A New Song (35 page)

Out there, it was rain, churning waters, and diesel smoke. In here, it was earsplitting racket and the worst ride he’d had since Tommy Noles had shoved him down a rocky hillside in a red wagon without a tongue.

The sun was emerging from the water, staining the silver sea with patches of light and color.

Pete Brady came into the cabin, holding a dripping ballyhoo in one hand. “You’ll want to go up to the bridge now, sir. Better put your jacket on.”

“Right!” he said. He was glad to leave the cabin; only a moment ago, he’d had the odd sensation of smothering. . . .

He stood, holding on to the table that was bolted to the deck, then made his way to the door, praying he wouldn’t pitch into Madge Parrott’s lap.

“You tell th’ Lord we’re wantin’ ’em to weigh fifty pounds and up, if He don’t mind.” Otis chewed his cigar and grinned.

Father Tim clung to the doorjamb. “How do I get to the bridge?” he asked Pete.

The first mate, who appeared to be squeezing the guts from a bait fish, jerked his thumb toward the side of the cabin. “Right up the ladder there.”

He peered around and saw the ladder. The rungs were immediately over the water, and went straight up. Three, four, five . . .

“
That
ladder?”

“Yessir, be sure’n hold on tight.”

He peered into the black and churning sea, and made a couple of quick steps to a chair that was bolted to the cockpit deck. Pete was bustling around without any difficulty in keeping his footing, but Father Tim had the certain feeling that if he let go of the chair, he’d end up at the Currituck Light.

He turned and lunged for the bottom rung of the ladder, but miscalculated and bounced onto the rail. Too startled to grab hold, he reeled against the cabin wall, finally managing to grip the lower rung. Thanks be to God, Pete was baiting a hook and facing seaward, and his cabin mates were oblivious to his afflictions.

He reached to an upper rung and got a firm grip.

The spray was flying, the waves were churning, the sun was rising . . . it was now or never. He swung himself onto the ladder and went up, trying in vain to curl his tennis shoes around the rungs like buns around frankfurters.

He hauled himself to the bridge, grabbed the support rail for the hard top, and stood for a moment, awed. The view from the bridge literally took his breath away.

How could anyone doubt the living truth of what the psalmist said?
“The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands!”
He wanted to shout in unabashed praise.

His shirt whipped against his body like a flag; his knees trembled. This boat was flying, no two ways about it, and beneath their feet, the endless, racking, turbulent sea, and a sunrise advancing up the sky like tongues of fire.

Surely this was the habitation of angels, and life in the cabin a thing to be pitied.

He lurched to the helm, where Captain Willie was holding a microphone, and grabbed the back of the helm chair.

“We’re glad to have you with us, Father! Greetings to you from th’ whole fleet on this beautiful September day!”

His stomach did an odd turn as he opened his mouth to speak, so he closed it again.

The captain winked. “Got a little chop this mornin’.”

He nodded.

“A real sharp head sea.”

He felt sweat on his brow as the captain spoke into the microphone.

“We’re mighty happy to have Father Tim Kavanagh to lead us in prayer this mornin’. He’s from over at Whitecap, where Toby Rider has his boat shop. Anybody with a prayer request, let’s hear it now.”

The VHF blared. “Father, my little boy fell off a ladder on Sunday, he’s, ah, in the hospital, looks like he’s goin’ to be fine, but . . . his name’s Danny. We thank you.”

“Please pray for Romaine, he had his leg tore up by a tractor fell on ’im. Thank you.”

“Just like to ask for . . . forgiveness for somethin’ I done, there’s no use to go into what, I’d appreciate it.”

Several other requests came in as he bent his head and listened intently, gripping the helm chair for all he was worth.

“That it? Anybody else?”

He fished in his pocket for his hat. Though the rain had stopped, he put it on and pulled it down snugly above his ears. Then he took the microphone, surprised that it felt as heavy as a lug wrench.

“We’d like to pray for th’ owner of th’ marina and his wife, Angie, too,” said Captain Willie. “She’s got breast cancer. And Cap’n Tucker’s daughter, we don’t want to forget her, name’s Sarah, then there’s Toby Rider, lost his daddy and we feel real bad about it. Course we’d like to ask God’s mercy for every family back home and every soul on board....”

