True Stories I Just Made Up #1

I find that it is a lot easier for me to write vignettes, moments stolen from a bigger picture, but that I rarely sit down and attempt to tell a story. This series, therefore, will be about telling stories with beginnings, middles, and ends; even if, as is the case today, the story is told in a "vignette setting".

My goal here with the first story was to be at least 50% comprehensible, for that is, after all, the very first among a writer's goals: being understood. Nothing really intensely inspired this story, I just got a visual and ran with it as an exercise.

Celestial navigation

The truck, the old man and the boy would have seemed sorely out of place to anyone driving by the lonely cotton-field that night. The witness might have squinted her eyes and stepped off the gas in an effort to answer the question inherent: "Why so late, on this june night, would two persons be traipsing around in the dark?"

But as it happens, not a soul passed by and the "question inherent" was left to the contemplation of a lone raccoon crossing the county road.

The field had been in the old man's family for four generations. The Hendons used to own half the town, but now the field and the farmhouse was all that was left. The old man had been explaining this to the boy on the short ride over to the bumpy stretch of land he had referred to as "Sendow's Point".

The boy, 16, but tall for his age, was, of course, the old man's grandson. He was not, however, a Hendon; in fact it had only been that summer that he had met his maternal grandfather, or even passed through his mother's hometown. Throughout the duration of the ride from the two story farmhouse he had nodded along with each detail the old man had pridefully put forth, the big overzealous nods people use to express acknowledgment without words.

The truck, a seen-better-days Ford with a "made in america" sticker carefully applied to the bumper, was a sort of faded teal color, save for a white hood that had been recently, relatively recently, replaced. There was barely room for both of them in the cabin; if the boy was tall, it was very possible he was tall because of his grandfather's genes.

Eventually the truck quit the fight, the jostling in the cabin subsided and the two figures stepped out into the night. June nights in Oklahoma are the temperate result of two extremes. Without shade, the field had been baking in the furious summer sun all day, so come nightfall the cold North wind whipping through the cotton stalks was met with the release of the ambient heat stored in the tight-packed sod. So it was that night when they ventured out. It was several hours after sunset when at last the old man laid out the blanket and retrieved the thermos from the dashboard.

"Grandad, you said we were out here to see the stars right?"

"That's right Simon."

"I don't see any stars."

"No, I don't suppose I do either." He paused, exerting the effort necessary to lay out his old bones across the blanket. "But let's wait a while. Sometimes I come out here and can still see a few, scattered about."

They waited in a silence broken only by the occasional slurp of coffee from the over-sized thermos. What is only 15 minutes can seem to a youth like time upon time, and to a man closer to the grave like a precious fleeting breath, as fragile as a childhood memory.

Again the boy broke the silence.

"So why did you call this place Sendow's Point? Is that someone in your family, like that I'd be related to?"

"No, no." The old man almost smiled. "We weren't related to Sendow. Not in any sense of the word." He looked at the boy again, and his half-smile faded into the quietest, but most complete expression of disappointment. "I proposed to your Grandmother on a night like this one. Many years ago. Before the highway came through town, you could actually see a thousand different constellations. I was hoping we could see a bit of what I saw that night." He scanned the sky from zenith to horizon. "Even a tenth", he said with a sigh.

Instead, what he was seeing was the yellow artificial glow, incommensurable to anything in nature, that swallows up skies observed by all who came before; street lights every ten feet, and empty parking lots illuminated continually, who, without the slightest pause or reservation, undo epochs of wonder, purpose and beauty. It can only be surmised that throughout his life the old man had seen the town grow, and the sky shrink, and that now he held onto a fool's hope of sharing what this place, what his life, had been.

The warmth that the ground had stored for them was quickly being carried away and a more persistant chill filled the air. Perhaps he knew that this was his last summer, or that the boy would understand, or that some stories aren't stories until they are told, but on that night the old man spoke of what he considered the axis, the days upon which the rest of his life was secured.

