Tall Tale Tuesday :: Caroline

When Caroline Crane stepped on stage at the Second City Mainstage Theatre, her dream had been in the grave for the better part of a month. No one took the time to inform Caroline, however. She hardly would have cared even if they had.

As far as she was concerned, receiving no callbacks during June was merely another setback in another month brimming with disappointments: losing her metro card, slipping on the apartment building’s rain-slicked stoop and tearing her best skirt, her husband Paul being shot in the shoulder in the line of duty, and the Cubs eliminated from playoff contention. Caroline met each with a shrug of dissatisfaction and found assurance in July’s arrival. “A new month with new opportunities,” she told Paul over breakfast. The lackluster months were mounting, though. Two hundred and forty consecutively, or twenty years, whichever you prefer.

Caroline never received callbacks for three reasons. First and foremost, she was overweight by industry standards; nowhere near obese, however. Not even pudgy. Corpulence worked for men in comedy, but women had to be something beyond talented. Her pale hair and clear complexion were not enough to compensate. Anyone exceeding a size six was deemed unfit, while sixes were almost certainly cast in skits and plays as maternal characters or the lead actress’s best friend. Secondly, she’d just turned thirty. She might as well have turned three hundred years old. Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, Amy Sedaris: all discovered while in their twenties. And lastly, Caroline was not funny.

“Thank you, Miss Crane. Callbacks are in a week,” said a voice. It was the casting director sitting in the auditorium, though the theater lights shone so brightly upon the oak wood stage it was as though he sat in the mouth of a dark cave.

“Mrs. Crane,” said Caroline.

“What?”

“You said ‘miss’. I’m married.”

“Hmm. Callbacks are still in a week. Next.” Caroline turned and disappeared between the folds of the scarlet stage curtains.

North Wells Street was wet under a misty slate sky and glossed with a dim yellow splash of sodium streetlights. Caroline lifted the collar of her pink slicker to protect her neck from the cool breeze and made for the El train platform.

Across from Caroline on the El sat an Indian man, drooping in his seat, his eyes laden with fatigue and the hood of his navy jacket drawn over his head. Cumin and coriander and all manner of curry scents wafted throughout the train car. Chicago is not a sterile city thought Caroline and it made her most uncomfortable. She clutched her purse and made for the exit when the P.A. announced her station.

In between auditions, Caroline worked as a customer service representative in a call center for an airline. Most evenings, for she worked the second shift, were spent in a perpetual apology, as the airline would often misplace passenger’s bags or shipments or cadavers. The call center hosted a congregation of selfsame cubicles arranged in a serpentine layout and the fluorescent bulbs overhead cascaded an electric glow upon the taupe walls. Caroline enjoyed her workplace immensely. Not once did she consider her aspirations for a career as a comedienne while clocked in.

Once home from work, Caroline consented to making love. It was sweet and sufficient. Afterwards, Paul fell asleep. He was a kind man, though she suspected it would not be long until he sought more fertile pastures. His shoulders were broad and his skin baked black by a brilliant sun. Caroline showered and watched Letterman in bed before sleep took her.

* * * * *

Caroline swims a perfect breaststroke through the inky black expanse of space, the twinkling white stars of the universe bobbing and bouncing like buoys as she makes for the velvety Milky Way ahead on the horizon. She glides through the creamy ether, the radiance of the galaxies growing more clean and colorful, full of greens and blues and purples and pink. . .

Caroline is delivering her opening monologue on Saturday Night Live and the crowd is aflutter with laughter. She delivers zing after zing after zing. No one is safe; no president, no empire, no diva, no reality star. All endure the scathing wit and tenacity of Caroline’s satire. Still, she is left uneasy. . .

Caroline is home in the fecund hills of Kentucky. She is standing in her mother’s garden and wearing the lavender romper her grandma gave to her on her tenth birthday. The air is pungent with the sour tang of cow manure and blooming dogwoods. Upon the crest of the hill beyond the pasture breezes Rhince, Caroline’s grey roan mare, still galloping along the border of the green and wild wood. Caroline’s heart bulges with longing and desire. The surroundings are familiar.

