Chapter 11 - Calm and Rough Seas

The bull dozers made such a noise that John and Theodore Wexley could hardly hear each other as they stepped across the freshly torn and broken earth of the Del Monte Forest.

“It takes about a month to get a lot this size ready for building, that includes tree stumps and grading and everything. Before we go to the new lodge and hotel I have to show you one of our other problems.” Mr. Wexley yelled towards John.

The Del Monte Forest was like a fantasy land out of a book of myths complete with fairies and wood nymphs, elves and magic. It was for John one of the most beautiful places he had ever seen. The sheer uniqueness of it made John feel inferior to the nature that surrounded him. Tall Spruce pines clustered in genetically related circles growing together as families, and each tree large and small was striving to be as straight and as tall as their nearby progenitors. Mostly inhabiting this wonderland were the Monterey Pines, dominating the forest with their bottom-heavy column like trunks built to anchor a billion pine needles each which seemed to serve in breaking the steadfast speed of the oceans winds, slowing the gusty trek of unrelenting blow of air, their combined efforts saving the thin tops of thousands of trees behind them, from breaking off, farther from the windy shore, giving them the chance of survival that the Monterey Pines has enjoyed. John would later contemplate that this land was an example that cooperative efforts between species and land, wind and rain, sun and night were not designed, but clearly adapted to. It could be imagined that when this rocky shore was first formed, that no tree could grow here, that winds were too strong, and soil was absent. Until one day, perhaps two hundred thousand years ago, a pine nut, perhaps the ancient ancestor of one the trees being knocked over by they bull dozer, landed securely in a crevice, protected from strong winds, nestled under ashen fresh earth, it then grew to fight and adapt and to begin this unique forest.

The two men climbed into Theodore Wexleys Packard and took a logging road about a half mile, towards the ocean in the west, then stopped and got out. Wexley went to the front of the car and pointed to a house deeper in the woods. It appeared poor, no paint and all wood, with a rusted tin roof and an out-house and fire wood piled up all along its sides.

“We, that is Morse I mean, have offered him five hundred dollars for that lot, it’s a full acre, and five hundred is generous to a man like that. But he won’t leave for a good offer!” Wexley declared.

“A man like that?” John thought. John has a psychological immorality bell in his brain. A faint warning he has been aware of, and that has grown more audible to him ever since he came to love the Worley family, way back then, in Missouri when he learned the best lessons in honesty he would ever receive. Immediately apparent to John was that to Mr. Wexley it is not the potential value of the land that the owner of that house should be paid for, but the stature and economic class of the man who owns the land that should determine what he is offered. Wexley continued with his explanation of the problem.

“If he and his family stay there in that dilapidated piece of shit, we won’t be able to sell the lots we plan to, that are going to go in around it. Our clients want to be near the hotel and lodge and near the links and don’t want to have to look out their windows and see a bearded geezer in his long John’s scratching his crotch and spitting tobacco and walking back and forth to the outdoor crapper!”

“How long has he been here?” John asked not wanting to express opinion.

“Too damn long. About thirty years. He’s a logger summers and a fisherman in winters.”

“Perhaps we should offer to relocate him and his family in addition to the offer?”

“Damn Irwin that’s a god-damned good idea, why didn’t I think of that?” Mr. Wexley said with heavy sarcasm.

“We did think of that John. Last year we thought of that. But it was too late. They formed a coalition. You see he’s not the only one out here. There are twenty two homes like this one out here. Most staked claim here more than twenty years ago when no one wanted to climb up and down that hill every day to conduct their business. But now cars climb the hill for us and progress is climbing up too.” Wexley further explained.

In silent pause, the two leaned back against the front hood of the Packard and each folded his arms and stared down the hill at the house in the pine tree clearing. Theodore Wexley continued.

“You see John not one of those twenty two can read or write and Mr. Morse and his attorneys took advantage of that situation. His land purchase includes this entire forest, all the way to the rocky shores of the Pacific. But these lots of one or so acres each are not on those land deeds, in fact they are invisible on paper. Not one of these owners ever approached the state and applied for a deed to their property, they were just too stupid to know better.” Wexley said with a disdainful grin.

John was disliking Theodore Wexley more by the minute. Not only was he greedy and bad mouthed, he was a social bigot and a racist. Wexley saw himself as better than the poor, not luckier, more deserving of the poor, and not equally deserving. When John thought that he would be hiding taxable income and capital investments, that was one thing, but now he was being asked to be complicit in chasing poor families off their land, out of their homes. He felt his breakfast coming up, but he forced himself to remain composed in front of Mr. Wexley. This man who was quickly earning himself repugnancy to John’s perspective, this new man in John’s life, who with a single phone call could destroy John and his family’s life, became a hump on John’s back that he wanted to cut off, with a knife in his own hands if need be.

The boys and Thelma were everything. They were at the foundation of all decisions affecting the future. John would kill to protect them, he would kill himself if it meant they could live, and so John became a bitter man. He struggled to contain his hatred of Wexley and Morse and of the whole Pebble Beach development, which lay almost in eyesight from his home, up over the hill, just to the south of Monterey. He was effectually slowly killing himself for the sake of the boys and Thelma. Because in the years that followed John would hold, festering in his body, his loathing, which became like a tumor of discontent, bound-up cartilaginous tissue of anger waiting to spread its vile poison to the whole of his body.

Less than eight months after John joined on to the local cabal of greed, the Dell Monte Forest caught fire in one of the most memorable blazes the central west coast had ever seen. A one month long drought had allowed for the flames to spread fast and tall, two hundred feet into the air, to sweep through everything in its path. The spreading took everyone by surprise as it moved east past the highway and over Jacks Peak and west right to the ocean and south to the Carmel Valley and north to the edge of Pacific Grove where city firefighters held the line. In the north, from the beach at Santa Cruz and from hilltops in San Francisco, the orange fireball lit-up the night sky to the awe of thousands. When it was over it smoked for two weeks as fire wagons and men scoured the forest putting out spot fires. Every single home that Wexley and Morse had been so concerned with was reduced to ashes. Perhaps coincidently, the project could now go forward full speed. Asphalt roads could follow the plan, straight through several of the lots owned by those who had been invisible on paper but an eyesore to Morse and Wexley. A wing of the new hotel had caught fire during the blaze and John took this be poetic justice for the Pebble Beach Development Company, he wished the entire structure had burned, but it was quickly rebuilt.

The coalition of home owners of the Del Monte forest found their hopes completely erased. Their leader, an old timer named Ed Leeper, had only just learned they needed to apply for deeds, individually at the county courthouse in Salinas. The day before the fire Ed had only just returned from Salinas with the deed applications. The entire coalition were but squatters in the eyes of the law. Twenty three families spent their nights in the gymnasium of the Carmel Mission School and the Monterey Mission School, until slowly they dispersed into the rest of California, penniless and desperate, many on foot pulling wagons by hand like peasants of old, they were passed on the roads at forty miles per hour, by dust spewing and gravel tossing cars, being stared at by fancy dressed passengers behind windows, adding insult to their plight.

