by Unknown
Forts William (named for William in) and Augustus (for the Duke of Cumberland) stand guard on either side of the glen, their broad streets sloping toward the great Caledonian Canal. Fort William, the first I reached, was noisy, traffic-clogged, and, I thought then, highly exciting; it was the largest town I’d ever seen, with handsome white houses, hotels crowded with vacationers, and the grey granite mass of Ben Nevis rising up behind it, its top obscured by clouds. One look at the women in the shops, all of whom seemed beautiful, and I resolved to go no farther; I would settle here. And I did... for a time. I put up at a cheap boarding house near the edge of town and found work in a tailor’s shop, fitting hikers with tweed suits-in those days one dressed up to hike-and mending worn collars. I’d been employed there less than a month, however, when one morning I arrived to find the street filled with shouting firemen and the shop a smoking ruin. I don’t know if they ever found the cause. At the time I suspected the landlord’s younger son, who’d had a dispute with the tailor; now I suspect God, who has lightning at His command. It was clear to me, at any rate, that I had to move on. I continued eastward, to Fort Augustus, at the foot of Loch Ness, where anglers stalk salmon and Americans search for monsters. The King’s Own Highlanders were garrisoned at the fort there, and I soon found myself a job helping keep the books for a firm that made uniforms for these troops. And then I fell in love. I shan’t write down her name; I haven’t done so in half a century. Sometimes I manage to forget her; I think I prefer it that way. Anyhow, I hoped to marry her, and plans were made, and then she got ill-she had a brother in the garrison, where a fever was raging-and finally God took her. No use protesting; He simply had other plans for me, and the girl had gotten in the way. I see that now; it’s why I’m writing this, so I’ll see it all for what it was before I go. I wasn’t supposed to linger at Augustus; my destiny-my great destiny-lay somewhere to the east. Pushing on to Inverness, I booked a passage for Edinburgh, where I found a ship to travel on, the Saracen. She was a rusted old tramp steamer, her twin smokestacks stained with grime, but they needed a purser on her and were willing to hire me. Besides, I liked her name. I signed on board, eager to see what God had in store for me.
* * *
Ports all over the world welcomed me in my quest. We docked at Lisbon, the Canaries, and Capetown, then sailed north to the Maldives and Bombay. In succeeding years I transferred to other ships and added new names to my catalogue of places seen. In a single year I saw Athens and Adelaide, Singapore and San Francisco. In another I did nothing but sail back and forth between Manila and Hong Kong. I saw a temple in Java where they worshiped small green spiders, and a woman in Ceylon who gave herself to snakes. I visited the New Hebrides and New Caledonia off Australia, lured by the Scottishness of their names, and the great port of New York, a universe away from the tiny ruined hamlet of the same name near my birthplace, at the edge of the Inverliever Forest and Loch Awe, where anglers feast on salmon and trout. The world left its marks on me, but I welcomed them. In Shanghai my face was slashed during a robbery, but I found the scar handsome. In Montevideo my nose was broken in a waterfront brawl, but I decided I liked it better that way. I was aimless, for once; I enjoyed it. I fell in love with travel. For a while, in the early years, I worried that God had forgotten me; then I hoped He had.
Throughout these years I found myself employed with increasing frequency by the Brittanic East India Company. The work-the purchase of shipboard supplies, the keeping of books- came easily now, and the Company and its concerns were seldom in my thoughts. But it seemed I was in theirs, because when the director of agricultural development unexpectedly took sick and died, they made me his successor.
Posts in Gibraltar and, later, Bombay awaited me. Once again my life had changed drastically; after gallivanting across the globe, I was suddenly planted in an office. I missed my vagabond days, but didn’t have the strength to refuse the raise in pay. My first post, in Gibraltar, lasted exactly seven weeks; I was supposed to expedite the transfer of olive trees from Rabat to Madrid, but a Moroccan revolution cut off our supply. In Bombay, I had barely unpacked my bags before I was placed in charge of a plan designed to introduce Welsh merino sheep into the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The poor animals had been wrenched from their homes and shipped halfway around the world; I felt a kinship with them. I set up a small office in the interior, in a dusty little village whose name I could never pronounce. It seemed as remote as another planet, though the wrinkled grey hides of the elephants passing on the streets reminded me of the slopes of Ben Nevis. Only after we’d gotten set up did I discover that I’d arrived at the hottest time of year, in one of the hottest years on record.
