Seawater and Salt

CHAPTER ONE

‘In the beginning,’ Henri remembered,’ it was scarcely noticeable.’

‘Like a friend’s tic, a small twitch,’ he thought, ‘something you don’t reckon with until you’re with someone for a while,’ and there was no way to know when it was going to happen.

Once Henri was about to speak with Lela.He was thinking how close they were to some understanding, an agreement determining how they would proceed with their lives.Before he spoke, she said,You know, Henri, I’ve been thinking.

Lela looked at him as if they were in the middle of a conversation they had begun long ago, some time before.

I think we ought to have a baby.

She looked at him as if there was nothing extraordinary about such a revelation.

You won’t believe this, Henri answered, smiling and catching hold of her gaze,I was just going to say that.

She smiled too, but didn’t really know the simple, literal truth of his words, that in fact he was going to say exactly that, but didn’t.

They left the day.

They carried on and played, going about their business, but there was a nagging and inarticulate uncertainty, a wonderment in Henri’s head .

‘Was there really anything to this this craziness saying people could read the thoughts of another, divine the future from history, know events before they happened.’

‘Is it good or bad,’ Henri asked himself, knowing whatever it was, it wasn’t a quality the rest of humanity shared, knowing, at the bottom, it would only further estrange him from the succor others seemed to find in sameness.

Days later, an evening of friends together, they were in the living room, speaking, telling stories, drinking wine.They laughed about the vagaries of populating the earth, what it did to the lives of others.When it happened, they marveled how lives, acts and thoughts of even strangers collided and intersected.

Henri, speaking with a class mate, thought to ask her plans for the upcoming summer.

As she spoke and her eyes glistened, he imagined a girl who had come from or was about to commence a journey at sea, to the translucent emerald waters of the Greek isles.

When she said,You know Henri, I think I’m going to Greece for a month., he felt the same slack jawed, uncertain wonderment of being there or being somewhere before time and chaos had organized fortune and the future into the elements of an event.

"Its something I’ve wanted to do for years and there is a chance now, I think, which I might not get for a little while again.

Celia,Henri said,You won’t believe this but I was just going to say that.

Celia looked at him without understanding and continued on.

I mean don’t you think it would be cool.Have you ever been there.

Henri watched her speak and smiled.He laughed quietly marveling at how curious life was, how paradox lived everywhere.

The gathering concluded, guests took their good-byes, Henri shook hands, said goodnight, nodded sleepily to the deportees but thought all the while,’ I can’t wait to get in to bed with Lela.’

You know,he confessed as they finished their ablutions, stripped off their cloths and raced to get under the cool drawn sheets,I just can’t speak anymore.

I don’t know,Henri confessed,I just don’t know how it all works.

Lela curled next to him, her head snugged into the crook of his shoulder.

While the words of the evening repeated themselves over and again, while Henri played and replayed the conversations trying to see if he’d heard anything he hadn’t already known, he grew increasingly bewildered, anxious.

Less certain he had heard words he hadn’t already figured or Henri wondered at words whose meaning he already knew, language of their body, the look of the speakers eye.He wondered ‘what was prescience or for-warning, insight from a sixth and unnatural sense.

He pulled the gently sleeping Lela into him.

He pulled her warm and gently breathing body to his own trying to feel the life between them, the difference between himself and her.

He traced the outline of her skin and tummy seeing with his hand, feeling with his senses, where she began, where he ended.

He knew, inchoately, he lacked integrity.He did not have the certainty that somehow he hadn’t come confused with the rest of the world, that like leaves in an old forest, he wouldn’t join the detritus of the forest floor and, as ashes turn to ashes, he would become indistinguishable and turn, inevitably and like everything, to dust.

Slicker

7/8 Malard’s Bay Lat 78’39 Lon 58’46

Winds W, SW, Barometer falling, Seas Calm

Varnishing rail, le’ward poop.

Ship’s Log

Odysseus lat:78’39 long:58’46

7/10 winds W, SW.calm

There is weather coming off the ocean.I have been working here every chance I get.This ship is more and more like home.It is hard to know sometimes what I have done, what is still undone what is the right thing next to do.Wood and tools, sand paper and glue, varnish and paint, it all seems so simple, done a thousand times since the dawn of man, but somehow still the most majestic act, the loftiest undertaking I can imagine.Strangers who come upon her, see the changes, have a glimmer of how she looked when first she sat bedraggled and unclaimed in her stanchions, maybe like me when Lela and I first met.

Each, the girl I knew, her sleepy child, and this ship, babes whose interests and needs command my attention grow increasingly, like seeds.

In a peculiar way I am so proud to have this ship a child like the one Lela will someday bear.

I am proud to have a child to nurse and grow, to nurture and raise.In a way, I am able to be some of the person I so admire in her.Curious though, for in the doing, what she does, as what I do will, in the end, take us oceans apart.

CHAPTER TWO

In this last year of university, Henri and Lela, as different as squash and pomegranate lived happily together.They shared the easy ways of their peers but with none of the hardships that accompany organized and formal relationships.

