Pilings

Pilings

by

Eric C . Hartlep

Oh, it’s no trouble at all. Please sit down – plenty of room on the bench. I’ll just scoot over a little. There. I can see by the look on your face that you’re in the same sort of a fix I was in several years ago.

No, don’t deny it. It’s as plain as day. You’ve lost someone, haven’t you? And recently, too. You’re feeling badly about it. You thought a walk along the lake at sunrise would help you clear your mind.

You can tell me about it – or not. Making a clean breast of things can really help. Believe me, I know that only too well. Of course, you’re reluctant to say anything, me being a stranger and all. But maybe it would help if I told you about the day I did what you’re doing now…and what happened afterward?

Because it’s also obvious, the way you’re looking up and down the beach, you saw the same apparition I did the first time I came here at daybreak. There was an old man here then, too. Now I’m the old man. Except, when I was your age, I was sitting on this bench when he walked up. For you and me, it’s the other way around.

Well, this is how it happened to me:

“You saw him, too, didn’t you?” the old man said to me. He walked up the beach, one foot in the water, the other on the beach. Straddling two worlds, you might say. It was cool just after sunrise. Little waves made a hushed lapping sound, reminding me of friends saying good-night after an all-night cabin party on the lake. I sat on this concrete bench right at the water’s edge just like now, digging my toes in the sand and sloshing them clean again while the sky turned from purple and gold to misty blue at the horizon.

“I did see someone,” I said as he came nearer. “But he disappeared when I watched a seagull flying past.” The old man wore cut-off shorts and a T-shirt that said Lake Charlevoix – Unsalted & Shark Free on the front. He leaned on a rough-cut staff with the bark still attached.

“He’s a ghost, of course,” he said, and stopped a few feet away. He had a strange, crooked smile. Not the joking smile locals get when they tease the summer crowd with North Woods tales. His smile meant he was curious to see how I’d react to such a straight-forward statement. But his eyes held a strange expression of hope. He seemed to be tired. Incredibly tired. His eyes were bright and alert, but they had ancient lines around them like rings in a tree.

I nodded my head and waited. But instead of saying more, he just looked out across the lake, toward the state park. Vacationers were just waking up in their RV’s or pop-up campers or sleeping bags in tents. So I said, “Friend of yours?”

He turned back slowly. “No,” he said. “Well, sort of. Maybe. I didn’t know him in life, if that’s what you mean.” An iridescent green dragonfly flew up between us, hovered a second as if listening, then darted off toward the picnic tables and swing sets. The parking lot was empty so early, but the private marina for the new condos over there to the west was packed with yachts and sailboats. You could hear their rigging ringing to the rhythm of the little waves.

“How old would you say he was?” he asked me.

I closed my eyes, trying to remember. The boy had slate colored trousers rolled up to his knees, but no shirt. His feet were bare, one slapping on the sand, the other dragging along in the lake. That’s how he walked when you saw him, wasn’t it? Yes, I thought so.

And he had a belt with a brass buckle holding his trousers up above his belly button. He had red hair. “Not old,” I said to the old man, opening my eyes. The man had come closer silently and had one hand on the back of this bench. “A teenager? Maybe fifteen?”

“You’re close,” he said. “But not a teenager. He was big for his age, though, so I can see why you thought that. Only twelve when he died. “

“And how did he die?”

The man said nothing for a while, but kept his eyes and crooked smile aimed at me. Finally he said, “You’ve had a loss, too, haven’t you? And a recent one.”

Just the same as I said to you when I first saw you. The tension in your shoulders just released, didn’t it? I saw them drop – and you took a deep breath. Thank you for not pretending any longer. It’s easier if you don’t pretend. If you accept responsibility and just let go.

