Chatters on the Tide

  Chapter 3

  Harold took another pull on his bottle of Wild Turkey 101 and lay back on the sofa. Taking the remote in his free hand he nudged up the volume to drown out the lawnmower, the sound of it alternating between ear shattering and just plain loud as it made passes by the front window. Finally he got up and peered out between the curtains and mumbled to himself.

  “Idiot. Why would you cut somebody’s grass you don’t even know anyway? Holy Crud. I told you not to bother.” He had to admit to himself that there was something about Lucas that he liked. His neighbor was the kind of guy that after he’s gone people describe as over six feet tall, handsome, and muscular. In reality he wasn’t quite six feet, he was past his prime, and he had the square kind of gut men have who can kick your ass. His brown and gray beard matched the braided pony tail that divided the meat-packing plant he used for a back, almost reaching down to the place where he should have had a butt. Harold would not have opened the door and called him an idiot for all the beer in Busch Gardens.

  Back on the sofa he tried to focus on the T.V., but he was growing too drunk. He drank and drifted a little, dragged himself to the bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed but slipped off and fell to the floor. His body was on the rug but his cheek was on the cool hardwood floor, and it felt really good. He slept.

  He jumped when the phone rang. It took eight rings for him to get up and find it buried in the sofa cushions back in the living room. He looked fuzzily at the screen of the cell phone, recognized the number and answered.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Greg, it’s Bonnie.”

  “I know who the hell it is.”

  “Greg, can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “As long as you keep it light, okay? Nothing too heavy. I’m having a party.”

  “You are? Who’s there?” she asked.

  “Some turkey, you wouldn’t know him.”

  “Okay...Greg, I know how you feel, how really hard it is. You misunderstood me when we fought before. I want you to know that everything is okay with me. None of that stuff matters. You can come home any time.”

  “I can? Gee thanks. I can come home to my own house. Great.”

  “Don’t do that,” she said.

  “Do what?” he asked.

  “Start the macho thing. That’s not you.”

  “I hate being like this, it sucks, really it does. But this is the way it is. Until I get a job and get back to...to what I do best, I won’t be myself. I can’t be...”

  “Honey, your job isn’t who you are. It’s just something you do. All that matters is...”

  “Hort-manure, horse-manure,” he stumbled, “it is me. I can’t come back there. Ever. I don’t like it there anymore. Maybe when I get a new job and get this place fixed up you can come here and we can talk, but I can’t come there.”

  “Greg, come on. Don’t be crazy. This is our house. That’s your grandparent’s house.”

  “No, now that’s your house,” he said. “You can have it. And this is my house. You can come and visit sometime.”

  “Why does it always have to be mine or yours? Why can’t it be ours? Everything I have is yours, how come everything you have isn’t mine?”

  Harold’s face crumpled like tinfoil, and he threw the phone across the room into the sofa’s matching easy chair.

  “Kill me with kindness why don’t you!” he yelled, and lay back onto the couch.

  Later, when the bottle of 101 was empty and the sun was down, Harold got his car keys and went out the front door leaving it open. The old wooden screen door peppered with holes banged shut behind him. He made his way down to the Acura and got inside making off for nowhere.

  At the 7-11 he picked up a six-pack of beer. The young clerk, a girl in braces, had second thoughts but decided not to challenge him. After all, he was a grown man in a suit and he had his ID ready. He slid back into the driver’s seat, openly having a beer and tearing up the road. He drove a long time, downing the beers.

  Finally he came to a stop before the bridge, pulled off the shoulder just short of it. He staggered off, the last beer of the six in hand. He hit the remote locking the car and setting the alarm. Walking out onto the bridge he looked to one side up the river, noting the lights of the houses along side it. On the other side was the bay, chocked full of fish and oysters, a couple of lonely boats far away. It was a long way down to the brackish water from the top of the bridge.

  His feet were cold, but his head was beaded with sweat. Looking down he realized he didn’t have on any shoes. The cement was cold and damp like the wind. He was not too drunk to feel his feet, just too drunk to care, and when he realized that he was too drunk to care, he wondered if that was good or bad because it was a long way down to the brackish water from the bridge.

  He missed Bonnie, but knew if he were back with her it would only be on her terms. He wouldn’t be a real man with her, wouldn’t be able to take charge, and it would be just like before. She wouldn’t let him. She’d tell him he wasn’t sensitive enough, tell him he wasn’t the man she married, all of that stuff. But then, building a life without her would be impossible too. He loved her and hated her all at once, and did not know how to conceive of a life without her in it.

