River Man (2016 revision)

Many of the people who frequented her shop were sailors passing through on the Waterway, and frequently she asked these patrons about their vagabond lives. She found these stories fascinating, and had recently begun to think about buying a boat of her own, about maybe taking a trip or two now and then.

She said when I walked into her store that she knew in an instant our lives had intersected. All things, she said, happen for a reason.

Did I hear a collision somewhere in the background?

She was, she said, an eternal optimist and I laughed, as there was, needless to say, a lot of lightning along the far horizon.

+++++

The wind continued to build throughout the night while Betty Hutton and I stayed up talking, and I think it fair to say we might have been creating a little storm our own -- yet that would be beside the point.

"So, why do you think you feel this connection?" I asked her at one -- point.

"I don't know."

"Fair enough. What do you want from me?"

"I don't know. But I don't think that's the right question, Martin."

"Alright. What's the right question?"

"Why did you walk into my shop the other night?"

"I don't know. I wanted some Riesling?"

She smiled. I had to give her that, she was then tolerant of my warped sense of humanity.

"You're being obtuse, Martin."

"Thank God some things never change," I said

Another smile. This time I smiled back. Was I flirting with her?

No, I assure you that was not the case.

"Sun's coming up. Did you say you needed to do something with the lines?"

I stood and walked over to the chart table, tapped the barometer: 28.82 -- and falling. Not good.

I cued up the weather-fax and waited for the query to load, and a moment later paper started to roll from the machine and a map of the weather system dropped into my hand. The hurricane looked like it was going to come ashore right over Cape Hatteras, much less than a hundred miles from here, and it had been upgraded to Category 3. Still, the forecast said it looked like it might weaken as it drove north during the morning and I looked at the clock: it was just now seven in the morning and, I noted, it should be light out. I said this to myself as it still looked like it was pitch-black outside, and I think Betty saw the look in my eyes.

It was time to go up for a look see, so I put on a jacket and trundled up the companionway steps; I stepped out into the middle of a maelstrom and said something, I'm sure, most intrepid and appropriate to the moment. Rain whipped my face, and I saw a couple of loose lines flaying about on the boat next to mine, banging my teak decks as they danced around. I ran to secure them when I saw it.

A waterspout. Oh...joy.

The sky was purple-black in the distance and pewter-green overhead, yet the waterspout looked like a pale white snake writhing in the air as it danced along the water. And I couldn't say for sure, but it looked as though it was headed right for our marina. I tied off the errant line and ducked below, turned on the radar and waited impatiently while the unit warmed up.

"What's wrong?" Betty Hutton said, studying my movements.

"Here," I said as the radar came alive. She moved over to my side while the glow from the radar screen filled the space around us with red and green shadows. "A waterspout. I want to get a track on it."

"Isn't that like a tornado? Where is it?" She sounded more than a little alarmed.

"Yes it is, and it's right...there," I said as I pointed at the screen. Right on cue a Civil Defense siren went off -- and she looked at me again, questioning the insanity of her predicament. "It's about a half mile from here, headed up river."

"Is it going to hit us?" she said as I smiled, as now their was some tension in her voice. I looked at the screen, held a little transparent ruler up to it and watched the storm for a moment.

"No. It's going to hit on the far side of that bridge," I said -- with more confidence than I felt.

"You seem so sure of yourself. Do you get that from flying?"

"Hmm? Oh, no, I got that from being married to the biggest pessimist that ever lived."

+++++

After the waterspout moved away from the area, I went back up and began to lay out extra lines to every cleat I could find on the dock. I -- like every one else now moving about frantically on the dock -- assumed that the breakwater and dock would keep the storm surge away and hold us securely in place. I figured if the surge was so bad it might swamp the marina we'd just make for the hotel and have a margarita or two. Hell, it was just a hurricane!

I walked over to Hanks boat; still no extra lines out so I knocked on the hull, called out his name. A couple of minutes later the turtle-man's head popped up the companionway.

"You alright down there?" I asked him. Hell, who knows. Maybe I was grinning.

He smiled and flashed a thumbs up. "How 'bout you?" he said, eyeing me with concern.

"Better get on up here; I'll help you lay out some lines. You just missed all the excitement."

"Excitement?"

"Yeah. Waterspout just blew by, right there by the bridge."

