Galveston

by Paul Quarrington

  Jaime had wanted to be a phys. ed. teacher too.

  They met at the University of Western Ontario, both attending, on the first day of their university careers, a class in kinesthiology It bewildered Caldwell to be attending a class in kinesthiology, because in the back of his mind he was already a phys. ed. teacher, and needed only to have the silver whistle hung about his neck. But now he found himself in a classroom, the rows of study tables raked precipitously. All around there were illustrations of naked human bodies, many more than naked, reduced to bands of muscle and connective tissue. The professor was a disappointingly small man, disappointing because Caldwell had assumed that all of the teaching would be done by phys. ed. teachers, über–phys. ed. teachers, remarkable specimens in blindingly white golf shirts.

  Caldwell was drifting off—he’d had too much beer the night before, chumming about with others in the physical education program, young men who, like him, seemed always destined to become phys. ed. teachers—when the door behind the professor opened and this girl walked through. The other students had entered from doors up above, filtering down through the aisles. This girl had obviously been battling through unknown subterranean territory; she barged through the door and was therefore the subject of the professor’s pointer when he said the words “a strong, healthy human body.”

  The students laughed, the humour here being that the phrase was so obviously applicable. The girl radiated good health, as though she’d been some test subject, reared in a laboratory in the bowels of the building, milk-fed and exercised, and was just now being set free in the world. She said, “Gee, thanks,” which redoubled the students’ laughter, and the professor, perhaps angered by this, said, “You’re late.”

  “I got lost,” she said. Caldwell would reflect later that this statement wasn’t precisely true. Jaime was always claiming to be lost, to have gotten lost, but what she really meant was that she’d made no great effort to discover where she was or where she was going, preferring to set out into the world with the naive innocence of a seventeenth-century explorer. So, in reading her schedule that day, Jaime had only noted the building and room number.

  “Don’t be late again,” the professor cautioned, and the girl nodded, as though striking a bargain, and then mounted the risers two at a time, entering the same row as Caldwell and sitting down immediately beside him.

  “What have we learned so far?” she whispered. She was busily arranging stuff on the workspace, which pulled up and folded out. She put her notebook there, a pen, a pencil, an eraser. Caldwell had set out none of these things and realized, when she asked the question, that he had no idea what he’d learned thus far. Probably nothing. He desperately tried to remember, because he’d been paying attention, at least he was pretty certain he had. There was something about ligaments or ligatures or something. He knew this wasn’t good enough to present to the girl, who had pushed her short brown hair back behind her ears in order to listen better. He considered a response like “Sweet dick-all,” which he would have uttered without hesitation if it had been a guy sitting down beside him. By this time, of course, the girl thought he was an idiot anyway, because he hadn’t spoken. So he said what he figured would make the best locker-room story. And although Jaime made much hay of the fact that the first words he ever spoke to her were, “Would you like to go out with me?” she never suspected that they represented more truly her first encounter with Caldwell the A-hole.

  THE DOOR BLASTED OPEN and Caldwell and Jimmy Newton blew back into the Pirate’s Lair. They were soaking wet, their hair and clothes disarranged and tumbled. “Holy Christ,” Jimmy said, waving his little arms in the air, “she’s the biggest thing I’ve ever seen and she’s not even fucking here.”

  Gail scowled, shook her head. “Of course it’s here. Just listen to it.”

  Beverly did just that, closing her eyes and tilting her head to listen to the song of lost souls.

  “Hey,” demanded Gail, and Beverly popped open her eyes. Gail stood in front of her, her arms crossed sternly across her chest. “What are you smiling about?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Beverly, “I was just thinking.”

  “You people …” Gail pointed to Jimmy, Caldwell and Beverly. “You people kind of creep me out.”

  “How so?” asked Beverly.

  Sorvig answered, “Because you want to get dead.”

  Newton rubbed his head with a bar towel and patted his thin hair back into position. “Not me,” he said. “There’s some danger involved, sometimes, but it’s like any, you know, extreme activity. Haven’t you ever done anything risky?”

  “Not really,” said Gail.

  “Okay, here’s the thing,” said Jimmy. “You know what a tsunami is?”

