Murmur Lee Harp Sees a Moment in the Life of Her Great- Great- Grandfather Oster Harp

Yes, I am watching him as if in a movie.

My great-great-grandfather Harp walks the shoreline, the very same shoreline I wandered for thirty-five years. But the beach in Oster Harp’s time is different. There is more of it, so wide that a plane could land with nary a problem. Not so in my day. At Iris Haven, time manifests as erosion. So while Oster Harp walks on a wide field of sand, I slip along a crescent. One day, there will be nothing: no beach, no dunes, no railroad vine, or coreopsis. The sea will claim my house. The lizards and snakes and bobcat and fox will find higher ground and will have to make due with less land from which to spin the drama of their lives. Iris Haven will become myth. And then what? What will Oster Harp’s life mean once the ocean obliterates the land we lived, loved, and died on? My soul blinks open (it smells of salt and gardenia); the wind sweeps in: I am full of memories.

I watch him trip in the wet sand; he lands on one knee, rubs his shoulder against his cheek, struggles to his feet, stands unsteadily—I think the wind might just knock him flat—and then he begins again. In the viewing, I gain a sense of his heartbeat. It is warm and steady and fully content not to return to the house and the women.

He is a young man—about my age—and other than his fierce blue eyes and a faint dimple in the bull’s-eye of his chin, I look nothing like him. He fidgets as he walks. His thin, strict lips rhumba, staccatolike, as if a lifetime of confessions are banging at the door, desiring to be let out, longing for the freedom that comes with being heard. The thumb of his right hand taps and retaps the pads of his fingertips—index to pinkie, index to pinkie, index to pinkie, Hail Mary, full of grace, the rosary made flesh. He doesn’t fool me. Oster Harp may be a Protestant, but his mother’s Catholicism runs like a neon virus in his veins.

He looks up from the rain-pocked sand and studies the night. The sun is finally beginning its liquid ascent, revealing a horizon I love so well, the one made restless by a wind-whipped sea. Slow-growing swaths of purple and gold cauterize the darkness. Yes, daylight insists on her due.

Oster listens, his head slightly tilted, to the soft sucking sound of the waves lapping near his bare feet and to the wind, which has not stopped howling since early yesterday, and the onset of the big blow. Yes, the wind song clattering over the dunes and through the embattled pin oaks and between the shredded green fringe of palm fronds frightens him because it carries in its whirling folds memories of Orchid in childbirth, memories only three hours old. He wants the wind song to stop. It rattles him the way scorpions rattle the long dark night of our fear. He covers his ears and tries to concentrate on something that bears no weight—last week’s fishing excursion: the sun, the good rum, the fair seas, the decent catch, grouper and triggerfish, and the one that got away.

It’s no use. The memories rush at him: The black women swooping through the candlelight—God’s great birds flying through the shadowy night—ministering to his young wife, who just happens to be my great-great-grandmother. There she is—Orchid Porphyria Harp—her legs spread wide, the mess between her legs opening grotesquely, wet and bloody, the frothing mouth of a wounded animal. I wish I had been there. I would have given her a tincture of yarrow to ease her pain, and before that—at the onset of her second trimester—I would have wrapped her belly in raw silk dyed with the blood of elderberry, so that the baby would have been content to stay in the womb for the whole nine months.

This is what Great-Great-Grandfather Harp cannot accept: Childbirth split her open. And as he watched, pegged to that flickering circle of reflected candlelight on the heart-pine floor, he was fascinated. Transfixed. Appalled. Embarrassed. Outraged. Sickened. Unable to look anywhere else. This is the truth: Not once did he consider stealing a glance at Orchid’s pale, crushed face. Or at her plum-sized fists flamed purple with the effort of gripping that rose-embroidered sham. Or at her small-boned bare feet held wide and aloft by two little black girls. Nor did he consider offering any words of comfort. He was too freaked-out: He was a man witnessing a train wreck; the carnage sickened him, but the passion that burns when life and death collide had hold of him by his everso–Gilded Age testicles.

