Deep River Burning (11 page)

“My Aunt Rosemary mailed me a postcard once from North Carolina that had a photo of a loggerhead turtle on it.”

“Ah, so you do have an aunt out there somewhere,” Father Allen said laughing. “Yes,” he continued, “the loggerhead turtles are endangered. I’ve seen them over on Bear Island. As with many sea creatures, pollution and shrimp trawling are a problem. Shrimp might taste good, but so many other species are killed in the process of fishing for them. And it’s a perilous life for the turtle eggs once they are laid to keep from being eaten by predators. Then, when they hatch, the tiny turtles need to make their way to the sea. Keeping the beaches clean is critical because sometimes, adult turtles swallow discarded plastic bags and then they die. That’s why an important mission of the sanctuary is education so that others can learn how to help protect the wildlife in the area.”

“Twyla said that you have been able to inspire your parishioners to volunteer for the sanctuary.”

“It is my belief that it’s our responsibility to care for all of God’s creatures, not just each other. The thing is, if we take care of our environment, then we
are
taking care of each other. It’s all connected and I can’t think of a better way to serve God. Being close to the wildlife helps me to feel closer to God,” Father Allen said in a more serious tone. “Did you attend a church of any kind back in Pennsylvania?”

“No, but I was raised Lutheran. You’re not going to try to convert me are you?” she said in jest.

“Well, no, but would that be such a bad thing?”

“I’ll never become Catholic,” she replied without hesitation.

“Why is that?”

“Because women aren’t allowed to become priests.”

“Ah ha . . . that is one of the better reasons I have heard. Even though I have no chance of converting you, Denver, you are welcome in my parish any time,” Father Allen said smiling at her. “But speaking of which, I really need to get back to the church. I have a mass to prepare for. Do you mind going back to get your bags without me?”

“No, not at all. Thank you for the talk.”

“Anytime, but I’m afraid I really wasn’t that informative,” he said as he turned away. “I’ll see you soon. We’re neighbors now.”

She walked back to the sanctuary to retrieve her bags. On her way to her apartment, she passed Father Allen’s church, Community of Hope Catholic Church, and a small food store. She received her key from Mrs. Denkins and opened the door to her new apartment. She needed to find a few chairs and a mattress. She didn’t want to get too much furniture because she didn’t know how long she would be there. The carpet was still slightly damp but the windows were open and the breeze dried the carpet by nightfall. She walked to the food store and bought a sandwich for dinner and a box of oatmeal and a bag of apples for breakfast. She only had one small pot for boiling water and some plastic utensils so she would need to get kitchen supplies.

She turned on the overhead light in the living room and closed the blinds when darkness began to still the world around her. She made a pillow with her duffel bag and sipped from a bottle of water. She began reading the pamphlets from the sanctuary, but she had to keep rereading the paragraphs because she couldn’t remember anything she read. The words ran together, and at that moment, the information didn’t matter because the walls began to close in, and the silence became unbearable and the words blurred through full, swollen eyes and the light glared when it bounced off the stark white walls, bright white, snow white walls, and there were no sounds from the other apartments, and she didn’t want to go outside and walk because she was afraid she would get lost, and after a while it began to rain. She was entirely alone in a strange town, in a strange state, in a strange apartment, surrounded by strangers. What she didn’t lose, she left behind. She was awake most of the night wavering between despair and confusion knowing that peace and a sense of belonging were intermingling waves being tossed into the open ocean, tumbling, circulating, and rolling with no shore in view. Do the stars and the sun have any pull on the tide? Because the moon might not be enough.

Chapter 17

Fistful of Sand

Memory is an unfolding force tucked away in the leaves of summer trees. With the slightest breeze or provocation, memories stir and reveal themselves, become more wide open and exposed. The world, tight and locked from the grip of winter relaxes fully in the heat, sits still with its memory, almost stagnates, and when life slows down, the world becomes magnified.

