THE FINAL CRUISE

CHAPTER TWO: ROSIE'S REALISM

2023-10-10T00:08:00.000-07:00

THE PIER

DRAFT ONLY
The pier, it seemed to Rosie, was a logical place to start searching for information about an old seaman.

Rosie was too old to be a girl, and too young to be a woman. Now as she walked the waterfront, she carefully avoided seagull droppings and the bits of decayed bait, dropped by yesterday’s pier fishers.

Gulls, annoyed with her intrusion, lifted off and circled impatiently. Some flew with their orange beaks open, eager to return to scavenging as she made her way along the wharf. Others cried and squealed in alarm.

Belatedly, she wanted to reconstruct something of her grandfather's past, to get the feel of things, how it must have been back then, in the good old days.

"These piers undoubtedly looked just the same when Grandpa walked here, she mused."

Following his death, she had realized how little she knew about her granddad's history, and wished that she had probed more deeply while he loved.

"Oh, the questions I wish I had asked him!"

Those questions had never seemed urgent until … she shuddered ... until his cabin was destroyed, and he along with it.

REMEMBERING THE ESTATE SALE

Before T.J.W. died, his doctor had advised the family: “I am afraid the old feller won’t live though this."

Doctor Cowell had known Thomas for decades; knew of his life at sea, his work on the American transatlantic railroad, knew of his stormy marriage, of his bleakly on-again off-again work history and more.

"I am afraid Tom is about to depart on his final cruise,” Dr. Cowell said sadly.

At 9 AM the next day, T.J. died, precisely three weeks before the estate sale.

At the sale, Rosie had been shaken when someone asked, “Will you take a quarter for this chair?”

It was a favorite chair of his. Though it was a cheap, wooden chair with peeling paint, she could hardly imagine strangers sitting in it.

She bartered until she got five bucks for the chair, then returned to her reveries, trying to remember bits and pieces of conversation, reconstructing what she knew of her grandad.

T.J. took his first employment on a sailing vessel at the age of fourteen. That much she knew.

Rosie's thoughts were interrupted again.

“How much for this watch?” someone asked.

It was his great pocket watch, the one with a long chain. They let it go for two dollars. A boy tugged at a woman’s dress. “Mom, can I have that pocket knife?

“You are too young for a knife," the woman said.

The boy howled, unheeded, for a half hour. When she apparently thought no one was looking, she reached beyond the roped off area, pillaging the family's keepsakes, and pulled out what happened to be T.J.’s old sea compass. Noting that the cover was professionally hand-engraved, and that a red stone graced the center of the dial, she placed the treasure inside her purse.

A man asked, “Three dollars for this hand saw?”

Rosie and stared as her mother ignored the question and blocked the thief's exit.

"You can pay for the watch over at the door, but the compass is not for sale," Ruby said.

After the woman left, Ruby gave the compass to Rosie.

"Take good care of this," she said. "It will be a keepsake for you. It meant a lot to Grandpa."

At first she objected. "But, it's just an old compass."

"It's symbolic," Ruby said. "Grandpa would want you to find your way. He would probably say that you need to find a compass for your life, and this will remind you of that fact at the same time it reminds you of him."

Rosie must have looked skeptical.

"There is more to it," her mother said. "Grandpa always told me that the compass was special. It has ... powers of some kind."

"Powers!" Rosie laughed outright. "What kind of powers?"

"I don't know, but he said that the compass was some kind of guide to a great treasure. Who knows, maybe he buried something in a treasure chest!" And this time it was Ruby who laughed.

Thus it was, that Rosie ended up with this compass, white elephant, albeit an old one.

The compass was, perhaps, the only vanity item amongst T.J.'s stuff. This was before the popularization of electrical hand tools. Having been, among other things, a ship’s carpenter since before the turn of the century, he had owned hand drills and bits, hand planes, pliers, wood clamps, two squares, plumb lines, folding measuring sticks, a claw hammer and a peen hammer, a variety of chisels and all else that a carpenter of he early 1900’s required. At the estate sale, Rosie had watched as the gentle carpenter’s history disappeared, piece by piece.

BACK AT THE WATERFRONT

Rosie stood before the Sow Tavern, taking in the scent of rotting seaweed and the calls of gulls. She had arrived at the wharf early, gathered her coat tightly around her shivering body and seated herself on a bench outside the old tavern.

The cool wood pressed against her warm fanny just as it had against the bottoms of fishermen, seamen, and longshoremen of yesteryear. She fondled the bench’s surface, rippled but smooth.

Grandpa sat in this very place!

She imagined him amongst others, all in sea-going garb, smoking pipes and waiting for the tavern doors to open.

Rosie had sometimes dabbled in spiritualism, and now, sitting on the waterfront bench, she tried to call up any remnant of her grandfather’s presence, but all she felt was the cold, damp air and the smooth but hard lumber resisting the pressure of her bones. At about nine AM the fog cleared and by ten the sun was shining.

At 10:15 AM the tavern keeper unlocked the door. Little by little, pier walkers, winos, displaced workers, and retired seamen emerged from narrow alleys or spaces between the hodgepodge of shops, and Rosie began to question them.

"Did you ever know this man?" she asked, showing them a photo of him as a young seaman, and another as an old man. Eventually she would produce the compass too, and sometimes they would look at it with great interest or curiosity.

Each was eager to please the young lady, trying to outdo the others in creating fantastic tales. They all embellished freely. The young lady, however, was desperate for concrete facts upon which to build her her own personal legends, for she, like all humans, felt a need to reconstruct the past in a way that glamorized her ancestors.

She soon heard all of the lies, idle rumors, and malicious tales that the scoundrels at the water’s edge could invent.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” she thought, but she wrote it down anyway. Later, she could also fill in the gaps with details from her own imagination. Her “Legends of The Sow,” written “by one of our own” was sure to entertain the local crowd, for she was intent upon becoming a professional writer.

What better way to break into writing than to start with my own family history?

Or so she thought.

Rosie appreciated even the lies and insults of the bums along the beach, but she had hoped for more, hoped to understand T.J.’s dreams, for example. Dreams and visions ran in the family, yet she puzzled about the nightmares that had tormented him. And they were many, as she knew from his infamous fitfulness and occasional sleepwalking.

As the sun fell, a fog bank rolled in and covered the pier in an ethereal mist. Alcoholics had sidled up to her and, wrapped in heavy, second-hand cloaks; they all fell asleep until at last, Rosie careful not to disturb the others, rose to leave, but not quickly enough.

From within an alley, a bony hand extended and grasped her wrist. She gasped and recoiled, but she found her strength much too inferior. As Rosie’s eyes adjusted to the dimly lit alley, she saw that her captor appeared old and weak.

I could easily escape, she mistakenly thought, but she soon realized that she was no match for him. How can such an old man be so strong?

Rosie panicked then, remembering the purse she had slung across her shoulder, and tucked it tightly beneath her armpit.

“Aw now, Missy, I don’t plan to rob you. But please try to understand, I have taken a little wine for the stomach’s sake you know.” And he laughed, which set him to coughing.

She drew back a leg to kick him, when something stopped her. An intuition, perhaps.

“Aye, Missy, that’s better. You don’t want to kick old Ike do you?”

She tried to stammer an answer, but the old man interrupted. “Of course not! Not when he can tell you something authentic about your grandpa.”

He pulled her by the hand, but not so hard as before, coaxing her along rather than moving her by force now.

“Come over here and let's talk a little. I will tell you something interesting about your grandfather, Missy.”

Frightened and knowing better, but curious, Rosie allowed him to pull her a little deeper in amongst the decrepit booths, sheds and storage shacks. Just then, the door to a run-down shack opened behind her, and a half dozen old men streamed out and surrounded her, many of them were, dirty, creepy (so she thought), and smelled of the alley filth and fish and alcohol.

“The Missy here wants to see what happened to her old’ grandfather,” Ike said.

A taller old man now brushed past the others and they yielded, making way for him.

“Madam, please excuse this rather informal introduction. I’m Peacoat. Odd name for an old salt, don’t you think?”

She nodded.

“So,” he continued, “you want to know something that happened to your old’ granddad?”

Doubtful, she nodded nonetheless.

“Close your eyes.”

Several hands now held her, tied a dirty rag over her eyes, turned her around, and shoved her along the rough boards of the pier. Shortly they stopped her, removed the bandana and, standing now at the very edge of the pier she gazed into the black, swirling waters below.

“Your grandfather was once shoved to the fantail of a ship, and pushed overboard.”

Peacoat pushed her out until she thought surely she would fall, but then he pulled her back.

“Of course, we would never do that to you, but he once was punished that way. Good thing he could swim.”

The others all laughed. "Even so, he was luck to live through that," Peacoat said.

She had completely forgotten about her purse by then, and suddenly with a surprisingly deft movement, Peacoat pulled the purse from off her shoulder. She instinctively reached for it but he held out a long, well muscled arm and stopped her with the palm of his hand resting firmly on her chest.

