That Good Night

by Richard Probert

  I hesitated before answering, “When I was sailing off the New Jersey coast, it did cross my mind. I had this thought of getting really ill while sailing. The thought of heading to shore, seeing a doc, winding up in some warehouse for the ill, letting That Good Night bob away at a dock…suicide sounded like a logical alternative. Do you understand?”

  “I do, more than you know. I think all of us in our later years are scared as hell that we might wind up in a nursing home. I dread the thought. But suicide?”

  “Why not?” I asked. “There is a reality at play here. I am an old man. I am sound of mind. I do know that I will never ever submit to spending my last days cooped up in some fluorescent lit, sanitized box. So, I ask a simple question, how would you do it?”

  Palming his snifter, Ernie gave the glass a quiet twirl, inhaled its delicate aroma before taking a thoughtful swallow. He said, “I’d use morphine. That would do it. It’s a painless, soft way to die.”

  The subject of death was taboo at Sunset. Maybe that’s because it was all around us. Beds became empty. The roster changed. It wasn’t like people went on leave or some fancy vacation. No sir, it was death. Roommates changed—reminders that all of us were rapidly spiraling downward. Nurses and aides would change shifts, go home to families. We went to the grave. I thought of the gray boxes in the basement of Sunset. Neatly stacked.

  “The name of your boat,” Ernie said, breaking the silence. He stood and walked over to the edge of the patio. I followed. Overlooking the cove and the sound beyond, he recited:

  “Do not go gentle into that good night,

  Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

  Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

  He turned and caught my eye. “Suicide? Is that how you’re going to rage against the dying light?”

  I stood, walked over to him, and pointed to my boat. “That’s my rage, Ernie. That wonderful boat out there is my rage. The sea beyond, that’s my rage. When death has me in its grip, I will submit. If I’m lucky, I’ll just die. Slip off in my sleep. My boat might become a navigation hazard, I might stink it up with my rotting corpse as you suggested, but I will not demand suffering from myself. If I have to, I’ll take death into my own hands.”

  Returning to the deck, Ernie refilled our snifters. While pouring, he said, “Let’s take a walk.”

  Palming our snifters, we left the deck and ambled our way to a brick path that led to a small salt marsh. The tide was in. Bulrushes mixed with other tall grasses were a pleasing break from the manicured lawns that surrounded the marsh. Frogs croaked here. Dragonflies flitted for their catch. A neatly coiled black snake enjoyed the last heat of the day.

  “So, you were in the machining business?” Ernie asked me.

  I answered, “Precision stuff. After the Korean War, we stayed with the DOD, air force mostly. But we competed in the marketplace, too.”

  In my heyday, when someone would ask me that question, I could expound for hours about the trials and tribulations of running a business, wooing clients, hiring workers, taking risks, carrying debt, sacrificing for the sake of business. But looking back, there really wasn’t much to say. I worked hard, made a good living but I really didn’t live much of an exciting life. We were talking about legacy here and I had little to offer. I thought about Lori’s photo album, so many photos sans Daddy. One of the rare ones with me in it was of me, Lori and the boys standing in front of a hot dog stand on the boardwalk of Atlantic City. I piped up, “There was this time I took my family to Atlantic City. We had a great time just walking the boardwalk. The kids hit the beach like they’d never seen water before. My wife, Lori—she looked like a starlet in her bathing suit. It was a family day.” I choked up a little.

  Where had that memory been? Were there more? Sure, there must be. Where the hell are they? I felt a strong urge to get back to my boat. Crawl into the cabin and shut out the world. Is that what I was doing, hiding, sailing nowhere? The Ancient Mariner? The Flying Dutchman? Charlie Lambert?

  “Are you okay?” Ernie asked. “Hit a soft point, did ya?” He continued, “You know Charlie, the thing about the past is we have a lot of it. Live to be eighty and you have a hell of a lot of past to mull over. There’s a lot of stuff in our wake and not a lot of future. But hell, there’s always a tomorrow, at least there is for now. Here’s to life,” he said, proffering his glass for a friendly clink. We toasted in silence to tomorrows.

  “So Ernie, what about you—I’d guess medicine?”

