The Hourglass by JD Strunk
Young Jackson Maddox captains the Hourglass in search of the Eternal Isle.
 |
| Image generated with OpenAI |
It was not my idea to search the ocean for the Eternal Isle – it was Jack’s, and Jack’s alone. I am not an aquatic person by nature. Still, I recognized that, as an adventurer, it would have been folly for me to ignore seventy percent of our planet simply because it didn’t sit well with my nerves. Jack never understood my reservations toward the sea. He always used to remind me that humans began as fish. He said this was why our veins were blue – that the sea still flowed around inside of us, just as it had a billion years ago. I once asked him how being a fish in the past would make me a better swimmer in the present, but I don’t think he heard me.
Jackson Maddox was a local kid, as well as a friend of mine. The first time I saw him, he was searching the schoolyard for dinosaur eggs. I asked if I could join in, and he said yes. We found eight.
I suppose it was lucky that our lives intersected at such a young age, as it gave us numerous summers in which to travel the world together. But even if we hadn’t attended the same elementary school growing up, I’d like to think I would have run into Jack sooner than later, such was the size of our quaint hamlet.
Our paths diverged after our fifth-grade year. While Jack proceeded on to Greenway Harbor’s public middle school, my parents chose for me a far crueler fate: I was to attend Saint Francis, the town’s private academy. And since my parents weren’t spending “all that damn money for nothing,” I was essentially locked into my house every fall, where I remained cloistered through the harsh New England winter, my closest friends becoming my textbooks and college-ruled notebooks. I was released only upon completing finals each spring.
From what I gathered over those years from other neighborhood youth, Jack wasn’t a particularly popular boy during his years at the Greenway Harbor Junior High. He possessed few of the empty virtues that propelled youth to popularity in those days – he didn’t play sports, he wasn’t a particularly gifted student, and he was far too small and skinny to be considered handsome. The kid couldn’t shoot a ball through a hoop if given a hundred tries, and had to use his fingers to recite his multiplication tables. He never gelled his hair.
It wasn’t that Jack was bullied at his school; he was just ignored. Children are practical creatures for the most part, preferring to surround themselves with those people to whom they attach an obvious and immediate significance. As such, Jack was essentially a ghost from September through May.
But… come summer, the tide would turn. For though he was relatively invisible during the school year, Jack’s exceptional summer exploits were common knowledge amongst his peers, and secretly drew widespread respect. Every summer, bored youth would inevitably begin to abandon the social hierarchy of junior high in favor of a small taste of mid-summer adventure. For this, they would come to Jack.
Jack was always pretty easy to find come May – you simply listened. Without fail, the loudest commotion in town would lead you directly to him. On that day, I followed the sounds of hammers and saws to the harbor, where I found Jack pounding away on a steel chain in the marina. I hadn’t seen Jack in nine months – not since the previous summer – but it felt like less than a day as soon as I saw him. He had grown three inches over the school year, but otherwise looked exactly as I had remembered him: shaggy blond hair, suntanned skin, skinny as a pole.
“Ahoy, O’Connor!” was the first thing Jack said to me – yelled, rather – once he saw me standing before him. There was no need small for talk – we hadn’t the time. He dropped his hammer on the ground and put his hands on his hips, smiling audaciously as he sized me up.
“It’s an anchor,” he said afterward, referring to a large piece of scrap metal. “Or at least, it’s gonna be.”
“An anchor for what?” I asked.
“A boat, of course.”
“A boat?”
“A boat, for Christ’s sake.” He gave a nod, and for the first time I noticed the handsome brigantine floating in the water behind him. It was a good-sized ship; one hundred feet long, with a solid oak hull and great white sails snapping in the breeze. Across the bow, “Hourglass” was painted in clean, black letters.
“That’s yours?” I asked, amazed at Jack’s resourcefulness.
He looked upon his ship proudly. “Sure is. Bought her with the gold we found in those Egyptian tombs a few years back – bet you didn’t know I invested it, huh?”
“You bought a boat…” I repeated, still struggling to accept that the wooden island bobbing ever so gently in the water belonged to a middle schooler. “But… why?”
“To sail, of course.”
“Well obviously,” I said nervously, immediately thinking about the time I vomited over the side of my uncle’s yacht on a trip to Hyannisport. “But sail where?”
“Oh, c’mon now, O’Connor,” said Jack. “You know where.”
I looked at him blankly.
