You'll Go Down in History Ch. 03

Luck has everything to do with success. Some call it divine intervention. Natural abilities are nothing without the coincidences on which a life turns. It also matters who you know. In my case I stumbled onto some good people. Finally. In my darkest hour, hiding from every single person on the planet, I got a lifeline.

*********

Then one foggy Christmas Eve

Santa came to say

"Rudolph, with your nose so bright

Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"

There's a fishing town on the Chesapeake Bay that sleeps in dreams of its past. An old wooden dock, half sunk trawlers and quiet surrounded me when I found myself at the literal end of the road. I'd been drawn to the water for solace though it had taken a couple days of hiking and hitching. Standing on the weathered boards of the dock I could see the Bay stretch beyond the horizon. Spartina grass whispered in a stiffening breeze. The sun made all the difference, warming my face on that chilly morning, though it appeared less and less. Across a gravel field was an old cinder block building with a rusted tin roof. The faded sign on its pocked wall said 'Chandlers'. It appeared to be a store so, being hungry, I stepped inside. Its dusty shelves were as bare and empty as I felt, but they did carry some necessities.

I looked as homeless as I was in my grimy jeans and straggly hair. My last shower was the explosive one with Kenobia, except for some rinsing in a rest stop bathroom. With nearly my last cash I bought a toothbrush, a couple of cheap souvenir t-shirts and some chips and a Coke. Wearing layers of shirts was warmer and easier than finding a washing machine.

At the counter a gaunt, gray man took my money without a word, though he kept a suspicious eye on me as I hung by the door outside in the last vagrant sunbeam, eating. I watched the seagulls tacking on the stiff wind against a sky of low, gray cloud, laying one Frito at a time on my tongue to let them dissolve. They lasted longer that way.

I was stopped, having run out of road. It's easy to be alone in America because, although many people will claim to care about others in the abstract, few will take any concrete actions that might upset their own applecart. I relied on being forgotten by the counterman and anyone I met along the road.

I know now that I was running from myself. Dr. Palmer carried me through that revelation and how trite it seems afterward. But before I crossed that bridge into self awareness the confusion and terror in my heart made my situation feel desperate. Something was about to catch up with me and I was very afraid.

That's when my luck changed. Or the Divine intervened. Take your pick.

As I sucked the salt from the chips a small boat came put-put-putting up to the dock. It's one mast was bare. It looked slightly less decrepit than the half sunken trawlers nearby. The person piloting it wore a jean jacket over a red hoodie and tan canvas pants. She tied the boat off deftly after jumping nimbly to the dock. I realized it was a woman only as she strode past me into the store. She was no taller than I am.

"Mornin', Jake!" I heard her say as the door rattled shut, her voice sounding out of practice. Nothing happened again for a while. The seagulls drifted. The clouds raced across the sky. Out of the wind I was almost warm. But that glimpse of her had stirred something in me, cut through my anxiety, turned my thoughts away from my panic. There was something in me that came alert in the moment I saw her. I've come to think of it as that feeling you have when you look in the mirror and realize you are not who you thought you were, like a stranger is looking back at you from your own face. That's happened to you, hasn't it?

I heard the garage door on the side of the building squeal open and then voices.

"It's gonna be two loads, now, Miss Sandra." This must have been Jake. "And you better hurry or you'll be stuck here with me." Sounded like he wouldn't have minded.

"Nothing personal, but I don't want to see you again for six months," she said with almost a smile in her voice. They came around the corner pushing a rubber wheeled cart piled with boxes that they struggled to steer across the gravel. I watched them move the pile from the cart to the boat, few words between them. When they dragged the cart back around to the side door I ambled over the gravel to the boat and climbed aboard, totally on impulse. It pitched gently at the dock as I found my way into the tiny forecabin. I moved a couple of the boxes that had been secured there and lay on the bunk covered in an old sail. I fell asleep and dreamed of the night monster again, in her cold tentacles, smothered by her voracious bulk, inexplicably aroused and thrusting.

I was drowning in her grotesque embrace when I woke from the dream wound in the heavy canvas sail. The boat rocked violently and my hard cock glowed neon in my pants again. The bunk swayed hard to the side and tipped me to the wall. When I tried to react the boat pitched the other way, hanging in a weightless plunge that suddenly had me nauseous. I scrambled to the gangway, thrown against one bulkhead then the other. My instinct was to find a place to throw up. I stumbled onto the deck under a dimming, cloud-wracked evening sky and sideways rain, shouldering aside the surprised woman pilot who shouted something I couldn't hear above the slap of the hull and roar of the engine.

