Funny, he, call him old man of the sea, although that appellation has been done to literary death in about sixteen different ways not all of them apt, in any case let’s not, definitely not, make it some Hemingway-ish old man, some viejo, some Caribe viejo, fighting some stinking marlin, or some such fish, mano y mano, stinking, man and fish, fighting some life and death literary metaphor struggle, but that name fits as good as any, thought as he watched out over another endlessly enchanted seascape, next stop England or with a wind drift or tide drift homeland, forbear homeland Ireland, how many such scenes he had witnessed in his whitened lifetime. This time the sea-scape, god-brokered, maybe god-forsaken, with furious winds driving white-capped waves thundering to ill-prepared but eagerly waiting to be taken like some overripe maiden beaches (better metaphor that some stinking viejo and fish combine, alright) and already filled with flotsam and jetsam, nature’s jimson, from a million previous rages, nature rages now co-mingled with his own benighted rages, brought another rage (rage against the dying of the light) about how much of his life had revolved around the sea, around trying to get a handles on the sea, trying to see, well, hell at this late date where he fit in, no, where he stood, okay. And after his rant subsided he thought this…
Maybe it was the sheer hard fact, hard to get around fact anyway, of the transcontinental California night calling after too long an absence, the California be-bop, be-bop, be-bop, praise saint be-bop, our lord and king be-bop, late 1960s night, summer of love night and its aftermath when all things were possible and when old Wordsworth had it right, had it poem right, to be young was very heaven. The afternoon turned back to morning as he headed west, funny, flown, jet-flown these days, no more those old days hitchhike road, waiting alone or with some angel woman by his side on some Route 6, or 66, hailing some lonesome trucker looking for poor boy company, someone to rant to at seventy-five miles an hour to in order to relieve his own desperate life with a road son, waiting too in some forlorn Neola, Winnemucca, Boise, Grand Island, Flagstaff, wherever, waiting a long time. Or on some just hopped flat-bed Denver & Rio Grande, Illinois Central, Southern Pacific train making time with the last of the old time hobos and dreaming his own dreams of some Phoebe Snow left behind in sorrow or anger. Less frequently, strangely, a flat-out car run west riding Route 80, 90 to Frisco town thundering through farmlands, the plains, rockymountain high and down on to the desert before golden-gated blessed land’s end, Frisco .
The eternal California be-bop night after years of Maine solitude, of Maine grey-blue-white washed, white-crested, white-capped, foam-flecked Atlantic ocean-flotsam and jetsam strewn waters. After all not all angel oceans are created the same, just look at the fury-driven pacific ocean in front of him, no friend to man, to beast, or to god, not all oceans speak to one in the same way, speak that siren song whisper, speak hushed tones that no man (and here man means man or woman, okay) dare speak above, nature’s arbitrary law, although they are all old Father (or is it Brother now) Neptune’s thoughtful playgrounds. (Thoughtful for ten thousand thoughtful walks, ten thousand un-thoughtful walks, and eight thousand more or less, indifferent walks, twenty-eight thousand, more or less, chances anyway.
California’s, yes, white-washed, yes, white-crested, yes, white-capped, yes, foam-flecked speak to gentle, warm lapis lazuli blue wealth dreams of the quest, the long buried life long quest for the great blue-pink great American West night, blue-pinked skies of course. Yes maybe it was just that sheer hard fact, hard to get around still, that pushed him, old man of the sea him, out of Eastern white, white to hate the sight of white, snowed-indoors, Eastern gale winds blowing a man against the sand-pebbled seas, and into the endless starless, better, sunless night. Yes, maybe just a change of color, or to color, from the white white whiteness of the sea stretched, white-etched night. Right down to the shoreline white where the waves devoured night and left their mark, their graffiti-etched mark.
Maybe too it was the sheer fact, he would no longer speak of hard to get around facts around since that was enameled into his psyche now, of preparing, against the timetable of that Eastern white night, timetable set and etched by that shoreline outline and that fugitive lover who ravished her shoreline sands and then fled, this and that for the winter California day, and night, the ocean California that set the thoughts of the be-bop night (hell, more than be-bop, be-bop to the nth power) suddenly came brain-storming in waves like that turbulent sea over him not seen or heard from since those first summer of love days, and the quest for the blue-pink skies humming once again in the, admittedly, older-boned voyager, voyeur (some snicker “dirty old man” and save such high society words as voyeur for the professionals) of dreamed once sultry, steamy sex-ridden nights.