  “Toothpicks. Can you beat that? I manufactured toothpicks. Billions of goddamn toothpicks. My grandfather spent his life building the business. So help me, Charlie, the old man worked right up to the end. Damn, he even died sitting behind his desk. Anyway, you’re right about the medicine part. Fresh out of my internship, I was drafted and served in a MASH unit. Remember that? The TV series?” I nodded. “From the frying pan of working like a dog in the hospital to the fire of wartime trauma. That was Korea. Now, how many people give that war a thought today? Hell, I bet it gets at most a sentence or two in the kids’ history books and not a word more. We fought like bastards, Charlie, and for what? When the Korean conflict—they didn’t even want to call it a war—ended, I wanted nothing to do with medicine—too much gore, Charlie, too much trying to do the impossible. I lost too many kids. It’s the craziest damn thing. Why the hell do we fight like that? Anyway, war wiped out my idealistic view of medicine.

  “When I got out, Grandpa had just died so I took over the company. It only took me three years to drive it into the ground. Obviously, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. Besides, old Grandpa had a ton of debt. That’s when I returned to medicine. General surgery, you know tonsillectomies, appendectomies, that kind of stuff. Pretty sure bet that patients would survive. There was a real push for me to jump into trauma medicine, but no way was I going to get back into that. Oh, now and then I was called in to the ER when the shit hits the fan, mostly having to do with gang warfare—don’t get me started on that.”

  After a slight pause, Ernie switched gears. “Any kids? Grandkids?”

  “Two boys. Both married. No grandkids. You?”

  “I had a son. Killed flying a Piper Cub into a bunch of trees. Can you believe that? It was the worst time in my life. I still think of Brad most everyday. He was a good kid. College degree, fiancée and all that. Anyway, my marriage died with it. So, no kids, no grandkids, no wife. It’s just me, my housekeeper Mildred, and dog First Mate.” Ernie swallowed hard and shook his head as if to dislodge his demons. We walked quietly back to the deck where he pointed to his Alerion. I read the boat’s name printed in neat dark blue block letters on the white stern: LAMEKUF. I read it aloud pronouncing it Lame-cuff.

  “No, no,” Ernie said. “It’s pronounced, Lamb-eh-cuff”

  “What does it mean? Is it Swedish or something?”

  “No, it’s not Swedish. Pure American. Try reading it backwards,” Ernie instructed. “Take your time.”

  I studied it for a bit then said out loud, “Fukemal.” I let it sink in. “Do you mean fuck ‘em all? Is that it, Ernie?”

  Slapping my shoulder, Ernie laughed, “You got it, Charlie. Lima, Alpha, Mike, Echo, Kilo, Uniform, Foxtrot, that’s what I named her. And believe me, it’s worth every letter. That’s the way I see it, Charlie. At our age it works for just about everything.” Leaving no time for me to respond, Ernie abruptly switched gears again. “So you’re really going to die out there?”

  “Die where out there? Jesus, Ernie, I’m still trying to figure out how you came up with naming your boat like that. I mean, why?”

  “You know, Charlie, when you get old and all that was gold fades into a cloudy distance; there is a pervasive sense that life is a journey of aloneness. When I left my doctoring career, there was the tried and true retirement party with all the congratulations and tokens that come with it. Retirement is not commencement. It’s the end of something except perhaps for a few lucky ones that keep a hand in their wo
rk or find some great reward. After retiring, I lost contact with my former colleagues. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t blame them for not calling or coming by; rather, I came to understand that going to the hospital every day had become my life instead of my job. When I left the job, I left my life behind. So when I say fuckemall, what I’m really saying is I prefer to just be me. I no longer want or need to be a part of a herd.”

  “So there you go. Deal with it!” Abruptly changing the subject, Ernie swept his arm toward Long Island Sound, and asked again, “Are you going to die out there?”

  “If you mean Long Island Sound, I sure hope not,” I replied. “Maybe on the Atlantic somewhere. What about you?”

  Ernie laughed heartedly, “I’m going to die playing with myself. I decided that the other day when I had a rare erection and, of course, used it. My chest tightened a bit and that’s when I concluded that I would die whacking my carrot. You still pound the meat, Charlie?”