  And where could he live with no job? His grandparent’s house wasn’t going to be his for much longer. When it went to auction to pay their medical bills, he would have his choice of going back to Bonnie or living out of the Acura.

  “Guess I’ll be in the Acura,” he said to himself, “because I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her castrate me again.”

  His bravado surged as it did when he was alone and unchallenged by faces. Faces made his courage fail, the faces of people who depended on him at work, the faces of loved ones like Bonnie’s, or even his own face in the mirror. The water was too far down for him to see his reflection. If he jumped, he wondered if he would see it just before he hit.

  On the span over the water he looked out and saw that he had no job, very little money, and soon he would have no place to live. He imagined people’s faces when he described how he had gone from V.P. Of Human Resources for a major corporation to living out of his car, how they would look at him when they asked him about Bonnie and he answered that they weren’t together anymore. He tried to imagine what would he say.

  “Oh, we broke up,” he whispered. “She wouldn’t let me be a man. I wasn’t sweet and sensitive enough for her.”

  Although he wanted to be with her so much that it hurt, he knew going back was pointless. She didn’t want him to be himself, she wanted him to be something else. The time he had spent with Bonnie, the time on the job, it had all been a waste, and he was too tired to start over somewhere else.

  What would people say if they found him in a few weeks, snagged in the brush near the shore, bloated and stinking like a dead puffer-fish?

  “That company that laid him off, that wife of his, they killed that poor bastard, they might as well have pushed him off,” Harold mouthed.

  Like a child whose tower of blocks has been knocked down, he looked off the bridge and down to the water, too heartbroken to see past the disaster and too tired to build again. Bonnie would miss him much more if he jumped and died than if he stayed alive and lived out of his car. Her heart would forget all the negative and only recall the positive. She’d want him back then, unchanged.

  He used to say himself that the best revenge was living well, but now he was beginning to see things in the reverse.

  “You want to control me? Then fine. Control me to death, suffocate me, drown me why don’t you? How will that make you feel...”

  Harold threw the empty can over the rail, and without a sound, leaped after it. There was no sensation of falling in the deepness of the dark. He hit the water and was stunned. Unaware of up or down, feeling no pain, he was unafraid for a moment. Then he took a breath and choked.

  His body
reacted to the threat of death and his mind quickly followed. His reasons for jumping were far away now, much less important than not having any air in his lungs. Thrashing and clawing he fought for the surface but did not know where the surface was. His tears became one with the waves and were washed away. Guilt and sadness gone, now he was alive and wanted to keep it that way, but it was too late. Half a minute later he could no longer thrash or claw and there was no air. Eyes open, the mystical lids covering the light of his spirit began to relax and fall. He moved into a neutral place where he neither wanted to die nor wanted to live.

  Hands were on him in the dark water, but they were hesitant, their grip light and yielding. He could sense their presence. Why aren’t they pulling me out? he wondered. Who would hesitate to save a man drowning? Without urgency, with detachment, he suspected he might die soon if they didn’t so something soon. Dying and not dying were as immaterial, as rooted in perspective, as right and left. Neither was good or bad, they were just opposite sides of the same coin. The hands still rested on him, not pulling him out, not holding him down.

  The difference between life and death was only Bonnie. In the choice he saw two worlds, one with her and one without, and he felt a stirring of the need to live. His thought on the bridge about Bonnie’s guilt had been right, she would blame herself and she would suffer. He imagined her suffering and he felt the suffering himself and it was the only real thing he felt in months. He wanted to live. The void no longer seemed relaxing or benign. Now the absence of sound, light, and sensation became bizarre and ominous.

  At last the hands delivered him to shore. He coughed and hacked, blinded by mud and spasms. When he could breathe and look around nobody was there. Soaking wet and nearly sober, he stared up at the moon, shocked at his own actions, thankful to be alive. He felt his feet and examined them in the dimness. They were muddy but uncut. He was expecting to find them bloody from the trash and oyster shells of the bay bottom.

  Harold got up, convinced himself that the unseen hands had been a trick of his mind while he was deprived of oxygen, and went back to the car. The keys were still in his pocket. He got in and drove off, shaking from the cold and wet, far from being at his best but nonetheless better off than he had been when he jumped. He turned the heater on high and made it back to the old home place. Once inside he stripped naked and lay down on the sofa, totally spent. He pulled the folded blanket from the back of the couch looked at the ancient VCR in the entertainment center. Its clock read 11:31 PM.

  “First time in months I’ve gone to sleep instead of passing out,” he said to himself, and closed his eyes.