For once I didn’t work hard; I sat there in my shirtsleeves and perspired. One morning a little old man, his face as brown and wrinkled as a walnut, strolled unannounced into my office. He was Mr. Nath, he told me in a shrill singsong voice, “a holy man.” His forthrightness amused me, and I told him to sit down.
He’d come, he said, because the locals were complaining that I’d brought the heat wave with me. They feared that I was cursed. “Well,” I said, not entirely joking, “perhaps I am”-and I proceeded to sketch the particulars of my life. “I feel,” I said, “a little like a pawn, constantly being shunted from one scene to another at someone else’s whim. I still believe there’s a design to it all, but damned if I know what it is.” Mr. Nath had been listening intently, nodding as I spoke. “All lives have a pattern,” he said, “that we see in their beauty and completion only at the end. One man is the second son, and will be second in all things. One will forever be doomed to arrive too late. One will go from rich to poor and back again seven times in his life. Another will always take wrong advice. Another will win only one race, at the start, and thereafter will know nothing but defeat. One will make a miserable first marriage, and then his second wife will bring him only bliss. Another will rue every day but the last. Another’s life will follow the pattern of a spiral, or a chess game, or the lines from a child’s nursery song. But you, my friend-” Suddenly I saw his eyes widen. He was staring at a swarm of bugs that had just flown into the room, a seething little microcosm of darting energy and flashing wings, hovering just above our heads, humming in the morning heat. They were, I don’t know, gnats, mosquitoes, tiny flies... India has so many. Their presence in my office was unremarkable; the door to the other rooms had been open, and the cloth screens were riddled with holes. What unnerved me was the manner of their coming, the sheer abruptness of it, as if they’d been rushed onto the stage by some great unseen hand. The little man seemed more upset than I. “Bugs,” I said, shrugging. He shook his head, eyes round with horror. “No,” he whispered. “Pests!” I mistook this for a reference to the plague, and, thinking of my lost love, felt a stab of sadness. And at that moment, just as quickly as they came, the bugs vanished-simply melted into the air, as if that same great hand had wiped them off the board. The little man’s eyes nearly popped from his head. He opened his mouth, made a strangled sound, and ran from the room. I was left staring at the place where the bugs had been, feeling more bemused than frightened. Those creatures didn’t scare me, not then. But they scare me now. Because now I know what they were.
The costs of running the Bombay branch proved to be too high, that’s what I was informed, and I found myself abruptly-and, I might add, high-handedly-relieved of my post. Blame it on the dreadful heat I’d brought with me (for I’m more than half convinced I did), and on the drought that followed. No one had ever seen such weather; the Company’s coffee crops withered, the sheep sickened and died, and the survivors had to be shipped north at considerable expense. Blame it on the war then raging in Europe, which more than doubled the price of doing business. Blame it on an act of God. All I knew is that I was suddenly being uprooted again, another chapter closed behind me. As I stood on the Bombay dock, gazing at the ship I’d soon be boarding while, around me, workers with ropes and pulleys strained to hoist cargo into the hold, I thoug
ht of the stable world I’d known as a child; I seemed to be inhabiting an entirely different place now, pushed from one scene to the next. These gloomy reflections were cut short by the highpitched voice of Mr. Nath, who had come to see me off. I’d become friends with him following the incident in my office; and though it was the one subject on which he’d refused to talk further, I’d relished his insights on other matters-so much so, in fact, that I’d hired him as my assistant. He had accompanied me back to Bombay; he, too, was now jobless, but seemed much less downcast than I, and was looking forward to returning to his village. As he walked me up the gangplank, he listened impatiently as I complained once more about the turns my life had taken. “Surely,” I said, “God must be behind these huge changes.” He gave a little sigh before he spoke, as if this were something he’d been hoping to avoid. “Yes,” he said, “and no. The changes you speak of are moya, illusion.” We had reached the deck now; he gripped my arm and stared at me with, for the first time, a hint of urgency. “In the things that matter,” he said, "the Lord works very slowly and deliberately, with a hand far more subtle than you imagine.
