She was screaming when the world went silent.
* * *
Somewhere above forty thousand feet traveling close to Mach 1, beneath screams and radio traffic and requesting clearance for landing and something about “B positive on hand,” the slide show played across my mind’s eye. I’ve always liked movies so I enjoyed watching one about me. I wasn’t expecting that. I saw my mom; caught a rare glimpse of my dad in his cab and for once he was smiling, saw myself surfing and delivering pizzas, watched a wrestling match in high school, hovered over the finish line in several track meets, visited classrooms in Boston, played poker with the big boys where I won a car, landing in London, meeting Amanda on a midnight run, dinner with her parents, Marshall, Brendan, watching through the window as Amanda opened the envelope and screamed at Marshall, watching her disappear in the rearview mirror, rebuilding my hurricane shack in Bimini, bumping into Hack in the hardware store, watching him chain-smoke while I nursed a cup of coffee, building a skiff, fishing the flats for bonefish, Colin giving me a tour of his boathouse and looking down on the world he’d created but had little interest in, Marguerite, Maria singing, Zaul driving the boat, tripping over a mound of cash in my shack and hiding it on the island, hearing Hack’s cough, my first glimpse of Shelly, late night deliveries in Miami, fast boats, Agents Spangler and Beckwith, Shelly as she placed my watch in my hand, Maria’s mummified face in the hospital, Colin hanging his head in his hands, skirting Cuba in the Bertram, the Panama Canal, the swimming pool in the living room of the house, Isabella pulling back my eyelid and saying “borracho,” Paulina, the chicken coop, mango juice dripping drown my chin, the oscillating lion breathing on my face, Paulo’s forearms as he swung a machete and stacked sugarcane, pulling teeth and the smell of pus, “el doctor,” Leena’s arms wrapped around me as we rode dirt roads on a motorcycle, the best coffee I’d ever had in my life, the biggest mango tree in Nicaragua, Isabella slipping her hand in mine, descending the well shaft, white bones sticking out of the rock, swinging a hammer in the dark, a trickle of water on my neck, cold water swallowing me, the sound of laughter, Paulo’s bloody hands, a long-sleeved white dress shirt, the smell of campfires, and the way the light reflected off Leena’s sweaty face as she danced and twirled, campfires across the mountainside showering sparks like fireflies.
The last image that played itself across my mind’s eye was something that happened when I was young. Maybe seven. Possibly eight. I’d been surfing. Or trying to. Just getting the hang of it. My mom was sunbathing, and rubbing sun tan oil on a guy I didn’t know and didn’t like. Gorilla hair covered his chest and back. His toupee sat canted at an angle, making me want to tug on one side to straighten it. He wore several thick gold chains, and a Speedo two sizes too small. But my mom was broken and blind. Had been. She was looking for a Band-Aid. I was, too. Only problem was this poseur lying next to her. When she finished greasing him up, he returned the favor and made a real show of it. I’d taken a spill in the surf and was walking up the beach dragging the two halves of my board. My head hurt. Blood ran down my leg. Mom saw me coming and waved me off. Attention elsewhere. “Go wash it off.” Standing there on the edge of that giant ocean, dizzy, the salt stinging my cut, holding two jagged pieces that would never again comprise a whole, an emotion pierced me. While the water around my shins turned red, and my broken board slipped from my fingers and drifted away, I whispered, “Charlie, you are alone and always will be.” Right there, nothing but a kid bleeding on the beach, life stained my soul.
The lights of the plane dimmed and I felt someone’s face close to mine. Tears dripped onto my cheeks. Lips pressed against mine. Breath forced into my lungs. Chest expanding. Somewhere in between this world and the next, I saw how the Loneliness had colored my DNA. Of all the days in my life, that day on the beach was the one day I wanted back. I wanted to grab that kid, wrap him in my arms, doctor his leg, wipe the tears and snot off his face, buy him a shiny new board, and cradle his very soul.
While the blood trickled out, staining the new carpet in that $7 million plane, the truth flooded in and laid bare the wound. The simplicity struck me. I’d spent my life medicating that wound. Since that moment, I’d bought into the idea that isolation would ease my pain and indifference was the remedy for rejection.
Clarity was quick in coming. Isolation is a prison and indifference is a lie. Neither work.
As the breath exited my lungs and the screams and cries faded above me like a passing siren, the video of my life ended with a sequence of sepia-colored slides. The first depicted me standing on the shore as that broken and bleeding kid, sun-bleached hair, bronzed skin, with the beginnings of hardened muscles in my back. I was climbing into the skiff Hack and I built and paddling out through the waves and onto open water. But as I tried to paddle out, all stoic and self-reliant, Leena held on to the stern, pulling back, digging her heels into the sand. She was shaking her head. “Don’t…” But she was no match for the current of my life so I slipped from her fingers. Out beyond the breakers, I turned back. Her mouth was moving but the pounding waves between us garbled her words. When I reached the horizon where the ocean fell off the side of the earth, I turned and found her still standing there. A dot on the shoreline. Hand shading her eyes. Beneath me, the boat jolted, rocking side to side, balancing on the same knife’s edge where I once so confidently and coldly held my life and those I valued. Straining to see her, I teetered on the same precipice where I’d once been so willing to nudge others if circumstances arose contrary to my freedom. As if they didn’t matter. She beckoned, “Charlie…Please—”
The bow dipped and the stern rose, blocking my view of the beach. The world had gone black but her breath washed my face. Charlie, let me give you me.
Two hands violently jerked my head toward Leena while powerful, stinging blows pounded my chest. I turned and readied myself for the frothy death by drowning on the rocks below when Hack appeared in my boat. Legs crossed. Not a care in the world. His hair had grown. Gone was the yellowed cigarette stain. Regal white had taken its place. His skin looked younger. No wrinkles. No crow’s-feet. He dipped Alejandro’s well bucket in the water and held it sloshing over my head. “Charlie, lonely washes off.” He waved his hand across the sea. “It’s why God made the water.” He laughed deep and long as he turned that bucket upside down. I expected hot and salty. What I got was cold, sweet, and tasted like mango. At first, the water that ran out of me was India-ink black. Just what I expected. Undeterred, Hack kept pouring. Flushing out the stain. Soon, the color changed, and as it did, the pain eased. When the color turned red, the pain was gone altogether.
Finished, he handed me the bucket and patted me on the shoulder, chuckling. He glanced at Leena on the beach and raised an eyebrow just slightly. “We’re made to walk ‘with.’ Not ‘without.’” Glancing over the side of the boat and down into precipice, he cocked his head at an angle and asked, “What’s that in your hand?”
So I started paddling back.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I’d always thought that when you died and came back that you were supposed to see people dressed in white and hear angels singing the “Hallelujah!” chorus. Not so. I couldn’t see a thing and the only thing I heard was hospital bells and alarms and a blood pressure cuff on my right arm. I woke to complete and total darkness. Not a ray of light touched my eyes. Despite that, I knew that I was holding a hand in each of my right and left hands.
Over me, to my left, I heard the whisper, “He’s awake.” Then I heard a bunch of shuffling and talking and it seemed like the room filled with people.
In my right ear, I heard Leena’s voice. “Charlie, can you hear me?” When she spoke, someone squeezed my right hand, causing me to think that she was holding my right hand. And in my left ear, I heard Shelly say again, “He’s awake.” When she said this, I felt someone both squeeze and pat my left hand. One minute I was paddling, rain on my face, and the next I was waking up with Shelly in one hand and Leena in the other.