  “Sure,” said Sorvig.

  Gail nodded. “Tidal wave.”

  “Now that is power. A tsunami is the whole ocean coming at you.” Jimmy held his hands one above the other to illustrate compression, bringing them together, pulling them apart. “You know, if a tsunami starts like a hundred miles offshore, there’s only maybe seven actual wave actions before it hits land. Think about that. You know what happens before a tidal wave comes? The water disappears. Harbours just suddenly go bone dry. Then the wave arrives. A wall of water a hundred feet tall.” Newton shook his head wistfully. “And sometimes I think about that moment, you know, the moment just before the tsunami hits. I think how wonderful it would be to be standing there in that moment, looking up at it. But I know the next moment wouldn’t be so wonderful. So I try to see how close I can get to the one moment without getting my ass kicked the next.”

  “Myself,” said Beverly, “I’m interested in what happens between those two moments.”

  “Well, like I mentioned,” said Jimmy, “you’re just a little bit nuts.”

  “Mm-hmm,” agreed Beverly. “That would seem to be the general consensus.”

  “What is it exactly,” Dr. Noth had demanded, repositioning her notepad upon her wide lap, gripping the arms of her chair to haul her bulk forward—they were obviously getting down to the heart of the matter—“that you think you want of these encounters?” Dr. Noth was referring to the more furtive acts that Beverly had spoken of: prowling the streets of Orillia on stormy nights, poking her head inside bus shelters to see who was standing in the shadows.

  Dr. Noth irritated her more than most of the professionals. She had an odd odour and an unrelenting hunger for what she considered “answers.” Beverly pursed her mouth for a moment before answering. “I don’t suppose I want anything other than the encounter.”

  “But what do you think is the significance of the weather?” “Hmmm, interesting.” Beverly often said that when sitting with Dr. Noth; the woman never noted the sarcasm. Beverly touched a finger to her face, as though giving the question serious thought. “Well, you know, there may be a biophysical significance. It may well have to do with ionization. People find storms exciting. Energizing.”

  “And when energized, you feel the need to make these sexual connections with total strangers?”

  “Well, I don’t have a very wide circle of acquaintances.” Dr. Noth wrote something down then, what exactly Beverly couldn’t guess. Beverly knew that she was a prize case for Dr. Noth, a history that the doctor intended to write up for some medical journal. There were so many tragedies in Beverly’s life that determining the root cause of her behaviour was, to a psychologist, what proving Fermat’s theorem was to a mathematician. Some professionals fastened onto the murder-suicide of her parents. Others asked endless questions about her grandfather, searching for signs of sexual abuse. And of course there were many who pointed their fingers at the death of Margaret, beautiful little Margaret of the long golden hair.

  The way Beverly behaved bewildered her as much as it did anyone. She functioned well enough at work. Even Mr. Tovell, who did not like Beverly on some profound level, was willing to admit that she was efficient. Their office was a small branch of a large multinational concern, and Beverly’
s main job was filing. She actually had the same problem with this as she had with grocery bag stuffing; there was usually something left over, a sheaf of papers in her hand for which there was no room in the cabinet. Beverly would then place it somewhere arbitrarily—or not quite arbitrarily, there was some sort of logic operating—and she maintained her reputation for efficiency by remembering where these things were. “Bring me the Donlands file,” Mr. Tovell would bark, when other staff had failed to locate the thing in the Ds. Beverly would hurry away and dig through the Ms, because when she was a little girl, milk had been delivered by Donlands Dairy.

  This was how she usually got through the workday. After Margaret died, she moved to a flat above a store that sold uniforms, things like nurses’ outfits and white shoes with thick soles. She would mount the stairs to her apartment, which consisted of two rooms, a bedroom and a kitchen. The bedroom contained a bed, a standing closet, a small chest of drawers. In the kitchen was an old fridge that usually held some fruit and cartons of milk in various stages of souring. There was a tiny television set on the counter, and on the kitchen table was Beverly’s computer. As soon as she entered her apartment, she pressed the “on” button, and as the machine booted up, she threw off her work clothes. She would put on a T-shirt and sit down behind the keyboard. Then she would click the icon that connected her with the Internet. Nightly she visited various sites pertaining to weather and storm tracking. She would stare at satellite photographs, squinting to simplify the masses of white, looking for big formations.

