Sanibel Scribbles (18 page)

“What makes you a makeshift raft?”

“The kind of vessel you are is a personal thing, ya know. I mean, it’s who ya are in life. I don’t try to be a yacht or anything. I mean, I guess a makeshift raft could turn into a yacht with lots of effort and all, but ya know what? I’m a happy raft. I just need to keep myself together next time around.”

“Hmmm. Classifying people as vessels. It’s a brilliant concept, Denver. But you’re right. I have no idea what sort of vessel I am.”

He stared her directly in the eyes and pointed at her as if threatening her. “Don’t cruise any further until you know what sort of vessel you are. I can’t give ya any better advice than that, girlie.”

“Tell me why your song is so sad.”

“Why can’t I be sad? What, don’t worry-be happy? Listen, if something happens in life, and you feel sad, I’m not gonna tell ya to rent a funny movie. You know why? That movie’s gonna end and you’re gonna feel sad again. No, let yourself feel down. It’s okay to feel down. I’m sick of this world not letting people feel down. The theme of our world is be happy, but I think we all need to have days, weeks and sometimes months of feeling sad. I think it’s part of life, that’s what I think. We’re gonna go through dark water, and sometimes we can’t make it out in one day, it’s too big.”

“Have you been in dark water long?”

“Hey, it’s bedtime. That means lights out, music off, band getting grouchy.”

Denver made his way over to the lamp, first bumping into the wall, then turned out the light. In the dark, he knocked over a couple things and probably hurt himself in the process, but Vicki knew he’d pull himself together again in time for work in the morning.

“Thanks, Denver. That was the best drink I’ve ever had.”

CHAPTER TEN

FLORIDA’S SKY MODELED SEVERAL
fashions. Some nights it looked starched and smooth, except for delicate rhinestones sprinkled across the heavens. Other nights it looked organized, with white clouds ironed into sheets of navy blue fabric. Then there were the sweet, light blue nights dotted in puffs of low-hanging clouds, and angry black-and-blue nights when darts of lightning ripped through wrinkled folds. On angry nights, inky colors stained the sky. The sky dressed as it liked, not minding the events or occasions below. It dressed as its Maker told it to, not caring to please anyone.

Several nights were spent sitting in the old lantern room on the top of the lighthouse, and the view from the top gave her the same thrill as taking the elevator to the top of the John Hancock Building in Chicago. Only instead of an overhead view of manmade skyscrapers, she got to see God’s skyscrapers. The towering palm trees formed a city of their own, but looking down at the tops of their heads sure beat looking down at rooftops.

She liked the breeze that made its way into the lantern room and understood why no one ever replaced the broken-out windows. She liked where she sat, her nest of privacy, and didn’t feel like sharing it with Howard, a different breed of bird. The sky spread itself sweetly in baby blues tonight, the colors of a nursery, and she liked sitting under the friendly sky. She stared at the light blue canopy overhead just as someone shook a pillowcase and a star fell out. She wanted to ask Howard if he saw it too,
but Howard didn’t talk much. No one on the island knew much about the fifty-something man, just that he worked in the kitchen making real key-lime pie—the kind that is yellow, not green—and doing prep work and existing in his own happy-go-lucky world.

His hair grew like a spiral staircase around his head and down his neck, branching outward as it reached his shoulder, and in the dark of night resembled a bonsai in desperate need of pruning and wiring. He wore the same straw hat all the time, and his scruffy auburn beard grew like vines up his face. His conversations with the staff were limited because he spoke his own quirky language. Now, he sat in the lighthouse tower, way past dark, yet he sat with a paintbrush in hand, making strokes on a canvas.

“I wonder if we’ll see another shooting star,” Vicki finally said to break the silence, her voice like a coin dropping during a performance and rolling down the aisles. “But then again, you’re busy painting, so you probably didn’t see the last star.” After another minute of silence, she added, “Yet you’re painting on a dark night without a light, so I’m confused.”

“Hey, Dude, would be kind of cool, Dude, cool to see another.” He tossed a twig over the side of the lighthouse tower and watched it drop. Then he made quick strokes on his canvas.

