The Water Is Wide

by Pat Conroy

  After the zoo we went to Great Falls. I wanted the kids to get the feel of a hill, the sensation of height in nature, and wanted them to know the joy of clambering among rocks and hearing water rushing through narrow gorges and leaping over impediments on the way to the sea. For two hours we climbed up hills and looked down at the water below. We maneuvered along cliffs which bordered the rapids, played silly games, took pictures, made plans to live in Washington, then headed back to Virginia in the full spring tide of afternoon traffic.

  It is difficult to calculate the value of an experience. I never created a test to evaluate the trip, nor did the thought ever occur to me. On the way to Washington, it struck me that the trip was a good thing in itself and needed no defense. Barbara and I were riding in the front seat of the station wagon, not far outside of Beaufort, when Jasper leaned up and asked me, “What those ol’ lines for?”

  “What ol’ lines?” I asked.

  “Those ol’ lines all over the road.”

  I still didn’t know what he was talking about. “I don’t see any lines on the road, Jasper.”

  “Yeh, they all over on the road,” he answered.

  Then Barbara said, “You mean the lines that divide the highway, Jasper. They tell the driver which side of the road to stay on. The yellow lines tell the driver if he can pass another car or not.”

  “Oh,” said Jasper.

  I sat there trying to comprehend what had just happened. I had seen the lines so often that they had disappeared from sight and were no longer part of my consciousness. To Jasper, who was accustomed to unpaved roads, they represented something strange, unexplained, and beyond his framework of experience. For the rest of the trip Barbara and I decoded road signs, billboards, and numbers painted on bridges and overpasses. Things I had not noticed for ten years now assumed great significance. I regretted that I could not be making this trip with the freshness of insight and beautiful innocence of Jasper and the others. I regretted that I was old, that I could no longer appreciate the education afforded by an American highway, and that I could not grasp the mystery of a single line painted down a road going north.

  CHAPTER 11

  GRADUATION WAS on a lovely June morning before the sun removed the dew from the ground. The two male graduates, Frank and Top Cat, had bought flashy dark blue suits for the occasion. The girls, Mary and Jimmy Sue, were dressed in the traditional white. The parents trudged up the dirt road to the school. Everyone was dressed in their “Sunday-go-to-meetin’s,” as one of the mothers said.

  The graduation was held under the oak trees in the schoolyard. A ceremonial white picket fence was pulled from the hall closet by Mrs. Brown and placed in front of the speaker’s podium, where the graduates would deliver their farewell addresses. The guest speaker of the day was the ubiquitous Ezra Bennington, whom Mrs. Brown introduced as “the best friend Yamacraw ever had.” Ezra delivered his speech in his slow, avuncular manner.

  “I think Yamacraw is as fine as any school in the county, despite what some people say. We’ve got problems here, but we’ve got problems in all the schools.” He then related several stories that reflected his concern over the island and its children. “When I was in charge of this district, there was one year, around Christmas time, when all the schools were going to have turkey for the last meal before the holidays. All except Yamacraw, of course. It seems the luncheon supervisor had decided it was too much trouble to send a turkey over to the island. So I went to the freezer and got two big turkeys out and sent them over to the children. Some people might call that stealing, but I felt that what was good enough for the mainland was good enough for Yamacraw.” Ezra was smooth as good bourbon, the consummate politician who could talk honey as well as he could act vinegar. He did not realize what the people who listened to his speech were thinking.

  I had taken up a small collection among the kids who wanted to contribute to buy Zeke Skimberry a gift. I walked up to the podium after Bennington’s speech and said I wanted to present a gift to the man who had done more to help me than anyone else this year. Then I called Zeke up and presented him a copy of The Family of Man signed by all of my students. Zeke got choked up. His blue eyes glistened as he accepted the book. He then gave a small speech. “I just want to say thanks for this wonderful gift and that I’ve worked on this island for a long time and have got to know the people and they have got to know me. I think the people of this island are some of the finest people in the world. This year I’ve gotten to know the children in Pat’s class real well and I’ve learned to love them. I love all kids. I just want to say if any of you ever need me in Bluffton, for anything—for anything at all—just come to my house and I’ll be glad to help you. This gift means a lot to me. An awful lot.” It was the speech of the day.

