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 Unaware, Aware

On that early summer day in late June when the sky was blue beyond imagining and the westerly breeze brought a tantalizingly subtle smell of salt, Gene walked north along the sand made dark and firm by the recent high tide which seemed to bring everything within its embrace. The rising and falling of water in the wetlands was like the slow breathing of the earth. The tide came in, paused, slid out, paused, came in and went out again and again, in and out, in and out, again and again and again, each flood or ebb like a separate breath--forever. Twenty yards off the beach egrets and herons lined up next to stands of spartina grass to fish a few hours either side of low tide. He paid no attention to any of it.

Gene was tall and thin, with a full graying beard which seemed to cover much of his face.  He plodded along in the thick sand, slightly stooped over, his unruly gray hair often falling over his blue eyes. He wore chinos, a blue button down shirt and large round glasses with clip-on sun glasses which he could flip up. A mechanical drafting pencil, several pens and a pack of index cards were stuffed into his shirt pocket.  He was thinking of the meeting he’d had just that morning with his boss and pictured Mr. Sharpton, a short heavy set man who always wore gray pants, a blue blazer and ties with small, fussy patterns, sitting behind his huge highly polished black desk, looking in Gene’s direction but somehow past him and saying, “Gene, you just don’t seem yourself. The designs for the new table saw are late, and what little you’ve given me are, well,” Sharpton leveled his steel gray eyes at Gene causing a shudder to go through him, “let’s just say, not up to what you’ve done in the past.” Gene felt his mouth go dry and he grasped the back of the chair in front of the desk. As he plodded down the beach, he still felt the anxiety of that moment well up in his stomach and spread out into his chest. The sand was getting soft and deep so he walked closer to the water where it was flat and hard. Now on firmer ground he recalled his voice shaking as he sputtered, “Mr. Sharpton, I’ve had some new ideas but I, I, I just, well, I haven’t, you know, worked them up quite yet.” “Well,” said Sharpton standing up, “get cracking. We need those plans.” He tapped his desk with a metal letter opener which looked like a stiletto, “You’re holding up production and advertising. Frankly,” Gene had felt his face redden and his body start to sweat as he felt Sharpton looking right through him, “you are holding up the works and we can’t have that. I hope you understand what I’m saying because I don’t want to have to spell it out.” Now several hours later walking on the beach in the hot sun, Gene shivered at the implication. He remembered trying to tell Sharpton that he’d get on it right away but he could only mumble, “Yes sir.” To make matters worse he knew that not only didn’t he have any ideas but he didn’t have any desire to do any new designs. He was tired, always tired even when he got up in the morning and had two cups of strong coffee. They didn’t help—they just made him jittery. Lately he’d developed headaches and stomach aches for which he took a pharmacy full of pills. When he got to the office a kind of numb feeling came over him and he avoided people, especially Sharpton. As he walked along the beach he thought about what was happening to him, and yet, he knew he’d have to get moving because he needed the job—who, he thought, would hire him at his age and he knew he was too young to retire.

He pushed himself to walk more quickly for the exercise ordered by his doctor so that he could now feel his heart pumping.  Every time he was tempted to skip a day, he remembered sitting on the edge of the examining table stripped to the waist as Dr. Bennett, sitting next to the EKG machine, looked over his glasses and admonished him, “You’d better get that cholesterol down, my friend, or you’re heading for a heart attack.” When Bennett saw the fear on Gene’s face, he smiled, “I don’t want to scare you but I do want you to exercise—that and,” he laughed, “keeping away from your beloved cheese cake should do the trick.” Gene managed a smile. Dr. Bennett told him to get dressed and as he walked to the door, patted him on the shoulder and added, “Start exercising and when you come back in a month, I’ll bet we see a big improvement.”

Gene plugged on in the bright sunlight and was surprised when he came upon a man, who Gene thought was also in his fifties, a man with neatly cut gray hair, sitting and staring out at the water. It was so unusual to see someone dressed so formally on the beach that Gene glanced at the man several times, noticing that he wore a gray suit, white shirt, dazzlingly bright as snow caps on rocky mountains in the strong sun. The man, who was sitting on a newspaper squinting out over the water, wore a red and dark blue tie and polished black shoes. His wavy salt and pepper hair was ruffled by the breeze. Gene passed him and looked at the man who glanced up and nodded. Gene returned the nod with a barely perceptible movement of his head down and up. He walked on, keeping to the beat of, Ella Fitzgerald singing, “From This Moment On,” in his big Bose head phones. He was unaware that a hundred yards over to the left, a great white heron banked around counter clockwise in a wide circle, glided toward the edge of a stand of spartina grass, headed upwind into a stall, spread his huge wings out in the bright sun, made two quick back strokes and floated down at the water’s edge.

