Bring on a little blood. That’s something I could deal with.

Dear Trevor,

 I’m sitting here at the Laughing Gull. Sung-Hee keeps coming to my table to try to drip a few more drops of her coffee into my overflowing cup. She’s trying to read over my shoulder. I take a small amount of joy trying to secretly block her view.

 It’s ghostly quiet in the restaurant today. In the whole town. The waves are quiet. The fog is thick. The residents are sequestered in their shacks. “It’s that damn boat,” whispered Sung-Hee. Everyone whispers on these days. “I wish it would hurry up and come so I could get a few more customers in here.”

 Ezra left a few minutes ago after another one of his unsettling conversations. More about forgiveness. When he was signing for our meal, he said, “You’re so inconsistent. Y—you’re more than happy to let me pick up the tab for your fish and coffee.”

 “You offered. And you’re the one who invited me to lunch. I was fine in my cabin.”

 “Yes, b—but you accepted. Now you need to let someone else pay the price for you.” He left in the middle of the riddle. I assume he’s talking about your offer, Trevor, even though I don’t remember mentioning it to him.

 I don’t much like your offer. I liked our earlier bargain better. I took on your fear of Mudgett, then you got a bloody nose. I could handle that more easily. Bring on a little blood. That’s something I could deal with.

 If Ezra stays true to his word and leaves on the next boat, I will miss him greatly.

 Dad

I’d rather go down in blood than go down beneath the moss.

Dear Trevor,

 I still haven’t heard from you. It makes me nervous. Your letters were the only rhythm to my rhythm-less existence.

 Even the silent postman seems a bit shaken. You’ve become part of his rhythm, too. When I walked in to his tiny post office a few hours ago, his face had an actual expression on it for the first time that I can remember. It wasn’t quite sorrow. It was more nervousness, I think.

 The smell of blood drew me away from Carl’s numb side and back to this seaside town. I knew what it was from the first subtle scent. It was that bloody boat. Just the smell of it made the woods seem even more dead—more lacking in sensation.

 I stumbled out of the trees into the dim light of this place. I followed the smell down to the pier, just in time to see the boat pulling away from the dock. Sung-Hee came out of her restaurant, wiping her hands on her dingy apron. She looked at me with only the slightest of interest. Then she turned and walked back inside—she had two new customers on whom she could foist her miserable coffee.

 The boat still terrifies me, but it pulls on me, too. I think it is the only choice I have here. Because I can’t stay in this in-between town. And now I know what the woods are. They’re death. They’re hell. So what does that make the boat?

 If it’s heaven, it’s a terrible kind of heaven. If it takes me to another level of hell, at least it’s a hell with some kind of something. I mean it’s not nothing. It may be all blood and violence, but I tell you, Trevor, that scares me less than those woods. I’d rather go down in blood than go down beneath the moss.

 Trevor, write me back. I’m on the brink. I need to hear from you.

 Dad

Something saved me.

Dear Trevor,

 I haven’t heard back from you for a number of days. I’ve been rereading the letters you sent during my absence over and over. My God, Trevor, you’ve been living. So much of it may look like pain to you, but all of it looks like life to me.

 That’s the lesson of the woods, I think. That true death is not doing. It is simply being. The woods, I believe now, are hell. That is where life really stops. The best case scenario in the woods is a kind of nothingness—a stopping of doing. A stopping of living. A burrowing under the moss and a returning to the soil. The worst case? That is Julia and the others with her on the far side of the chasm. With her? That is not the proper term. No one is with her. She is all alone. She is pure, longing loneliness.

 Your life, Trevor, with your idiot of a basketball coach making you miserable every day, is so far from this. That may be all that you write, but here’s what I read: I read that Mr. Schick gave you a great gift by making you feel miserable. You felt something. So many teachers and coaches seem bent on making you feel nothing. I read that you forged a new friendship with this boy Brian, who obsesses over cars. God bless him! He cares about something!

 In the woods, Trevor, there is nothing to care about. That’s why Carl sat down. That’s why he ignored my pulls and pleas. He sat there, uncaring, as his body sank into the damp dirt. The wet didn’t stir him, nor did my bullying. What did I have to tempt him? His miserable cabin? Sung-Hee’s lousy coffee? My companionship?