  “Jesus, Ernie, what are we, in junior high school?”

  Ernie looked at me like I had a screw loose. “Haven’t you joined the fraternity, Charlie? I have exactly one friend left in the entire world. And my guess is you have less than that. So, here I am offering some old man bullshit, maybe trying to capture some bit of yesteryear and you act like I’m some decrepit old bastard looking for a thrill. Well, I’m not, Charlie. The way you treated Commodore Idiot back there, I took you for a kindred spirit, an octogenarian that could still piss-write his name in the snow. Ever do that, Charlie, piss-write your name in the snow? Or am I getting too personal?”

  Unlike my contemporaries back at Sunset, Ernie wasn’t regaling me with times past. Ernie was in the present, spontaneous, more pubescent than octogenarian. His Boy wasn’t crushed out of him, not like it has been for so many old men. Time for me to let go.

  “You’re damn right I piss-wrote,” I said. “In upstate New York where I was raised, we had farms all over the place. One winter, I was piss writing in the snow. Ever piss on an electric fence, Ernie? Now that’s something you don’t forget.”

  Off we went telling dirty jokes, cursing, and carrying on like pumped-up prepubescent boys meeting behind a barn. We laughed, drank, and farted with abandon until we petered out just after midnight. Just before heading back to That Good Night, Ernie invited me to hang around to crew for the West Harbor Yacht Club Anniversary Race. “It’s tomorrow,” he commented, then added with a grin, “We’d make a hell of a pair.”

  I agreed. What was one more day?

  WEDNESDAY, JULY 11

  I’m not much of a racer. Years back, I crewed as a mainsail trimmer for races on Lake Ontario. Racing skippers are another breed entirely. If they have a lot of money, their boats are bedecked with every conceivable electronic gizmo on the market. They’ll buy sails worth more than a modest house. Their wives seldom go with them. Racing sailors yell a lot. And as far as safety goes, they might as well have their crew walk a tight rope over alligator pits. After a few of those races, I promised myself never to go near those nutcases again. But, I have to admit, more often than not, they know how to handle a sailboat.

  From what I had observed so far, Ernie would be more collected and respectful of crew, boat, and wind/water conditions. As it turned out, he was, except for one thing: he appeared to literally hate every other skipper out there.

  It wasn’t a matter of winning for Ernie; it was more a matter of belittling every other sailor. Ernie knew tactics like a navy admiral and used them to out maneuver his competitors. Like at the start of the race. Once we had the five minute warning, Lamecuf went into stealth mode, zipping among boats like an Australian sheep dog, herding the boats into an ever tightening pack; adhering to rules for racing sailboats becomes much more difficult in close quarters. Ernie enjoyed the mayhem he created.

  Once the cannon roared to announce the start, Ernie held back, letting his competitors crunch across the starting line. As the pack broke loose, old Ernie trimmed Lamecuf’s sails and off we went on a journey of harassment. Ernie’s favorite was to saunter up to a boat’s stern, hang there a second then go windward around the boat, stealing his wind. And never did we go by a boat without Ernie saying something sarcastic and, at times, giving a one finger salute. At the end of it all, Ernie neither won nor did he ingratiate himself to any member of the club. It was enough for Ernie to let everyone know that he could have won the race if he had wanted to.

  I shared crewing duties with a young fellow named Steve McIntyre. Steve ran the foredeck which essentially meant setting and managing the spinnaker. He was a good guy, nimble and very focused on his job. Steve, thirty-five years old, was a fireman with the West Harbor Fire Department. Ernie handled the helm, I trimmed the main and Steve did all the rest. I envied his agility; Steve just zipped and zagged around that foredeck like a cheetah chasing an antelope. I, on the other hand, had painful spasms in my neck from looking aloft to find the right sail trim. The three of us left the Yacht club right after dinner in time for Ernie to avoid the award ceremony. We took a slow walk back to Ernie’s place, sat on the deck, drank beer, talked and waited for dusk and the annual yacht club fireworks. Steve bid adieu after the last boom. Ernie broke out a bottle of Sandeman Founders Reserve Port.