During the following week, the clouds lumbered in from the east like huge dirigibles and the air, suffocatingly heavy, felt wet enough to wring out. Gene trudged along in the soft sand breathing hard in the humidity. He stopped, pushed his glasses back up his thin nose, balanced some index cards in his left hand, selected a black fine-point pen from his pocket and  wrote a note to himself, then he drew a quick sketch of a possible design, then crossed it out.

He saw the same man again, this time sitting directly on the sand hugging his knees and looking out over the water. Gene smiled, “Hi.” The man waved and smiled, “Hello—how’s it going?” “Just fine,” Gene replied, thinking that the man’s eyes looked sad despite the smile. He noticed that he was wearing jeans and a white tee shirt both of which looked much to large for him. After several days of their nodded greeting, Gene turned down the volume on his Walkman but left his earphones on and commented, “Nice day.” The man responded in a loud voice so Gene could hear, “Yes it is, isn’t it? Thankfully,” the man smiled broadly, “it’s not so hot.” “It’s the humidity that got me,” Gene added, pulling out the front of his shirt as if to show that it stuck to him in the humidity. “Gets to me too,” the man nodded.

In the following days Gene began to feel a certain familiarity about him, expecting to see him there and looking forward to the slight camaraderie between them. Then, after a few more days, Gene stopped, took off his earphones, the faint melody of, “Take The A Train,” still coming from them, wiped the hair out of his eyes and looked out at what the man was looking at. From this small rise in the beach he was able to see out over the large stands of grass which were revealed now at low tide. The man pointed, “It’s low tide and the egrets are fishing.” There was a quiet excitement in his voice. “Oh yes, I see now, hadn’t noticed, and look at that,” Gene pointed, “that bird just poked his beak into the water and came up with a small fish! Amazing how fast they are!” The man chucked, “Yes they are fast.” He seemed even thinner today than Gene had noticed before. 

“Look out there,” again the man pointed, “see those little things that look like sticks sticking out of the water?”

Gene squinted and looked, “No…wait…” he crouched down to better follow the man’s outstretched arm, “oh out there, but they seem to disappear and then new ones come up.”

“Those are terrapins, turtles, coming up to the surface for air,” he nodded to affirm what he was saying.

“I had no idea that so much was going on here,” Gene kneeled on one knee.

“That and a lot more,” he smiled at Gene’s realization. “See right over there at the edge of the water.” The man leaned forward in his beach chair with its blue and white webbing and pointed closer to the shore, “Those are horseshoe crabs.”

“It looks like half a dozen of them!” Gene exclaimed; there was real excitement in his voice. 

“See how they are all bunched together?” the man said enthusiastically holding out his hands and moving them together in a gathering motion. “The females are depositing their eggs in the sand and the males are pushing in behind them to fertilize the eggs.” He pushed his right hand forward to imitate the movement of the males.

Gene stood up and walked over to the edge of the water to get a closer look, then turned and looked back at the man, “My God! They look like some prehistoric creature.”

“Actually they are—they’re a very old species.”

Gene stood for a moment looking at the crabs, then out at the terrapins and the egrets. He smiled broadly, obviously delighted, and turned to the man, “Thanks so much…wonderful…thanks again.” He extended his hand, “By the way, my name is Gene, Gene Soloway.”

“Martin, Martin Emet.” Martin held out his hand, “pardon me if I don’t get up.”

“No problem,” Gene leaned over to shake it, “Nice to meet you Martin.” Martin’s hand was limp and damp. Martin smiled warmly, his eyes crinkling with pleasure. Gene added, “Take care,” patted him on the shoulder and went on his way.

