It is around 11:00 a.m., Sunday, July 4, 2004.  I'm driving along a narrow country road in Texas which connects the little town of Woden to the equally small town of Etoile.

 

Actually, Woden and Etoile are not towns.  They're too small to be called towns.  Each has a post office and a gas station and a roadside vegetable stall.  A few farmhouses are sprinkled around the intersections that bear these unusual names.  Woden was named after a Teutonic god of war and the other name is French for the word 'star'.  There isn't anything remotely warlike or stellar about either place.  They are simply the homes of generations of East Texas farmers, descendants of people who came here long ago to settle the rich bottom lands between the Angelina and Attoyac rivers.

 

The road between Woden and Etoile is approximately 12 miles long.  A few houses are scattered along it, and there are several broad swaths of pastureland and corn fields that open up to pleasant undulating views between long stretches of dense, deep woods.  The rolling hills of southern Nacogdoches County are cloven by steep creek cuts in many places.  The road crosses several bridges that one comes upon abruptly after a sharp turn, and the brown water creeks are generally crowded with fallen limbs and tree trunks.  It is a quiet road, having little traffic but the pickup trucks and occasional tractor crawling along its back.

 

I am a fortunate man.  It is my pleasure to drive along this road twice each workday.  In the morning it is not uncommon to see deer, turkey, bobcats or even the stray coyote alongside it.  Crows stand at its edges, and the occasional hawk swoops down in search of prey. In the evenings it is generally abandoned by every creature but myself and perhaps a wandering hound.  The road is the heart of my 35-mile drive into town.  It affords a kind of peace that is unique, the peace of a long stretch of country road.  It is the kind of road which I am most familiar with, long, isolated and quiet. Its secrets are hidden by the woods.

 

I am mindful of the date this morning. The immensity of the meaning of the date, July 4, is almost incomprehensible to me. So much is wrapped up within this simple day in

summer, so many lives, dreams, ideals, philosophies and concepts, that I don't think any man alive can embrace in his mind all that this one simple day symbolizes.  My mind wanders strangely around in curves, much like this Texas Farm Road 226.  I know where the road leads.  The mind has a different destination, sometimes unknowable.

 

There is something missing in my life.  I am seldom fully aware of its absence, but I am never completely unaware of the longing for it. If a man does not have a longing, a deep abiding longing in the profundity that is his heart, for something --- no matter what it might be --- he has not lived deeply enough.  If he has no longing, he has not truly loved.

 

We pine for the love of a wife or sweetheart; we ache for the memory of a lost loved one; we recall with affection the lost days of our youth --- but longing, the yearning of the soul for its own kind --- is a different thing, an expression and experience of our own spirit.

 

Today, this morning, this July 4, I am consumed by my own personal longing.  This yearning is every bit as strong and natural to me as the very urge to breathe.  Here, on this deserted country road, alone but for the distant static of the radio and the unseen presence of God's wild creatures, I confess that my most beloved mistress is calling me.  Her voice is greater than the strength that is in the wind.  How I yearn for her, how I need her embrace, her mystery, yes, even the coldness that is her heart.  I, like Masefield, must go down to the sea again.

 

To attempt to describe a man's love for the sea is futile.  No English word conveys its depth.  Perhaps one of the many Greek words for love embodies it.  No matter.  The thing is immensely greater than the word.  Perhaps men felt it before there were any words at all.  It is Timeless.  It is the sea, the wide, trackless ocean, a universe, needing no one, needing nothing other than its self.

 

My mind wanders.  This being July 4, I think of another Texan.  Born southwest of here in the Hill Country of south-central Texas, a man whose fate took him from the rock-strewn, mesquite littered cattle hills to the unlikely deck of a ship, a man whose destiny and fame was made by the sea.  Chester Nimitz.  I laugh.  How could either this great admiral, or even my unknown self, born and reared in multi-hearted Texas, country boys to the bone, ever have known the mystery of the sea?  Kindred spirits, in some ways, I guess.

