A Fist of Water

“Hey, you stayin’ warm over there, Liam?” shouts my great uncle over the steady thrum of the wind barreling across the beach. Even though it’s only October, I’m in full winter gear. Sand would be in my eyes right now if not for the clear ski goggles my uncle brought for me. I feel a little silly, yet also invincible. My fingers are a little nippy. Otherwise, I’m pretty cozy.

“Yep, I’m good, Uncle Jerry,” I yell through my neck warmer, my voice muffled.

“Good, good,” he says, absorbed in his work.

Uncle Jerry is Grandma’s brother. He’s standing on the shore behind a tripod with a huge camera mounted on top. His legs are splayed out to help him balance in the wind. The camera is held tightly in his hands and he’s focused on the waves out in Lake Erie. 

I’ve never seen anything like them. 

They aren’t like waves you picture in your mind: smooth and glassy and curling in perfect arcs to crash on a white sand beach. No, these are absolute monsters. They’re like hands of water, fists of water, violently reaching up to grab a handful of air, only to dissolve back into the water.

We’re at Sturgeon Point where a small jetty runs out along the marina. The waves hit the jetty and bounce back into the oncoming waves. When they meet, they pound into each other and create huge explosions of water that are then torn apart by the wind. They shred into millions of molecules of water. If the sun peeks out from behind a cloud and hits the water just right, Uncle Jerry goes crazy on his camera. It sounds like a machine gun as he holds down the shutter. I’m trying to keep from being blown away in the storm. I don’t know how Uncle Jerry is standing there at all. 

—

Mom had helped me get ready the night before, saying that Jerry would be over to get me in the morning.

“To do what?” I’d asked.

“There’s a big storm rolling in and Jerry wants to take you to the beach.”

“The beach?”

“Doesn’t sound like a beach day to me either honey, but Jerry is a little on the eclectic side.”

“What do you mean?” I’d asked.

“Well, he’s tried many things in his day. Carpentry, substitute teaching, golf course maintenance, you name it. He made decent money at Goya once he settled down. Then he bought that pontoon. He wanted to run photo tours on the lake. Tillman’s Tours he was gonna call it. But then he got fired and lost his wherewithal. Not sure it’ll happen now.” Under her breath she added, “Better know what he’s doing out there on the beach this time of year.”

—

Uncle Jerry says it’s time for a break. We retreat to the truck.

“Hot cocoa?” he asks, pulling out an old, battered Stanley thermos.

We sip our cocoa for a while in silence and then he says to me, “Your Mom thought it would be good to get you out of the house for a bit, Liam.” He’s working up to what he really wants to say, “After what happened, and all, I thought you might like to get some air,” he stops and looks at me. “Ah hell, Liam. If you want to talk about what happened, I’m all ears. What happens in the truck stays in the truck. Got it?” He nudges me in the arm good-naturedly and I almost spill my hot cocoa.

I stare out the window for a moment and then say what has been on my mind for days, “He broke my trumpet, Uncle Jerry.” He obviously knows what happened.

“I know, Liam. And I’m so sorry about that.”

I didn’t know my great uncle all that well. I saw him at family get-togethers every now and then. He’d never been married as far as I knew. I thought he was kinda cool in a way. Different, you know? Maybe because I don’t know him that well, or because I think he’s cool, or because he isn’t like my dad or my grandpa, I decide to tell him what happened. We sit and sip as the cold wind buffets the truck.

“Well, Dad came home drunk after leaving me at the band concert last weekend. Didn’t even walk me in. And mom was late. So that pretty much sucked” — I look over at Uncle Jerry, but he’s looking out the window — “but that wasn’t the worst of it.”

—

My dad had been a welder, or boilermaker as he liked to call it. I was fascinated with the tools of his trade. I would watch him in the garage with his face mask on, sparks flying, the orange glow reflected from his mask, torch bright as the sun and think of a blacksmith in a medieval fairy tale. I imagined him forging swords and gauntlets for knights and kings.

I went with him one Saturday to work on the heating system in a hotel in Buffalo. Mom thought it would be good for us to do something together. I was 8-years-old. I’d never been to a swanky hotel like it. The huge lobby was brightly lit and the tiled floor had chips of crystal that sparkled as we moved through the open space. We didn’t go to the swanky part, though. He led me through some doors to a flight of stairs that went down and we entered a room unlike any I’d ever seen. Pipes of all sizes spiraled around the room like mechanical spaghetti. Valves of all sizes and dials with glass covers and huge vats filled the space. It was dingy and dank. The walls were bare concrete. The ceiling was low. I imagined it was slowly getting lower. I didn’t like that space at all. Dad kept telling me to keep my hands off things.

