The horizon darkens cerulean blue with the advancing swell. Waters around me eddy and swirl as the towering face jacks up on Mysto Reef. Lifting its translucent arch skyward, the massive wave breaks like the crack of doom as indignant pelicans take flight.
The following sea bears down like judgement day, forever stalled in mid career; a constant moment leaving me spellbound by its lofty grandeur. I'm lifted high on the watery messenger from Africus' torrid zone, that's come to break in a crescendo of spume on my home town beach. Far down the glistening green wall I behold the western realm of infinite light and repose.
Where has he gone, that apparitional self, who looked into the hollow maw of fear?
*****
In a garage sale, in a dream, I found my old copy of the Aeneid among carved wooden heads intoning prophesies from a laurel shaded altar.
In his wheelchair, dad held vigil from a South Laguna hill, searching the horizon for whales. A watch held in his once stout heart, vestige of the ancient clan, now closeted amid the holies like an old hat. There, shelves of brown lore lay darkening in the suburbs; now dusted off for our perusal, only in dreams.
On the cover was Baskin's drawing of Anchises, hoisted on the shoulders of his fated son, fleeing the streets of burning Troy.
“We are becalmed, mate.” McWhirr's voice seems far away.
“I thought there was always a breeze in Port Madison.” I say.
“Always a memory of one, anyway.”
The boom swings and the mainsail flogs to the sound of pans clattering below. To the North, an abomination of a container ship rounds Jefferson Head, pushing a bright bow wave as it turns southeasterly past the Sierra Foxtrot buoy.
McWhirr, taking his pipe out of his mouth, says:
“How about we crank up old Phyllis and motor over to Indianola Marsh and drop the hook?”
Ducking below, I release the compression levers and bear down on them again as Phyllis springs to life with a steady, thumping rhythm.
Now back on deck, I uncleat the topping lift and drop the main boom onto the gallows before going forward to lower the jib and secure it to the stanchions. Returning to the pilot house to turn the wheel to starboard, I head for the anchorage just off the marsh, passing sodden fishermen tending lines hung over bent gunwales, looking bereft of hope for even an anemic cod.
“Three fathoms. Let go here Mister Spencer.”
“ Aye Captain!” I send the CQR anchor splashing into the depths and pay out twelve fathoms of chain.
Old Hand slowly turns to face northeast.
“The flood has set in already.” observes McWhirr while taking bearings off Point Monroe.
The clouds have lifted to the East where the sky turns violet before falling off to slate gray above the snow covered Cascade Range. Gulls wheel their plaintive cry overhead, dropping white poop into the water forward of the starboard bow.
“ Have I ever told you about the wave I caught in Laguna?”
“I seem to recall the one you didn't”
Let it go then. That was another lifetime. Another has signed on as swab this voyage. I was but a nipper who beheld the hollow countenance of Saturn in the form of a towering breaker long spent on a Southern California shore. Just as now, he faces down from the Northern black clouds; a stern inverted profile mirrored on the sea. He's rough-hewn on the rocky peak yonder, endlessly stumping his sluggish round and enclosing our modest endeavors like the laurel tree's shadow circling over the household gods, ever counter to the golden sun.
“Guess I'll turn in. Goodnight Mister Spencer.”
“And pleasant dreams to you Captain.”
McWhirr goes below and soon the stillness is broken only by his regular snore.
I hear a rush of air from over the rail. A fine mist shoots up and hangs, dispersing into the black sky, before gently closing over the deep sounding whales back.
It's a spirit spout beckoning our ship toward far latitudes where the dark isle enfolds my father's wrack. The whale left this memento falling back into the source this gentle night, calling us to the eminence beyond the Eastern mountains. What salvation can we hope for from that quarter? What windy advent heralds vistas brighter for being reborn? I see beyond the blue peaks to a presence shining from the Seraphim's mansions, an Orient that looms all the more lucid for its absolute inscrutability.
I drift off with Old Hand's easy rocking on the waves abeam.
The night is a vast inter-tidal zone, where I lie aground in dreams until a remembrance intoned, as if from a wooden head inside my own, sings: Wake from the dream of life and see.