  On Monday after graduation seven of the kids took the island boat to Bluffton. Barbara and I met them there and drove them to camp at St. Mary’s. Father Becker, the northern priest who had contributed to the Washington trip, had given me full use of the camp and swimming pool for one week. In this week I hoped to accomplish another dream. I wanted to teach the kids how to swim. It had astounded me that the people who lived on an island, exposed constantly to the perils of storm and rough sea, did not know how to swim. None of the kids in my room knew how to swim and their fear of the water was so pronounced that I felt gratified when I was able to talk seven of them into accompanying me to the camp. I could not find a place on the island to serve as a place for swimming instruction, since the kids refused to enter the ocean because of the currents and the fresh water, because of the water moccasins and alligators. I wanted them to learn how to swim and swim well. Throughout the year while talking with the adults, I had heard the islanders recite litanies of their friends and relatives who had fallen into the water and sunk like stone. The bodies would generally resurface later bloated and discolored, salt water pouring from the ears, nostrils, and mouth. One source of drowning was the “snowbirds.”

  Anyone familiar with the inland waterway that runs along the East Coast of the United States knows of the great white yachts, driven by the captains of industry and their wrinkled ladies, that point their bows southward toward Miami when the first breath of winter is manifested on Fifth Avenue. The shrimpers around Bluffton and Hilton Head call these boats the snowbirds, for like the migrating fowl from northern skies, those boats, too, seek refuge from the bitterness of the cold. The people of Yamacraw Island fear these boats with good reason. Several times in the history of the island, a snowbird has passed an islander crabbing or fishing in the river, failed to cut its engine to a lesser speed, and capsized the bateau with a huge and dangerous wake. The result is nearly always the same: an islander is dead. The captain of the snowbird does not see the bateau overturned, for he is looking to the next channel marker and does not witness the drowning of the sometime crabber behind him.

  So the snowbirds, if nothing else, made it important that I try to teach my students to swim. There was another reason. It also occurred to me that the people of Yamacraw spent an inordinate amount of time on docks fishing, socializing, and waiting for boats. Falling off a dock is not the most uncommon accident on riverfronts nor the most serious. But it is fatal to the nonswimmer. I learned from Edna Graves that she had lost a close relative the previous summer in this manner. He had gotten drunk in Savannah, fallen off a dock while trying to board a boat, and was fished out three hours later—which brought me back to the original premise that people who lived near the sea should not have to perish in the sea.

  Of course Barbara and I soon discovered that simply because we had succeeded in getting seven kids to come to the camp was no guarantee that seven kids would enter the water. The three boys who came, Lincoln, Frank, and Top Cat, entered the water quickly, if not eagerly. They splashed about the shallow end of the pool an arm’s length from the edge, nervously daring each other to go deeper. The four girls lingered beside the fence surrounding the pool, chattering like parakeets, shrieking wildly whenever I i
mplored them to come near the pool.

  “I ain’t comin’ near that ol’ pool,” Mary screamed. “Git away from me, Mr. C’roy. Git away now. I ain’t playin’. I ain’t gonna drown. Don’t you play no games with me.”

  The upshot of the whole scene was that the girls never overcame their fear of the water during the entire week, nor could I coax them into even the most basic discussion of swimming. They would have none of it. Barbara talked to them and other people who came to the camp to help talked, cajoled, and pleaded with them to moisten a toe or two in the water. All to no avail. Toward the end of the week they would sit by the edge of the pool when no one was around, cool their feet, put their hair up in curlers, and listen to soul music. I would lecture to them about the critical necessity for at least mastering the art of dog paddling.

