The surf and sea foam bubble around his ankles and he shakes his head in an attempt to loosen these unwanted images, as if they might fall right out of his head and onto the sand, as if the incoming tide will wash them out to sea. No wonder birthing is woman’s work. No wonder Velma looked over her shoulder, her black face glistening behind a stinking veil of sweat and candlelight, and said in a voice so calm one might think she didn’t understand the magnitude of what was taking place, “You get on outta here, Mr. Harp. This may be your doing, but right here right now ain’t none of your business.”
And all of this caused by a new life pushing its way into the world!
Oster Harp knew a storm was coming. Everyone did. The weeds and grass at the bottom of the water-filled jars had begun to rise. And the pelicans rode the sea wind (a steady wind, which lacked the ominous quality of song) east to the far shore, across the river, and hunkered down behind the dunes in large, feathered battalions. The sun-glazed clouds traveled even faster than the great birds, pushed by forces building—indeed, boiling forth—in the Sargasso hundreds of miles to the east. But he surely did not know that a baby was coming, too.
He has not laid eyes on his child. All he knows of her is what the women told him. “A bird, a tiny baby bird,” Velma cooed. “So small, you barely need more than one hand to hold her!”
And while he paced and drank good French brandy behind the closed doors of his study—all in a failed attempt to block the memory ghosts of my great-great-grandmother in labor—Velma yelled the pertinent details from her side of the door. The women swabbed his daughter in unsalted butter, slipped her into a shoe box, and placed her in a slow, warm oven in the screened kitchen that overlooked an oyster midden and the river. “Got to be kept warm. That baby wasn’t ready to be born!”
As for Orchid, all Oster knows (perhaps cares to know) is what he was told by Martha Ann, Orchid’s white help, and—if the truth be told—her best friend. She tapped on the door and, probably emboldened by the evening’s events, took it upon herself to crack it open and peer in. “She’s quiet now, Mr. Harp.” Martha Ann smiled indulgently, the way women do when they are trying to pull a man into the sphere.
But Oster was not a man to be pulled. He’d see his wife later, once she was recovered and all signs of a difficult delivery were swept from the house, her countenance, her language.
From the slouch of his shoulders and the slow roll of his gait, I can’t be sure what gives my great-great-grandfather more comfort: the fact that the birth is over, or that he isn’t a woman and will, therefore, never have to endure what Orchid just went through. Maybe that’s the key to masculine discontent: They are pissed, grateful, and in awe that giving birth is a privilege reserved for women. He stops walking, pushes his spectacles up the ridge of his nose, and squints seaward. He notices something bobbing in the roil of foam and waves. Inanimate or not, he is unsure—but most certainly something is there, maybe twenty yards out, riding the surf with humanlike determination. Perhaps a case of Madeira from a Portuguese ship. He waits and watches. He looks over his shoulder, scans the dunes, the leafless pin oaks, the sky hardening into a relentless blue. He is the only human soul present. He turns to the northwest, toward the mouth of the inlet, and perceives the faint surge of a rainbow as it unfurls across the moisture-soaked sky. A reminder of the covenant. Perhaps God is trying to apologize for the suffering he forced upon Orchid. This thought wafts by on the salt-laden wind, free of irony or complaint.
Again, he turns seaward. The object is making frenetic progress. The waves push it forward, suck it back. Occasionally, it spins, caught in the web of an eddy, before popping back into the sea’s incessant ebb and flow. And sometimes, in a lull between waves, the drifting treasure simply rides the surface, partially submerged. For a moment, Oster worries that it will never make landfall, that it is too heavy, that the sea will open its jaws and swallow it whole. He is about to give up and continue his stroll, when the wind blows a tangle of seaweed around his bare feet. He glances at the green-brown ringlets that wiggle eel-like against his skin. The wind gusts, stinging him with salt and sand and its discordant song. He removes his spectacles and wipes the salt out of his eyes with a handkerchief retrieved from his back pocket. With growing impatience, he positions the spectacles back upon the bridge of his nose. He longs for silent air. He casts a final gaze seaward, blinking, eyes watering. Through the veil of gauzed vision, he sees it: a giant wave propelling the object shoreward. Oh my, this is no case of Madeira. She is exquisite. He steps closer. Even from this distance, he sees she is raven-haired, barroom-boned, buxom, of course, as are all figureheads. Her skirt, mottled with foam, seems to swirl—as if tumbled by the sea—and even this harsh world of wind, salt, and water hasn’t been able to erase the fact that whoever created her possessed the whimsy of a child. Her hardwood prism-colored skirt billows as if caught in a strong gale, and along the hem, fish—their eyes painted yellow and green—happily swim. Dolphins leap over the curve of each breast.