He sat there while I yelled at him. He sat while I told him stories, while I talked about you, while I reminded him about our boxing matches, while I recited bits of Yeats to him. I told him every tale I could remember, about getting in fights or getting drunk or hurting myself or having a belly laugh. I talked to him about the taste of a tangerine at Christmas and the way the sharp juice stings your mouth with flavor. I talked about watching your brother Rhett crash his bike and imbed gravel into the flesh of his knee. I talked about the feel of your mother’s hair against my mouth, about breathing in her scent.

Carl sat there. For days, I think. Maybe weeks. Long enough for the moss to grow onto him. I’d scrape it away, but he barely noticed. He breathed at me.

I nearly sat down next to Carl. But something saved me. A smell. A scent made it all the way into those smothering woods.

It was the smell of blood. I followed it back.

Dad

I will lie down here, I thought, just for a moment.

Dear Trevor,

Believe me when I tell you I care about your life. It’s nearly all I’ve cared about since the first time I received a letter from you up here. I would love to come to your basketball game. If I could find it in myself to shed a tear, I would shed them for the times we did not get to play together at any sport or game—basketball, soccer, a simple game of catch, a pillow fight, a race to the mailbox and back. A spitting contest off the deck.

The woods simply overwhelmed me. I am a little better today, a condition which fills me with its own kind of dread, because I know I must go back into the woods.

Will it help if I continue my story for you? Here goes:

I followed Julia and Martin’s trail deeper into the trees until I began to notice a sound. It started as a distant, muffled buzz, but I recognized it even then. It was a river. It had such a steady, solid noise that I thought it might be a waterfall. The sound was a comfort—like running into an old friend in a strange city. A river meant life. Rivers started somewhere and went somewhere. They proceeded, unlike tides and fog and everything else in this world that simply seemed to come and go.

I was desperate for any kind of company, because the woods were the most alone place I have ever been. No animals. No people. Even the tree branches were out of reach. It was a smothering kind of loneliness. I thought maybe I would never see people again. I longed for humans. I would have kissed Sung-Hee on the lips if I had seen her.

The sound of the river was the closest thing to a friend I had. For the first time since I entered the forest, I quickened my step.

In the silence, the sound must have traveled for many miles, because it seemed I walked for days without reaching it. The saturated moss sucked at my feet. I slipped more and more as I went along, each time covering my clothes in green stains. The stains are still there now—green-streaked souvenirs of a trip I’d rather sever from my memory.

I was tired, but not in the way you might get tired from running lines in your basketball practice—yes, I read that letter. I was short of breath, much like I had become late in my cancer, when the air seemed less worth breathing. The moss sucked at my feet from below. The dark, moist air sucked at my mouth, seeming to pull any usable oxygen out of it.

But I went on, stopping briefly at the bottom of a rise in the land. The sound of the river grew louder here. I began to struggle up the rise and determined that when I reached the top, I would lie down and rest. It seemed as I went up, that gravity increased its pull on me. Each lift of a foot became a struggle of determination. I stopped halfway to the top.

“I will lie down here,” I thought, “just for a moment.” I did so, sprawling on the damp moss. I closed my eyes and tried to catch my breath, but the air here was damper than ever. It was like breathing in Jell-o.

Lying there, the side of my head was half sunk into the deep moss. I could hear the squishing, sucking sound through my submerged ear. I could feel a kind of tingly, creeping movement over my wet skin, as if bugs were crawling slowly up from the moss and onto me. I wanted to scream, to jump to my feet, but I was so tired.

I laid there, Trevor, thinking that perhaps I would just breathe in and out one more time and then go to sleep. It had been so long since I’d had a really good sleep. But I dreaded lying their by myself. I wanted to find someone—anyone. I longed to be not alone. I longed even for Martin and Julia’s pathetic company.

It was that longing—or that dread of loneliness—that pushed me to my feet. My face and clothing were wet and green now, like the moss I’d lied in. I struggled mindlessly to the top of the hill and nearly tripped over Martin’s body.

