The Sound of Silence (Fall Equinox 2015)

The Sound of Silence (Fall Equinox 2015) - a reading (on YouTube)

Just over fourteen years ago, I was standing out in our front yard listening. All the planes had been grounded. Even living many miles from a major or even a minor airport, I was struck by how much background noise that normally emanated from the sky had simply disappeared. It became more notable in its absence.

Even traffic on the nearby four-lane roads sounded light. Our house is bracketed by several major roads within half a mile in three directions. The slightest breeze from the east, north or south brings the monotonous low hum of tires treading pavement. Few people were moving around that day if they could avoid it. Like a major holiday, most hunkered down wherever they wanted to be.

Uncertainty tinged the air like a corrosive chemical spill. Like the aftermath of a mass migraine, the shock and numbness of the previous day’s pain had not worn off. Media outlets had exhausted their sources of new information and devolved into increasingly dramatic speculation. Rumors surfaced in real time only to submerge hours later when someone finally did a fact check or sought official confirmation. Video that most of us never wanted to see again played on continuous loop in the background of every broadcast like a traumatic childhood memory we couldn’t get unstuck from our collective consciousness.

Almost everyone I know remembers September 11^th. I remember September 12^th.

That morning, I had turned off all the receivers. I knew from previous crises that no new news would be forthcoming soon. The professionals were gathering and sorting through information as they prepared for a response. No one knew exactly what would happen next. Events had spiraled well beyond my control.

Still a bit shell-shocked after spending the previous twenty-four hours cataloguing scenarios, I sat with my coffee at the dining room table looking out the front window. A flash of red drew my eyes toward the hibiscus hedge. A cardinal flitted through the foliage, playing hide and seek among the scarlet blossoms. A blue jay soon joined him, sparking a bit of a territorial skirmish.

Then I noticed the scurry of squirrels chasing each other up, down and around the pine tree and across the front lawn. One noshed on a mushroom like an ear of corn in the shadows of the hedgerow. None of these animals either knew or cared what was going on, or what it meant to me. Their lives went on uninterrupted. I drew comfort from the thought.

That’s when I wandered out into the front yard to soak in the silence. I knew I would want to remember that day, that I was unlikely to experience another with the white noise of civilization missing. Where the softer sounds in the symphony of life could finally rise above the diminished noise floor. I found the music that bled through that previously unheard silence reassuring. Our daily anxieties don’t matter in the larger context of life.

Since then, I’ve learned to take solace in silence as a way to regain perspective after a crisis. Or so I thought.

I spent much of this summer shrouded in a different kind of silence, one that felt more judgmental than reassuring. As I’ve said before, silence often has a quality, one I’ve grown accustomed to interpreting.

When people don’t know what to say, they don’t say anything. They quickly adopt a don’t ask, don’t tell policy with anything that makes them uncomfortable, anything they don’t want to think about. They convince themselves they aren’t that close, that anything they have to say would be unwanted. That others will reach out so that they don’t have to. That all you really want is to be alone.

Most times, they are wrong.

After I posted the Summer Solstice message, a profound silence descended. A few people touched base with us as a couple but only a handful with me as an individual. People whose friendships I thought I’d cultivated remained silent. As if to say nothing I’d gone through carried any weight. I knew it was coming. Not the first time. And probably not the last. But rarely have I felt so isolated and alone.

So when record summer downpours unexpectedly cooled the air outside from subtropical to something more temperate, I snuck out on the porch to smoke. Just loaded up my pipe with black Cavendish and sat staring at the green across the ditch, listening to the rain on the metal roof. Watching the odd squirrel take shelter on the gutter spout beneath the eaves. Stroking Nyala or Mara when they curled up beside me. Time slowed to the pace of smoke rings drifting away on the faintest currents.

I didn’t return inside feeling refreshed or rejuvenated so much as if I’d paused my fall farther down the chasm for a few precious moments. My focus was shot, my motivation faltered. Consistent stretches of writing were measured in minutes, not hours, days or weeks.  I spent most of the summer struggling to regain my balance through simulated, secondhand human interactions: watching movies, reading books and playing games. Or just synchronized napping with Nyala who rarely left my side.

I still find I am more easily exhausted, as if I’m recovering from a physical wound. Even now I don’t want to write this. I’d rather crawl back into those entertainments. Not because what I have to say is so difficult. Because saying it feels completely futile. And largely, it will go unread.

Several times over the past three months, I almost stopped writing completely. I came close to tearing down all my sites and walking away from the brand I’ve built. Retreating from revealing my thoughts and experiences to an at best ambivalent audience. Echoing silence with silence.

Most, but not all, of that temptation has passed. Though in all honesty, some days the coin remains in the air. But writing is something I do instinctively, for myself and for Karen. I need to remind myself that everyone else is just along for the ride.

So while the balance between light and darkness has returned to something nearing normal, the intervening silence has likely shaped me in unanticipated ways. In music, the rests define the notes. In writing, empty spaces create the words. In art, it’s best to focus on light or shadow, and avoid the middle values that just muddy up the eye.

But as I learned fourteen years ago, what I do or think doesn’t really matter in a larger context. In the words of Amul Kumar, a professional photographer and friend whose creative instincts I very much admire: “In three words I can sum up everything I know about life: It moves on.”


© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III

Mayport (Lughnasa 2015)

Mayport (Lughnasa 2015) - a reading (on YouTube)

Growing up, I was always interested in seeing places few other people had seen. I’m not sure exactly why. Maybe because of the nature of my father’s work on nuclear warheads that he couldn’t talk much about. Maybe because that work called him away to places I’d never heard of, places he seemed to enjoy more than being with his family. Strange how the mind turns something negative into something romantic.

That’s how I came to be aboard the USS Leyte Gulf docked in Mayport the summer the first Gulf War started. I’d volunteered go to sea to support testing of the prototype communication system my company had designed. Which meant getting the equipment up and running before the ship sailed to Norfolk a few weeks later.

By the time I arrived, two double racks of electronic equipment had been installed in a shelter that was bolted to the deck of the cruiser, between a pair of Phalanx anti-missile defense guns, beside the forward smokestacks just behind the bridge. Our job was to get it at least minimally operational and talking to the high-power amplifier and the directional antenna up on the mast. To do that, we needed logistical support from the ship’s communications section.

High summer had officially kicked off in north Florida. The weather was steamy, hot and humid. Doubly so in the shipyard where the concrete and steel soaked up the sun then radiated that stored energy deep into the night. The kind of weather where tempers are prone to flare.

After dropping off my stuff at the hotel and picking up a badge at base security, I turned up at the ship. We’d been briefed at the office by a former sailor on Navy protocol and a few things to expect. Only some of which prepared us for the world we, as civilians, were about to enter.

After a brief tour of the ship and the routes from the pier to and from our shelter, I remember being told to grab some dinner before we got started. Other priorities and a compressed schedule dictated we do most of our work at night.

Sometime after dark, the guy I was working with, my former boss, needed to talk to an NCO in the communications section about something we needed. I don’t remember if it was about power, chilled water or getting our equipment’s crypto loaded with the new day’s key.  I hadn’t been down there yet so it seemed like a good opportunity for him to show me where it was.

The Leyte Gulf is over five hundred feet long and fifty-five feet wide with a crew of roughly four hundred. Somewhere in the maze of narrow corridors and steep stairs linking its decks, we got turned around. One corridor was blocked off as the crew prepared to redo the chipped paint flooring.

Eventually, we exited to the bow and came back toward the communications section from the other direction. As I said, it was dark outside. Most of the corridors were dimly lit, though not quite so bad as a darkened ship I would learn later. As we drew closer to our goal, the overpowering scent of noxious, industrial chemicals from the chipped paint flooring grew stronger and more disorienting.

Finally, we came to a compartment that was roped off with yellow plastic tape like you see at a crime scene. Emanating from the compartment was the overwhelming odor of the chemical solvent they used to dissolve the chipped paint before they relaid it. By now, I was dizzy and had trouble making my eyes focus straight.

Peering inside from the threshold of the doorway, I saw a compartment about the size of our living room and dining room. Old style, chunky, Government Issue steel desks were arrayed throughout with steel bookcases stocked with black two- and three-inch binders interspersed between. All the furniture was painted a uniform gun-metal gray, nearly indistinguishable from the walls and ceilings. The only color was the chipped paint flooring, a mottled mix of primary blue and white. 

The compartment was occupied by half a dozen sailors dressed in blue work uniforms and one lieutenant in khakis, probably a JG. None of them looked older than twenty-three. Each squatted atop one of the desks. All the chairs had been removed when the new, still setting floor had been relaid. But that inconvenience didn’t mean these men could stop working.

