The Ocean Ranger

And now the wakes are over
And the masses have been said
And the widows and the orphans
Now are left to mourn their dead
We pray to God the father
And the son, and holy ghost
To protect all those who venture forth
Off Newfoundland's fateful coast

-Excerpt from “The Ocean Ranger” by Mary Garbey

The Sea Captain watched the sharp gray waves crash on the smooth rock cliffs below in just the same way as they had crashed for the eyes of his father. He watched as the cycle of unforgiving energy battled against the land, smashing the worn cliff faces, rumbling with the sound that he'd heard every moment of his life since first breath. It was the lullaby of a restless monster blind with jealousy and the obsession of its goal to own everything that stood above it. The Captain had learned to have peace with the oceans battle song. He let it lure him to sleep at night even though it sometimes awoke him in his nightmares.

The Captain thought back to how he had learned to both love and be afraid of the sea. It was his father, a captain as well, that had told him as a boy of the vast and deep ocean through stories of pirates and tides and sea monsters and crosswinds, his father always carving away at the characters of his tales on pieces of driftwood found by the boy on the black sand beaches below their family’s cabin. These were stories given by the sea, used to tempt those that chose to taunt it with their lives. A reward but a double edged sword. It was from these tales the young boy learned to be the Sea Captain that he was today. But before the real ships and real splinters that ship wheels would embed in his hands it was with these stories that he sailed in his imagination and dreams, watching alongside his father for the months he was gone to sea. The boy, though standing on the cliff, was living on the sea. When his father would return there would be new stories to add to the boy’s knowledge. In a way these were stories not only of his father but of all men, not just those on the boat and not those just that were sailors. They boy did not know this then but his father did. The boy would realize eventually with age, even before he became a sea captain himself.

And now he stood as a captain on the cliffs of his childhood and looked at the unforgiving waves crashing on the cliffs and pictured his father at home waking before the sunrise to dress and drink warm tea with his mother one last time before leaving once again. The vision was the boys with his own eyes because he would always awaken early on his father’s last day on land in hopes that he could save the memory of his father’s face until his return again. He hid now in the shadows watching until his father called the boy near, his old man eyes catching the glow around the boys figure in the blackness of the houses dark corners, illuminated only by the pale blue glow of the moon and blaze of stars that the boy would soon learn to see with himself. His father called him toward the open door, he passed through the warm bright glow of the oil lamp and into the cool blue air of the dawn near the door, the mist rising from the cliffs calling his father toward the water. The father hugged his boy and handed him a small ship he had carved with drift wood shaped by the sea while telling stories.

As his father left he looked one last time at his boy and his wife, toward the sleeping youngsters in their shared bed and the boy saw the constellations flash in his father’s eyes. The father turned to leave, walked down the dirt road that lead to the harbor along the cliffs as he had many times before, knowing that the boy would wait and walk behind him in the dark, slowly becoming illuminated as the rising sun began to cut through the fog blanket hugging the land. The man would walk and they boy would walk, another man would join his father up ahead, a friend who sailed with his father, a man who his father had known since he could remember, the new mans own son waiting behind their own gate and joining our own boy, two boys walking who had known each other since they were born. The men would be joined by two more men further down the road on their walk, all joined and followed by two more boys who also hid behind their gates. All walking together toward the harbor just as their fathers and grandfathers had walked before them.

From the cliffs the boys squinted as the tall black schooner highlighted against the now white glass covered sea disappeared over the horizon, the waves still crashing but gentler now, tempting the boys, deceptively asking them to come along also, but the boat was too far and they were too young, a memory of their fathers was their only opportunity, a small black speck on the horizon of the cool white sea. The boy watched and waited just as he had always done for as long as he could remember. The sea itself noticed the moment and the longing of the boys and wondered why such small things mattered when there were rocks to be crushed and land to be smashed, it was too deeply focused on its own imagination of dreams to care how they affected anyone but itself.

The days passed, the seasons changed and the sun circled high in the sky until it once again began its slow journey back toward where it had come, the low path along the horizon, disappearing and then returning over and over, the cool gray sea also cycling back to the place it had been a million times before. And the boy still stood and began to wonder now when the schooner would also appear again over the horizon. The women and children of the village began to wonder as well.

And now the Sea Captain stared at the same waves, in the same cold mist, in the same spot on the cliff where he had waited for his father long ago, his eyes trained on the edge of the horizon, knowing and not knowing what lay just over its edge. The sea, with all its emotion between rage and tranquility was now deceptively simple. It rolled up and then down, giving and then taking. The Sea Captain thought back to when his mother had stood next to him on the spot he stood now, telling him that he needed to come home, that he couldn't stand there for eternity, but the boy wanted to stand until he saw his father again, otherwise for eternity. Eventually he would go back and come out of the rain but he still stared at the dark sea through the window of the cabin, his eyes not breaking from the horizon even when his mother blew out the candle that illuminated the boys face. But the boy could still see the water and the waves illuminated by the stars and the moon. Without the candle he understood more than he had before, the stars whispering their knowledge, watching over him now.

For the boy his father’s wake was his first, but a funeral without a body was not the first for his mother, not the first for the village and not the first or the last for the cold gray ocean. Those who understood knew that this was a part of the sea, those who loved it also needed to know that they should be very afraid of it. It could and would eventually take back everything it gave. His mother knew this pain and comforted the younger wives who hadn't been wounded so severely yet or had only lost a single uncle or an older brother to the deep, not the immensity of the father of their young ones. Our own boy held his mother’s hand, picturing his father on the sea, battling with pirates or fighting against sea monsters. These were images that would stay in his head for always and that he used in his own stories that he told his own son. His own son that stood next to him now on the same cold rock cliffs and who held a wooden boat that the Sea Captain had carved himself from the memory of his own fathers wood carvings. The Captain stood holding the hand of his own boy who looked at the sea and then watched as his father let go of his hand and walked down the path toward a black schooner and boarded. The boy would watch as the schooner disappeared over the horizon too, then stand still on the cliff seeing the waves of the cool gray sea crash again and again, he would look and wait and imagine when his father would once again return.