“I’m so sorry,” Woody said, once they’d docked and the client had left.
“It’s okay, Woody,” Berg said.
“Are we going to report this to Mangini?” Garrett said. He was nervous, pacing the galley, clearly afraid that reporting the incident might endanger his job.
“I don’t know,” Berg said.
“If we’re going to report it, we need to report it now.”
“I’d say let’s report it,” Woody said.
“Berg’s going to decide,” Garrett said. Berg looked at the floor. He felt unable to process what had just happened.
“Let’s wait until tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll see how I feel tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 25
IN THE MORNING, WHEN he woke up with blinding headaches, he knew he’d suffered another concussion. It was not as bad as the first one but it was certainly a concussion. Uffa and Demeter drove him to the hospital in Santa Rita, where they took an X-ray of his brain to make sure that he wasn’t bleeding internally and then sent him home with a pamphlet about concussions.
Later that afternoon he called Garrett and told him about the concussion. He said he was going to take a week off, that he’d call Mangini to let him know.
“No, no,” Garrett said. “Let me talk to Mangini first.”
Mangini called Berg fifteen minutes later and told him to take his time recovering. Berg was immediately suspicious: his words sounded inauthentic and forced, as if he were reading them from a teleprompter. Was he just afraid that Berg was going to sue them? He had never trusted Mangini. Nobody trusted Mangini. Berg wondered what Garrett had said to him, why he felt the need to speak to him first.
“The important thing is that we learn from this,” Mangini said. “This is a good wake-up call for all of us.”
Nell came up to stay with Berg and he spent the next few days in bed, taking ibuprofen and acetaminophen to ward off headaches, with little success. Alejandro and Rebecca let Berg and Nell stay in the guest room in the farmhouse so Berg wouldn’t be disturbed by noise from the shop. It was the only spare room in the house and it was simple, unadorned. A small bookshelf and, opposite the bed, a window looking out on the grove of laurels and cedars.
Berg slept and listened to a book on tape about World War II. After three days of rest, he went back to work, for both Alejandro and Mangini. On his first day back, Mangini gave him a weird lecture in which he basically told Berg that the incident was his fault, that he shouldn’t have been standing where he was standing, and that he needed to do more sailing training if he wanted to remain at Fernwood.
“We just can’t have this happening on charters,” Mangini said. “I’ve been working on the bay for thirty years and this is the most serious accident I’ve ever been associated with. We’ve lost trust in you, so you’re going to have to earn it back. But I’m glad you’re healthy,” he added. “You feeling all better?”
“I’m getting some headaches but it’s okay.”
“Yeah, man, I got smacked in the head all the time when I was younger. You just gotta tough it out. You’ll be fine.”
It seemed like Mangini had been stewing about the incident for the past three days, demonizing Berg in his absence. Berg was infuriated. The accident had not been his fault. He was not faultless, he shouldn’t have been standing there, but there was plenty of blame to go around: Garrett should have never tried to furl the jib in that kind of weather, Woody should have had the line around a cleat, and Garrett shouldn’t have accidentally jibed. Still, Berg knew he was lower on the totem pole than Garrett, and he didn’t feel like throwing Woody under the bus. He said nothing to Mangini, nodded silently, and then walked down to the docks to prep the boat.
The next two weeks were miserable. The headaches were back and more forceful than ever. They short-circuited his thoughts and they made his whole body feel tense and sensitive, like he’d been drinking a lot of caffeine and not getting any sleep. On occasion, his ears would begin to ring, seemingly at random. He told Alejandro he wasn’t doing so well and Alejandro told him he should take more time off.
He did take more time off and felt a little better, but when he went back to work, the headaches returned in full force. He decided he needed to go see another doctor. He had not been inspired to do this earlier, because the specialists he’d seen the first time around had not been helpful. This doctor was no different. He told Berg that there was nothing to do except wait. It was normal to have these kinds of headaches after a concussion, he said, and eventually they would diminish in frequency and intensity.
