The Water Is Wide

by Pat Conroy

  Now at this point, Fred has discovered that it was Lincoln who socked him instead of Saul. Fred jumps out of his desk and plants five of his toes into Lincoln’s ass, who is busy defending himself from the enraged and formidable Cindy Lou. Lincoln wheels and chases the fleeing Fred, who bumps into four desks on the way back to his seat, causing every occupant of a bumped seat to slap or poke at Fred as he passes by. Then each one slaps and pokes Lincoln as he pursues Fred. Then Cindy Lou races after Lincoln and pinches him on the back. Oscar tries vainly to trip Fred, Lincoln, and Cindy Lou in succession. The noise level in the room has risen 5000 decibels, everyone is shouting and cheering on the gladiators as they battle their way around the arena, and the bleeding heart pirouettes about the room after them, armed with his theories about humanity.

  Soon Mrs. Brown, whose ears are as sensitive to horseplay as American radar to a MIG, appears at the door, leather strap wrapped around one iron fist, death etched in her cold, brown eyes, and silences the room with a single, arctic glance. She then majestically turns her eyes to me after the waters have been stilled and says, “You can’t control these children without a strap. I know ’em. I know the only thing they listen to is Doctor Medicine.” After she leaves the room, I confront my class with the fury of one who has just been humiliated.

  “Now, my friends, I am going to find out why you do not listen to me when I ask you to sit down and shut up, but you do listen to Mrs. Brown when she bops in the room with her strap.”

  Pregnant, inscrutable silence reigns over all. Bleeding heart continues his soliloquy. “I have never liked hitting kids or belting kids or slapping the hell out of kids in class. I don’t believe in it. I am not going to do it. You are not going to make me do it. Does anyone want me to buy a belt and use it to keep you quiet?”

  “No,” came the unanimous reply.

  “Now, Lincoln, I would like to know why you hit Fred.”

  “I didn’t hit that boy, C’roy.”

  “I saw you hit him, Lincoln.”

  “No, C’roy. That boy hit me first.”

  “What you say, boy?” Fred says angrily. “You watch your mout’, boy.”

  “Who you tell to watch his mout’?”

  “I tell you, boy.” Then Fred socks Lincoln and the whole festival of violence begins anew.

  These small classroom brush fires occurred almost every day during the first three months of school. For a while I simply arm wrestled any boy who caused a major disturbance in the room. The idea was if he could beat me in arm wrestling, he could continue fighting, talking, and disrupting. This took a great deal of guts and virility on my part since I outweighed every boy in the class by at least seventy pounds. All the boys took the arm wrestling very seriously, however, and all of them grunted and strained to slap my arm down on the desk. Oscar and Top Cat, the two largest guys in the room, would grimace painfully and breathe convulsively trying to bring the only white arm in the room to a state of humility. The only person I let beat me was Saul. Saul would take my hand, place his elbow firmly on his desk top, bend his wrist slightly, and drive my hand fiercely to the left. As my hand bit wood, Saul would turn to the much larger boys with a look of faint disgust in his eyes and say, “I beat ’im.” The boys would shout foul and I would swear that Saul had the most powerful arms on Yamacraw Island. Of course, Oscar would then arm wrestle Saul and nearly break his hand driving it down upon the desk.

  The arm-wrestling method was a great energy release, but it was not a foolproof method for putting down the skirmishes that raged through the class once or twice a day. The girls could be adequately controlled by simply appealing to their conception of womanhood, usually, that is. An enraged Mary or Cindy Lou could not be stopped, only contained or controlled by gentle proddings or removal to the kitchen. With all of the kids, though, I knew that I could never hit them with a belt, stick, or anything else. This was against my nature, philosophy notwithstanding. Yet with Mrs. Brown constantly lecturing me about the efficacy of leather on flesh and interfering when the fights did break out, I needed some way to control the kids instantly and silently. It was sometime in December that I remembered how to milk a rat.