Protruding out over the stalks of corn is the big house, sky blue with a black shingle roof and wrought iron weathercock. Caroline walks through the back door and upstairs to her father’s study. Leather bound books line the shelves of the study and in the hearth hiss hot embers. In the far corner sits a staircase, its ramshackle railing held aloft with wooden slats. She ascends the staircase and finds a door of knotted oak. She rattles loose the rusty chains and a bulky copper lock hanging about the door's entryway. The hinges creak and moan as the door gives way.

The air is stifling and musty in the attic. Each breath is a labor for Caroline. There are no windows in the high room, though it is filled with an unnatural quality of light. The stretch of the space is vacant but for a brown and battered chest. Caroline reaches out and tugs on the golden catch, loosing it and throwing open the top. Inside sits a stone imp, a gangly thing, no larger than a goose egg and grinning a wide impish grin. His teeth are ivory tines like toothpicks chiseled of ancient bone; his eyes inset with rubies. Caroline is frightened by the demon figure and closes the chest.

She is outside again somehow, on the edge of the garden, but the chest remains before her. Caroline sprints to the barn and grabs the garden hoe where it leans against Rhince’s stall. She takes the imp from the trunk and pitches him to the ground and begins to swing and hack wildly with the hoe, chipping and chinking the stone surface until it is disfigured and mutated. Caroline digs a patch of soil in the garden and thrusts the imp deep into the tilled dirt. Self satisfied, she steps back from the unconsecrated sepulcher.

Night falls without the forewarning of dusk. It is mirthless and pitch black. An orange glow flays the darkness and glistens over Caroline’s shoulder. As she rounds in place, the volume increases. The barn is ablaze, its skeleton crackling as the flames lick the marrow from the bones. Yelps from within are only just discernable as her mother and father. Soon thereafter, the yelps fade to low groans and die away. The high whinny and demented squeal is Rhince. Caroline is stock-still where she stands, subject to the same tragedy she endured in childhood, but not for the first time since and certainly not for the last. She no longer cries and is fiercely proud of this.

Just beyond the long shadows cast in the flickering light, amongst the trees upon the hill, lopes a slinking and lanky figure, its eyes glinting red and pernicious.

* * * * *

Caroline awoke with a start, her chest heaving in breathless gasps, and Rhince’s sinister neigh still ringing clear in her mind. Beyond her bedroom window plush purple lightning twined itself around the darkness; a peal of thunder shook the ground. Her alarm clock blinked 12:00 in a muted digital red, though dawn was only a couple of hours away. She pulled open her nightstand and rooted through the socks and underwear until her finger felt that familiar caked surface and she grabbed it. The stone imp was as dark as coffee with sparkling white teeth.

How much more? She thought. When will I have given the Devil his due?

She turned on her side in bed, pressing her back into the warmth of Paul’s naked chest and continued to fear all things beyond the fire’s light.

Tall Tale Tuesday :: Fountain Drinks

It’s out of the frying pan and into the fire, thought John, hating himself for permitting the cliché’. It was a Tuesday afternoon when John’s doctor told him he had lung cancer. It was aggressive and it was terminal. His mother and his father were dead and no other family or friends came to his relief. He had spent his life in the Appalachian hills, going from mine to mine, picking up whatever spare work was thrown his way; no roots to speak of. He was not frightened by the cancer. John was a survivor of a mineshaft collapse. He was never afraid in the midst of all that dark and quiet and he was not afraid now.

With little consideration, John packed his belongings into his Taurus during the night. He wanted to see the beach and Miami sounded nice. If the doctor was correct, he still had four or five Tuesdays to enjoy. Dawn began to break and John drove south.

* * * * *

On the south side of Asheville John picked up a shabby man in a threadbare jacket hitching home to St. Augustine. The man was middling tall and smelled like a wino. He thanked John for his courtesy, took a drink from a pewter hip flask and went to sleep. The wheels kept rolling.

* * * * *

The diner was thick with the smell of bacon grease and the allure of the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks decrepitude. The lamplight within washed the dingy restaurant in a filthy sort of muted yellow glow, barely enough light to turn away the chilled darkness pressing in from beyond the grimy windows. John drank his coffee down to the dregs and gestured to the waitress for more. Across from him sat the bum, a slim dark man with a beard full of grey. He told John his name was Leon. The bum called Leon was a garrulous drunk, but John didn’t mind. It gave him something to think about besides the cancer. Thirty days, give or take, and dwindling, thought John, and the image of a grand hourglass spilling sand grain after precious sand grain emerged in his mind’s eye.