Jack leaned in close, until his mouth was mere inches from my ear. “The Eternal Isle,” he whispered dramatically.
“The Eternal…” I smiled, “You’re kidding.” Because he had to be kidding. The Eternal Isle was an urban legend – I doubted anyone outside our little town had ever even heard of it.
“I’m not kidding, O’Connor,” said Jack excitedly, picking up his hammer once more. “I’m going to the Eternal Isle.” He raised his arm to begin hammering again, but then hesitated. “We’re going,” he revised.
As legends go, the Eternal Isle was a rather vague one, with each new teller adding on their own specific details, but the premise always remained the same – that there was an island halfway between the Old World and the Americas which remained lost to time. Those fortunate enough to find the island lived there harmoniously with the native species, which included dragons, griffins, unicorns – any animal you can think of – along with the usual bill of fare (toucans, giraffes, elephants). The island contained the world’s largest waterfalls, its bluest lagoons, its juiciest fruits. Some said it even had a theme park. But by far the greatest thing about the Eternal Isle was that once you arrived, you ceased to age. This detail would prove exceptionally useful to us adventurers, as there is always one more adventure to be found, but rarely the time to find it.
I now looked over at the Hourglass again, but this time with the scrutiny of someone who would one day have to board her. As I watched Jack wallop a bolt through a pre-drilled hole in the scrap iron, I tried my best to hide my apprehension. No, wrong word: hide my fear.
Two weeks after first gazing upon the wooden hull of the Hourglass, I arrived at the harbor again with nothing in hand but a worn canvas duffle. Jack had offered me the position of First Mate aboard his ship, and I had accepted, albeit not without some trepidation.
It was a warm and balmy day, and the marina was far busier than when I’d stopped by in May. I sauntered slowly down the concrete pier that ran perpendicular to the beach, and then made my way onto the wooden boardwalk against which several ships were moored. Once I arrived in front of the Hourglass, my jaw dropped. Jack was there, but not the Jack I had seen two weeks earlier. That Jack – the boy as I knew him – had ceased to exist: Only Captain Jack remained. Captain Jack wore brown pantaloons, a black leather belt, and a tricorn hat with a red feather in the brim. (A phoenix feather, he explained, plucked from the bird as it slept.)
“Ahoy, O’Connor,” Jack said when he saw me. Behind him, a handful of sailors prepared the Hourglass for sea.
“Ahoy, Captain,” I said. “Pretty good turnout, I gather?”
“I’d say,” said Captain Jack proudly, eyeing his crew.
Just then a lean-faced boy with a skeptical face approached Captain Jack and me from the boardwalk.
“Is this the Hourglass?” the boy asked.
“It is,” said Captain Jack proudly.
“Do I need anything to board?”
“Only two legs and a name.”
“Name’s Blake,” said the boy, and then, after looking Jack over, he added, “You sure look the part, don’t ya?”
“I prefer to distinguish myself from the Paryen’tahls,” said Jack.
Blake looked at him blankly. “What the hell’s a Paryen’tahl?” he asked.
Captain Jack – looking stunned – gave me a quick piercing glance, before looking back toward Blake.
“A Paryen’tahl is anyone who pledges allegiance to the Paryen’tahl Empire, of course,” Captain Jack declared, nodding his head in the direction of a massive steel-plated Paryen’tahl battleship moored in the distance, well beyond the Hourglass. The stenciled black letters on the battleship’s side indicated that it was the Sunset.
Blake gave Jack a skeptical glance, as if deciding whether or not he really wanted to accept his post aboard the Hourglass after all. But in the end, he continued his way up the ramp and onto the ship.
“I wonder about some of these men, O’Connor,” said Captain Jack once Blake was out of earshot. “They don’t seem too world savvy, if you take my meaning.”
“Give them time, Captain. They’ve been surrounded by Paryen’tahls their entire lives without even realizing.”
For as long as I had known Jack, he’d been skeptical of the Paryen’tahls, even as we lived amongst them – lived with them. And on this matter, we slightly diverged. For the most part, I’d always found the Paryen’tahls a fair and honest people, striving for what they value most in this life – success and stability – both of which they would gain and lose perpetually in an ongoing drama quite outside of the realms of us small-time adventurers.
