CHAPTER THREE: LEVIATHON

Awakened by his nightmares, T.J. rolled over and fell sleep again, but fitfully. His roof had sprouted a new leak, and the drips of water splashed on his face, running down his chin and wetting the pillow.
Meanwhile, he dreamed that he was in the ocean, and that a grappling hook had snagged his armpit, pulling him through miles of seaweed, the pimpled kelp leaves slipping across his body like rough but slithery hands.

When morning came, T.J. lay in bed exhausted, listening to the rain. T.J.‘s cabin nestled on a steep hillside in the redwood foothills near Paradise Point, and after the separation from his wife Elizabeth, Paradise Point had seemed a perfect place to get away from her -- and stay away. From the living room window T.J. viewed the ocean to the west, and to the east a redwood forest. A dirt footpath went winding toward the north between sea and forest, now through giant trees, then through sand dunes and back again. Wild, pea-sized strawberries, brown hazel nuts and, after spring rains, mushrooms, grew, free for the picking.


True, the wild harvest ripened in the midst of poison oak, stinging nettles, and, during hot weather, amongst nests of aggressive yellow jackets. But that was nature. T.J. loved the redwoods with their giant trunks with the red bark hanging in hairy shanks resembling, he supposed, prehistoric animal fur. Every day he walked thirty minutes along the fern-lined, hillside path.

“Lovely dark and deep,” T.J. mumbled. (He often quoted the poet, Robert Frost.) Though T.J. liked the forest, he loved even more the sea coast, and here he had found the best of both.


Although T.J. was an American citizen, a touch of English still clung to his bones; with the sea in his blood, adventure in his heart, and with a subtle, if at times sarcastic, humor, he would often say things like, “You would kick if you were hung with a new rope.”

Of the less satiable foods he would say, “It’s good for what ails ye.“

He was English but, one might say, “Not British.” As a young lad and merchant sailor, he had turned his back on England, forever. Even now, hiking northward along the path, he loved seeing the frequent glimpses of the Pacific Ocean, but he never considered crossing the sea to visit his homeland. There was no hope of seeing family again, as will be made clear later in the book.


As a youngster he had been gone to the sea for it’s promise of freedom, and for the allure of adventure, but after the initial excitement of his first sailing voyage, he grown to both love, and fear the sea. In his old age, he had come full circle, relishing the romantic memories of his youth; he barely recalled the forgotten rigors, fears and hardships of sea.


Nevertheless, there were times like now, when the old fears revived. While he listened to the sea now, waves beat, drum-like, with roars and splashing. War messages pounded on the shore, the threatening cadences of the Eternal, or of the near-Eternal, or the all-encompassing code of nature, or the undulating rhythms that evolution wears into the soul of man no less certainly than the legends and the drumbeats of the (no doubt coffee-colored) hands. Hands of the relentless gods. People who live too far from the shore never know that fear. Never feel the vibrations of the earthquakes nor the terror of earth vibrating with a roar, as if the land had decided to shake the coast off into the sea, to break off and dispose of the coast (and its residents) as one discards an old toenail.


T.J.'s father had been a lay leader in the Episcopalian church, and even though T.J. rejected his father’s religion, a vague notion of God had always filled T.J.'s thoughts. Like a mystical fog, it had fueled his fears, inspired his hopes … and his dread.

He often felt empty, destitute of faith, but whenever he tried to make up his mind not to believe, he would think he felt some mysterious Presence, resembling a god or gods, or invisible shadows would flit cross the borders of his inner vision, like demons or evil spirits, and he would shiver uneasily. In his younger days, sitting between his parents in the pews, he would silently deny God, secretly cursing and blaspheming, and thrill to the danger of it all, half expecting immediate retribution at the hands of an angry God.

Later, when he was in his twenties, he would think the same blasphemous thoughts and immediately he would hear, or rather imagine, a multitude of reproaching voices: his mother, his father, a kindly Christian sea captain, his lover Claire, his once best friend, Cimmeron. Cim, though not a Christian, had never exhibited cynicism, never expressed antagonism against God or “the gods,” as the case might be.

T.J.‘s daring cousin Georgie, on the other hand, was openly hostile against every God and all gods. 

“If you are going to think it you might as well say it, admit your unbelief," Georgie had challenged him. "Say it out loud. Say 'I am a fearless sinner and I am against all gods, devils, ghosts and demons!’”

But T.J. could never bring himself to do that. T.J. assumed that Georgie and all the other ghosts were probably long since deceased. Only their unholy ghosts remained, or so it seemed. Their memories sulked and lurked in T.J.’s mind.