“And more to the point, m’boy,” said Leon, “the vast majority of life is nothing more than self-fulfilling prophecy; people believing possibilities are finite and unattainable, effectively putting them out of reach. These misguided souls file in and out of existence each day, worried more about a company’s ROE or market shares than discovering new worlds, or taking a voyage beyond the boundaries of the map, or even…” He was interrupted when the waitress brought John his refill. She was a woman in her late forties with hair the color of fire opals and a face dispossessed of its youthful beauty. Leon considered her for a moment before taking a swig from his flask. He wiped the dribble from his chapped lips with the back of his hand and continued.

“Or even becoming the first female astronaut,” said Leon, his eyes catching the waitress’s. “But then comes that first algebra test sophomore year. A whole lotta red marks on the pages, and it’s easiest to believe the lies. ‘Not strong enough; not smart enough; never to amount to anything more than ordinary or plain.’ It’s a slippery slope from that initial concession. Isn’t that right, Kate?”

The waitress’s face lost all color and her lower lip quivered. “H-How did you do that?” she asked.

“Well, dear, you are wearing a name tag,” said Leon.

“No. I mean, how did you know I wanted to be the first woman in space?”

“Intuition, maybe?” said Leon, and he chuckled. The woman scuttled back behind the counter, back to what made sense, placing a buffer between her and the ambiguity.

“Nice trick,” said John. “Did you overhear her in conversation or something?”

“Holmesian deduction, son,” said Leon. “I’m a regular Sherlock, taking applications for my Watson.” John inclined an eyebrow in disbelief. “Take, for instance, the efficacious manner in which she dispersed the coffee, avoiding all splatter. Clearly, she maintains a firm grasp of physics and possesses a sound mathematical mind.”

The short order cook, not the waitress, brought out their order. A bowl of vegetable soup with a grilled cheese went to Leon. John opted only for coffee. After a moment, Leon went on, his mouth full and his beard festooned with tomato bisque. “Also, she hummed the chorus lines to that piss poor Police tune from the late seventies about walking on the moon while she wiped down the bar counter.

“The significance of this is two-fold. To begin with, the song came out circa 1979. I'll wager she was in high school, junior or senior year, judging by her age. That’s about the time most people give up all hope of realizing their dreams," Leon mopped up the mess in his beard with a napkin. "People enjoy the theory of achieving a dream, but the effort required is what frightens them. One finds rest and comfort in surrendered aspirations. The hope for a sunnier future will linger always, but the ambition flutters away. At the point of abandonment, most all deserters create little mementos, small keepsakes of their once vibrant dream. Something they can cling to when life becomes arduous; something that can make them think, ‘remember when?’ People find peace in potential, even if it’s past its expiration. Kate’s Police song is her keepsake. I digress. The last point of interest is that Kate here has a…” Leon leaned over the table, invading John’s air, his breath full and infectious with the scent of something sweet.

“Hell, I chanced it, Johnny. I took a shot in the dark and I read her right. There is no science to it. I’m old. I’ve been around the block a time or two. After a while, you begin to understand people, especially their weaknesses, the chinks in their armor.” said Leon, retreating back to his side of the table. “But really, what kid that grew up back when Armstrong and Aldrin prowled the heavens didn’t want to blast off for NASA when they grew up? To be up there,” he said, flicking his spoon and head in synchrony towards the ceiling, “navigating through a sea of stars? They were the last great pioneers; Gods almost, in their heyday, but soon discarded.” He hefted the flask to his lips once more and drank deeply.

“Maybe you should cut back on that stuff. You know, take it easy,” said John.

“Maybe I should, but I probably won’t.” replied Leon, and he smiled.

John squared the bill with Kate at the register and Leon decided to hang back. Together, they stepped out into the heat and humidity of the night. Jacksonville was an hour south on I-95 and St. Augustine three hours past that.

* * * * *

Leon fell asleep somewhere between Jacksonville and St. Augustine, his head lolling as he tried to explain what was the greatest of human luxury.

“It’s not booze, or money, or women – or guys if you swing that way – No, it’s accessibility. People want reach out and take hold of what their hearts desire without concern or labor, like one plucks an apple from a tree. Accessibility is life’s greatest indulgence. No fruit can be sweeter,” said Leon, the final syllable melding into a wheezing snore.