He laid there, his eyes mostly closed, his big chest rising and falling ever so slightly. Moss covered him nearly completely. It grew on his skin, as if he were made of rotting wood. One dripping eye was exposed. His gaping fish mouth sucked the moist air in and out. I screamed.

“Help me!” a voice called in response. It was Julia. I looked around in the dim light. “Help me, please!” she cried again. The sound of rushing water nearly drowned her out. “I heard a voice!” she cried. “Is someone there?”

I could just see her, waving a hand frantically, on the far side of the chasm. I had no idea how I might get to her. I had no desire to stay where I was, next to the moss-choked body beside me.

I need to beg for your patience again, Trevor. I am tired. I need to try to catch my breath again. I’ll write again soon. I’ve told you most of it, anyhow.

Dad

This is my terrible Christmas gift to you.

Dear Trevor,

The boat came and went today. I’m still here. I can’t get on it.

Gordon was sitting with me on my porch, running his fingers through his longish, gray hair, when we heard the sound of the train. He jerked rigid, then grabbed my leg. “You hear it, too, don’t you? That means she’s coming. That means I have a choice to make. It is time to act. Time for the experimentum crucis.”

“Eh?”

“The crucial experiment. Literally, the experiment of the cross.”

I followed Gordon to the train depot, where we could already see the old train screeching to a halt. A minute later, the door opened and the newcomers started stepping off, about a dozen in total. Like always there were three basic types. Some climbed off the train and wandered directly into the woods, as if the trip was an orchestrated camping trip. These ones never said much. A young blonde woman—probably 25—walked by me on her way toward the trees. She looked like she’d just stepped out of a college lecture, with her brow still furrowed from a debate.

“Where are you going?” I asked her. She turned toward me, startled a bit by the sound, but when she saw me, she shook her head. I mean she shook it as if she were clearing out cobwebs. She frowned even more and walked past me toward the trees. When she reached the nearest one—a rough-barked Douglas fir, she put her hand on it and stopped there, as if catching her breath. She stroked the bark, looked back my way for the briefest of seconds, then stepped past the Doug fir into the shadows.

The second type were the wanderers. The people like me. They look completely baffled by the experience. A woman with unkempt hair and bright red lipstick almost asked me a question, but all she could manage was, “Do you?” She turned a bit frantically away and  followed the rest of the wandering crowd. As she walked, she kept trying to smooth down her hair.

As always, there were a few Crazies who led the way. The wanderers always follow them right down to the dock. I always follow them, too.

There were three Crazies this time—a fat Hispanic man in a freshly pressed white shirt, a thin-faced old woman with straight, steel-grey hair that fell to her shoulders, and a young man with rectangular glasses and a huge smile. This young man—I’d put him at about 25, too—led the way today. He shouted a laugh when he stepped off the train and practically ran for the dock. Gordon huffed along behind him with the others. I followed, farther back. It’s funny how people follow someone who is sure of himself, even if they have no idea where he is going. That young man would have made an incredible salesman. He sold his destination.

When we reached the dock, the boat had not yet arrived.

Gordon had a small, ratty suitcase with him. “Going somewhere?” I asked him. He smiled grimly without looking my direction. He was staring with everyone else, out into the fog. “What’s in the bag?” I asked.

“Very little,” he said to the fog. “Mostly just scribbles. A few pencil stubs.” He paused. “Am I the only one with luggage?”

I didn’t answer, because the boat arrived.

I know I complain about how little my five senses work in this half land, but when that boat came in, I wished I could have cut them off completely. The sight of all that blood, the smell of all that blood—I wanted to run back to my little cabin and climb under the covers.

The woman captain looked through her beaten, puffy eyes as she eased that wreck of a boat alongside the dock. The young man with rectangular glasses grabbed a line from the dock and tossed it expertly around a cleat on the boat’s deck. With a few quick spins of his wrist, the boat was tied off. He jumped from the dock to the deck without hesitation.

“Here I go,” whispered Gordon. He moved with the crazies toward the boat. When it was his turn, the young man smiled at Gordon’s little suitcase and said, “Can’t bring that, Uncle. Toss it away and climb aboard.”