Don’t you know how He changes a dog into a cat?" He paused, smiled when he saw my bewilderment, and seemed about to answer his own question, when suddenly I saw him look past me; his eyes widened with horror, the way I’d seen before-with horror and, I think now, a kind of terrible understanding. A shadow fell across the deck, and I looked up, half expecting to see a swarm of insects.
But something else darkened the sky: a rope had snapped, and an enormous wooden crate destined for the hold was hurtling down upon us. I stumbled back in time; Mr. Nath was not so lucky. The crate caught him almost head-on, crushing him like a bug and bursting open on the deck, its puzzling contents spilling out and all but burying my friend.
Coats, that’s what the crate had contained; the word, in fact, was stenciled on the side. Greatcoats, dress coats, army issues, fancy leather affairs with epaulets and brass buttons. They lay scattered across the deck, some of them dropping into the warm blue water. I even think I saw my old woolen coat from Oban disappear beneath the waves. None of this made sense. The weather was hot in this part of the world, preternaturally hot at the moment, the climate muggy even at its best; these garments were as out of place here as a pair of snowshoes. Now, of course, as I set this down and read it over, the whole thing is comically clear; I must have been blind not to see it. But at the time my friend’s last words, and the contents of the crate that had killed him, were sufficiently enigmatic that I spent most of the voyage pondering them. It was a shorter voyage than anyone expected. The ship, the Jane Guy, traveled south, then eastward, then south again. We kept clear of Japanese waters-there was still a war going on-but in those days nowhere was truly safe. Passengers took turns on deck, searching the horizon for a sign of danger. As I stood my watch one moonless night, preoccupied by thoughts of God and death, the ship gave a lurch, and somewhere metal echoed upon metal. Later a survivor would theorize about Japanese torpedoes, but it seemed to me that a piece of the ocean floor had simply risen up and speared us. However, there was no time for speculation.
We were sinking.
Boats were lowered over the side, passengers and crew having scrambled aboard, and those of us who could lay our hands on oars paddled madly away from the ship. My boat lost the others in the darkness. We heard the sound of distant screams and a great rushing of water, but when the sun rose we found ourselves alone. Several of us unfurled the single sail, but the canvas hung limp; there was no wind. The sun’s gaze was as blank and pitiless as poets have warned.
There were thirteen of us in the boat-we joked about it, of course-and it wasn’t many days before the other twelve were dead. Half-starving and delirious, I shoved their bodies over the side to thwart temptation, and looked forward to dying myself. I felt like Ishmael or the Ancient Mariner; I couldn’t understand why I’d been spared. That I had been immediately became clear, for no sooner did the last body hit the water than a sudden wind sprang up and filled the sail. The boat began to move. I can see God’s hand in that wind now, and in the calm that preceded it as well. It is not a kindly hand; I wish now I’d had the courage to jump over the side and defy it.
But all I could do at the time was lie back, mumble a prayer of thanks, and let the boat carry me where it would. I no longer questioned the plans He had for me, though I must have lapsed into a sun-dazzled reverie of some sort: boyhood memories, faces, questions, words. But suddenly those thoughts were interrupted by a rhythmic thumping...
Beats of a drum were echoing across the water, above the pounding of surf. I raised my head. Before me, in the distance, lay an island: coconut palms, thatched huts, and a row of natives waiting for my boat to wash ashore. They reminded me, as the boat drew nearer, of the black-faced sheep of my childhood ... only sheep had never worn bones in their noses, nor gazed at me so hungrily.
I can see even now, as in a fever dream, the group of them come toward me, dragging my boat onto the beach. In the background women are tending a fire; the glowing coals remind me of my boyhood. The largest of the men lifts me from the boat. He ties my hands; he anoints my face; he drags me forward...
And heats a pot that’s large enough to be my coffin. Wearily I whisper a final prayer... Till at that moment, borne before a huge unnatural gust of wind, a sailing ship appears on the horizon. The cartoon natives run away, and I am saved. The ship meets a steamer which returns me to Scotland; I set foot once more on my native soil. Still dazed and emaciated, a grey stick figure in cast-off Navy clothes, I sink to my knees and praise God for his goodness; I consider myself blessed. Later, as my weary legs carry me toward the house where I was born, I believe I finally see the pattern He’s imposed on my life: a madman’s full circle, clear around the globe.