Over the next hour, a steady parade of young sailors made their way down the boardwalk and onto the Hourglass. There were kids of all shapes and sizes, all lured by the romance of a summer at sea. By the time we were ready to set sail, Jack was the captain of a twenty-man crew. After Captain Jack delivered a few words of welcome, the Hourglass cast off. As we exited the marina, Jack stood silently looking out to sea, his bronzed cheeks glowing with optimism…
Now would be the time to tell you of the great adventures that befell the crew of the Hourglass over those first few weeks at sea. And I would love to, except for this: there weren’t any. That summer the seas were as calm as they’ve been at any time since Creation. All the things I had feared about the ocean growing up – pirates, giant squid, rogue waves – were nowhere to be seen. Day after day went by with no brigands to fence, no abnormally sized tentacles to hack through, no Leviathan to appease with human sacrifice.
While the unfettered waters sped our journey toward the Eternal Isle, it also made for a restless and discontented crew. They had been expecting entertainment, not a lesson in patience. In mid-June, the Hourglass sailed into the port town of San Lorenzo in the Caribbean, and Captain Jack gave the crew four hours for food and rest before we’d resume our travels. But so unremarkable had been our first few weeks at sea that, when four hours came and went, only part of our crew re-boarded the ship. When a timid sailor named Jimmy whispered to Jack that the island was rife with debauchery, the likes of which he had never seen, Jack – stone-faced and steel-eyed – proceeded to pull up anchor, muttering under his breath that we’d never call to port again.
So continued a summer of routine; a summer of mopping decks, rigging sails, and pulling chains. Slowly but surely the weeks wore on, out of June and into July. And just as the days began to steadily disappear, so too did the crew: Fifteen became twelve; twelve became nine. One by one our fellow shipmates found excuses to leave the Hourglass by way of transfer to the odd freighter, or sailboat, or tug. Excuses ranged from the respectable (ailing family member) to the ludicrous (severely stubbed toe). All were granted their request, of course. After all, no man was a prisoner aboard the Hourglass – any could leave at their choosing. But it was obvious what was happening – the verdict had come in, and it was Jack had lost his way.
On a stifling day in late July, and with the sun beating down upon the ship especially hard, I overheard Blake ask Captain Jack a question that had been on my mind for ages, but that I had not dared ask.
“Hey Captain,” said Blake, “we ever gonna have some fun on this ship or what?”
“We’ll have plenty of adventure on the Eternal Isle,” said Jack. “But we have to get there first. Right now we need speed, not excitement.”
“But the summer’s passin’ by,” said Blake. “It’ll be fall before we know it.”
“Don’t you know anything?” said Jack indignantly. “It is always summer on the Eternal Isle. Mark my words, sailor, once we arrive on the island, you’ll never shiver another day in your life.”
Blake opened his mouth as if to argue further, but then thought better of it and made his way back to the galley, which he continued to mop halfheartedly.
After ten uneventful weeks at sea, only five out of our original crew remained. Besides Jack and myself, there was Blake, little Jimmy Blaine, and Jimmy’s older brother, Emory. For reasons unbeknownst to me, the other three stayed with Captain Jack even while acknowledging the lackluster nature of our travels. Who knows, perhaps they felt boredom at sea was preferable to boredom on land? Or maybe they, like me, were put off by some of the news we’d heard from home over the last several weeks. Stories were already beginning to spread around the ocean that some of the same sailors that had abandoned the Hourglass earlier in the summer had gotten into a heap of trouble with the law back in Greenway Harbor – libations and girls were involved – and were now doing time in a Paryen’tahl jail. None of us knew if these stories were true, but they were enough to keep us on the Hourglass through July and into August.
Once August came, the resilient blue skies that had followed our ship through June and July became a rarity. Nearly every day huge columns of cumulous clouds billowed skyward in all directions, and every evening they would unleash their wrathful torrents back into the ocean. Come nightfall, our small crew would gather on deck and watch the heat lightning illuminate the boundless sky.
While we managed to avoid the storms for a while, there was one evening in late August that two storms began merging directly in front of us. Worse, the winds of the combined storms began to pull the Hourglass straight into their dueling vortices at a breakneck pace. Once again it was Blake who served reason to our heedless captain.
Captain Jack watched Blake approach with obvious consternation. “What’s on your mind, seaman?” Captain Jack said once Blake stood beside him.
“The crew wants to know why we’ve not turned away from the storm,” said Blake.
“I thought the crew was anxious for some excitement?”
“We want adventure, Captain. Not death.”