John was angry and could not credibly grasp the idea that Morse would burn down so much forest to rid the land of the poor who stood in his way. But of all the coincidences that happen daily to all people in all of the world, this one was just too beneficial to Samuel F.B. Morse and Theodore Wexley to be only coincidence. One aspect of John’s suspicion did not make sense and that was that Morse had been making a good profit from the lumber of the Del Monte forest, but the forest is burned and only trees that were large but resembled fat and bare sticks, blackened by flames, remained where once the land was lush and green and shaded. Then to John’s surprise, just one week after the smoldering subsided, the trucks and loggers moved back into the burnt forest and began bringing down trees. Stripping the burnt bark from the trunks of the larger trees, the loggers found a perfectly good lumber bounty underneath. John was bound to secrecy, his mouth sealed shut by his own carelessness and irresponsibility, having stolen to help others, having been caught himself. Robin of Locksley was in the dungeon of the Sheriff of Nottingham unable to help the villagers.

Sunday had become picnic day for the Irwins. It began as a way to fool the neighbors into thinking they had all gone to church. An imposing Catholic Mission Church right at the end of their street rang their incessant bells like there was a fire, nearly every day, at all hours. On Sundays the cars and people would parade past the Irwin’s house like sheep towards the bells, some peering through the front windows of his home as they passed by. This unpleasantness sparked the ritual of hiding the car one block east on the night before. Then on Sunday mid-morning, before the bells of the flock started to ring, the Irwins would creep through the backyard, through the Walkers house and off and away from the “Church People,” as John called them.

The beach is where John could forget he was a white-collar scoundrel. As the boys would play and build sand castles, fly kites, find shells, he and Thelma could cuddle behind a large umbrella. For privacy and cleaner surf water the Irwins had to walk almost a half a mile from the house, down the beach eastward where almost no-one else would be, and for the boys sake the water was less bloody from whale kills being striped at the wharf and fish guts being dumped from the canneries, where sharks would congregate in a frenzied school of hunger for anything in the water. The loving couple would sip on white wine and watch the boys and share their stories, no matter how trivial. Sydney and O.W. were both in growth spurts that raised their heights by inches in a matter of months. When a new movie came to the State Theater the Irwins were among the first at the doors. O.W. and Sydney would sit up high in the balcony, they had learned that from those seats, the older kids can not easily hit them with thrown caramel popcorn. The boys saw Robin Hood six times and wooden swords began to litter the neighborhood surrounding the Irwin and the Garafalo homes as the daily duels and swashbuckling heroics became the favored games of all young boys. Every boy was Robin of Locksley, every girl was Maid Marion, and all boys had to take their turn being the evil Sheriff of Nottingham.

Twenty six year old Ed “Doc” Ricketts was angry and drunk and disgusted as he sat in his desk chair at his microscope table, under an oil lamp light, he held a cold steak to his right eye socket in an effort to reduce the swelling and he wondered why cold meat is used to treat fist fight bruises. It was after one in the morning and he had just left the Bear Flag after losing his temper and defending his own honor against a derogatory label thrown at him of “squid bum.” He patted the meat over his eye as if pressing away the fluid that was fast rising under his flesh from the left hook he received while he thought of how he was viewed in town by others:

“I’m a drunkard lazy intellectual with no goals in life! They don’t know me. Drinking with other men for a few years doesn’t mean you know them! I’m getting that stupid biology degree one day soon! I’m a collector of fish and fishy things. A rarity. An eccentric! Some kind of booze swilling recluse who walks around in the damned water, poking around at shit no one else is interested in! Jesus! They look at me as if I’m someone emotionally crippled, someone with no future, no aspirations, I don’t even have a fucking girlfriend. I’ve had a bunch of girlfriends!

Doc threw the steak in a frying pan for morning breakfast. He wobbled his way to the lamp near his bed and turned it down. He flopped backwards onto to his bed, a mattress on a flat board, and with his boots on he fell asleep, and the lamp gradually extinguished its own wick.

Before leaving the lab, for the morning collection ritual in the tide pools, Doc looked at himself in a small mirror hung by the front door, he rubbed his chin to measure his beard stubble. “Ahh the hell with it.” He said to himself. He marched out the door carrying a crate full of empty jars and a fishing net pole, and as he exited his front door the bright light of the morning sun nearly blinded him. Above him a flock of gulls were waiting on the edge the labs roof for him to emerge. They follow for fear of not being there when Doc, on occasion, while picking sea life from the shallows, will throw a crab onto the shore, making their patient following worthwhile.

“Lets go ladies. Times a wasting!” Not looking up, he told the flock.

In the beginning of the second summer since arriving in Monterey, O.W. was exploring by himself along the shore just west of the canneries, he would jump from boulder to boulder and sometimes walk in the shallow tide pools looking for whatever interesting and small thing he could find. He liked being alone sometimes, especially on these summer mornings, because school was out and some of his friends had become tiresome. While many of the other boys, he and Sydney knew, had jobs with their fathers or with the canneries, the Irwin boys were allowed to find their own paths through the summer days. At twelve years old there was still wonderment around the corner of almost everything. He kept a rucksack on his back and would place sand polished stones in it, and seashells and starfish that appealed to him. On one such morning while returning from his trip up the shoreline, east toward Monterey proper, to recover his bicycle which he had carefully hidden behind a very large rock, he nearly walked face first into a man who was also walking in the tide pools towards him. Startled, O.W. nearly fell over as he looked up at the unshaven face of a brown haired man in a trench coat. He was carrying a crate on rope containing bottles of sea water and hanging from his coat sleeve was a small net on a handle. He smiled and grabbed a hold of O.W.’s shoulder to hold him from a fall.

“Well I was wondering when you were going to see me!” He smiled down at O.W..

“Umm, I’m sorry sir, I , I was looking at the bottom and not in front of me.”

“Not necessary to be sorry young man, we have to watch our footing out here as it is very slippery. I’ve been doing this for a few years and I still fall over on my keester now and again. That’s why I wear these waders all the way up to my chest. What brings you out here to the tide pools in the middle of the morning sport?”

“I just like to collect stuff Sir. I put things in my sack and bring them home and I clean them up and I give them to people to decorate with.” O.W. replied looking up at the stranger’s face, squinting to see through the morning sun in his eyes.

O.W. was at ease now, the stranger seemed a very friendly type. O.W. glanced into the bottles inside the crate the man was carrying, inside were starfish, and small fish and one jar had an eel of some kind, three other jars had baby squid inside.

“Ahh, you like my specimens do you? These are for the laboratories. I sell them to the universities so students of biology can examine the sea life that they otherwise would not be able to, being they are so far from the ocean.”

“Geez do you keep them alive the whole time?’ O.W.’s fascination was clear.

“Oh absolutely, my customers expect them to arrive alive. By the way young man I am called Doc around here, pleasure to meet you Sir!” Doc reached out his hand.

“I’m O.W., it’s short for Orenthal Wilfred and my last name is Irwin, my dad works at the bank, we’re from Salina, Kansas, originally.” O.W. smiled at Doc.

The two shook hands, affirming a new friendship. O.W. quickly felt commonality with this new man who stood with him, on his turf, at his time of the morning, doing practically the same thing as he. Doc paused for a moment to think about his new shorter friend and then made an offer.

“O.W. I have to collect three more baby squid and a half dozen or so abalone and I sure would appreciate a little help. Would you like to learn how to catch them? It shouldn’t take more than an hour and afterwards we can bring our fresh bounty back to my lab for safe storage. What do you say O.W.?” Doc smiled down at O.W..