“Ahh, it’s just a few tiny things.”

“A few tiny things that can’t come with you. Hurry and toss it. I want to get going!”

I rushed up to Gordon’s side. “Going where?” I asked. I think I sounded a bit desperate.

“You know!” the young man shouted. “Everyone knows! Every tongue declares our destination! Now climb aboard or cast off.”

Gordon moved to step on. The young man blocked his way, nodding at Gordon’s bag. When Gordon hesitated, the young man yanked the line from the cleat and threw it back onto the dock. The woman captain looked at me. I could not hold her gaze. It was so terrible. She was so beaten, so bruised, so swollen everywhere.

I turned and ran—yes, I ran—into the Laughing Gull. Sung-Hee had coffee waiting. She was ready for the confused crowd. I grabbed a napkin and, using the coffee, painted this portrait of the captain’s battered, feminine face.

This is my terrible Christmas gift to you.

Dad

If that boat comes in tomorrow, I wish you would draw a picture of it.

Dear Dad,

I remember that stupid Play-Doh toy! I have no idea if I ever played with it or not. Boy, do I ever remember that feeling of guilt. I thought it was Mom who caught me. It was you? I guess one authority figure is as good as another when you’re four.

We have a couple of Christmas photos that you and I are both in. I’m wearing pajamas and I’m so little in them that I guess it makes sense that I don’t remember you.

I talked to Mom about taekwando lessons. We already have a Y membership, and she said if it doesn’t cost extra and I can get a ride that she supposes I can do it. She said I need to figure out about any extra costs. Mom says that things that sound free always end up costing her a bunch of money. I think it’s hard to be Mom. I bet she puts up with all sorts of stress that I don’t know about, money-wise. Anyway, I’m planning on catching a ride with Mudgett’s mom after school. Hope it’s not too weird.

If that boat comes in tomorrow, I wish you would draw a picture of it. Maybe I can look at the picture and help you figure out what the boat is for. There’s got to be some way to figure out where it goes and what happens to the people who get on it.

It’s the day before Christmas Eve down here. Christmas Eve Eve, as Rhett calls it. I’m just kind of hanging out. I got up early this morning, before anyone else, and went into the living room and lied on the couch under a blanket. I turned on the Christmas tree lights. I like the way they turn the room all warm looking, even when it’s freezing cold. I like to blur my eyes a little bit—you know, by squinting—so that all the colors kind of fuzz together.

I’ve got to wrap everyone’s presents today. Want to know what I got them? I got Mom this picture frame with a photograph of a sunset in it. I took the photo from our deck. It’s pretty cool. And the frame is round. I think she’ll like it. I got Steffan a license plate holder for his truck that says, “Old Chevys Never Die.” Rhett helped me pick that one out. I got Keith this thing you put a soccer ball in. It has a string on it. You hold the string and then kick the ball. The package says it’s “The Ultimate Training Tool.” I got Rhett a used White Stripes CD called Elephant. He used to have it, then he lost it. It was only $4.99. And I got Rhonda a pair of gloves. Rhonda’s hard to shop for, because she’s a girl, but not a girly girl.

I just realized I didn’t get you anything. Is there something you’d like? Oh, and if I forget to write you on Christmas, Merry Christmas, Dad.

Your son,

Trevor

Tomorrow, I think the boat is coming.

Dear Trevor,

You are an astonishing son. An amazing son. A man, perhaps, at least for a few moments.

What can I say to you? You are as good as any man and better than most. If I could sleep, I would dream that in some small way, I helped. Even the possibility that I helped is enough to get me through today.

Tomorrow? Tomorrow, I think the boat is coming. That awful boat, covered in blood.

Dad

All blood and dirt and broken skin.

Dear Dad,

Mudgett gave me a serious bloody nose. Then Mudgett got the crap beat out of him, but not by me.

Earlier, in social studies, I said, “You still feel the need to fight me?”

“I ain’t no wussy boy like you,” Mudgett said.

I didn’t see him again until after school. At three o’clock, the last bell rang. Science class ended and I walked toward the back of the gym. Donnie Joad asked me where I was going. “No place,” I said. He asked if Mudgett was going there, too. I didn’t answer and two seconds later, Donnie went running away from me to spread the news. He can’t help himself, I guess.