Hank's eyes went wide and he dropped from view. I heard some bumping around down below, and a moment later he popped back up the companionway and jumped onto the dock.

"Got any extra line," he asked.

'You gotta be kidding me!' I said to myself, the disbelief in my mind clear. I went back to my stern locker and pulled out two extra anchor lines I kept in reserve and moved to help him tie them off to the pier.

"Betty still with you?" he yelled as a strong gust whipped through the marina.

"Yeah. That other one still with you?"

"Yeah. Miserable bitch!"

"Maybe we can talk about this later," I yelled over another particularly vicious gust shook us. "Better get below!" I patted him on his wet shoulder and ran for my boat. When I looked around, he was still out there looking at the sky. I swear to God he looked more and more like a turtle with every passing minute.

+++++

I turned on the sailing instruments and looked at the wind speed. Unfortunately, the gauge topped out at a hundred miles per hour, and the needle was pegged at the maximum. I flipped on the VHF and listened to NOAA weather radio: wind speed at the Cape was one twenty and rising, but the storm was moving rapidly now to the east, moving rapidly away from us and out to sea.

"I think we just dodged a bullet," I said to Betty, and I pulled out a chart out and began plotting the storm's center. Once she saw what I was laying out she grasped the implications immediately.

"Do you think we could go to bed now?" she said, a twinkle in her eye.

"Surely, Ma'am, not on the first date!" I said with feigned outrage dancing across my face.

But that's exactly what we did. Several times, as a matter of fact.

Then as the winds outside subsided in the afternoon, she got dressed and left. She didn't even say goodbye, but that wasn't entirely unexpected, was it? Not in my little corner of the darkness.

+++++

So, two hurricanes in one day.

One hurricane moved out to sea; there wasn't even any storm surge in the marina the rest of that day. All of us moved around the piers that evening clearing up the tangled mess of dock-lines we'd stretched all over the place that morning (in our frenzied desire for security), and it was all very fun now. A sense of community builds after shared experience this intense, and there was almost a party atmosphere in the evening that followed. But not for me.

For you see, I'd had my close encounter -- with Hurricane Betty.

She came to me in my hour of need and -- like a hurricane -- completely tore my world apart. I went to bed that evening -- exhausted from the effects of her winds -- and slept so soundly I didn't dream. And that may have been a good thing, too; I'd probably have only been able to dream of Ruth, yet I already felt guilty enough for having enjoyed Betty so much, and I didn't need that much guilt in my dreams, I reckoned -- correctly.

We had -- Betty and I -- walked through our own geometry of the heart that day, experienced what had felt like the sybaritic abandon of our inevitable collision. She was indeed a skillful interrogator, and pretty mad in the sack, too.

I woke the next day to a world sunny and cool; there was a sudden autumnal snap in the air, and the rains and winds had swept my little world clean. All traces of that woman were gone and the air smelled lonely and clean again.

I saw Hank was on the foredeck of his little Island Packet, running some sealant along a hatch.

"Hey partner!" he called out when he looked up and saw me. "Did you sleep through the party?"

"Party?"

"Yeah, up by the pool. Started about eight, went to God only knows how late. Hell, everyone in town was here!"

I just looked at him blankly and shook my head.

"What the hell happened between you and Betty?" he asked.

"I don't know. It was nice, and . . ." And what? How could I describe what happened?

"She came over, seemed lost. She and Susan took off about four."

"Did she say anything to you?" I asked. I wanted to know. Really. Hell, maybe I needed to know.

"No, not really. Like I said; she just looked lost. What happened?"

I shook my head. "I don't know, Hank. She ripped my world apart, then just walked out."

"Hey buddy, I may not know up from down most days, but I'd say if anyone's world was ripped apart, it was hers."

"Yeah? Well, what are you working on?"

He looked at me for a second, then down at the hatch he was working on. "I don't know, man; something came down on the plexiglass and whacked it. Nice hairline crack in it. You think silicone will seal it?"

"Well, it'll seal it until the first time someone steps on it, then it'll split and leak again."

"Fuck."

"Nothing for it but to replace the thing, especially if you plan on going offshore."

"Bahamas," he said.

"Gulf Stream," I said. "Come on, we'd better head up to the store and see if we can find a replacement hatch."

