THEO
AFTER BUD WROTE his reports and took pictures and the coroner took the body, I went home, dropped into my chair, drank two shots of Murphy’s, and stared at my fish and the Navy Citation that Imogene had hung back up on the wall. That Citation had once represented a good day’s work; now it just made me feel helpless. I didn’t like helpless. I yanked it down, shoved it in the drawer, grabbed a fresh bottle of Murphy’s and headed back to the beach.
The police cars, coroner’s wagon, and onlookers were all gone. The sun and the tide also had come and gone. It was muggy and approaching sunset. I plopped down a few feet from where I’d found her body. The log was still there, but there was no evidence she ever was.
“Alright God,” I said. “How many times do we have to have this talk? It’s not like I’m praying for a football team to win some championship. Hell, you gave your own son the boot, supposedly for our sins; still don’t understand how that one works. Though I’m told it works on the back end, blind faith, blood and all . . . and that’s what I tell others.” I downed half the bottle in one long gulp and then stood. “I tell them that, even though personally I’ve even given up on anything man does, evil or good—it rarely makes sense. And I certainly can’t make sense out of the things I’ve done. You know all that. But you . . . you’re supposed to know better, at least that’s our hope. Are we all just slaves like that prison poet said, waiting for the scraps of fortune, grace, peace . . . love? It’d almost be funny, that ‘Divine Comedy’ he mentioned, if it weren’t so frighteningly true.” I slumped back down in the sand and took a drink. “I didn’t know about Divine Comedy when I was ten years old, but I get it now. Joke’s on me.
“Why do you keep dropping dead children at my feet? What do you want? I meant my vows when I took them. I want to be a man of peace, a man who turns the other cheek, who makes amends for having taken lives. But, forgive me Father, how can I? If Andréa hates me so badly she can’t even speak to me, if there’s no forgiveness, and if all those kids I tried to save are in heaven now, if there even is a heaven, then why not just take us all, get it over with. Why not take me?” I shouted, then yanked my white collar off and threw it in the ocean. “Take me!”
***
Woke at sunrise to Solomon standing over me, my shoes tied together and draped over his shoulder, a blanket on his other shoulder. “Here,” he said, and tossed my shoes to the sand next to where I’d slept.
My head spun. I struggled to prop myself up against a driftwood log.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
I darted a look around the beach. It was early morning. My jacket was twenty feet away, my wallet in the sand next to me, shirt gone, pants soaking wet, and no socks. I felt for the chain around my neck making sure the ring and my dog tags were still there. They were.
“Not sure,” I said, picking sand from the corners of my mouth. Then I spotted the Church Ladies, all six of them standing next to their black Packard at the top of the hill—crows on a wire—dressed in black, holding their black-gloved hands over their brows to block the sunlight and get a real good picture of me sleeping on the beach with half my clothes gone. I waved. They scrambled to their car as if the boogeyman had said boo. Their engine hummed to life. Mrs. Scovelli, a woman who weighed no more than ninety pounds but had feet and hands the size of a man’s, slapped her big hand onto their dashboard Bible and held it there as they all craned their necks to watch me. The car drove slowly down Beech Street. I waved again.
Solomon squatted down and said, “There was nothing you could do about the child.”
“Good to know nothing’s changed,” I replied pulling a strand of seaweed from my hair.
He tapped his finger on my tattoo and said, “Winged soldier with sword is a warrior.”
“Was a warrior,” I said and wrapped the blanket around my shoulders; my head throbbed and my stomach flip-flopped into my throat. My lips trembled from the cold.
“Your drunkenness has nothing to do with dead child,” he said. Then he stood back up blocking the sun. “Are you the Theo who was my student?”
“No,” I said. “I’m not. I’m a gimp, a throwaway, a cripple.” I shoved my feet into the wet shoes. “I’m good for nothing but bein’ a punchin’ bag.”
He glared at me and said, “This is true. You act like punching bag, you are punching bag; a beat-down warrior . . . not worthy. This is the truth you make.”
“Make? It’s just the way things are.”
“Inside each of us two hungry wolves fight.”
“Wolves?”
He frowned down at me and said, “The wolf is a tracking predator.”
“Oh great! Wolves now? Okay, let’s have your grand tale about wolves.”
“His eyes,” he said, “are large and piercing, on the front of his skull. He sees everything. Those eyes shine like embers from bonfire. Both wolves with hungry eyes desire different things: one seeks anger, regret, greed, self-importance, guilt; all these are hungry things.”
“Sorrowful things . . . hungry wolves . . . what are you talking about?”
“You, sorrowful thing who should listen,” he said pulling me up by my arm. “The other wolf hungers for peace, love, and compassion. This same fight goes on in you, me, every man, some women.” He motioned for me to walk.
I walked; my teeth chattered from the cold. “Alright . . . alright. So which wolf wins?”
“The one you feed most.”
“Still my teacher.”
“Still student?” he asked, now walking ten feet ahead of me. “Read your letters, Theo. Learn from your pain. Must open wound to heal it. Then burn them. Let fire cleanse your wound. Learn to stand on your two feet again, root them in ground where you live. Feed hungry wolf who wants peace.” He leaned down and picked up the empty Murphy’s bottle from the sand. “Not this hungry wolf.” He threw the bottle into the black ashes of a cold fire pit. “That hungry wolf dies here.”