O.W.’s eyes widened with anticipation. But realizing he was being asked to perform work he pretended to be compliant to a favor for Doc and he hid his skyrocketing excitement of the possibility of foraging the waters with an expert in collecting sea life.

“Umm, well, sure I can help you for a little while, seeing as you need some help that is.” O.W. faked a serious adult face towards Doc.

“Splendid! Here you take this net and I’ll show you how scoop up a squid without letting it get away.” Doc was as glad as O.W. to have company.

Doc lived near the old China Point on the western edge of the cannery district, in a two story wooden barn, in which the second floor had been converted to a business and a home. Waves could be heard loudly pounding on the rocks just a hundred feet from his back door. The two tidal pool explorers stomped up the wooden stairs underneath a small sign which read “Western Biological Laboratories,” and Doc threw open the door to the laboratory. O.W.’s pants and shoes dripped with sea water and his shoes squished and oozed sea water, but Doc didn’t care. Inside shelves and tables and boxes were crammed full of bottles and flasks, two microscopes and test tubes in racks filled a specially made work bench in the center of the room. At the far end of the main room a window was wide open and a large and scruffy looking seagull sat in the window sill, facing Doc and O.W., waiting for leftovers of biological samples from the sea not good enough for Doc to sell or to ship.

“That’s the Professor in the window.” Doc said as he placed his heavy crate on the floor near the bench.

“Why do you call him the professor?” O.W. asked looking at the large gull.

“Because he is the smartest seagull I’ve ever known. Why, I can actually tell when he is happy, like when we walked in just now, I saw him smile.”

O.W. smiled with fascination at this entire arrangement. A seagull who smiles and stakes-out a window sill. A laboratory with microscopes. A man who lives on his own and spends his days wading through the sea and bringing home live underwater animals. “Amazing,” O.W. thought to himself.

“Doc, do you need any help tomorrow, cause I think I might be available.”

Doc sat on his desk chair and began pulling off his long waders. He looked over at O.W. and smiled as he concluded that a more eager young man he had never seen. He thought of the consequences of being responsible for someone’s boy, even if it is only a couple of hours in the morning. Doc spun his chair around toward his desk, reached up for a shot glass and a bottle of whiskey, poured a full shot and threw it down his throat, and voiced an “ahh.” He turned to O.W. who was in full suspense waiting for an answer and he looked him straight in his eager eyes, then he raised his finger pointing to the roof, to illustrate a coming point of contention.

“Ok, but your father has to know about it and to make sure he has to come over and meet me, so he sees for himself that you’re not with a dangerous person and you’re safe. Understand O.W.? Once he has come over and seen the place and we have met, you can start helping me collect specimens, nearly every day if you want. You can tell your pa, that you’ll learn a lot about nature and a lot about sea life.”

“Gee willickers Doc! That’d be great! I’ll tell him tonight when he gets home! See ya! Oh and thanks for teaching me!” O.W. had lost composure.

O.W. required no more conversation, no more lingering around Docs lab, he now had a mission and could think of nothing more important. He spun around and dashed out the door and down the steps to his bicycle and peddled home as fast as he could.

Doc was an early riser no matter how drunk he got the night before, and that was lucky for John and O.W. who rapped on his lab door at eight thirty the next morning. Doc had hair below his shoulders and he had just washed up and shaved. The sight of a long haired man, who was not a local Indian, was a surprise to John and he contained his surprise by staying focused on Docs eyes, one of them blackened and bruised. Doc swung open the door and answered.

“Good morning Sir you must be O.W.’s father! Top of the morning O.W..”

“How do you sir. O.W. tells me you and he hit it off very well yesterday.” John Irwin and Doc shook hands.

“Well I have yet to meet a boy with similar interest in sea biology. Please come in Mr. Irwin.”

“You can call me John. And the name Doc, is this your local moniker Mr., eh Mr.?”

“It is actually Ricketts, John. The locals gave me that nickname a few years ago when I first settled here, they all thought I was a doctor because I carried a field survey bag and the name wouldn’t rub off.”

“Well, Mr. Ricketts, err Doc. It is a pleasure to meet you. I think you are interesting enough to be someone valuable to know, for anyone to know. I also think O.W. is fortunate to have met you and he could learn a lot from you. I give him my permission to work with you in any way you see fit, with your own good discretion as to his safety, of course.” John smiled approvingly and wandered his gaze around the interior of the lab.

“I know it is a bit of a mess, organization is a challenge in this building and besides that, living where you work is not conducive to an orderly environment.” Doc offered.

“What do you use the microscopes for Doc?” John pointed to the lab bench.

“Sometimes samples are sick, or maybe wounded by a predator, but mostly it is to make sure that I don’t contaminate other specimens with a bacterial, or an algae born infestation. I can see the bacterial growth only through the microscopes and my customers depend on consistently clean specimens. One day I’ll start teaching O.W. how to spot diseases of ocean life through the microscope.”

“Fascinating Doc! Does that spark your interest O.W.?”

John looked to O.W. and asked, who was busy on the other side of the room picking up specimen bottles and holding them up to the morning light.

“Does it! That would be super Doc!” O.W. snapped with a wide smile.

It was clear to John that O.W. found something he loved and he would not stand in his way. As for Doc, he seemed decent. John did smell whiskey as soon as they had entered the room, and it was right early for drinking, but it was not like Doc would be driving O.W. around, or even swimming, they would just walk in the tide pools and work with the specimens. That summer became O.W.’s to remember forever. Doc became Pa number two on the weekday mornings. He began frying eggs for the two of them each morning. Outside he kept O.W. dry and warm, and protected his boy hood legs and ankles from twisting and breaking on the rocks of the shore. Sometimes Doc would tie a rope to O.W.’s chest and allow him to swim dive for abalone in the deeper areas of the shore, while Doc would keep his hands on the rope taught to prevent O.W. from being swept away in tidal pull.

It was the winter of the start of the third year since arriving in Monterey and John was acutely aware that as a person and a man, he had changed. He had begun to snap in frustration towards Thelma and the boys. Burying his disappointment with himself was not working. Weekends with Thelma and the boys had helped him to forget, for a while, but his emotions had been coming to the surface, to breathe the stale air of reality, to express themselves like trapped beings within him that had been violently shaking the locked bars of a door that was his own mind’s self control. When John’s body was warmed with the flow of alcohol in his veins, and when his sight was slightly blurred with the arterial flooding of increased pressure to his eyes, and when the ragtime piano in the taverns became an opiate for the back of his brain, tickled by the melodies, only in those inebriated long moments would he feel like the old John. In this stupor John was in touch with the idealist that had been him. He felt the optimism he used to feel, and the innocence that he enjoyed and had taken for granted, back when Flora was his, and when Salina was like a paradise for women and children to grow and play and he was a figurehead of the little city, a man at its center. John had become a regular patron at the Del Monte Country Club, and a regular member of the Lodge at Pebble Beach. With the sponsorship from Morse himself, often he would get to sit at his table with guests he entertained who were interested in real estate. John used to drink about once a week, but now he was a nightly drinker as he had found that there was more available homemade moonshine alcohol then was needed. Hiding his habitual drinking by varying his visits to different establishments, or having wine with good food on fine linens. Often, wine became whiskey on wooden tables with cigars in the several smoke filled unmarked pubs and at the bar at the lodge at the Del Monte. Here in Monterey it seemed that prohibition was a law in another country, overseas. John began a ritual of stumbling home at ten or eleven o’clock at night from Jeff Davies barn, a local bootleg whiskey drinking hole four blocks from the house on Alvarado Street. Thelma always waited up for him. Often she would end the night holding him like a mother, cradling him while he sobbed and bemoaned his new position in servitude of a scoundrel, regretting having brought them here. But Thelma consoled well. Telling John how happy she was to be there in Monterey, and how happy the boys are, and how the area offers hope where Salina had little.