"But," you might object, "the mind is not some kind of “other place,“ or “other faculty,” not something separate from the body bur rather a combination of images impressed in the brain cells through combinations of lasting impressions, impulses or sensory “data.“

True perhaps. If so, T.J. had been plagued with a too-vivid imagination, some would say. For example, while T.J. was yet in his thirties, he imagined he could feel beneath him the so-called “foundation of his being.” The feeling when expressed as a thought was silly he knew, he could feel something, like a Divine Essence, and he was either ecstatic. Or he “saw” in his dreams a Being of Light, in which case he was awed. But then there were those other times, when he was terrorized by a Being of Great Darkness and Evil Power. In those times great darkness, and they were many, he felt alone and afraid and insignificant.




THE LAST DAYS


Thus it was that, on the final Sunday morning of his life, having been awakened by his nightmares, T.J. lay thinking about his father’s religion. Episcopalian. “I have lived a good life,” T.J. said aloud, as if in answer to his father’s accusatory stare. In rebuttal to his father, he silently reminded himself, “Life itself is the only thing that is truly Holy.”


It was then he noticed that the rain had stopped and the sun had appeared, dimly at first, in the bedroom window and the warbling of California quail outside his window, and he missed hearing Stella’s soft snores that only the day before had mingled with their good natured clucking, for by then Stella, his lady friend, had begun spending the nights with him on occasion. The quail clucked and chuckled and he could hear them rushing away through the underbrush singing their morning “prayers,” as Stella had sometimes claimed. “Prayers?” T.J. now wondered. “Prayers? Or is that their morning ranting, cursing, and blaspheming? Their daily denials of faith?” Though he had become somewhat deaf in the latter years, T.J. had always enjoyed the sounds of quail, and of life in general. Some of his fondest memories went back to his childhood, having been sent to bed early when company had come to visit with his parents. He lay in bed and listening to the blessed tones and sundry voices, hearing only the sounds but not the words, the lightness of laughter and the sonorous overtones of the Jewish neighbor who had come for the evening. Whether Blessing or Cursing, the quail sounded better on a Sunday morning than church choirs, or so he had long since decided. And he was glad that he had moved to Paradise Pointe. Away from the city that Elizabeth adored. Away from the holier-than-thou church just down the street. Away from the noise and confusion of the big city. However, he soon learned, regardless of where he might live, he carried within himself the babble of his own confusion.


As he daydreamed, his mind wandered back to his seagoing days. On a ship, out of sight of land, it was easy to become superstitious, T.J. knew. He recalled the sound of waves lapping on the wooden sides of his first merchant ship, little waves seeming so innocent, so benevolent, as if the hands of God were slapping friendly “hellos” at the hull. As he was soon to learn, during storms the slapping hands became pounding fists, battering like the clubs of some malicious crew of pirate-devils. The sailors inside wrapped their arms and legs around their hammocks and prayed to whichever god’s they held to. Sometimes they cried, very silently so no others would hear, but begging -- whatever or whoever -- that they might make it safely through the night, and they tried to sleep without being tossed to the deck. Tried not to allow the other men to see their fear, and, sometimes, they hid so many tears in their pillows that they woke with the stinging taste of tear-salt upon their cracked lips. At times like those, they would vow to themselves that if they ever made it back safely to land, they would never to go to sea again.


But the sailors always did return to their livelihoods at sea. They needed the money and, besides, sea was in their blood. Take Ike, for instance; that “old salt” had been the only one who greeted T.J. as he had boarded his first transcontinental ship, the St. Thomas. Ike had shaken his hand heartily, introduced himself, and begun asking personal questions. Upon hearing that T.J. was English he promptly nicknamed him “Limey.” Ike pressed on to ask of T.J.’s likes and dislikes, his beliefs and then, speedily changed the course of conversation to religion. Ike commenced to solemnly warn T.J. which taverns were the roughest, which seas ran the highest, and which Gods were the worst to encounter, and which spiritual perils seamen must avoid above all others. He especially emphasized Neptune, that cantankerous old god of storms at sea and of earthquakes on land. “Neptune is a jealous god,” Ike warned. Ike had his opinions about women too: “Never fall in love with a woman, Limey and, never, ever leave the seaman’s life for the easy life on shore. Neptune won’t like it. He will seek you out and reek revenge!” Later, when T.J. had dismissed the advice, had gone to “land lubbering” and living at the foot of a coastal mountain range. Oh yes, T.J. had long since dismissed those stories as myths and fables, yet during winter storms when great trees came tumbling down the mountainsides, branches crashing, thumping and snapping with sounds resembling the breaking of ship‘s masts, T.J. would think of Ike’s warnings in spite of himself.