"Don't worry, you will get the purse back; I just want to have a look-see in here. We wouldn't want any surprises, such as a little snub nosed pistol."

There was no gun, of course, but Peacoat pulled the compass from her purse and held it up for all to see.

"Ah-ha, what have we here?” And thy all oohed and awed.

“I tell you what, Rosie. Let's make a deal! How's about I tell you more of what I know about T.J., and you lend us this little compass for a day or two in return?"

She cried out in alarm, however. "You can't have that! My mother ..."

The drunken laughter of the crowd drowned her out, and seeing an opportunity, she snatched the compass from Peacoat's hand and he did not resist..

As soon as she had the compass, however, another man grabbed her wrist and yet another snatched the compass away from him. Suddenly the compass was flying from one drunk ex-sailor to the next. Around and around the compass went in this rambunctious game until the drunkest of them all, the one farthest away from the edge of pier, tripped and fell, and as he fell, he knocked over another, who in turned fell against another, and so on. Complicating things, their feet became entangled in a piece of two-inch rope that had been coiled upon the deck, and so they all fell down.

Rosie might have had the opportunity to escape then, but for one thing: She was the person closest to the water's edge. She felt herself knocked off balance, and when her toe caught on a protruding plank, over she went, into the drink.

She felt several of the wrinkled, boney, hands grasping at her, but over the side she went nonetheless, straight into the sea.

She fell some twenty feet before the cold water enfolded her body; the momentum plunged her beneath the surface, and as she held her breath she prayed desperately. The water is way over my head! Oh, Jesus, help me!

Gradually the momentum slowed and she began rising upwards, but not fast enough.

Too far, she thought. I can't make it to the top.

She struggled, holding her breath. When her hand finally broke the surface, she gasped, taking in both air and water. Alarmed but alive, alone in the water at last, she looked upward.

Peacoat waved, as if he were trying to tell her something, but she could not hear what he said, and then he disappeared and all of the other men scurried away too.

In a few seconds they came back and tossed her a line of four-inch rope, but she refused it. She felt safer, somehow, in the water now. Safer than up amongst those rowdy and somewhat unstable old men. Surprisingly, even her purse now floated beside her. She swam from piling to piling, clutching at at them for rest but cutting her hands and feet on the barnacles.

Reaching the beach beneath the pier she was drenched, scared, and exhausted, but also felt energized. She ran the dark streets to her studio, fumbled in the purse and to her amazement the keys were still there. She slung open the door, and flipped on the light. Then, stripping off her wet clothes, she left them in a heap at the doorstep and, trembling from the shock of her experience as much as from the cold, took a hot bath to warm herself back up.

Afterward she sat at a small desk considered her options. She should call the police. She should buy a hand gun. She should ... she absently pushed a button and the light on the front of her electric typewriter turned green. It was an impulse perhaps, but instead of doing any of those other things that she had considered., she began typing, and was soon lost in her novel; it was the story, as only she could imagine it, of her great grandfather T.J.'s life.

CHAPTER ONE: A CHILD IS BORN, 1886

2023-10-09T23:48:00.000-07:00

DRAFT COPY

Sam hammered away on a ruffian's coffin. Government work that brought in extra cash.

Inside a nearby house, the staccato hammering had faded into the background of a woman's suffering. His wife's screams had muted the sounds of "progress" that filled the carpenter's ears

She heard only the midwife's voice.

"That's it Honey, that's OK, now. You are very close. A few more minutes, I am sure."

The midwife was mistaken. For three more hours the contractions increased in length and intensity.

Returning to his carpenter's lean-to out back, Samuel Walden pounded the last few nails, forcing himself to shut out the woman's wails: Giving birth was women's work. His business was to provide for his family.

"I am sure glad God made me a man."

He mentally noted that he should check back on his wife and, hopefully, her new child, later on.

"I hope it will be a boy," he thought, as he hurried over to the job site to check the progress on his newest project, a housing development and stood for savoring the scene with pleasure; a dozen new homes in various stages of construction, all for middle class families.

"I did all this," he thought with pride. "I have built these houses that people can live in for decades, centuries."

But then a sobering thought troubled him: "The government will tear these homes down to make room for that new canal. Why do I keep working? All my hard work will be destroyed."

But no. He corrected himself: "I will start over. Me and my future sons.We will do it all again, and again as often as necessary."

Back in the house, his wife screamed and clutched at the midwife's hand.

"Oh God, oh, God," she cried. "Oh Jesus, please HELP ME." The pains occassionally lessened and left her wimpering, but always returned. Pain that beyond Samuel's comprehension.

At long last the child was born.

Belinda, the Midwife, laid the him down for few seconds, lifting the folds of her own dress to wipe the sweat from her pock-marked forehead. Then with a sigh, handed the baby to its exhausted mother.

"Here he is," Belinda declared, "the future bricklayer of Samuel and Sons Construction Company!" But the maid had wrongly assumed the mother's intentions. She had her concerns about the notion of a baby-as-bricklayer. That was Samuel's vision, a dream that he had made it well known.

So far, Sam's dream was right on track. His foresight and good timing had paid off, as his tracts lay directly in the path of the projected Manchester Canal, soon to become the largest navigation canal in the world; the waterway would provide Manchester, England, with a direct route to the sea, and the government had already promised to pay Warden a premium price for the land.

Sam could easily have retired on the amount the government would offer over for his lands, but he would not retire. No sir. He would move on; he would expand the family business and build an empire.
He often had prayed as he worked, "Please, God, if it be your will, make this baby to be a boy."

The midwife, now sweating and exhausted, sat on the bedside and called for a youth, "Hurry up, run and tell Samuel!"

Warden's heart leaped when the panting messenger boy arrived

"It's ... a ... boy," he gasped, trying to catch his breath. Warden clamped his big hand heavily on the poor youngster's shoulder, nearly knocking him to the ground. “Yippee!" he shouted. "Another boy! Thank you God.”

Exulting in his good fortune, he tossed his tools into the toolbox and set off at a lope toward the house, while the boy, already winded, tagged along behind. Sam ran to his wife‘s bedside, touched her tenderly, and lingered, looking down dreamily at his new son, lost in thought.

“Penny for your thoughts?” she queried weakly.

“My thoughts?”

They had already discussed his thoughts before.

He tried to say only what his wife would like to hear: “Isn’t he beautiful!”

But then he could not contain himself, and blurted out, “This child will fulfill my lifelong dream! My sons and I, we will build a huge family business, with employees and subcontractors and multiple contracts and architects and … he will be our bricklayer.”

The mother returned a tired, worried smile. She had known without being told what Sam was thinking, and her intuition told her, "No one can plot a child's life in advance."

Samuel ignored her doubtful expression, speaking unnaturally louder.

"Thomas, will become the company’s brick mason.”

He looked at her, hoping she might agree, pleading with his eyes that she might understand how important this was.

"Samuel and Sons!”

As if he had just remembered something, he withdrew from a deep, baggy pocket a small pointer trowel. The handle was of the finest hardwood, and the welds were gilded with bronze. A beautiful “toy.” And on the handle were engraved the new child’s initials, T.J.W., which of course meant the trowel belonged to Thomas Jefferson Walden, the new baby.

In this manner, T.J. was introduced to his lifetime “occupation.” Prior to sucking his first milk, before his tiny lips could even explore his mother’s breast. Thus the stage was set for T.J.’s lifelong struggle against tyranny, and his quest for personal freedom. The right to follow his own dreams, not the dreams of another.

***

Note: If you are a book publisher, agent or editor, or experienced (published) novelist, I welcome your comments. I am looking to be published.

Update on "The Final Cruise" by F. Ellsworth Lockwood

2010-11-08T17:50:00.000-08:00

Would you like to help me write a book, or help me make the book better? Here's your opportunity to play critic/English teacher and model reader!

The posts below are old (embarrasing?) versions.

The full story has now been revised several times however, and is available for public viewing at:

http://www.authonomy.com/books/21239/the-final-cruise/.

Feel free to just read my book on Authonomy.com ... and other people's books as well. Or if you would be so kind, you may help me rise in the "ranks" on Authonomy.com by registering and backing my book (by putting it on your "bookshelf").

To search for the book on Authonomy go to link as noted above http://www.authonomy.com/books/21239/the-final-cruise/).

The "author's name" on the Authonomy website is "eltopiaauthor" an the title is "The Final Cruise."

On Authonomy, you may notice that I was experimenting with an added character to introduce the rest of the book, but that proved difficult to do without it appearing "tacked on." Now I am considering just chopping off the first chapter of the story as it reads on Authonomy, but have not gone to that drastic step as of this posting.

If anyone is interested to read both versions, I would love to hear your thoughts as to which opening works better. Thanks.

Please Help Me: If you would like to increase my ranking at the www.authonomy.com site, please register there, and back my book, The Final Cruise by "EltopiaAuthor" or just search the site for "eltopia." Again, thank you ahead of time.

Also, any comments would be appreciated, whether at this site or on the Authonomy site.