He continued his walk down closer to the water where his sneakers made a crunching sound on the sand and gravel. He looked out at the wetlands at first but soon retreated into worry about his job. He had thought that a blade guard could have small lever-cams for removal that would be easier to use and more secure than thumb screws but when he walked into Sharpton’s office and put the drawings down in front of him, Sharpton pushed them aside and erupted, “Damn it, do something that the customer can see, not some hidden thing with the guard—you know that most people just take them off anyway.” Gene who had been standing next to him, backed away and started to explain, “I was just…” meaning to tell him that he was hoping that making the guard work better would encourage people to use it, when Sharpton interrupted, “Don’t explain. Just do. I don’t want to have to look for a new designer. Get my meaning?” The humiliation turned Gene’s face pale; he clinched his teeth in anger so that the working of his jaw muscles was visible through the skin, his lips a tensed thin line. He seethed, “Of course,” and turned away. The recollection made him feel like an electric current was being passed through his body making every nerve raw, making him want to climb out of his own skin. He walked along, deaf to the wetlands’ own quiet music—grass rustling, low waves slapping against the shore, the calls of crows and terns, a heron squawking as it rose above the grass. There were some faint intrusions: the chug of a lawnmower on the waterfront property a mile across the salt marsh, the clatter of workmen hammering on a new house up the hill, a motorboat droning across the bay in the deeper water; but they were all faint and distant noises.  Gene looked at his watch to see how much time he had before going back to work; he felt a shiver of anxiety. He slowed his walk and his shoulders slumped as he felt the conflict between the desire to run away and the fear of losing his job.

The summer ripened. Gene would begin his walk each day with the expectation of seeing Martin; each day he was disappointed. He stood on the spot where Martin showed him the white birds with long legs--he’d forgotten what they were called. He didn’t see any so he walked on, wondering what it was about seeing him that had become so important to him. July came and went. The situation at work had grown worse. He noticed Sharpton talking to John Tourney about some designs and was afraid Tourney would take his place. Gene knew his situation was precarious, and, as in the past, he had no ideas and no desire to think of any new ones. Even worse, he had no idea what he would do if he lost his job.

Toward the end of August when the nights turned cooler, Gene saw a man sitting on a blanket and from a distance thought it was Martin but as he got closer he wasn’t sure. The man was wearing a wide-brimmed hat with “Audubon Society,” stitched on the side, his brown sandals next to him. He was wearing a sweat shirt despite the 85 degree weather and his thin ankles sticking out of the sand where his bare feet were buried. His cheeks were sunken and his skin looked yellow-gray. He was looking out at the wetlands through binoculars and had a bird book open next to him. Gene noticed that his boney shoulders poked into his loose sweat shirt and that the top of a catheter was sticking out from where the neckline sagged. He was so different that as Gene approached he had a quizzical look on his face. Martin saw him looking with that questioning expression, “Yes, Gene it’s really me, the new me. Da, dah!” He held out his  arms in a theatrical pose and smiled. Then more seriously, “I still prefer the old me but what can you do.” Gene, afraid his expression had only emphasized Martin’s condition tried to cover over the awkwardness with an overly cheery, “Hi Martin! Great to see you again! Checking out the birds?” Martin nodded back, “Sure thing,”   then pointed excitedly, “Hey, look at that!” Gene turned around. “Look, look at that Great Blue Heron! Some sight!” Gene looked out to see the bird’s huge wings pumping, pushing down on the air, rising up over the grass. “That’s some flying machine,” he commented, as he watched the great bird tuck in its long neck, its wings kneading the air. He followed it, his eyes riveted on this great wonder, watching it as it flew languorously around a bend in the beach and out of sight. Gene stood for a moment watching the empty sky where he had followed the great bird, feeling a kind of exhilaration he hadn’t felt in years.  Gulls cried loudly as they wheeled around and settled on the water folding their black-tipped gray wings neatly over their backs. “Martin, it’s good to see you again,” Gene smiled warmly, “but I’ve got to get my walk in. See you on the way back.” “Enjoy,” Martin sounded cheery. Gene now walked along rapidly feeling sad at Martin’s condition. He looked over the water a few times to see if there would be another heron, and along the beach at the shells but his mind soon wandered to his job. Sharpton had stopped asking him for work which was a relief but he figured it was only a matter of time before he was let go.  He began to check the want ads in trade publications to see if his company was advertising for his replacement but as he did he realized that Tourney had probably already taken his job and figured Sharpton was just trying to be nice by keeping him on a little longer; he expected the pink slip any day. It did occur to him that he should be looking in the want ads for himself but he had no idea what to look for and couldn’t even bring himself to try to figure it out. 