"Yeah, guess so," he said, but I knew he was tabulating cost-benefit ratios just then. "Let me grab some shoes."

We walked up the pier to the harbormasters office and went in to get directions to a marine supply store. There were a couple in town, and we got addresses.

"Ah, you Mr Ghent?"

"Yes."

"Got a note for you here," the man said as he dug an envelope out from under a pile of papers on his desk. "Woman dropped it off here yesterday afternoon."

I took it from him. The envelope was hotel stationary; the handwriting unfamiliar. I slipped it in my pocket and Hank and I walked out into the afternoon, looking for a taxi.

+++++

As the sun set, Hank and I finished installing his new hatch and I invited him over for dinner. I did it, too: I called Room Service and had them bring down a raft of t-bones and shrimp cocktails and -- well -- a bottle of Dewars. I set the CD to play Ella Fitzgerald in the cockpit, and put up the cockpit table just as our white-jacketed waiter rolled his cart to the side of the boat.

We -- Hank and I -- sat in the afterglow of a really magnificent sunset and wolfed down shrimp and steak, then picked at cheesecake for a while as we sipped Scotch.

"So, what happened with that - er, with you and Susan?" I asked as the night settled in around us.

"Oh, you know . . ." he said quietly, and his voice trailed off into the night.

"No, I don't know. That's why I asked, Hank."

"Oh, well, I think it turned out she wanted a go at you and was kinda pissed off at Betty for moving in so fast." I looked across at Turtle-man -- not the best looking guy to come along, that much was certain -- and I felt kinda sorry for him. "So, you never said, how was Betty? She work out OK for you?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, Hurricane Betty. Yeah, Hank, she was something else."

"Was that letter from her, the one at the harbormaster's office."

"Shit!" It was still in my pocket, unopened, and I reached for it.

"You haven't read it yet?!" Hank asked incredulously.

I pulled out the envelope and held it up for him to see.

"Prick," I think he said when he saw the unbroken seal.

I think he watched while I opened the letter, but who cares. 'Martin,' the note began. 'I know we shared something special last night, maybe even something beyond special, but I don't know if you're ready to face the consequences of the moment yet. You have a choice to make. Let me know if I fit into your plans. Oh, by the way, I think I love you. Betty.'

"Well?"

"Seems I have, according to her, a choice to make."

"What?"

"Very serious girl, this one, Hankster. Very serious indeed."

"My advice to you?" he said as he looked at the paper in my hand. "Run like the wind, Marty. Turn and run like the fucking wind and never look back."

Maybe life is that simple for some people. Find someone, and like a bee in a glade full of shimmering petals, stop on one and spread your seed, then move off on the breeze, toward the next flower, always moving toward that next epiphany. Always moving...never satisfied...always lonely and looking for the next collision out there in the dark...being and becoming.

You have a choice to make. But do I?

It's always about choice, isn't it? Forget about right and wrong, good and evil; those aren't relevant or even helpful constructs to hold onto when confronting choices dripping with implications of fate and destiny. Rely in instinct to see your way thought the stumps, right?

Like Nietzsche said, there is no objective right or wrong, only what we choose to make right.

You have a choice too make, don't you?

Right now, or I could leave the marina in the morning, head down the river to the ICW, and make my choice there. That's right...put it off...run a little longer...

So, what's the choice? Turn right, head south, away from Elizabeth City and Betty Hutton, or turn to the left and return to her, see what the future holds in that woman's naked arms.

Is that what I want? It always boils down to being and becoming, doesn't it?

Did I want to fall into the arms of the first woman I ran into, or wasn't that just being emotionally childish? Did I really feel an attachment to her already, or had she simply read me like an open book, understood the depths of my need and acted on -- what? Her instinct? She was a lawyer, right?

And just what can you say about a woman who claims to have such a profound understanding of the future? That she can divine a connection between two people in an instant?

Do you feel like mocking that? Walk away -- from an assumed gift?

Or do you respect that person's gift, as incomprehensible as it may seem to you in the moment, and follow her intuition?

"What about you, Hank? Was that woman causing all the ruckus in Elizabeth City your wife?"

He looked down at his feet. "Yeah. I've been running away from her all my life, Marty. I used to think I loved her, but you know, it's hard to love someone so mean. Love isn't supposed to hurt all the time, is it?"