  Milking the rat was an art among my childhood friends. The best rat-milker of the group had the same status as the; best marble-shooter, the best hitter, or the fastest runner. The boy who could milk a rat well could bring a bully whimpering to his knees in a matter of seconds. He could render Samson hairless or Goliath helpless. Nations have been conquered by notable rat-milkers. To milk a rat, you simply press the fingernail of an opponent’s finger with your thumb. Your index finger squeezes the back of the bottom joint of the finger. Your thumb mashes the fingernail against the second joint of your opponent’s finger. All three joints of your opponent’s finger are brought into action against him. Milking the rat is an almost impossible maneuver to describe in words. It is extremely painful, but the level of pain can be controlled by modulating the pressure exerted by your thumb.

  When I remembered this childhood protection from neighborhood toughs, I shouted aloud and announced to the class, “My friends, I have got it. I can stop your stinking fights without bloodshed or raising my voice. C’mon. One of you guys make some noise or do something terrible.” I walked over to Oscar, who was sitting minding his own business pursuing his scholarly studies, when I suddenly grabbed his hand and milked his rat. He screamed, got out of his seat, fell on his knees, rolled his eyes, stood up, and then went to his knees again. I let Oscar go. Then I showed everybody in class how to milk a rat and explained as well as I could what an incredibly effective method of control it could be. All the boys practiced on each other after I demonstrated the basics. “Press up with the thumb, Frank. Hold the back of his finger with your forefinger. That’s it, right where the finger goes into the hand. Learn how to milk a rat and the world is yours.” Then I went around to every boy in the class, milked his rat, explained the physics of the maneuver, and how I was going to use it to break up fights, rebellions, or mutinies in the class. They loved it. Anything connected with violence, fighting, or the improvement of their skills as potential street fighters was always acclaimed by the boys. The rest of the day was spent with me milking the rats of boys causing a disturbance by milking other rats.

  CHAPTER 8

  I GAVE UP MY HOUSE on the island at the end of October for three reasons. I wanted to live with my family, it seemed folly to pay rent for two houses, and my fear of rats. The last reason deserves some explanation. The Buckner house at night was quiet and dark as a mausoleum. Whenever I turned the lights out to go to sleep, the degree of darkness always startled me somewhat. It was the darkness of the womb, the prenatal darkness of embryos in that house, which was a little disconcerting but made for deep and luxuriant sleeping.

  In the middle of October the man designated as official grass-cutter on the island rode down on the island’s lone tractor and plowed up the field outside the house, which had become choked with weeds and high grass. This pleased me since I still maintained a healthy respect for the diamondback rattlers that flourished on the island. What I did not realize was that the grass afforded cover for a multitude—nay, a plague—of mice who had settled permanently in this field. When the plow had ripped furrows into the land and destroyed scores of mouse homes, these mice, with infinite practicality, moved into my spacious quarters. Now mice, however small or harmless, are rats to me—snarling, needle-fanged wharf inhabitants whose fleas carry the black death and whose bite is rabid. Rats are dealers in death and ol’ Conrack is scared to death of them.

  After they had moved their belongings and their children in with me, I knew that my days in the house were numbered unless by some miracle of Hamelin I could lead them out of my residence and coax them, lemminglike, into the sea. Ted Stone recommended poisons virulent enough to kill a herd of mastodons and it seemed to clear out most of the rat population. But several hardy ones still crept around at night leaving their droppings as reminders that they had no intenti
on of moving on such short notice. The little round turds were challenges, like glove slaps across my face.

  I might have won this battle had it not been for an extraordinary and strategic move on the part of one of my tormentors. Whether or not he sensed my phobia about his breed I will never know, but he acted in a drama convincing enough to draw me to the brink of coronary failure.

  I was sleeping soundly on a fairly chilly night. The room was black as pitch, silent, with the vestigial odor of mildew left from the days of noninhabitation. I felt something on my foot, something palpable and heavy, something alive, something present, something breathing, but most seriously of all, something on my foot. Without moving, I tried to think of some rational course of action. I could not see my five fingers if I placed my hand against my nose, so very slowly I reached up and pulled the chain on my lamp—and saw a flash of movement and watched as the rat moved like bald-tailed lightning across the room and out the door. “The rat was in bed with me,” I called aloud. “The goddam rat was on my foot in my own bed!” Then I reasoned further that the rat could have just as easily been on my head—then a flashback to a scene from Orwell’s 1984, where there is a description of a starved rat chewing through the eyeball of the protagonist. A rat had bedded down with me. I had shared my pillow with the animal I feared most.

