Fatally Faithful

Could I… but for a moment… dream as I stare at the sun? My mind’s eye awakened as I physically go blind? What a poetic statement. What a true statement. I wish the sky was crying, but California only has sun. For someone like me, the seasons never match my mood. Instead I must go chasing sunsets and finding solace in the chaos of crashing waves. For now, just a beer down at the pier pub should be enough to calm the storm rising up my throat.

It’s October 5th. My sister’s birthday. She was a bit of a drinker. That’s what got her killed. Well, inadvertently anyway.

I walked up to the pub, paused in the doorway and sighed. I wonder what my sister would think of me right now. I had always wanted to be the reckless one of the two of us, but she took that mantle to her grave. I took a seat at the bar and stared out at the sunset. The arrays of purple clouds and strokes of red on the horizon should move my spirit to bear witness to God’s great artistry, but I felt like He had forgotten me today.

“What’ll ya have?” the bartender croaked. He was an older gentlemen, and he looked like a cuetip.

“Got a Bavarian-style wheat beer?” I asked, not hopeful in the slightest.

“Wha — ?”

“Just give me your best on tap.” I sighed. There is no art to crafting anything anymore, am I the last of my breed? The artists whose blood is the very paint they use, whose lungs only serve to bless the air with music, whose mind is only useful for creating other worlds to live in, whose words only ever allude to the greatest pieces of art in history, I’m one of those kind. I don’t think anyone has any respect for that, or me, anymore. Not in this town anyway. The bartender handed me a pint of reddish-brown beer and I took a sip. Not bad, just a weird mix of bittersweet.

My sister always told me if she ever got raped she would just lay there. You know, like a sack of potatoes, unmoving. She had read somewhere that rapists get off on resistance, so she figured she’d be better off doing nothing. This one didn’t like that very much. He’d strangled her so she’d fight him. It was three years ago, and nobody asks how I’m doing anymore. They say grief fades as time ages but I’ve aged and the only thing fading is her laugh from my memory. I can’t hear it anymore. I can still see her eyes though, except I can only see them wide, round, popping, and terrified as she died. I found her that way. She had felt as cold and as hard as the pavement she was laying on — brittle.

I stared at that full glass of beer for two and a half hours as I tried to cool the searing image of her face on my brain. I knew a beer wasn’t going to do the trick. My mentor told me to bathe in the psalms today, but I didn’t feel like it. Today is the day God forgets about me.

“Hey, um — we’re closing up shop now. You gonna drink that?” asked the gentle, handsome man across the counter. He frowned.

I threw down a twenty on the bar without really thinking, “Thanks.”

What am I supposed to do now? I thought to myself.

I walked across the street to take a long walk down the short pier. My parents always warned me about being alone late at night, but I was tall and strong. I may be a woman, but I know how to take care of myself. After twelve years of competitive sports and a few spent playing in the inner cities, I knew how to get out of a dangerous situation. My sister however, she was the dainty type. She couldn’t even look at a spider let alone fight off an attacker.

There was only one guy at the end of the pier fishing; it was a Tuesday so everyone was home sleeping. I think it was only about 11:00 at night, the bars here don’t stay open too late during the week. The tides were high up on the support beams, and the sea spray was nice and cool on my cheeks. Each crash against the beams sounded so gentle up here, somewhat muffled by the expanse of black ocean that seemed to blend with the night sky. There was no sky, no ocean, only two moons that reflected each other with perfect imbalance. That’s the only peace that gives me peace, the darkness in my soul that reaches out to touch another darkness outside of me.

I reached the end of the pier and saturated myself in the blackness like it was an old friend, only something felt off. The darkness wasn’t sweeping me up with peace, the wood beneath my feet was creaking, and I couldn’t hear the water crash.

The soft pad of a man’s shoes.

I whipped around before he could get me in a headlock. He grabbed at my hair with a snarl, and I yanked my head forward, banging his shoulder against the pier rail so he would let go. His hand slacked, and I barreled into him and knocked him off his feet.

I think he hit his head on the rail before he fell over, I don’t know it all happened so fast.

I saw him hit the black water, but he wasn’t moving. He was facedown in the water with his hands out at a T, and he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t moving.

“Oh my God.” I spluttered, shaking. “No… no, no! He deserved that! He-” Child.

“I — what?” I whirled around, looking for the voice. I looked back over the rail, he still wasn’t moving. Jump.

“What?! No!!” I howled to the night sky. Save.

“He just attacked me!! He deserves this!” Forgive.

“GOD you haven’t spoken to me in THREE YEARS! Why now!?” Forgive.

“He deserves — ” I repeated. “Wait. He deserves it.”

Something clicked. I climbed onto the railing, staring down at his unmoving body. I hesitated, then jumped.

The water was cold and hard. My feet smacked the surface flat-footed, and it sent shards of searing pain up my legs. I sank deep, fast, and immediately fought the momentum of the fall. Finally rising to the surface, I coughed out the water I had accidentally swallowed, and grabbed the unconscious man and turned him over. He had water in his lungs, but I couldn’t do anything until I got him out of the water. I wrapped my right arm around his torso and began swimming as fast as I could muster in the freezing water. The sweatshirt I was wearing got heavy fast, but the man got heavier. He was an unbearable burden, but I was here so I had to get him to shore.

Just keep going, I thought. Swim. I got to the break quicker than I thought, but the waves were huge tonight. I stopped for a second just outside the surf; big waves can either take you closer or farther away. I saw a set coming in and swam frantically with one of the waves. I had never successfully bodysurfed before, but I had no choice. The wave grew, and grew, and I was falling behind, so behind.

“AaaaAHHH!” I yelled as I lurched forward in the water, launching me and my burden forward as the wave began to crash. I caught it. I brought him closer as we surfed in.

In less than a minute we tumbled onto the shore. I had no energy, but I had to keep moving. I sluggishly got up, my clothes were restricting me, but I pulled him farther onto the beach and started CPR.

“Ah-Ah-Ah-Ah- staying alive, staying alive,” I sang to myself. It was the song I learned in my CPR class to keep the compressions at the right tempo. He wasn’t waking up, and I was not going to kiss this guy. Thirty compressions and I had no choice. I tilted his head back and gave him the kiss of life, but it wasn’t working. I started compressions and repeated the process, but it wasn’t working.

“GOD—you better come through. I did NOT do this for nothing!” I panted before giving him another two breaths. I started compressions again, I couldn’t call for help — nobody was here and I lost my phone when I jumped off the pier. It was an iPhone anyway and God knows they don’t work after being submerged. I gave him another breath and —

He coughed in my mouth.

He coughed in my mouth.

He COUGHED in my MOUTH!

So I coughed back at him. He rolled to his side and practically vomited the water out of his lungs before collapsing back on the sand and staring wide-eyed at me.

“Wh-why did you — ” he gasped, slowly realizing what had happened.

“You coughed in my freaking mouth.” I replied, cleaning off my face with my soaked sweatshirt.

“I… I could have killed you, I would have killed you…” he wheezed.

“I know.” I said. I wonder if this is what Jonah felt like when he didn’t want to go to Nineveh…

“Then why?”

I looked at the wet, pathetic heap in front of me, he was broken and bewildered, looking for any remnant of hope for his darkness. My soul reached out to his. “Because you deserved to die, and so did I.”

“I don’t understand.” he said slowly.

“But Jesus thought I was worth dying for, so He took the death that I should have died and saved me, and He wants to save you too.”

He just stared with his jaw ajar like a car door.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Jonah.” He replied. I smiled. Sometimes the most poetic, and beautiful moments are said in the simplest of ways.