***


The cabins in Paradise, were few and far between and most of them vacant except for a week or two in the summer. People would go to Paradise Point for “spiritual retreats“ during which they sought to “fill up“ with God before going back out into the world of homes and businesses and schools. Then they would leave and the park would be the same quiet, damp, green place that it had been before. The noisy visitors always arrived in a hurry and quickly unpacked their suitcases and grabbed their brooms; the unused cabins required cleaning after months of disuse. They came with their bibles and with their pillows and blankets, and enough food for a week stuffed in the trunks of their cars. They hastened about cleaning and setting up house. Evenings and Sundays they went to the chapel to “listen” for the “voice of God,” but after a few hours -- or more usually , a few minutes -- God apparently would have said his piece and they would slip away with novels to read, sitting on beach towels along the shady banks of the Saint Lorenzo River . The San Lorenzo was a fitting place for such reading, seeing as the river was named in honor of Saint Lawrence, the third century Roman deacon who in due time became “Patron of Librarians.”


Other seekers, those with less of a literary bent, would suddenly produce fishing poles (seemingly out of nowhere) and lawn chairs, which they would also take to the river. Those who neither read nor fished simply sat listening to the running of water over the rocks. This was prior to the advent of pocket-sized radios, of course, let alone electronic games. In those days one could actually listen to the silence of the forest without such distractions; rather than reading constant text messages, watched the clouds passing by, and. they listened to the wind blowing through the treetops. Their hearts (or what they called hearts) were tuned in to the calls of stellar jays rather than the computerized voice that says, “You have mail.” To be sure there were tourists, even back then. Like crows devastating corn fields, the visitors would flock in to Paradise Point in the summer, and just as suddenly they would flock out and the park would be back to normal again. Quiet. Peaceful … or perhaps, lonesome.


Without someone to love, without a life partner, even Paradise was a lonesome place. T.J. had lay alone in his own bed, the one with the brass headboard. T.J.‘s hand occasionally strayed up shook the brass bars, and he listened to them rattle in their sockets. For hours the only other sound was the ticking of the clock and the constant drumming of rain on the thin cabin roof. A single rainy night could be pleasant, but then there were those times when the rain poured down day after day, night after night. Those were the nights when the more imaginative folk could swear that some Devil, Beast or monster, scientific or not, had arisen to beat upon the earth. Beat hard, like the hooves of Neptune’s horses, trampling forests, breaking half-ton branches from trees, flooding rivers and stirring vicious breakers, strewing the beaches with driftwood logs, and with coral from thousands of miles away, and with piles of kelp that smelled of the sea. And along with the superstitious T.J. listened in fear. Even one redwood tree, if it crashed upon the roof, would send his cabin tumbling down the mountain, where the shack would then break up into a heap of weathered scrap on the rocky beach below. But it was not to happen. Yet. The absurd and confused thought came to him, “Mine hour is not yet come.”


AFTER THE RAIN


Ah, the sunshine and the rain. Smell the flowers! The moist humus of the forest floor drifts up to one‘s nose and thus, humans become too accustomed to good luck. The waves roll in, and they roll back out again; they stay within their set bounds. The earthquake will happen, but not here. Common folk begin to bask in the fake comfort of these false boundaries. In order to go about our normal routines and duties, we simply must trust that those “safe” cycles will always continue. We trust that nature will always be kind even if the gods-- gods as we imagine them -- are not. Just so, the storm was one of those short, pleasant rains that cleanses the air without dampening the spirits. After the little tempest had passed, a freshness filled the air, and sunshine poured through the openings in the forest. T.J. and Stella spent another afternoon and evening together. It would be their last opportunity to do so, for at noon they walked to the park’s post office and picked up the daily mail. T.J. looked through his letters and frowned. Stella quipped, “What’s the matter, nothing but bills?”
“Ho ho ho,” T.J. replied gloomily. “Bills would be much more welcome than this.” And he handed her the top letter. It was from Elizabeth, from whom T.J. had been separated for several years. “Well I’ll be … no news is good news!” Stella said. And sure enough, the letter served notice: T.J.’s wife, Elizabeth was on her way to Paradise Point, and planned to move in with T.J.. Permanently.


***


That evening both T.J. and Elizabeth felt depressed, but they went ahead with their card game. Stella cut the deck. “If there is a God, he must be always moving,” Stella said. T.J. noted mentally the word “if.“ Stella had never before used the word “if” with reference to God. He wondered if he had been a bad influence on her faith. It had always seemed to T.J. that God was the one and only certainty in Stella’s life. “The tide moves back and forth twice a day, a watery pendulum,” T.J. conceded … “but the tides are due to the moon’s pull, laws of nature, not to any God, devil, or spirits.” he thought to himself, and he silently complimented himself for being so scientific. So modern.