“Our destination is the Eternal Isle. We don’t deviate for storms.”
Blake muttered something inaudible under his breath.
“If you have something to say,” said Captain Jack hotly, “spit it out.”
Blake scratched his neck awkwardly. “It’s just that…” he hesitated. “It’s just that we’re getting too old for this, Jack. And so are you.”
“Christ,” snarled Captain Jack impatiently. “You’re sounding like a Paryen’tahl!”
“Well, we’re all going to be Paryen’tahls someday. Maybe it’s time we started acting like them.”
“Nobody on this ship will become a Paryen’tahl unless they choose to.”
“Yeah, well, maybe we choose to,” said Blake. “Because this is kid’s stuff, Jack – sailin’ round the world, lookin’ for somethin’ that may not even exist.”
“Better to look and be sure for ourselves,” said Jack.
“No it ain’t, Jack. It ain’t and you know it. Look, if there were some Eternal Isle out there, the Paryen’tahls would’ve found it years ago. They wouldn’t let us look otherwise. The crew is tired. We’ve had enough.”
“If you want to abandon your ship and your captain, that’s your business,” said Jack, “but don’t be talking like you speak for the rest of the crew.”
“Thing is, Jack, I do. Jimmy, Emory – we all wanna get off this boat. There are better ways to spend a summer. Or what’s left of it.”
Jack was speechless, though with disappointment or fury it was hard to tell.
“And where is it you intend to go, exactly?” exclaimed Jack. “We’re out in the middle of the ocean, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“We’ll swim to shore,” said Blake.
“Swim!? You’ll drown!”
“Like hell we will.”
“You’re bluffing!”
Blake sighed. “See ya ’round, Jack.” He looked to me. “O’Connor.”
Captain Jack and I then watched in horror as Blake, Jimmy, and Emory walked up to the side of the ship and leapt overboard, diving headfirst into the cerulean ocean.
It took a moment for this mutiny to sink in properly – both for Jack and for me. After it had, Jack turned to me. “You going too?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’m going to follow my captain.”
Clearly relieved that Blake had not been speaking for me as well as the others, Jack swelled up his tattooed chest and turned toward the gathering storm.
“Then onward we sail,” he said. “The Eternal Isle is close, O’Connor – I feel it in me bones.”
It was the worst storm we’d ever seen in all our adventuring – the mother of all tempests. Rain fell in torrents from the charcoal sky with violent fury, cutting into our faces like shards of metal, stinging our eyes, clouding our vision. The newly-polished deck was slick as glass as we frantically tied rigging, adjusted sails, then tied down again. More than once Jack or I slid across the entire length of the ship as the Hourglass rose and fell over the white-crested waves. Only well-timed appeals to railing posts saved us from our watery ends.
The storm raged on for hours, exhausting both our bodies and our spirits. My muscles were soon limp with fatigue, my eyes burning with saltwater. Wrapped in netting, I had been hit by so many waves that I was becoming numb to their sting. I no longer cared if my nose became waterlogged, no longer cared if I was swept off the ship, no longer cared if the Hourglass survived the storm at all. I had given up. If the sea wanted me that badly, I was hers for the taking.
With the last of my strength I lifted my head and searched the gray mist for Jack. He was fifteen yards from me, sitting cross-legged around the mast of the ship, clinging to it as though he were one of the koalas we had seen five summers before in the jungles of Australia. Through the darkness I saw that his head was cocked toward the east: Even amidst the chaos that enveloped our ship, Jack had still found the strength to look toward the direction of the Eternal Isle.
And then – just as I was beginning to think the storm would go on for all eternity – the waves mellowed, the thunder softened, and the downpour became nothing more than a trickle. Moments later, all was still.
After taking a minute to catch our breaths, Captain Jack left the mast and made his way to the back of the boat. Water dripped off his glistening back as he placed himself behind the ship’s wheel and turned it 180 degrees counter-clockwise – due east. Shortly thereafter, I too made my way to the wheel, taking my place by his side.
“Why is it you stay with me, O’Connor?” Captain Jack asked.
“Because you’re my captain,” I said. “And because you can’t sail these waters alone.”
“You’re never alone on these waters,” said Jack, and I knew he was referring to the Paryen’tahls. “Just think, O’Connor,” he added with a smile, “there will be no Paryen’tahls at all on the Eternal Isle. Not a one.”
