Still Life in Shadow (16)

"Well," she said to Jenn now, "I wish you the best. I love you, dear girl, and I always will."

Jenn nodded her head, but I could tell she was trying to hold back tears of her own.

We stood to leave, but Maria remained seated. We let ourselves out, and I felt the lights in the room go out, and I turned to look at Maria as she sat in sudden shadow.

Jenn and I walked back to town, we walked under the stars. I held her hand now like I would never let it go again, and we listened to the gathering silence around us. The sound of the sea could just be felt through the hum of the town below us, and as we crested the hill we could look down on the harbor spread out below -- like a black hole surrounded by amber-hued diamonds.

On the breakwater we could just make out the flashing lights of an ambulance.

Men were jumping on and off a boat moored there.

It was, we could see, the Bolero.

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"Dave?"

"Yeah? Hey, Pete," came his faint voice through the growing fog.

"I sent Jenn down to the boat to check on Max. Is there anything I can do?"

"Get me out of here, Pete. I don't want to die in here. Get me back to the boat, okay?"

"Alright, Dave. Hang in there; I'll be back in a minute."

Jenn filled me in on the details later: Someone had been walking along the breakwater and looked down at Max, who had seemed agitated, and they had seen Latham laying face down in the cockpit. They had called the Guardia, and the firemen had come for him. Now Jenn was down on the boat taking care of Max and straightening up the forepeak berth. We carried a bag of ice down to Bolero, and some fruit juice in case David felt like drinking something, then walked back up to the hospital and arranged to have him brought back down to the docks.

Some firemen and I loaded him up and rolled him out to their ambulance, and we drove down to the dock and got him moved back aboard. Jenn and I got him to the forward cabin, and she helped him into his bunk. I opened up the hatch over his head, and a sharp, early winter's breeze filled the space. The breeze tussled our hair on it's way through the boat, awakening memory in it's passage.

"You want some juice, or some ice to chew on?"

"Maybe some ice. Got cottonmouth. Where's Max?"

But Max was having his own troubles that night. He was moving slowly, and it was obvious to me that he too was in a lot of pain, but when her heard David say his name he ambled forward and sat down on the teak next to David's berth. His tail thumping, he looked up at me expectantly; I leaned over and helped him up on the bunk and he scooted over and settled-in next to David, his chin resting on Latham's shoulder. Those big brown eyes went from me to David and back again, over and over, like he didn't know whether his allegiance belonged to the living or the dying, but after a few minutes of this he settled down and looked at David with a smile on his face. He seemed so full of love as he lay there.

"Orion."

"What's that, David?"

"Up there, through the hatch. It's Orion." I craned my neck and looked up into the night sky. Almost directly overhead I could make out the Hunter's stars: Betelgeuse, Rigel, the belt stars and the short dagger with the fuzzy patch around the middle star, the Orion nebula. "That's my favorite night sight," he said. "I wish I could've gone there."

"Maybe you will."

He smiled. "Fairy tales, Pete. All just fairy tales for scared children, afraid of the dark."

"Could be. Here, open up." I put some crushed ice in his mouth and he smiled. I little runner dripped down his chin and Max licked it off, and David smiled deeply as that familiar grace interrupted his journey through the stars.

"Pete? There's an envelope in the chart table addressed to you. Instructions, you know, for later."

"Sure thing, Dave. Don't worry about that now."

"If...I...ah, take care of Max...would you?"

"Count on it, my friend." I watched as he swallowed hard, as he struggled to keep his eyes on Orion, but he gave up and looked down at Max, and he started to cry softly.

"Bye, buddy. Such a good friend..."

He tried to swallow again, but gave up. He breathed one last time as he reached up to rub Max's ear, then he grew very still.

I put my hand on his, felt the last moments of life in him, then wished him a good journey.

I looked at Max, and he too seemed very still now. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to be at peace with this world, but his tail was motionless now, and so it would forever remain.

After a few minutes I moved away from David and Max to sit with Jennifer, and though the world seemed suddenly a very cold and lonely place, I knew the love I held in my heart for those two souls would sustain me the rest of my life.

◊◊◊◊◊

Life goes on. Isn't that what you're supposed to say?

Time to get on with it. Get your chin up. Get on with living.

Don't you get it?

I read through Latham's last wishes as I sat at Bolero's chart table, and it was all I could do not to laugh. I looked around at the masterpiece he'd created, at the honey-warm teak and the soothing brass oil lamps giving the space it's unnatural glow, and I just shook my head in wonder at his insight.

He'd thought of everything. He'd planned what he wanted done, sought approval from the necessary bureaucracies, and left me contact information for what needed to be done to settle his affairs back in the States.

Max was an unforeseen complication, but it turned out nobody cared what happened to his body.

But I cared. It mattered to me. And I knew it mattered to David, too. But most of all, I knew what Max would have wanted, knew what he would have wanted me to do, and in the end he was my friend, too. Maybe the best friend I ever had.

I just had to pull it off, somehow.

And everyone in the town looked at me expectantly that last evening, as we all walked out to Bolero one last time.