I dimly noticed the steep swells that we were wallowing in and fell toward the rail to puke my guts up. Goodbye Fritos and Coke and what felt like half my insides. That shit burns the hell out of your sinuses on the way out. To say I was too distracted to pay attention to the woman would be an understatement. Instinct kept me barely in the boat as it violently pitched, soaked by the spray and rain from head to toe.

The pilot was too busy wrestling the boat down the line to do anything more than watch me from the corner of her eye. She obviously wasn't going to let go of the wheel. Finally empty but no less nauseous I curled into the little bit of shelter that existed opposite her from the gangway and hung on for all I was worth. Which wasn't much. My head explosive, my body weak, I clung in terror to the unstable boat. The woman swore non-stop. At the sea, the boat, me. She may have been as scared as I was. Soaked with cold rain and seawater I shivered violently.

After I'd given myself up for dead several times the boat hit a quieter patch of water. The engine roar pitched down and I heard it echo. The wind softened. Peering over the rail I saw that we were on the lee side of a small, rocky island. A short floating dock lay directly ahead in a narrow cove. Beyond that a short, barren, gray-black cliff surmounted by a white building over which, towering into the rain, stood a lighthouse. Its top was obscured by the weather. Icy rain stung my eyes.

Still, we pitched and yawed alarmingly. The woman, intent on her piloting, said through clenched teeth, "C'mon Gussie! C'mon, Goddam ya, Gussie!" The dock and the rocks rushed toward us, then as rapidly drew away. She gunned and feathered the engine to fight the push and pull of the sea and gradually we neared the shore. The metal collars of the floating dock screeched along the pylons as it rose and fell - the cries of dying animals.

"CAN YOU GET UP?" she yelled to me without looking.

"Not sure," I groaned, but got on my hands and knees and wavered there for a minute, still shivering.

"GET UP! GET UP! GET UP!" she shouted. I pulled myself up by the woodwork and nearly puked, feet sliding on the wet deck.

The little boat slammed sideways into the dock and I went down again to the squeal of tortured hull. I hurt all over.

She heaved at the wheel and jammed the throttle. The boat hovered on a rising swell five feet from the dock.

"GET UP! GET UP! GET UP!," she shouted again and I managed to get on my feet. The boat slid down the receding trough and slowly approached the dock again. She maneuvered it smoothly to within three feet.

"Hold this right here!" she yelled, indicating the wheel. I leaned hard into it, felt the shuddering, leaping engine and the force of the sea with our rudder in its teeth. She cut the throttle and jumped, hawser in one hand. For a long moment the boat and the ocean and the island stood still. She'd timed her leap to give her the best chance to tie us in the moment of stasis. Skillfully she whipped the hawser around the bollard opposite the rear of the boat and leaned back, pulling with all her little weight.

"HARD RIGHT!," she shouted to me, running forward, "HARD RIGHT!" I felt the boat rising as the ocean rushed back into the cove and the hawser sprung taut. For a moment the bow drifted left and we twisted. Then I understood and swung the wheel to the right with all the force I had. There was no subtlety to my skills. Nothing happened for a long scary minute. I thought the boat would be jacked hard across the narrow space and sideways to the next wave. But slowly we came right and the bow shoved roughly against the tire fenders hanging on the dock. The woman secured the front hawser and the boat and dock rose and fell together, anchored to the stone of the island. Metal on metal, the dock shrieked as it settled into the receding swell. She dropped to her knees where she stood and touched her forehead to the pulpy boards, hands over her head, heaving. I draped myself on the wheel and waited for the strength to stand.

And that was the first time Sandra saved my life.

**********

I dreamed of sirens. Punning, like dreams do, the sirens of mythology (as I now recognize them) called to me from an idyllic island, but with sound of the shrieking dock as it rose and fell in the storm. I was drawn to the sound of torment. Yet there was beauty and peace in the dream, too, if I followed. Strangely, rather than fear, the overwhelming feeling of the dream was one of deep gratitude.