And vivid memories of golden Butterfly Swirl (born, Cathy Callahan, corn-fed, no more from hunger okie forbears migration Carlsbad, California, circa 1950) and her sex, her seventeen different little tricks (to match her age in that 1967 summer of love night, if you need a date), learned, learned from who knows where, maybe mother ocean herself or some karma sutra book but certainly not from her former “seeking the perfect wave” surfer boyfriend-where would that fit into his timetable? Such thoughts, such memory thoughts a different proposition, a different proposition altogether, on most days, from preparing to face fierce Maine winter mornings, unaided by the graces, speak freely of the graces please, and forms nature provides its hardier creations. No thoughts today of heavy woolen coats, double-stitched, double-plied, doubled-vested, old nor’ easter worthy, or heavy woolen pants, same chino pants of youth, same black chino pants, no cuffs, except winter weight, not the always summer weight of no knowledge youth (inside sad joke), or heavy boots, heavy clunky rubbery boots mocking against the snow-felt, ocean-edged soft sand streets, or maybe, more in tune with aged-bone recipes heavy-soled, heavy-rubber soled (or was it rubber souled?) running shoes (also known in the wide world of youth as sneakers, better Chuck’s, Chuck Taylor’s). Of scarves, and caps, full-bodied caps, better seaman’s caps, heavy, wool, dark blue, built to stand against the ocean-stormed waves crashing and thrashing against ships hulls, and gloves, gloves to keep one’s hands from frosty immobility he need not speak. Or will not speak. Of this he will speak…
A memory picture too of boyhood friend Jimmy Leclerc, remember that name like you remember the seas, like you remember certain tales, like you remember, well, like you remember as best you can , that which somebody told you about but which you did not experience (although Jimmy experiences filled his soul, filled his sea-watching soul even this day). Blessed, sainted, sanctified, cradled, born under a certain star, lucky maybe if you believe in making your own luck or having it thrust upon you, Jimmy, young, maybe four or five, no, five, definitely five, school ready, school ready come five year old fall, mucking around the summertime shoreline mucks, low tide, shoreline white-etched ravishes well up the beach, fetid smells from seven kinds of tanker-passing oil slicks, rancid chemicals from the cross-bay industrial plant, human mucks mixed in from ten thousand , ten thousand (thanks, Sam Coleridge) sources seeping back to shore and mephitic (thanks, Norman Mailer) seeps as well from the close by marshes that guard the approaches to the sea.
Jimmy, a tow-headed, tow-headed kid, five, portending Adonis and ladies, maybe some Butterfly Swirl and her seventeen little tricks when he gets old enough to know of such tricks, know of teaching such tricks just in case he lands a neophyte, knowing from some savior older brother himself sent to sea at fourteen, or some other worthy sea-mate, that day, that picture day, walking toward the ever-present amateur clam diggers(or maybe professional but it was hard to see how they, or anyone, could make a living out of oil- slicked, fetid, human mucked clams),high rubber boots, high almost to the crotch (although Jimmy would not have pointed that hard fact out, no then), buckets, small buckets, portending small payloads, sea-rakes, sea-shovels, sea-backs and working against time before the relentless seas come back to cover their own.
And just that day, that low tide and mucks days, Jimmy learned a valuable lesson from those vagrant gypsy clam-diggers (literally gypsies, Roma now, if you prefer, but just plain ordinary gypsies then, and called so, mostly seen with travelling carnivals and on city sidewalks selling cheap roses for the lady, and maybe their daughters too, selling that is, they used the clams in some special olio broth magic that kept their race alive in hard times) about only believing half (or less, but that was another lesson another time) of what you hear. He had heard a few days before, heard from some older boys who lived up the street (the name of the street not important, not important to the lesson, but maybe, naming will act as an omen, name Taffrail Road evoking long ago wooden ships and sea-farers worthy of the name, sea-ward pirate cousins of that day’s gypsies) and who were interested in girls, as girls, as opposed to childhood boys leave girls for later pickings and moonings, and not like Jimmy, Jimmy even then girls as foils for his child-like schemes, not all evil, not at all, but not in entangling, intertwining ways like they spoke of, that the sea before them contained mythic submarines, enemy submarines out beyond the breakers. He asked one of the gypsy diggers if he had seen any submarines around while he was digging. The digger spoken to by Jimmy called to his gypsy partner repeating Jimmy’s question and they both let out with a low groan laugh, then a heartier one. The first man laughed some more and then said to Jimmy that while there were not many around anymore since the war (World War II for those who are keeping counts on wars, or just trying to keep them straight), since the bloody Germans has been defeated and good riddance (reflecting the decimation of his kindred in Europe who took a serious beating from the bloody bastard Nazis) but he said on certain moonless nights you could see objects that certainly looked like submarines so be watchful, and be careful. So for a couple of months thereafter whenever the moon was low or it was cloudy Jimmy looked out fiercely at the open sea and then after a while went on to other things. Lesson about half of what you hear learned.
Memory fast forward. A moonless June night, circa 1961 Jimmy Leclerc was sitting in his brother borrowed 1957 two-toned (cherry red and white) Chevy (the old man as he mulled the ancient fact knew , he knew said brother should have been shot, or worse , for letting anybody, even a brother, even a brother who spent the whole afternoon turtle-waxing the damn thing in order to borrow his chariot borrow his chariot) down at the far end of Seal Rock (name also not important except that Seal Rock says beach, says mystery and says, far end says, that this is the local lovers’ lane for the free-spirits who don’t mind the crowds of cars that dotted that place on moonless June nights, and other times too, or mind being seen in a spot that means only one thing, that you will be anywhere from point one to point thirty Monday morning in Olde Saco High School (Maine, okay) before school “lav” talk, boys’ or girls’ lav accordingly, about who did, or did not, do what and with whom (or is it who) over the weekend at Seal Rock. And that week, that week just before school let out for the summer and spoiled all those Monday morning discussed points until September’s deluge, Jimmy and Lorraine, Lorraine Dubois, received a number because Jimmy, who had long since learned to believe in making his own luck, has talked his ball and chain sweetie Lorraine into searching for submarines, those mythical gypsy digger submarines. And searching for them very closely, very closely indeed, as it turned out, in the back seat of that brother’s cherry ’57 Chevy.
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