  One day she saw a puff of white obscuring the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa. This excited her, even though she knew it was commonplace. But it was the beginning of September, the start of hurricane season, and perhaps her excitement was akin to the optimism a fisherman feels on opening day, an optimism that no amount of past failure can diminish. The next day this little button of white had grown larger, moved slightly toward the Americas. She checked with NOAA’s site, noted that it had achieved official depression status. She touched the little patch of white and pulled her finger across the computer’s screen, not thinking, only reacting to ethereal whim, and when her finger passed over a tiny sliver of black, she had enlarged the image. Another option laid a grid-work overtop the image, words appearing beside the various formations. Dampier Cay.

  Now, as the hurricane neared, as Caldwell once again took a seat on the bar stool beside her, an answer occurred to Beverly. She felt an urge to telephone Dr. Noth, but there were no telephones at the Water’s Edge. And whatever phones were on Dampier Cay were going to become useless very soon. But if she could have spoken to the professional, Beverly would have said, “It’s easy to see what I want. I’m looking for someone who is looking for the same thing.”

  After that class in kinesthiology, Caldwell went to the Olympic-size pool in the college’s athletic centre. He found an empty lane and dove in, and for half an hour he went up and down the right-hand side. He was not a particularly good swimmer, but he could go for very long distances. In the back of his mind he had always imagined attempting some marathon journey, across Lake Simcoe or something. He had done this since he was a child, although as a child he had dreamt of stepping into familiar water and swimming to some other shore where everything was new and unknown.

  As he neared the wall in the deep end, he heard a voice say, “Excuse me.” Caldwell did not suspect that it was directed at him, since he was minding his own business. So he turned and did another two lengths, up and back. This time the voice was brittle. “Excuse me.” Caldwell stopped mid-turn, pushing off the wall and then waving his arms to slow his progress. He turned and saw a woman standing above him.

  This image Caldwell kept with him. In the days before the hole in his life, it was always close at hand. Caldwell used it sometimes as he and Jaime were making love, especially as the end neared, when Jaime had come and Caldwell was free to charge at the finishing line like the huge clumsy athlete he was. After his memory was destroyed, the image would occur randomly, unbidden, and he would have to stop whatever he was doing.

  As Caldwell looked up at her, Jaime’s thighs appeared even more massive than they really were. She was a competitive swimmer, and her hours in the pool had exaggerated her body in many ways. Her thighs wowed, ballooned with muscle. She wore a black bathing suit, modestly cut, the bottom drawing a prudish line across the top of her legs, the top wrapping around her neck almost clerically. But she had raced through the showers on her way poolside, and the wet material clung to her little belly and her breasts.

  So Caldwell pulled off his goggles and this image burned itself into his memory.

  “The thing is,” Jaime said, and she lifted her hand and began to make a circular motion, “you’re supposed to do laps in the lane. You know. Up the right-hand side, down the left-hand side. That way, three, even four people could use the same one.”

  “Seriously,” said Caldwell, “I think we ought to go out together.”

  Jaime had been gazing at the pool and organizing it theoretically, but now she looked down and saw who it was. It took a moment, but a smile did come. “Oh, why not?” she muttered. Then she dove in. Caldwell watched as she moved underwater, like a dolphin, her body undulating and rippling with strength. She broke the surface about halfway down the pool’s length and began a fierce crawl.

  Caldwell leapt off his bar stool suddenly. He looked at Beverly and smiled. “I have to go do something,” he said. He bent over and kissed Beverly on the lips, as lightly as he could manage, and then he left the Pirate’s Lair.

  Jimmy Newton picked up the digital video camera, aimed it at the people in the Pirate’s Lair. There was a light on top, a lamp that sent out a strong beam, and people would squint and scowl as the thing was aimed at them. Especially Maywell, who usually squinted and scowled. “Get that thing away from me.”

  “We’re going out live all across the world,” said Jimmy. “Anybody you want to say hello to?”

  “No.” The only person who meant anything to Maywell was in the same room.