  “Man, you girls are going to fall into that water around the island and sink like bricks. Mary, you will go straight down swallowing about eighty gallons of water before you hit bottom. You are gonna swell up like a toad, float back up all blue and purple, and they are going to stick you in the ground.” Even with this macabre vision I could not convince Mary that swimming was for her. She and the others had developed a phobia about water so strong that it would take several weeks just to get them to enter the pool. All of them had attended funerals of relatives killed by falling into the same medium that I wanted them to enter voluntarily. They would have none of it.

  The three boys came to the camp wanting to learn to swim. They fished the island waters during the summer, lifted crabpots into the tiny bateaux, and played around the docks or on the beach all day. They saw the need for swimming and understood that it could conceivably save their lives. They entered the water hesitantly, but it did not take long for them to put their heads under the water, dive off the side of the pool head first, and after the third day, to dog paddle formlessly and desperately across the breadth of the pool. By the end of the week I could take them into deep water and let them swim to the safety of the shallow end. On Friday they bragged to the girls about their miraculous, Christlike powers to stay above the water. Though they could hardly endure a twenty-yard test, they were convinced that they could swim and referred to themselves as “the three man swimmers.”

  During the week we played Softball, hide and seek, freeze tag, and went crabbing. The kids loved their crabmeat savagely peppered and stoked with hot sauce. On Wednesday afternoon I took all of them into Beaufort to hear my good friend Tim Belk play the piano. Tim was a teacher at the university extension in town, a distant relative of the Belk department-store clan, and a very fine pianist. I had wanted him to come to the school during the year to give a concert for the whole island, but Tim suggested that it would be easier to raise the dead than to transport a piano to the island.

  So after failing to bring Tim to the island, I was very pleased to bring some of the kids to Tim’s house in Beaufort. Tim was a master of style and I was glad the kids could see him in his own domain, against the dark woodwork and faint whiff of southern decadence he loved to cultivate and discuss. He had peanuts in bowls and cheese and crackers set out for the kids to eat. I had given him a list of the “great works” that we had played during the year. I asked the gang to see if they recognized any of the songs Tim played. As soon as I said this, Tim suddenly and with the timing of an experienced ham, let loose with Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Naturally, Lincoln, Top Cat, and Frank nearly catapulted off the couch, over the peanuts and cheese and onto Tim’s keys to shout, “Bay Toven the Fifth!” Soon Tim’s fingers moved again; his audience shouted and screamed the names of the identified pieces.

  After exhausting the list they knew, Tim gave a brief, impromptu concert. He would first introduce the composer with a brief biography, tell something about the music, then play something from his works. Tim had an incredible ability to tailor his performance to his audience. After a bit of classical music, he played songs from Porgy and Bess, rock and roll classics, and even a little soul. Then he rose majestically from the bench and sat each child down and taught him to pick out a song. Then, ever the cordial, impeccably mannered host, Tim winked at me, discoursed on Mozart, congratulated the kids on their knowledge of music, and passed the peanuts and cheese. It was a good afternoon. Mary told me later that she “just loved ol’ Timbelks!”

  On Friday, just before we drove the kids to the boat, I received a phone call from Howard Sedgwick in Bluffton. “Hello, Pat. This is the axman. Doctor Piedmont gave me the dirty job. He doesn’t want you back on the island next year. He’s not paying for your gas bills. He’s also had a lot of complaints about you.”

  “You mean I’m fired, Mr. Sedgwick?” I asked, a trifle stunned.

  “Well, let’s say you are expendable.”

  “Thanks for the call,” I said. Then I told Barbara and the kids.