In waking life I was beat up and at the end of the world. Sandra had set me up in a small room in the keeper's house, the building I'd seen leaning against the lighthouse. She gave up getting anything out of me early on when I only grunted one syllable responses to her questions. I hoped I was shipwrecked for life and I didn't care.

I was completely sunk in my own shame. Now that the motivation to flee had brought me to the island I'd run out of energy and illusions. I couldn't escape my deformity. With Dr. Palmer I've learned something about albatrosses and the necks they hang from. In those first days in the lighthouse I loathed my organ and was sickened every morning to wake up to glowing wood. When awake I was too heartsick to get a boner, but my sleeping body had no such impairment. I thought about cutting it off. I thought about throwing myself in the ocean, but I was too depressed to get out of bed.

Over a few days Sandra unloaded the boat herself and went about her work. She brought me food that I ignored and let me simmer in my own ripe juices. By leaving me alone she saved me a second time.

*********

"And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. And God said, 'Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.'" Sandra read at my bedside. I perceived dimly that she'd been there for a time. I despaired to be alone with a bible-thumper. There had been plenty of those who tried to save me and mom from our squalid lives.

"I brought you some breakfast, Tom," she said closing the book. Then she left quietly. The food smelled powerful and, finally, I was powerful hungry. I fought off my covers and my despair and ate the sweet oatmeal she'd made. And the berries. And the orange juice. And the toast with blueberry jam. And the bacon. And the omelet with onions and cheese. And I was still hungry.

I was awake enough to smell myself by then. Gahhhh. I found the shower off a short hallway and ran the hot water for a long, long time. I didn't even care that the only soap smelled like flowers; I washed my hair with it, too. By my bed I found a pair of sweats and a hoodie advertising Duke. I couldn't bear to wear my old jockeys, so I went commando in the sweats and pulled the loose hoodie down to mid-thigh. My old second-hand Chuck Taylors looked like the shriveled bodies of dead rats. Smelled like it, too. Squeezing them on my bare feet I ventured out into the world.

Tough, short grass grew between the rocks outside the door. Bright sunlight had me squinting as I stumbled across the ground, breathing the crisp salt air, clearing my head. It was late afternoon; a deep darkness in the east. Birds indeed flew above the earth across the dome of the sky. Gulls laughed as they drifted on the stiff breeze. As far as I could see, ocean, presumably with swarms of living creatures. Waves boomed and shivered along the rocky edge of the island and the wind snapped in the flags streaming from the pole above the keeper's house. I didn't see Sandra anywhere. And that was OK. I began to feel alive in the sun and surf. The chill wind at my neck and ankles wakened me completely.

A short walk around the island gave me a mental map of my new world. Stony beach, rocky flanks, the narrow cove, some sand and tenacious grass, a generator shed smelling of diesel with solar panels on top, the lighthouse and the keeper's place that sagged against its base like a scrotum against a stiffy. God, my young mind wouldn't stop going there. I hated myself for that then. My chill and hunger finally drove me back inside, looking for the warm kitchen.

The keeper's house was a small building with a common room, kitchen and bath on the first floor and, I supposed, a bedroom and bath on the second. Sandra had secured me in what must have once been an open porch off of the common room and I'd left the building by its door. I found my way back in by the main door and directly into the kitchen where I saw Sandra reading at a small table. She'd been watching me perambulate the island, wrapped in a hoodie and sweats like me.

"Are you a tea or coffee person?" she asked as I stood there awkwardly at the door.

"Coffee," I sat at the other chair as she clicked the Mr Coffee on.

"I only drink coffee when I have to stay up all night," she smiled.

I wasn't alive enough yet to speak. My eyes followed her across the kitchen and back to her chair, all soft in her fleece, her dark hair loose.

"You're probably wondering what a girl like me is doing in a place like this." Why did she have to keep looking straight into my eyes? " Well, primarily I keep the light on when it's needed. But I'm also a biologist and I find time to study certain sea animals." She looked out the window at the gray-blue horizon. "There's a plankton in these waters of particular interest." She turned her curious gaze to me. "What's your story, Tom?"

It was an effort to get out of my own head, to realize I was in the world with another human being, but I found an answer. "I'm a, uhh, a pilgrim," I said, not entirely without truth.

"Seeking what?' she asked.

"More bacon?" I asked sheepishly.