Captain Willie turned to the helm, grabbed the red knob, and cranked the engines back to idle.

In the sudden quiet, the waves slammed against the hull, dulling the gurgling sound of the exhaust. They seemed to be wallowing now in the choppy sea; they might have been so much laundry tossing in a washing machine.

His heart was hammering as if he’d run a race. But it wasn’t his heart, exactly, that bothered him, it was his stomach. It seemed strangely disoriented, as if it had moved to a new location and he couldn’t figure out where.

“Our Father, we thank You mightily for the beauty of the sunrise over this vast sea, and for the awe and wonder in all the gifts of Your creation. We ask Your generous blessings upon every captain and mate aboard every vessel in this fleet, and pray that each of us be made able, by Your grace, to know Your guidance, love, and mercy throughout the day. . . .”

The names of the people, and their needs, what were they? His mind seemed desperately blank, as if every shred of thought and reason had been blown away like chaff on the wind.

“For Sarah, we ask Your tender mercies, that You would keep her daily in Your healing care, giving wisdom to those attending her, and providing strength and encouragement. . . .”

More than three decades of intercessory prayer experience notwithstanding, he found it miraculous that the names came to him, one by one. He leaned into the prayer with intensity, feeling something of the genuine weight and burden, the urgency, of the needs for which he prayed.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Oh, Lord, who maketh a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters, we thank You for hearing our prayers, in the blessed name of Your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.”

The captain took the microphone and keyed it, thanking him.

He noted what appeared to be a look of compassion on the captain’s face as they shook hands.

“
Blue Heaven, Salty Dog,
come back.”

“
Blue Heaven,
go ahead,
Salty Dog
.”

“Just want to say we really appreciate Father Kavanagh’s prayers, and sure hope he doesn’t succumb to the torments of a rough sea. OK,
Salty Dog
back to eighty.”

“
Blue Heaven
standin’ by on eighty.”

As the captain gunned the engines, Father Tim careened to the rail and leaned over.

The goodwill and fond hope of
Salty Dog
had come too late.

 

Twice over the rail should nip this thing in the bud. Already his ribs hurt from the retching; it was probably over now and he could go down the ladder and have something to drink, maybe even a bite to eat—that was the problem, going out on rough seas with an empty stomach. . . .

He was amazed at his agility on the ladder, as if by the earlier practice shot he’d become a seasoned sailor. No big deal, he thought, looking down at the waves hammering the boat.

Good grief !
He scrambled off the ladder and leaned over the rail, the bile spewing in a flume from his very core, hot, bitter, and fathomless.

 

It was his head. He seemed to have lost his head the last time over the rail. He reached up feebly and felt around. No, it was his hat he’d lost. It had slithered off and dropped into the sea, and his scalp was parching like a Georgia peanut.

“Let ’im set there, we ain’t findin’ any fish,” he heard Otis say. He opened his eyes and realized he was sitting in the privileged fighting chair. The fighting chair. What a joke.

“Hat,” he said. “Hat.”

Nobody heard him, because he found he couldn’t speak above a whisper. He had no energy to force audible words through cracked lips.

Fine. He’d just sit here until they dumped him overboard, which he wished they’d do sooner rather than later. He’d never known such suffering in his life, not from mayonnaise that had nearly taken him out at a parish picnic, not from the diabetic coma brought on by Esther Bolick’s orange marmalade cake, not from the raging fever he had as a child when he saw his mother as a circus performer who made lions jump through hoops.

“What I don’t like about th’ Baptists,” Otis was saying, “is they won’t speak to you at th’ liquor store.”

Laughing, shuffling around, general merriment—people living their lives as if he weren’t there, as if he were invisible, a bump on a log.

 

“That’s th’ way it is, some days,” said Pete. “You’re either a hero or a zero. Yesterday, we were haulin’ ’em in faster than I could bait th’ hooks; today, I don’t know where they are.”

“You got to pump ’em,” said Ernie. “Like, say you’re reelin’ in a fifty-pound tuna, you got to raise the rod up real slow, then drop down quick and
crank.
”

Conversations came and went; it was all a kind of hive hum, he thought, as when bees returned from working a stand of sourwoods.