On his return, Gene saw that Martin was struggling to stand up. He saw him move from resting on both knees, to getting one foot on the ground and kneeling with the other. Every time he tried to stand, he’d sink back out of breath. At the same time Martin was trying to hold his hat on his head, but he needed both hands to steady himself and the hat fell off revealing sparse tufts of hair on his otherwise bald head. Gene hurried over and held out his right hand, “Here, let me give you a hand.”

            “Thanks.”

Gene pulled the ear phones off his head letting them rest around his neck, the beat of Ella Fitzgerald singing, “From This Moment On” vaguely audible, took him under the arm and lifted him easily—he felt un-naturally light.  The effort left Martin out of breath but he managed to say, “Thanks.” Then breathing heavily, “I think…I’m fine…now.” “You sure you’re okay now?” Gene asked then let go of Martin’s arm, bent down, picked up Martin’s hat and gave it to him.

“Yes, thanks,” Martin settled the tan hat on his head, not aware or perhaps not caring that it was askew.

Gene picked up Martin’s sandals and blanket which he bunched into a ball and carried them as they walked up the beach together. “It’s really too early for the fall migration but I’ve been looking for Canvasbacks and Buffleheads just the same,” said Martin. “The spartina grass is turning a bit early, so you never know.” Gene mumbled, “Oh. I guess you have to be patient.” “And pay close attention,” added Martin looking over at Gene, “yes, that’s the main thing, paying attention.”

Martin stopped to catch his breath and gestured widely toward the water, “Pretty place.” A tern hovered like a helicopter, then dove, splashing the water and rose with a small fish in its mouth.

“Yes, it is,” Gene nodded, turned and looked out toward the water.

“It revives me,” Martin looked up, raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun, “puts me at peace.”

Gene walked Martin to his car and put the blanket in the back seat for him. When Martin was settled, he held out his hand through the open window. Martin took it and as they shook hands, Martin said, “Thanks. You were a real life saver there.” Gene put his left hand on top of Martin’s, “No, you are the life saver.” Martin wrinkled his forehead as if to say that he didn’t understand. Gene said, “Take care,” and walked to his own car.

That night Gene went to a blues club, something he hadn’t done in twenty years or more. He sat at the bar on a stool with a cracked vinyl cover and had a beer. When Koko Taylor came on and sang, “Tired Of That,” Gene’s feet were tapping along with the snare drum beating out the time, and his fingers played on the bar when the piano came in with high riffs. Every time she belted out, “I’m tired of that,” Gene mouthed the words with her. And then when she sang “Jump for Joy,” he began to move and felt his body dance while sitting on the stool—it was like he was moving with the whole room. Several middle aged couples had gotten up and were dancing next to their tables. He closed his eyes and smiled, stretched out his arms in joy, snapped his fingers to the beat and thought how much he’d missed this music.

The next day Gene found Martin sitting in a folding chair, “Hi, how are you doing?” “Not too bad,” said Martin, at first his voice sounded weak and thin, but then he managed to point excitedly, “Look out there!” His hand shook as he waited for Gene to look where he pointed.

Gene kneeled down closer to Martin so he could follow the line of sight from Martin’s outstretched arm, “What am I missing? There’s just water and some grass.” Martin let his arm drop.

“Anything else?”

Gene flipped up his sun glasses, “Oh, a few birds, some of those big white ones and those gray birds, gulls, I suppose.” Gulls called loudly as if they celebrated being noticed.

 “Yes, great,” Martin smiled, “and see that over there?” Martin gestured with just his hand, pointing over to the left.

Gene shrugged, “What?”

“The water,” Martin, out of breath, paused, “looks like it’s boiling, doesn’t it,” Fifty yards out over the calm surface toward an area where the water tumbled and foamed like a gust of wind was whipping up the water in just that spot.

“Oh, now I see!” Gene shaded his eyes with his hand.

“Those are thousands of mossbunkers coming in with the tide,” Martin said eagerly, “chased by blue fish. They feed on them.”

“Amazing! I never noticed.”

“There’s more,” Martin’s face brightened and he nodded over to the right, “See all that grass out there you noticed before?”

“Yes,” Gene nodded, then shifted to the other knee.

“Well that is spartina grass which is supported by the banks of mud under it and in there is a huge,” Martin spread his arms slightly, then let them fall back into his lap, “breeding ground for sea life.”