Anyway, it was my turn to look out across the lake, then. “Good guess,” I said. A single wave, bigger than the others, splashed half way up my shin, and then receded. I thought of summer parties on the beach with Sandy and her friends, years ago just out of high school. Her friends, not mine. Still, they picked me to write something to read at her graveside. Because I’m still local. The unofficial town historian. I had three weeks to finish it before her friends arrived for the memorial service. She’d been in the ground two months, safe under earth and stone. But her other old friends live far away now, busy with their own lives, so Sandy had to wait for them to arrive for the words to be spoken.

“It’s no guess,” the old man said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be able to see him. Or those.” He lifted his staff and pointed down the beach toward the mouth of the river. I followed with my eyes but didn’t notice anything until he said, “His tracks. Just one foot can trod the land, of course. The other has to stay in the water forever. The waves have nearly wiped them out. But even when they were fresh, whole folks couldn’t have seen them.”

“Whole folks?” I asked. I felt unwelcome tears pricking the corners of my eyes. He nodded and sat down on the bench and I told him about Sandy. When I had poured out my sad tale, he patted my hand and told me about Jake, the boy who died from one miscalculation back in the 1920’s. We parted, but before I walked up to the library to work on my speech about Sandy’s life, he made me promise I would come tomorrow as well. I promised.

At the time I had no idea I would be coming back, every summer day, for the rest of my life. I live in the old man’s house now, and am growing old and tired myself. When I saw you coming up the beach to sit on my bench, and saw you hesitate when Jake appeared, I realized that you could see him, too. And then you felt the urge, the need, to wave to me. Loss always calls to loss. So tell me, who is it you have lost? I’m all ears.

It’s all right if you’re not ready to talk about it. Making peace with the dead can take time, especially if one feels guilty in some way. Let me tell you the rest of my tale. Maybe that will encourage you to tell me yours.

Sandy and I should have been what people call childhood sweethearts. You know, one of those couples that seems like they’ve been together forever, that no one could ever imagine being in love with anyone else. Town fixtures. A perfect pair that people look to when they want to remember their youth and the way the town was when they thought it represented the whole world.

But I was afraid. If she rejected me I thought I would die. And so I said nothing about how I felt and the opportunity slipped away. I went off to college and she chose the air force. I went east, got a teaching degree and came back here to northern Michigan and taught high school. She went to Texas and all over the world. She was a jet engine mechanic, but really worked on everything from fighters to diesel trucks. She only came back to Boyne City when they found the cancer.

Of course, if I had opened my heart to her our lives would have been completely different, wouldn’t they? She wouldn’t have gone into the air force, wouldn’t have been exposed to asbestos or some other toxic substance and would still be alive and we would be happy, right? Those are the thoughts that never let a person rest and grow like a tumor in your mind.

To make matters worse, we had always stayed in touch. Not just Christmas cards, but long letters once or twice a year. Better letters on her side, because she moved from base to base, country to country, and everything was new for her. From me it was literally tales out of school, and they were pretty tame.

Her sister took care of her the final months. But I stayed away, even though she was only a few miles from here and neither of us had ever married. I was still afraid. Afraid she would be eaten away by the cancer. Afraid her decline from when we were sweethearts would crush me. But then, she wrote me a letter just a week before she died. And I was too afraid to even answer it. So now you know my loss.

I can see you still aren’t ready to tell me your story. So I will tell you about Jake, since you are going to meet him one morning if you keep coming back to this beach. And I know you will keep coming back, because you have to. He feels your loss and you at least sense his – and now, maybe, mine. And it will grow stronger. Believe me. You will be drawn here like I was.

Jake’s story is also tied up with Sandy’s story, because when I got up from this bench all those years ago to write her epitaph I also looked into his demise. You’ve seen the library building, haven’t you? It’s a classical Carnegie example, with an impressive entrance and grand steps and lots of light coming in through tall windows.

But even more impressive are the old books and volumes of bound newspapers and the big framed photographs on the walls, from when this town was a bastion of the lumbering era. Dozens, maybe hundreds of buildings in New York City were constructed from the white pine cut not more than thirty miles from here. It’s true. Millions of board feet of Pinus strobus taken east by ship or rail. Look it up yourself. It’s all there, and the library is only three blocks away. Sorry if I started to wax eloquent – it’s one of the hazards of being the default town historian.