If you know any publishers or agents, please tell them about my story. Thanks

CHAPTER SIX: GEORGIE, 1878

2010-04-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

Memories. They may bless or they may curse, but they may never go away. Not completely. For years, buried leagues below the seas of our forgetfulness, memories suddenly, inexplicably, return like Paradise itself, and when that happens we bask in the pleasure. Often the case is contrary, however. At those times the memories swirl beneath the dark waters like the shadows of circling sharks, or they loom suddenly, as soul-shattering reefs. At the age of 12 T.J. struck one such “reef.”

“You are not to play with Georgie any more,” his mother said. T.J.’s face went white. “But …“ The boy’s trembling lips began to stammer a protest. That protest, however, stopped short when the front door jerked open. “Sam’s home,“ T.J.‘s mother said. Her tall, strong husband filled the doorway briefly before he entered the room, and the scent of pines filled the air; as always, his trousers and shirt carried the aroma of sawdust. Sam’s calloused hand forced the door shut behind him with a tug that rattled the windows. “Swollen wood. I’ll fix that door when the rain stops,” he said. T.J.‘s father, Samuel Walden (a carpenter by trade), could easily fix the door, if only he could only take some time off from his carpentry contracts. Most recently had built a hangman’s scaffold and a birching triangle, the town’s remedies for crimes large and small. Justice was set for the next day: Execution and public beating. Sam slung his jacket on a handcrafted, wooden coat hook next to the door, and removed his hat. He had hand-made the hat and coat racks.

When Sam entered the room, the defiance instantly left the boy’s face, but the anger already had its grip, refused to let the boy loose, so he turned away in tears, attempted wiping his eyes on his sleeve. His father stared. “What’s the matter with him?”

“He doesn’t understand why he can’t play with Georgie.” The freckled young woman rinsed a dish and placed it on a towel next to the sink. “They have been best friends all their lives. Like brothers.” She poured coffee.

“Well, by this time tomorrow he will damn sure understand why he cannot play with Georgie.“ A pause, then, “The Golden Boy, they are calling Georgie now.“ Samuel had sneered, slurring the word “golden” in contempt. “By this time tomorrow that gold color will change to the color of excrement, I can assure you of that. I just came from building the birching triangle.” His contempt for Georgie was so obvious. Or was it shame? “Embarrassment,” Georgie‘s mother decided. Sam’s nephew had embarrassed him. “Georgie the Golden Boy,” the big man repeated with a snort.

Far from being “golden,“ Georgie and his mother were dirt poor, but after the theft, all the neighbors had begun to call him “Golden Boy” in view of the assumedly large value of the coins that had disappeared. With every re-telling of the story, the imagined value of the stolen coins mounted higher until the petty theft had grown to a felonious size, a buried treasure, for Georgie had hidden the money and refused to say where. Georgina’s stifled a cry. “Surely you don’t mean to go through with this! You can’t. Please, Sam, don’t.” She pleaded. “Don’t let him see that, Sam. Do something. Use your influence at the church!“ She attempted forcing her voice to lower, to sound calm and controlled, but instead the question came out low, throaty, like a growl: “And how could you possibly have agreed build the triangle on which they plan to whip my sister’s child?” The word “whip” hardly conveyed the meaning, for what they were discussing was no mere swat with a twig; it was a public birching, designed to inflict both excruciating pain and public humiliation. As everyone knew, even grown men would and plead for mercy during a public birching … besides, their buttocks were exposed to public view! And Georgie was but a child. “It will do him good,” the father said.

Walden frequently told himself -- and anyone else who would listen -- that he was a law-and-order man. “It’s my job,“ he now told his wife. “I am a carpenter. Whatever they need built, what the government requires, I build it. Sometime’s it’s a chapel and sometimes it’s a scaffold.” His wife frowned. “All authority is given by God,” he reminded her from scripture. “The power is ordained by the Almighty.” Her frown remained and he tried a different tack: “I can’t be so choosey you know… not unless you want to starve, or to work in the cotton mills like Georgina.” She stiffened at the mention of her sister’s name. “So, that’s it? We have to do whatever the judge wants, no matter what or whom it affects?”

“No matter whom. Justice is justice. Keep your nose clean and you don’t need to fear the king.“ A carpenter by trade, Sam Walden had not only built the birching triangle. Sam had also constructed the scaffold for the hanging. Public hangings were already prohibited by law, of course. People hung now in private, but with legal witnesses. Having built the scaffold himself, however Samuel would be allowed attend, and be planned to try to sneak in a guest as well;. he hoped to bring T.J. to the hanging. Of course, he had not told Georgina of this plan.

Observing the whipping alone would not be enough, given T.J.’s love for his cousin. “Perhaps viewing a hanging will help T.J.. Harden him. Help him to resign himelf to power. Accept and understand the authority of the king, and the consequences of sin as well. Sam glanced at his wife and away again. No better time than now to cast a hint of his intentions. Test his wife‘s reaction. “In the olden times, everybody took children to public hangings, and they had a lot less crime back then.” T.J.’s mother knew the unspoken rest of the spiel; she had heard it often: The softening of society toward criminals had caused a current crime wave, society was going to collapse with the weight of sin, the government was too easy on crime and on criminals etc. etc..

When it struck home with her what Sam was implying, that he might take T.J. to a hanging, T.J.’s mother looked appalled, horrified. At that moment, for the first time in their relationship, she realized something completely: Although he was a good man and a good provider, at times like this she absolutely loathed her husband. Crime, as Georgina had gradually come to believe, resulted from affliction and poverty. People with no other means to survive would resort to crime. Children with no one to supervise them. “Everybody had potatoes before the potato blight, and there was less crime back then too,” she retorted.

Brushing sawdust from his corduroy pants with one hand, he took the cup in the other. “Not every poor person is dishonest.“ Cradling the hot cup in his hands, he felt the comfort of its warmth penetrating through his calluses. “Feed the criminals better, and they will reform of their own? How ridiculous! The world has gone soft on ruffians, thieves, vandals. Tomorrow may convince T.J. to keep his nose clean.” He walked to the kitchen table. Sat down. T.J. had sidled away, toward the stairway but Samuel noticed him now. “Where do you think you’re going?“ T.J. had hoped to escape to his bedroom, and now he stood still, his eyes lowered out of respect, or fear.

. “Rebellion is serious business.” Sam turned back to his wife, “We should have laid the law down long ago about his playing with Georgie. Bad influence that Georgie. A single bad apple that spoils the barrel.”

“Georgie is not a bad apple, he is just a hungry child with a poor mother who was abandoned by that lousy jerk of a husband.” (She had emphasized the word “jerk.)“ She paused. She had already said too much, she knew that, but out of control now she continued anyway, “that jerk of a husband … your brother John.”

Samuel blanched but stayed seated. John had disgraced the family by deserting his family, and Sam knew it, but that did not justify Georgie‘s thievery, not in Sam‘s view. “I have to try to save T.J. from the likes of George. What T.J. needs is the wholesome feeling of work. Of holding a mason’s trowel. He needs calluses on his hands.” He unconsciously fingered the calluses on his own palms, enjoying the rough feel of them, then became aware of what he was doing and held his palms out toward T.J.’s mother. “These calluses are the marks of manliness! I want to give T.J. this incredible gift, to give him the satisfaction of looking back at the end of the day -- at the end of a lifetime even -- and seeing what he has accomplished.“ Samuel stood up then, trying to appear calm and in control, but his body betrayed his frustration. His movements had become jerky and abrupt so that, when he stood, his thigh bumped the table and spilled his coffee. Georgina resisted the impulse to run over and clean up the mess. The steaming coffee poured over the edge of the tabletop, ran off the table leg and soaked the front of Samuel’s corduroy trousers. He felt the searing, burning result of his anger, but forced himself not to notice, not to react to the pain. “Next month I am going to send T.J. to his uncle Bob’s … to start an apprenticeship.”

At that, T.J. cried out in alarm. “Papa, please, I don’t want to be a brick mason. I hate bricks. I hate mortar. I hate the bricklayers. They are so mean.” Sam looked at him in amazement, but for the first time T.J. had been moved to openly resist his father’s will. His voice weakening, he went on. “Papa, please, just let Bobby do it, Bobby wants to be a brick layer!” Sam’s oldest son, Robert, had wanted to become a brick mason but when Robert had become old enough for an apprenticeship, Sam had needed another carpenter instead, a right hand man that he could train, and could trust, and so he had invested four years in that Bobby, training him until he had become a master carpenter, competent (if uninspired) in all phases of building.

Georgina spoke next. Came to the rescue. “T.J., I thought you had gone to your room,” she said. And T.J. ran, glad to escape the scene. But in the bedroom he threw himself on the bed sobbing, but silently so that his father might not hear. And Georgina lowered her voice so that T.J. might not hear her either. “He’s not interested in bricklaying.”

“”He is too young to know that. Look how good Bobby turned out. Once T.J. has finished the apprenticeship … once he gets the feeling.“

“My son … our son is not going to be a brick mason, for your brother or for anyone else. Can‘t you see that?”