 

Flying fish glide with their extended pectoral fins for dozens of yards across the waves. Quartering out off the starboard deck, a school of dolphins frolic.  One must only witness their play for a moment to know that these mammals of the deep share with man the capacity for joy, playfulness and sheer exhilaration simply over being alive on a summer day. What a mystery to imagine what one of these animals must see in the depths of the ocean in only one day of their lives!

 

The bow of the little sloop rises and falls rhythmically as it crowds into the waves.  The cliffs of Catalina Island are so far astern now that they look like low clouds on the

horizon.  If we kept this heading we'd make it to Oahu maybe in three weeks. The Menagerie is not a fast sloop.  I climb out of the hatchway with a fresh drink. The red streaks of the dying sun far away in the west promise fair weather.  The breeze is low; the sea anchor is out. One rod is out, baited with an anchovy.  A steak sizzles on the gimbaled hibachi. The stars are already out over the mainland. The Menagerie rocks gently, its tiller tethered. Nothing but open sea for miles. The mainland has long been out of sight. There is a tiny blinking light in the heavens. Maybe a satellite. I wonder if it sees me.  I don't care.  What does it matter?

 

The moon slowly rises.  I watch it creep over the millions of souls back on the mainland.  I am not one of them. There is no part of me that is connected to any of them.  My brief blink of a life is here.  It is neither happy or sad.  It is merely a consciousness, an awareness.  Are there other sentient things around me?  My psyche is speaking to the ocean.  It has no message, no question, no statement of fact or desire.  A whale's call eerily rises from the waves as an answer. Unlike me, it seeks to communicate, to call out to its own kind, born out of an emotion only it can understand.  Maybe I am doing the same.  Or perhaps we are saying the same thing.  Just with different voices.  The steak cools over the dead ash of charcoal.  I go below to pour another drink.

 

There is a special womb-like closeness below deck. Everything is compact, self-contained, stowed away, tied down.  I sit down at the table.  When not in use as a table, it folds down into a bunk.  I am the only soul on board, so I leave it up.  On the ocean, one resists the temptation to place objects on available flat surfaces.  With one good swell the drink, the pliers, the can of beans, whatever it might be, slides quickly to the lower deck and rolls around until it finds a resting place inaccessible to the reach.  The gaff hook has retrieved more beers from beneath the V-birth than fish from the ocean.  Carefully I mix another drink on the table.  I succeed without spilling anything. I sit down and gaze out the larboard porthole. The radio is silent.  No WHISKY ROMEO X-RAY FIVE THREE FOUR SIX, OVER Crackles.  No fishing boat chatter.  The Coast Guard is silent.

Good.

 

 

Filimon Carranza sits on the rough bench, his back against the main mast. We’re about two miles out of Puerto de Abrigo near Yucalpeten in the Yucatan.  The Caribbean water is as clear as your neighbor's swimming pool.  I'm watching fish play along the bottom, some fifty feet down. This is the world's great aquarium.  Filimon, his old, cracked hands fondling a length of line, waits for another bite.  Huachinango.  Pescado Frito.  EI Redemptor Divino.  I can see the green foliage on the beach behind the line of snow-white sand. 

 

The beach looks deserted, but there are palapas there, the homes of Mayan Indians who live by the sea, who live on the sea, who live in the sea.  The Mayans have beautiful brown skin and raven black hair.  Their eyes are slanted in a peculiar way, and their noses are aristocratic arches emerging from their flat faces like the dorsal fin of a tiburon.  The women are particularly beautiful, like Gaugin's Tahitians.  They wear loose white cotton shifts, embroidered at the neck with multi-colored threads.  The women will swim out to the boat when we return, the white cotton of their dresses transparent in the transparent water. They will laugh as they claim which fish they want.  A nice pile of snapper already lies at my feet in the leaky little sailboat.  The women will chatter in their own language, a language that I am beginning to understand.  The women are neither modest nor immodest.  Their breasts are round beneath their shifts as they breathe heavily from the swim. They cling to the gunnels of the boat as we drift in, then with a laugh they take off to the next clinker-built sailboat.