Once I found what I needed about Sandy’s life, in copies of the Boyne Citizen from our high school years and after, I started going through those from the 1920’s. The old man couldn’t be more specific about when Jake died, because he had never looked the story up. He didn’t need to look it up. Jake told him all about how it felt to die, to feel your neck snap, so your mangled face plunged into green water - to hear your friends’ voices fade away for the last time as you went under. He alone knew what that was like, but he was a little vague on dates.

It took me about an hour to find the front page story. It was the summer of 1923. By then the lumbering era was nearly done. Even so, the lakefront was dominated by huge stacks of lumber – even uglier than the condos that replaced them. The stacks were twenty feet high in some places, and irresistible to young boys like Jake and his friends. They climbed the piles, even though they were forbidden to do so. Then they did swan dives into the pea green water below.

The stacks of lumber stood on old docks. And the docks stood on pilings driven into the yellow sand of the lake bottom. There had once been more docks, standing further out in the lake, but when the decking rotted it was just torn up, and the piling left in place, sticking out of the water like thick, stubby fingers.

Sometimes the pilings rotted, too. One had sheared off a foot or two under the surface of the lake. You can guess what happened. Jake was the first boy to dive in the day he died. Correction, the only boy. Because there was no boy who dove in second. Not even to try to save him. His five friends never got their feet wet. And they never dove from those woodpiles again.

None of that is in the newspapers. Not the names of the boys or a single eye witness account.

Because the boys ran away. They scrambled down the shore side of the lumber piles, ran back to town and lived the rest of their lives knowing they had left their friend to die. Because the broken neck had not killed Jake. The piling was just far enough submerged, that the water cushioned the blow. He broke two vertebrae. Once you know him better, Jake will let you touch the nape of his neck, where they protrude. It’s not as creepy as it sounds, because that wasn’t what killed him. He drowned. For almost 30 minutes he floated, and the water supported his head and neck. He could have been rescued and might have recovered, even with the limited medical expertise of the day.

But his friends ran away. And said nothing. The newspaper article begins, “The parents of Jake Morgan, age twelve, last saw their son on Saturday morning…” His body was never found, according to the paper. And according to the old man who introduced me to Jake. According to Jake himself, who you saw this morning. Notice his tracks there, heading off toward the condominiums? The lumber pile he climbed that day stood right where the green and tan unit is today. The piling that broke his neck stood ten or fifteen feet out from its deck.

So, anyway, I read my little public eulogy over Sandy’s grave. The tears were real. But I cried them as much for my own weakness as I did for Sandy, I think. After the ceremony, when all my old classmates had gone away, I followed the little path the old man told me about, leading to the older part of the cemetery. Jake’s five unfaithful friends all got to rest in solid ground, just as Sandy did. She’s the only one who deserves it. And I don’t deserve a peaceful rest, either. I ran away, just like those boys did. Guilty as sin. Can you understand that?

I can see you have some doubts, and honestly I don’t blame you. The second morning I came to the beach, the old man knew I didn’t really believe him, either. I’d looked at later issues of the newspaper, and it never said anything about the five other boys. Or that Jake Morgan had ever been referred to as anything other than missing.

So the old man took me out in his rowboat to convince me his story was true. The condo wasn’t green and tan then, it was grey and navy blue. The old man rowed steadily until he lined up two big rocks on the shore where Division Street meets Lakeshore Drive. He never dropped anchor. Said he didn’t want to disturb Jake any more than he had to. The lake was glassy still. But there is always a little swell, and the hole in the sand, where the fatal piling used to stand, wavered like a mirage on the bottom of the lake.

We didn’t stay long above it and I must admit I wasn’t much impressed. But the old man said, “There used to be hundreds of pilings standing along the shore, lots of them good and solid long after Jake’s piling crumbled away. But there aren’t any other holes to be seen. The others have all filled in over time.”