While he worked, I wandered around following a pipe’s twisting path through the room. The image of my dad forging swords and other implements of war faded slowly from my mind. I watched him on his hands and knees grumbling at a stubborn valve or a dropped tool in a tight space. My dad was just a normal guy, after all.

If he’d given me a job to do I might have felt like a part of the team. He didn’t do that, though. He kept me at arm’s length made me feel left out.

Eventually, he struggled to find jobs like the one that Saturday. He started selling his tools. I’d find his empty beer or liquor bottles laying around the garage. He slept late and often wasn’t up when I left for school in the morning. I never really knew what he was doing. I felt like I was orbiting outside his universe. There was tension between him and my mom that hadn’t been there before. You could cut it with a knife. I hated that.

—

Playing the trumpet made me happy, though.

That gave me something to focus on. While I didn’t have many friends in the band then, I still felt like I was part of something bigger than myself. I was also a natural with the instrument. Well, ok, someone told me that once. 

I’d gone to an introductory night at the local high school where you could try all the instruments. I drifted over to the trumpets. A high school band member was cleaning off the mouthpiece. She asked if I’d like to give it a try. I picked it up and remember liking how it felt in my hands, the heft of it. It was a well-used instrument. I loved the rich gold color along the pipes and how it changed in the light as I moved it. I put it to my lips and blew. The resulting sound that came out was pure and clean.

“You should play the trumpet,” the high schooler said.

“You think?” I asked.

“Definitely.”

I practiced every day. In 5th grade, as promised, Mom bought me my own trumpet and I was offered a spot in the advanced band. 

Music made me comfortable in ways I hadn’t experienced before. Sometimes life was so complicated I just wanted to scream. Why was it so hard to read people? Why was Dad so angry and frustrated all the time? Why did I feel awkward in my own skin? How is it that no else seems to have any problems? “Water off a duck’s back,” like Grandpa would say. My problems stuck to me like I was made of fly paper. Music, however, was a realm that brought me peace. 

—

We’d had our fall concert at the middle school in October. I was excited, and a little nervous, to perform in the huge gym. Since Mom was working (she’d promised to be on time for the show) Dad took me that night. Although his driving had scared me, his remoteness was scarier. He stopped in front of the school like he was dropping me off.

“Aren’t you coming in?” I’d asked.

“Just go, I’ll find you.” 

I stepped out and watched him park the truck. He got out, stumbled on the curb and came walking toward me. His attitude was different and suddenly I knew he had changed his mind.

“Better get in there, gonna be late,” Dad said.

“I don’t know where the gym is, Dad.”

“Just go inside. You’ll find it.” 

I’d never been to the middle school before. I turned and did my best to walk through the double doors with my head up. Families were streaming in. Once inside, I turned and raised my left hand in a helpless shrug, but Dad was already heading back to his truck. I was embarrassed and angry. I felt like he had stormed my happy place with a battering ram.

Mom found me after the concert. When I told her what happened she got quiet. We didn’t say much on the drive home. I was sort of mad at her too because she had been late for the show.

Dad’s truck was not in the driveway when we returned home. Mom turned to me and said, “Honey, you sounded great in there tonight, I’m so proud of you and I’m really sorry about your father doing what he did.”

I couldn’t get the picture of Dad walking away out of my head. I propped my trumpet case against the post in the living room and went down to my room. I listened to Eric Clapton’s ‘Change the World’ on my headphones. I then heard the truck door slam outside. I pulled off my headphones and heard Dad cursing outside. I peeked through my window and saw him on the front lawn. He stood up and kicked the bottle that he’d obviously tripped on. I watched him walk toward the front door with dread in my stomach.

I heard the front door open and Mom asking him where he’d been and what had happened at the concert. He cut her off and told her to leave him alone. I walked down the hall toward the living room. I watched Dad slide a forearm along the kitchen counter, shoveling dishes into the stainless steel sink with a crash. “Hey,” Mom had yelled at him. “What?” he’d said, like he was all of a sudden ready to argue, or worse. He pulled a bottle out of the fridge and opened it with a bottle opener. It took him a few tries and then the bottle cap fell to the ground.