Samuel noticed the once hot coffee turning cold on his damp pant leg, and began to pick at the trouser material with his fingers. “You know, after you build something you look back at it and it gives you this tremendous feeling of pride.”

Her voice was softer now, pleading, “You can lead a horse to water, but …”

“I want to pass the legacy of self-satisfaction on to him,” he interjected, “to teach him pride. I sometimes go back to the old neighborhoods just to look at houses I have built. I stand there and stare at them. Knowing they will be there ten years, fifty years, a hundred years from now; my God, it feels good. Feels good to know that people will still be living in them.”

She tried again. “But he is so soft, he is too delicate for that. He should be a poet or a writer or … a philosopher.”

He grunted. “Soft. Delicate. Listen to you. He is not a woman. This boy is tough. He is almost a man. Why when he was only nine he hopped a barge …”

“Yes, he hopped a barge, for which you punished him.”

“He was supposed to be in church.”

“ But he did it for the adventure, he only wanted to taste the salt of life.”

“Well, I hope it tasted good; he got the taste of a birch twig when I caught up with him.” Samuel’s neck burned as it turned red. For the For the first time in his adult life, Samuel Walden had lied. He had felt that he should whip the boy, had taken the birch twig in his hand and held it before the boy’s face, but then had laid it down.

“The birch?” T.J.’s Mom was aghast. “He never mentioned it to me.”

Samuel elaborated on his lie: “Of course not. He’s a tough boy. Needs the devil beat out of him from time to time. Some day he will thank me for it.”

“The whip makes its victims bitter, not better,” she asserted. “Is the whip the only kind of discipline you know how to use? I wish they would outlaw the birch.”

Samuel frowned. “As long as his feet swing under my table he is not too big for the birch.” But even as he spoke the words, he knew they were no longer true. He had lost control over his son. Was powerless to change him. To save him from himself.

She began setting the table for dinner while talking. “Can’t you see that he thrives on his own imagination? Why, he has a stage inside himself. In his mind. He creates entire worlds out of his nothing but his thoughts. Have you heard him inventing stories for his sister? And she loves to listen to them.”

Frustrated, Sam began scoffing: “A writer. A teller of tales. Of outrageous lies!“

Convinced she was right, T.J./s mother persisted: “But sometimes a simple story can convey more truth than one of your engineering manuals. Even Jesus told stories.”

“Jesus was a carpenter and bricklayer, a builder like me! And he never went to college. Never wrote no books either. No one in our family has ever even gone to college. No one ever will, least of all T.J..“

“He won’t lay bricks. He’ll die first. He will … “ Her voice broke. She was pleading now with a little sob in the middle of each sentence: “He will … run away from home.“

“Let him run then. Where would I get the money to send him to college? Once he gets used to the feel of a brick in his hands he will grow to love it.”

“He needs to be always creating things in his mind!”

“Then let him create real things … factories … real cotton mills out of brick, not imaginary scenes on paper. Industrial plants where real people, like Georgina, can work and earn a living.”

“It’s not a living! How can you call what Georgina does living? Sweating away in a clothing factory from six in the morning to six at night, six days and more a week while her son runs in the streets? Afraid to be five minutes late to work? Afraid to stay home, even when she is ill from the cotton dust? That’s not living.”

He raised his voice. “At least it’s honest work. If Georgina’s son had been working in the factory with other good fourteen year olds he might not have gotten in all this trouble.”

“But T.J. is a Sagittarius! He needs to travel and to explore; he needs to seek out and develop ideas. Or travel. Perhaps he will become a merchant sailor and travel the world, gathering ideas.

. “No, are you crazy? A lousy, drunken seaman?” Samuel reached into a wooden box next to the back door and jerked out a masonry pointer-trowel. A worn pointer tool that had seen decades of brick masonry. Now he held the trowel up before his own eyes, admiring it with an almost worshipful stare. “The sign of the trowel is the sign that will guide his life. Will provide for his own wife and children some day. Building. Construction.“ Sam suddenly scowled. He had been mulling when to inject his theological perspective on astrology: “His astrological sign? You are resorting to that? The science of Satan? I am offended that you would be showing an interest in such occult nonsense.”

After that she was silent. He waited for a few seconds but when she made no further comments, his voice lowered and so did the trowel. “T.J. will soon be thirteen.” Sam’s emotions were calmer now, but his body went rigid, his mind, coldly rational. “If he keeps on going like he has been I might have to turn him out of the house.” She gasped, but he continued. “When I was thirteen I was doing a man’s work.”

She turned to the sink. Chin to her breast, trying to choke back the tears, but they came anyway and she could not stifle a little wail of anguish. Sam stood. The coffee and conversation had activated his intestines and he needed to use the latrine, the little outhouse in the back yard. He moved toward the door. “As for the birching, my mind is made up,” he said, and shut the door between them as she stood crying at the sink.

CHAPTER FIVE: The Invocation

2010-04-18T13:59:00.000-07:00

A touch of white lace graced her neck. Other lace accented the firmness of her upper arms. T.J. adored the sight of her, and though he tried not to let it show, his wife Elizabeth observed all ...

STELLA, 1944

Slender for seventy-four years age, Stella wore a yellow cotton dress. A touch of white lace graced her neck. Other lace accented the firmness of her upper arms. T.J. adored the sight of her, and though he tried not to let it show, his wife Elizabeth observed all, read all, understood all quite clearly from the eagerness in his eyes, the hastening of his step, and the straightening of his back as he stood more erectly.

A gust of breeze wrapped the folds of Stella’s dress tightly around her body, outlining the shapes of her legs. Strange as it might seem to younger people, even at 78 years of age T.J.’s heart fluttered, for he was a romantic man, and the passing of time had left the instincts of his heart intact. Wrinkles had, indeed, enfolded the skin, but the seat of his emotions was as smooth and as untarnished as at the age of 17. Older, he was. “But,” he would object, “I don’t feel old -- except for this rheumatism.”

Initially, Stella had intended to meet alone with T.J. on this, his seventy-eighth birthday, for he had been estranged from his wife, Elizabeth, for several years. Elizabeth lived far away in a city and had either abused or neglected T.J. for as long as anyone could remember. Stella, therefore, had fantasized about an intimate birthday dinner for TJ, an occasion to be illuminated with candles, warmed with a nightcap of Scotch imported from Speyside, Scotland; Stella imagined an evening that culminated with hugging and snuggling -- not unlike teenagers -- beneath mounds of comforters, quilts and pillows, just as the evening chill settled over the forest. What neither she nor T.J. had foreseen was that, after having been separated from T.J. for two years, Elizabeth would suddenly show up. And that T.J. would feel guilty. And that he would feel sorry for Elizabeth. And that, in the end, he would cave in and agree that Elizabeth could stay at his cabin. Predictably, Elizabeth would take full control over the small house, by degrees and stages. At first, he had only conceded that she should move in and use the small bedroom. But that only lasted a couple of nights. Such was the power and authority that Elizabeth exercised over TJ, that in just a few days, she reclaimed her position as wife, mother, boss, priestess, interpreter of values and conveyor of political convictions. If he suggested the slightest disagreement, T.J. was shouted down, or simply paralyzed by the glare of her disapproval.

Elizabeth’s return to Paradise, of course, had meant the end of T.J.’s intimate visits with Stella. Elizabeth was back … to stay. And so it came to pass, that Stella, not knowing what else to do, invited Elizabeth, too, to T.J.’s birthday party, as if nothing had passed between Stella and T.J. other than friendship. Leaning on an oak cane, T.J. hobbled toward Stella’s cabin. For a second, the breeze flipped his red necktie over the lapel of the drab, second-hand sport coat. Elizabeth, 73 years of age and (at five-foot-nine) five inches taller than he, limped at T.J.’s side wearing a purple, floral dress. The same breeze that flipped T.J.’s necktie had blown Elizabeth’s dress upward, exposing her ankles. Elizabeth’s ankles were constantly swollen, and she had wrapped them tightly with linen to relieve the pain. Now she grabbed the sides of her skirt and held it tightly, hiding her ankles. As they approached Stella’s driveway, Elizabeth looked up, and was about to criticize Stella’s short sleeves, when Elizabeth’s foot slipped into a pothole. She stumbled and grabbed T.J.’s arm, which sent the cane flying, and they both tumbled into the dirt by the roadside.

“Oh, my!“ Stella had walked out into the yard to greet them.

“We are fine.” T.J. chuckled. “A little tumble is good for what ails you.” Elizabeth, however, saw no humor in it. “A little tumble in the hay?” She wondered. But aloud she said, “A little tumble in the poison oak should cure you of that notion.”

“But, your ankles!” Stella said.

“My ankles are fine, no worse than usual.” Elizabeth had jumped back up from the tumble with surprising alacrity, but T.J. was taking his time, and Stella helped him up. Elizabeth watched, stood catching her breath while Stella first offered her hand to TJ, then brushed off the dust.

“You will go to the park’s office first thing in the morning TJ, and tell them to fix those potholes so we won’t be stumbling in the dark all the time,” Elizabeth instructed TJ.