  That was my last night in the house. Ted Stone was disturbed, probably because he would no longer receive his percentage of the rent. I did not tell him about the rat incident, since he was the kind of rugged frontiersman who would not cringe even if he found himself sleeping with a boa constrictor. My fear of mice would reflect on my manhood.

  He came to check the house over a few days after I informed him of my decision to withdraw. I had moved all of my essential belongings back into the school; the avoirdupois crossed the river to Beaufort. There were still a few pictures on the wall and a couple of posters scattered in odd places about the house. As Ted inspected the house with an opprobrious tilt to his nose and something vaguely militaristic in his inspection tour of the damp bedrooms, he stopped suddenly in front of a poster and stared at it. The poster elicited nothing in me, not a single, controversial thought. It simply pictured Steve McQueen astride a German motorcycle he had stolen from the Germans in the movie The Great Escape.

  “What are you doin’ with a picture of this Nazi?” Stone hissed.

  “What Nazi?” I asked.

  “This Nazi here. I ought to know a Nazi when I see one. I killed enough of ’em.”

  “Mr. Stone, that happens to be Steve McQueen.”

  “I don’t care who he is, he’s ridin’ a Nazi motorcycle.”

  “It’s a movie, Mr. Stone. In the movie, Steve McQueen steals a Nazi motorcycle and tries to get away from the Germans.”

  “He looks like a Nazi to me. He got blond hair like a Nazi.”

  “He is as American as hominy grits. That is Steve McQueen, Mr. Stone. He is a movie star. He is an American movie star in an America movie who steals a German motorcycle.”

  “I fought Nazis from D-Day all the way into Germany. Killed a lot of Nazis. I don’t like Nazis or Nazi motorcycles.”

  “Mr. Stone, I’m glad it isn’t a poster of the creature of the Black Lagoon. You’d probably go crazy.”

  “I just don’t like Nazis.”

  “I got your point. I honestly did.”

  Two weeks later, I became a commuter.

  The boat ride to Yamacraw became a celebration of sorts. It was a time when I became aware of tides ebbing and flooding in accordance with the transcendental clockwork of the universe; a time of the pale, wafer-thin moon in the early morning sky and of the last star to vanish with the coming of the sun over the green waters. It was a time when I measured days by the flocks of birds winging south or by the number of porpoises that performed fluid and solitary ballets beside the boat. I would watch the egrets and herons, frozen in slender, graceful statues on the shores, and regret my intrusion when they flushed at the sound of the boat and passed over me in quiet, majestic flight in search of more private feeding grounds.

  It was a good time, for I had never followed the hunters into the woods or the fishermen up the river. Nor had I ever been part of the enormous, grass-prevailing silences of the ever-shifting marsh. In winter mine was the only boat on the river, the sole craft desecrating the steel gray waters. In January and February the whine of my boat was heresy to the silence of the grasses. In winter, the marsh was anchoritic, reflective, and brooding; the presence of man was strange and unwanted. Yet I liked the feeling of being the only person in a vast stretch of water, the only index of civilization in the tenuous, light-flecked darkness of seven o’clock in the morning.

  Each day Zeke would launch me, his every breath a short, swift cloud; his hands blue and copiously veined, his face as gaunt and weary as a tundra, his voice the only voice in a village unawakened. On days when the tide was sufficiently high, I would turn the boat toward Cannon Creek, a sinuous, narrow shortcut that wound through the heart of the marsh. Once in the creek among the brown, floating islands of dead reeds, I would watch the gradual coming of the sun, the swift resurrection in obedience to an eternal cycle, and the flooding of the land with the rich, incredible colors of early morning.