My coworker called to the NCO we needed to coordinate with, a petty officer first class I think. The man hopped from desktop to desktop until he reached the door, the same way as when a group of kids declared the floor had turned to lava. Even as he spoke with us, he kept a sharp eye on the other sailors in the compartment, like a veteran elementary school teacher who expected trouble as soon as his back was turned. The lieutenant ignored us and everyone else as if living in his own little world where none of us existed.

Midway through our conversation with our contact, the lieutenant asked one of the other sailors in the compartment to pass him a notebook. Immediately, our contact turned upon that sailor.

“HAND the notebook to the lieutenant,” he instructed with an iron glare as if addressing an incorrigible child, “DON’T throw it.”

Thinking he had made himself clear, the NCO turned his attention back to us. I watched as the grinning sailor, probably all of nineteen, picked up the black notebook in question and swung it with a motion like he was warming up for a throw. The lieutenant held out his arms, apparently overriding the NCO’s instructions.

The motion must have caught the NCO’s attention. He broke off our conversation mid-word and turned upon his insubordinate ward just as the notebook arced through the air. The kid’s lob was good, hitting the lieutenant squarely on the hands. But the lieutenant apparently had concentrated more on his studies in high school than on baseball or football. He fumbled the catch, swatting the notebook up before clipping it with another hand in a failed recovery and finally knocking it squarely onto the still damp floor where it landed with a squishy thump.

The NCO’s reaction came almost faster than the speed of light. “What the HELL did I just tell you?”

He followed it up with a blistering stream of invective laced with profanity the likes of which I hadn’t heard since the first time my mother tore apart my sister’s room by throwing everything she owned into the center of the floor as a lesson on neatness.

My eyes grew wide. I flashed back hard. I was scared and I wasn’t the target of this man’s ire. I exchanged a look with my coworker. We both froze. Neither of us knew quite what to do.

The lieutenant, however, carried on like nothing had happened, back in his own little world. Squatting lower on his desk, he reached down and retrieved the notebook, wiped off its cover, then opened it and set about continuing his work, completely oblivious.

Suddenly, like a parent remembering his misbehaving child was out in front of company, the NCO turned to us, as composed as a judge, and asked conversationally without a trace of annoyance, “You gentlemen are up in the shelter on the O4, right?”

It was like someone had thrown a switch. I think that scared me more. We nodded our heads uncertainly. Between the mind altering nature of the chemicals, the men eerily squatting on their desks as if it were normal and the NCO’s sudden on-then-off reaction, we felt as though we’d entered an episode of the Twilight Zone.

“Someone will come find you in a few minutes to address what you need,” he added. And with that he quietly closed the door, only to resume his screaming the instant it snicked shut. Dismissed, we walked away in a daze, uncertain what we had just witnessed. We could still hear him yelling at the kid from behind the door three corners away.

Welcome to the Navy, son. Never Again Volunteer Yourself. That made quite the first impression. But it did prepare me for the reality of live at sea.

For the past two months, that’s the world I’ve found myself in, unexpectedly and unrelentingly surreal. Like falling down a rabbit hole where white turns to black, where up means down. Where men squat on their desks to work and mothers abandon their daughters as disruptions. Where mimsy were the borogoves, and the vorpal blade goes snicker-snack. And I’m desperately trying to cling to the vision of that lieutenant as I try to carry on my writing despite the grim absurdity that surrounds me.

© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III

Darkness (Summer Solstice 2015)

Darkness (Summer Solstice 2015) - a reading (on YouTube)


My original intent was to write this up for Samhain. I’d been planning to write it up since last year, mostly in light of the number of brave women who had shared their own stories, stories I’d read. Recent events caused me to revise the timetable.

That revision started with breaking news about the Duggars, then Dennis Hastert. It ended when my wife broke her long silence and publicly shared her own story. Karen was incredibly brave in telling it. I have no desire to detract from that, only build upon it.

She first told me nearly twenty-one years ago. We were newlyweds, married just over six months at the time. We were out walking in the neighborhood one night in the fall. I was bitching about my family, about something one of them had done that had left a wound when I was young. I’d probably been talking too long, too self-absorbed. That’s when Karen dropped the bomb on me about her brother.

First, a little context. When we first started going out in college, nine years earlier, I noticed something odd about her. She was skittish in a very particular way. She didn’t like to be seen as a woman. She tried to hide in plain sight. She tensed sometimes when I touched her. Something clicked in my mind. She’d been sexually assaulted. So I asked her.

I remember she looked startled, probably wondering how I knew. She said she’d been raped in high school. A friend of her brother. She hadn’t told her family. She didn’t offer details. I didn’t ask. She would tell me when she was ready, if ever. We were only going out. I just tried to be careful not to set off any landmines that I now knew remained below the surface.

As we got more serious and eventually moved in together, I began to worry. What if I met her brother’s friend? Since her brother didn’t know, I figured it was at least a possibility, though maybe not a likely one. But I didn’t know what I would do if that happened.

Eventually, I met her brother and his family, but never his friend. Or so I thought. Karen’s brother seemed nice enough. Mark Monroe was four years older than I was, married with two daughters and a son. He was an engineer like me, though he had attended a prestigious engineering school in Virginia and worked for a major tech company (he is a former director at Sun). He was a fair-haired child. A golden boy on the rise. I started looking up to him. I trusted him.

Fast forward back to where I started, fall of 1994. Walking in the neighborhood. My wife turned to me and said something like, “I’ve been betrayed by family, too.” I looked at her, skeptical no doubt. Her family appeared to be the pillar of Norman Rockwell’s New England. But every family has their secrets.

“Remember when you asked back in college if I’d been raped?”

I nodded, uncertainly. “Yeah, by your brother’s friend.” I figured from her tone it was about to get bad, I just didn’t know how bad it really was. My mind raced but I waited.

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t my brother’s friend. It was my brother.”

Darkness. Complete and utter. No sound. No light. Just that shock after you feel the impact, when you know you’ve been hit, hard, but your mind hasn’t caught up with the pain. Which you know is coming and will be crippling when it does.

At this point, my memory goes blank. The next thing I remember is us sitting in the back room of the house, mostly in the dark. I remember her describing to me exactly what happened, blow by blow.

She was fifteen. He was a freshman in college. An adult old enough to know better. Fuck, even fifteen year-olds are old enough to know better.

I knew I had to listen. I’m not sure I was looking at her. I was afraid if I did, all the hate behind my eyes would pour out. Hate not at her, at him, though I knew she might not be able to tell the difference. I thought my heart would burst.

As she recounted her story, I could only close my eyes, as if my eyelids could contain my rage and keep the darkness out. I heard every word she said. She didn’t spare me the details. I didn’t want to be spared. I needed to know.

He waited until their parents were gone. He started by exposing himself to her. She told him to put some clothes on. Later he went into her room. He tried to coax her onto their parents’ bed. She said no. He didn’t stop. He was six inches taller than she was, a hundred pounds heavier. He played football in high school. Any struggle would have been short-lived. No one would have heard her scream.

There was no one there to save her. That’s what big brothers are supposed to do, but he was broken and standing on the wrong side of her bed. Who the hell did this to anyone, never mind his own sister? What type of sociopath was he?

As the picture she painted formed in my mind, I felt an imaginary pistol pressed against the small of my back. Over the next few moments my imaginary hand came to rest on its imaginary grip. By the time she finished describing the way he violated her, that imaginary gun was out in my imaginary hand and pointed at his imaginary head.

The rage inside me was visceral and instinctive. Someone had hurt and betrayed my wife in one of the worst ways possible. The monkey inside me howled in anguish. Son of a bitch must pay.

Darkness. Another damaged sector on the memory spool. I think only seconds passed, but I can’t be sure.

“What are you thinking?” There was a pleading in her voice. I know there were tears, hers not mine. I seem to remember my face feeling dry and hot, like you get when you’re bordering on heat stroke. All I wanted was to go to sleep, like when I was a kid and my mother flew into a rage. Just fall asleep and wake up to find everything was a dream. Or never wake up at all.

Attention, Kmart shoppers. We have a man down in housewares. Cleanup on aisle fuck.

Again, I don’t remember my answer. I think I said she’d done nothing wrong, said how sorry I was. Said how angry I was. I don’t think I needed to add that last. I think she was afraid of me in that moment. Not of what I’d do to her. What I’d do to him. I’m sure it was written on my face.