The sun was approaching the horizon, but already the moon was large and bright. T.J. happened to look up and see the light. His moon. Stella’s moon too. And the moon of the little hoot owl in the nearby woods. T.J.’s mouth had opened; he was prepared to say, “Now that’s a real lovers’ moon.” Elizabeth’s sarcastic, clipped voice cut him off; “T.J. never sleeps when there is a full moon.” What Elizabeth had said was true. Too much light pouring in the windows kept T.J. awake, sometimes all night. And when he did sleep, it would be with restless dreams.

As they turned to enter the house, a large crow landed on the roof and began to peck at insects. “Caw. Peck, peck, peck. Caw.” Elizabeth held her ears. “TJ, do something about that awful crow.” T.J. picked up a pebble and threw it, dropping his cane again in the process, but his aim was not good and the rock hit a small attic window. The glass tinkled and Elizabeth frowned. “Throw at the crow, not at the window, you idiot!” Stella, the hostess, only laughed. “That silly old crow always comes at this time of day.” T.J. offered to repair the damage immediately but Stella insisted, “Come in and sit down, and leave that window for tomorrow. I want you to see your birthday present.”

An amateur artist, Stella had created for him a personalized teapot; on it she had engraved images depicting events from T.J.‘s past life: The wagon full of coins, of which he had spoken so often; the image of a man laying bricks; a sailing ship, a steam locomotive crossing a trestle, a small cabin nestled among trees, and more. Elizabeth frowned, but T.J. felt contented. Stella proceeded to fill the new pot with hot tea water. Like TJ’s cabin, Stella’s tiny home had no dining room, so they ate in the kitchen, starting with tea served from his birthday pot.

Stella made a show of pouring her tea leaves into the saucer and reading everyone’s fortune. “You will achieve a great victory in your love life,” she told Elizabeth. Elizabeth snorted. Stella then held T.J.‘s hand and read his palm, “Your adventures have just begun!” she told him. Elizabeth snorted twice this time. “Adventures! A safari to find his false teeth perhaps.” T.J. had misplaced the dentures and lost a half hour looking for them before coming to the party. Stella served the appetizer: crawdad cocktails; the crayfish were fresh from the San Lorenzo River, which flowed behind Stella’s cabin. Elizabeth looked at her husband. “You ask the blessing, T.J.” T.J. hesitated, but Stella rescued him. “Oh, no, it’s my turn.” Stella prayed and then commented, “Isn’t it wonderful how the Lord has blessed us?” T.J. stared at his plate but Elizabeth agreed loudly. “Oh, indeed it is wonderful. It’s only because we believe the Holy Bible literally that God has blessed our great nation.” T.J. sucked in his breath but avoided rolling his eyes as he would have done had Stella not been present.

Aborting religious talk, Elizabeth started an attack on her own eldest daughter, Ruby. “Isn’t it awful, Ruby dating that horrible Texan.” A statement, not a question. “Why, her husband died barely two months ago.” T.J. clicked his false teeth. It had been four months. Still, he said nothing. Stella stood and poured each of them a small glass of wine, and said, “But Ruby seems crazy about him.” Stella was always cheerful like that, optimistic. Dinner had not been served as yet, but Elizabeth had reached over and helped herself -- stuffed her mouth full of pork -- so she was chewing and could not reply.

Ruby was a puzzle. She alone in the family had had black hair, the others were blondes and redheads. She had been wild but intelligent and charming as a child. Of the three girls, Elizabeth had picked only Ruby for charm school, where she had learned to present herself properly, but Ruby had not learned to restrain her wild spirit before the damage was done. Ruby came to age in the roaring twenties, and she was a modernist. As a teenager she had taken several lovers, all soldiers, several years her seniors. Naturally, she become pregnant. Elizabeth sent her to San Diego to live with distant relatives for a few months. The abortion in San Diego had ruined internal organs and she was never able to have her own children after that.

The loss of her child had sobered Ruby however, and, combined with the effects of charm school, the experience had transformed her into a sophisticated, modern lady. She was the only one of the sisters to attend college, and after business college, she resembled her sisters in almost no way. Her speech was refined. Her clothing was expensive. Her posture was upright. Her face was white, her hair black, and her cheeks always bore a touch of red rouge. She was so beautiful and so well spoken that she seemed almost to have come from another family. Still, the others never forgot that Ruby had been impregnated. Had been young, wild, unmarried, and … soiled. For six months she was sent away from home. No amount of money or supposed “class” could wipe away the disgrace, not so far as they were concerned. They never forgave her.

Nothing could stop the steady stream of young and older men who were attracted to Ruby, however, and she had soon married a rich boxer who later died of a sudden heart attack. To his credit, he left an estate worth $250,000. To Ruby’s modest family, that quarter of a million dollars seemed a vast fortune. With the boxer, Ruby had lived in a big house with beautiful gardens. Fine silverware and expensive lace tablecloths graced her table, while the others in the family had to make do. Her sisters had lived in run down apartments and had hemmed old sheets, remaking them into tablecloths. By contrast, Ruby’s place was an exhibition of style: Oriental ceramic elephants, their ears spread and trunks raised heavenward, “grazed” among potted tropical trees. Her indoor flower pots, the works of Chinese artisans, were engraved with flying birds, twisting vines and pink blossoms. Unlike the rest of the family, Ruby had become “well to do.” And refined. Her walls were lined with bookshelves, which were laden with original, signed copies of the noted authors of her day: Upton Sinclair, Jack London and Carl Sandburg to name a few.

In spite of the luxuries that Frank had bestowed upon Ruby, T.J. had disliked the boxer, although T.J. had tolerated Frank well enough … for Ruby‘s sake. In his youth, Frank had been a decent boxer and had earned good money, but he was already 42 years old when he married the twenty-year-old Ruby. As she discovered, Frank was constantly sullen, angry and depressed. The best hours of his life had been those spent in the ring, pounding his opponents senseless. At home he was cantankerous and a bully and Ruby wore dark glasses and long sleeved dresses to cover the marks he left on her body. “Ruby was not happy with Frank,” T.J. ventured. Elizabeth’s eyebrows raised a notch. T.J. ignored them. “Ruby could do worse than re-marrying to old Austin.” It was the first time T.J. had challenged Elizabeth during the meal. “At least Austin treats her like a lady.”

Elizabeth dropped her spoon; it clanked noisily on her dish. She glared at her blouse, which the falling spoon had splashed with red cocktail sauce. Doubly upset, she turned her gaze upon her husband. She thought about yelling, “Now look what you made me do!” Remembering that she was in Stella’s presence, however, she said instead, “Why, of course! Austin should treat her nice. She is a lady.“ Elizabeth sniffed loudly. Snorted. “But he is just after her money. He thinks she’s a bird’s nest on the ground, that’s all.” Stella brought Elizabeth a damp wash cloth to wipe the soup from her dress.

T.J. remained silent now, again speaking only when spoken to. Stella tried to smooth things over. Elizabeth criticized one neighbor or relative after another, seemingly oblivious that she was putting a damper on TJ‘s party. To sweeten things up, Stella served homemade lemon pie for dessert. After pie, everyone helped clear the dishes, except for the teapot, which Stella refilled, and they returned to sit around the kitchen table. “Has anyone heard from anybody/?” Stella asked.

“I almost forgot!” Elizabeth groped for her purse and handed an envelop to TJ. “This letter. I forgot to give it to you this morning.” The letter was an invitation to a reunion with shipmates from TJ’s first sailing ship, a wooden bucket known as “the SS Saint Thomas.” T.J.’s eyes brightened for a second, but then his shoulders slumped. I cannot afford a trip to San Diego.” Nevertheless, he had been pleasantly surprised to hear that some of the original crew were still alive; he folded the letter carefully and put it inside his coat pocket.

A lull in conversation followed, rather like the calm before a storm. Stella acted quickly. “Let’s cheer things up with a game.” The legs of Stella’s chair screeched on the linoleum floor and she rose, going to the cabinet. “I’m tired of Canasta. That’s all we do, Canasta, Canasta.” She turned back to them, holding a Ouija board. Elizabeth squealed in mock horror, “I will not touch that evil thing!”

“It’s all superstition anyway,” T.J. said.

Not to be deterred, Stella smiled and looked directly into TJ’s eyes. “Ask the Ouija a question. Go ahead. Try it.” He declined. “I won’t, but if I did believe in a Ouija board, I would ask to hear from my old friends again, from my cousin Georgie, and …” his eyes wandered to one side as he recalled his old chums, “and Simm.” He hesitated. “And … Claire.”