By the time I got to the back of the gym, Mudgett was already there. He’d put his taekwando jacket on, but still wore jeans. He looked pretty cool, for a dork. I wondered if Mom would pay for me to take taekwando lessons.

“You ready to get your butt whipped, wussy boy?”

“If you’d just stop calling me that, we wouldn’t have to fight,” I said.

“Oh, we’re gonna fight. I’m gonna show all the ladies just what a wussy boy you are.” He pronounced it, “lay-dees.” He got into his taekwando pose. He looked like he was ready to break a board.

I got into my boxing pose. The problem with boxing lessons through the mail is that it’s like following instructions. I mean, I still have to think about all the stuff you said. I made sure my left foot was forward. I bent my knees. I thought about my back being straight. I looked down to make sure I was on my toes. I looked up and pow! Mudgett whopped me right in the nose. Blood started spurting everywhere. In about five seconds it made a red path down the front of my shirt. I think it freaked out Mudgett more than me.

A bunch of people started coming around the corner of the gym. Donnie, Brian Haase, Misty Lee and some other girls, that jerk David Gilman and his stupid friend, Jordan Sackett. Once a crowd formed, Mudgett got all agitated and started jumping around. “Hey, wussy boy!” he yelled at me. “You’re a bleeder!”

I got into my stance again. Left foot and shoulder forward, on my toes, knees bent, hands up, elbows in, fists relaxed. The blood running down the back of my throat didn’t bother me much. You were right. I didn’t die or anything. I started sliding toward Mudgett. He came at me again with his fist, but I was ready this time. I blocked it and jabbed him in the chin. He stepped back, almost into the crowd. Then he tried this big roundhouse kick and completely missed me. He spun around and totally nailed David Gilman right in the nuts.

Gilman let out a big groan and bent over. The whole crowd let out this huge gasp, then started laughing. In only a couple seconds, Gilman stood back up and all the laughter stopped. It was the first time I’d ever seen him without that stupid grin on his face. He marched up to Mudgett. He must have been eight inches taller and a good hundred pounds heavier. Mudgett backed away until he ran into the gym wall. Gilman said something to him I couldn’t quite hear. His voice didn’t sound quite right. Mudgett started muttering and shaking his head back and forth. Gilman grabbed him and bounced him off the gym wall hard. I could hear the back of Mudgett’s head crack against the concrete blocks. As Mudgett bounced forward, Gilman drove his fist into Mudgett’s face and bounced him off the wall again. Gilman hit him again and Mudgett crumpled to the ground. Gilman fell on him then and started pounding on him. In the face, on the body, wherever. Gilman was beating the snot out of him.

That’s about when I realized that I was screaming at Gilman to stop. I grabbed him around the throat until he gagged. Gilman tumbled over and rolled to his feet, coming at me in a crouch, like a wrestler. I fell into my stance, without thinking about it that time.

I could tell the crowd was yelling stuff at us, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. My ears were full of a buzzing, pounding sound.

I jabbed with my left. Gilman slapped it away with a big paw and circled around me. I turned to face him and jabbed with my left again. I grazed his chin. I popped back into position. He swung his big fist around toward my head. I blocked his fist with my hand, but I didn’t stop it. The blow to my head was hard enough to knock me to the ground.

As I was standing back up, he hit me again and knocked me down again. I stood up and backed away, getting back into my stance. Left forward. On my toes. I went in with a jab. Then another quick one. Each time I jabbed, his head would swing away from my left hand.

I jabbed him again. Hard. Then followed even harder with my right cross. One-two. Pow. I hit his chin with my center knuckle so hard it felt like I broke my finger. Gilman’s chin snapped up. I could hear his teeth click together. He looked at the sky, then fell straight over backwards.

I was a mess. Mudgett was a worse mess, all blood and dirt and broken skin. I grabbed Donnie and Brian and we helped Mudgett to his feet and ran around the far side of the gym.

“Can you walk?” I asked him.

“Barely.” He was hard to understand. I bet his mouth was full of blood. Maybe even a busted tooth.