Oster frees himself of the seaweed, rolls up his pant legs, and wades into the surf. Water surges past his ankles, slaps his calves. He takes another step and plunges waist-deep in the roiling Atlantic. The storm has rearranged the ocean floor, creating new drop-offs and shoals. His gold watch fob floats on the surface, as if riding a swell of liquid glass. The timepiece is ruined. He’s sure of that. Or perhaps its gold case will keep the inner workings safe. He scolds himself for behaving so carelessly and then shades his eyes, searching for the raven-haired girl. The wind moans, high-pitched, like a bat, as it presses against the gullies and hills of the water. Oster Harp feels the tug of total immersion.
Aqua-prismed swells. White foam swirling off the wide, round hips of waves. Wind screaming along the sea’s ruffled edge. A horizon splashed purple and orange and insistent blue: the morning’s glow. This is the Atlantic at its wildest: poststorm, when beauty and relief combine to drive men and women alike into madness.
She is nowhere. There are no telltale signs. No pieces floating, bobbing, which is what would be found if the surf had broken her apart. She is not here. She doesn’t exist. She was a cruel mirage.
The world consists of Oster and the ocean and a chain of pelicans cruising effortlessly in this siren wind. He decides to head back to shore. And to tell no one of this foolishness. His brain betrayed him. The strain of last night meddled with his good sense. A form of sea madness inflicted by stress and sleeplessness and devil brandy. That is why he keeps imagining the wind is singing. Sea madness. There is no wind song. No such thing exists. And there is no figurehead. There is just Oster and this ocean, which he struggles to take leave of. The current tugs at his legs, arms, even his chest. He pushes forward through the weight of water—his head high and proud—before being slammed soundly off his feet by a Mack truck of a wave.
Fully submerged, not to mention surprised, he swallows seawater. The current pulls him eastward, tugging at his spectacles, which he attempts to remove and pocket for safekeeping, but the water steals them from his fingers. He reaches through the murky darkness, but the sea has already spun them beyond his reach. Unknowable creatures and objects tumble past as the riptide ferries him toward Europe, the islands, Africa, and toward, he fears, the past—the pagan past that flourished before men of enlightenment sought dominion over this old earth, and, in particular, America. (Oh, yes, how different my great-great-grandfather and I are. He with his faith in a Protestant God, me having giving up on monotheism entirely. Won’t we have a few things to talk about if ever we meet!) The riptide is a rapidly moving river flowing within the larger sea, carrying him quickly to another time. A place where he is not in control. A wet, dark, sun-filtered place where he is just another fish. How delightful, the notion that my great-great-grandfather nearly was transformed into a fish at death, as I momentarily was!
As if he’d been swallowed by a great whale and then belched from its belly, he pops to the surface, gagging, spitting, struggling to fill his lungs wit
h the air of the present. Even the wind song welcomes him. The scrub oaks grow smaller and smaller, then disappear all together as the past pulls him back down, sandwiching him between waves, imprinting upon him images of a far and foreign shore. A tremendous pressure squeezes his chest. He fears he will explode. First his spine will pop, next his heart, liver, spleen. Skin will be the last to go. It will shred like the tattered remains of a forgotten flag. As the past, which Oster perceives of as death, becomes more real, he seeks intercession. He asks God to save him. And then he insanely questions the sincerity of his own request because it is, alas, automatic. His eyes burn, salt-scalded, and his chest fills with water, replacing the present air. Animals whose identities remain secret approach, silent and unafraid. His prayers issue faster, with ever-greater urgency, until they swirl and escape beyond the realm of language. My great-great-grandfather tumbles and claws, tumbles and claws. He is ready for battle, ready to kill and be killed. Indigo and ocher and black water seep into his brain, and it is then that the whale spits him out for the second time, leaving him to vomit seawater and rediscover music and air. He is just about to thank God for sparing his life, when he looks over his shoulder and—buxom and proud, propelled by the ocean’s force—the figure slams him square in the head.