At the mention of the name “Claire,” Elizabeth jumped out of her chair, her hip bumping the table. The teapot, dashed to the floor, shattered into a jagged puzzle of broken pieces. Tea had splattered Elizabeth’s shoes and, at the same time, Elizabeth had shrieked, “Claire! That … whore! That Mormon slut! ” But the words were drowned out, because, just at that moment, far beneath the earth’s surface, the pressure of two continental plates had built up to the breaking point. The earth emitted a rumble and then a roar and the cabin began to shake. The Ouija board jumped off the table, books fell from the shelves, and ceramic knick knacks scattered on the floor, in shards. The tremor lasted only a few seconds. The lights blinked but the electricity remained on. When the quake was over, a single light bulb blinked above the table, swayed back and forth on its cord, not unlike a fragile glass head, suspended on a wire noose. Thus, the party ended.

***
Author's Note: The above was a chapter from an experimental novel by F. Ellsworth Lockwood.

The book incorporates adventure, romance, and spirituality in the saga of a boy named T.J., who runs away from home at age fourteen in search of freedom and self determination. T.J. navigates a transition from wooden sailing ships to steamships and locomotives, yet the end of his life is more surprising (and more adventuresome) than his first boyhood prank, in which he jumped aboard a rag barge only to fall into the hands of a cantankerous “rag lady” and her skinny daughter.
Please include your comments. Also, if you are a book publisher, agent or editor, or experienced (published) novelist, I especially welcome your insights, as I am looking to be published.

CHAPTER FOUR: STELLA 1943

2010-03-31T17:38:00.001-07:00

Stella would be on her font porch, waiting on for T.J. as usual. Clouds drifted overhead and T.J ambled unaware, with no presentiment of the disaster that would transport him to another world.

She sensed no premonition of his impending fate, nor of the terrible event that would sweep T.J. out of this life, flushing him down life’s drain spout like a leaf in a rain gutter. Adrift in that unknown sea of “death.” Some call it a preamble to real death … real death supposedly being that final state, which some men (of the type more religious than scientific) have also called “the second death.”

Likewise Stella waited joyously on the front porch, her feet clinging to a cold redwood deck, her hands resting lightly on the porch handrails, and as she looked beyond the wooden steps that led to a gravel driveway, watching for T.J. to appear, she enjoyed the day’s last rays of sunshine until the sky suddenly darkened and the first drops of rain descended from heaven. Stella hoped the storm would pass quickly. To her, the eternal optimist, the breeze seemed friendly, detaching brown, red, and yellow leaves from the trees. Those leaves joined the millions that composed the random artwork of decomposition, the fallen foliage that makes forest soil so soft and spongy.

All Paradise Pointe homes, including Stella’s cabin, seemed like dwarf-houses, the tiny people-boxes, like bird-nests-on-the ground amongst towering redwood trees. As she waited, the winds picked up, nudging branches which in turn scratched the roof with rough caresses. Within two hours, however, the storm would hit full force, pounding, scourging and punishing the attic’s eve. The wind, emitting moans like the callings of spirits, would blow away all other thoughts but that the house was to be destroyed. But that would be an empty threat, at least for the time being. On this night. Branches would fall, crushing other cabins’ roofs with a sound like the crunching of wooden ships which were breaking apart in a storm at sea. But morning would come and sun would shine, more brightly than usual in contrast to the squall of the preceding night.

At last, from her perch on the porch, Stella saw T.J. coming up the hill, the wind whipping his coattails, his hand holding onto his hat to keep it from blowing away. He mounted the stairs and They embraced, enjoying contrast between cool surrounding air and the warmth of each others bodies. She then grabbed his arm, pulling him into the house, out of the wind, just as the first few drops of rain pelted them and wetted porch.

Some time after midnight T.J. was awakened by dreams of his seagoing days. The nauseated feeling that his ship was going down would gradually dissipate as his eyes adjusted to the light and he recognized ghostly but familiar outlines, the shadows of the structures of Stella’s room: The carefully-oiled, oak, chest-of-drawers, the freshly-pressed white doilies of hand-stitched lace. The family portraits, hanging neatly. A decently framed imitation of Edward Hugh’s painting, “Heart of Snow,” and the fluffy, white comforters that billowed around himself and Stella, asleep beside him.

Then he remembered the letter he had received from Elizabeth. Such glowing, early-morning awakenings would be happening no more. Life had not been going well for Elizabeth. The house payment she could no longer make. Poor health prevented her from working even if she could have found a job, and doctor bills had mounted. She had nowhere to turn but to her ex-husband, who was actually not her ex but her husband, because they had never divorced

The letter presented a dilemma for T.J.. Once Elizabeth arrived, T.J. would have to sleep only in his own cabin -- with his own wife. The wife of his youth would demand her rights. Certainly, he could move in with Stella, but that was almost heard of in those days, and especially so in Paradise Pointe. Besides, if he did leave his cabin and move in with Stella, Elizabeth would expose him to the Park Association, would raise a fuss. If she could prove that he had been sleeping with Stella, she might even succeed in having him booted out of the park, for Paradise Pointe was something like of a religious fraternity, even though it was not restricted to any one denomination.

Yes, Elizabeth’s arrival would doom his relationship with Stella. Instead of opening his eyes each morning to view the minor luxuries of Stella’s dainty world, his dreary eyes would be forced to squint to the blurry sight of his own, splintery chest-of-drawers. The rattling brass bars at the footboard of his too-narrow bed would jingle every time he moved. A single mirror would continue hanging lopsidedly on the wall, giving him the same distorted view of himself it had always had. His socks, and Elizabeth’s leg-wrappings strewn about the floor, would complement the dreary picture of the “new” life to which he would be awakening.

Stella and T.J. had become such happy neighbors. They had been “just friends” for a couple of years untill, one sunny day, Stella had arrived to find T.J. in his cabin, seated amongst piles of hand-picked mushrooms and not a few toadstools; he had been drinking black and orange English pekoe tea at his small table, and he had offered her a cupful. His kitchen furniture was but a rickety pine table and two chairs. The green-and-white, lead-laden paint had flaked off in places, leaving the bare, exposed wood to turn gray in the misty mountain air. They visited. Upon leaving, Stella had kissed T.J. for the first time, though only on the forehead, a light friendship kiss. The next week the kiss had moved to the cheek, and the week after that, they had kissed on the mouth. Unknown to them, even while they kissed, beneath their feet, tremendous pressure had built up as to two continental plates vied to occupy the same space. Geologists have since come to define the area as a “strike-slip fault,” for Paradise Pointe occupied an area along that treacherous boundary where the Pacific and North American plates continually grind past each other, the cause of numerous earthquakes. Inevitable and unknown, an earthquake was in the making. On the other hand, the earthquake that Elizabeth would cause was all too evident.

They simply could not process it mentally: No more visual caresses, no warm, loving embraces with Stella, no more Canasta-and-wine alone. No more sitting on her porch and listening to the hoot-hooting of the owl, for Elizabeth, was plotting, planning to return; she was intent on moving back in with T.J.. And knowing him as only an ex-wife can know her man, she was certain that after initial protests and misgivings he would give in, and would allow her to stay. Stella saw it coming, too. Knew the outcome before it happened. T.J.’s morals, his ethics and his conscience would win in the end. If anything, Stella was the more spiritually aware of the three of them. She told herself sadly, “The relationship has been against my own values too.” Feeling upset at the thought, she excused herself to T.J. and went to the bathroom to be alone. “I had no business getting involved with a married man,” she thought, and she cried, sniffling quietly so as not to alarm T.J. “According to my own bible, the relationship was wrong from the start,” she thought, and in the privacy of the bathroom she wept silently.

As much as she loved T.J., she realized the relationship was, after all, against one of her core beliefs, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.“ She was not repentant, but she knew when she was beat. “There is nothing I can do now but savor these last few hours.” The real pain would come later. So she went back to the bedroom where T.J. was already buried beneath the covers. There they cuddled up beneath her fluffy quilts for one last time and said no more about the future. Instead, Stella read to him from the bible. The book “Song of Solomon,” the sole book in the bible speaking of romantic love. “By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him but I found him not.” And as she read, she suddenly could not stop her tears from streaking those graphically penned pages, and T.J. was not able to console her. They both knew. “It’s all over, isn’t it,?” T.J. admitted, and they clung to each other like two tender, albeit naughty, children. Long after midnight they finally went to sleep in each other’s arms.

***
Author's Note: The above was a chapter from an experimental novel by F. Ellsworth Lockwood.

The book incorporates adventure, romance, and spirituality in the saga of a boy named T.J., who runs away from home at age fourteen in search of freedom and self determination. T.J. navigates a transition from wooden sailing ships to steamships and locomotives, yet the end of his life is more surprising (and more adventuresome) than his first boyhood prank, in which he jumped aboard a rag barge only to fall into the hands of a cantankerous “rag lady” and her skinny daughter.

Please include your comments. Also, if you are a book publisher, agent or editor, or experienced (published) novelist, I especially welcome your insights, as I am looking to be published.

CHAPTER THREE: LEVIATHON

2010-02-26T13:33:00.000-08:00

Awakened by his nightmares, T.J. rolled over and fell sleep again, but fitfully. His roof had sprouted a new leak, and the drips of water splashed on his face, running down his chin and wetting the pillow.
Meanwhile, he dreamed that he was in the ocean, and that a grappling hook had snagged his armpit, pulling him through miles of seaweed, the pimpled kelp leaves slipping across his body like rough but slithery hands.