But I knew the imaginary gun wasn’t real and never would be. It was just a symbol of my rage. My primate brain wanted to kill him. Pick up the jawbone of my slaughtered prey and use it as a club. As I clawed my way back into something more civilized, I wanted to round up my friends and male cousins, ride out and burn his castle to the ground. But I knew I never would.

At some point my rational mind kicked back in. I said in very short order that she would need to talk to someone, a therapist. As much as I wanted to help her, this was well beyond my league. Besides, I knew I had my own shit do deal with on this issue. I had too many conflicting emotions. I was pulled in too many directions at once. I had to prioritize.

It quickly laid out like this in order of importance. Support my wife and get her help. Protect her nieces from this predator. Make sure no one else ever went through this. See some measure of justice served. Justice was the last and the least important. The imaginary pistol had gone away. Even through the worst of what came after, it only reappeared once, two decades later.

Karen tried to swear me to silence. I told her I couldn’t. Silence is toxic. Secrets get people killed. I knew that from growing up. I told her I had to tell at least two people so I could have someone to talk to as we sorted this thing out. She agreed. Only two. Not her family. Not mine. That last was never really an issue.

I insisted she share what happened with her family. Her brother had two daughters. Her sister had one. There was no way I could let silence claim one of them as another victim.

But I knew even then that the odds were not in her favor of getting their support. The psych stats are grimly clear. Families tend to blame the messenger as the one who overthrew their world, not the perpetrator. That’s if they believe the messenger at all. People are supremely willful in their ignorance when reality will dispel their illusion of the world.

My enforced silence lasted a year and a half. It was brutal. It tore me up inside. My attitude suffered. I grew short tempered. People at work noticed. All I could do was let my supervisors know I was going through something. I didn’t tell them what. I almost lost my job. I would have if I hadn’t straightened up. Somehow, I did.

After a lot of pushing, and hard work in counseling, Karen was finally ready to confront her brother and tell her rest of her family what had happened. Anyone who thinks counseling is easy has probably never sat through a session. I went to several with her, whenever she wanted. I left each one feeling raw, sore, exhausted and drained. Like I’d been beaten. And she did most of the talking. I can only imagine how she felt.

At first, things went ok when she told her family. They believed her. That was at least one major hurdle passed. Her parents were shocked but seemed supportive. Mainly, they seemed disappointed she hadn’t told them when it happened. They would have gotten her help. Her. Not him. Looking back, I shudder to think what that might have meant. The Duggars now spring to mind.

Her sister’s initial reaction was, “The Golden Boy has feet of shit.” A telling comment by my measure. But that quickly changed to “Nothing you’ve said changes my opinion of him.” She also insisted that the incident be hidden from her children even though her daughter was almost the same age Karen had been when her brother raped her. That fit the normal pattern. I’m sure her sister thought she was protecting them, but looking back I wonder if she was protecting him, and the way her children saw their uncle.

My wife talked to her brother in her therapist’s office. That, too, seemed to go surprisingly ok. He admitted what he’d done. She told him what she wanted him to do to make up for it. He agreed. I thought maybe her family had beaten the odds.

That fell apart pretty quickly. Once he was back home, her brother reneged on his promises. I called him on it. Words were exchanged. I told him if I ever found out that he’d raped anyone else, I would see justice served. That as he looked as his wife and kids and beautiful life, he needed to think about that. He took that as a threat. Which was fine by me if it kept his stupid ass in line.

Rape, that word alone became an issue. Karen’s brother and his wife took offense to our using it. They wanted something softer, something more lenient. Karen wasn’t raped, they said. Molested, maybe? Fondled? Could we just say that? No. We can’t. Rape is the legal definition of what he did, in the state where he did it and in the state in which we live. That was just the beginning of his equivocations and backfilled rationalizations.

In the last letter he wrote my wife, he blamed her for what happened, for not stopping it. He cut her off from his children, holding the cards and presents which we still sent as we tried to work it out. “If you don’t have a relationship with me, you don’t get to have one with them.” Ah, yes, extortion. Now we were back on script. I suspect he did the same with his parents. At one point, Karen’s mother said to us, “I won’t cut myself off from my grandchildren.” That caught my attention.

Soon after, her brother’s wife found God and forgiveness soon followed, as we were told it should for us, automatically and unconditionally. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. Her parents began treating the incident like a sibling squabble in which they refused to take a side, as if there were no right and wrong.

Then things got weird. There was a visit where we were put up in her brother’s bedroom, the only bedroom that hadn’t been redecorated since the kids moved out. A will where all three kids had to all agree before anything could get done. A string of years where my wife tried to visit her parents at her birthday only to be told point blank not to come because it was too hard to schedule around her brother’s family events. There were others.

Rereading that, none of it probably makes sense to anyone else. It’s all contextual and emotional. Time after time, I called her family on it.  Only then would something regarding the particular incident change. But the overall pattern did not. It pointed to a distinct lack of empathy. Or cleverly disguised passive-aggression.

Karen began hearing how much her brother and his family were suffering. How he was depressed, how he was in therapy, how his marriage was suffering. Fuck, we were depressed, Karen was in therapy. Our marriage suffered. Talking about having children was off the table. “Children are too cruel to each other,” Karen said.

Eventually, Karen had to tell her parents she didn’t want to hear about her brother and his family any more. It hurt too much to listen to their sympathy when he had done nothing, nothing he’d said he would. She felt more and more outcast, alienated and alone. More than once, she told them.

It didn’t matter. Over the years, things went back to normal for the rest of the family. They seemed to have forgotten about what he’d done, as if it never happened. Visits and joint vacations were once again scheduled, family milestones were reached and celebrated. Everyone attended. Everyone but us.

My wife gave up on saying anything, just began to accept the hurt, as though it were her lot in life, as though she had done something wrong. It isn’t and she didn’t. He did.

I did not accept it. I grew up in an abusive family. There was no way I was signing up for a second, not matter how casual or thoughtless their cruelty. It seemed we had become the problem, the inconvenience, the reminder that everything had changed. Because we were the ones who wouldn’t let it go.

Like Karen could. That was her first real sexual encounter. Who the hell thinks that didn’t leave a mark? What would have happened if she’d gotten pregnant (which she could have if he’d done everything he wanted)? What if that had been you? Your wife? Your sister? Your brother? Rape and incest never go away.

I think her family believes Karen or I are stuck on justice. By the time Karen told me what had happened, the laws and statutes of limitations had already begun to change. States recognized these types of cases take time to surface, take time for the survivor to confront what happened. Karen could have sued him and very likely won. She might still be able to. She probably could have had him arrested and dragged into open court. If he’d been convicted, he’d be a registered sex offender now. She could have made a call to DCF stating anonymous concern for his children. She could have ruined his life. With very little creativity, she could have turned his life farther upside down just like he did hers. She didn’t. I deferred to her wishes.

As far as I’m concerned, he walks around free on sufferance. Karen hoped, one day, he would see the light and atone for what he’d done. But he only sought forgiveness from his wife, his god and his family, not his victim.

It very much seems like we are the only problem left. The ones who just won’t let it go. As if my wife’s brother were an unrepentant stranger, anyone would ask.

No one in her family seems to recognize that. And she got beaten down.

Her family chose a side and it most distinctly was not hers. So he got away with rape and incest. They shielded him with silence. They never insisted he keep his word. It was easier to let Karen drift away.

Which brings me back to Chekhov’s gun, the one I mentioned earlier. That imaginary pistol only came out one other time, a few days ago. After another message where we were told how much fun the rest of the family would have when they gathered for another week together, how much fun they always had. Without us was left unsaid.

That spawned yet another email, another tearful phone call, another emotional discussion. And finally, seven words emerged from Karen, born of frustration, rejecting everything I’d done.

Those words hurt me so deeply that I was ready to give up and walk away. I couldn’t do this any more. I’d supported her. At points, I’d carried her. I’d tried my best to look out for others in her family, the ones who couldn’t look out for themselves. Those seven words erased it all. There was truth in them. They resonated. It didn’t matter whether she meant them or not.

I knew exactly how bad it was when I was sitting at my desk before dawn Sunday morning and that imaginary gun reappeared in my hand after all those years in hiding. Only this time, it wasn’t pointed at Karen’s brother. It was pointed at me. Its barrel in my mouth.

That wasn’t a suicidal thought. It was a symbol of futility. In that moment, it seemed nothing I’d done had mattered. My help had been unwanted. The darkness had returned.

Separately, Karen and I looked down into the abyss and saw the abyss looked back. We saw this thing could still consume us if we let it. Instead, we clasped each other’s hands and took a careful step away.