Rain fell fast and steady, its noisy feet pattering upon the roof of the car. John felt empty. Until Leon came around, John had never questioned his lack of concern for his future or his cancer or his death. Now it was all too clear. He could not recollect a moment in his past where he clung tightly to a notion of a future more prosperous and plentiful than his current lot in life. He merely lived. Days would pass and John just watched as they slid by. His newfound depression wasn’t entrenched in lack of accomplishment or a litany of unfulfilled life goals, but rather in the lack of goals altogether. He was vacant.

The wipers cleaned the rain-flecked windshield and the central white lines detached by stints of asphalt fell behind the car. It was when the surface of a road sign glinted green in the Taurus’s high beams that John began to cry. MIAMI: 300.

He did not want to go to Miami any more than he wanted to brush his teeth or scale K2 or get Jesus. This hurt the most. John sobbed now.

“It’s alright, Johnny,” said Leon through a yawn, “it’s ok. Everyone finds their way.” He arched his back and limbered his arms in a giant stretch. “This is my exit.”

Leon asked to be dropped off at a gas station, locally owned, on the corner of Mill and Bimini. A deep fatigue began to insinuate into John’s mind and muscles. He felt it as he lurched his stiff frame out of the driver’s seat and walked toward the entrance. It was the cancer. There was nothing natural or normal about it. Masses of mutated cells ready to snuff out his existence. It ticked inside him like an egg timer, soon to bong.

“Johnny, over here.” Leon motioned with his hand. He was standing at the Coke fountain at the back of the room. In each hand he held a hip flask. He handed one to John. A fine filigree engraving that read A Lane Jounced Open was inset upon its side. “Fill it up. Coke, please.” John did so. Once full, he offered it to Leon. He did not take it back.

“Listen, Johnny, I appreciate the lift and the meal.” Leon raised his flask in toast, “To John! ¡Salud, pesetas y amor y tiempo para gozarlos!” and he drank deeply. So did John, though with great hesitance.

Energy surged through John’s limbs as the cool fizz of the soda washed his throat; a strength and vigor so vivacious and hot and teeming his whole body broke into goose bumps and the hair on his head bristled with life. His vision came into keener focus, like after one rubs the sleep and gunk from waking eyes.

“You’ve done me a good turn, Johnny, and in return I’d like you to keep that flask. Y’know, just as a keepsake.” With that, Leon turned and made for the exit.

“Hey, Leon,” John shouted across the store. “Back at the diner you said you were old. How old, man?”

“Dunno. I stopped counting a long time ago,” he said with a wry grin . He waved and walked into the muggy gloom of night.

John checked his watch. If I hurry, I can make it to Miami before the sunrise, he thought.

Tall Tale Tuesday :: A Den Of Thieves

Derek wakes from a sluggish sleep and winces, his grey eyes hiding behind narrowing eyelids as the afternoon sunlight pierces the tall windows of the tour bus, aggravating his hangover. The previous evening was filled with laughter and tequila, and on the periphery of his recollection it seems karaoke tucked into the night as well. He hums tunelessly and percusses his thigh. Meredith elbows him in the ribs, not unkindly, gesticulating her displeasure for his restiveness with a single finger placed over her pursed, slim lips. Standing in the front of the bus is the stocky tour guide with copper colored skin called Manuel. He greeted all the gringo travelers as they boarded the bus, a jaundice yellow tin can on wheels. Manuel’s brow is furrowed and it shelves several beads of sweat each glistening and tumbling in its turn, like shooting stars, as he amuses his guests with a brief history of the Mayans. He speaks a muddled, strenuous sort of Spanglish. Derek considers it put on, just another service Manuel offers. The mere appeasement of Western white presuppositions.

Meredith is rapt with attention, clutching a copy of Frommer’s entitled Explore Chichen Itza!, her blue eyes wide and her fingers twirling tangles of her nut-brown hair. She is rather beautiful. The image delights Derek, and he reclines in his seat and lets the lilt of Manuel’s voice nurse his queasy stomach. “It isn’t practiced so much anymore, but the Mayan gods are still remembered by true Mayans. They speak the dead language; they tell the old stories; they honor the aged memories,” Manuel says, and the bus trundles deeper into Yucatan.