I said it was probably just from gas bubbling up in that one spot, and the old man tipped his head to one side and smiled. But his tired, tree-ring eyes were sad.

“You’d like to think so,” he said. “I wanted to think so, too, when I was your age. But that hole has been there, undisturbed, as long as I can remember. Even after they tore out the last of the other pilings and filled in the lake bed with rock and rubble to support the foundations for those condos, that hole never filled in. And never moved.”

I’d begun to feel a little nervous and made myself smile just like you are smiling now. I understand it’s not just hard to believe, it’s unpleasant to believe. The old man told me that, and said other things, too. More evidence, for lack of a better word.

“When the ice breaks up in the spring, from high winds and powerful storms, the bottom of the lake here gets scoured with more force than any dredge could ever produce,” he told me. “And yet, that hole is always there. And it always will be there. Because it isn’t a thing that can be worked on by living forces. It isn’t something that is. It is something that is missing. It’s a lack, and a lack that can never been filled.”

When we pulled the boat up onto the sand, the old man said, “We just missed him.”

Yes, there was a set of tracks, left foot only, along the beach. The last step angled out into the water toward where we had been, floating over the piling hole. But honestly, I still didn’t fully believe in Jake’s ghost. Until the old man gave me his house to live in. Just after my last conversation with him.

At the time, I lived in an apartment above the liquor store on Water Street. I’d moved there when I first started teaching high school. Why bother with a house? It was right downtown, in a beautiful old brick building. Built in the 1890’s. And it was just me. No wife, no kids, and no prospect of either one. Do you have children? That’s what I thought.

One day there was a knock on the door, which was unusual, because my apartment was upstairs and nobody came there but me or the landlord. I opened my door and a lawyer introduced herself. I invited her in. She explained that the old man had died, and had put me in his will. I was shocked because I had seen him just that morning here on the beach, and he looked as strong as ever. Tired, of course, but not at death’s door. We had had a long and, to him, rather urgent discussion about how to handle Jake under certain specific circumstances. I began to feel very cold and a little sick to my stomach, but I tried to remain calm. Fought to remain rational. Teachers are supposed to be rational, right?

The old man had died last week, she said, and had left me his house. But I had seen him that morning. We had talked at length. I felt the hair stand up on my neck and noticed that my hand was shaking. Rational, I repeated in my own head. Rational. “Maybe you have me confused with someone else?” I asked. She handed me a large envelop. “That’s your name, isn’t it?” she asked. I told her it was, and she took out and displayed a set of documents that named me as beneficiary, and Mr. Albert Townsend as the deceased.

“I’d assumed you were old friends?” she said. “Mr. Townsend made out his will more than ten years ago. Before he went into the home.”

“The home?” I said. I told her I had no idea where his house actually was, because he’d never invited me to it.

She gave me an odd look. “Not his home. The nursing home,” she said, “He’d been in a coma for…” she thought for a moment, looking at the ceiling. “For the last seven years. But the house he bequeathed you is on Front Street, across from the municipal beach. It’s been empty ever since his wife died.”

When I only stared, she said, “Hadn’t you ever visited him at the nursing home? On Division Street. You know, across from the old water works?”

I shook my head. Time had become quicksand, or beach sand, and I was sinking. I had only met Mr. Townsend a few days earlier, and yet I was named in his will, signed ten years before. I’m afraid I began to giggle. I simply couldn’t help it. The lawyer had probably seen every possible human reaction to death during her career, so she didn’t bat an eye.

She made arrangements for us to meet in her office the following week, which would give us both an opportunity to “get more used to the idea” of Mr. Townsend’s passing away. I was very grateful for her calm and seemingly understanding attitude. Because, you must realize, I couldn’t possibly tell her any of the things I’ve been telling you. Even though she has been my lawyer for many years, now. But you are different, of course. She remains calm in the face of loss, but you share a special affinity with my loss, because of the nature of your own.