I wish I could say it happened that easily or romantically. But like any birth, there was pain and screaming and irrational accusations and more than a little (metaphorical) blood.

Karen wrote what she wrote and named her brother’s name because she finally could. Because it was the only thing left for her to do. She didn’t tell me she was going to do it. She didn’t tell me that she had. She left it for me to find if and when I did. She didn’t do it for me. She did it for her. Because she saw how much the silence had eaten away from her. From us.

As I said earlier, I've been pulled in two directions all along. I felt compelled to do what was best for Karen to help her heal, and to make sure no one else became a victim. Those were conflicting goals, often impossible to juggle on the tightrope and keep my balance. I'm not sure I’ve succeeded in either. I should have been able to pass off the second responsibility to Karen’s family. But they seemed unconcerned from the beginning that her brother might rape another minor.

They were more than interested in giving him the benefit of the doubt. I was not.

Every instinct in me screams that I should have buried him by shining daylight on this from the onset. In that, I failed. Whether he left another victim in his wake haunts me every day.

So why am I writing this now? Partly because I can share my part in this story now that Karen has made it public. Partly to honor her bravery and the bravery of too many others who have come forward just like her. And partly to tell anyone else who has been through the same, as a survivor and as their supporter, you are not alone. We’ve been through the wars and understand your pain. We may not have suffered the worst wounds, but the scars run deep enough.

Mostly, I hope it serves as a reminder that even on the brightest day, darkness still remains. All we can do is shine a light upon it and hope the shadows scurry away. Even knowing that one day all too soon, the darkness will return. Yet, even then, we preserve a little light to fight it back.


© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III

Bully (Beltane 2015)

Bully (Beltane 2015) - a reading (on YouTube)

In high school, I drove a moped. Not exactly stylish but it was cheap and reliable enough to get me back and forth to work, and to school on the days I missed the bus. What it lacked in panache it more than made up for as a bully-magnet.

As I’ve said before, bullies seem to think I’m an easy target, I think because I’m quiet and generally keep to myself. I tend not to make an issue of things if I don’t feel I have to. But once an issue kicks off, I don’t back down until it’s resolved, one way or another.

My ride topped out somewhere around 35 mph and that’s if I had a tailwind. Because of that I drove the back roads around town as much as I could. But I couldn’t avoid a few stretches of four-lane divided roadway where the speed limit was 40 to 45, which meant 50 in most people’s minds. When I drove those roads, I hugged shoulder so I wouldn’t get clipped, and so people could more easily get around when they saw an opportunity.

I don’t remember exactly when it started, sometime over the spring. One day, I was driving the little beast home from school along one of those stretches, consumed in my own thoughts, when a car crept up just behind me where I couldn’t see it and blew its horn. I about jumped straight out of my seat and barely kept control. That was an adrenaline rush I really didn’t need. I never got a good look at the driver.

Turns out, this became that driver’s favorite pastime, pulling up just into my blind spot and laying on the horn. I began to recognize the car and to look for it in my mirrors but didn’t know who drove it. I’m pretty sure after that first encounter he went out of his way to find me. So like most teenaged males, I instinctively took to flipping off that car every time it blew its horn and then sped by. For a while, that became our shared ritual, BEEEEP, (jump), middle finger.

That changed the day that car tried to run me off the road. Instead of speeding away as normal while I flipped it off, it made a quick swerve up beside me. For a moment, all I saw was a broad, steel quarter panel closing off the asphalt. It might have been faded green but I can’t be sure. Somehow I avoided it by darting onto the grassy shoulder, and still managed not to lose control. Now the driver had my full and undivided attention. I took that personally.

I reported the incident to the police but they were disinterested. Basically, the officer said that unless he witnessed something himself there was nothing he could do (or would) even though I gave him a description of the vehicle and a partial license plate. Thanks for nothing RPD. Protect and serve, my ass.

So I figured I needed to take my protection into my own hands. While I could make an effort to take the bus to school, I still had to get to work. I worked 20-30 hours, 4-6 days a week. I had access to my mother’s second car when I needed it but there was no way she was going to relinquish it to me full-time. So I had to come up with another solution.

My testosterone addled brain focused on a weapon to defend myself. Or at least to leave a mark on this guy’s car if he tried running me off the road again. I settled on a miniature wooden baseball bat, the kind they sell as souvenirs at Major League games. It was about as long as my forearm, spun from oak, and emblazoned with Boston Red Sox down the side. My grandfather had bought it for me the only time we’d seen a game in Fenway Park together.

It fit perfectly along the moped’s stanchion, right behind to the steering column. I designed a mechanism that would hold it in place but would still allow me to retrieve it one-handed on the fly. Satisfied with that, I drilled a hole near the handle and threaded it with a leather strap so I wouldn’t lose it. My inexperienced mind figured that perhaps a simple warning would send the message I was serious and I wouldn’t have to use it. Ah, the naivety of youth.

I think it was a week later before my theory was put to the test. By this point I still wasn’t positive who was driving the car other than it was someone I went to school with. But I did know which neighborhood he lived in. One about midway between mine and my best friend’s, G.

I was driving home from school, watching my side mirrors, and sure enough my shadow pulled up behind me and blared its horn. I completed our ritual by flipping him off. But instead of speeding past, he slowed down to tail me, riding no more than five feet behind me, gunning his engine off and on. Oh, this wasn’t good.

I quickly reassessed my situation. At that moment I was keenly aware that the back roads I normally used would leave me pretty vulnerable. They were not well trafficked so there would be no witnesses to whatever happened. And if he decided to run me off the road, I was probably as good as dead. All he had to do was nudge me since he outweighed me by a couple tons. But I still had two advantages he couldn’t match.

First, I exploited my maneuverability. I set him up by driving past my normal turn, tricking him into believing I was taking the long way home on the most public of roads. He seemed content to settle in for a slow-motion chase. So it caught him completely by surprise when I darted down a side street across several lanes of traffic without so much as leaning to advertise my intent. I was there and then gone before he could react. He overshot the turn and had to wait for a break in traffic to double back.

I knew that move wouldn’t buy me much time. But I also knew my second advantage lay at the end of the road I’d just started down, maybe half a mile away. Now we were in a race, one I could only hope my cleverness would help me win. I opened up the little beast for everything it was worth, using every trick I knew to eek out just a little more speed. I prayed it was enough combined the delaying tactic I’d used. I ran at least one stop sign just so I wouldn’t have to slow down.

When I heard his engine rumbling in the distance, I casually retrieved my makeshift billy club from the stanchion and hung it from my right handlebar as a warning. I wasn’t planning on going quietly that into that good afternoon.

Just as he was racing up behind me, I reached my goal, a pedestrian bridge across a ditch that connected my neighborhood to the one just north of it. I had just slipped through the chainlink posts at full throttle when I heard the squeal of brakes behind me. My second advantage was that I knew the terrain and had picked the most favorable location. Had I not made that bridge, I knew I had a set of dirt trails immediately to my right and left where his car also couldn’t go.

Once I was safely across the bridge, I circled back to look. I found myself confronting an irate underclassman from my high school, BR, and his friend, whose name I didn’t know, both standing beside the still running car. BR was clutching a pair of numchucks and yelling something that I couldn’t understand through my helmet and over my puttering engine. But their postures were easily read. They were itching for a fight and livid they’d been outfoxed. I left them where they stood without a word and headed home. I was confident they didn’t know exactly where I lived but I knew I’d just narrowed it down to a neighborhood for them. I figured they’d start trolling streets to find for me soon.

By the time I got home, I’d realized that my improvised billy club was no match for two guys and a pair of numchucks. But I wasn’t about to back down and hide. I’d been face to face with bullies twice before and understood that, win or lose, only standing up for myself earned anything other than continued confrontations. Thankfully, both BR and his friend were smaller than I was. There had to count for something.

I quickly re-evaluated my strategy. A billy club wasn’t my only choice of weapons. I passed over the hand ax and the spiked flail I’d brought home from Spain. They required getting into close quarters. Besides, I needed something felt comfortable with taking on two opponents. I’d practiced with a quarterstaff for more than a year, but a 5-foot weapon is a bit cumbersome to haul around on a moped. That’s when my eyes settled on the sword hanging on my wall, a gift from my father from several years before. I’d practiced with it, too. Many of the defensive moves I’d learned from the quarterstaff overlapped.

So I slipped it through a belt-loop and called G to tell him I was coming over. If this was going to go down as two on one, I needed backup and G was the best I had. He was a year older than me. We’d met at school and ID’d with each other because we were both geeks and gamers. We’d worked in the same restaurant briefly. He’d introduced me to a side of music I’d never heard. We formed the kind of bond you think at that age will last forever. He always had my back. Looking back, I hope he felt I had his. I should probably mention G lived in public housing, one city north of mine.

