I AM THE OLD MAN IN THE SEA
My paddle slices through the frigid water, sending icy spray into my face. It doesn’t matter that it is 5 degrees Fahrenheit outside or that half of Washington County is looking for me. This is where I belong.
“Dad, we can’t let you go out on Grand Manan Channel,” My controlling daughter Barbra had told me the last time we were together. I regret raising a daughter like her. Joanne and I thought we were clever as we gave our oldest daughter, Barbra, authority in our home, helping us raise our other eight kids. I appreciated having Barbra take over the care of Joanne during the last three years of my lovely wife’s life. But now, Barbra thinks she can bully me and tell me what to do.
I hated how she had peered down her wirerimmed glasses at me, looking and sounding like a rooster, as her hands flayed across her hips. Perhaps she will start pecking at me. At least, that’s what she mentally does.
“I will continue to do what I please.” I tried to stand as my back tightened, sending an electric bolt of pain into all my muscles. I had to hide the grimace, or Barbra would pounce on it. I tried to straighten, but things didn’t work right in my back. An excellent visit to the chiropractor would fix it. I put the weight on my right side and hobbled toward the door.
“Dad, stop! You are Ninety-two. You aren’t twenty-two. Stop acting like it. Look, you can’t even walk, yet you want us to let you kayak in the ocean every day. No way! Not happening!” Her words wrapped around my legs, heart, body, and soul like the chains of Jacob Marley, the ghost who tried to enchain Ebenezer Scrooge. Barbara sucked the living out of my life.
As Barbara lectured me, my eyes wandered to the untouched mystery goop and soggy Brussels sprouts on the plastic tray. The aid had left the ‘food’ in my tiny room, and I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. That crap smelt a lot like dirty underwear. That old gal Mable, two apartments down, had told me I could order food from my phone, and people would deliver it to me. I would have to start doing that. Again, I looked at the institutional garbage food and was tempted to grab a handful and smear it into Barbra’s overly-processed hair. Instead, I yanked my hearing aid out, chucked it at Barbra, and awkwardly dragged myself toward the door. The rough material of my corduroy pants rubbed against my chunky thighs, which had thickened over the last few years as I walked less and less.
Barbra’s shrill, birdlike voice played in my head. “You want us to let you kayak.”
-Let you kayak.
-Let you kayak!
The nerve!
It wasn’t her choice. I didn’t live with Barbra. She didn’t have power of attorney over me. She couldn’t order me around like she did her husband. Pour soul had no idea what he was getting into when he asked her to marry him 48 years ago. Or was it 49 years?
Nonetheless, it probably felt like a hundred years to him, being told about every move he could or couldn’t make. I think I was good to Joanne. I gave her freedom. I missed her as I wobbled into my room and slammed the door.
I looked at the small room, hating everything about it. Joanne and I had a lovely home in Cutler, Maine, but I sold it to afford the assisted living I had to move her into.
“Just move in with Mom. She cries every night without you.” Barbra carefully laid the trap, and I hadn’t seen it.
“I will die if I live in a nursing home.”
Barbara did her Hillary Clinton laugh. Honestly, if I hadn’t attended Barbara’s birth, I would have thought she was Hillary’s long-lost twin. “It’s an assisted living facility, not a nursing home. -So different. And you don’t need to live here. You are doing it for Mom. Only while she needs you.” Which was Barbra’s code for saying, we will sell everything you have, and after mom dies, you will have nowhere to move and will be a permanent prisoner of the nursing home, AKA assisted living.
The time I spent in assisted living with Joanne almost tore me apart, losing my self and identity like that, but I stayed busy with her care. I took her to all the mind-numbing activities to bring a little sparkle into her dying eyes. But I refused to go to any of that with her gone. Those little babies that ran the place talked to us like we were imbeciles, mere embryos still in the womb. Besides, the activities were crammed with fossils. I might be ninety-two, but I am not dead yet.
Two months after Joanne died, I had to make a break, even if was for only a few hours. I stood at the curb when the shiny black car pulled up. It looked like the one in the app.
“I don’t know how these things work,” I told the baby boy driving the car. He jumped out and opened the door for me.
“You don’t know how what works?”
“How Uber works.”
“You obviously do, because you got me here, didn’t you?” The toddler laughed as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
“Mable set it up for me. I think she’s hot for me,” I winked at the boy. “By the way, do you even have your learner’s permit? Do they let babies drive today? Back in my day, I got my driver’s license at fourteen. I lived on a farm. But what are you, twelve?”
“You are funny,” he said. “I am twenty-two.” I cringed, wiping the drool from my chin before the driver saw it. Why does this drool thing seem to be happening more?
“You guys just get younger and younger looking every day.” I shifted as the pleather seats crinkled under me. The seats were cold, like sitting on a block of frozen salmon straight from the freezer, the cold moving into my bones.
“Or you get older and older every day.”
“Wow, you have sass. I like it,” I said. “What is your name?”
“Briant.”
The smell of cheap air freshener whacked me on the side of the head. I closed my eyes, and the smell made me feel like I was in a casino in Bangor.
My body shook, and I opened my eyes. “Briant, you do Uber to make money, but you kind of work for yourself. Am I correct in my observation?”
“Sure. Where do you want to go, bruh?”
Oh yeah, I guess he wants to get moving so he can pick up another customer soon. He would be in a hurry, but I wasn’t. I wanted to prolong every minute away from my prison. “How many people are dying for an Uber around here?” I asked.