In Nineteen-Twenty-Five the Monterey peninsula was seeing growth by hundreds of families per year. Many of the luxury class that John was making his living from had come to settle in the high spots above the bay and real estate was hot. Mass production had become the catch phrase that described the potential of American productivity. While much of the fishing industry had suffered in Monterey due to the sardines all but completely disappearing, still the canneries had expanded. Innovations such as conveyor belts and vacuum sealing automatic canning machines had allowed Cannery Row to clean up the shanty houses and hobo shacks that became swept away, often with bulldozers, and replaced with businesses and new homes. The canneries could now do more with less people, and several new canneries opened bringing jobs and revenue.

John had become far more than a banker, having learned the real estate business backwards and forwards. Couples and their realtors were arriving from San Francisco every week to look at property for a new home and many for a second home, and the Pebble Beach development was the most desirable, with John as its point-man, the first face of a gentlemen to meet the customer.

On the books, kept in a safe in the second floor back office of the Monterey Home Credit Bank, the Pebble Beach Development Company’s assets were all but spent. Showing Samuel F.B. Morse making only enough to live on, in luxury, but barely. Loggers being paid five dollars a tree up on the hill, were being paid twenty dollars a tree on the books. Milled lumber for housing costing four cents per linear foot, was marked as twenty cents per linear foot in the dirty books maintained by John Irwin. Foremen and bosses were paid off in large cash bundles to produce receipts to back up the fraud. Telling them that the receipts were for purposes of avoiding taxation, was a perfect justification for their complacency that they all could relate with. At less than a dollar per acre, forty five years in the past, the familial predecessors of Samuel F.B. Morse had bought a bargain and passed it on to him through the silver spoon of inheritance. Now Morse was seeing thousands of percents in real estate dividends. As more lots would sell, the prices of remaining lots would climb. To Morse this exponential climb in price insured that the new families moving in, were richer than the last to move in. To Morse, the richer a man was, the better he was, as if the money made the quality of the man and therefore the quality of his family too.

Morse and Wexley had been nagging John to move out of the bungalow house on Cortes Street and up onto the hill, into the Pebble Beach development, or anywhere near the Seventeen Mile Drive. The drive was popular with visitors. It was a Samuel F.B. Morse created touring road that wound its way through the forest and along the scenic coastal views, covering the top of the hill above Monterey and Carmel. But John wasn’t about to disrupt the life that Thelma and the boys enjoyed, down in the pits of lower middle class dwellings. Thelma had friends and her life was as happy as it could get. O.W. had become a book smart and an incredibly curious young man, much credited to the influence of Doc and the three summers they have spent together scouring the oceans curiosities.

Sydney might benefit from moving up to the higher classes. He had been a recent concern to John. With lower grades each year, more rebellion, even getting caught drinking with three other boys, just recently. Sydney fancied himself a man of the sea. Sydney, having been granted permission by John, after many months of pleading to work on a fishing trawler, with Skipper Bob in command. Sydney had seen four trips of many weeks and returned happy and filthy each time, wreaking of fish and grinning ear to ear.

Clear to John was that Sydney was a man in a boy’s body, aching to get out of boyhood, perhaps too quickly. John and Thelma could see the man in the face of the boy who was Sydney, and it was a bit frightening to them, as he was in the midst of an emotional growth spurt which could define him for the rest of his life. His growth of self confidence, of overcoming fears and of learning the team work and the trust vital to the welfare of a team. To Sydney, working on the boat even while gone sometimes for two weeks or more, was each time an adventure worthy of story and was the single greatest thing to happen to him. Sydney’s confidence in all matters had improved after just two trips with Skipper Bob and his five man crew. If John would move him to Pebble Beach, he would also have to move him to the nearby private academy school, where he would attempt to assimilate into the world of the rich. “Not a likely scenario.” John thought to himself. “He’s a different kid now.”

At dinner at the Del Monte Country club the topic of John moving out of the bungalow house and into Pebble, came up for the second time, initiated by Mr. Morse and Mr. Wexley, but John closed the conversation for good and all.

“I would move up there. And I’m sure I would love it. But the majority of my family overrules me on this point. Because I’m not going up that hill leaving a trail of broken hearts behind me.”

Morse and Wexley had to stop chewing their sirloin steaks. They looked at John who then sipped from his wine.

“Well said Irwin!” Morse responded.

“Right O, old man. Good to see your principles are unwavering when your family is the subject. Well said.” Added Wexley.

Thirty minutes later the three men left the dining room of the Del Monte Country Club and coming down the front steps Mr. Wexley and Samuel F.B. Morse turned and began walking towards the backside of the main building. John stood still waiting for the valet to bring his car.

“Mr. Wexley, Mr. Morse sir, my car will be brought by the valet.” John stated quizzed at the different direction of the two men.

“Not to worry Irwin. Come this way fellow, we have something to show you.” Wexley said and waved his arm for John to follow.

At the back of the building, outside the kitchen, was a cream yellow four door Bentley, glimmering in the evening sunshine. New and polished so finely that John could see in its front fender the reflection of the three of them walking up to it. Its black convertible top was unscathed and as dark as a closet in the night time. On the rear was a spare tire and luggage trunk attached. A rumble seat was contained inside the rear behind the passenger area. The chrome was polished like mirror and an ornament of a winged woman holding a sphere, perhaps the Earth, stood at the front of the hood. It had white wall tires that were impeccably clean. John opened the driver’s side door to reveal white leather seats, a polished smooth wooden wheel with finger grips and a wood veneer dashboard polished smooth and scratch less. The shifter on the floor was ivory with a wooden knob on top. In the dashboard, adjacent the passenger seat, was a long box that protruded from the rest of the dash panel by a couple of inches. John recognized the configuration but the appearance of it in a car was a surprise, it was a radio with a single flip switch toggle on one side, a glass covered numerical gauge and a tuning knob on the far side.

“A radio, why would it have a radio in the car?” John exclaimed.

“For listening John!” Mr. Wexley answered with a chuckle.

“But there is nothing to listen to here, theres no broadcast around here.”

“There is a station opening in Salinas next month and we should be able to hear it from here. I should know, I’ve funded it. Besides that, at night you should be able to hear San Jose FN or even San Francisco!” Mr. Morse added.

“This car is incredible, it’s like a hotel on wheels, luxurious!”

John stated as the three men stood on the side of the shining new car.

“You have earned it John. It’s yours to enjoy.”