The surf and sea foam bubble around his ankles and he shakes his head in an attempt to loosen these unwanted images, as if they might fall right out of his head and onto the sand, as if the incoming tide will wash them out to sea. No wonder birthing is woman’s work. No wonder Velma looked over her shoulder, her black face glistening behind a stinking veil of sweat and candlelight, and said in a voice so calm one might think she didn’t understand the magnitude of what was taking place, “You get on outta here, Mr. Harp. This may be your doing, but right here right now ain’t none of your business.”

And all of this caused by a new life pushing its way into the world!

Oster Harp knew a storm was coming. Everyone did. The weeds and grass at the bottom of the water-filled jars had begun to rise. And the pelicans rode the sea wind (a steady wind, which lacked the ominous quality of song) east to the far shore, across the river, and hunkered down behind the dunes in large, feathered battalions. The sun-glazed clouds traveled even faster than the great birds, pushed by forces building—indeed, boiling forth—in the Sargasso hundreds of miles to the east. But he surely did not know that a baby was coming, too.

He has not laid eyes on his child. All he knows of her is what the women told him. “A bird, a tiny baby bird,” Velma cooed. “So small, you barely need more than one hand to hold her!”

And while he paced and drank good French brandy behind the closed doors of his study—all in a failed attempt to block the memory ghosts of my great-great-grandmother in labor—Velma yelled the pertinent details from her side of the door. The women swabbed his daughter in unsalted butter, slipped her into a shoe box, and placed her in a slow, warm oven in the screened kitchen that overlooked an oyster midden and the river. “Got to be kept warm. That baby wasn’t ready to be born!”

As for Orchid, all Oster knows (perhaps cares to know) is what he was told by Martha Ann, Orchid’s white help, and—if the truth be told—her best friend. She tapped on the door and, probably emboldened by the evening’s events, took it upon herself to crack it open and peer in. “She’s quiet now, Mr. Harp.” Martha Ann smiled indulgently, the way women do when they are trying to pull a man into the sphere.

But Oster was not a man to be pulled. He’d see his wife later, once she was recovered and all signs of a difficult delivery were swept from the house, her countenance, her language.

From the slouch of his shoulders and the slow roll of his gait, I can’t be sure what gives my great-great-grandfather more comfort: the fact that the birth is over, or that he isn’t a woman and will, therefore, never have to endure what Orchid just went through. Maybe that’s the key to masculine discontent: They are pissed, grateful, and in awe that giving birth is a privilege reserved for women. He stops walking, pushes his spectacles up the ridge of his nose, and squints seaward. He notices something bobbing in the roil of foam and waves. Inanimate or not, he is unsure—but most certainly something is there, maybe twenty yards out, riding the surf with humanlike determination. Perhaps a case of Madeira from a Portuguese ship. He waits and watches. He looks over his shoulder, scans the dunes, the leafless pin oaks, the sky hardening into a relentless blue. He is the only human soul present. He turns to the northwest, toward the mouth of the inlet, and perceives the faint surge of a rainbow as it unfurls across the moisture-soaked sky. A reminder of the covenant. Perhaps God is trying to apologize for the suffering he forced upon Orchid. This thought wafts by on the salt-laden wind, free of irony or complaint.

Again, he turns seaward. The object is making frenetic progress. The waves push it forward, suck it back. Occasionally, it spins, caught in the web of an eddy, before popping back into the sea’s incessant ebb and flow. And sometimes, in a lull between waves, the drifting treasure simply rides the surface, partially submerged. For a moment, Oster worries that it will never make landfall, that it is too heavy, that the sea will open its jaws and swallow it whole. He is about to give up and continue his stroll, when the wind blows a tangle of seaweed around his bare feet. He glances at the green-brown ringlets that wiggle eel-like against his skin. The wind gusts, stinging him with salt and sand and its discordant song. He removes his spectacles and wipes the salt out of his eyes with a handkerchief retrieved from his back pocket. With growing impatience, he positions the spectacles back upon the bridge of his nose. He longs for silent air. He casts a final gaze seaward, blinking, eyes watering. Through the veil of gauzed vision, he sees it: a giant wave propelling the object shoreward. Oh my, this is no case of Madeira. She is exquisite. He steps closer. Even from this distance, he sees she is raven-haired, barroom-boned, buxom, of course, as are all figureheads. Her skirt, mottled with foam, seems to swirl—as if tumbled by the sea—and even this harsh world of wind, salt, and water hasn’t been able to erase the fact that whoever created her possessed the whimsy of a child. Her hardwood prism-colored skirt billows as if caught in a strong gale, and along the hem, fish—their eyes painted yellow and green—happily swim. Dolphins leap over the curve of each breast.