“We better get out of here.” I watched him stumble to his mom’s car, wondering how he was going to explain his face to her. I ran out to the parking lot, where Rhett and Rhonda were waiting for me in Rhett’s crappy car.

“What happened to you?” asked Rhonda.

“Fight.” I said.

“With who?”

“Mudgett. Then Gilman.”

“Holy crap. How’d you do?”

“I think I lost to Mudgett. But I think maybe I beat Gilman.”

“Geez.”

When we got home, Rhonda helped me clean up before mom got off of work. Mom will probably hear about it from some teacher and then I’ll hear about it. But right now, as I write this letter, I feel OK. And that was the last day of school before Christmas break!

Your son,

Trevor

The only blood to be found in this place seems to be on the boat.

Dear Trevor,

Don’t worry about David Gilman and his “wussy boy” comment. He’s one of those guys who says whatever sounds cool that day. Tomorrow he’ll be making fun of his best friend if he hears someone doing that.

David Gilman is the stupidest kind of bully. He is not worth considering. Your Mrs. Henry, however, is a different matter. She is certainly worth a study.

I think I understand what she is saying with her theories. If God is more than bunk, than time and space and life and death have to be meaningless to him. Otherwise, what would the point be of praying for your brother to have a safe trip.  You’re praying that God will somehow go with him into the future, in another location, and impact the surface of the road he drives on and keep other cars from running into him. Would it be possible, Mrs. Henry is postulating, to pray for something that also happened in the past? Would it be possible to make an oath with someone, with God as your witness, who was on the other side of the world or even, dare I say it, dead? I have an idea or two on how we might test her theory, but it would be great to hear more from Mrs. Henry.

Boxing has become a bit of a hobby with Carl and me. We wrapped our fists in a couple of Sung-Hee’s dish cloths and punched a sack of beach sand and rags. It doesn’t have the heft of your heavy bag, but then again, either do my punches. I can’t seem to hit the bag hard enough to tire out my hands. Carl derides me for my weak arms, but his don’t seem to hit any harder.

We tried a little sparring as well. Carl slipped a hard jab through and hit me right in the nose. I expected blood to come out and kept touching my nostrils with my rag-wrapped hands, but no blood.

The only blood to be found in this place seems to be on the boat and its bloody woman captain. As far as I can recall, the boat hasn’t been here in a while, which means we should be seeing it any day. I long for and dread its appearance, as well as the appearance of newcomers. Believe me, any diversion is precious, but each newcomer who arrives and then leaves is another painful reminder that I am still here.

Dad

There are no calendars here. No clocks. No seasons.

Dear Trevor,

I don’t know what day it is. I don’t know how long it takes your letters to get here. I go to the post office and pick them up and go back to the post office and drop off a reply. That’s all I’ve got for you.

There are no calendars here. No clocks. No seasons. My hair grows, but that’s about the only way I have to track time. I should start keeping track of how many times Carl and I have cut each other’s hair with the kitchen shears. No daily newspaper. No monthly bills and no checks to write. No paydays. No weekend football games and no church on Sunday. No Sundays, as far as that goes. Nothing happens on a regular schedule except the train and the boat and honestly, they might not be regularly scheduled either. I really have no idea how often they come, just that they both come every now and then and when the train pulls in, the boat pulls in.

When the boat does pull in, that woman captain is always onboard. What does she look like? My God, it is hard to look at her and almost as hard to make a record of it now. You ask, is she covered in blood? She is dripping in it. I think she is likely the source of all the blood around the boat, but it’s hard to tell if the blood she’s covered in is her own. It may well be the blood of her victims, if that is how it works. Or she may be the victim herself. Is she the butcher at the slaughterhouse, or the cow with the slit throat? Either way, she is covered in blood.

It’s strange to sit in this little town, with its quiet fogginess and then see this bloody hag come creaking in on her tub. If the water is especially calm, her blood actually stains her wake. That’s how much of it there is.