Mr. Morse looked to John and stated, waiting a reaction. John’s jaw dropped with amazement and glee. John loved cars and this was a gift that his compulsion towards steel and speed would not let him turn down, not for his presence of pride or for the guilt for what he does for a living. For years following, the cream yellow Bentley was the mark of the Irwin family, and for John a symbol of his compliance and servitude to Mr. Wexley and Samuel F.B. Morse. A symbol he would remember each time he approached the car, but that he would quickly forget once the engine turned over and he grasped the wheel and felt the rumble of the six cylinders.

Twenty five miles off the Big Sur coast, where the summer currents had brought the warm South American waters, to brush the sea shelf and canyon tops of the rugged California undersea, a small herd of Gray whales had been escorting Skipper Bob’s trawler, the None Too Bold, for several hours. The sight of the whales would always distract the crew, especially the younger three, including Sydney, who in his third summer under Skipper Bob, was still in awe of the mysterious and huge creatures that seemed to look at Sydney and the rest of the crew with one eye pointed upward, as if to peer over the bow of the boat at the tiny humans on legs.

Skipper Bob usually fishes with another trawler, the Boondocks, also an independent boat, although in competition for schools of fish to net, the two boats would keep each other in eyesight distance for safety. But on this trip the skipper of the Boondocks had to turn around and go back to port with sickness of some kind. But Bob betrayed the conventional safe measure of having another boat near and he chose more fish over more safety.

The second haul of the day was being brought in and Sydney was at the helm, one hand on the throttle and his arm around the wheel, watching for instructions from Skipper Bob who was observing the net winch as it slowly pulled toward the boat a three hundred foot net, tightening around a bounty of albacore, Bobs favored catch.

The afternoon was typical, the air temperature was far cooler than the bay, so much so that even in July the crew had jackets and wool caps on. The engine was noisy while it worked to pull in the tonnage of the catch. The steel wheels of the winch and crane that rose above the aft bow had to be oiled to keep from cracking under the heat of the friction created by slippage of the thick hemp rope of the large net. Everyone’s attention was facing east towards to the coast, where the catch was being hauled as the boats forward bow pointed westward. Neither Sydney or Bob or anyone else who were busy at work to save the catch and prevent serious accident, saw the storm coming from the south west. They did feel the warmth of the air, as the lower forward winds of the storm scouted ahead the waters for easy tracking, but the crew dismissed the temperature change as merely their own bodies warming from the work they were engaged in. The net was about half pulled in when Skipper Bob turned to look at Sydney and saw him smiling back at him in front of a background of ominous dark storm cloud bearing down on the None Too Bold’s position. Bob’s panic set in as his heart skipped beats before he could shout out, “storm!” Images and thoughts of faces of every fishermen he knew that had been killed by the sea and the stories that the survivors told, raced through his mind. He looked at the winch and into the sea towards the net, he looked forward again towards the storm, it was large. Bob’s own voice became audible in his mind: “Lose the catch, cut the net, lose the catch, better to live, we’ll get a new net, play it safe Bob!”

“Lock the winch gear! We’re losing the catch!” Bob yelled to the crew.

Bob unsheathed his knife, put the blade in his mouth and climbed the crane, standing on the edge of the aft bow, grabbing the cranes rise to hold himself to the boat, he cut the thick rope and it snapped with force that caused the boat to bounce forward and afterward, knocking two of the crew off their feet.

“Sydney ten degrees north east, full throttle, ease into it!” Bob yelled to the helm.

Skipper Bob was intensely worried. He knew he could beat the storm, if he didn’t have nearly a ton of albacore already in the hold, on top of five hundred pounds of ice. Bob’s choices were not easy ones. He could put three of the crew to work bailing out the hold of ice and fish, to lighten the boat and allow a much faster speed back to harbor. But even with three men hauling bucket by bucket out of the hold, it would take at least two hours to empty and that would not guarantee they would out-race the storm. If he left the hold full, with a heavy keel, the boat would stand a better chance of staying afloat and not capsizing in high sea. He had chosen a dangerous fishing ground, too far from safe harbor to out run a storm. In a straight eastward line the Big Sur coast might provide refuge, but it was a rocky, and current strong, coast and chances of beaching the boat there and surviving the landing were slim. He was some seventy five nautical miles from Monterey harbor, two and a half days full, one day if the hold were empty. The dingy was small and they might survive high seas in it, but the dingy was the last resort. Bob chose due east for the Big Sur coast line, its rolling ridges almost visible on the horizon.

“Sydney new course, zero nine zero! Every body put on a life vest and tie them well!” Skipper Bob ordered.

The boat was moving at about five knots east, not nearly fast enough and Skipper Bob knew it. The storm seemed to be tracking north east and after one hour it became more apparent that the storm would either brush them on its outsides or envelope them completely. The boat began rocking heavily port and starboard and the winds picked up and the whirring and whipping noise from the mast and ropes that tied the boats equipment together grew louder and seemed to be screaming at the crew. The five person crew huddled together in the pilot house, Skipper Bob had taken the wheel and the five pretended to enjoy hot coffee while barely getting the cups to their lips in the newly rough seas.

“Skipper you’ve been in other storms like this one, right?” Sydney asked.

The four faces of the crew starred the Skipper down waiting for his answer, but pretending to be strong and confident men, seafaring men. Their coffees sloshing out sips all over the cabin, while their minds worried within.

“Oh, of course I have boys, this one looks tame as compared to the mothers I’ve had to wrestle out here, we’ll be fine I’m sure, a little sea sick maybe, but we’ll be fine.” The Skipper assured the whole crew.

Skipper Bob turned away from the crew and looked out the windows of the pilot house at the deck of the boat, the rain had started, and the darkness began. The Skipper’s instincts told him what to do next.

“Sydney, Robert, go below to the engine tool box, theres a big two person saw in there, bring it up and cut the mast off the deck about two feet up. Be sure to cut all the ropes holding it first, and make sure it doesn’t break the side railings or crack the hull when it falls. Throw it over board. Joe, Teddy, un-strap the dingy from the front, bring it around the aft deck, lay it upside down and put just one tie-line on the front of it. We have to be able to throw it in the water and cut one rope in a hurry if we have to, as a last resort. Joe when you’re done, go below and get an empty bottle with a cork, write a note and put all of our names on it, where we are, where we are heading and the time of day and date, then cork it up and throw it overboard. Just as a precaution.”

These cautionary orders were conflicting with the easy going optimism and reassuring talk of just moments before. But it was the Skipper’s way to be extra careful.

“Better safe than sorry fellas!” The Skipper yelled out as the crew left the pilot house.

An hour later the storm had turned east and the None Too Bold was only slightly closer to the coast but the crew could no longer see it, their view was of darkness and gray cloud and sheets of rain. If not for the compass showing eastward, they could have been anywhere. At the skippers suggestion the crew went without rain coats and their clothing got soaked.

“Better to be able to move fast and freely than to have dry clothes in these situations!” He said with a reassuring tone.

The boat was now rolling so violently that the sea would completely disappear from view as the boat rocked then slamed back down against conflicting waves. The pounding on the bottom of the hull was terrifying for the crew as it felt as though the hull was hitting a brick wall. Sydney lay on the aft deck holding the dingy line with his legs braced against the aft bow. Skipper Bob stayed at the wheel struggling to keep the None Too Bold on course. The engine thumped fast like the heartbeats of the crew, but its work was wasted as the propeller would rise out of the water and breath into to the air, spinning too fast, churning no water, getting them nowhere. It was too late to continue trying to stay on course. The Skipper focused his attention on steering into the waves, keeping the vessel rocking fore and aft, to avoid spillage of the ocean into the hold, which would fill the hull and lend to capsizing the boat. Bob turned his head back to the crew who were holding on to anything they could and shouted above the wind.

