“Jonah thrashed back to his kayak. But Katherine rolled out of hers, powered through the water, shrieking and splashing. Scared the crap out of those animals. They dove, and when they popped up a minute later, they’d fallen way back.”
I stopped. We sat in silence a long time.
George spoke first. “Why do you think you never told me the full story?”
This query was a breach of protocol, being more for himself—curiosity or wounded pride—than for me. But it was a good question nevertheless.
“Because I don’t know the whole story. Not who started the scuffle, or why, or what they yelled at each other. I don’t know why Daniel swam after the sea lions. Even if he hadn’t known they could be aggressive—which he definitely did—why would he abandon his kayak in open water like that? The only explanation he ever gave was that he ‘wanted to meet the sea lions.’” I fell silent a minute or two. “Mostly I didn’t tell the story because I don’t know what I was doing while my wife rescued our son.”
“You were collecting the kayaks and helping Jonah get back in his, then going to Katherine and Daniel—” This from Abigail, talking in a rush. George and I cut her off with a glance. “Sorry,” she said, and returned to her posture of thoughtful listening.
I took several deep breaths. “That’s probably true. We saved the kayaks and got the boys on board. I probably had something to do with that. But when I think of that day, I see only Katherine. She’s beautiful and horrifying. I don’t mean so much as a woman, though that way too, I suppose. But she was beyond that. She was this explosion of love and violence. Pure, unconstrained . . .” I searched for the word. A minute passed, then another. “Life. She was life.”
We sat in silence a long time after that, twenty minutes at least. I still had no idea what to make of the story. There’d been some scuffle between the boys. But there’d been many. Daniel had been wounded, but he recovered quickly. I was pondering these things when Abigail asked, “And what were you that day, Isaac?”
Answers are not required in clearness committees. The questions are solely for the person asked, to use as they see fit. I didn’t offer a response, and we spent the rest of the meeting in silence. But the question stayed with me, for I knew the answer all too well.
What was I the day the sea lion attacked Daniel? I was a worthless piece of flotsam, floating on a dangerous sea.
47
Day of My Death
For seventeen years, I was a boy named Jonah. Then one act and wham! I’m a murderer, a label that rings a lot louder than any name. The boy named Jonah? Turns out he never existed. He was only ever a killer, hiding, waiting, in a boy’s clothes.
That’s how it will be, right? When they find my note later this morning. Everyone tracing back through my life, looking for devil markings on my skin. I’ve been doing it too. For days, I’ve felt tender spots on my scalp like horns might be pushing through. But I keep thinking about something Mr. Balch said last spring when we were walking back from meeting.
I’d started jabbering on about politics, ended up saying a certain leader of ours was evil. Mr. Balch, who’d been quiet till then, stopped and turned to me, all urgent like he could get. “Evil isn’t a person,” he said. “It’s not a political group either. Or a religion like some people think. Evil is a force. Like gravity. It acts on all of us. We’re all vulnerable to it.”
I argued with him awhile. I could think of a ton of evil people in history. He listened intently like he always did, then turned and started walking again. With anyone else, I would think I was being dissed, but with Mr. Balch I knew he was processing things. Finally he said, “My mother died of cancer. The last time they cut her open, she was so riddled with tumors they closed her back up. The doctor said that’s all they found in there, just cancer as far as he could see.”
I kept expecting an explanation. After a few more blocks, I said, “I’m not getting it.”
Gravel crunched under his feet awhile, then, “My mother had cancer, she suffered cancer, but no one ever thought she was cancer itself.” He took a few more steps. “Despite all the evidence.”
* * *
—
I WISH I HADN’T QUIT GOING TO MEETING LAST SPRING. Those Friends sitting in that big plain room created a force field that blotted out the pain in my head. Most of the hurt was about my dad, the way I never knew who I’d get one minute to the next. And there was school, and friends, trying to pretend I belonged when I knew I didn’t. All the money stuff too, watching Mom struggle. Our lights and heat kept getting cut. Even to a kid, those unpaid bills were like monsters pounding at the windows, so noisy it was hard to think of anything else.
But in meeting, there were no monsters, no dad, nothing pounding at the outside of me. Just peace. In my life, peace of any kind was the strangest thing of all.
When I started showing up every week after Daniel quit, I worried he might be mad or think I was stupid. But he said only, “Suit yourself.” And I know Mr. Balch liked that I went. He isn’t a big smiler, but when he’d see me, it’d be like he couldn’t help himself; the corners of his mouth would curl up the tiniest bit. Afterward we’d always walk home together, and even when we were quiet, it felt like we were talking up a storm with our silent steps.
The year I turned sixteen, this weird thing happened at meeting. A light, a big glowing ball like a small sun, appeared a couple of feet over a Friend’s head. Then it descended on her, made her glow. It was one of the older ladies, her gray hair so thin she was almost bald. And right then, she started singing. The best part was she couldn’t sing to save herself and yet it was the most magical thing I’d ever heard. Pure off-key love. Another time, the glowing ball formed over the empty center. It grew and grew during the hour, until it hovered over the whole room, flashing like that spaceship in Close Encounters. As we were walking home, Mr. Balch said, “That was a covered meeting. Did you feel it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Saw it too.”
He looked at me like what in the hell was I talking about. “Do you know what a covered meeting is?”
“You mean the light?”
He was quiet a moment. “I guess you could put it that way. A covered meeting, some call it ‘gathered,’ is hard to describe. Time falls away. It feels like the Divine—the Light, you might say—rising up in the entire room, not just in one Friend. We all feel it.”
“Yeah. I felt it,” I said, and left it there. After that, I did some searching online. I didn’t see anything about glowing balls and Quakers, and no one ever mentioned them during meetings or after. Maybe I was the only one who saw them. The last time I saw one, the ball hovered over one Friend who broke the silence and then moved slowly to a different Friend who spoke too. Lots of times, though, Friends spoke and I didn’t see any ball of light. I never did see one over Mr. Balch’s head, though he broke the silence most of all.
I finally got up the nerve to tell Mr. Balch about it, just said it straight out. “Sometimes I see lights around people before they break the silence.”
He acted surprised, wanted a few examples. I think he was dying to know if I’d ever seen one around him, but he didn’t ask. I was glad. He would have been disappointed.