When morning came, T.J. lay in bed exhausted, listening to the rain. T.J.‘s cabin nestled on a steep hillside in the redwood foothills near Paradise Point, and after the separation from his wife Elizabeth, Paradise Point had seemed a perfect place to get away from her -- and stay away. From the living room window T.J. viewed the ocean to the west, and to the east a redwood forest. A dirt footpath went winding toward the north between sea and forest, now through giant trees, then through sand dunes and back again. Wild, pea-sized strawberries, brown hazel nuts and, after spring rains, mushrooms, grew, free for the picking.

True, the wild harvest ripened in the midst of poison oak, stinging nettles, and, during hot weather, amongst nests of aggressive yellow jackets. But that was nature. T.J. loved the redwoods with their giant trunks with the red bark hanging in hairy shanks resembling, he supposed, prehistoric animal fur. Every day he walked thirty minutes along the fern-lined, hillside path.

“Lovely dark and deep,” T.J. mumbled. (He often quoted the poet, Robert Frost.) Though T.J. liked the forest, he loved even more the sea coast, and here he had found the best of both.

Although T.J. was an American citizen, a touch of English still clung to his bones; with the sea in his blood, adventure in his heart, and with a subtle, if at times sarcastic, humor, he would often say things like, “You would kick if you were hung with a new rope.”

Of the less satiable foods he would say, “It’s good for what ails ye.“

He was English but, one might say, “Not British.” As a young lad and merchant sailor, he had turned his back on England, forever. Even now, hiking northward along the path, he loved seeing the frequent glimpses of the Pacific Ocean, but he never considered crossing the sea to visit his homeland. There was no hope of seeing family again, as will be made clear later in the book.

As a youngster he had been gone to the sea for it’s promise of freedom, and for the allure of adventure, but after the initial excitement of his first sailing voyage, he grown to both love, and fear the sea. In his old age, he had come full circle, relishing the romantic memories of his youth; he barely recalled the forgotten rigors, fears and hardships of sea.

Nevertheless, there were times like now, when the old fears revived. While he listened to the sea now, waves beat, drum-like, with roars and splashing. War messages pounded on the shore, the threatening cadences of the Eternal, or of the near-Eternal, or the all-encompassing code of nature, or the undulating rhythms that evolution wears into the soul of man no less certainly than the legends and the drumbeats of the (no doubt coffee-colored) hands. Hands of the relentless gods. People who live too far from the shore never know that fear. Never feel the vibrations of the earthquakes nor the terror of earth vibrating with a roar, as if the land had decided to shake the coast off into the sea, to break off and dispose of the coast (and its residents) as one discards an old toenail.

T.J.'s father had been a lay leader in the Episcopalian church, and even though T.J. rejected his father’s religion, a vague notion of God had always filled T.J.'s thoughts. Like a mystical fog, it had fueled his fears, inspired his hopes … and his dread.

He often felt empty, destitute of faith, but whenever he tried to make up his mind not to believe, he would think he felt some mysterious Presence, resembling a god or gods, or invisible shadows would flit cross the borders of his inner vision, like demons or evil spirits, and he would shiver uneasily. In his younger days, sitting between his parents in the pews, he would silently deny God, secretly cursing and blaspheming, and thrill to the danger of it all, half expecting immediate retribution at the hands of an angry God.

Later, when he was in his twenties, he would think the same blasphemous thoughts and immediately he would hear, or rather imagine, a multitude of reproaching voices: his mother, his father, a kindly Christian sea captain, his lover Claire, his once best friend, Cimmeron. Cim, though not a Christian, had never exhibited cynicism, never expressed antagonism against God or “the gods,” as the case might be.

T.J.‘s daring cousin Georgie, on the other hand, was openly hostile against every God and all gods.

“If you are going to think it you might as well say it, admit your unbelief," Georgie had challenged him. "Say it out loud. Say 'I am a fearless sinner and I am against all gods, devils, ghosts and demons!’”

But T.J. could never bring himself to do that. T.J. assumed that Georgie and all the other ghosts were probably long since deceased. Only their unholy ghosts remained, or so it seemed. Their memories sulked and lurked in T.J.’s mind.

"But," you might object, "the mind is not some kind of “other place,“ or “other faculty,” not something separate from the body bur rather a combination of images impressed in the brain cells through combinations of lasting impressions, impulses or sensory “data.“

True perhaps. If so, T.J. had been plagued with a too-vivid imagination, some would say. For example, while T.J. was yet in his thirties, he imagined he could feel beneath him the so-called “foundation of his being.” The feeling when expressed as a thought was silly he knew, he could feel something, like a Divine Essence, and he was either ecstatic. Or he “saw” in his dreams a Being of Light, in which case he was awed. But then there were those other times, when he was terrorized by a Being of Great Darkness and Evil Power. In those times great darkness, and they were many, he felt alone and afraid and insignificant.

THE LAST DAYS

Thus it was that, on the final Sunday morning of his life, having been awakened by his nightmares, T.J. lay thinking about his father’s religion. Episcopalian. “I have lived a good life,” T.J. said aloud, as if in answer to his father’s accusatory stare. In rebuttal to his father, he silently reminded himself, “Life itself is the only thing that is truly Holy.”

It was then he noticed that the rain had stopped and the sun had appeared, dimly at first, in the bedroom window and the warbling of California quail outside his window, and he missed hearing Stella’s soft snores that only the day before had mingled with their good natured clucking, for by then Stella, his lady friend, had begun spending the nights with him on occasion. The quail clucked and chuckled and he could hear them rushing away through the underbrush singing their morning “prayers,” as Stella had sometimes claimed. “Prayers?” T.J. now wondered. “Prayers? Or is that their morning ranting, cursing, and blaspheming? Their daily denials of faith?” Though he had become somewhat deaf in the latter years, T.J. had always enjoyed the sounds of quail, and of life in general. Some of his fondest memories went back to his childhood, having been sent to bed early when company had come to visit with his parents. He lay in bed and listening to the blessed tones and sundry voices, hearing only the sounds but not the words, the lightness of laughter and the sonorous overtones of the Jewish neighbor who had come for the evening. Whether Blessing or Cursing, the quail sounded better on a Sunday morning than church choirs, or so he had long since decided. And he was glad that he had moved to Paradise Pointe. Away from the city that Elizabeth adored. Away from the holier-than-thou church just down the street. Away from the noise and confusion of the big city. However, he soon learned, regardless of where he might live, he carried within himself the babble of his own confusion.

As he daydreamed, his mind wandered back to his seagoing days. On a ship, out of sight of land, it was easy to become superstitious, T.J. knew. He recalled the sound of waves lapping on the wooden sides of his first merchant ship, little waves seeming so innocent, so benevolent, as if the hands of God were slapping friendly “hellos” at the hull. As he was soon to learn, during storms the slapping hands became pounding fists, battering like the clubs of some malicious crew of pirate-devils. The sailors inside wrapped their arms and legs around their hammocks and prayed to whichever god’s they held to. Sometimes they cried, very silently so no others would hear, but begging -- whatever or whoever -- that they might make it safely through the night, and they tried to sleep without being tossed to the deck. Tried not to allow the other men to see their fear, and, sometimes, they hid so many tears in their pillows that they woke with the stinging taste of tear-salt upon their cracked lips. At times like those, they would vow to themselves that if they ever made it back safely to land, they would never to go to sea again.

But the sailors always did return to their livelihoods at sea. They needed the money and, besides, sea was in their blood. Take Ike, for instance; that “old salt” had been the only one who greeted T.J. as he had boarded his first transcontinental ship, the St. Thomas. Ike had shaken his hand heartily, introduced himself, and begun asking personal questions. Upon hearing that T.J. was English he promptly nicknamed him “Limey.” Ike pressed on to ask of T.J.’s likes and dislikes, his beliefs and then, speedily changed the course of conversation to religion. Ike commenced to solemnly warn T.J. which taverns were the roughest, which seas ran the highest, and which Gods were the worst to encounter, and which spiritual perils seamen must avoid above all others. He especially emphasized Neptune, that cantankerous old god of storms at sea and of earthquakes on land. “Neptune is a jealous god,” Ike warned. Ike had his opinions about women too: “Never fall in love with a woman, Limey and, never, ever leave the seaman’s life for the easy life on shore. Neptune won’t like it. He will seek you out and reek revenge!” Later, when T.J. had dismissed the advice, had gone to “land lubbering” and living at the foot of a coastal mountain range. Oh yes, T.J. had long since dismissed those stories as myths and fables, yet during winter storms when great trees came tumbling down the mountainsides, branches crashing, thumping and snapping with sounds resembling the breaking of ship‘s masts, T.J. would think of Ike’s warnings in spite of himself.