It’s hard to see beneath the blood, because it is black and crusted in her hair like so many meat drippings. But every now and then I do see. Her face is a mess of scars. And not just scars, but open wounds. From week to week they change. One day her left eye may be swollen shut. The next time it may be her right. Her ears are cauliflowered and cut. Her lips are swollen and bleeding. Her mouth never opens, which is honestly a relief, because I’m sure it would either be a howl of madness or a howl of pain.

Hers is an image I will never get used to, but after countless viewings, I began to notice other surprising things. Her face is so covered in blood that it’s hard to see, but it is not an old face. It was likely well-formed once. Her body is bloody mostly, but the elemental shape of it is the shape of a young woman, with curving breasts and hips. To see such pain or wickedness in one that seems so young may be the hardest thing of all.

Excuse me for such language, but between us as father and son, she looks mostly like a whore, one that was pretty once, but has been savagely used and savagely beaten. Believe me, if you were to see her, you would not want to board her ship. If she is treated so miserably, what must happen to her passengers? She must be coming from hell and going back there, because she looks to be living in constant hell, covered in constant blood. And who treats her this way? They must certainly be waiting on the other end of her journey.

Enough of that. I don’t want to replace your dreams with nightmares.

It surprised me to hear that Pastor Mel died, as you say. I have not seen him come through our town, or if he has, I’ve not recognized him. That’s possible. I thought by now I’d have seen at least someone I know. But I don’t understand who comes this way and who does not. It is not the whole population of the world, to be certain.

I don’t recall that evening at the Robbins, but I can imagine it, I suppose. Honestly, Dorothy and her husband were two of the most uptight people in the neighborhood. They lived up on the hill, like that gave them some special position. I can’t remember her husband’s name. It has slipped away from me. But the two of them always used to look at all you kids as if you were a pack of wild dogs, as if you were our burden to bear, instead of our joy. If we spent an evening at their home, you have to forgive me for getting drunk, but it likely helped me get through it more pleasurably.

I have no desire for drink now. My mind is foggy enough as it is.

But you’re right. I could never carry a tune. A sad thing for a Welshman to be a poor singer.

How do you feel about Misty Lee? Are you heartbroken?

Dad

The boat was called Violence.

Dear Trevor,

Misty Lee is definitely not doing it right. But give her a chance. She’s in seventh grade. She’s a beginner. At least she’s enthusiastic. You should go to school tomorrow. You should kiss her. Kiss her once for me.

Sung-Hee would probably give me free meals for a month if I shared your letters with her. Especially if she knew they covered the subject of French kissing. No one likes a bit of steamy gossip as much as Sung-Hee, and there is so little to gossip about around here, steamy or otherwise.

Before she moved here, Sung-Hee ran a hamburger joint off the Interstate, between Centralia and Rochester. It was basically a drive-up stand and she took orders, flipped burgers and tried to pedal teriyaki to the rednecks. Now she does the same thing, plus waits tables, with lousy fish instead of lousy burgers, but like she says, at least she’s indoors. And there are chairs for the customers instead of just a walk-up counter.

What was it like to die? I don’t know. I don’t think of myself as having died, because nothing stopped. I just moved from one place to another. It felt more like moving—like changing jobs and houses—than it felt like anything even close to dying. Dying sounds so final. I don’t feel like anything final has happened.

Before the move, as I’ll call it, I remember having a couple of rough days at home. Evelyn—your mom–relocated me from our upstairs room down to the bedroom on the main floor. The one right next to the one you shared with Rhett. I was back in the original bedroom your Mom and I shared before we had the second story added to the house. God, I miss that drafty old place. I especially liked that downstairs room, because the windows faced west and I could see the sunset behind the Olympics through most of the spring and summer.

So I’d moved down there, partly because I couldn’t do the stairs anymore and partly so your mom didn’t have to keep walking up and down them all day every time I needed a glass or water or had to pee. I’d been there for a couple of weeks and Dr. Bruell—is he still alive?—finally convinced me I wasn’t going to pull out. Then the pain got so bad that I went from wanting to survive to wanting to die. Pain can be your friend in that way. It can help you come to terms with passing. Pain is your final friend on earth. It’s funny, but now that I’m up here in this foggy land where I feel next to nothing, I miss that pain almost as much as I miss your mom. O to feel something! Anything!