◊◊◊◊◊

David was down below on his bunk, and Max was still nestled-up on his shoulder, though now they were wrapped up in one of Bolero's working jibs. I was alone in the cockpit, sailing Bolero out past the light at the end of the breakwater, out to the open sea. I little patrol boat from the Coast Guard trolled along beside Bolero, and I looked back at the town as it receded into evening. Most everyone on the island had assembled on the breakwater, and the people there began to light candles. The town's priest was talking to the people, and though I was too far away to hear anything, I think I knew what was said.

They were, I suppose, being told that David Latham was a kind soul, one who had come to their village in a time of great personal need, and that he had touched all of their lives in profound ways during his passage through their lives. Just as they had touched his.

It seemed that, in the end, Latham turned out to be one of those so-called Microsoft millionaires, and that he left this earth with a ton of money in the bank. His instructions were simple: upgrade the hospital; the town library, the church and the schools were to be repaired or modernized. He left detailed plans on how he wanted some of his money used for local public works projects, and he wanted a statue of Max commissioned and placed on one of the headlands north of town that looked out over the sea. When the townspeople learned of Latham's gift, it was as though a miracle passed through the air all these people breathed. They knew their lives had been touched by Latham in small, personal ways, but they had never really understood what that meant, never got the bigger picture. Now they did, and now they stood on the breakwater, bathed in the glow of a thousand candles, and many of the people watching cried as he left the way he had come. By way of the sea...

I set up the self-steering wind-vane and balanced the helm, and Bolero bit into the wind and began to dance again in the waves once again. I fell into that trance again; that place I go when the wind streams through my hair and I feel so connected to life on this planet, and I felt the water as it hummed through the wheel, it's vibration settling into my senses. I stood with the wind in my face now, the last of the days light falling off and the sky around me a deep purple streaked with orange, and I felt tears rolling down my face -- only to be whisked away by the wind and carried back to the sea.

A dolphin broke the surface next to us, and I looked down into it's black eye.

There might have been an infinity between us, but we were brothers in this instant of time, and I think even that dolphin knew what was coming...

The cabin below was awash in gasoline. I took Bolero's flare pistol and cocked the hammer, then called for the little Coast Guard ship to come alongside. I moved forward, moved to look at David and Max one last time, then held the pistol out and pulled the trigger. The fire started slowly, but once the elements were united in combustion they began to dance with all the fury of creation long denied.

We saw a transfiguration, I suppose, dancing in those flames.

I jumped across to the waiting boat and we moved off, though I turned and watched Bolero as we headed back in.

Bolero continued to sail perfectly away to the northeast, her interior at first trailing black smoke. Then a fierce glow could be seen down below, followed by naked flames dancing in the air around her topsides. The fire grew, in hunger as yet unsated, waiting to absolve all sin with it's passing, and Bolero gave way to this passage. Flames consumed the deck and jumped into the drawing sails and moved skyward, toward the heavens, and I wondered, as I guess we all do, what awaits us on the other side of the night.

◊◊◊◊◊

I made it back to the hotel later after midnight, and I finished packing my bags. Jennifer's bags were packed and stacked neatly in the corner of the room, and she was sitting in a chair -- looking out the window at the sea -- and beyond.

We talked about maybe staying, buying Maria Louisa's little cottage, but no -- there were too many memories bound up inside those walls. Still, we loved this island, we loved the life, the people. Maybe we could make it work. Maybe I had to, because of David. He wanted me to see his wishes carried out, and I needed to be here to make that happen.

But the first thing we had to do was find her parents, my friends, and we had to make that world right again. We talked through the night about what we might say, how we might repair all our burned bridges then, as the sun lightened the sky we went down for a last walk around town.

Maria Louisa D'Alessandro was walking along the road, on her way to the hospital for her first surgery of the day, and I looked at her as she approached us.

We stopped when we met, and she looked at me.

"You'll be late for surgery if you're not careful," she said -- and at first I thought she was joking. Then I saw the questions in her eyes, the longing for resolution.

An end to the running, they beseeched.

And I nodded my head, looked at my watch, then I looked at Jennifer. My Jennifer, our Jennifer, then they looked at me and sighed.

And Jennie nodded to the inevitable. Perhaps there was a cottage on the north side still on the market?

I looked down at the harbor, thought of David and Max and wondered where on their journey they might be just now. I could see Max's big brown eyes, that huge pink tongue wagging as fast as his tail, and Latham hanging from the mast, working to make his home as beautiful as it could ever be. I could feel them with me as I stood there. I could feel Max's hot breath on my thigh as we walked, and Latham's contented laugh as he smiled and shook his hands at death.

Yes. We the living have our ghosts, but where would we be without them?

And the sun was so strong and warm. So full of hope. All I could do was smile at the absurdity of life, at our own gently beckoning mortality.

'Everything's going to be okay, isn't it, Max?' I said to the passing wind.

He was sitting there looking up at me again, his eyes all bright and alive, his love the one constant in an ever changing universe.

'Yeah, I knew you'd say that.'

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