Oster frees himself of the seaweed, rolls up his pant legs, and wades into the surf. Water surges past his ankles, slaps his calves. He takes another step and plunges waist-deep in the roiling Atlantic. The storm has rearranged the ocean floor, creating new drop-offs and shoals. His gold watch fob floats on the surface, as if riding a swell of liquid glass. The timepiece is ruined. He’s sure of that. Or perhaps its gold case will keep the inner workings safe. He scolds himself for behaving so carelessly and then shades his eyes, searching for the raven-haired girl. The wind moans, high-pitched, like a bat, as it presses against the gullies and hills of the water. Oster Harp feels the tug of total immersion.

Aqua-prismed swells. White foam swirling off the wide, round hips of waves. Wind screaming along the sea’s ruffled edge. A horizon splashed purple and orange and insistent blue: the morning’s glow. This is the Atlantic at its wildest: poststorm, when beauty and relief combine to drive men and women alike into madness.

She is nowhere. There are no telltale signs. No pieces floating, bobbing, which is what would be found if the surf had broken her apart. She is not here. She doesn’t exist. She was a cruel mirage.

The world consists of Oster and the ocean and a chain of pelicans cruising effortlessly in this siren wind. He decides to head back to shore. And to tell no one of this foolishness. His brain betrayed him. The strain of last night meddled with his good sense. A form of sea madness inflicted by stress and sleeplessness and devil brandy. That is why he keeps imagining the wind is singing. Sea madness. There is no wind song. No such thing exists. And there is no figurehead. There is just Oster and this ocean, which he struggles to take leave of. The current tugs at his legs, arms, even his chest. He pushes forward through the weight of water—his head high and proud—before being slammed soundly off his feet by a Mack truck of a wave.

Fully submerged, not to mention surprised, he swallows seawater. The current pulls him eastward, tugging at his spectacles, which he attempts to remove and pocket for safekeeping, but the water steals them from his fingers. He reaches through the murky darkness, but the sea has already spun them beyond his reach. Unknowable creatures and objects tumble past as the riptide ferries him toward Europe, the islands, Africa, and toward, he fears, the past—the pagan past that flourished before men of enlightenment sought dominion over this old earth, and, in particular, America. (Oh, yes, how different my great-great-grandfather and I are. He with his faith in a Protestant God, me having giving up on monotheism entirely. Won’t we have a few things to talk about if ever we meet!) The riptide is a rapidly moving river flowing within the larger sea, carrying him quickly to another time. A place where he is not in control. A wet, dark, sun-filtered place where he is just another fish. How delightful, the notion that my great-great-grandfather nearly was transformed into a fish at death, as I momentarily was!

As if he’d been swallowed by a great whale and then belched from its belly, he pops to the surface, gagging, spitting, struggling to fill his lungs with the air of the present. Even the wind song welcomes him. The scrub oaks grow smaller and smaller, then disappear all together as the past pulls him back down, sandwiching him between waves, imprinting upon him images of a far and foreign shore. A tremendous pressure squeezes his chest. He fears he will explode. First his spine will pop, next his heart, liver, spleen. Skin will be the last to go. It will shred like the tattered remains of a forgotten flag. As the past, which Oster perceives of as death, becomes more real, he seeks intercession. He asks God to save him. And then he insanely questions the sincerity of his own request because it is, alas, automatic. His eyes burn, salt-scalded, and his chest fills with water, replacing the present air. Animals whose identities remain secret approach, silent and unafraid. His prayers issue faster, with ever-greater urgency, until they swirl and escape beyond the realm of language. My great-great-grandfather tumbles and claws, tumbles and claws. He is ready for battle, ready to kill and be killed. Indigo and ocher and black water seep into his brain, and it is then that the whale spits him out for the second time, leaving him to vomit seawater and rediscover music and air. He is just about to thank God for sparing his life, when he looks over his shoulder and—buxom and proud, propelled by the ocean’s force—the figure slams him square in the head.