No one comes looking for my great-great-grandfather. They are all too busy caring for his nameless shoe-box baby on his nameless island and pressing cold compresses against the forehead of my fever-delirious great-great-grandmother.
In my film of Oster Harp—a man I knew precious little about in life—the sky boils with giant white clouds that move quickly east to west, then finally clears into a high-pitched brightness. It is then—when the atmosphere thins into glass—that my great-great-grandfather comes to, beached, blinded by his own blood. He wipes his eyes clean with a raw hand. The rainbow has retreated, the sun ascended. The moon shines on other lands. The wind song has grown weary.
Downshore, toward the inlet, maybe fifty feet away, he spies something—blurred, thanks to his bad eyesight and lost spectacles—but he is certain of what he sees. The figurehead lies placidly on the sand, like a drowsy sunbather. Oster rises on rubbery legs and runs. He is so grateful to be alive. God is so good. He trips, falls into the soft new dunes, clamors to his feet, and begins again. He is covered in the grains of the beach: a castaway crusted in salt and blood.
When he reaches the figurehead, he drops to his knees. He inspects her, his face close in, thanks to his bad eyesight, his hands doing some of the work for him. She is more beautiful than he first imagined. Her gaze is forward-bound. She sees into the future with the grace of a seasoned sailor, unflinching, respectful of what lies ahead, a faint and wry grin gracing her solid features. He studies this seaborne treasure, pressing his palms against her ocean-cured wood, marveling at what fine condition she is in. Her rainbow skirts are dusted with barnacles. He decides they are diamonds sewn by the sea. He doesn’t admit that this observation reveals him to be a man with a tendency to the poetic. He simply thinks, I’m going to take good care of you.
“I promise,” he whispers, and I cannot help but believe that he is treating this figurehead—this inanimate gift from the sea—the way he wants to treat his baby girl but can’t quite bring himself to. I’m going to take good care of you. I promise. He is speaking to his shoe-box baby. I know it. The sky knows it. All those countless grains of sand know it. He’s the only one who is clueless.
He sits on the sand beside his worm-holed and water-beaten find, stunned by his good fortune, watching the ocean (all he truly sees is a wash of rhythmic color), mulling over the pattern implicit in God’s mystery. The birth—however grotesque—of his first child. The covenant-sealing rainbow. His close call with drowning. The providential figurehead with a skirt of many colors.
And then it comes to him: The Greek goddess of the rainbow. Iris. Of course!
“Iris,” he says. It rolls off the tongue with little effort, even a tongue swollen by seawater. A properly feminine name, without extraneous flourish. Distilled to a fair essence. Air. Iris.
So this is how my great-grandmother came to be known as Iris Harp, named by my great-great-grandfather, a man so full of his own importance that he named his baby girl before speaking to her mother. Indeed, before ever laying eyes on the child herself.
And in a fit of saccharin charm, he decides to name the island in honor of this day and his hours-old shoe-box baby. Iris Haven. It is a name that will stick, that will come to be printed on maps and deeds and birth certificates long after Oster Harp leaves this land.
The wind blows big and purple. The images of Oster and Iris Haven and my great-great-grandfather’s life recede to black, and I am left here in the wind, bemused. Poor old Great-Great-Grandfather Harp must not have known that the rainbow goddess didn’t simply spend her days lolling about Mount Olympus, admiring her handiwork. No sirree, Granddaddy! Iris, the rainbow goddess, had one hell of a job: She received the souls of dying women.
Did Oster Harp commit a metaphysical blunder when he named his baby and this island in honor of Iris? Did his ignorant foray into the world of nomenclature curse this place? Is that why we keep dying out here, again and again, so young? Did his gesture create a hole in the universal scrim, causing us to be called forward into the rainbow’s portal, received perhaps by the likes of Iris herself?