She wanted to bring out a normal side to Howard and a simple question might do just that. “So, Howard, tell me, where are you from?”

“Whoa, Dude, I’m from the Creator.” Dude was his word of the day. Some days it was “yo, man,” and other days, “whopper,” Vicki had observed.

“I’m from the same one who created that there ladybug sitting on your shirt,” he continued. “I noticed it in the dark. I can almost see its red shellback and how it’s painted with little black dots—perfectly round. I couldn’t draw a perfect circle if I tried.”

He dabbed his finger in paint and dotted his canvas.

She picked the little creature off her shirt and tossed it over the side of the rail, wondering if he had escaped some cult. “So you, I, and the bug come from the same creator, Howard.”

“That, that, that, that’s right!” he said in a Tony the Tiger voice.

She wanted to tell him he was crazy, but not knowing the chemical status of his brain, she didn’t want to trigger some violent reaction. “Interesting,” she said.

Howard rubbed paint on his lips, kissed the canvas in front of him, and then wiped his lips on his tropical-flowered button-up shirt. “Who do you think I am?”

“I don’t know. An artist gone mad?” She laughed.

“No, but hey, Dude, let me tell you something about art,” he said. “We’re all artists. Yeah, that’s right. Every living person has the ability. Listen to me now. We wake every morning with a clean, white canvas before us. As the day progresses, we paint that canvas with the words we use, the gestures we make and the thoughts we think. And Dude, by the end of the day, our canvas might look horribly disturbing, or it might be a masterpiece. It’s all up to us, you see,” he continued. “We paint our own pictures. Now, who do you think I am?”

She didn’t want to answer. She wanted to think about her canvas. What color has it been for the past several months? What color is it on a daily basis? She couldn’t wait until morning to start with a fresh canvas, to paint something beautiful.

“Oh, come on now, don’t get serious on me. Who am I?” he asked again.

“I don’t know, Howard. Ah, a criminal on
America’s Most Wanted?”

“Ho, ho, ho, no, no, no,” he laughed. “Try, try again.”

“Okay, my second guess. Uh, someone in the witness protection plan?”

“You are far off. I consider myself an antique. Old, ordinary, forgotten, and worth a fortune. But in the world according to Denver, I’m a caravel.”

“A caravel? What’s that?” she asked.

“It’s a sailing ship, typical of Portugal and Spain. When I’m peeling potatoes, as I do almost three hours a day, I’m the
Santa Maria
. Sometimes when I paint, I’m the
Niña
, and right now, as I’m here talking with you, I’m the
Pinta
. Just depends on my mood and what I’m doing. I mean, how can we go through life as just one vessel? We’re constantly changing.”

“Oh, so you’re the three ships that Columbus took to America. Okay,
and to think, the others on the island, they all told me you only talk jabberwocky. How dare they?” She laughed. “You’re a deep individual.”

“It’s not funny,” he said. “I didn’t come out here to get to know people or for them to get to know me.”

“So why are you here and why are you talking to me?” asked Vicki.

He paused for a moment. “I’m here for therapy, and you’re attempting to have an intelligent conversation, and I respect that.”

“Therapy?”

“Yes. I’m dying.”

“Oh.” There was a moment of silence. “I had no idea.”

Howard laughed. He laughed uncontrollably. He laughed until he cried. Eventually he wiped his eyes and smeared his canvas. “Oh please! We’re all dying, you see. Yes, your mother, your father, your siblings if you have any, your friends, every one of us on this island, on this planet; we’re all dying. Some people are already dead, and others have never lived at all. We were born to die, and every single day of life means one less day of our life.”

“Oh.”

“Come on now, you’re the one who started talking to me,” he said.

“Don’t just sit there in that fearful silence. I’ll tell ya, parents need to do a better job of telling and reminding their children that, someday, they’re gonna die.”

“Well, there’s only so much time for the essentials, how to drive, balance a checkbook, and how to …”

“Wouldn’t this be a better world if children grew up aware of the fact that this life is quite short?”