I remember having one really bad night. Your mom had to help me out of bed to go to the bathroom, and with one good grunt I filled the toilet bowl with blood. I flushed it quick so Evelyn wouldn’t see it, but I wasn’t quick enough and she started crying. She cleaned me up and helped me back to the bed. I remember that we laid there together as I struggled to catch my breath. I cussed a couple of times and she asked me to stop. Your mom never could stomach rough language. So I gritted my teeth and said nothing and fell asleep like that.

When I woke up, your mom was gone. The house was gone. I suppose I was gone, because I was at the airport here, walking up the jetway toward the terminal as if I’d just gotten off a plane. I had no luggage and I was wearing the same clothes I’m wearing right now. A white, short-sleeve dress shirt from JC Penney, a pair of dark brown slacks, dark brown dress socks, brown shoes and brown belt. I don’t know where the clothes came from and don’t know how I got from my bed to the jetway, but there you have it. Maybe it was magical or maybe I just don’t remember.

I followed the crowd down to a shuttle bus that took us just a few hundred yards to a train platform, where we boarded the train. I got on the train with everyone else. All the other passengers looked just as confused as I did, except for the Crazies. There were probably 25 of us on that train and five of those were Crazies. Of course, I didn’t think of them that way at the time. They looked as calm as they could be and stared out the window as if they were in the most wonderful place imaginable.

The train rode along for about 20 minutes and then stopped here in our little berg. I stepped off and followed the Crazies through town and down to the dock. I figured we went from the plane to the bus to the train, so why not to the boat? But when I saw the boat, I stopped.

It was the most rundown fishing boat you’ve ever seen. It sat low in the water and leaned so far to one side that sea water actually came over the starboard rail. Its nets were torn and patched and torn and patched again. The surfaces that weren’t covered in seaweed or barnacles or gear were all stained with blood. There was blood on the bow hatch and blood on the bridge and blood on the windshield and blood along the portside rail.

I read the name dug into the bow. It was called Violence. And there was no way in hell I was getting onboard.

I wandered in a bit of a daze into the Laughing Gull and Sung-Hee set me down and gave me a cup of her miserable coffee which was as bad then as it is now. Not bad enough to be interesting, but not good enough to be enjoyable. I drank a cup and asked her about the boat.

“No one knows nothing about the boat,” she said. “The lady captain can’t or won’t talk—not a word—and none of them passengers ever come back. I’ve been here for—oh, I don’t know how long, but I never met no one who knows nothing about the boat.”

“What about those people lined up to get on board?” I asked her, pointing to the five people who I’d come with on the train.

“Ya can’t trust what them people say,” Sung-Hee said. “They’re Crazies. That’s what we call ‘em. Look at the way they stare at the boat, as if was beautiful.”

Sung-Hee was right. I finished my coffee and wandered back out to the dock. The Crazies looked like they were waiting to get onboard a cruise ship. They cooed and pointed and stared, with their mouths hanging open and hungry.

“Look at the blood,” said the woman closest to me, with a voice full of wonder. “Look at all the beautiful blood.” She was an older black woman, dressed for church or for a fancy night out. She had on a bright red dress and red hat, finished with a pink veil that would have hung over her eyes, but she kept flipping the veil up so she could see unobstructed.

“Where’s the boat go?” I asked.

The woman looked at me with a startled smile, as if a toddler had asked her how breathing works. My question was too basic for her. She understood the boat at such an elementary level that she’d never had to articulate its purpose or its destination.

“Why child,” she said, in a very gentle voice. “It goes onward.”

“Onward where?” I asked. When she realized that I really didn’t know, her joy-filled face broke. A tear formed quickly and ran down her cheek.

“You poor, ignorant creature. I’m sorry,” she said. “I am so, so sorry.”

But as soon as she turned her head back toward the boat, her joy returned and she forgot about me. Tears of joy overwhelmed the other lone tear and washed it off her chin.

I haven’t thought about that day or that first meeting for a long time. Now the coming and going of the train and boat seem so much like the regular rhythm of this place that I don’t consider them much. They come out of the fog and return into it. The fog remains, like me.

Write again, please. I depend on your letters now.

Dad