You’ll want to know about the last, urgent conversation I had with Mr. Townsend, the week after his death. It was about Jake, of course. I think Albert was anxious to speak because he felt his own time was coming to an end. Not the end of his life, of course – his life had ended several days before. No, he was coming to the end of his exile, the time away from his own, dear wife. He didn’t say so, specifically, but it’s my belief they were soon to be reunited. They would see each other again, and he and I would no longer be able to speak.

The thing was, after Jake died, he simply couldn’t rest in peace. His five unfaithful friends had lived, and in time grew into adults, married, had children of their own. Four of the five produced sons of their own. And you know how boys are. Boys always want, more than anything, to do exactly the opposite of what their fathers tell them to do. In the case of those four boys, they’d been told never to go down to this stretch of lakeshore alone.

Now Albert never for a moment thought that Jake was jealous or vindictive. He never believed he would try to harm one of those boys intentionally, or take vengeance. And I agree. In all my dealings with Jake since Albert passed him on to my care, he has been a pleasant young man to deal with. He skips along the sand, with one foot at least, though the other drags among the waves.

The problem is, Jake is lonely. On more than one occasion, Albert had to intervene when one of those boys played hooky on the beach, particularly in the early hours of a beautiful summer day. Jake would walk with the boy, tossing bits of driftwood at ducks and gulls, skipping stones – all the little things that boys like to do. But when it came time for the boy to go home, the pain of abandonment and loss gripped Jake ferociously.

And he in turn would grip the boy by the hand or shoulder, at first gently. But when the boy made clear he didn’t want to go for a swim out among the pilings, Jake began to insist. Albert had to be vigilant always. And it was tiring. So very tiring.

Now, of course, those four boys are no longer in any danger. The one who is still alive is elderly, and innocent, and in a nursing home himself. One of the three who died was Albert Townsend. He was safe with Jake because he promised to come and see him, every summer day. And he did so without fail. He has paid his father’s debt by keeping his vigil all those years.

Unfortunately, Jake is still a spirit defined by loss. Now and then, when a summer storm sweeps down the lake, he forgets himself. He sees a boy who reminds him of his former friends, or the sons of those long-dead boys, and tries to get him to swim out among the waves. I stopped him from taking a boy away just last summer. And while eternal vigilance is, indeed, very tiring, it’s a good sort of tired. A tiredness that represents accomplishment, not merely loss. Not only because you help protect the young and innocent of today, like being a secret godparent to each and every one, but because it provides a feeling of atonement for the guilt that will always plague both you and I. Until, of course, our vigils are complete, and we can finally rest.

Which is more than poor Jake will ever be able to enjoy. Please consider that as well.

Please tell me of your loss. I will do anything I can to help to ease your suffering. But in return, I do ask some assistance with my own situation. Call it a fair trade. You have a strength about you, despite the obvious weight on your shoulders. I feel you have the moral and physical stamina to do what is right. Each evening I walk to the cemetery and sit with Sandy until it grows fully dark, after which I return to Albert and Ethel’s old home on Front Street, and try to rest. But I must be up very early the next day. I try to be vigilant, but I am getting old. And one day, I fear, I won’t wake in time and there will be a tragedy as grave as what happened to poor Jake. One lost soul is already too much along such a beautiful lake, don’t you agree?

Please tell me of your loss. If it is like mine, I can suggest a remedy, one that may benefit us both. I have a lovely house with a lake view, but no relative or loved one to leave it to. I feel it is a place you might truly feel at home. A place where you could find peace once your day’s work is done. And eventually, eternal peace, as I know Albert Townsend now enjoys.

I know that Sandy has already forgiven me – that was the last message that Albert passed along to me before he ceased to be on this plane of existence. And so I know, if Jake’s vigil can be maintained, I will be reunited with my dear Sandy. I feel certain that you, like me, share a lifelong desire to be reunited with the one person who can make you whole again. I can help you to achieve that, if only you will help me.

Please tell me of your loss.