The Whale and the Sub-Sub

There the ships go to and fro,

and the leviathan, which you formed to frolic there.

-- Psalm 104.26

"Call me Ishmael." These are the famous words that open Moby-Dick. The words that scholars highlight and readers remember.

The words that actually open the book are all but ignored.

***

I said, "I need to rent a boat," and the air in the store changed, like I'd committed some major social blunder. I could see it in the cashier's eyes. She looked at me over her glasses, one eyebrow raised, her lips pursed, and her head cocked. "I'm from New Castle." I felt the customers behind me. They were no longer shopping. I waited for her to help me, but she didn't reply. I was hostage to her scrutiny until I talked.

"Do you have boats to rent?" I knew they did. From where we stood, I could see the colorful sides of blue and red rowboats hanging on a rack that spanned the length of the store outside.

The cashier's mouth moved, and without the rest of her so much as twitching, she said, "All the way from New Castle. To fish on this lake?"

"Oh, I'm not going to fish." Talk about the wrong thing to say.

"You're just gonna -- what, row around?" A smirk developed at the corner of her mouth. The people behind me, however, remained still -- a reassuring fact that drew sweat from the back of my neck.

I was afraid of this. I didn't know what I was doing, not really, and I was unprepared to explain to a stranger what my plans were. That's the kind of thing I usually have to practice saying before I enter a room or pick up the phone. "Well, I'm trying to get away, I guess."

"I see. From New Castle?"

"Yes. From New Castle." Now I wondered if she'd rent me a boat at all -- I thought maybe she'd chase me out with a broom and a snarl because I wanted to row on the lake.

"Okay." She said the word with the motherly combination of warning and resignation.

I paid her and tried not to look anyone else in the face.

The truth is I'm not really trying to get away. I've started a blog on the side, and I need it to blow up so I can sell my book and quit my job. The Post Office is killing me slowly, and I've known that for a long time -- in fact, I knew it would before I took the job, but, what's a budding novelist to do? My landlord doesn't accept poems for rent, you know?

The problem with the blog is that I lack inspiration. I work long hours and the writing is drying up. It happened without some kind of landmark event; gradually, I ran out of words. Or I'm running out. I wrote the book, tried to publish it for a few years, and now I'm leaning on the blog for readers. That's why when I heard about this town and this lake -- and the "ghost" who lives there -- I knew I had to go. Maybe seeing for myself would jog something loose.

My roommate knows a girl from this small town, the one where I encountered the helpful cashier, and he said that she told him a story about a guy who lives out on the island of the lake. He's lived there for years, she said, and people only see him every now and again. When she was a senior in high school, she and some friends wanted to know what he looked like, so they went out there one night. The old story, right? Some boys want to impress the girls, maybe scare them into their arms...

The night was a disaster. There was a hole in the boat, and it slowly let water into the bottom. They were giddy enough not to notice until they'd explored the island and came back without a sighting. The boat, still tied to a large rock, was half-sunk in several feet of water. All of them began to drag the boat to shore, when a bright light lit up the area around them and several rocks pelted them. They grabbed the life jackets, jumped in the water, and swam back, their fear only growing until they were well away from the island.

The last thing they saw was the outline of the guy pushing their boat into deeper water so it would sink; a torch burned behind him, its handle stuck in the sand, and it cast otherworldly shapes toward them.

I don't know how much of that I believe, but I intend to go during the day.

***

It's not only the writing or the need for inspiration -- it's also the thought of the mailroom that led me here. The smell alone is enough to make me dream of sorting. The last year or so, I've started taking my uniform off in the car before I go home. I don't wash it with my other things, either, because I noticed the mail smell on some of my other shirts.

You'd think the death of the personal letter would have slowed the mailroom demand. The problem is the big companies know this -- they've begun to design mail to look like a letter from your grandmother, so you open it, right? Their hope is that it's too late, or you don't really care, once you realize what's happened. The glossy ad is in your hands by then.

I can't get the smell out of my nose. And I'm tired.

***

From the shore, the pier looked like an arrow pointing toward the deep. Down at my feet, where the turf met the boardwalk and the boardwalk met the pier, it was wide and still; yet the water-sounds reminded me that at the end the lake had its way, that the pier was its dancing partner -- now a slow twirl, now a tango -- the wind their tune and master. Standing there in the predawn darkness, I felt myself begin to sway at the thought. When I left the hotel, my goal was to be in the lake before sunrise, but in that moment I was content to stand there. The vision of the pier and the lake caught in an endless embrace -- for years on end -- it slowed me, checked me.

I don't know how long it was before the sun seemed to rise from the water. The colors, I've never seen them before: They were liquid red, blood orange, and a depth of magenta that made me think of ancient things -- things that existed before the first cities rose off the face of the earth. Once the light made it all the way to the pier, of course it was changed in brightness, but I still had to touch it while it lived on the surface of the lake.