“Should I be working?” Berg asked.
“It’s been what? Over a month?” the doctor said.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t see why not. You can’t make the concussion symptoms worse at this point,” he said. “Just make sure you don’t get another one.”
So Berg continued to work. But the work he was doing was very poor. They were building out the frames for a skiff for the Moltisanti family, and Berg was helping Alejandro make the cuts on the big green bandsaw. Cutting frames was difficult because they had to be cut on a rolling bevel. Berg’s job was to push the wood through the saw while Alejandro stood above it, adjusting the bevel as they went. Shortly after they’d started, Berg produced a few unsatisfactory cuts that would have to be fixed with hand tools. He was frustrated because he knew how to do this. It was embarrassing to mess up right in front of Alejandro. Oftentimes, when he made mistakes in the shop, he was allowed to make them in private, and then correct them before he presented the work to Alejandro. But with this work, his teacher was right there, observing.
“It’s okay,” Alejandro said. “You’re not trying to show who you are, you’re just trying to make the thing.”
Berg nodded. He looked around for Uffa and then remembered that he’d gone over to the farmhouse to begin cooking dinner. Like a college co-op, the family meal was prepared by a different person every night, according to a monthly schedule devised by Rebecca.
“We’re just trying to merge with the task at hand,” Alejandro said. “That’s the best you can do. It’s like cooking a meal or walking in a field.”
Berg took a deep breath and lifted up the next piece of wood. He’d had a headache all day but it had grown more painful as the day wore on. The more he messed up the cuts, the worse it seemed to get. Right now it was burning white and sharp.
“Are you sure you’re okay to do this?” Alejandro asked.
“Yes,” he said.
Alejandro watched him for a moment, and then he said, “No.” There was a serious look on his face. “No,” he said. “C’mon. Here, put this down.” He waved at the piece of wood Berg was holding. Berg rested it against the bandsaw.
Alejandro led him out of the shop, through the pasture, and into the oak meadow east of the house. They walked for a while until they came to a smooth log. Alejandro sat down on the log and invited Berg to do the same. A soft wind passed through the meadow, carrying with it smells of the distant woods: moist dirt and fir and creek water. Alejandro took a deep breath and then closed his eyes.
“Oh you who are nobly born,” he boomed. “Do not forget your true nature.”
Berg shifted on the log. He had no idea what Alejandro was up to. He wanted to go home and take six ibuprofen and lie in the cubby. He knew he wouldn’t be able to rest well, that the headaches would inevitably disturb him, but it was better than sitting on this log and listening to Alejandro chant sutras, or whatever he was doing.
“That is what the Buddhist texts say,” Alejandro continued, more quietly. “Every Buddhist text opens with that address. They seek to remind us of our inherent dignity. Of the wisdom we already possess.”
This isn’t going to help, Berg thought, but Alejandro’s tone was very solemn and he didn’t want to be disrespectful, so he sat there, listening.
“Now Berg,” he said. “I want you to close your eyes and sit here in a posture that embodies dignity, whatever that means to you.”
Berg noticed he had been slouching and sat up straight. He felt more alert after he did this, more engaged.
“And now,” Alejandro continued. “I want you to bring your attention to the breath as it moves through the body. Just noticing it. Not trying to alter it, or change anything. Just watching it. And, as the mind creates thoughts, which it inevitably will, just naming them, observing them, and bringing your attention back to the breath.”
Berg tried to do this but found it challenging. He couldn’t keep his focus on the breath. It was too boring. There was nothing to notice about it. It was like sharpening a chisel, only more difficult and less practical.
“Noticing,” Alejandro continued, “if the mind says that it is bored or that it isn’t able to do this, and just naming that, and patiently bringing attention back to the breath. What we are trying to do here is cultivate a nonjudgmental awareness. All of our lives we are doing, doing, doing. Constantly judging. And this doing, this judging, it prevents us from seeing what is happening right in front of us.”