“Don’t tie yourselves to the boat. Hold on and don’t let go no matter what, unless I say to man the dingy! Watch me for orders!”

The fear could no longer be contained with machismo and pretense. The entire crew now shared equal concern for their lives, most of them for the first time. They listened intently through the wind and rain for the Skipper’s orders.

This storm seemed to have no single direction, its northeasterly winds met the north west running currents of coastal California and created twisting waves five to ten feet above normal. When the Skipper thought he had found a pattern of waves in one direction, to keep the boat on top, a series of large waves from a another direction twenty to forty degrees off, would pound the side of the hull and begin twisting the boat. As the young crew watched his every action for instructions or any indication of how well or bad off they were, Skipper Bob began cursing like the sailor he was, at the sea, at the waves, each threatening wall of water was shouted at like he was a domesticated animal turned vicious.

“God damn you fucking piece of shit wave! You blasted cocksucker, you’ll not do us in, you fucking watery fuck! Mother fucking cocksucker! You’ll not take this boat you bitch! You big fat wet bitch!”

Sydney watched and listened in awe of this new example of seamanship and for a few moments, for he and the rest of the crew, the novelty of an always controlled Skipper Bob, now losing his containment and treating the sea as a furious and unforgiving being to do battle with, distracted their minds off the possibility of dying in the cold Pacific.

Sydney was scared and closed his eyes while he stretched back holding the dingy line with all his strength. In his mind he visualized Salina in the summer, the pond and the very tall trees around the pond, and the rope swing. He began to hear the sound of kids playing, he saw O.W.’s face and the faces of several other kids that used to come to the pond. He heard the birds singing. He heard the words “tag you’re it!” He imagined the sound of laughter of himself and other nine year old kids under blue skies and white puffy clouds. He visualized Thelma’s big pitchers of iced tea and her smiling face bringing him and O.W. two tall glasses with mint leaves on top, and he saw himself rubbing the sweaty cold glass over his forehead and feeling the relief from the summer heat. He saw the back of O.W. running away from him as he chased him around the old house on Santa Fe Avenue with a wooden army gun. He looked over to his left to see his pa riding a carousel horse right next to him, going up and down, and looking right at him, smiling and laughing. He opened his eyes and he felt the boat rising almost straight upward and awaited in suspense the awful slamming back downwards into the next wave, he wondered when the wooden hull would snap and burst open from the punishment.

The cracking sound was louder than everything else, so loud that no one on board had to ask what to do next. The front starboard hull had ripped open and several boards were hanging off into the sea. The boat was listing into the sea starboard and was not coming back to upright and the water now washed over the deck so strongly that Sydney could feel splinters digging into his hands from holding on to a railing against the force of the waves. Sydney looked back towards the pilot house and the rest of the crew, he noticed Robert holding on to the vertical bars that outlined the pilot houses exterior, then a wall of water like a thousand buckets thrown at once, assaulted the pilot house directly and Sydney watched Robert disappear in an instant as if taken by magic, he was gone.

“Forget him, he’s gone, you’ll die if you try to save him!” Skipper Bob yelled to the rest of the crew.

“Man the dingy! Man the dingy!” He screamed as he abandoned the wheel.

Sydney tried to stand up to turn over the dingy, but standing was nearly impossible. Kneeling, he looked to his left to see Teddy crawling toward the dingy just a few feet from him. Joe and Skipper Bob were holding onto each other and using the dingy line to pull themselves towards Sydney and the dingy. Another tremendous wave came over the low side of the boat, now almost at sea level. Teddy screamed in horror, abruptly ending his scream, he then vanished like some debris washed down a sink drain. Skipper Bob made it to the dingy and Joe climbed his pant legs and held the dingy also. Together the three men climbed in and rather than attempt to lift it over board, chose to allow the small row-boat to fall along the deck and into the water. Joe immediately began bailing with a two gallon bucket. As Sydney and the Skipper fumbled with the oars, the None Too Bold succumbed to the last three waves of sea water it would ever know. The waves pounded its main deck like bricks falling from a crashing building. The structure of the boat fell apart like a toothpick house under an angry fist. The row boat was half filled with water and after e very few long moments another wave would crash down on the men. The None Too Bold sunk aft first into the sea and soon all the three men could see was its bow, buoyant from the remaining air and fish in its hold. Joe could not keep up with the water as he bailed hopelessly, he began to cry and bemoan the situation.

“It’s no use Skipper! It’s no use. Too much water. Too much!”

“Sydney, use your hands, flush it out with your hands!” Skipper Bob yelled.

The Skipper and Sydney put the oars back in their rungs and began frantically scooping and moving water with their hands. The cold pacific could now be felt by the three, soaking through their heavy clothes, the fifty-eight degree water kept them shaking and shivering, unable to think, unable to dwell on the deaths moments ago of Teddy and Robert or unable to search the nearby waters for them even if they were still alive.

The wave that knocked over the row boat was not larger than the others, just stronger, at a different angle of a attack on the men. When Sydney surfaced from being tossed under the water, he saw Bob’s arms flailing near by and he began swimming back towards the small boat, now capsized, its bottom barely visible, pushed by wind and current and waves it drifted away from him, but he struggled to get closer to it and he heard Joe screaming from the distance, his direction unknowable. As he realized the boat was getting farther away, faster than he could swim to it, he felt sadness overcome him, then weakness and suddenly his legs covered in denim with work boots on his feet, became lead weights underneath him. His life vest seemed as if it only held him in place in the water, preventing him from reaching the row boat. He reached the drawstring on the vest and pulled it out. Swallowing water and bobbing under and out of the ocean, he wiggled his way out of the vest, and with energy only available to a young man in a panic, he again swam towards the boat, but he could no longer see it and the waves obscured his view and he had lost his sense of direction. Sydney then began to remove his boots, he let himself fall under the water while he attempted to pull off the heavy foot wear. The silence under the waves grabbed what little attention he could muster, because there it was peaceful, with no yelling or no wind, and no struggling, down there four feet under the surface. As a result of his horror and his weak body, he became insane and a place in his mind where peace was found, answered his plight and told him to stop fighting. He gave up trying to untie his boots and he straightened out his body upright, and he looked at the dimly lit green surface above him that was so beautiful and so quiet. He released the few bubbles of breath that he had been holding onto dearly and allowed the water to enter his lungs. It was like breathing but different, he felt no pain, no more panic, he could hear his own heartbeat, slowing down, his body relaxed and he watched as the surface climbed away from him. He saw Skipper Bobs legs above him, kicking, splashing, and he heard himself thinking: “I hope they make it.” It was no longer cold, but warm, then no feeling at all and his sight became cloudy and he saw in his mind the face of his father and his father’s arms lifting him into the drivers seat of the old Model T, back in Salina. He saw Thelma pushing a toy train across the living room rug towards him and smiling. He saw O.W. looking back at him and screaming with delight from the end of the rope swing above the old pond, and O.W. let go of the rope and disappeared under the water. Sydney closed his eyes and sunk into the deep darkness.