As I boil forward, my spirit wobbly but not without hope, I want to know. And to stay safe—I do not understand what is happening in these early moments—I will practice my own form of nomenclature voodoo, whispering into this infinite dark space the names of those who have come before me. Orchid, Mother, Katrina, Blossom. Orchid, Mother, Katrina, Blossom. Orchid, Mother, Katrina, Blossom. Orchid, Mother, Katrina, Blossom. Oh, how this wind blows!
Billy Speare
You know, sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you’ve fucked up in life, because once in a blue moon the big guy in the sky sneezes, a big-assed atchoo, and just like that, all the planets spin sweetly into alignment. The ex-wife, the alimony, the daughter who has disowned your soul—all of it bleeds to white in the glaring, awesome light of one fine day.
July 14, 2001.
Memorize that. Write it down. Scrawl it across the sky. Tattoo it on your ass.
There I sat, at the picnic table outside my fish-camp trailer—the mercury already pegged on 90, and it wasn’t yet 9:00 A.M.—drinking coffee with a bourbon back, sucking my first cig of the day, terrified at what lay before me: the New York Times Book Review. I never read reviews of my own work. And my agent is under strict orders never to mention them to me. Why would I care what a pissant wanna-be thinks? But the agent broke our rule and left a message on my voice mail. “Read it, Speare,” she said. “Just get the hell over yourself and read it.” I swear to God, I bet the woman smokes unfiltered Camels.
And Christ, I was doing it. I was following orders and letting yet another woman fuck up my day. The Sex Life of Me was my fourth novel, my best, and it damned well needed to do well. I flipped through to page 16, squinting my eyes against the cigarette smoke, my hands shaking with the premonition that I was gonna get creamed.
Hmpf. Not bad placement, above the fold, a pen-and-ink drawing that I guess was supposed to be my protagonist, Jake Harris. I clutched the paper tightly, ready to ball up the motherfucker and hurl it—all I needed was the first sign, a clause that hinted, Okay, here it comes, an unkind or stupid shot. My lips moved with the words, but my voice was soft; dread had it punched full of holes.
“Mr. William S. Speare’s genius is that he sees into the hearts and minds of even the lowliest human souls and illuminates for the reader their dark, lonely, wretched lives. The Sex Life of Me is a tour de force. We should be grateful that a writer of Mr. Speare’s ilk walks among us, for all of humanity benefits from his abundant talent.”
Shit. I took a shot of bourbon and gritted my teeth. Fucking bastard nailed me.
I reread the review, searching for the obligatory sentence that would in
dicate I hadn’t done this or that up to snuff. But there was no snuff. It was a goddamned rave. Everything revved: my heart rate, my breath, the speed at which I downed my shot of Wild Turkey. My brain dropped to the floor and did twenty sit-ups. I had to call my editor, then my agent, had to let my ex-wife know. Even she, after ten years of alimony battles, might be happy for me. But first, I walked down to the river, still shaking, and took a good long piss, batting back tears, breathing in deep the scent of the rich river muck, knowing that nobody could fuck with me now.
This was it. The big break. What had to happen. In the July 14, 2001, issue of the New York Times Book Review, Dr. Gordon Laughton, a professor of English literature at Duke, pinned the g word to me. It was about fucking time. It had taken ten jerk-off years and tons of blood spilled on the page before some hack reviewer found the balls to cough up the proper noun. But, hey, who’s bitching? At least it finally happened.
Later that day—after a dozen jubilant phone conversations and one argument (my ex told me I could kiss her ass and that, no, my daughter did not want to talk to me)—I took my boat downriver to check my crab traps. A small pod of dolphins—four of them, I think—cruised on by, and I noticed a skiff up ahead, bobbing real gentle like, and rising from it a set of legs crossed like silk against that hot blue sky. It was right then, let me tell you, that July 14, 2001, took me by the ears and screamed, Hey, asshole, your good luck? It’s not over yet!
The Problem with Murmur Lee Page 4