and Polaris. Finally he guided her to Orion, to his belt, and he described the sword that hung from it. He pointed out the huge fuzzy patch in the middle of the sword, and described the violent birth of hundreds of stars that was happening right before their eyes, deep within the Orion Nebula.

"How far away is it, Eddie?"

"Real far, darlin'. It would take billions of years to get there if we walked! If we could move as fast as light moves, it would take 1,500 years, maybe more."

"It must be cold out there," she said.

"Uh-huh."

"But I sure feel warm right here with you. I guess that's all that matters, Eddie." She turned around on the narrow cockpit seat and kissed him. They sat huddled together cheek to cheek, occasionally kissing, for several minutes. "Eddie?"

"What is it, sweetie?"

"Could we listen to the Awaken song, now, and then would you make love to me?"

*

They sat down below, within the cloudy nebula of Awaken's belly, her wooden interior barely glowing from the single oil lamp that burned in gentle refrain. Sara Wood sat inside Ed MacCarley's warm arms, the side of her face rubbing on his shoulders.

She jumped as a burst of piano music shattered the darkness, then felt her body relax into the gentle voice that sang of the sun, of being, and just as suddenly the music dissolved into chaos, music from a different time, a different place. The music was jarring, unsettling, like a storm tossed dream.

The music rolled through valleys of touch, crashed in sudden shifts within the dream, then seemed to end, only to be reborn, and build again in other distant dreams. Soft interludes lapped at the shores of the song-dream, then folding in on themselves, they gave way to more violent spasms of, what, a nightmare?

The music went toward the light, building towards its awakening, and exploded like an orgasm as light and fury poured into her imagination, only to once again fall into the soft gentle voice . . .

High vibration go on
to the sun, oh let my heart dreaming
past a mortal as me
where can I be...

Wish the sun to stand still
reaching out to touch our own being
past all mortal as we
here we can be
we can be here...

Sara could feel Ed's tears on the side of her face, could feel him lose himself within the words, sway in the currents of the music. As if time had given way to the music, she felt her body join with his within the afterglow of the dream.

"Youwerestanding close to me, weren't you, Eddie? When you found me, I mean."

"Yes, I was, darlin'. But if I go away, you'll be right there with me."

*

October 20^th

It has always been a simple fact of life that the better you know who you are, the more you know what you want.

For Ed MacCarley, he knew after spending almost two weeks on Awaken with Sara that he was a wanderer, that he felt destined to wander the byways of his heart and soul with her, but further, that he could no longer face life on the street with a clear conscience. He knew the realities of convention, knew the scorn an almost 50 year old man would reap with a 20 year old girl as a wife. He knew what would happen if he tried to blend into to the social world of his fellow officers. And the funny thing about the understanding that developed along these lines? He knew he wasn't ashamed of his decision to love Sara, that he wouldn't be ashamed to take her anywhere. He felt ashamed of society, of people who would condemn without understanding either his capacity to leap beyond the barriers of self-righteous moralists, or Sara's infinite capacity to forgive. He felt ashamed that the same self-righteous people drove past all of the Sara Woods that were hiding in the shadows without even noticing all of the pain and the suffering around them, let alone feeling the compassion necessary to shelve their own selfish interests long enough to just simply care. Tax cuts were all that mattered to these people. A bigger house, a bigger car, a bigger black hole where a heart had once been. He had been in churches recently where the preacher castigated his flock for not earning enough money, equating one's earning power with one's godliness. Ed had watched with utter astonishment as people wrote out checks for hundreds of dollars to this con-man. The con-man preacher had driven away after the service in a goddamned S-class Mercedes Benz!