  “I’ve been putting something off,” Ernie said, pouring some of the garnet red liquid into my glass. “Yesterday, when I told you about naming my boat LAMEKUF, I didn’t mention that after retiring, I kept an old couple on as patients. I’ve been doctoring Doris and Ivan Heller for over fifty years. Late last night, Doris called me to tell me that Ivan passed on.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “Did he die at home?”

  “He did. Nice way to go. In fact, he’s still there. Doris called to ask me if I could arrange a burial at sea. Are you interested?”

  “Wait, you mean to tell me that this old woman is staying in her house with her dead husband?”

  “Damn it, Charlie. What’s so wrong about that? I went over and took care of things. Now are you interested or not?

  I wasn’t certain what interested meant. “What do you have in mind?”

  “Ivan was in the merchant marines. He lost a lot of friends in the war. Picking off Liberty ships was like shooting skeet to the U-Boat guys. Anyway, Ivan had a streak of guilt a mile wide. He was one of these guys who just couldn’t understand why he was spared and his friends weren’t. I guess he wants to join his friends.”

  “So, what do you mean by interested?”

  “Your boat. We can’t take my boat. Too small for a few overnights.”

  “Overnights?”

  “What are you thinking, that we can bury the guy in Long Island Sound? We need to take the body out into the Atlantic.”

  “I assume that you’ve looked into this. And why not cremate the guy and scatter the ashes?”

  “Ivan was very clear. He specifically said that he did not want to be cremated. He wants to join his buddies for a game of cards and Ivan didn’t believe that ashes can play cards. And, yes, I have looked into burial at sea: At least three miles out in water no less than six-hundred feet deep. The closest spot is off Long Island Sound by thirty miles, so I’m guessing three overnights.”

  “And you want me to do this on my boat?”

  “It’s the perfect boat. Doris will come along. That makes three, four going out if we include Ivan.”

  “Whoa, Ernie. Slow down. Why Doris?”

  “Why not,” Ernie answered. “This is a funeral. She needs to have closure. For God’s sake, Charlie.”

  “Ernie, you are a true pain in the ass.”

  What the hell. Go with the flow and yes, pun intended. That’s what sailors should do. Anyway, I had no schedule to keep.

  “Conditions,” I declared. “First, his body must be prepared by an undertaker for an at-sea burial, weights and all. Second, he’s got to be in a box and kept on deck. Third, the box must be padded on the outside so it doesn’t scratch the deck. And last, you’re in charge of Doris—I don’
t want to have to take care of a grieving widow.”

  “Agreed, except for one thing, the box. Ivan wants to go over the side like his buddies did.”

  “Look Ernie, what are we supposed to do, fling him overboard like tossing a kid in a swimming pool?”

  “Maybe. Why not?”

  “Because I don’t want to. Simple as that. You solve the problem.”

  “How about we flip over the box. You know, just dump him overboard.”

  “How much does he weigh?”

  “No more than eighty pounds—he was pretty far gone when he died. And when the mortician gets rid of the fluids, he’ll be down to maybe seventy or so. Plus, don’t forget the weight needed to take him to the bottom.”

  “We can do that from the stern platform. Did good old Ivan express having a problem with being dumped off the stern?” I asked sarcastically.

  “He never mentioned it. Sounds good to me. Can we leave tomorrow?” Ernie asked with the enthusiasm of a four year old about to get his way.

  “Depends on the weather,” I replied.

  “I’ve already checked: Southwest wind 15 to 20; high pressure for the next four days.”

  “We need to take on stores.”

  “Mildred is making up meals for three days.”

  “Jesus, Ernie. You had this all planned out. Why didn’t you bring this up yesterday?”

  “Because you weren’t ready.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “C’mon, Charlie, let’s just do this and enjoy ourselves. When Doris called, I was looking over at your glorious boat and thinking that Ivan deserves to go out in style.”

  “My boat looks like a Cadillac hearse?”

  “Hell no. It’s a magnificent sailing vessel that speaks of pride and love of the sea.”

  “Ernie, you are the biggest bull-shitter I’ve met since leaving Sunset.”

  “Sunset?”

  “Forget it. Okay, I agree. We leave tomorrow at 0930 hours.”