“Now, you take tarpon,” said Otis. “I was down in th’ Keys where they grow too big to mount on your wall. Tarpon you just jump a few times and then break ’em off before you wear ’em out, you wear ’em out too bad, th’ sharks eat ’em.”

“I never fished any tarpon,” said Ernie.

He opened his eyes and shut them fast. Pete was showing Madge and Sybil how he prepped the bait.

“See, you pop th’ eyes out like this . . . then you break up th’ backbone ...”

“Oooh,” said Madge.

“Don’t make ’er faint,” said Otis.

“I have no intention of fainting, thank you!”

“Then you squeeze their guts out, see. . . .”

“Lord help,” said Sybil.

“Thing is, th’ more they wiggle in th’ water, th’ better they catch.”

“Clever!” said Madge. “That is
really
clever.”

Without realizing how he got there, he was at the rail again, on his knees.

“On his knees at th’ rail,” said Madge. “That is very Episcopalian.”

“Or Luth’ran,” said Sybil. “Can’t that be Luth’ran?”

He didn’t know who it was, maybe Otis or Ernie, but someone held his head while he spewed up his insides and watched the vomitus carried away on the lashing water.

“We been out every day for forty-one days straight,” said Pete, who was currently varying the bait, trying anything.

“Sometimes you just pray for a nor’easter so you can get a break, but if th’ weather’s good, you have to go.”

The weather today is
not
good,
he tried to say, but couldn’t. Why in blazes did we go today if you don’t go when the weather’s not good?
Answer that!
Plus,
plus . . .
he wished he could discuss this with Roger . . . his math told him that, discounting the crew, he represented more than any twelve blasted percent.

He declined the fighting chair in case anyone got a strike, and sat feebly in an adjacent chair.

“What do you think the winds are right now?” asked Roger.

“Oh, fifteen, sixteen miles an hour. This ain’t nothin’. I know somebody was out all night last night in forty-mile winds.”

General, respectful silence. Diesel fumes.

“We need to think positive,” said Madge. “Smoked loin of tuna! That’s how
I’m
thinkin’!”

“Must be lunchtime,” said Otis. “Believe I’ll have me a little shooter. Want one?”

“Maybe later.”

“Thank you, you go on, but I wouldn’t mind shuckin’ a few peanuts with you.”

He was baking, he was broiling, he was frying, he was cooked. Sunscreen. He remembered the sunscreen in his jacket pocket, but he wasn’t wearing his jacket. Someone had helped him remove it earlier.

“Look,” said Sybil. “Th’ poor man needs something.”

“What?” said Madge. “Oh, mercy, look at his head, it’s red as a poker. Where’s his hat?”

“He went to the rail and came back without it.”

“Here you go,” Otis was patting sunscreen on his head and followed it with a hat

“Bless you,” he managed to whisper.

“What’d he say?”

“He said bless me.” He thought Otis sounded touched. “Father, you want some water or Coke? Coke might be good.”

“Nossir,” said Ernie, “what he needs is ginger ale. Anybody got ginger ale?”

“Fruit juice,” said Madge, “that’s what I’d give somebody with upset stomach.”

“No deal with th’ fruit juice,” said Pete. “Too much acid.”

“How about a piece of ice to just hold in his mouth?”

“I don’t know about that. They say when you’re real hot you shouldn’t swallow somethin’ real cold, it can give you a heart attack or maybe a stroke.”

“He’s moving his lips. What’s he saying?”

Otis leaned down and listened. “He’s praying,” said Otis.

 

They had veered east, then south, but weren’t finding any fish. Neither was the rest of the fleet. Occasionally a boat would get a couple of strikes, radio the news, and everybody would head in that direction. But so far,
Blue Heaven
had taken only two dolphins, and thrown back a few catches that were too small to gaff.

They were currently idling the boat several miles south of Virginia, and trolling a spreader bar. The chop was as bad as, or worse than, before; they were wallowing like a bear in cornshucks. He thought of looking at his watch, but why bother? The misery was interminable. There was no hope that anyone would turn back to shore for a sick man, much less send a helicopter. He was in this scrape to the bitter end.