Page 49 of The Words We Lost

I post near a window behind Joel’s bench, searching the vast waters while my ears remain open to Joel and Wayne’s conversation.

The retired pastor takes a sip of his Coke. “I noticed the sign outside the dining room of the hotel referring to late-brunch Sundays as well as the list of local churches and worship times they provide in the area. Sure makes checking out the competition easier.” He winks at me and slides into a deep southern drawl. “You can take the preacher out of the pulpit, but you can’t take away his desire to critique a good sermon.”

Joel laughs. “My folks have always given our kitchen staff Sunday mornings off so they could attend church and enjoy time with their families. We try to keep as light a crew as possible that day.”

“That’s rare in today’s world,”Wayne replies. “It’s a blessing to have a family whose principles are backed by a strong faith. Keeping faithful habits and traditions in our lives is what helps us stay afloat when life goes topsy-turvy.”

“I suppose there’s truth to that,” Joel says in a contemplative tone. “Although I think even the best practices aren’t enough to sustain someone through a real crisis. At least, it wasn’t that way for me.”

Wayne regards Joel with rapt interest, and I find myself doing the same. I’ve never heard him speak a contrary word about practices of faith, much less the church he’d attended for decades. Joel’s family has been longtime members of Lighthouse Community Fellowship.He’d been the one to invite me nearly every Sunday for close to a year before I finally worked up the courage to say yes. Cece had attended as well, but her snooze button often took precedence over the start time during a good portion of her teen years. It was Joel who’d accompanied me most.

“Call it an occupational habit, or simply an old man being nosy, but I hope you’re planning to unpack that statement a bit more.”

Joel motions to the open water, to the mountains, to the cloudless patch of sky overhead. “I’d hate for you to miss the sights. We’ll be to Port Williams within thirty minutes.”

Wayne waves him off with a chuckle and gestures lovingly to his wife, who hasn’t lowered her binoculars once. “Consider theological discussions my personal whale-watching obsession.” His grin is contagious as he slides his gaze to his wife’s back and says in a purposeful whisper, “It’s probably not hard to tell which of the two of us is more holy.”

“My eyes might be focused on the water, Wayne, but I promise you my ears work just fine. You best behave yourself.”

Once again, we all laugh, and then Jan jolts straight up.

“Look there,” she points. “There’s a cruise ship coming right at us!”

“Objects are closer than they appear, dear.” Wayne taps her binoculars and she lowers them and squints, but to her credit, the ship isn’t too far off.

“Ingrid,” Joel says, craning his neck to find me. “I’ll need to get over this wake quickly.”

“Right.” I nod at his meaning and ask the sweet couple to secure their seats for a few minutes so Joel can maneuver the boat around the wake. As I take a seat directly behind him, my right shoulder grazes his back and he twists his neck again so our faces are close.

“Thank you for being here,” he murmurs just loud enough for me to hear, and something warm glows bright in my chest.

He accelerates to exit the wake quickly, and the whir of the engines and the movement of the wind and the waves put an end to anyand all discussions. To converse at sea, you have to be intentional. It’s why my father trained me in hand signals at the same time my mother was teaching me how to read. I’m sure most were standard but others were ours alone—how he’d tap his cap twice to tell me to stay alert to our surroundings. How he’d open and close his fist in a blinking maneuver to indicate an approaching lighthouse—myfavoritesight on the water. Or how he’d pat his right shoulder with his left hand before touching the tip of his nose and pointing out to sea. It was my father’s original way of saying,The best life is one spent at sea.

I notice when Wayne cocks a persuasive eyebrow at our captain as if to suggest he’s ready to listen whenever he’s ready to speak. If Joel is bothered by the retired pastor’s forthrightness, he doesn’t show it. He simply taps the throttle until the engine slows to a low hum and takes a full breath.

“I’ve been somewhat of an overachiever since birth,” he begins. “A natural problem-solver like my dad. I prided myself on fixing potential conflicts before they ever had a chance to surface.” At his hesitation, I see the span of muscles constrict in his upper back through the thin white cotton of his shirt. “But that was before a problem I tried to solve hurt someone I cared about very much ... and there was no reversing the part I played in it.”

In the quiet seconds that follow, a barrage of images flood my mind, starting with the torment on Joel’s face that night on the dock when I told him I wasn’t coming back from California after graduation like we’d planned. I can hear his pleas for me to stay, for me to forgive him, for me to allow him to be the one to comfort me through the dark days of grief ahead. But it’s the strength of his embrace I swear I can still feel when I close my eyes. The way his arms tightened around my waist for a final time, holding me as if he thought he could keep me from leaving.

Or maybe because he knew he couldn’t.

“It only took one night for me to question everything I ever believed about God,” he continues, “and it took years for me to findthe answers I needed most. You were right about my parents having good principles, but their faith alone wasn’t enough to save me when I was drowning. I had to be the one to reach for the life raft.”

Wayne nods solemnly. “I think it’s the single most important reach we can make as humans. It’s especially difficult to make when we’re suffering.”

Joel doesn’t speak for close to a minute before he finally offers, “It’s even more difficult when the people you love continue to suffer.”

My heart is caught between my chest and my throat, and I have to glance toward the salon to keep the tears from rolling down my cheeks. Suffering isn’t a word I’ve ever allotted to Joel Campbell, yet what right did I have to assign any kind of emotion to him when I’d been the one to walk away six weeks after we’d buried my father?

Before my thoughts can linger much longer in this altogether new territory, a piercing cry splits the air, causing all of us to leap from our seats. Joel kills the engines as Jan flails her arms and laughs. She points toward the water but her only words are a broken kind of gibberish. We look in the direction she’s wildly gesturing toward and discover a pod of three or four orcas.

I immediately reach for my phone and take a video of Jan and Wayne as they share the binoculars and exclaim over the discovery of such a wonder. I zoom in on the whales just in time to see one of the orcas breach the water and smack the surface with a huge splash. It repeats this performance several times over, and Jan is beside herself, her countenance overcome with joy. Finally, when the pod heads north, Wayne takes his wife in his arms and plants a kiss on the top of her head. “Happy anniversary, sweetie.”

My eyes well at their tenderness, and I can’t help but study the two of them with wonder at all they must have experienced in a marriage spanning forty-five years. What kind of hardship had they overcome during that time? What kind of tragedies and regrets had they navigated?

I twist to find Joel’s eyes on me, and his expression seems to holdhis own set of ponderings before he takes on the role of captain once again. “We’ll be in the harbor in five minutes.”

For never having docked a boat with Joel at the helm, there’s a seamlessness to it I can’t explain. We’re a synchronized dance of bumpers, ropes, cleats, and knots. By the time we’re positioned in the seaweed-coated slip, Jan and Wayne have gathered up their belongings and given us both farewell hugs and well wishes. I send them the whale video I captured and encourage them both to buy the lavender soap and hand lotion from the farm.

---