Though the university left them in some unnatural constellations of groupings, the recollections of their parents, the difficulties of their own families seemed different altogether than the character of their congenial and pleasnt lives.

I’m going down to the yard,Henri announced appearing to Lela to have risen early, and readied for a day with some unknown but certain agenda in mind.

With scarcely any thought Lela recognized that transitions appearing to have intent were not always so clear in the indistinguishable moments in which they sometimes lived.

‘What seems an aberration,she realized,a single act can, in hindsight, be a sea change, a life change, an unreconncilable passage from one to another of the seasons of their lives.

To see someone,she asked, still looking at her notes for an exam about which she was anxious and still preparing.

His hands occupied with the task of fitting his knife to his belt, he neither looked up nor spoke answering only with the turn of his head.

Who are you going to see,Lela asked again, herself looking up from the handmade compendium which she hoped contained the distillate of notes satisfactory enough for her to matriculate and successfully gain entrance to medical school.

Henri raised his head watching her now watch him and smiled.

He knew this time the question she asked and the meaning in her face and eye but too, he knew she had spoken, and his behavior was not altogether recognizable.

‘It is reasonable,’ he thought she should inquire as to his comings and goings.

‘It is reasonable,’ he thought she should seek to comprehend his intent and understanding it was not magic or requiring extrasensory artifice or any unique or uncommon capability.

No one,he spoke softly, seeing again the focus of her inquiry, the sincerity of her interest and the ingenuousness of her question.

Nobody,he repeated, smiling proudly, a little boy tying his laces for the first time under the scrutinous gaze of his mother.

I’m going to work on the boat.

Lela paused.Speaking of the boat and going there were always two very different undertakings.

Somewhere, Henri harbored the foolish but fanciful dream, that he might both begin and complete Odysseus, a surprise for Lela, a gift of the Magi, without her ever knowing, until it was finished, ready to launch and whose picture she would see when the giant crane would loft her from the stillness of her stanchions and gently set her into the waters embrace.

Since the time they had bought her, accumulating bits and pieces of materials, woods and tars, varnishes and lacquers, only rarely had they set aside time together employing their hands and the aggregation of supplies to work at transforming what had been a dream, heretofore, into the basis of reality, something that would withstand the pressures of displacement and float.

In the beginning, the times Henri spent at the yard, the times he began work, he did so without telling Lela, surreptitiously, and with no public announcement as to his whereabouts or activities.

Bringing Odysseus to life, enabling her to sail again was, in a way more like raising a child than passing four years of college and

Henri had no experience, or model.His steps and hopes were tentative, filled with uncertainty,

Are you actually going to work,she asked, the surprise and irony evident in her tone.

Um,Henri murmured, trying, with unwilling fingers, to tie a sailor’s knot he had seen in one of the old books he had bought, trying to affix his buccaneers knife, in pirate fashion, to the backside of his belt.

Good luck,Henri said, his gear sacked, his knife in place, his determination to get to the yard intact.

Thanks,she answered, her voice subdued, turned into the face of her studies, her focus still on the more than daunting exams this afternoon held.

Hey, if there’s any mail will you leave it on the table.I’m supposed to get some answers today.

She looked at him, remembering the last time they were on Odysseus, how she had lain below deck and napped, thinking now, in the midst of so much, in the force of so many events, she would enjoy such a brief interlude again.

Silently Henri nodded, acknowledging he had heard, he would comply and that he, for other reasons would check the post himself and see what news the day brought.

Ships

Log

Odysseus

Lat:79’39 long:58’46

9/12 Overcast , light rain

Barometer29’33"falling.

The old salt, the sea Captain I see so regularly is, like so many other times, yet another thread in this rich tapestry of life.His presence is, in a way, so quiet, connected in so many ways, I cannot understand how they all fit together but feel grateful and lucky to have this acquaintance.

He speaks to me like a wise man.He speaks like a father.His words are serious and meaningful for the moment and appropriate to the task in which I am engaged, but too, he speaks with a gentility and kindness, an eye to me as if I were a child, his child, maybe and as if he were a father or teacher and helping me to grow.

Being with him is like being with a father and a friend and someone, in a way, like Lela who I both admire and respect.

‘Slicker’ 9/12 Lat 78’39 Long 58’46 Mallards Bay

Barometer falling, 29’77 seas rising, gathering storm.

Aft sail locker has water leak, will caulk and refinish, varnish when weather clears.

If there are some days of rain the engine room needs attention.Odd to be here working, and the Captain, young Daniel is never around.

I wonder what it is like for the lad I see on dry-dock refitting his old Dutch sloop.

CHAPTER THREE

The yard which held their prize, bought three and one half years earlier, the first acquisition of their new and formative relationship was, in a way like a child they promised to have but for whom, tacitly, they agreed to wait until they had individually and jointly matured.

The half century old gracefully weathered hull of their ship sat amongst it’s fancy and modern peers.Clearly of another age, born of the handiwork of craftsmen and stuck in their ways, rather than the factories from the bowels of industry, they were neglected and unattended, so many glaring possessions of the rich and idle, not for use, but rather the conspicuous ownership of their owners.