No one comes looking for my great-great-grandfather. They are all too busy caring for his nameless shoe-box baby on his nameless island and pressing cold compresses against the forehead of my fever-delirious great-great-grandmother.

In my film of Oster Harp—a man I knew precious little about in life—the sky boils with giant white clouds that move quickly east to west, then finally clears into a high-pitched brightness. It is then—when the atmosphere thins into glass—that my great-great-grandfather comes to, beached, blinded by his own blood. He wipes his eyes clean with a raw hand. The rainbow has retreated, the sun ascended. The moon shines on other lands. The wind song has grown weary.

Downshore, toward the inlet, maybe fifty feet away, he spies something—blurred, thanks to his bad eyesight and lost spectacles—but he is certain of what he sees. The figurehead lies placidly on the sand, like a drowsy sunbather. Oster rises on rubbery legs and runs. He is so grateful to be alive. God is so good. He trips, falls into the soft new dunes, clamors to his feet, and begins again. He is covered in the grains of the beach: a castaway crusted in salt and blood.

When he reaches the figurehead, he drops to his knees. He inspects her, his face close in, thanks to his bad eyesight, his hands doing some of the work for him. She is more beautiful than he first imagined. Her gaze is forward-bound. She sees into the future with the grace of a seasoned sailor, unflinching, respectful of what lies ahead, a faint and wry grin gracing her solid features. He studies this seaborne treasure, pressing his palms against her ocean-cured wood, marveling at what fine condition she is in. Her rainbow skirts are dusted with barnacles. He decides they are diamonds sewn by the sea. He doesn’t admit that this observation reveals him to be a man with a tendency to the poetic. He simply thinks, I’m going to take good care of you.

“I promise,” he whispers, and I cannot help but believe that he is treating this figurehead—this inanimate gift from the sea—the way he wants to treat his baby girl but can’t quite bring himself to. I’m going to take good care of you. I promise. He is speaking to his shoe-box baby. I know it. The sky knows it. All those countless grains of sand know it. He’s the only one who is clueless.

He sits on the sand beside his worm-holed and water-beaten find, stunned by his good fortune, watching the ocean (all he truly sees is a wash of rhythmic color), mulling over the pattern implicit in God’s mystery. The birth—however grotesque—of his first child. The covenant-sealing rainbow. His close call with drowning. The providential figurehead with a skirt of many colors.

And then it comes to him: The Greek goddess of the rainbow. Iris. Of course!

“Iris,” he says. It rolls off the tongue with little effort, even a tongue swollen by seawater. A properly feminine name, without extraneous flourish. Distilled to a fair essence. Air. Iris.

So this is how my great-grandmother came to be known as Iris Harp, named by my great-great-grandfather, a man so full of his own importance that he named his baby girl before speaking to her mother. Indeed, before ever laying eyes on the child herself.

And in a fit of saccharin charm, he decides to name the island in honor of this day and his hours-old shoe-box baby. Iris Haven. It is a name that will stick, that will come to be printed on maps and deeds and birth certificates long after Oster Harp leaves this land.

The wind blows big and purple. The images of Oster and Iris Haven and my great-great-grandfather’s life recede to black, and I am left here in the wind, bemused. Poor old Great-Great-Grandfather Harp must not have known that the rainbow goddess didn’t simply spend her days lolling about Mount Olympus, admiring her handiwork. No sirree, Granddaddy! Iris, the rainbow goddess, had one hell of a job: She received the souls of dying women.

Did Oster Harp commit a metaphysical blunder when he named his baby and this island in honor of Iris? Did his ignorant foray into the world of nomenclature curse this place? Is that why we keep dying out here, again and again, so young? Did his gesture create a hole in the universal scrim, causing us to be called forward into the rainbow’s portal, received perhaps by the likes of Iris herself?

As I boil forward, my spirit wobbly but not without hope, I want to know. And to stay safe—I do not understand what is happening in these early moments—I will practice my own form of nomenclature voodoo, whispering into this infinite dark space the names of those who have come before me. Orchid, Mother, Katrina, Blossom. Orchid, Mother, Katrina, Blossom. Orchid, Mother, Katrina, Blossom. Orchid, Mother, Katrina, Blossom. Oh, how this wind blows!