Of course, getting there meant transiting across the front of BR’s neighborhood. That didn’t bother me. I would be on a very public road. Besides, I’d had just about enough of this and was more than willing let them know. So I remounted my metallic pony and headed off toward G’s, about five miles away. I sped along a four-lane suburban boulevard, head held high, looking like something out of a modern Don Quixote.

Sure enough BR and his buddy were lying in wait at the front of their neighborhood. Or maybe they had retreated to rearm and were just heading out to find me. I guess I’d saved them the trouble. They quickly fell in behind me at a respectable distance. I wouldn’t shake them again. This time they’d given themselves enough time to react. Clever monkeys.

I sensed a moment’s hesitation when I turned into G’s neighborhood. This was the south in the 1980s. In my hometown, public housing had a reputation for being rough. The police only went there in numbers. But it was broad daylight so BR dutifully stuck to my tail.

Once we were in the network of streets that mostly went by alphabetical designations, BR closed in a little tighter as if either thinking none of the witnesses here mattered, or more likely, clinging to me as if he and his friend belonged. That was all the opportunity I needed.

As I approached G’s duplex, once again I didn’t slow or give any inclination of what I was about to do. I just swerved up onto ten feet of lawn at 35 and dropped the moped against the side of the building with a crash. Once again, the overeager BR overshot. That gave me enough time to prepare to face him and his friend when they circled back around.

They quickly did only find all six foot one of me standing on the grass, my feet planted squarely with a longsword at the ready, fully prepared to use it, a sack full of crazy in my eyes. What I didn’t realize at the time was G was leaning on a heavy oaken quarterstaff as he stood outside his back door. He had heard my moped drop against his living room wall and run out to see what was happening.

BR, who was closest, barely cracked the driver’s side window. His friend, who was hanging out the passenger side and shouting across the roof, initially did most of the talking. The conversation followed predictable lines that went something like:

Me: You want a piece of me? Come on!

BR’s friend: You’ve got a sword.

Me: B has numchucks.

BR’s friend: You had a club.

Me: He tried to run me off the road.

BR (finally speaking): You flipped off my mom while I was in the car.

Me: Then tell your mom not to sneak up behind me and blow the horn.

BR (looking at G): I’m not taking on two of you.

G: I’m just here to make sure your friend stays put.

BR: Then put down the sword.

I slung it down point first about three feet away, leaving two and a half feet of feet of Toledo steel quivering in the ground in front of me.

“Come on!” I yelled, curling both hands in a bring-it gesture. “I don’t need a sword.”

His friend just slid down into the passenger’s seat, suddenly realizing this was not his fight. BR said something about watching myself, rolled up his window and drove away.  G and I just watched them go as we leaned on our weapons. Then we went inside where I immediately started shaking from the adrenaline crash. I didn’t think this was over.

The next day, I drove my mother’s second car to school, figuring if there was going to be a repeat performance, I wanted a cocoon of steel around me for protection. As I walked by the band room toward my locker, a sophomore I recognized but whose name I didn’t know rushed up to me, grabbed my hand and started shaking it. I was confused.

“I hear you pulled a knife on BR yesterday. He’s needed someone to do that for a long time.”

“How’d you hear about that?” I asked, not correcting him about the type of blade.

“Half the school knows,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.

As I walked past the cafeteria, I noticed a number of people staring at me and whispering behind their hands. Seemed I’d gained some notoriety. That actually scared me more.

The next thing I knew G’s brother, who was several years older than both of us and worked at the school, pulled BR and me aside at the lockers. “Settle this. Right now.”

We traded the same spars as the afternoon before. I tried to keep my voice steady but failed. Only this time when BR tried to end it by telling me to watch myself, I looked down at him with the same crazy in my eyes and said evenly, “If you do it again, you’ll get the same response. Or worse.”

G’s brother stepped in with “That’s it. It’s over. Now get out of here” (looking more at BR than me).

I didn’t have any more trouble with BR, or anyone else for that matter, for the rest of my high school days. My demonstration had worked.

---

Looking back, sometimes I wonder if I should thank BR for teaching me some valuable lessons. While he wasn’t the first or the only, he certainly did reinforce the impression that sometimes confrontation is unavoidable, that sometimes you have to stand your ground. That being able to think through your anger almost always pays dividends. That knowing something about your adversary and the element of surprise should never be underestimated. And neither should crazy eyes.

Or maybe that incident carried no real lesson. Maybe it didn’t matter why we fought, only that we almost came to blows before one side backed down and the other wouldn’t let him save face just to make sure it never happened again. Maybe we fought because we could, or maybe because we needed to. Or maybe, we fought just to prove ourselves because winter had ended, and life now filled the air. Maybe we just needed to test ourselves against it.

I think in that, we may have been no different from a pair of territorial bucks locking horns with a crack in ritual combat as a sacred rite at Beltane. The day the horned god rules over the impulses of all young men. The day that marks the first of Celtic spring.

© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III

Art and Anniversary 2015

For our 21st anniversary this year, we made the quinquennial pilgrimage to Washington, DC, one of the few cities we seem to go back to on a regular basis.

We flew out early Thursday afternoon, direct to National Airport. The airline offered us an upgrade to first class (for an additional fee), which we decided to take advantage of as a treat. I could get used not waiting in line and not having to squeeze all six foot plus of me into a space barely meant for someone half a foot shorter. But I'm not quite sure about having the flight attendant call me by name, though I think she was mystified that I didn't partake of any of the offered food or beverages. I spent my time with my nose buried in notebook (the old school kind) organizing four poems from our fall color trip in October. I'm glad I let those lines settle since the fall. I think there is something there. A great way to start the vacation.

Having our luggage first off the plane, another perk, meant we could get out of the airport before rush hour on the George Washington Parkway. One of the advantages of having driven from Rockville to Crystal City for work when we lived there is knowing a pleasant back way to the hotel that didn't involve the Beltway.

We found the Residence Inn tucked away on a dead-end road in Tysons Corner. Because it was nestled among mid-rise office building, it was amazingly quiet despite being a quarter mile from a major artery. It had a number of restaurants within walking distance, from a Subway to sushi to Thai to Mediterranean to Indian. As well as a fireplace in the room, a hot breakfast, and a Metro station on the new Silver line within walking distance. Pretty much ideal for us.

That night we hopped over to Tysons Corner Center. Even though it's not the Galleria, it makes Tampa’s International Plaza look a bit low-rent. We poked through a few of stores we don't have nearby, including LL Bean and Levengers, but nothing really caught our eye. We ended in a two story Barnes and Noble. Karen found a couple crochet books but for me it was pretty much a bust. When we were last there, I picked up a few science fiction titles not available locally. The intervening years have not been kind, at least to the sections I'm interested in. But that's been true of every B&N I've been in recently. Finding anything decent to read there has become a challenge. So I left empty-handed and feeling like I no longer belonged there. Thankfully, that wouldn't last.

We awoke to find snow accumulating on the grass and cars. Both of us would have been happy if that kept up all day. But after breakfast, snow gave way to sleet then freezing rain then just rain. At 30-something with a steady wind, it wasn't exactly a pleasant day for walking around the National Mall. But one of our destinations wasn't open on the weekend so off we went.

Our first stop was the World Bank InfoShop. What I wouldn't give to have one of these nearby. They focus on economics, social and cultural issues, development and infrastructure along with international fiction, all in mid-sized suite. Plus they offer a 10% discount to government employees. I could have spent a fortune there. It would have taken me a year to read everything that caught my eye. I restrained myself to three books, Smart Cities, Townsend; Poor Economics, Banerjee and Duflol and Americanah (a novel), Adichie. Karen picked up Behind the Beautiful Forevers, Boo.

Next we popped across the street to Reiter's Professional Books. I first ran across them in 1989/90 on travel for work. I think this is their third location since then. It is amazing how small their new location is after the expanse of the previous two. I hope they continue to survive. There I picked up Business of Civil War (DR Congo), Kabamba. I almost picked up a book on neuroanthropology, another on probability in finance and a third on innovations in financial vehicles but all were a bit more technical than I wanted. How often do I get to say that? Karen bought Extinction, Erwin; and Human Nature and the Evolution of Society, Sanderson. She wasn't afraid of going deep.