It was cold. For a moment I closed my eyes and tried to let the water and the colors transport me to another time.

Later, I realized I had no idea how to row.

***

It was close to noon when I couldn't see the pier any longer. The rowing wasn't hard, but it didn't take long for me to tire. I ate and let the boat drift. There were low hills everywhere I looked, all covered with trees that were green fading to almost black. Even at this time, the fog among the crowns of the trees wasn't gone.

I slept in the bottom of the boat, rocked to sleep by the hand of the lake. Somehow it didn't matter if I even found the island or the man who just wanted peace. Who am I to disrupt that which comes dropping so slow? How could I live with myself if I trod on his bean rows or knocked over his bee hives?

These were the thoughts I had as I slipped into sleep. When I woke, I found a note in my pocket.

***

It was from my roommate, Samuel. After a few opening remarks, a reminder that he's my best friend, etc., this is what I read: I made the story up. The one about the island and the guy. The girl, too. Sorry. Look, this may seem like a bad joke to you, but man, you were in a bad way. Do you remember, in college, reading Melville's short story? "Bartleby the Scrivener"? Well, I couldn't help but think of that story the other day... 

I knew what he was trying to say. The boat rocked, and the sun glinted off the lake-waves as I remembered our conversations about Bartleby. We thought the systems ruined him -- specifically the mailroom -- and we vowed this wouldn't happen to us.

The joke's on me, I guess.

I reread the note. Twice. Then, with the paper folded in my hands, I fell asleep again. I dreamed I was sitting on sand, the surf swirling around my feet, the earth tilting.

***

Beacons of worlds beyond our reach, stars swirling in unnamed galaxies -- my eyes drank them in with a fullness I hadn't before known. I willed myself, and the boat and the lake, not to move. The stars flashed at me, and the longer I looked, the more their burning light seemed to watch over me, know me.

Once the clouds moved in, however, I became aware of the sunburn on the right side of my face -- my right ear specifically. I began to row. It wasn't long before the rain fell, soft rain that cooled me as it ran down my scalp.

***

I don't know how long I rowed before I found the island. The rain didn't stop, but I was able to retreat to the trees before it poured down in drops the size and weight of marbles.

Sleep didn't come for me, and I lay under an overhang of rocks listening -- listening and remembering the other things Samuel wrote.

Do you remember the other Melville work we never wanted to name? I laughed in my cubicle the other day -- out loud -- when I thought of that. How professor Clark, or was it Vincent?, refused to discuss the opening lines of Moby-Dick? How we laughed at the thought that he'd never paid it attention? How we vowed never to forget those two characters who are so forgettable? The whale, Ahab? They've had their day...

Of course I remembered. It was Vincent. He dismissed those unnamed characters -- the "late consumptive usher," and the "sub-sub-librarian." To spite him, the two of us memorized the pages they inhabit; we said, "We won't forget them." I guess we didn't.

"The pale Usher -- threadbare in coat, heart, body, and brain; I see him now." And: "It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grubworm of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane."

Those words still have a place within me after so many years.

***

It rained all that night, and I didn't fall asleep until the sun showed itself under the thinning clouds. I don't remember whether I had dreams.

"...poor devil of a Sub-Sub." Before I moved, these words rattled around in my mind. And then, like a flash of light in a storm, I remembered some of the things this Sub-Sub did -- I've known the words so long their meaning must have slipped from me. This librarian had collected any reference to a whale he found. Pages of little disconnected quotes from speeches, plays, poems. And why? I couldn't remember.

And then I heard the water. Through the night and early morning I heard the pattering of rain, but now I could hear lapping from the shore. I rose and stumbled toward my boat and fell in the wet sand. For a moment I listened to the soft tide. Closed my eyes.

I took off my shoes. Waded into the shallows up to my thighs. In this early light I wanted to see the shadows of fish darting about -- I knew that now. There! Some large creature whisked its tail and was gone. And yes! My heart leapt into my throat, and for the first time in years I smiled, warm tears running down my face. They fell into the water one after the other.

Now I know. I know why the Sub-Sub, in his back rooms, down the aisles of worn down shelves, among hasty patrons or haughty customers -- I know why he looked for and kept those words. (Maybe his pale hand struck out with a stub of pencil while his superior turned for a moment, the new find, so unexpected, shot into his hand and threatening to dash away -- done! A new corner of the notebook populated. And then a swish, the notebook gone, swallowed by a side pocket.)

By no means am I worthy of adding to his list in either word or deed, but here it was, right at my feet: The mystery of creation awake and well; the secret within reach, and yet... "Go," I said aloud. "Go, but give me at least your outline once more." A whole school of fish, before I'd finished speaking, came and inspected my ankles for mere seconds I'll collect in my mind and treasure until my death.

I spent all day on the beach watching, listening. That night I built a fire and lay with my back to it, otherworldly shapes cast before my eyes, a world of thanks due to Samuel.