"I don't know, Hank. I really don't."

"Oh..."

"So, why did she leave?"

"I guess she thought if she had me trapped on the boat, in such a controlled space, she could murder my soul -- one inch at a time. When that didn't work out, when I started in on her too, I guess she decided she'd just about more than enough. Served the bitch right, I guess."

I looked at this turtle-man as he said that, and for the first time in my life I knew what it felt like to really pity another human being.

"Oh? Why would she want to do that, Hank? Murder your soul, I mean?"

"She's evil, Marty, an evil, blood-sucking hell-bitch!"

It wasn't too hard to see it, in the end. Two people diametrically opposed in want and desire, locked in endless struggles for dominion, each over the other, each never bothering to understand the impulses driving the other until in narcissistic rage they pummeled each other figuratively to death. Nothing in common, in the end, but hate for one another. That was all too human, I guess, when the wrong collision comes calling.

How many people settle for that? Settle for such easy dominion when there is so much beauty out there waiting to be explored? Yeah, I know. My hypocrisy is boundless, isn't it? Me, speaking from the comfort of my dark little corner in hell.

Hank would continue to search for another woman just like his wife, for another woman to bully, and who would bully him, until they self-destructed over and over again. So futile, yet so human. Round and round we go, so why pity the man? He's just running through his program, his lines of code written eons ago.

Had Ruth and I not done the same thing? Was Turtle-man just a mirror of my soul?

Hadn't Ruth and I been diametrically opposed in outlook? Why, then, had we ultimately been so compatible? Had we been secure enough in our own world-view to accommodate the other's? To turn away from bludgeoning the other with our own singular truth?

What was there in Betty, I wondered, that made her so like Ruth. I wasn't conscious of anything, but if I held to the view that people make the same mistakes in their relationships over and over again, then surely there was something similar, something fundamentally the same about Betty and Ruth.

Is that what Betty saw? Was that the connection she touched in the air between us?

Isn't that what we're all looking for? Freedom from endless collision? A safe harbor?

Even a Turtle-man like Hank could appreciate that, couldn't he? No, I didn't pity him. I had to admit, even, his need for collision was growing on me.

+++++

The engine was warming up the next morning while I coiled dock lines and stowed shore-power cords; Hank was up on deck admiring his new hatch, dreaming of all the far-away places he would, no doubt, run to. Well, walk to, or whatever it is turtles do.

"So Marty," he said, basking under the sun. "Made up your mind yet?"

"Oh, hell Hank. I never know what I'm doing from one minute to the next."

"Man-oh-man! If you don't know, then who the hell does?!"

"You have a point, Hank. You have a point. How 'bout you? Still going south?"

"Yeah, I'm gonna stay inside all the way down to Florida; maybe November or December I'll slide across the 'stream to Grand Bahama."

"What are you gonna do about your wife?"

"She wants a divorce, so by all means I'll give it to her!"

"You'll probably lose your boat, Hank."

"Not if they can't find me, amigo."

"Hank, that's the wrong thing to do and you know it."

"Yeah, well, I tried the right way all my life, and that didn't work out so fuckin' great. Time for something new."

"Your choice, amigo, and your life, but if I were you - if that's the choice you're gonna make - you better leave the country now, and don't ever plan on coming back."

He looked at me thoughtfully for a minute, then shook his head. "Yeah, maybe."

That was all he could say? Maybe?

Maybe that was what separated the Hanks of the world from me, from people like me. Maybe he didn't have the courage of his convictions, the courage to face his own shortcomings, or worse still, the courage to accept his desires and act on them.

"Well, Hank, keep it slow and steady. Who knows, you might still get there."

He looked at me quizzically while I backed out of the slip and drifted into a turn; I slipped the transmission into forward and gave the beast some throttle. I looked at Turtle-man standing on the deck of his little boat, alone, running and afraid of his future. That was no way to live; running never is.

The boat arced out into the river and turned downstream; I had several miles to go to rejoin the Waterway, a few hours to think about the choice that lay ahead.

The sky was still clear, not a trace of the hurricane remained and the cool breeze out of the north was already stirring up a few whitecaps on the river. There would be a tough headwind back towards Elizabeth City, a hard ride to return to Betty Hutton if that was the choice I made.