“Not many. I am studying at an online University. Whenever I get a job, I can drop what I am doing to make a buck. If I depended on this for my living, I am in the wrong town.”
Briant rubbed his hands together. I hoped he’d turn the heater up. Was he really twenty-two? He looked preadolescent. “Where am I taking you?”
“Well, I want to go kayak the Grand Manan Channel.”
“Bruh, that’s intense.” He stared at me through the rearview mirror.
“How so?”
“A man of your age.”
“I don’t get the big deal. Listen, I could rot in a nursing home or die in the ocean. I pick ocean.”
“Right on. I love it. I know a good spot for you, but where is your kayak?”
I looked down at my lap. I had been self-sufficient my whole life. I wasn’t used to this lack of control. “I guess I need to rent one. Would you mind running me to a rental shop, then to the channel, then when I am done,” I swallowed. “Back to my prison.”
Briant pointed to the assisted living center. “Your prison?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hmm. I can do you one better than that. I have kayaking equipment. I will rent it to you, say, $5 sound fair?”
“More than fair, young man.”
He rubbed his chin, pulled into traffic, and said, “Do you mind if I join you? I could use a break.”
My back ached as the alarms in my brain chimed and banged. “Did Barbra set you up to come babysit me?” I snapped.
“Come again?”
Mable had put the app on my phone. Barbara didn’t even know about this, did she? We sat at the light, and I couldn’t believe it. Barbara made a left turn through the intersection and then turned into my purgatory. Like a stupid kid sneaking out of the house, I ducked in the backseat as my heart raced. I am not going to die in the ocean. I am going to die by Barbra’s suffocating grip.
Barbra must have spotted me because she did a wild turn in the driveway of the institution and then squealed after us. She cruised through the red light, not watching for traffic, when a giant semi-truck slammed into the side of Barbara and then--
“Where ya from before you went to jail?” Briant pulled me out of my fantasy with a chuckle that reminded me of my ole’ rugby mates. I looked back at the intersection to see no demolished vehicles. I could see Barbra’s car parked at the assisted living. I must have imagined her chasing us.
“Did you hear the joke about the frog and the dog?” Briant asked.
I had a fabulous conversation with Briant and nearly forgot he was old enough to be my great-great-great grandson. I hate being old! It turned out, he lived on the beach like Joanne, and I had. Even though he had access to the water whenever he wanted, I smoked him on the kayak. I wished Barbra could see how fabulous I was. Then maybe she would stop nagging like she was my wife. Actually, Joanne never carried on like that. If Barbra had seen me out on the ocean, she would have sent the helicopter police to yank me out of the water.
I ended up telling Briant about my life, my ambitions, and my hell. -the reader’s digest version. I had mixed emotions as he drove me home. That time on the water had been the best time I had in five years. Briant made me feel young again, especially when I out-rowed him. A mile away from my prison, he pulled over. He just sat staring at his steering wheel as the cars sped too close to us. At least if they creamed into us, I wouldn’t have to return to the old folk’s home.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
He rubbed his hands through his brown hair, flipping it around, then turned to me. “I probably shouldn’t be doing this, but I have a proposition.”
“Okay.” My skin prickled. I hope he doesn’t have a gun. He could have left me in the channel if he wanted to rob me.
“I have a mother-in-law apartment I fixed up and tried to turn into an Airbnb. I hardly get any bookings. It sounds like you hate your life at the assistant living. I need a little extra cash, and you need a place to live. What do you think about-“
“Yes! I will take it!” I hadn’t even given him a chance to finish speaking. If Briant’s car had been a convertible, I would have jumped high enough to touch the clouds. I felt like the doctors had hooked me up to an alcohol IV, pumping pure alcohol into my veins.
I decided not to tell Barbara, the other kids, or the center about my move. On Sunday, the following weekend, when most of the staff was gone, Briant came through the side doors and moved me out. Not one person saw!
I couldn’t believe how fabulous the apartment was- three times the size of my tiny space at the assisted living. He gave me full access to his kayak. The only thing that made Heaven slightly sweeter than Briant’s place was Joanne was there.
My legs might betray me on land, but my arms are as solid as the Rocky Mountains.
My attention returns to the kayak with the cold wind penetrating my jacket, yet I don’t care. I shout out loud, “Woot!”
It’s been a week since I found freedom and came alive again! I see my image on the news every night. I was smart enough to withdraw my entire savings the Friday before I left so they could not trace me or put a hold on my finances. I had earned every penny, and no one had rights to it but me.
Screw leaving money for the kid’s inheritance. After the assisted living trick, they don’t deserve a penny. Every night, I use their inheritance to order fine food for Briant and me.
Last night, Briant asked, “Bruh, am I going to get arrested for hiding you here?” Briant raised his eyebrow as we watched my image flash across the news. “Randall Craig is still missing. His family is worried sick. If you have any information on his whereabouts, please contact-“
“I have done nothing wrong. No one has power of attorney over me but me. I have every right to life, liberty, and happiness as you do.”
“Good enough for me.” I had stretched out in Briant’s warm house, knowing the channel waited for me in the morning.
So, as my fingers turn blue to the cold, I row my paddle in the water, thankful to feel, thankful to breathe, thankful to live!
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I am the Old Man in the Sea
by Stephanie Daich
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