 

 

Filimon and I converse in Spanish.  He is a gentle old man with many grandchildren.  He tells me the name of the fish I catch.  I would be helping him if I tried to catch more snapper.  Instead, I dangle my hook in front of a different species of fish each time I bait my hook.  Filimon indulges me.  He calls me El Capitan.  I tell him, no, I am not the capitan.  He is the capitan.  He says, no, he is merely a marinero, a sailor.  I bring up the yellow‑ and brown‑spotted fish. It is small, with slimy skin and bulging eyes. “¿De qué está?” I ask. “Se llama kuah‑tu en Maya,” he answers. “No sé en español.” He doesn’t know the Spanish name for the fish, but he knows the Mayan name for everything in the ocean.  The biggest city he's ever visited is Merida.  He doesn't like it.  It smells, he says.

 

 

The day has been easy for us deck hands.  We departed Freeport before daylight this morning.  The workboat is too large to be a boat, a mite too small to be a ship.  There are bunks for thirty men, showers, a mess cabin with color television and stereo.  Some of the men are playing cards. Some drink beer, some watch television.  The barge will be here sometime tonight.  Tomorrow will be a long hard day. We're at the site of a rig that went down.  In the morning, before most of us are up, the divers will be 120 feet below the surface, cutting apart the tangled steel structure and placing charges.  Their gear is on deck tied alongside the mess cabin.  Thick canvas and rubber suits, the globe-shaped hard hats that look like space helmets with hinged porthole windows.  Yards and yards of hose are coiled on deck. The divers make it plain that no one is to go near the equipment.  They are a stand-off bunch of guys, an elite clique of hard men who do not suffer fools.  In a hold below are the explosives.  I never learn what type. The divers are not particularly conversant.

 

By dusk the following day the divers are back on deck. Grim, expressionless, quick with shop talk, but little else. Boudreaux, the Cajun foreman, a big man with the ways of the sea written across his face, announce that we are going to back off and detonate the charges. The anchor grinds to the surface and the diesel engines grumble louder. They are never turned off. One can always sense their quiet mumbling, feel the vibrations through the steel deck.

 

Dave Butcher joins me at the rail.  He is a big young man with long brown hair. He has spent the short span of his whole life on the water.  His biceps and chest muscles are more than most grown men want to argue with. “Hey, Thomas,” he yells. “Get the dip nets!”

 

It's after dark when the first charges are detonated.  There is a flash below the surface, the only thing visible in the darkness except the stars and deck lights.  The glow of the explosion lasts a second or two longer, then the ocean boils. There is a thumping sound, the sound of the blast itself. Again, the flashes and the thumping. The boiling ocean erupts again.  For several moments there is silence.  The chief diver says something to Boudreaux, who calls, “All Clear!”   Dave Butcher and Roberto Guillardo lean over the rail, the long-shafted dip nets ready.  Thomas holds a hand lamp, playing the broad beam over the surface of the water. Soon dead and stunned fish float to the surface.  “Just the snapper,” calls David Butcher.  They continue to dip fish as I go below.  I have my own cabin.  It has a metal framed military bunk bolted to the floor and an overhead light.  Not exactly a penthouse.  I crawl into the lower bunk before reaching up to snap out the light.  I notice rust bubbles beneath the white paint beside my head.  I turn out the light.  Tomorrow we'll be winching up pieces of the rig, cutting the beams with acetylene torches and piling them on the barge.  The last time we were out, the smaller work barge sprang a leak.  Being shorter and more agile than most of the crew, I was elected to go down through the deck hatch and pull a pump hose through the steel bracing to a place where the seawater could be pumped out.  That wouldn't have been so bad if there hadn't have been nearly a foot of diesel fuel sloshing around down there.  The diesel floated on the seawater as I scrambled blindly between the bracings.  I smelled like diesel for a month after that.  Even the little Mexican gal who occasionally shared my port motel room, couldn't stand me.  I got used to it.