All the other fishing boats had returned to the wharf over the past three days. Only one captain had reported seeing the storm, but he saw no other boats. O.W. kept vigil at the end of the dock, a lunch bag packed by Thelma and his bicycle laid behind him, in the sun, surrounded by hungry seagulls, O.W. would wait and watch the waters at the edge of the jetty for the None Too Bold’s bright blue hull to crest into view as it approaches the harbor. Sixteen days would be the longest trip yet for Sydney and the rest of that crew, at least in the past two other summers that Sydney worked that boat. It was around eight o’clock and the sun was setting and O.W. had fallen asleep, flat on his back, on the pier with his legs hanging over the edge like bait for leg eating sharks. John and Thelma had walked over to get him and bring him home. They sat down on the edge of the pier on each side of him.

“Wake up boy, it’s time to get up sleepy.” Thelma said quietly and gently rubbed O.W.’s forehead.

“You might have fallen into the sea and been eaten by a Sea Lion!” John said with a smile.

O.W. awoke to surprise, he rubbed his eyes, and after a moment, realizing where he was, he sat up, looked at Thelma and smiled and he looked at his father and smiled. Then a tear came to his eyes as he realized Sydney was still not back. At thirteen he thought crying was behind him, that he was too grown up for it, but it came out in the company of the most important adults in his life.

“Sydney might be dead pa.” O.W. said sobbingly.

“Oh, it’s not likely son. Skipper Bob knows what he is doing. You know what is more likely? It’s more likely that Skipper had bad luck fishing and tried a different location for netting, and that means more time out to sea.”

John did his best to reassure O.W., but he himself was worried, almost as worried as O.W.. If it were not for the fact that the other albacore boats had returned and were now preparing for another trip, he would have felt genuine about his placating words to O.W..

At the end of the seventeenth day the word was put out that the None Too Bold might be missing. No sightings were reported. The harbor at San Francisco was alerted. No word. John and Thelma were now feeling helpless and the agony of suspense had engulfed the Irwin house. John stayed home from the bank, Thelma cancelled lessons for the neighborhood children. O.W. nearly stopped eating as his stomach was in knots. John would visit the harbor masters house twice or three times a day for word of reports. After twenty two days it became a search for debris, for a sign of the boat or its crew. John and Thelma and O.W. drove the coastal highway south to Rainbow Canyon, where the road ends. Walking the beaches and climbing the rocky shoals was a depressing and challenging task for the three. Hoping to find something, a piece of bright blue wood, clothing, anything would have helped them to resolve the mystery and put to end the torture of their hearts. But no debris was found on that small stretch of coast.

It is of small consequence that reconciling with themselves that Sydney may be gone forever, may have been less painful in this slow and suspenseful manner, in that the family was not shocked into an emotional heart break with sudden news of his disappearance.

It was nearly sixty days since the None Too Bold had left the Monterey harbor. John was resolved that there would be no funeral services for his oldest son until some evidence turned up from somewhere, that the boat had indeed met with disaster. The four other families had agreed to wait as well. There would be a large and solemn funeral service for the entire crew.

In early October, Mattson was walking northward on the shore of the coast that bordered the Saddle Rock Ranch while Bessie, his eleven year old brown mayor and best friend in the world, loyally walked behind him. Mattson does not need people. He lives in his cabin, among a circle of Redwood trees, near a fresh water spring, on the top of a hill, two miles or so north of the village center of Big Sur. Mattson survives on what he traps, squirrel and rabbit mostly, or what he catches in the sea, abalone and mussels and on lucky occasion he shoots a sand shark with his rifle. On Bessie clanked a frying pan and a coffee pot, a short handled shovel, a satchel of burlap stuffed with small pieces of driftwood, a long pole net and an old Winchester repeater rifle polished bright and clean. Mattson poked at the sand with his six foot staff, with a leather grip and wrist loop at chest height, which he used to maintain his balance on uneven trail and while wading through the shallows. He kept a long and fat Bowie knife sheathed and strapped on his upper right leg. He once killed two mountain lions, in the Big Sur back country, with only his knife and his bare hands, he brought their bodies in on horseback to collect a twenty five dollar bounty from the ranchers. Money that he still has most of four years later. His only need for money is to use it in Carmel, or in the Big Sur village, to buy a dime novel or two, or cooking oil, rice or beans, and tobacco.

For Mattson God had forsaken him at age twenty nine and his anger and shunning of his lord had become his guilt and shame to hide from society. Mattson had been a preacher and he had his own parish in Fresno, when in eighteen ninety three, his new wife, the love of his life, was killed by pneumonia. He had been serving the lord well, doing everything right as far as he could tell. He was living the life of a savior. He was devout and loved by all in Fresno, his parish was a shining example of love and charity in the community. Then God took her away. Mattson went mad. Mattson threw off all religious icons, his bible, his robes and he left Fresno. Afraid to be recognized by others to be a man against God, Mattson hides among nature. The blue and green waters and the Redwoods understand him, he talks to nature from his perch on the hill, at his cabin, where the Godly can’t see him, or know him, or shame him for his anger against a very cruel God.

Mattson thought he saw the underside of a beached sand shark, up ahead of him, tossing back and forth in the small waves, lapping the beach. It was grayish like the belly of a shark, but more peculiar. Standing right over the object he still could not tell what it was. He stabbed it with his staff and held it out of the water. It was a battered and torn, gray canvas wrapped life vest. In black paint and barely legible remained the initials on its front: N.T.B..

“Huh! How about that Bessie. Looks like there was trouble at sea! I wonder if the poor fellow that was inside this, made it? We better bring this into Carmel, someone there will want to know about this!” He proclaimed to Bessie standing behind him waiting.

The None Too Bold was not the only boat lost from Monterey, it seemed to happen at least once, every couple of years. But Skipper Bob had a young crew, with only one seasoned fisherman on board with him. At the memorial for this young and dead crew came hundreds of mourners and sympathetic friends and associates. There were no bodies and no funerals. The service was held in front of Fisherman’s Wharf. Reality set in strong for most of the families leaving the service that day and the Irwins were no exception.

On the slow walk home from the memorial services, Thelma and the Irwin men were silent until O.W. inquired as to the validity of the after-life.

“Pa what if there is a heaven?” O.W. asked looking downward at the street.

“Well that would be fine, wouldn’t it? Surprising. Astounding even. Unlikely, but that would be fine. Don’t you think O.W.?” John reached for O.W.’s hand and smiled.

“Well it sure makes me feel better to imagine that Sydney is there now.”

“Ah ha. Well. The interesting thing about imagining what makes us feel good, is that it had to be imagined to begin with. Ironically, imagine that you knew, that is had evidence to suggest, that indeed there did exist a heaven, where all good people went to live in a paradise above the clouds and have immortally. Then right now, you would expect that Sydney would be there, right? You would not be surprised that he was there, or if you had really strong faith you would know with certainty that he was, errh looking down on you and me and Thelma right now from Heaven. Therefore, and here is the catch, you would not need Heaven as a point of imagination that helps you to feel good, or better about the death of a loved one, or even of yourself. So you see, with a Heaven that is real and verifiable and observable, you would not need a Heaven for the very purpose that the concept of Heaven is used for, to quell our fears about death, and to protect the mental stability of those who suffer from deaths of those near to them.”