***

The cabins in Paradise, were few and far between and most of them vacant except for a week or two in the summer. People would go to Paradise Point for “spiritual retreats“ during which they sought to “fill up“ with God before going back out into the world of homes and businesses and schools. Then they would leave and the park would be the same quiet, damp, green place that it had been before. The noisy visitors always arrived in a hurry and quickly unpacked their suitcases and grabbed their brooms; the unused cabins required cleaning after months of disuse. They came with their bibles and with their pillows and blankets, and enough food for a week stuffed in the trunks of their cars. They hastened about cleaning and setting up house. Evenings and Sundays they went to the chapel to “listen” for the “voice of God,” but after a few hours -- or more usually , a few minutes -- God apparently would have said his piece and they would slip away with novels to read, sitting on beach towels along the shady banks of the Saint Lorenzo River . The San Lorenzo was a fitting place for such reading, seeing as the river was named in honor of Saint Lawrence, the third century Roman deacon who in due time became “Patron of Librarians.”

Other seekers, those with less of a literary bent, would suddenly produce fishing poles (seemingly out of nowhere) and lawn chairs, which they would also take to the river. Those who neither read nor fished simply sat listening to the running of water over the rocks. This was prior to the advent of pocket-sized radios, of course, let alone electronic games. In those days one could actually listen to the silence of the forest without such distractions; rather than reading constant text messages, watched the clouds passing by, and. they listened to the wind blowing through the treetops. Their hearts (or what they called hearts) were tuned in to the calls of stellar jays rather than the computerized voice that says, “You have mail.” To be sure there were tourists, even back then. Like crows devastating corn fields, the visitors would flock in to Paradise Point in the summer, and just as suddenly they would flock out and the park would be back to normal again. Quiet. Peaceful … or perhaps, lonesome.

Without someone to love, without a life partner, even Paradise was a lonesome place. T.J. had lay alone in his own bed, the one with the brass headboard. T.J.‘s hand occasionally strayed up shook the brass bars, and he listened to them rattle in their sockets. For hours the only other sound was the ticking of the clock and the constant drumming of rain on the thin cabin roof. A single rainy night could be pleasant, but then there were those times when the rain poured down day after day, night after night. Those were the nights when the more imaginative folk could swear that some Devil, Beast or monster, scientific or not, had arisen to beat upon the earth. Beat hard, like the hooves of Neptune’s horses, trampling forests, breaking half-ton branches from trees, flooding rivers and stirring vicious breakers, strewing the beaches with driftwood logs, and with coral from thousands of miles away, and with piles of kelp that smelled of the sea. And along with the superstitious T.J. listened in fear. Even one redwood tree, if it crashed upon the roof, would send his cabin tumbling down the mountain, where the shack would then break up into a heap of weathered scrap on the rocky beach below. But it was not to happen. Yet. The absurd and confused thought came to him, “Mine hour is not yet come.”

AFTER THE RAIN

Ah, the sunshine and the rain. Smell the flowers! The moist humus of the forest floor drifts up to one‘s nose and thus, humans become too accustomed to good luck. The waves roll in, and they roll back out again; they stay within their set bounds. The earthquake will happen, but not here. Common folk begin to bask in the fake comfort of these false boundaries. In order to go about our normal routines and duties, we simply must trust that those “safe” cycles will always continue. We trust that nature will always be kind even if the gods-- gods as we imagine them -- are not. Just so, the storm was one of those short, pleasant rains that cleanses the air without dampening the spirits. After the little tempest had passed, a freshness filled the air, and sunshine poured through the openings in the forest. T.J. and Stella spent another afternoon and evening together. It would be their last opportunity to do so, for at noon they walked to the park’s post office and picked up the daily mail. T.J. looked through his letters and frowned. Stella quipped, “What’s the matter, nothing but bills?”
“Ho ho ho,” T.J. replied gloomily. “Bills would be much more welcome than this.” And he handed her the top letter. It was from Elizabeth, from whom T.J. had been separated for several years. “Well I’ll be … no news is good news!” Stella said. And sure enough, the letter served notice: T.J.’s wife, Elizabeth was on her way to Paradise Point, and planned to move in with T.J.. Permanently.

***

That evening both T.J. and Elizabeth felt depressed, but they went ahead with their card game. Stella cut the deck. “If there is a God, he must be always moving,” Stella said. T.J. noted mentally the word “if.“ Stella had never before used the word “if” with reference to God. He wondered if he had been a bad influence on her faith. It had always seemed to T.J. that God was the one and only certainty in Stella’s life. “The tide moves back and forth twice a day, a watery pendulum,” T.J. conceded … “but the tides are due to the moon’s pull, laws of nature, not to any God, devil, or spirits.” he thought to himself, and he silently complimented himself for being so scientific. So modern.

“But look at how the stars move across the sky every night,” Stella said as if having read his mind. “Doesn’t that make you believe in God? How do you explain that?“ In actuality, T.J. knew, it was the earth itself that rotated, the stars being fixed in the sky. But rather than turn the evening into an argument about philosophy, he said nothing. Stella provided him with spiritual, if at times illogical, options. “The clocks of the gods,” he finally said. “ are in the cycles of nature.” There were the strange menstrual cycles that governed sexuality and the giving of birth, and then there was the greatest cyclical mystery of all, the mystery of life, and death, birth and, perhaps, rebirth. God, if there were any, might be as regular as the moon and the sun, steady as winter and summer, and as unyielding in the carrying out of life’s certainties.

“Not gods, the One True God!” Stella exclaimed. T.J.’s turn now. “But then again,” T.J. said and played a card, “isn’t it just as possible that God would be unpredictable, as violent and chaotic, as a sudden storm at sea?”

The next time his turn came around he won the game, but he was still worried about losing in the other game, the game of life … and of love. Life held so many questions for him and as a youth, in view of history, with so many tragic world events, he had often wondered “Why?” As if on cue, Stella‘s eyes twinkled as she said, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God. And you, my dear, are no fool.” T.J. gasped. “She read my mind!” he imagined. All his life he had hoped that, some way or another, old age would bring wisdom, that after so many years of seeking and being open minded, he would finally know. Knowing! What a gift that would be. Knowing, not in the sense that one “knows” doctrines or teachings, but in the sense that one just knows something. Knows it the same way that he knows what time is or, light or gravity, though he cannot describe those in mathematical terms. Fool, yes. Fool he had been in his childhood, and foolish in his old age; his heart had not found wisdom or knowledge it seemed, but instead his doubts had appeared only to grow, to wrap their weight around his heart as if to sink him to the depths of the sea. On this day he could not fight off thinking in his heart, “There is no God.” Yet his doubt was never complete. His skepticism never took command enough to be the captain of his soul and set him free from his fears, he continued to doubt but then he would begin doubt his doubts. And so he had done for over seventy years now.

“I still pray. I suppose I am just hedging my bets,” T.J. admitted. “But if I had to get on an airplane or go on a sailing trip, I know I would pray. When the wind blows, and you feel the anchors hitting the sides of the ship, you pray.” The discussion then turned to the dreams, dreams that had constantly disturbed his sleep, for as long as he could remember.

“Why can’t I have just a few years of peace and solitude and … just being? Just living as a human being?” he asked. “Why must I be a Christian or a Moslem or a Jew or a Buddhist or a … Why all this struggling with gods and demons that exist only in my own mind? And why do I continue to put up with Elizabeth anyway? These are modern times. I should have been divorced years ago.” Stella remained silent. Gave him space to vent.

At first after separating from Elizabeth, T.J. had believed that he was the luckiest man on earth, that he had sailed into his final refuge at Paradise Point, a harbor where he would be safe at last from all the past storms of his life. But the dreams fears and doubts had returned. He did not believe in omens, yet the persistent thought had occurred that these dreams were drawing him both backward into the past and, at the same time, they were foreshadowing some future event. A dangerous gathering of some sort. A reunion or some kind of official ceremony where he would be singled out, publicly embarrassed, humiliated and punished. An inevitable experience for which he held, not so much fear as … dread. He looked Stella in the eye. “Stella, what’s going to happen to me when I die?” Stella did not hesitate. “Why, you are not going to die, my dear! Are you feeling ill? You look good to me. Besides, God is merciful,” she said. But seeing the seriousness in his eyes, she added, “Don’t worry, you are in good hands, my dear. Trust in God!” God notwithstanding, when T.J. turned in for the night, the best thought that he was able to conjure was, “ Dust to dust, and ashes to ashes.” But what of those who drown at sea? “Slime,” he told himself, and dozed off to a restless night during which he dreamed of riding for hours on end upon a sea creature the identity of which he somehow felt he knew … without knowing why, he believed that the beast had once been known as … “Leviathan.”

***

Author's Note: The above was a chapter from an experimental novel by F. Ellsworth Lockwood.

The book incorporates adventure, romance, and spirituality in the saga of a boy named T.J., who runs away from home at age fourteen in search of freedom and self determination. T.J. navigates a transition from wooden sailing ships to steamships and locomotives, yet the end of his life is more surprising (and more adventuresome) than his first boyhood prank, in which he jumped aboard a rag barge only to fall into the hands of a cantankerous “rag lady” and her skinny daughter.
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