Once within the confines of the ruins, Manuel provides a trifling tour equal to the trifling charge his company collected from each of the day-travelers. Upon completion, he points to a kiosk flanked by a lavatory. “Be back here just after sunset. You have the rest of the afternoon to do as you like. But remember, the last amigo back buys everyone cerveza,” Manuel says with a smile. The crowd disperses.

Meredith insists upon retracing the steps of the tour. “It’s the only way to make certain we’ll appreciate the experience,” she says. Derek consents because he loves her, but mostly because he enjoys the urgency with which she walks, and the subsequent sway of her hips, whenever she feels she is sharing in something authentic or crucial, a discordant fusion of jogging and strolling.

It is not the arithmetical precision with which the step pyramid El Castillo was hewn and assembled to align symmetrically with the constellations and calendar that causes Derek to marvel, nor is it the opulent emerald depths of the Well of Sacrifice, decorated with sunlight cascading and glinting over the face of the water, fairy-like and ethereal, shrouded by the dense jungle. Instead, it is the enormity of the mass of the people selling trinkets that renders Derek in awe. Local peddlers nestle against the stone temples and swarm the pebbled pathways, like bees to the hive, their ornaments and wares heaped upon tables, overlapping and teeming. They entreat each foreign visitor or white face to buy tacky t-shirts, bright blankets, stone daggers, whichever souvenir of shoddy sentimentality can be hawked with the least personal investment. “Time is money,” says Derek. Meredith ignores this.

One vendor, a grimy woman with a beaky face, thrusts a jade necklace towards Derek. He shakes his head in refusal. The grimy woman takes the rejection as an imprecation, her face transmuting into gloom. Derek rifles through his pockets and shovels the contents into the woman’s wrinkled hands, a few paper pesos. Meredith strokes Derek’s shoulder affectionately in approval, like a master pets a dog for proper behavior. Derek blushes.

The booth attendant adjacent the grimy woman steps into Derek’s vision. He is dark, his lank long hair is darker, and his lop-sided leer is darker still. “My friend,” he says, “have a look at my things.” His tabletop is adorned with figurines, both porcelain and wood-carved. They are obscene distortions of old Mayans, naked men with engorged genitalia and women with swollen breasts. The lop-sided leering man has the figurines arranged in compromising positions, mimicking coital scenes and lascivious acts. “All merchandise, four for 24 pesos,” he says. It is Meredith who blushes now and grabs Derek’s hand, using her other to wag a reproving finger at the leering vendor. Such is the sprawl of the ruins, a rabble of merchants congregating amongst the remnants of bygone glory.

“Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, and through them presses a wild motley throng.” The words flood Derek’s mind, and he says them aloud. He does not remember where they came from.

“What?” asks Meredith.

“Nothing,” Derek replies, “its nothing, Mere. They just seems really desecrated. These temples, this place. Just the entire setup. Doesn’t it?”

“Not really. It’s just people, doing the best they know,” she replies. Derek shrugs, not entirely convinced. But Meredith is beautiful and he loves her.

The sun wanes in the west, washing the worn and dusty paths etched about the monuments with a weak light. Derek and Meredith make for the rendezvous point beside the kiosk. Walking past El Castillo, Derek imagines hearing drums from the temple atop the step pyramid, deep and clangorous, like a peal of thunder rolling out from the belly of the earth. It is not until Derek turns to Meredith that he realizes the drums are not imagined. Her eyes are fixed upon the high temple, as are everyone’s, inside which there emanates an orange glow, fiery and flickering. A single voice, musical and malevolent, carries high on the air, permeating the grounds, its melody imploring in a foreign twittering tongue.

A new clamor hangs thick in the air, far less eerie than the harsh voice, a crunch of rocks underfoot or the crackling of dry leaves; somewhat similar to the first sound but much more tangible, as though the two melded into one another, like a hideous noise from a nightmare that, upon waking, proves to be a washing machine or an alarm clock.

Comprehension dawns for Derek. He is able to place the new noise. The marching of a regiment, he thinks. Meredith turns his head with her hand and his eyes validate the fears of his ears. Upon the west hill, out of the Temple of the Warriors, marches a troop of soldiers unlike any Derek has seen. These men are true Mayans. Not paunchy or portly, but solid men, barrel-chested men, forged of toil and suffering and pain, old and forgotten strengths. They wear vivid blue war paint atop their cinnamon skin, only a cut of cloth around their groins otherwise.

