Nowhere Man 13
By: Harry Hogg
Tags: Fiction Series, Life, Fiction, Writing, Fiction Writing

The Rainbow Warrior was gone. I’d never know the like of her again.

I’d seen her as few ever had, lying at rest under a sinking sun, sailing through storm torn skies, when lightning was so sharp it stitched clouds together. She was not mine of course, she belonged to the world, a symbol of mans hope. Now, whenever I sit on a windy shoreline, looking out across any ocean, it all comes back, the sense of smell, long after the burning has gone, yet still lingers in my nostrils.

“Lay still, lay absolutely still, Greg.” It was the voice of my friend, Steve. Tears falling down his face.

“Steve, I can’t feel my legs.” He was holding my head against his knees.

“You must lay still, do you understand?” Sirens sounded in far off streets. The hissing of steam filled the air. As if someone had placed a red-hot poker into water just behind my head.

“What happened, Steve?” I whispered.

Steve didn’t answer. My fingers were burning with cold. I saw myself in the reflective glow of a fire burning in his eyes. It occurred to me I might be dying, right there in Steve’s lap. I began to think of all the things I wanted to say, so as not to die unforgiven.

“When my son has grown, Steve, tell him I love him.”

“Listen,” he said, “you’re going to be all right. Don’t think about anything else. We dragged you from the water. You’ve got a chunk of metal in your back, do not try to move — do you understand?”

And there was no more to be heard.

I woke up in a hospital. For four months, I lay still while surgeons played around with my spine.

Katie had made the long, worrisome flight to my bedside. She wouldn’t look at me. The eyes of the woman I loved stared blankly at my broken body. I was loved deeply. She could not look at me in pain. It is something I was never to forget.

Katie was not going to be loved this way. No man was going to occupy a place in her life, her heart, or the lives of her children and risk himself for ideals.

Philip’s birth had changed her perspectives.

Her eyes were saying. ‘You have no place in my life. You are an intruder.’ This is what she would tell me when I was stronger, if she didn’t weaken.

Why was I so bloody difficult? Why couldn’t I just love her like other men love their women? Adore her the way other men adore? Lust like other men lust? But that was never my way.

Katie had sailed into my life like a storm-christened rigger, taking my breath away. She had shown me, proved to me that she was an by exceptional person.

It was all too much. What if I never knew her smile again, her strange words, the predictability of her in my life? She would have to say something — but of course, I was all I said and my truth affected her and touched her. She placed her hand in mine, resting her head on my chest and sobbed.

“Come home, Greg” She whispered.

I lay still, knowing her pain, feeling her heartbeat heavy in her breast. I wanted to be with her forever, to stand at her side as real as a mountain. I wanted to hold her, fire a blue and white electricity into her hurting emotions and make them better.

“You’ll walk. I just know it, Greg. I just know it, and the doctors say you will.” She kissed my cheek and turned away, tearful.

I watched until she turned the corner. That disappearance broke every barrier that was holding up my dignity and pride. Sobs rose from my stomach and caught in my throat. They were there, when a minute later she walked back toward me. She took a tissue from her bag and held it to my face.

“I’ve never seen you afraid before.”

There was no wild fury left. I was indeed afraid.

“It’s done, Greg. Your time is done. No more. We are your life now. You come home and you stay. You stay, Greg. You are a father and a husband. You will not put us through this again.”

Katie had walked away without saying it but now, returning with new strength, said what she had wanted to say for a year or more. She held my hand and kissed my mouth.

“No more, or we cannot make it.’”

She turned and walked briskly away. I never saw her tears but I knew her heartbreak was unimaginable and fierce.

The surgeons played it right. After the fourth month of treatment, I walked out of there.

The French had bombed and sunk the Rainbow Warrior, killing one friend.

Goliath had come for David and won.

I don’t know why, when I look out to sea, it should all come back to me so vividly. Not when there are so many beautiful memories of the Warrior, so much achieved. The Rainbow had her failures, of course, but how she had handed me so many friendships and adventures.

Katie and I walked out together on the bend of Tobermory. Our son was growing fast, and our second son, Daniel, was on the way.