Berg felt his headache pulsing. That was what was happening right in front of him. He was going to have to tell Alejandro this wasn’t working for him, that he needed to go back to the shop. He was strategizing about how he was going to say this, how he was going to tell Alejandro he needed to leave without offending him, when Alejandro spoke again.
“Noticing,” he said. “If any pain arises in the body, and just watching that pain, trying to see it for what it is, trying not to push it away. Seeing if, instead of endeavoring to change things, we can just observe what’s happening, because it’s already here.”
After he said this, Alejandro was quiet for several minutes. Berg abandoned his plans of escape and tried, again, to focus on his breathing. He stayed with it for a moment, but then his mind became diverted. It was like a stream rushing down a mountain, forking every time it encountered an obstacle.
Berg was not sure how long they sat in meditation but, after a certain point, he seemed to drop out of clock time. Every so often, Alejandro would provide some kind of instruction.
“Your thoughts and feelings are like weather patterns,” he said. “See if you can just watch them pass, not judging them.”
When the meditation was over, Berg found that, while his headache hadn’t disappeared, it was not as painful as it had been earlier. They walked back to the house and joined the bustle of the kitchen. Marie was baking bread and Uffa was grilling steak. Sandy was in the living room, playing piano and talking to Lizzie at the same time. Rebecca, it seemed, was still out on the farm somewhere. Alejandro poured himself a cup of coffee and a cup of wine. He was the only person Berg had ever met who drank wine and coffee at the same time.
Berg began to clean the table, which was scattered with books and newspaper and glasses of water. Then Tess entered the room. She was wearing overalls, red Converse shoes, and a baseball hat. She had a smudge of dirt under her right eye, a blurry smudge, like a pencil mark that had been rubbed out with a bad eraser. Lately she had been carrying around a small wooden flute and she announced her arrival by wailing on one of its higher notes.
Alejandro put down his drinks, grabbed her, and spun her in the air.
“Pamba,” she shrieked. “Stop it!”
Alejandro set her on the ground.
“What did I tell you about inside flute-playing?” he said.
“You didn’t say anything about my flute.”
“I did.”
“This flute?” she said, holding it up.
“That flute.”
“This flute?”
Tess brought the instrument very slowly to her mouth as Alejandro stared at her. She blew one sharp note, giggled wildly, and sprinted away.
“Dinner time,” Uffa said.
CHAPTER 26
THE DAY OF THE concert, Berg got home late. He’d been out on a sunset charter earlier in the evening with a group of lawyers. He’d had a headache all day and he was feeling irritable, but he really wanted to make it to the show. He’d tried to meditate that week, but he couldn’t seem to find the time. Alejandro had mentioned that the meditation would be most useful if he developed a daily practice. But Berg found that it was hard to bring himself to sit. It seemed like there was always something else that took precedence over it.
Woody picked him up after work and the two of them drove over to the stadium. It was just up the road from Albert Worsley’s ranch, one of the other properties where Alejandro often milled wood. Worsley, Woody insisted, had also been a part of the drug-rehabilitation cult.
“He was one of the first people I saw when I visited,” Woody said. “Greeted me at the entrance with a bunch of other people and had me do the Niebor dance. That was the name of the cult, The Church of Niebor. They made everyone who showed up on their property do the dance right when they got there.”
“What was the dance like?”
“You kinda hopped around like a bee. And you made some strange noises. When you finished, they offered you coffee and peanut butter sandwiches. They were always offering you peanut butter sandwiches. They were really into that.”
Once inside the stadium, Berg wandered around looking for Nell, who had driven up for the show. The bus was set up near the pitcher’s mound and lit with purple and blue light. People crowded around its entrance, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Others were sitting in the dugout. Berg recognized very few people. There was a jerry-rigged bar that was decorated with palm fronds and run by a man dressed like a desert nomad. A long piece of elastic blue fabric had been draped from the top of the backstop down to the entrance of the bus, where a young woman with long, bouncy brown hair asked for donations.