The warriors are sprinting and shrieking through the ruins, like feral dogs nipping at the heels of a cornered fawn. The scene is ghastly. Their serrated swords, ancient tools crafted of obsidian so pure and perfect they sparkle and shine purple, kiss and slash and kiss again. Flesh, bone, and baubles: maimed, purged of all impurity. The rush of the raid dissipates and the warriors are lost from sight, if they ever existed at all. The firelight and the din in the high temple is no more. Night has fallen amid the tumult.

Meredith is dead, but so are many others. The lop-sided leering man, for instance. Derek feels a tug at the hem of his sleeve and turns to find the grimy woman, still as beaky as before. She takes his hand, palm up, and returns the pesos he gave her. He watches as she walks away, becoming a silhouette against the twinkling purple sky.

“Is it well to leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast fold Sorrow’s children, soothe the hurts of fate,” Derek says into the darkness. He pockets the paper pesos, and makes for the kiosk, wondering if he will have to buy beer for Manuel or anyone at all.

Tall Tale Tuesday :: Safe Passage

Sailors in my Father’s tavern would often regale the other patrons with tales of the affectionate caress of the Sea, of how Her garish blue green sting would wash and lick and rinse the wounds of any man. As I sat on the prow of the ship the wide foamy swath of Sea before me glittered and glinted in the tinge of a red dusk, but it was no elixir for my failed heart. Perhaps I am the exception, then. But I believe my wounds are too wide to patch, too deep to mend.

The captain, a tawny man with kindness etched into the lines of his face, lent me a cloak, dry and scratchy. My own clothes are little more than refuse now, sodden and frayed from days spent as flotsam and jetsam, me along with them. It was only the day after last his boat came into vision, slicking over the horizon like butter skimming across a hot pan, and plucked me from a delirium of thirst and sun fever. He gave me quarter in the belly of the cedar ship. I drank warm broth and sipped fizzy wine. A viscous amber salve was spread over my burns, softening the sting of the Sun upon my skin. I slept.

My dreams were wicked and true that night: Lovers ripped from one another by the incensed current of a swollen Sea. A child perched high in a gnarled Beech tree, her ululation rising with the predatory tide. Swarms of people thrashed and flayed and churned into a maelstrom of crimson and scarlet. The air was rank with the squalid scent of brine and blood and bile. Grand buildings erupted. Churches crumpled. Fine homes exploded, sending splinters and shards slicing the survivors; shrapnel crafted of pomp and hubris. Time ceased, then sprung forward and ceased again. The torrent dwindled. I was alone.

The dream replayed the following night.

The next morning I woke to the sway of the ship, listing over on her port side. The captain redirected course when I came aboard. We were sailing towards the rising sun. “My engagement in the west is complete,” he said. I nodded. Two promontories were on the horizon, jutting gray and withered against an indigo sky, like the fingers of an ancient god, eager to clutch seafarers for his keeping. The captain invited me to take up a post upon the prow. “One should appreciate a first passage between the Pillars.” I nodded once more and obeyed.

It was dusk. Midday and the Pillars were well behind us. The captain moored the ship in a bay he spotted off the port side when we first cleared the pass. The land before me was good green pasture, gilded by the sun’s waning light. Beyond the meadow was woodland and beyond the woodland sat the mountains, wreathed in mist and shadow.

My gaze averted from the land and alighted on the captain, his foggy eyes pallid and cold. He smiled, wryly, and inclined his head to a tan rucksack on the deck. I fumbled through the pack he had prepared for me. Behind a jug of water, a loaf of bread, and a wineskin, I found my old clothes, restored to pristine condition. From the pocket of my vest I pulled a red-copper coin, the wage of a day’s work in Father’s tavern. After a moment, I bundled the sack and hefted over my shoulder. The captain was waiting for me in the stern of the ship, leaning against the tiller. I approached him and offered the coin. He took it. “For others requiring passage?” he asked. I nodded. His smile transmuted into a beaming grin, almost nefarious, a gleam reminiscent of a chimp. With a flick of the wrist, the captain sent the coin skipping across the surface of the water and into the western sun.

I flung the pack into the water and jumped from the stern into the bay. Once ashore, I made for the meadow beyond the beach. “Farewell, Andalusia.” yelled the captain. But I did not turn around.