"They saved my life once, you know", he started, tentatively.

"Saved your life? What, the stars?"

"Saved my life, I'd be dead. You'd 'ave never been born. I would've never married your grandmother, you'd 'ave never been born." He was gaining a bit more confidence now, as details rushed back to him across the sweeping wind-torn fields, across oceans dark and deep, halfway around the world they sped and told his tale:

" After December 7th, a bunch of us, my friends and I, started feeling real strong-like. We joined the army, every single one of us. We were patriots, and we were shipping out to basic within the month. Left your grandmother and I with no time to plan a wedding, no time to do it right. I wanted to do right by her, so I told her we'd be married the day I got home, but that we would plan it all out really nicely in letters and that everything would be perfect. I still have all those letters, in the attic.

War is a confusing thing, and a lot of what happened in that year of my life I don't understand. I ended up on a boat in the Pacific, a communications officer, when my unit was disbanded. I was only supposed to be on that boat for a week at the most, but, like I said, war is a confusing animal; I was on that boat for 3 months and 12 days. For 3 months and 12 days I wrote letters that I had no way of sending, I was miserable and alone, save for the one tolerable man on the whole crew. Private Sendow was our gunner, a mountain of a man, and a hell of a poker player. We worked a lot of nights together, floating around in the middle of nowhere. Jon was a college man before the war, he was going to be an astronomer, taught me all about how the seasons change the constellations around, and how I could always tell where we were going. We never really talked a lot about home, or about our families, our girls, but we spent a week's worth of hours staring at the Pleiades, at orion."

The boy was watching, listening carefully, to the old man. It seemed to him as if his grandfather's entire physiognomy had been bathed in the yellow artificial light and dissolved, leaving a face bare of wrinkles and a mind free of the weight of the years.

"Three months and eleven days into my time on the "saber", that was the name of our cutter, we passed by an archipelago to the south that was supposedly in hostile territory. Our Captain thought us unprepared for conflict and we headed out into open waters.

I woke up the next morning to sirens blarin' and fires blazin'. The Saber had been attacked, and our Captain was right, we weren't ready for conflict. I was almost overboard before I knew what had happened and after a few more wet, confusing minutes it was over. The Saber lie at the bottom of the pacific, the japs had made off, and I was left alone, a soldier dying a sailor's death."

The old man stopped for a while. A particularly cool breeze had rustled through his whispy gray hair and brought him back for a moment. He closed his eyes and described what he saw.

"I had a life-vest. I had a life-vest and that was it. I never have felt as small as I did then, tossed around, alone. For a while it was more than I could take, I closed my eyes and waited for it all to end. I was a coward, I wouldn't let go of that vest. I was waiting for fate and force to finish me.

For 16 hours I was lifeless, worthless chaff in the sea. The daylight burned out in a fire that consumed the horizon and then I was alone in the dark. I yelled for a bit, maybe a half an hour. I sloshed about and gnashed my teeth and was left with the fact that this vastness was going to swallow me one way or another. So I decided to let it.

I let go of the vest, and laid out, floating on my back. Then I looked up.

Then I opened my eyes and looked up.

I saw across stretches of space that make the whole of the ocean look like a step through a doorway. It was the exhaustion surely, or the onset of shock or the hopelessness I felt, but my eyes were lit. Every star, the whole sphere of the heavens, was visible. When I closed my eyes, they followed. I couldn't help but recognize the constellations Sendow had taught me to look for. Andromeda, the big dipper, Aries, I knew a sky that had order, that I had made have order, if you can possible follow my meaning... Well, it got me to thinking about your grandmother, about that night I asked her to marry me, beneath the same stars which were then nameless to me. I thought about all the things that had led me to that boat, of all the twists and turns of fate. I thought on all of this and felt something start burning in my chest."

The old timer opened his eyes and stared thoughtfully at the spellbound youth.

"Well I got this crazy idea in my head that I wanted to live. Not just that I wanted to survive, but that I wanted to get home, marry Celine and really live. I wanted a family to teach the names of the stars. I wanted them to guide me on a thousand journeys home.

