In Between the Tides

On some clear, summer nights, in between the time when the tide came in and went out again, there would be an interlude of such exquisite peace and serene quiet that it would make you cry.  You could almost hear the dark stretching over The Point - it was in the calm waters, the shimmering path of moonlight across the passage, the lights of Brier Island mimicking the stars - and in front of our house, a soft circle of yellow light from the newly erected street lamp.  There was a sadness in these moments, a deep well of certainty that God was watching and approving.  Sometimes I would wake with a fierce need to be outside, feeling the darkness pulling at me.  I would creep through the sleeping house and out the side door where I could look up at the stars and feel the night breeze over the ocean.  I listened as hard as I could, holding my breath until I could hear only my heartbeat, expecting something to make itself known, to reveal itself from the shadows. Nothing ever did except the now and again quick, sharp footsteps of a lone figure passing by - Walkin' Will Patterson,
mostly known as "Swing" for his love of Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys - and his ability, at least before he'd gone to war, to do an uncannily lightfooted two step at the Saturday night dance.

Nana said he was a broken soldier, a shadow of the young man who had so proudly enlisted and sailed away to France to join the good fight.  He came back thin and pale with shell shocked shy eyes, a ragged scar across one cheek and chronic insomnia.  He walked the island roads at night, alone and sometimes til dawn, his boots echoing on the pavement with a staccato-like rhythm.  It was a lonely, lost sound, especially on those clear, quiet nights in between the tides when everyone else was sleeping and the world seemed so peaceful.

He walked hard with his head down and his hands jammed into his pockets, stopping often to light a match with his thumbnail.  It was so deathly quiet I could hear the match strike and sometimes even see his face briefly illuminated in the small flare.  Then he walked on into the next patch of darkness and eventually out of sight, even out of hearing on the nights he took the still dirt Old Road.  It was said that on some nights he walked all the way to Tiverton and back - 12 long and solitary miles - but mostly it was from The Point to the square, around the cove and then back again.  He walked, he smoked, and he drank from a flask he carried in his hip pocket, night after night, as regular and reliable as the tides.  

War changes them that fights it, Sparrow allowed one afternoon as we sat on his porch and watched the fog coming in from Peter's Island while Swing, who kept body and soul together with odd jobs and his monthly military check, split wood in the side yard.  We couldn't see him but we heard the ax falling as regular as clockwork.  Somehow it was, like boot heels on a paved road in the dark, a lonely and lost sound.

Swing Patterson walked for for some 20 years before they found him on the beach one early morning, his body broken beyond repair by a slide down the embankment near where the guard rail ended on The Old Road.  An accident, everyone agreed, it was a treacherous turn and anyone could lose their footing on a dark night with the fog rolling in and no moon.  No one talked about the fact that the moon had been full and the night clear as glass.

Between the moon and the tides, Sparrow wrote my grandmother, a man's only got so much walkin' in him.