  In this world of boat and river, I huddled low to escape the cold air that cut above the windshield like a blade. But I prized the aloneness of the trip, the beautiful isolation, and the knowledge that I was afforded a glimpse of the marsh at ease, a glimpse of the land at rest from the penetration and mindless barbarisms of man. But even then on clear days I could see the smoke towering above the Savannah skies. Tall columns of white smoke, graceful and almost feminine, rose like false gods on the horizons and from my boat they were salacious and impure reminders of the absolute insistence of man that he defile all that he touches. Man excreting, straight up, through the phallic smokestacks of Savannah. Still, the factories could not dull the sharpness of the air or despoil the natural sanctuary along the creek.

  Often the river would be rough and the boat would fight through heavy swells and bitter winds on the way to Yamacraw. Other times, the water would be glass, hard, green and opalescent in the early light. I was always alone during the cold months. The winter ordained a cessation of motors, shrimp nets, and fishing lines. More than any other time, it emphasized the inaccessibility of the island and the isolation of the residents.

  Because I was commuting and because I wished to prove conclusively that it was possible to commute, I never took a day off or failed to make the crossing on account of the prevailing weather conditions. Barbara went on an extravagant shopping spree in early November and returned home with enough winter clothes to melt a glacier. She bought insulated socks, jackets, gloves, and boots. She also bought a multicolored wool mask, which covered my entire head except for green-rimmed holes for my eyes, nose, and mouth. This wardrobe seemed adequate for even the worst conditions a South Carolina winter could offer. In the full majesty of my winter plumage, I felt that I could follow penguins to their homes. All through December I remained comfortable in the mild morning chill, but in the first week of January the most severe cold spell since 1952, according to Ted Stone, gripped the South Carolina coast. In this single week, my respect for the river turned into awe, and maybe a bit of fear. For in that week I met the father of cold, the grand cold, the inquisitor of cold, and the pope of cold, all huddled in my boat to supervise my trip to Yamacraw.

  It began, as it always did, at Zeke’s. The smell of coffee filled the yard outside his house. Zeke was sitting in his easy chair smoking a cigarette and listening to a nasal, twangy sound on the country-music station out of Savannah. Ida, cold-natured and crotchety when the thermometer dipped below fifty degrees, had her heater turned up high enough to simulate high noon on the Sahara Desert. In the bedroom I could hear the heavy, regular breathing of the two boys. The hounds whined and scratched at the front door.

  “Cold as a witch’s titty,” Zeke said, as I entered the room
. “Weatherman says it’s goin’ down to thirteen degrees this morning.” I peeled off several layers of clothes to insure my survival in Ida’s makeshift steam bath. Momentarily, Ida shuffled into the kitchen, reached blindly for her mug, poured her coffee, then sat shivering on the sofa, claiming she was freezing to death.

  “I’m sweatin’ my balls off, Ida,” Zeke would say, winking at me.

  “You would sweat, you son of a bitch. You’d live in a goddam icebox if I’d let you,” Ida would snap back.

  Then Zeke looked at me and said, “You’re gonna be able to tell if you’re a man this week. I wouldn’t get on that river.”

  “Be careful, Pat,” Ida would add, “I get real worried about you on that river. You don’t know your ass about boats.”

  We drove to the landing. Zeke pushed the boat off the trailer. The wind whipped malignantly from the river and the waves crashed over the trailer to wash and numb his feet. It was this week more than any other that I ceased to like Zeke Skimberry and came to love him. He put me into the water at sunrise and met me at the lowering sun at four in the afternoon. The last thing I saw as I lowered the mask over my face was Zeke smiling in the back of the blue pickup. “See you at four,” he would shout. “Don’t get sunburned.”

  I would start the motor and press my face against the windshield to protect myself from the terrible flow of air that swept over the boat. The water was choppy and a sharp, stinging spray covered me before I reached the first protected creek. The salt water soon froze on the windshield, making visibility very difficult. My breath came in frosty, labored clouds. Every drop of water was a fang, a single tooth of cold. My ears ached, my hands throbbed, and my feet deadened in the boots. As the boat passed the familiar landmarks of the journey, the sandbars and leafless islands, I noticed the absence of birds in the shallows and of life on the shore. The world was dead, soundless, and frozen. Nothing moved except the boat.