From there we made the hike past the White House to the National Gallery of Art. Our only agenda was to revisit some old favorites, a couple Vermeers, some 17th century Dutch still lives, Thomas Cole's Voyage of Life series and Dali's Last Supper. Once again, the Dali had moved to a new location, its third. They had rearranged the 17th century gallery as well so we caught a number of Spanish, German and Italian works we hadn't seen before, some of which we came back to. We also checked out a number of Renaissance books and bronze sculptures. We bailed out by mid-afternoon, both to avoid rush hour on the Metro and because we had an early dinner reservation for our anniversary.

To celebrate, we’d opted for Fleming's Steakhouse which was less than a mile away. We'd eaten there once before in Orlando, about ten years ago for our anniversary. It was good enough that we wanted to go back. This time didn't disappoint either. Butternut squash ravioli, tender filet mignons, grilled asparagus, signature potatoes, then coffee and berries and fresh whipped cream for dessert. And of course wine. Perfect food and service, just like the last time. Yet still odd being called by name by a waiter (because of the reservation). I think we spent more on tip than on many sit-down meals we eat out anymore. Strange living this highlife even for a day. But Karen's worth it.

And what better way to end the evening than at a Wal-Mart. But a Tysons Corner Wal-Mart. With paid parking. You know, to keep the riff-raff out. But we still didn't find what we were looking for, which was wood for the fireplace. So we settled for what the hotel had to offer in their mini-shop. Which was enough for ambiance. Plus some green tea and chocolate. A perfect end to the evening.

The next day we opted to do our driving. Driving the Maryland back roads and the Virginia hills along the Georgetown Pike outside the Beltway was quite scenic. I could see living out there. Maybe if we hit the lottery. A warm, sunny day with a high of 62. Quite a change from the day before.

First up was Politics and Prose, a well-curated independent bookstore in DC proper, not far from where Karen used to work (I could tell you, but then, well, you know). As their name implies they focus on politics, history and general fiction, but had a full selection in all the other sections as well. One of the best organized bookstores we've visited in quite some time, replete with staff recommendations. Only one book for me, Wired for Story, Cron (the neuroscience of storytelling). Karen picked up two by Maraget Atwood, The Penelopiad and the Blind Assassin. That put her two ahead!? Usually, I'm the one who loads up.

Then we headed for Great Falls National Park along the Potomac where we hiked two to three miles along the river. We've been there several times before but never walked that far up the river. Our timing was perfect as there weren't too many people when we arrived. By the time we left, all the parking lots were nearly full and there was a line of cars at the entrance. The river was high but not as high as we've seen it. The falls were dynamic, as were the jumble rocks we climbed over to see them. Karen got her geology moment.

Next up was the Udvar-Hazy annex of the Air and Space museum out by Dulles Airport. This is the hanger where they display a huge number of planes, along with a few satellites and other space artifacts. Highlights were the space shuttle Discovery (mammoth), the Enola Gay (bittersweet to see), and an F14 Tomcat (an inspiration for Aluria's Tale). Interesting to see all of them up close.

Our final stop for the day was the Game Parlor, a well-stocked gaming shop we'd run across a couple visits ago which is still thriving unlike many of its brethren. They had a full house of tables running various games, from what looked like Napoleonics to fantasy miniatures to several collectible card games. And, no, we weren’t' the oldest people in there. For the first time, we didn't pick anything up other than two ideas for board game expansions we wanted to look up before we committed to. By then we were pretty fried so crawled back to the hotel, navigating by memory and feel when the phone (with our GPS) like us ran down.

That night we walked up the street to Bombay Tandoor for chicken Tikka Masala and Butter chicken with rice and nan. Definitely acceptable, though not quite Gateway to India at home which has become our gold standard. And because we had a fridge, we brought leftovers back to the hotel.

For our final full day, we opted to head back to the National Mall. That day was cooler with a high of fifty-something and breezy but sunny. Still scarf weather early. Not bad for street hiking four plus miles on the Mall. We saw the MLK Memorial (which was beautifully done), the Korean War Memorial (much more powerful than the WWII Memorial which left me underwhelmed), the Vietnam Women's Memorial and the Wall, the Einstein Memorial (which has some very cool Easter eggs), Constitution Gardens, and then back to the National Gallery. Along the way, we found the only four cherry trees in bloom, tucked away in a sheltered area near the DC WWI Memorial. So pretty and subtly fragrant. We keep getting lucky in finding them off peak.

We spent the afternoon crawling through nearly every section of the National Gallery. The day's highlights included. Green Wheat Fields, Van Gogh; the portrait of Ginevra de' Benci, da Vinci; Departure and Return, new Thomas Cole's from the Corcoran that the National Gallery inherited; Still Life with Ham and others, Garrit Heda; Interior of St. Peters, Rome, Panini; Interior of Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, Emanuel de Witte.

The last two paintings are two cathedrals, one Italian (18th century), one Dutch (17th century). One Catholic, one Protestant. Both captured various elements of their societies. But you can see from the de Witte why the Protestants were considered so irreverent. And from the Panini why the Catholics were considered so hypocritical. I almost want prints of each to hang in the office.

And the two new Cole's... wow. He works really well in series. We kept shifting back and forth between the two to figure out the landscape, the time of day, and the common elements. Another pair I'd love to hang somewhere. Just the framing would set us back.

No swag unless you count the guard at the National Gallery offering to hook us up with some paintings if we picked them out and built a climate controlled place to store them, say in Hawaii. Our shade tree mechanic of art dealers. Oh, yeah, I think I could find some room for a couple in the back hall.

Dinner that night was leftover Indian and the last of the miscellaneous munchies we'd brought along.

The next morning, we opted to hang out in the hotel room until checkout rather than rushing to the airport and trying to take in Arlington Cemetery. That will have to wait for another trip. So after five memorials, three bookstores, two museums, one game store and one national park later, we headed home with fifteen books (only three of which came up with us. How does this happen? When a mommy book really loves a daddy book...). We'd upgraded our tickets to first class on the way home, too, which made for a more relaxing end to the trip. We even snuck in a visit to Legal Seafood for lunch at the airport, including their incredible New England clam chowder.

A good, if quick, trip to reacquaint ourselves. Honestly, I could see us living up that way again at some point. The change of seasons, the topography, and the balance of wood, water and stone are all appealing. As is the proximity to so many museums and so much culture.

In contrast by the time we returned, all trees here were fully leafed out. After the sparse landscape with only buds up there, the park looked so close and very green. But Nyala and Mara were very glad to have us home. As always Nyala took some convincing by her dad-cat to come out of hiding. She’s been staying close the past two days to make sure I don’t leave again.

© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III

Sinking (Spring Equinox 2015)

Sinking (Spring Equinox 2015) - a reading (on YouTube)


My junior year of college, most of my annually shifting set of dorm-mates were certified divers. Spring break that year, they planned a trip down to the Florida Keys to do some reef diving. I wasn’t a diver and wasn’t much for boating but I love being in the water. So I tagged along with fins and a mask to snorkel.

As soon as we were all free, eleven of us packed into four cars, drove down to Key Largo and camped out by the beach. The next morning, we rented a boat, a fiberglass, center console fisherman just over twenty feet long. We paid for a set number of hours in advance. One guy’s parents were vacationing from England and graciously put up the deposit even though they weren’t coming with us.

All of us piled in the boat, loading fifteen to twenty dive tanks in the back. A lot of people and a lot of gear but it was cleared by the rental company. My roommate Dick was the boat-master. He’d done this type of thing before.

It was a beautiful Florida spring day, warm and sunny without much wind. We motored to John Pennekamp State Park about four miles offshore. Once we were over the reef with fifteen to thirty feet of water below our keel, we ran up a dive flag. My other roommate, Tracey, set our anchor in a large sandy patch between banks of coral so we wouldn’t drift.

We spent most of our time in the water, keeping an eye on the clock for when the boat was due back. None of us was in a hurry. Being poor college students, we all wanted to get the most time for our money. Mid-afternoon, a tourist dive ship pulled up and held station half a mile or more away, playing hide and seek on the edge of our vision for the rest of the day. Seemed like we’d picked a decent spot.

The water was crystal clear and teeming with fish and other sea life. The coral was colorful, densely layered and healthy, at least as far as I could tell. I spent most of my time chasing schools of fish, struggling off and on to get my ears to clear. For me, the freedom and solitude of the water was a subtropical paradise. I tried to stick close to the boat, but now and then found myself swept up by a current and farther away than I would have liked. The seas were mostly calm so swimming back to it wasn’t too much of a problem. The sun was warm but not hot, a pleasant contrast to the cool but not cold water.

