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Lights at Skipper’s Cove
- Syracuse University Press
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82 Lights at Skipper’s Cove Meditation and water are forever wedded. —Herman Melville The water was a light turquoise, and clear to sixty feet down. Looking like iridescent parachutes, jellyfish drifted below us, a visual echo of the small puffy clouds overhead. The motor quietly hummed. My wife, Erin, was at the helm, watching the sonar and occasionally glancing sternward to keep our four lines straight. My friend Nick sat in one of the deck chairs, his eleven-year-old son, Billy, in the other. It was hot. The western seascape glittered—hypnotic , unreal. We were at the Gulf Stream, fifty miles out. It was one of those lulls between strikes. Nick and Billy sat facing the stern as if they had deliberately turned their backs on me. Maybe I had tried too hard to prove something. I was of two minds about Rainy’s absence from the boat. Despite their differences, she and Erin enjoyed each other’s company. Early on, we often had Nick and Rainy to our house for dinner, but Rainy never returned the favor, claiming she couldn’t compete with Erin as a cook. Erin was unfazed. People considered Rainy a knockout, but she had a pouty mouth and a voice to go with it. She couldn’t or wouldn’t adjust to the South. Once in front of Erin, oblivious of the insult, she claimed she could barely understand North Carolinians Lights at Skipper’s Cove | 83 when they spoke to her. She missed Connecticut, especially Bridgeport , her hometown, and spoke about it in tones that suggested a fabulous lost civilization. At one of our parties, alone with her in the kitchen, I was trying to make a point about something when she grabbed my crotch and squeezed, but not as a come-on. “Things aren’t what you think.” Her voice was a whispery hiss. “Wake up!” Then she stumbled toward the crowd in the living room. What, I had always wondered, was that all about? Since both of us were half blitzed, I wrote it off to booze. Blood was bright on the white pebble decking from the wahoo I just gaffed aboard. He was now fluttering and making a racket in the fish box. Nick’s catch. A nice thirty-pounder. I told Erin to hit the toggle switch for the water pump. I started to hose blood toward the stern scuppers, watching it turn pink. Small red bits stretched and clung to the edges on the pebble flooring. I had to put the nozzle down close for the pressure to work. Finally, water that backed up at the scuppers turned faint red. Then, like a bad thought, it was gone. Nick was a good-looking guy with deep-set eyes, wide shoulders, and a bad-boy grin. He kept his hair in a short ponytail and had a silver stud in his ear. He could crack me up with his laugh, a high-pitched whinny oddly out of sync with the rest of his rugged self. We were walking toward the faculty lounge at Stokes Academy where we taught. Students in my French class had just groaned at their last translation assignment of the year. It was warm and sunny, and we were laughing about something. Along the sidewalks azaleas were in bloom. It would have been a great day to be out at the Gulf Stream. In the distance I saw Dr. Tuck, our headmaster, and told Nick about the Ed Psych course he was insisting I take. “Our noble leader,” said Nick, and let out that great whinny. “I’d rather hump a goat than take an education course,” I said. “Relax, relax,” Nick said. He showed me the cover of his new book on Zen, a foggy mountain with a few brush-stroked Chinese characters. Some time ago I had put him on to Alan Watts, and he [3.238.130.41] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:58 GMT) 84 | Allegiance and Betrayal couldn’t quit—meditation and sport, Zen and golf. But now he said, “Forget Dr. Tuck, man. You’ve got to take out the trash, yank them mind weeds.” “Look who’s talking. Have you come across Shantideva yet?” He shook his head. “‘Conquer your angry mind, and rivals become friends.’” “Discipline,” he said, “like training camp. I love it.” I was coaching tennis when Nick was hired to coach football and teach history. That we became friends on the tennis court...