A taut silence followed. “What is it you hate so much about the Paryen’tahls?” I asked at length. There was a tension to my voice, but Captain Jack showed no surprise at the question. It was as if he’d been expecting it for some time.
“I don’t hate them,” he said softly. “I just don’t want to join them.”
“Everybody says that,” I said. “But everyone does join them.”
“So what?” shot back Jack.
“So why do you think everyone becomes a Paryen’tahl, if they don’t really want to?”
“They see no other option, I suppose.”
“And you see another option?”
“Well, I look. Others don’t look.”
There was a lull in conversation, during which we watched the moon’s alabaster reflection dance in the ocean’s rippling surface.
“Do you ever think…” I swallowed a breath of humid, midnight air.
“Yeah?”
“Do you ever think that the Paryen’tahls don’t look for the Eternal Isle because they know there’s nothing to be found?”
His right hand still on the wheel, Jack held his left arm straight out in front of him, palm up, as if holding the Eternal Isle in his hand.
“You see that light in the distance?” he said.
I squinted into the inky night.
“Maybe…” I said.
Jack smiled. “It’s the Eternal Isle, sailor, I’m sure of it.”
I had lied, of course. I didn’t see anything at all. But the fervor in his eyes was beyond anything I had ever seen in him – in anyone – and I very much did not want to be the one to shatter his dream. And so I climbed back atop the pile of netting on which I had waited out the storm and proceeded to fall asleep beneath a blanket of stars.
When I woke the next morning the skies were blue and clear in every direction as far as the eye could see. Jack had jiggered the ship’s wheel into position with a bit of twine, and was now sitting up on the stern, looking behind the Hourglass, back toward Greenway Harbor, where it lay hidden by the curvature of the planet. Once I had worked the sleep out of my legs, I joined him.
“Morning, Captain,” I said.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me. Upon closer inspection I noticed that he was pale as death. Feeling the seeds of panic rising up from my stomach, I followed his gaze. It took a while before I saw anything at all, but eventually I found his reason for despair; a pale gray dot had appeared on the horizon.
“Is it them?” I asked.
Captain Jack nodded.
“Why would they be coming after us?” I asked. “What have we done?”
“Nothing,” said Jack. “We’ve just run out of time.”
“September,” I said.
Jack nodded.
Abruptly noticing that there was practically no breeze to speak of, I added, “Well, if we don’t move, neither will they. And once the wind starts back up, we’ll beat them on the open ocean.”
Captain Jack looked up at the dead and drooping sails. “No, we won’t,” he said. “It’s the Sunset. She has an engine. She’ll be on us within the hour.”
I looked back in the direction of the dot on the horizon, wondering how on earth Jack had recognized the ship by name at this distance. It was as though he had been expecting the Sunset to appear.
Over the next hour, the occasional breeze pushed us haphazardly forward, but Jack was right – it was not enough to outrun the Sunset. It was not even enough to keep us at a distance. The Sunset grew larger and larger, until she pulled up right beside us, her steel sides towering over us like prison walls. Shortly thereafter, a dozen grappling hooks shot forth from her sides and attached themselves to the wooden hull of the Hourglass.
Even as we gazed up at it, a middle-aged Paryen’tahl officer, a woman, leaned over the side of the Sunset and called on us to surrender. As soon as I saw the woman, a lump the size of an egg formed in my throat. The reason for my disbelief was not that we had been overtaken, or that we had been called upon to surrender; it was that I knew the Paryen’tahl leaning over the side of the Sunset. I knew her very well, indeed.
“M-m-m-Mom?!” I gasped.
“You have no just cause to commandeer this vessel, Paryen’thal,” Jack said. “Leave us to our mission!”
“Hello to you too, Jackson,” said my mother flatly. She then looked around the nearly vacant Hourglass. “Where are all your friends, boys? Last summer there was a whole troupe of you.”
“They all left,” I said. “Paul Livingston has been having parties all summer. Emory said they drink beer.”
“Oh they better not,” said my mother with an intimidating grin. “I may just have to have a word with Paul’s parents.”
“Stay in character, O’Connor,” Jack ordered. “You’re a sailor, dammit.”
“Jackson! Language!”
Jack looked to his feet. “Sorry ma’am.”
My mother now eyed the Hourglass skeptically. “So that’s what this thing is? A ship? My, you boys certainly have some powerful imaginations.”