"Oh, of course," and she pulled some from the fridge and peeled it into the iron pan on the stove. "You seem human again this afternoon." Her back to me, she said, "Why did you get on my boat?"

I didn't answer until the bacon began sizzling and she didn't break the silence, just calmly poked at the frying pan with her fork, standing with cocked hip. The sweats hugged the high, tight curve of her ass. My cock stirred and I jammed my hands into the pocket of the hoodie, covering myself.

"I'm on a road to nowhere," clenching my hands around my scrotum, wanting to rip it off. "I'm running on empty. I keep thinking I'll hit the bottom and escape."

She turned and pointed the fork at me and sang, "Well, you don't need to live like a refugee-ee." When I looked confused she said, "Tom Petty. The Heartbreakers? We are talking in song lyrics, right?"

"No, I'm running away. Really. I ran out of road and your boat appeared. I just got on it."

"I think God sent you, Tom. He brought us together here. I couldn't have docked Gussie without you, I'm sure."

Oh, God, not that Bible thumping, again.

"I'm not afraid of you, strangely," she continued. "I used to bring home baby birds and injured squirrels, too. He knows I need help with my work and you need someone to heal you." She slid the bacon onto a plate and put it in front of me with a cup of coffee. She watched me eat one-handed for a while, sitting across the table, chin on her hand. From the look in her eyes I knew she believed what she was saying, nonsensical as it sounded.

So I told her about growing up homeless, my drug addict mother, running away and joining the circus, fleeing the police. But I did not tell her about my glow-in-the-dark dick, my gnawing shame, my ultra-freak status. As I told my half-truths I looked at her closely for the first time, reading her face for reaction to my story, as a good liar does. She had curious, deep hazel eyes, magnified by black-framed, square glasses, a pixie face, short, straight, poorly-cut, dark hair, pale skin, thin, pink lips. She was not gullible. She was not disgusted. She was not angry or shocked. Sandra listened without judgement and I gradually felt my burden lift. I said more than I normally would to turn a mark. Eventually I cried without even trying.

"What a remarkable ability you have to adapt and survive," she said as I sobbed into my hands.

"Are you gonna send me away? Take me back to the mainland? I'm never gettin' on a boat again."

"Well, there's no practical way to do that right now. Besides, there's a nor'easter forecast. Worse than the storm we got caught in the other night." Outside the kitchen the falling afternoon sun still shone bright and the gulls still laughed in the wind. "Let me show you something."

Sandra walked into a short stone passage and opened a heavy wooden door. I rose stiffly and followed her into the lighthouse itself. The stone passage was the thick base of the wall of the tower rising above us, the round room she led me into surprisingly large under the fluorescent lights. The circular stair dominated one side, its metal framework rising upward. Around the walls were benches stacked with scientific apparatus I had no way to recognize. There were fish tanks and microscopes and it smelled very much like rotting seaweed. Made her seem like a mad-scientist in a medieval castle.

"I study this plankton in my spare time here," she said, pointing at the tanks. "Watch this." She flipped off the lights and as my eyes adjusted I saw that the tanks glowed dimly. Sandra stirred one and the glow increased. Sandra gazed at me with a meaningful look in her eye. I got goose-bumps. Oh, no. How could she know?

"These plankton are bio-luminescent. I think we can find a use for that biological property. Especially in these end times." She smiled and cast me a questioning look from the corner of her eye. Something in me responded to her veiled invitations, but I wasn't going to be the one to play the first card.

She beckoned me up the stair.

Tiny, deep windows allowed some of the bright afternoon sunlight into the tower, slanting sharply in from the west. Her tight ass bunched in the cottony sweats as we climbed the circular metal stair upward past empty, dusty rooms that echoed with our footsteps. I lost count of the treads around 136. No wonder she had such a trim behind, if she climbed these stairs all the time.

Rising into the glass room at the top of the lighthouse the world burst into brilliant, enormous beauty, a three-sixty view of blue-green ocean, etched with white, wind-whipped waves. From here I could see the bank of dark clouds rising ominously in the east, racing the sun to sundown. My spirit expanded unbidden. I'd never felt awe like that. I mean, even the sex with Kenobia hadn't reached that level of elation. We were suspended between ocean and darkening sky, alone on a rock, balanced on a slim stone needle.