Gene raised his eyebrows, opening his eyes wide with the look of amazement, “And, I thought it was just grass.” He looked over at Martin whose face was now alive and animated even though he was slumped in his chair seemingly exhausted from the exchange.

“Pretty special grass,” Martin looked at him, moving his head up and down for emphasis, “it has a way of growing in salt water. If you look at it up close, you’ll see salt crystals on the backs of the stems where it expels the salt in the water it takes up.” He stopped for a moment to take a breath and turned his head from left to right in a sweeping gesture at the entire panorama, “but all around it millions of sea organisms are coming to life.” He paused, looked down, his voice now sounding weak and thin and said softly, “Actually there is a lot of death here too—clams, muscles, crabs, dead reeds from the phragmites—that’s the tall grass with the tassels.” Martin slowly nodded right and left again, “Look at the shore. It’s littered with their shells and lines of dead reeds which the tide has raked up into long bundles at the high tide mark. It looks as if someone came along and raked them up in a line like farmers rake hay in a field.”

Gene eagerly looked to each side, “This is the most amazing thing—I’ve really got to know more.” He asked Martin to suggest some books.

Gene sat down on the sand next to Martin and they were quiet for a time. The salt smell in the air brought him back 40 years to his summers in scout camp when they camped on the beach, netted little fish for bait and dug in the wet sand for clams. God how he’d loved it. Back then he couldn’t get enough of the water—swimming, watching the waves, listening to the thunder of the breakers. The troop even had a sail boat and he remembered how he would watch the graceful curve of the sails and how he loved the feeling of the boat gliding along in the wind. He could still feel the heeling of the boat and he recalled how he would hike out over the gunwales in a stiff breeze. The feel of the boat surging forward had been thrilling and as the spray came over the side and drenched him and his sailing partner, they would both whoop it up, “Yahoo, let’er rip!” He shook his head, what happened that I haven’t even thought of that in all these years? College? Marriage? Work? He didn’t know. After a few minutes, Martin looked up and said quietly, “It’s all here, life and death, growth and decay—all of it beautiful,” he opened his hands, “and all right here in front of us.”

 Gene watched the terns which seemed like they were dive-bombing the water. Then, “Hey, look at that,” he touched Martin’s shoulder and pointed excitedly, “that bird just dove under the water.”

“Oh that’s a cormorant fishing,” Martin laughed and smiled enthusiastically at Gene’s interest.

They  watched egrets which waited on long stilts without moving, then stabbed at the water with their long beaks to catch a fish. “It’s really something,”  said Gene, “looking at all that out there.”

Martin turned to him, slowly lifted his right hand and tapped Gene’s arm then pointed toward the water, “It’s not out there,” he moved his hand slowly toward his chest, “it’s in here and we are out there.”

“In where?” Gene turned towards Martin knitting his eyebrows.

“We, they,” he looked out toward the marsh, “we’re all part of the same puzzle.”

Gene closed his eyes for a moment and moved his head up and down, “You know, Martin, everything looks small, even insignificant next to all this,” he swept his arm over the panorama. He took the cap off his water bottle, held it up jauntily toward the wetlands, “Here’s to Mother Nature and all her wonder!!!” Martin laughed. And then more seriously facing Martin, “And here’s to you too,” Gene raised the water in his direction, smiled, took a drink then looked at his watch and stood up, ”Time to get back to work.” Martin said softly, “Gene” and waited until Gene turned toward him, “It’s been nice talking with you.” Gene bent down and took his hand, shook it gently, “It sure has. Take care.”

Over the next few weeks Gene took his regular walk and each time he anticipated finding Martin at his regular spot. As soon as he parked and noticed that Martin’s blue Toyota wasn’t there he felt a sinking feeling of disappointment in his stomach and then he trudged over the sand and saw that Martin’s usual place next to a dead log was empty. He stood there looking at the spot and then out at the water feeling that he’d lost something very important and real sadness overcame him. Later, he checked the phone book hoping to call him but there was no listing for Martin Soloway. He even called the other Soloways listed to see if perhaps Martin’s number was listed under another name. After a time he gave up expecting to see him but soon bought a bird book which he carried with him and consulted each time he saw a new bird he didn’t recognize.

A week after he tried to call Martin, Gene walked into his office, pulled all the papers out of his drawers and threw them into the waste basket, arranged his T-square and pencils in a neat line, placed his chair upside down with the back hanging over the edge of the desk, put the waste basket next to it, and walked out without saying anything to anyone.