  The next day I entered Piedmont’s office on the run. We shook hands like two gunfighters about to draw back thirty paces at high noon. I wanted him to explain the phone call from the axman, what had prompted it, and why he had not called me himself. He stared at me with malevolent, falcon-yellow eyes burning behind his brown half-glasses. He made’ no effort to be civil, or his normal unctuous, ingratiating self. For some reason he had assumed the role of the terrible godhead of authority wronged or authority challenged. He crouched in his seat, bent and misshapen, staring at me with a contempt born over a long and trying year. His stare was calculated to wither me and Piedmont had risen to minuscule greatness by his uncanny ability to melt underlings or other prey with his rapacious glance. I sat in a chair across from him staring back. And in that single moment I realized something very important. Piedmont could not scare me. Nor could Bennington. Nor could the assembled board of education in all its measly glory. For in crossing the river twice daily I had come closer to more basic things. I had come to know the singular power of a river advancing toward the open sea and the power of tides regulating that advance. I had seen how fog could change the whole world into its own image. The river, the tides, and the fog were part of a great flow and a fitting together of harmonious parts.

  Because I had seen this for the first time over the year, I could not be intimidated by guys who wore expensive shoes and flashy ties. Piedmont could fire me, bawl me out, abuse me, put it on my record that I was an incorrigible son of a bitch, make sure I never taught in South Carolina again, or cut off my teacher’s pension. That was all he could do. His power was economic and emotional, not spiritual or supernatural. Compared to the river that flowed even as we stared sullenly at each other, Piedmont was a nothing and so was I. Soon though, the great doctor commenced to handle an irritating labor problem.

  “Pat, I’ve been informed that you have been late to class this year.”

  “Who informed you, Doctor?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve been informed and leave it like that.”

  “No, just tell me who informed you and we’ll leave it like that.”

  “Have you been late?”

  “Yes sir. I was lost in the fog three times, late because of rain four times, and I walked to school from the dock for the last three weeks because Ted Stone took the use of the car away from me.”

  “We simply can’t have our teachers bein’ late to school.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because it’s against the rules. In my school system I treat all teachers alike. All teachers keep the same rules. No exceptions. You’ve been tryin’ to make an exception of yourself all year. You are no different than any other teacher in this school system,” he said, leaning forward across his desk to emphasize the point.

  “You’re wrong, Doc,” I answered, the blood rising like hot sap to my head. “If you think teachin’ on your little island is exactly the same as teachin’ anywhere else in this county, you’re crazy. That is so ridiculous that I can’t even figure out a good answer for it. It just shows that you have been sitting in this office so long that you have forgotten what the world is like.”

&nb
sp; “I know an awful lot about what goes on over at your schoolhouse. A lot more than you think I know,” he said defensively.

  “Sure. You get your information from Bennington, who gets his from letters from Mrs. Brown, his hired stool pigeon. Bennington whispers in your ear that I am an impudent punk who’s going to make trouble. Bennington is the same guy who was in charge of that island for forty years, Doctor Piedmont. Forty stinking years he was the king of the dump. And he didn’t do crap, but let those kids rot over there.”

  “Mr. Bennington worried himself sick over the Yamacraw School. He worried about those children as much as I have.”

  “If you are so worried about the kids, Doctor Piedmont, why haven’t you been over to the island?”

  “I haven’t had time. HEW has kept me so busy I have barely had time enough to go home at night.” (I badly wanted to ask him how he had had time to win the golf championship at his country club, but prudence held me back.) “I’ve been meaning to get over to see the school and meet Mrs. Brown, but things keep coming up. Anyway, this is beside the point. You’ve been late to school. I’ve been receiving all kinds of complaints about your long hair and your appearance.”

  “I do not have long hair.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “You better be glad you live in South Carolina if you think this hair is long.”

  “Young people don’t realize how important personal appearance is. If you’re neat and well groomed you can go anywhere and talk to anybody. People will listen to you and respect you.”

  “Young people know that some real sons o’ bitches hide behind coats and ties.”

  “This is all beside the point. You were late to school. You didn’t work with the chain of command. You commuted against my orders. And you charged the gas to the county. We can’t afford to pay for your personal transportation to and from school. That’s not fair to the other teachers. What if they ask me about my payin’ your gas bill to school? How could I look them in the eye?”