  Jimmy moved on. “Sorvig?”

  Sorvig, after thinking for a moment, waved at the camera and then began to speak a strange language. Beverly listened for words she might recognize. In a certain mood she felt she could understand people no matter what language they spoke, because words were really not as powerful as everyone imagined. They were weak, rusty and old-fashioned locks that could be popped open with hairpins.

  In fact, Sorvig did use some words that Beverly recognized, English words. “Sunbathing,” she said, and “hurricane.” Beverly wondered about the country Sorvig came from, which lacked expressions for these things, some vacuum of a place where there was no light or wind.

  Jimmy aimed the camera at Sorvig’s friend. “How about you, Gail?”

  “Well, um, hi, I guess, Cheryl. Wish you were here.” Gail and Sorvig both laughed for a short time and then fell silent.

  “Crazy lady? I mean, Beverly?”

  Was there anyone Beverly wanted, needed, to say hello to? Not her grandfather, certainly. Beverly didn’t hate her grandfather, but she was certainly angry with him most of the time, resentful of his resentment. He resented her, of course, because she’d survived her mother, because when the police finally burst through the door, little Beverly was sitting in her high chair, apparently gurgling happily. Perhaps her grandfather resented that, the happy gurgling, but Beverly suspected the old man had made up that piece of the story, justification for his resentment.

  If not her grandfather, then who? It suddenly struck Beverly as funny, humorous, that there was no one else in the world with whom she had any connection. She had not been distant, she had not been aloof—in fact, she’d been the furthest thing from aloof—and yet, there was no one.

  Still, it seemed fitting to say something, to make some sort of announcement. “I’ll send a big hello to anyone out there,” said Beverly, “who has lost someone. Maybe that’s most everybody, I don’t know. It’s a lot
of people. And I just wanted to point out that maybe they’re not really lost, I mean gone. Because when you think about it …” Beverly lifted a hand in the air, began to turn it around in a slow circle—cyclonic action. “Sometimes everything—people and time and everything—gets sucked up by a storm. A hurricane or a tornado. And it might seem like you’ve lost something, but you haven’t, when you think about it, not if you get sucked up by the same storm, you see what I mean, maybe you can’t get at it, but it’s not lost, you’re part of the same, it’s there and you’re here and everything goes round and round so that … Oh fuck, where is Mr. Caldwell?”

  The mechanics of fly casting are simple; many people, even non-anglers, are familiar with the concept that the rod is stopped, forward and back, on the face of a huge imaginary clock—one o’clock, eleven o’clock. This is how Caldwell had learned, but he didn’t conceive of casting that way any more, because it involved time. He preferred a conceptualization that had been suggested by a particularly grizzled guide in New Zealand: “You’re standing in the middle of an empty room with a paintbrush. Now, flick paint on the wall in front of you. Now on the wall behind.” This appealed to him for the sense of destructive mischievousness it lent to casting. But Caldwell’s favourite little mantra, the one he employed now, was “Hurl the hatchet” for the forward cast, and for the back, “Stab the sky.” Actually, he didn’t even bother with “Hurl the hatchet” most of the time, and he would mutter, over and over again, “Stab the sky. Stab the sky. Stab the sky.”

  Of course, none of these are any use at all when hurricane-force winds are involved. That didn’t stop Caldwell. Lightning still sparked. The bolts were more infrequent but also more substantial, and Caldwell had hopes of hooking into one. So he stood on the rocks overlooking the ocean, staring into the face of Claire. He had found a flat surface, lower than much of the rise, only twelve, thirteen feet above sea level. The ocean exploded all around him, and once or twice spilled over and formed tentacles, wrapping around his ankles, trying to pull him away. Caldwell held fast, and, strangely, it wasn’t that difficult. The undertow, that phenomenon so feared by Beverly, had been tamed by the storm. Nature operates by balance and equiponderance. So when waves come ashore, the water molecules floundering on land must be replaced out in the deep; this is why the undertow comes into being. Hurricane Claire was driving all of the water toward Dampier Cay. She was supplying any deficit, so Caldwell found it relatively easy to keep his footing, even on the slick rock.