“Well, it might frighten them.”

“Bah, humbug! Why should death frighten anyone?”

“It scares me, Howard.”

“Why? Tell me why!” Howard squashed a bug on his arm. “Everything lives and dies. Why should it frighten anyone?”

“It means separation from loved ones, it’s unknown it’s …”

“The separation from loved ones is temporary. It’s like going away on a trip, saying good-bye, but not forever. You’re scared because the topic of death is taboo, and you’re not prepared to handle it. You’re an educated
woman, preparing for a career, for a house and family someday, for wealth and vacations, but I’ll bet you’re not taking any time out to prepare for death.”

“Prepare for death?”

“Yes. It’s stupid and simple. All you have to do is live. I’m guessing you’re book smart, and that is a fine thing to be. However, now you need to live, become world smart, experience the world. Take it from me, the exploration vessel.”

“Well, since I’m talking with a caravel, I’ll admit that I was planning to go to Spain in the fall, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea now.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I was going with a friend of mine, but things got in her way and now she can’t go, and I don’t want to go without her. I guess in a way, I feel guilty.”

“Are you asking me for permission to set out for Spain?” He slid his eyeglasses back up onto his nose using his middle finger and looked as if he was about to peruse the
New York Times
.

“No, of course not.” She couldn’t help but laugh.

“Then it sounds like you need permission from your friend before you set off. Let me help you with that. Get past the guilt phase. Live your life. Your day to die will come. If she’s a good friend, she’d want you to go; she’d want your dreams to come true.”

“Howard, you’re wise.”

“Thank you.”

“And easy to talk to. I’ve also got this anger.”

“Forgive. You’ve got to push yourself out of your anger and your guilt. It might feel like walking a plank into dangerous water, but do it. Push yourself to move on.”

Vicki tore a vein out of a fallen palm leaf. “I don’t know that I’d feel comfortable going alone.” She wrapped the leaf around her finger, looking only at her project as she spoke.

“I can give you a contact to look up when you get there.”

“You
know someone from Spain?”

“Quite well. I’ll give you the contact information soon, not now, so
don’t rush me on it.” He tore a jagged sliver of wood from the lighthouse and split it in two, as if fiercely competing in a turkey-wishbone contest. “When the time comes, go and explore new worlds, new people. Sail away to Spain. It should only take about five and a half weeks with a crew of ninety. Sail away, young woman! Sail away!”

“Fine. Thank you,” she said to this eccentric character.

“But remember, no matter where you go in life, and I know you’ll go far, please don’t ignore the small things, the details. Pay them attention, notice them.”

“Like what?”

“Look at that lizard over there, behind you.” He laughed as he picked the lizard up by its tail, which subsequently fell off. “When cornered, did you know one type lizard sprays the intruder with blood from the corner of its eyes?”

“I had no idea. My college doesn’t offer classes on lizards, Howard.”

“And another sort of lizard, uh, the chuckwalla lizard—when he’s being hunted down, he runs into a crevice of some sort and breathes extra air into his lungs, so he gets bigger and can’t be pulled out of his small hiding space. Oh, and the alligator lizard—he’s got scales as mean as armor. The poor old lizards that don’t have rough scales, they can dart quickly, to hide behind things and escape. The chameleon, well, we all know they change colors.”

“They’re like artworks, detailed art,” said Vicki, smacking a mosquito that landed on her arm. “Death comes to the mosquito, too.”

“Yes, it does. And I hope I’ve answered your question, Vicki. I’m here on the island to notice things, smaller things in life. It is my own personal therapy right now. I’m here for one other significant reason, but it’s personal.”

His words echoed above the palm tree tops, and this she noticed. His words sounded refreshing, and she felt mad at all the thoughts she had allowed in her mind over the past several weeks; all the thoughts that smeared over her canvas in dark, dramatic, depressing colors. He got up and opened the trapdoor of the light room, then nodded for her to climb through. She carefully climbed down a ladder, and then down the black
iron stairway. He followed.