For Father Allen, it meant that he spent more hours in prayer. He spent more time walking on the beach and gazing out into the blue sea. He spent more energy organizing tours and volunteer work at the sanctuary and less time harboring in the divine light that called to him. At the parish, he sometimes sat in one of the pews, leaned forward, and rested his head on the back of his hands that were propped on the solid and sturdy wood of the pew in front of him. Every now and then, when he felt empty, he would look up and see the life he had built and remember that it couldn’t always be glorious.

For Denver, the color of the sea grew bluer and the sea grass and the herbs growing in pots at the sanctuary became more green and lush. The sweet songs of the crickets in the dunes became louder, and she realized that Aunt Rosemary was right when she said that we can hear everything we need to know if we stop and really listen. In some ways, it is disconcerting, when everything stops and you are as aware of all the birds and insects that have always been fully aware of you. But that’s not exactly what Aunt Rosemary meant.

There was very little chaos at Isabel Beach. Even when storms blew through, it seemed to be more of a cleansing, or an opportunity for the sea to stretch its muscles or work out its kinks. The morning after a storm always brought with it tranquility and a flood of fresh seashells still intact.

There are those who are drawn to the beach only when it storms, only when the wind has something fierce to say and when the ocean responds with upheaval and agitation, when the sunbathers with their thick novels and long blankets have been escorted back to their summer homes and hotel rooms by heavy rain. And when the sky pushes its rolling black clouds in some other direction, the stormy beach people walk away in their slick, shining raincoats back to the world that was interrupted.

The days got better for Denver. She studied the beaches with an interest she hadn’t felt in a long time. She helped take care of the birds, and she saw Iris and Father Allen almost every day. When she wasn’t at the sanctuary, she spent her time exploring the Outer Banks and White Crystal Coast. She learned to feel the water race between her fingers and to enjoy its soft body in the palms of her hands. But she was still a person walking without skin, a bundle of exposed nerves trying to stay warm even on the hottest of days. The wind is always blowing by the sea and some days she grew tired of its gritty rawness. If only she could let herself be a feather and allow the wind to lift her and move her into a direction of patient surrender.

She was reminded of her disquieting past in Pennsylvania one night when a call came to the sanctuary about a wounded dog that was found on the beach a few miles south of the sanctuary. When she arrived at the beach with Father Allen and Iris, she saw something she hadn’t seen in a while. There was a party nearby where a crowd of people stood and laughed around a small beach bonfire shooting its orange, yellow, and blue flames into the night sky with a plume of smoke rising into the dark. She thought beach fires were illegal, but maybe they weren’t. It didn’t matter. She never saw the dog, never got the chance to help, and that was a guilt she had to deal with on top of her morbid fear of fire, which caused her to run down the beach as fast as she could, as far as she could, without looking back, without stopping, until she got back to her apartment where she collapsed. An hour later, Father Allen knocked on her door.

“Denver? Are you there?”

She reluctantly opened the apartment door, but she wouldn’t look at him, or at anything, except the floor. She finally told him everything about Adena and her parents, and Josh, and Helena. She told him about Aunt Rosemary, and she even told him about Mr. Pilner and the river. They talked long into the night, and Father Allen listened to every word.

They were both silent for a while. At some point, it became apparent to her that Father Allen had his own pain that he carried with him. Maybe it was the way he gazed out the window as if looking at something other than darkness. Being at Isabel Beach gave him a life where he could serve both the sea and God. Although she knew he had struggles of his own, she didn’t know what they were. He kept them so carefully protected, like a pearl he once found still in the shell on a remote part of the beach. When he opened the shell carefully, and exposed the shell to the world of light, it was as if his very soul was hanging from his fingertips. What was the sorrow when it was just a grain of sand? And is it the harboring of that grief that makes it grow into something so much more precious, so much more costly? What good is a pearl that is never moved by an ocean wave?