I looked around for my vest, and found it to be, miraculously, a few yards away. Remembering that there had been a chain of island to the south, I used the techniques Sendow had taught me to divine which way I should be swimming. A queer thing, a thirst for life is; it'l fill you with a second wind. And thank God the current was with me that night.

I swam and paddled for hours, and the rest of the story must be no surprise for you. Here I am. I got to the islands and waited for a week and a half, but then I was on my way home. What a home it was. I married Celine, we had your mother and your uncle Stan. For a longer time than most, we were happy."

He stopped again, and again his smile melted into troubled reflection.

"One shouldn't complain when one has been blessed for so long, but after the car accident it was just me and your mom. I felt like those stars had lied to me, like I should have died that night, alone in the Pacific. I didn't see what I had left. I was so caught up in the unknowable dark, I lost sight of the bright points of light. I pushed your mother away from me, we lost touch, I lost touch. I gave up on finding my way home. I stopped looking up at night, and eventually they stopped coming out at all.

But that was many years ago; Time has a way of smoothing over bitterness, hearing he ain't got long left has a way of changing a man, and hearing he has a grandson has a way of softening the heart, making me remember why I am here. So here we are, trying to catch a glimpse."

He had never told his story before, never even written it out, so sharing all this was like letting the largest part of himself go. He was greatly disturbed. Turning away from the boy, he spent a moment collecting himself, banished the whole ordeal from his wiry frame with a heavy sigh, and announced: "We won't be seeing much of anything tonight. No I don't think we will".

***

The boat, the man and the urn would have seemed sorely out of place to anyone standing on the sandy shores of the lonely island chain that night. The witness might have squinted his eyes and stepped out into the water in an effort to answer the question inherent: "Why so late, on the night in july, would a sailboat be passing by this out-of-the-way archipelago?"

But as it happens, not a soul passed by and the "question inherent" was left to the contemplation of a lone hen, escaped from a nearby village, wandering the shoreline.

The boat, a 26 foot yacht, was a brilliant white form against the water. It had been painted recently, and though it was of an older build, thorough maintenance kept her sailing smoothly. Nothing was out of place inside the cabin, and a clear, uncluttered deck betrayed the orderly manner of her captain.

The man was, of course, Simon: the boy grown up. At 24 he stood even taller than he had that June night among the cotton. His features defined, his jaw set, he scanned the dark waters before him with the eyes of an experienced sailor. His three itinerant years on the water had taught him many lessons and so he employed his wits and strength with the vigor that the sea demands. His searching eyes met what they were looking for, and he dropped anchor.

The urn was a humble porcelain home for what remained of the old man. No etchings or painted patterns adorned the exterior. Simon liked to think that his grandfather would have appreciated the lack of what he might have called "frivolity". Simon liked to think that he knew what his grandfather would have thought about certain things. He often thought back to that summer in the fields, going out every night to Sendow's point to fruitlessly search for constellations. They had become close in those days. They had worked and lived together and Simon was there the day the old man died.

He had promised himself he would make this trip, and to him it was the most sacred and real commitment he had ever made. Here at the pivotal moment however, he felt no great stir in his heart, no sense of completeness, only a practical knowledge of what was left to do. Once the yacht was completely still he grabbed the urn and unceremoniously scattered the ashes into the water. It was done.

The man uncorked a bottle of wine and drank deeply straight from the bottle. With a pause to wipe his lips on his sleeve, he set about pulling up the anchor and rigging the sails. He was halfway through the process when he realized that he had not yet set a course.

"Where to now?" he asked aloud, half expecting a reply. He went through the motions of grabbing for the navigational unit in the cabin, but didn't have the heart to open it, for he knew in the deepest pit of his chest where he was bound. And he knew that there was only one way to find his way.

"Where to now?" he laughed as he put away the laptop.

The man hoisted the sail. Then he looked up.