She didn’t say this meanly, just matter-of-factly. But as soon as she had said it, the Hourglass began to shrink in size before me, as did the ocean around us, and in an instant I found I was no longer on a brigantine in the middle of the Atlantic, but rather on a mass of logs and two-by-fours, clumsily nailed together, and tethered to the river’s shore by two mossy ropes attached to nearby trees. I was no longer the First Mate – Jack was no longer my captain. We were just two boys wasting time on summer break.
Seeing his world falling to pieces, Jack stepped toward my mother and said, pleadingly, “Mrs. O’Connor, you have to let us sail on. We are very close to finding a very special island. I regret that I can’t tell you any more about it, but I assure you that its discovery is pivotal to your son’s and my future.”
“Okay, that is quite enough tomfoolery, you two.” My mother’s voice was becoming agitated – I did not want my mother to become agitated. “You’re far too old for this. You both start high school in a week and instead of preparing, you’re climbing about that filthy junk pile every day as though you were half your age.”
“But Mom…”
“I made fajitas, James.”
Fajitas were my favorite. Still are.
“His rank is Commander, ma’am,” said Jack, though I could hear defeat in his voice.
My mother surveyed the Hourglass again. “And I suppose you boys paid for all that lumber?”
Jack’s face reddened.
“Figured as much. Jackson, is your mother coming to pick you up?”
After looking back toward the empty Hourglass, Jack turned toward my mother and smiled his terribly convincing smile. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “My mother said she’d be by before five.”
My mother looked at her watch. “Well, okay. You stay off of that junk heap until she comes, you hear me? You wait on the bank, there.”
“Yes ma’am,” said Jack.
With that, my mother put her arm around my shoulder and directed me toward the car.
“You’re a good captain, Jack,” I yelled over my mother’s freckled arm. “And don’t worry, we’ll find it next summer – I feel it in me bones!”
Jack didn’t say anything. He didn’t even smile. He just nodded.
“I can’t believe you, James,” my mother scolded as we walked to the minivan. “I know you boys stole that wood from the lumberyard. How am I supposed to reimburse Mr. Johnson? Go up to him and hand him a check made out to ‘stolen lumber’?”
My mother’s voice trailed off, because, try as I may, I couldn’t pay attention to her. All I could think about was my last image of Jack, sitting alone on the bank of that muddy old river, abandoned by his entire crew. He’d never see the Eternal Isle after all.
I never sailed again after that August day. In fact, that summer was the last time most of us who had set foot aboard the Hourglass went on any real adventures at all. I started at my new private high school the next week. It was only after coming home after my first day, sick with worry over how I’d deal with nine months of upperclassmen, that my mother took me aside and asked me – rather, demanded – a list of all the different places Jack and I had ever played over the past decade.
As it would turn out, Jack never went home that night after all. His mother had never actually arranged to pick him up – he had told her he’d find a ride. After my mother and I left him on that riverbank, Jack had (evidently) climbed back aboard his empty ship, and untied the Hourglass from the shore. He never ate dinner with his family that night, nor fell asleep in his own bed. Jack was sailing long after my belly was engorged with fajitas, and long after I was showered and clean and had laid out the clothes for my first day of high school. Jack remained at sea even as I drifted off into a nervous sleep that night.
Fifty men from this town and the next town over searched the Scioto River for two weeks looking for Jack, but they never found anything. The only proof that he had ever even been on that great river at all was a wet pile of gray and black newspaper pulp discovered lying upon the muddy bank. And nobody would have likely ever even noticed that pile of newspaper had there not laid, in the middle of the muck, a duck feather spray-painted bright crimson, its filthy stem broken in half. Amazingly, those fifty men never found the twenty-foot pile of junk Jack had gone to sea with. The Hourglass was never seen again.
The men eventually gave up their search, and in time, so too did Jack’s parents. The local paper ran a story explaining how Jack had died, and when there would be a service for him at the local Methodist church, the one both Jack and I attended growing up. I went to Jack’s funeral. Dozens of classmates were there – some cried. They all talked about Jack as though he was gone. But as an optimistic child of thirteen, I didn’t understand their sadness. I myself wasn’t sad – not really sad – because I knew better; I knew that Jack had really taken that raft – that ship – out to sea purposely. I still imagine him out there to this day, an ageless thirteen-year-old with sun-bleached hair and sunbaked skin. And I imagine sixteen ragged sails propelling him eternally eastward, out of the interminable banality in which we all live and into the ethereal glow of yesterday.