By late afternoon, a couple of us noticed the boat had begun riding lower in the water. Initially, Dick wouldn't listen to our concerns. We pestered him until he finally saw for himself that the boat was losing ground, or rather gaining water. He tried the bilge pump but couldn’t get it to fire. He thought maybe the boat was self-draining. So even though we still had divers in the water, he decided to try and get it up on plane to see if it would empty.

When it wouldn't, his expression hardened to concern. But Dick figured if he could keep the boat moving, we’d probably be ok. That meant heading back to shore.

Back on station, he cut the engine and we scrambled to get everyone out of the water. Most of our divers had surfaced, wondering why their ride had fired up for a high speed spin in a long, lazy circle. We frantically called to the divers on the surface and told them to relay the signals to anyone underwater. We were met with much reluctance and confusion. Even though the sun was drifting toward the horizon, we still had plenty of time left on our rental.

By now the boat was riding really low, lower than it had been before. Suddenly, a sense of urgency crept into getting everyone on board. Two guys stood by the back ladder physically pulling each diver and his gear from the water. Tanks and equipment were quickly stowed. With each extra pound of weight added, the boat sank a little deeper. Water climbed a little higher up the side.

I hovered by a gunwale trying to keep out of the way. Everyone was shouting instructions and advice, including me. I focused on getting people into lifejackets, but no one was inclined to listen. They all thought that once we got underway, we’d be fine. Remember those airline lectures about securing your own oxygen mask before helping others? There’s a good reason for that instruction. Once the chaos starts, you just might not have time.

As the last diver heaved his tank onto the dive platform, Dick frantically tried to restart the engine. It just made that rurr-rurr-rurr sound like a car with a battery that was nearly dead. Someone shifted from port to starboard to make room for the new arrival. The deck tilted beneath our feet. Suddenly, water started pouring over the gunwale. And the deck didn’t stop turning.

I dove clear before the sea completely eclipsed the sky. Like a wounded U-boat evading depth charges, our little boat shot straight for the bottom. Tanks and dive gear fluttered away from it on the way down like false markers for an enemy destroyer, or the trail of jetsam that would eventually lead to the rediscovery of our miniature Titanic.

The first thing I remember doing as I broke the surface was cursing, and then swimming. I still hadn’t donned my own lifejacket before the boat had transitioned to a mortally wounded submarine. Fuck, fuck, fuck, what was Plan B?

In front of me, I spotted a string of lifejackets quickly drifting away. So I power stroked after them, throwing one then another then another toward the confused and angry voices behind me. I recovered maybe five before the current dragged the remainder out of reach. I was afraid if I continued after them, this time I wouldn’t make it back. Though I did remember to save the last one for myself. I wouldn’t need to learn that lesson twice.

When I finally looked back to evaluate our situation, I found our group was strung out in a long, ragged line. A quick headcount showed we hadn’t lost anyone. But we were four miles off shore with thirty feet of water between us and the boat that had settled on the sandy bottom. I don’t think there was a radio onboard not that it mattered now. But I didn’t remember anyone calling mayday. We had no flares or strobe lights. Maybe half of us had on lifejackets. At least we knew all of us could swim. Some of the guys still had on their fins.

Some days, it’s better to be lucky than good. Before we had bobbed there very long trying formulate what exactly to do next, that tourist dive ship we’d been playing hide and seek with on the horizon came charging toward us. Someone must have seen us flounder. We found out later they’d just been bringing up the last of their divers when they’d seen us heel over. In another fifteen minutes, they would have been headed back to port. And we would have had to hone our meager survival skills at sea.

The dive ship started pulling our people from the water. I don’t remember where I fell in order; I wasn’t the first but not the last. Only a couple strangers offered us towels, snacks or even condolences. Most just gave us dirty looks or disgusted glares. The crew completely avoided us once they’d fished us out.

A second boat materialized and began rescuing the remainder of our people. They’d heard the dive ship’s mayday and come running. A few minutes later, a third, smaller boat appeared with a trio of divers about our age. My roommates began coordinating with them on salvaging our gear, shouting back and forth across the water.

Once we were all safe and dry, the dive ship’s captain became anxious to get back to port, his maritime duty done. The trio on the smaller boat said they’d finish hauling up our scattered equipment. Contact information was exchanged so we could connect with them on shore. I’m not sure in that moment whether the trio’s intentions were entirely honorable. Or perhaps they were and it was only later that opportunity called them like a siren’s song. Regardless, they seemed friendly as they said they’d return our equipment, no problem. And we had bigger issues anyway, like explaining to the rental company why we were coming back without their boat.

On the journey back, we huddled together like refugees in stunned and embarrassed silence. Thankfully, the dive ship was half empty that day. Everyone left us to our thoughts. That was when the enormity of the situation began to settle in. What the hell had just happened?

On shore, our odyssey was not quite over. The rental company insisted whatever had happened was completely our fault. First they said we’d overloaded the boat, even though they’d approve the number of passengers and equipment. Then they changed tack, saying it must have been something else we’d done. They threatened to confiscate our deposit and make us pay damages. We shot back that their boat had sank out from under us, and their bilge pump had never worked. We were the aggrieved party.

As both sides argued back and forth, their salvage company motored in at twilight with our boat in tow. They’d managed to float it off the bottom without incident, which didn’t exactly help our case. A quick inspection revealed no cracks. In the end we all agreed that assignation of blame would have to wait until they ran a test on the hull. We’d meet again in the morning.

Our next stop was to pick up our gear from the trio of divers. When we finally caught up with them at their condo, they’d decided they deserved a finder’s fee. They returned our fins, masks and snorkels as promised, but wanted hundreds of dollars for the tanks and regulators they could pawn. Money we certainly didn’t have and couldn’t get. Technically, it was all maritime salvage so they had the right to it. Legally, anyway.

Around ten at night, after heated negotiations back and forth, my roommate Tracey tried to play the peacemaker. He identified the most reluctant member of the triumvirate and drew him aside. They talked quietly in the darkness away from the rest of us for a little while. They might have gotten down on a knee to pray. I learned later that Tracey invoked their common Christianity.

Whatever argument Tracey used, the third guy eventually agreed to spring our gear. He’d wait for the other two to leave and then let our people into the condo so we could pick it up. Ironically, he planned to tell his partners they’d been robbed. About one in the morning we got the call, and our guys picked up their equipment. With that we were halfway home. Hopefully no one came looking for us.

The next morning, we all held our breath as the rental company hoisted the boat and began filling it with water. Our hearts began to sink when no cracks miraculously appeared. Then, drips and runnels began forming beneath the fiberglass surface, first sporadic then steady. A spider web of hairline cracks slowly revealed themselves as if written in invisible ink and exposed to a secret element. We all smiled, feeling vindicated. While the company argued they shouldn’t have been enough to sink the boat, they eventually returned our deposit and cut us loose from all liability. They were probably lucky none of us decided to sue.

Before they could change their mind, we quickly piled back into our cars and crawled home, licking our wounds and thanking all the gods of the sea that events hadn't unfolded much differently. At least some of us anyway.

Back at school, bravado took over as we talked about the incident. A handful of our divers insisted we’d never been in any real danger. They were confident that they could have swum back to shore and gotten help even though land was out of sight. I disagreed. I’d swum a mile in controlled conditions on an open lake and knew exactly how tiring it was. Four miles is the type of distance that gets people killed if they've never done it. None of them had. Never mind currents, darkness and disorientation. Or dehydration, exposure and the risk of separation. Had it come to that, the odds were maybe fifty-fifty that not all of us would have made it back.

I’ve always known exactly how lucky we all were that we never had to place that bet. Even thirty years later, I can’t forget the sensation of having a once stable world twist and slip from beneath me. Or that detached feeling of being kid swimming in water way over my head, knowing that whatever happened or however tired I got that I wouldn’t be able to touch. Or seeing the sun sinking toward the horizon as we floated without direction, resigned to spending a night or longer on the open sea.

Looking back, it strikes me that boats are like the equinox, a finely-tuned balance of air and water, one of man’s early engineering marvels. But no matter how idyllic your surroundings, it always pays to be prepared in case wind or weather turn against you. Because should a spider web of cracks upset that equilibrium, water and gravity always win.


© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III

Wrestling with the Devil (Imbolc 2015)

Wrestling with the Devil (Imbolc 2015) - a reading (on YouTube)

At college, I lived in the same dorm room for nearly three years. My university had a requirement that all freshmen live in the dorms at least a year before moving off campus or into a subsidized apartment. That first year, our floor of ten rooms was a random collection of stoners, rednecks, frat boys, athletes, hippies and suburban misfits, not all mutually exclusive, packed three to a room. Pretty much like every college across the country.