‘Odysseus’ wooden hull was as different from these fiberglass creations and their technical wizardry as arthropods and crustaceans.

Built abroad, her keel laid years before Henri was a twinkle in his father’s eye, her hull was made from timbers imported from the northern forests.Her decking came from Jakarta, Brazil, Manila, mahogany whose parents, in the form of tree and the canopy of ancient rain forests were now virtually extinct or whose inhabitants were so controversial and in such demand they were unavailable and closed to the chainsaw of modern man.

Henri walked reverentially through the collection of fancy hulls, themselves replicas of a marine life form contrary to all upright and bipedal man, creatures covered by tarp and plastic, shrouded from view, his first second, and yet unrequited love.

With no formal name, Henri called her Odysseus in any of the then many and now singular monologues in which he engaged, particularly when seeing her after such a span of time or in the nexus of events when change was immanent and she, Odysseus, was exactly and predictably the same.

The yard was quiet.The wind was slack.None of the gentle slapping song of halyard against mainmast or the guys clapping together was in the air.

High season would not begin for another two months and the occasional stalwart or worker who was now here was a slave to his love or a commercial fisherman whose livelihood required dry-dock and repair or a seafarer whose soul would never quite settle until he and his ship returned to the regular and rhythmic ways of the water and sea.

Henri moved through the stanchions and approached the ways which held his Odysseus.

Reaching for the closest line which, like the hemp that tied down Gulliver, he thought of Lela and how anxious sometimes he was to see her, to climb under the covers, find the comfort and warmth of her body, the reassurance of her scent, the smooth and yielding envelopment of her quiet embrace.

Odysseus sat, shrouded in green tarp, tied down, a prisoner in penance from the sunlight.

Untying the lines, up on the stern, Henri rolled the tarp, carefully unearthed her beautiful wooden cockpit and hull to the sun.A wash of succor and excitement coursed through him.

CHAPTER FOUR

When he returned there was unopened mail.He carried it under his arm and though meaning to leave it off, he sorted through it, quickly.

He shuffled the letters, a hand of cards spying the numbers, trying to see if he had ones sufficient for a straight or flush.Immediately and unmistakably he saw the bold, old English print of a letter clearly from a foreign university.

The style spoke of the world of Cambridge or Oxford where the recombination’s of sounds formed the language he had known since being born.

Henri studied the return addresses on the unopened letters splayed across the table now, seeing if he could guess who was writing to whom, what was the content, the story, the intent of the missives before he or Lela would read them, another attempt to peer into the future, walk through the veil which Henri believed, thin and nearly transparent, maybe just a gossamer down separating this reality from the next.

‘Is this the world where a word has to be spoken before understanding can evolve, a letter had to be opened before its contents understood.

There was a letter from England.The profile of the letters, the unmistakable stature and form of these old English scribes told Henri with certainty that the university to which Lela had applied for admission had sent their response and the thickness of the form indicated, beyond any shadow of doubt, she had been accepted.

Odyssseus Ships log

Dry-dock 8/15

Seas choppy, surf 1-3 feet winds South, Southwest

The Captain is a mysterious fellow.He’s always around to help , never to impose yet seems to be so engaged in a life somewhere else, so full of his own dreams and undertakings I can’t quite figure how he lives, where he comes from, what he does when he’s not visiting me or talking about what next to do on Odysseus.

Whenever I am not in the middle of some chore, below decks on my belly trying to rivet a fitting or paint the keel, I watch him.I wave good bye and watch him leave.

He is like Lela, in a way.He goes into the depths of the yard.He walks perfectly upright, straight and tall, an Alaskan fir, smoke swirling from the pipe he always carries, but I never see his destination.I have watched him four or five times carefully and cannot see where he goes, how he disappears into the yard, amongst tall ships, Lela to medical school, and then suddenly falls from sight.

I wonder if there isn’t something about him I haven’t understood.I wonder if there isn’t something mystical about him I am to comprehend, like a religion or zen but which so far has eluded me.

‘Slicker’ 8/17 Mallards Bay Lat 79’53, long 49’56 Barometer steady, skies grey, seas flat.

This girl has been without company since the day I left the engine room.Maybe the dockmaster has walked by but she has been alone and it is not a way to be.

Such a beautiful woman needs the companionship of man, at least the occasional eye of a beholder who sees her beauty, does not allow her youth to be squandered alone or without the high blood of white crested seas, ripping winds, gales from the west testing her strength, buffeting her main and holding the carved beautiful form of her sleek hull from a slick and weightless flight.

It is not good for such beauty to be unattended for so long, so far from the appreciative and grateful eye of a stalwart and generous mate.

CHAPTER FIVE

In the small windowed three season porch, Henri worked on three pages of theorems.

He believed, theoretically that the universe was both finite and bent.That however far was infinity, however great the big bang, there was, a simple mass to the whole of it, an unmistakable beginning and end and a pull on the body of the