—

As I picture it now, that bottle cap took forever to fall. I never really wanted it to hit the ground. As long as that cap remained in the air, whatever was going to happen next — what I could feel was going to happen next — wouldn’t happen. I watched, transfixed, and it fell, irretrievably, spinning end over end, to the ground in silence with a final, resounding, devastating clink.

—

I turn my gaze from Uncle Jerry’s passenger window, where the memory of that bottle cap and the wind out on the lake has put me in a trance and continue my story. He listens, motionless. Our cocoa has gone cold in our mugs. 

“Dad stood up straight and lurched into the living room. He kicked my trumpet case — accidentally, I’m pretty sure — on his way and it fell open. The trumpet spilled out onto the hardwood floor. If I’d just taken it to my stupid room…

“Anyway, he picked it up and spun it lazily in his hands. I didn’t like him holding it, I just…didn’t like it. He started mumbling and staggering around the big post in the living room. He kept twirling the trumpet in his hands. I only heard a few things he was saying. Mom had gotten off the couch and was approaching him. She told me to go back to my room. Later, she tried to defend him. Told me how frustrated he was with his life and the direction it took and blah, blah, blah. I couldn’t understand how she would defend what he did.

“After standing there swaying around and mumbling, his face all scrunched up in anger, he suddenly up and whacked the trumpet against the post. Just like that. It clanged through the house and he swung again and again. He looked lost for a minute. Then he let it drop and went out the door. We heard the truck drive off. I tried to put my trumpet back in its case but it wouldn’t fit and my eyes were watery and I didn’t want Mom’s help when she came back in after trying to stop Dad from leaving. I went back to my room with the trumpet.”

The wind is hammering the truck. I hadn’t felt it or heard it. As the memory of that night starts to fade, the sound comes back and I hear Uncle Jerry saying, “Sorry you had to go through that Liam. Have you guys seen him since?”

“Yeah, he came back the next day and packed a suitcase. He looked terrible. Told me he was sorry about the trumpet, but he didn’t really look at me. And then he left. Doesn’t feel like he’s coming back.”

“Well, time will tell. Thanks for unloading on me, Liam.” I am thankful he doesn’t say more. That he doesn’t try to tell me it will all be ok, that Dad will come back and be a changed person and that he’ll fix my trumpet and my life, and so on.

“Do you really listen to Clapton?” says Uncle Jerry, out of nowhere.

“Yeah,” I say, looking over at him, smiling.

“How ‘bout that? Didn’t know kids liked Clapton these days.”

“Billy Joel, too. Let’s go look at the waves again.”

“You said it!”

Sand streaks across the beach while the waves offshore shatter each other into frothy fountains. They experience the ultimate tension, then simply melt back into the surface.

I wish I could do that.

—

After Uncle Jerry had taken about a thousand more pictures he calls it a day. 

“Weather looks to be ramping up,” he says. Earlier, the clouds had been allowing the sun to sporadically poke through. When they did that the sunlight had turned the waves into ‘structures of crystalline beauty’. At least, that what my uncle had said. He got a little swept up in it all. Now, the clouds have obscured the sky and the wind is pushing the water higher up onto the beach. Waves are now crashing over the jetty.

We walk over to the tailgate and Uncle Jerry shows me a few of his pictures on the screen of his Nikon. Again, the idea of fists of water come to me. His images hold power, yet also grace.

“Amazing,” I say, my teeth chattering. “I think we should get in the truck now, though.”

“Couldn’t agree more!” shouts Uncle Jerry, over the wind, slapping me on the back, more to warm his hands than anything, I think. “Just one more thing,” he says, reaching deeper into the bed of the truck. He slides out something and unwraps it, carefully stowing the plastic sheeting into a nook on the inside of the truck bed. It’s my old trumpet case. I open the lid, careful not to let the wind catch it. The rich gold color along the pipes of the new trumpet glow, even on this cloudy, gloomy day. The instrument sits snug in the cradles of felt. I close the lid.

“I figured you could use a new one,” says Uncle Jerry. “I’m no musician mind you, couldn’t find the right end of a clarinet if you asked me. I hope I got the right one.”

“It’s perfect,” I say. “Thank you.”

“You bet, kid. You just better invite me to your next concert, all right? Now, let’s get you and that shiny ol’ instrument into the truck. It’s getting cold!”

We climb into the truck and I put the trumpet case on my lap and wrap my arms around it.

I feel as if I’ll never let go.