By winter quarter, maybe a sixth of the guys had cleared out, claiming spots in frat houses down by the river or sneaking into apartments with upperclassmen while their parents still paid for a bed. With a bit more breathing room, the rest of the floor began reordering itself into groups based less on some arcane stochastic process and more on shared interests and compatibility. That’s how Rick came to live in the room next to mine.

Rick was a hippie, a libertarian and one of the sharpest software engineers I’ve known. He was a year older than the rest of us, serving out a yearlong exile from Carnegie Mellon after a mysterious run-in with his department head the year before. Because he never planned on staying longer than his sentence, he remained somewhat derisive of the school, its teachers and his classmates. He was also more than a bit willful and impetuous, proclaiming at the beginning of fall quarter that he would wear nothing but shorts and tee-shirts with no shoes all winter because it never got cold in Florida. I can still see him hobbling barefoot to class early one November morning with the temperature hovering at 39. When he went home for the holidays, he came back with a coat.

Despite all that, I liked him. He was generally easy-going and usually fun to be around. We had similar taste in music. He didn’t borrow my stuff without asking then treat it as his own like a number of other degenerates on our floor. He had the cool air of confidence that came with being a red-shirt freshman. I sensed somewhere beneath his mask lurked a decent human being. As time and forced contact bred familiarity, we confided in each other and connected in some meaningful way.

The university had turned a blind eye to our floor being mostly down to two in a room after what I assumed was an annual stealth evacuation. That’s where Rick’s compassionate hippie nature got the best of him. Somewhere in his travels he’d run across a couple local construction workers who started hanging out. One went by the name of Donald Bradley.

Neither Don nor his friend were college types but both them were interested in partying which was one of Rick’s favorite pastimes. Don soon became a fixture on our floor, though his friend just as quickly disappeared. Come to find out Don had spun Rick some woe-is-me sob story of being homeless, something about a girlfriend or roommates kicking him out. So Rick, according to his nature, gave him a place to live. No one was using that extra bed anyway.

Don was four years older than the rest of us, sun-baked and well-muscled from his work outdoor. He spent most of his energy trying to convince us that we were wasting our time learning a bunch of useless knowledge, that we could haul down serious cash in construction right now. The irony of his squatting on charity in a college dorm wasn’t lost on us. Most of us were uncomfortable having him around. He had a look and demeanor that spoke of unpredictability and thinly veiled potential violence. We all knew Don was using Rick, but in some foolish bond of youthful solidarity and shared misery none of us blew him in to the university.

By February, Don had become well entrenched on our floor, showering in the communal bathroom, hanging out in people’s rooms, entering and leaving unobserved through the back door beneath the staircase. So I wasn’t really surprised when I returned from class one afternoon to find Rick, Don, and another couple guys from our floor waiting in my room. I knew by their postures and the look in their eyes that something was up, something I probably wasn’t going to like.

Turns out they’d heard it was my birthday. I’m not sure who’d told them. I tend to keep details like that close with casual contacts. I’d never fit on the floor in because I’d never felt I had much in common with the other guys and it probably showed. I think some of them thought I needed a lesson. Or maybe this was some testosterone-addled form of acceptance. Either way, Don had convinced the other three that they should give me upgraded ritual spanking.

The plan was to tie me to a chair and leave me in the shower. You know, good, clean, guys being guys sort of fun. The type of stuff I’d never cottoned to in my life, either on the giving or receiving end, and wasn’t about to start to now. But what I thought really didn’t enter the equation as the others were convinced that this was the perfect birthday gift. Don said he would hold me still while the others did the work. With four of them, it would take a few minutes tops before they could taunt me with some well-earned beers then they settled in to get me drunk.

Sorry fellas, I think I have other plans.

The four of them jumped me anyway and wrestled me onto a bed without much problem. I’m not certain what they expected; I guess that I would eventually just give in to the spirit of the moment. That was never going to happen, not without a fight.

All my life, people have underestimated me. More than once I’ve been the target of bullies, probably because I don’t look all that intimidating and tend to avoid conflict where I can. But when trouble jumps off, I don’t back down, often to my detriment. Growing up in a house with a couple abusive people either beats you down or sparks a fire within your soul. With me, it laid the tinder.

Anyone who knows me knows I’m not a big guy. Back then I was tall and lanky, not yet filled out like most men now. But I’m still wiry and my lever-arms are long. Plus I’m willful and evil cunning when backed into a corner. It probably doesn’t hurt that living in fear for most of my life left me with crazy eyes.

So I unleashed my inner demons and allowed them to erupt. While I could never quite break free, every time the four of them thought they had me immobilized, I slipped sideways somehow. Though we weren’t really trying to hurt each other, I didn’t mind using my knees and elbows to make a point.

When the other two guys understood I wasn’t taking this as a prank, they suddenly remembered they had somewhere else to be. Don and Rick kept at it, thinking they’d eventually wear me down. They were both stronger than I was, and there were still two of them after all. But fear and adrenaline make powerful allies.

Unfortunately, the math had turned against me. Two was greater than four because they no longer got in each other’s way. My dorm-mates were mostly undisciplined stoners so had never evolved from a simple pack mentality to coordinated attacks. And Don relied exclusively on might makes right to win the day.

My struggle turned into an existential crisis. I fought and fought and fought until my muscles ached and my skin was raw and red. I knew I had to keep them off balance or risk being drawn into a war of attrition. If these two tied me to anything and left me anywhere, I’d probably stay all night to justify their grief.

Finally, Rick, too, got the message that mine wasn’t a token resistance. Besides, after so much exertion, he desperately needed a cigarette. He collapsed onto another bed and started cajoling me to submit to the inevitable as he satisfied his addiction. When he recognized that surrender wasn’t in the offing, he reluctantly switched to Don.

But Don wouldn’t have any part of it. He’d be damned before some skinny college boy got the best of him. At this point he had me in a full body lock, contained but uncontrollable unless I let him. Encouraged by even odds, I honed my tactics and started pitting his strength against him. He had to keep his body taut in every possible direction to prevent me from slipping free. I could mostly rest as I picked the direction of my next attack. Which I did relentlessly each time his concentration lapsed.

My long-term strategy paid a dividend when I threw another change-up. I lulled Don into loosening his grip by playing possum, a trick I’d learned when someone tried to drown me when I was ten. Sensing victory, he relaxed just half a second too long. I seized my opportunity like Caesar at the Rubicon. Before Don could react, I burst up and out the door. Behind me I heard Rick say, it’s not worth it. Just let him go.

Even then, I stayed away a good, long time. I re-entered the dorm only cautiously then locked myself in my room. I watched my back for at least a week and disappeared all the next weekend. Don struck me as the unforgiving kind. The kind with a very long memory of defeat.

Soon after, campus security caught wind of Don’s covert living arrangements. He had to leave the dorm or risk arrest. The following quarter, Rick left, too, returning to his predestined path in Pennsylvania. We exchanged a letter or two but soon fell into characteristic college silence. Despite the one encounter and losing touch, I still considered him a friend, one of the few I counted my freshman year.

Fast forward to the Facebook era. Like a number of people I’d somehow made an impression on without realizing it, Rick reached out with a friend request. We did the usual, exchanging some posts and comments and a few messages to catch up. He even led me to a number of my current online friends.

One day a couple years ago, I spotted a message from him in my inbox. “Remember him?” was the only preamble to the enclosed website. And there in the preview pane was Don’s mug shot. I recognized him immediately and followed the link to what turned out to be a Florida Department of Corrections webpage. Not just any DoC webpage, their list of current death row inmates. My blood went colder than Lake Baikal.

Turns out our quasi-dorm-mate had been sentenced in a murder-for-hire scheme he’d successfully carried out. As an added perk, by the time we’d met him, he’d already done one year of a three year stint for failure to appear. Rick’s only other comment when I got back to him was “No real surprise.” I wasn’t sure exactly what to make of that.

Now I wrestle with this memory. Rick’s message serves as a reminder of just how lucky I’ve been throughout my life, often without realizing it. The situations we find ourselves in can quickly turn unpredictable. You never know exactly who you’re dealing with. And sometimes a random encounter kicks off with a dorm-mate who can’t turn away a stray.

So how does all this relate to Imbolc? I’m not sure it does except through proximity to the date. It is just one of many life events that shaped my outlook, though one that has obviously lingered more than most. Memories like this sometimes haunt me now, kicking like lambs in their mothers’ wombs on the eve of Celtic spring. Perhaps a sign that they are preparing to emerge in warmer, safer, more contented days.

© 2015 Edward P. Morgan III