“Then the whole Heaven business is a trick?”

“Well it’s not so much a trick as it is a tool. A tool to protect us from the pain of grief. From fear of our own deaths and a tool the Church uses to keep the flock loyal to God, to keep kids from misbehaving when their parents can’t watch them and so on.”

“Why do people trust the church and bible and stuff if they could be getting lied to?”

“Because they want to believe. Believing in things feels good. Just like you were just feeling better about Sydney being dead, when you were imagining he was in Heaven. You felt better.”

“Pa why have we not had this talk before? I mean, you seem pretty serious about this, like it is important to you?”

“You were not old enough O.W.. When you were a short kid I thought it wouldn’t be fair to fill your head with such high thinking puzzles and insights. Personally I don’t think any child should have to learn religion at all until he is old enough to begin to understand the complexity of the behavior of all folks. Like wanting to be believe in a heaven or in gods with powers and that like.”

“But pa, why do so many churches all over the world and so many people go to them if it’s all a bunch of hooey?”

“Well, first off it’s not a bunch of hooey to a believer. That sort of defines belief in itself. But people, all through history have sought answers to what is a mystery to them. The problem is as I see it, is that religion is there to be a false answer that requires no hard work on the person’s behalf. No math, no microscopes, no telescopes for astronomy, no fossils to measure our past or archeology, no evolution. Because these beliefs require no effort, the ignorant are freed from mental labor by the superstitious solutions found within religion.”

“But Pa, if a religious person doesn’t use science, how do they function? Like what if they get sick, or if they even have to look at a clock to see what time it is?”

“They do use science, but to rationalize their use of scientifically created tools and methods, they say that God granted them the ability to create those things. But the interesting thing is, each and every invention allowed to be created through scientific research, removes a rationalization that only God himself had controlled that mystery. Electricity for instance. Or even gasoline, made from oil, a fossil fuel from deep below the Earth composed of plant and other life forms long dead for millions of years. You see, electricity was known to be controlled by the hand of God, just three hundred years ago. Oil that would light our rooms in our lamps was a gift from God, not because it was really a gift from God, but because people didn’t understand how it worked. You’ve heard the phrase “If man were meant to fly God would have given him wings,” right? Well, a powerful God who wanted us to fly would have indeed created people with wings, but he didn’t. Hundreds of inquisitive men who would not accept the restrictions of a god’s desires, over many decades and centuries through trial and error, created the airplane. People don’t like mysteries. Each scientific discovery discounts or removes the superstitious answer that God was responsible for that mystery.”

“Pa why are so many people so stupid?”

“Don’t think of them as stupid O.W., think of them as blissfully ignorant by choice.”

“But what if God does exist Pa? Won’t we be going to hell if we are wrong?”

“Sure, but if Hell were real and God was all powerful, would he not give us some indication that Hell and Heaven were real? After all, they say we are his “children,” and we are imperfect and prone to compulsion and misbehavior. Given these truths, does he want to trick us? That would be immature and cruel, would it not? Another thing to remember about what I like to call “godism,” is this; there is no proof of the existence of a god. There is no need of or use for a god. Because a good god would be useless if he were not powerful and likewise a powerful god would not deserve worship if he were not good. So there can be no all powerful good god; otherwise there would be no imperfection, like with disease or war, pain and hunger, good and innocent people dying young, like Sydney, and so on.”

“Pa it’s just hard to believe that so many millions of people, for so many thousands of years, can be so wrong all at once.”

“Why not O.W.? You saw what happened in the great war, millions of people were wrong, all at once. An idea can spread like an airborne disease, conveyed without proper protections like in the case of religions; education. The ideas spread and the results are usually awful. Besides that, consider that godism was practiced thousands of years ago, when mankind was the most ignorant he had ever been, long before Christianity, so ask this: could primitive humans who were wrong about literally everything else, I mean really everything else, have been right all along about something like the existence of a god, a creator, or an afterlife?”

“You’re right Pa, it doesn’t make any sense at all. It just don’t figure.”

‘That’s right O.W., it doesn’t figure, it actually can’t be figured, there is no way to figure it. You chose the exact right words.”

John smiled down at O.W., enjoying the moment of enlightenment of his youngest, and now his only son.

Thelma and John and O.W. arrived to the front porch at Cortes St.. John stopped and turned to O.W. before walking up the steps. He grasped his shoulders, and held his attention to his eyes.

“Listen up O.W.. You have just reasoned something. You took in some information. It made logical sense to you. Because in your mind, you weighed my words against what you have been told about that subject, it conflicted and you deduced the logic of my statements. But understand this, I may be wrong still because there will always be room for the exploration of all subjects whether it is philosophy or science, for further reasoning, do you understand this? Reasoning is what you need in life, not superstition, not faith or beliefs. Your ability to reason will always be your best tool.”

“I understand Pa.”

“I don’t expect you to fully understand O.W., not right away because this is a weighty subject. You’ll ponder this over the coming days and weeks, maybe years, but eventually you will truly understand it as I have come to in my many years. I’ve got a book I want to give you, Robert Ingersol writings.”

In the weeks that followed the tragic loss, for the second time in the life of the Irwin men, Thelma’s internal strength held the family together. She maintained a civilized and optimistic air in the house on Cortes Street. Her hands were more than busy keeping the house, but also busy consoling the two men young and old. Her gentle hands were the warm and soothing weight needed to rub the stiff muscles, to massage the tense necks and to cover and relax the scalps stretched tight from worry and despair and hopelessness following the long months of suspense and grieving over Sydney’s absence. In the evening when Thelma would bring an extra blanket to cover John or to tuck around O.W.’s shoulders, the blanket was not only insulating and warming, but actually projected love as it fell onto them while they drifted back out of sleep just long enough to realize the covering of love that Thelma had brought.

Night mares and passing images of Sydney had become a regular part of O.W.’s nights and continued for two to three years. In O.W.’s dreams Sydney was always on the boat and he being out of reach of him, while Sydney sees him and he reaches for O.W.’s extended hand and yells something, muted, through the wind and rain. Then he would awake in the darkness of his bedroom, in sweat, salty like the ocean, damp and uncomfortable, and thirsty. Thelma would always hear him calling out his brother’s name, and from the other side of the house, would be at his bedside, in a matter of moments.

The ocean had become an object of fear for O.W.. He worked with Doc for only two more months after Sydney died. Each wave of water that slapped his legs while working in the tidal pools, would remind him of Sydney’s tragedy, remind him of the horror and helplessness that Sydney must have felt in those last minutes on the None Too Bold. When O.W. looked into the shallows the reminders were absent and he could focus, but just glancing at the choppy bay or out towards the open Pacific would invoke a sense of fear within him. Often he would feel anger at the ocean and anger at the unfairness and the relentless and unforgiving nature of the big water. A future in Marine Biology was less a possibility for O.W.; for like Doc had told him more than once “ . . you have to love what you do.” Doc Ricketts was disappointed and tried to convince O.W. just take a break of a few months and then come back. But O.W.’s nightmares stopped soon after he stopped working with Doc, and this settled his mind and he chose from then on, to stay away from the Ocean.