“But look at how the stars move across the sky every night,” Stella said as if having read his mind. “Doesn’t that make you believe in God? How do you explain that?“ In actuality, T.J. knew, it was the earth itself that rotated, the stars being fixed in the sky. But rather than turn the evening into an argument about philosophy, he said nothing. Stella provided him with spiritual, if at times illogical, options. “The clocks of the gods,” he finally said. “ are in the cycles of nature.” There were the strange menstrual cycles that governed sexuality and the giving of birth, and then there was the greatest cyclical mystery of all, the mystery of life, and death, birth and, perhaps, rebirth. God, if there were any, might be as regular as the moon and the sun, steady as winter and summer, and as unyielding in the carrying out of life’s certainties.


“Not gods, the One True God!” Stella exclaimed. T.J.’s turn now. “But then again,” T.J. said and played a card, “isn’t it just as possible that God would be unpredictable, as violent and chaotic, as a sudden storm at sea?”


The next time his turn came around he won the game, but he was still worried about losing in the other game, the game of life … and of love. Life held so many questions for him and as a youth, in view of history, with so many tragic world events, he had often wondered “Why?” As if on cue, Stella‘s eyes twinkled as she said, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God. And you, my dear, are no fool.” T.J. gasped. “She read my mind!” he imagined. All his life he had hoped that, some way or another, old age would bring wisdom, that after so many years of seeking and being open minded, he would finally know. Knowing! What a gift that would be. Knowing, not in the sense that one “knows” doctrines or teachings, but in the sense that one just knows something. Knows it the same way that he knows what time is or, light or gravity, though he cannot describe those in mathematical terms. Fool, yes. Fool he had been in his childhood, and foolish in his old age; his heart had not found wisdom or knowledge it seemed, but instead his doubts had appeared only to grow, to wrap their weight around his heart as if to sink him to the depths of the sea. On this day he could not fight off thinking in his heart, “There is no God.” Yet his doubt was never complete. His skepticism never took command enough to be the captain of his soul and set him free from his fears, he continued to doubt but then he would begin doubt his doubts. And so he had done for over seventy years now.


“I still pray. I suppose I am just hedging my bets,” T.J. admitted. “But if I had to get on an airplane or go on a sailing trip, I know I would pray. When the wind blows, and you feel the anchors hitting the sides of the ship, you pray.” The discussion then turned to the dreams, dreams that had constantly disturbed his sleep, for as long as he could remember.


“Why can’t I have just a few years of peace and solitude and … just being? Just living as a human being?” he asked. “Why must I be a Christian or a Moslem or a Jew or a Buddhist or a … Why all this struggling with gods and demons that exist only in my own mind? And why do I continue to put up with Elizabeth anyway? These are modern times. I should have been divorced years ago.” Stella remained silent. Gave him space to vent.


At first after separating from Elizabeth, T.J. had believed that he was the luckiest man on earth, that he had sailed into his final refuge at Paradise Point, a harbor where he would be safe at last from all the past storms of his life. But the dreams fears and doubts had returned. He did not believe in omens, yet the persistent thought had occurred that these dreams were drawing him both backward into the past and, at the same time, they were foreshadowing some future event. A dangerous gathering of some sort. A reunion or some kind of official ceremony where he would be singled out, publicly embarrassed, humiliated and punished. An inevitable experience for which he held, not so much fear as … dread. He looked Stella in the eye. “Stella, what’s going to happen to me when I die?” Stella did not hesitate. “Why, you are not going to die, my dear! Are you feeling ill? You look good to me. Besides, God is merciful,” she said. But seeing the seriousness in his eyes, she added, “Don’t worry, you are in good hands, my dear. Trust in God!” God notwithstanding, when T.J. turned in for the night, the best thought that he was able to conjure was, “ Dust to dust, and ashes to ashes.” But what of those who drown at sea? “Slime,” he told himself, and dozed off to a restless night during which he dreamed of riding for hours on end upon a sea creature the identity of which he somehow felt he knew … without knowing why, he believed that the beast had once been known as … “Leviathan.”


***


Author's Note: The above was a chapter from an experimental novel by F. Ellsworth Lockwood.


The book incorporates adventure, romance, and spirituality in the saga of a boy named T.J., who runs away from home at age fourteen in search of freedom and self determination. T.J. navigates a transition from wooden sailing ships to steamships and locomotives, yet the end of his life is more surprising (and more adventuresome) than his first boyhood prank, in which he jumped aboard a rag barge only to fall into the hands of a cantankerous “rag lady” and her skinny daughter.
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