 

 

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico's tiny hourglass waist. I'm on the Pacific side in an old two-story wooden hotel with a nurse from San Francisco whom I met a few days earlier in Palenque.  It is so hot that she and I take turns standing in the shower to cool off.  We only dare make love in the small hours before dawn.  Any other time it is simply too damn hot.  We go to a bar for some camarones and a few Dos Equis beers.  The Mexican children alongside the broken concrete breakwater have found a clutch of sea turtle eggs. Yes, I tell the nurse, they are supposed to be an endangered species.  Tell it to the Mexican kids.  The eggs are about the size of ping pong balls, and white and slimy. The eggs are not hard-shelled like chicken eggs.  They are leathery and must be cut open with a knife.

 

In the bar we meet an American and his wife and her brother.  They are headed up the coast in a nice little 36-foot Catalina.  I hitch a ride to Puerta Vallarta.  The nurse says she gets seasick and won't come.  On the beach in Puerta Vallarta, I wonder what happened to the nurse.  Sometimes I still wonder.

 

 

Back on board the Menagerie, anchored in Little Shark Harbor on the windward side of Catalina.  Venator and my cousin are doing their best to make something edible out of a guitar fish and a bag of rice.  We've been aboard for over a week now, sailing and fishing, drinking and telling stories. We managed to get around the submerged reef that guards the harbor without a problem.  The reef visible beneath the surface at low tide, but even at high tide, with the rise and swell of the breakers can snag a keel and rip the bottom out of almost any boat.  I've seen it happen twice.  We're anchored fifty yards offshore, prow to the sea, with both hooks, fore and aft, gingerly grasping the sandy bottom.    Little Shark Harbor is not particularly well protected, and the sandy bottom is not good anchorage.  We'll have to keep an eye on the hooks tonight to see that we're not washed up to the beach.  Tomorrow we'll sail around the east end of the island and back to the harbor at the isthmus. It is the harbor where Natalie Wood discovered she couldn't swim too well.  There, we'll encounter other boats and other people.  There will be alluring women and Ramos Gin Fizz cocktails.  We'll sale the little Sunfish around the harbor and out to Bird Rock, so named because its surface is covered with pelican guano.  We'll snorkel the depths of Little Fisherman's Cove and spear fish with the long fiberglass Portuguese spear.  We will dive down to thirty or forty feet and look for abalone and lobster.  We will drift beneath the waves, keeping an eye out for small frying-pan sized halibut that go so well with scrambled eggs.

 

 

Twenty miles out to windward from Catalina, alone on my boat, these things wander through my mind.  I get up from the table and go up on deck.  I hang a battery-powered lamp from the mainsheet, hoist it up and tie it off.  I want to be sure that a freighter or cruise ship can see it.  With the old binoculars I scan a 360 around my position.  Not a soul nor ship in sight.  Odd to think that even as far out as I am, I could be rammed.  It happens.   I go back below and move forward to the bow of the boat. The V-birth moves more with the waves than the midship berths.  But I prefer it.  I like the rocking motion.   Besides, there is a hatch immediately above it and I can leave it open and see the stars.  There, in the old sleeping bag, I can let the wide ocean rock me to sleep. The whale calls again. I suppose I, too, have called out this night.  It has been a good night.  A few ragged clouds drift across the moon.

 

In Texas, the road between Woden and Etoile is a quiet road.  With enough quiet, a man can think. He can think about the 4th of July; he can think about Chester Nimitz, a nurse from San Francisco, sea turtle eggs, a guitar fish, a Ramos Gin Fizz cocktail, a whale's call, the moon, islands in the pacific, the gentle swelling of a Mayan woman's breast.     Underneath it all, there is a longing, a deep urge, a need.  It is a constant longing, always there like a man's very thoughts. As long as he breathes, it will be with him.  He cannot change it.  He wouldn't change it even if he could.  Even the longing itself is of greater worth than most other things in life.  It is the longing for his own kind, a longing for that which has created within him the very thing that he is.