He broke the silence to say that a group of people from the church were going camping at Bear Island, and he asked Denver if she wanted to go. She quietly said, “Okay,” and he left. The room was still. Sometimes she wanted to tell him that she had always hated Catholicism, that words like “confession” and “repent” made her want to cast her image of God into the sea so that it would sink into one of the deepest trenches in the Atlantic. But he had his grain of sand deep inside the soft shell of his body, and she had hers, so she said nothing.

One day, she wrote down the names of people and places and events that she wanted to forget onto small slips of paper and burned them in a hole she dug on the beach. Then she covered the ashes with a heavy wave of cool, damp sand. If the ashes were ever uncovered, they would mix imperceptibly with the freckled sand and simply wash out to sea with the high tide. Even these small flames made her a little uneasy as she watched the red embers rapidly consume the white pieces of paper. What could Adena be to her now but an image? It had ceased being a reality to her. When she walked home, a small pain was working in her chest like a sculptor carving into a stone, chipping away in tiny shavings so she couldn’t quite see a shape, but she knew that one was forming nonetheless.

Father Allen was still somewhat of a mystery to her and had been inquiring more about her religious beliefs of late, but he did not press. He wasn’t like the priests she had known in her life, which did not add up to many. He had a long stride that seemed effortless, even when he walked through the peaks and valleys of billowy soft sand. He would sometimes socialize with Iris, Denver, and the other beach people, joking as if his calling was no more lofty than theirs or as if he was no more “found” than the rest of those who ended up at the sanctuary lost or maimed or called to duty.

She knew of Catholics in Adena who believed that priests were not entirely human, that they managed to transcend the wants and desires of humanity to live on a level closer to God, or to something certainly more holy, if not ethereal. But she didn’t believe this about Father Allen, even with his symbolic black attire that represented the death of his interest in worldly things. He was much younger than other priests she had met, and he had a curiosity about the world that never waned. She thought priests were only supposed to wonder about God and his will and how to best serve his purpose at all times. Still, she chose to think of him as a spirit who could walk to the edge of the water and step into a place something like heaven, while he kept the other foot here on earth to nurture the languishing mortal souls.

Even with her education, she felt ill-prepared to work at a coastal wildlife sanctuary. In college and through her own initiative, she mostly studied geology, coal, river biology, water and air pollution caused by coal production, species native to eastern Pennsylvania, and ecosystems of the mid-Atlantic. Other than the few books she had been reading recently, she knew very little about the ecology of the southeast coast.

The next morning, when Denver woke up early to walk the beach looking for shells, she saw Father Allen sitting on the beach deep in prayer. What does a priest say in his prayers? What does he say as he strives to experience oneness with God? Does he feel something others do not? When she looked out at the vast expanse of the Atlantic, she thought that God must be here, if he (or she) is anywhere.

She walked up the beach combing the shoreline looking at the space around her feet and the tidewater flushing in and pulling back. She looked for shells, but she rarely ever kept them if she found one. When she scanned her eyes over the rippling foam, she was looking for anything, not just shells, seaglass maybe, and once she found a seahorse, motionless and limp lying on a tuft of sand with the perfect curve of its back still intact. She loved seahorses, the way their movement through water is a slow, delicate dance and the only way they can escape the claws of their predators is to hide. She guessed that the seahorse she found had been washed ashore by a storm that moved over the beach a few days earlier.

No two seahorses are alike, and when they prance about, their curved bodies gracefully glide in and out of the dark sea grass beds and coral reefs. This seahorse was female because it didn’t have the pouch in the front of its body. She took the seahorse back to the sanctuary and placed it by the window on a piece of wax paper. After a while, the seahorse became stiff and prickly as its finned body dried and petrified. She wanted to preserve it as a reminder to her of all the things in this world that are extraordinary.

She went back outside and sat down for a while on the beach to look around. The sun still hadn’t risen so it was chilly, and although the damp salt wind could be harsh at times, this morning it was a tender caress on the skin. Father Allen had seen her and slowly walked up the beach to where she was sitting. While some aspects of him didn’t seem priestly to her, from whatever distorted image she had accumulated of priests up until then, his gait had all the markings of holiness, the very movement of peace. Nothing about him was awkward or clumsy or fierce. Whatever struggles he fought, he certainly mastered the art of calm, or perhaps it was the sea that made him that way.