“This is a jar of money,” she said to no one in particular. “This is a jar of money. Let it be known that this is a jar of money. Do you support vagabond artists? If so, place money in this jar.”
Before Berg could find Nell, Uffa called out to the crowd to let them know the show was starting. The side of the bus had been opened like a can, and there was a stage extending out from the opening. Uffa had told Berg that the bus was capable of doing this but he’d never seen it in action.
Everyone gathered in the infield, around the bus. Berg finally located Nell, who was sitting up near the stage, next to two girls with ear gauges and cool haircuts. She waved to Berg and blew him a kiss. She had a green scarf wrapped around her head and she was drinking red wine out of a mason jar.
The first performer hopped up onstage and introduced himself as Maze. He was wearing a denim jacket with a furry collar.
“All right,” he said. “Welcome, welcome. Thanks for coming out. It’s nice to be out here in the country. Thank you very much to the Oysters for hosting us. We’ve got Uffa on lights and Chloe on candles. Give them a hand. All right, sorry it’s kinda cold out. But this is gonna be some good shit, man. Don’t worry. This won’t be some shitty concert. This is gonna be some good shit.”
Maze sang for about twenty minutes. His songs were about growing up in the Midwest and being a freak and his asshole stepdad who’d fought in Korea. On occasion, he would hum a saxophone solo. At one point he invited Uffa onstage and they sang a song about a boy who looked like a horse. In the middle of the song, Uffa shook his head and neighed like a horse.
After Maze, a red-haired woman came on stage. Her name was Chloe and she sang quiet, brief love songs. Uffa had told Berg about her. She was one of the housemates from the warehouse and Uffa thought he might be in love with her. Berg looked around the audience as Chloe played and noticed that Alejandro and Rebecca were sitting on chairs by second base, holding hands. Rebecca seemed to be enjoying Chloe’s music a great deal. Her eyes were closed and there was a gentle smile on her face. More than anyone, though, Walt was loving the show. He was sitting front and center, eyes closed, head bobbing side to side.
When Chloe’s set was finished, Uffa announced that there would be a brief intermission and then two closing acts. During the break Berg found him
self in line for a drink next to Katherine, of all people.
“Holy shit,” he said. “I had no idea you were coming here.”
“Yeah!” she said. “I saw that Nell was playing a concert at a minor-league baseball stadium and I thought, How the hell can I miss that? How are you? I hear you’re building boats.”
“I am,” he said. “I live about ten minutes away. With the guy who owns this bus, actually.”
They got their drinks and wandered away from the bar. Berg used his beer to swallow a few ibuprofen pills.
“Did you come up alone?” Berg asked.
“Yeah, Eugene had to go to a friend’s birthday.”
“I miss seeing that guy around.”
“He misses you,” she said, laughing. “You guys had a sweet friendship.”
Berg took another sip of his beer, scanned the surrounding crowd, looking for Nell. The intermission was going to be over soon and he still hadn’t had a chance to say hello to her. He wanted to find her before she played. When he looked back at Katherine she had an orange pill bottle out and she was tapping its contents into her hand.
“I have no idea what the fuck I put in here,” she said, squinting at the pills in the low light.
By the time the show started up again, Berg was high, soaring high. He’d taken two Perc 30s and an Adderall and he felt euphoric. His headache disappeared and as he watched Nell step up on stage he was filled with a glowing warmth. When she began to play, he found he was finally able to be present, to drop in and really listen. He’d been elsewhere until he took the pills, he realized, skating across the top of every moment, deterred by the pain. Now he was there, absorbed in Nell’s performance, and it was extraordinary: keening and poetic and heartful. You could see the audience grow more and more enraptured with each song. She finished her set with the seven-minute ballad about California and her aunt and then the audience roared, stamped their feet. Someone handed Berg a mug of wine. He whistled and cheered, took a gulp of the wine.
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