* * *
The heath now stirs around me in the autumn wind. I have returned, like a piece of ancient driftwood, to the spot where I began-though not, in fact, to my parents’ doorstep. Their cottage now stands empty like the others, roof rotten and fallen in, a picturesque ruin. Instead, I’m now living in a tiny bungalow just down the hill from it, on a small plot of what was once my parents’ farm.
The land is subdivided now, along with the land of our neighbors, and a company down in London is busy populating it with vacation homes. Tourists, hikers, and holiday makers now roam the hills where once I tended my father’s flocks. The old “puffers” have been replaced by diesel-powered vessels that take Americans to Jura and Islay, and the deserted forts, those still in decent repair, have now become museums. In one of them, devoted to local history and antiquities, I recently had the novel experience, novel but eerily disorienting-of finding a shelf of my own childhood books on display in a room labeled “Typical Crofter’s Cottage, Early 20th Century.” I felt a queer burst of homesickness, seeing them there in that reconstructed room; they looked as clean and well cared for as if my mother were still alive to dust them. Among them were the bound Youth’s Companions that circumstance had robbed me of the chance to read. I removed one and sadly flipped through it. It fell open, as if by design, to a page entitled “Rainy Day Puzzles and Pastimes,” below which my eye was caught by a familiar question: “How do you change a Dog into a Cat?” Heart pounding, I read on: “By changing one letter at a time. This age-old game is called a ‘Word Ladder,’ for each change must make a new word. You can turn Dog into Cog, and Cog into Cot, and Cot into Cat-just three steps. Or you can do it in four, from Dog to Hog, to Hag, to Hat, to Cat. Or in five, from Dog to Bog, to Bag, to Bar, to Car, to Cat. In fact, the ladder may stretch as long as you like. The possibilities are endless!” And, by God, they are-though at first I didn’t understand; it’s taken me this long to work it through. And now, at last, it’s all laid out here in this memoir, the secret itinerary of my own career from “Birth” to “Firth,” to “Forth,” and on to “Forts”... and all for His amusement. All those deaths! The men of the Jane Guy, my father and mother, my friend Mr. Nath,
the girl in Fort Augustus... Was it really for this that she had to die? To move me one rung down, from “Forts” to “Ports”? Couldn’t He have spared her? Couldn’t He have set me on a different course? I might have gone instead from “Forts” to “Forks,” “Folks,”
“Folds,” “Golds,” “Gelds,” “Melds,” “Meads,” “Meats,” “Heats,” and “Heath”...
Or in an even more roundabout journey, from the “Posts” I once held, to “Poses,” “Roses,” “Ropes,” “Rapes,” “Races,” “Faces,” “Facts,” “Fasts,” “Fests,” “Tests,” “Tents,” “Dents,” “Depts.,” and “Depth” (assuming the old cheat would allow Himself the use of an abbreviation near the end). But in my case He seems simply to have plumped for the easiest and most direct route-except, I now realize, for a single false step. The holy man must have noticed it at once. “Pests!” he’d cried. Not “Bugs!” but “Pests!”-a chapter that, in someone else’s life, might well have followed “Posts.” Those creatures, had they been permitted to remain, would likely have led me on an alternate route to “Tests,” “Bests,” “Beats,” and “Heats,” arriving precisely where I am today. Instead, God must have changed His mind-and erased that swarm of pests from the game so hurriedly that my friend saw what it meant. Perhaps, in the end, He simply found it easier to move from “Posts” to “Costs,” and to drag in that dreadful crate of coats. ... Well, I always knew I was destined for something; I just never thought it would be this. Saint John had it right, I see that now: In the Beginning Was the Word. Unfortunately for me, the word was “Birth,” and it was all downhill from there. Below me now lies one more rung-the bottom rung, the one that follows “Heath.” I’d rather cling to this one for a while, but I know that, like any true gamesman, God’s going to have the last word.