“Good morning, Denver,” he said cheerfully.

“Good morning!” Denver responded smiling. He had a way of making everyone feel good around him.

“What brings you out here so early?”

“I’m looking for treasures, maybe,” she said looking out at the sea.

“Have you found any?”

“Not yet, but I’m hot on the trail of something.”

“The sea has many treasures to offer,” he said as he sat down next to her.

They both sat for a moment thinking and watching a bird dive into the water and seconds later, rising with a fish in its mouth.

“Is this where you find God?” Denver asked inquisitively.

“God is everywhere, Denver, and in all things.”

It was one of those statements that however true, sounded so painfully cliché that it bounced off a road block when it entered her ear.

“I don’t understand how you can say that when you know there is so much evil in the world, and so much pain and suffering, and not all places are beautiful and peaceful like Isabel Beach. Where is God when a bird is strangled by a plastic ring from a six-pack? Where is God when there is an oil spill? Where was God when my parents were brutally murdered in their sleep? Where was God in Adena?”

“I have no explanation for what happened in Adena, but I can suggest that God does not think of death the way we do. If God sees all souls then there is no death, only movement and transition. It is a gift that we have been sent to experience being human, but if we remember that everything, in its essence is far, far greater than the physical world, then perhaps we can ease our suffering, and the suffering of others.”

She looked down at the sand. She felt a heaviness in her chest. Father Allen was lying on his side propped up on one arm. She watched his other hand filtering grains of sand.

“But . . . I am the physical world,” she said. “This is my body. This is the Earth I’m sitting on. When I fall hard against it, it hurts.”

“No, Denver. You are not your body. Ultimately, you are not even your mind. We don’t know who we are because our minds can barely conceive of it. But when we attach ourselves to our physical and even psychological worlds, we further ourselves from God and suffer much for it. These worlds are not the reality, not the essence. They are distractions . . . distractions through which standards and expectations are formed by humanity, and then finally judgments. There is a Hindu word,
Maya,
it refers to this illusory realm, this chaos, which binds humanity to the suffering. If we identify ourselves with Maya, then we attach ourselves to these judgments.”

While she listened, she traced patterns in the sand with a piece of shell.

“Sometimes I think of the human experience as being similar to watching a movie,” he continued. “We are there and we feel it, in fact we get so entranced by it, so engrossed in its beauty and suggestions, that we forget ourselves, sometimes entirely, we step into the movie . . . but all the while, still sitting in the seat, patiently waiting, is the true self. This true self does many things to get our attention. It will make us sick. It will create conflict in our relationships with others. It watches us as we try to make ourselves whole by turning to everything else, to money, to work, to alcohol, to another person . . . to a place. This is the part of us that we have abandoned because the movie is so seductive and overwhelming. But this part of us is in pain and we will suffer until we find our way back to it.”

“How can someone step out of this movie? Do I have to die physically to find my true self?”

“I’m not sure death of the physical body even guarantees it. We are all on this journey together . . . this same journey for the same thing, and we are all here to help one another get there whether we realize it or not. Some people are closer than others . . . and I think it has less to do with age of the body and mind and more to do with the age of the soul. You are here to serve some divine purpose, Denver, and to continue on with your own journey, if not for God, then for yourself. You will teach others, and others will teach you. But never forget about that part of you that is watching, that part of you that is hurting. It knows the way.”

“There’s no way out of it. Is there?”

“Out of what?” He asked sitting up.

“Out of the cycle. I mean, if God saves, then what kills? Satan? I don’t believe in Satan, Father, so how can I believe in God? The two are mutually dependent on one another. How can God work his miracles without evil? And I wonder sometimes if good and evil don’t come from the same place. If so, isn’t God just as much to blame for the bad things that happen as well as the good?