Wisdom on the Dock

“So why are we out here?” I asked, trying not to stumble in the night.
“You got someplace to be?” he replied, walking nonchalantly ahead of me.
“Well, no, but...” I began.
“I like to come out here to keep in touch with my neighbors,” he said, cutting off my reply.
“Your neighbors?” I said. That would at least explain why he had me carrying a twelve-pack. As I looked around though, I didn’t see anyone else. Apparently my look of total confusion was plain even in the darkness, because he went on to explain.
“Exactly.” He said, nodding as my eyes began to adjust to the light of a sliver moon. He reached for a beer, popped the top, and took a long drink. I did the same, waiting for the explanation sure to follow.
“No one takes the time anymore to stop and get to know their neighbors,” he told me. “For example, people today might know the little old lady down the street enough to wave, and they probably know she’s the only one on the block that doesn’t put up Christmas lights. But, they never bothered to learn that she and her husband used to have the most spectacular lights of the season when she lived in Michigan. Then he died on Christmas Eve,” his voice grew sad, “ Now she just can’t seem to find the Holiday Spirit anymore. Someone should share theirs. She needs it,” he added sipping the beer again
He moved downwind of me and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “Do you mind?” he asked. He hesitated until I shook my head then lit one and drew on it hard, exhaling long and slow, upward, his eyes on the stars. “They know the shy, mousy little girl from two streets over who rides her bike around by herself all the time,” he went on, “ But they don’t know her name, or that she plays the flute so well it would make Mozart himself weep tears of joy. They also don’t know that she rides her bike alone because she has no friends, and she desperately wants friends. A little genuine praise and encouragement from a few good neighbors could make all the difference between her taking that flute to the finest concert halls of the world or giving it up before she’s even through with college. Someone needs to take the time to care,” he said, his eyes turning back to mine on the last sentence.
“People know the sweet little couple next door,” He paused, blowing smoke again. “The McAllisters, John and Ann” he added, his voice making it plain that the names had just been plucked from the night air. “They know John’s a vet, because he marches with the VFW in every parade, and they know the two of them are always holding hands. That’s why everyone thinks of them as that sweet little couple.” My friend smiled and his eyes grew distant as he added the last, as if remembering just such a couple.
He stopped for moment, pinching the now finished cigarette and flicking the end rapidly with his middle finger. The burning cherry ember fell with a sharp hiss into the river below us, and he tucked the filter into a back pocket. I’d known this man for years, and he smoked like a chimney, but I’d never seen him leave a filter on the ground. He drained the beer and, tossing the can into a trash bin near us, reached for a second. Absently, he pulled out the pack and lit another cigarette as he continued. “Yup, chimney,” I thought.
“What people don’t know about the McAllisters, John and Ann,” he said, again giving the names a peculiar emphasis to again make it clear they were fictitious, “Is that John still claims her picture was the only thing that got him through Inchon and the long, cold nights that followed, waiting in a frozen hole in Korea for the sound of Chinese whistles and trumpets. They don’t know that he promised God that if he could just make it home, he’d never let her go, and he never has. They don’t know that Ann, waiting at home near Akron all those years ago asked God for the exact same deal.” Again my friend paused and smiled as if remembering.
“What they also don’t know is that John doesn’t march is those parades for himself, or even for the friends he left behind in that frozen hell,” he paused to pull on the new beer and the cigarette in turn, and swiveled to face me. “He marches for John Junior, their son, who would have been one of the last Marines to leave Saigon.” I noted a quaver in my friend’s voice as he stopped to hit the cigarette again, his eyes going across the water to the islands beyond, “If he had only lived to leave Saigon,” he finished.
Eager to fill a silence that had suddenly grown too intense, I raised my beer to him. “To the McAllisters,” I toasted.
That seemed to snap him out of it. “John and Ann,” he added, clicking his can to mine.
Both beers were drained, tossed into the trash, and replaced from what was apparently going to be a very short-lived twelve-pack. Again I stayed silent. I’d known this man for years, and, while these talks might tend to drag on sometimes, they always had a point.
“You see,” he said turning to face me. “Neighbors have wants and needs. Sometimes just a smile and a wave is enough, but sometimes they need a little more. They need someone to take the time to get to know them, really know them. A band-aid is fine for a skinned knee, but a deeper wound requires more attention, and more importantly,” he added, “More time.” Again there was a break so that neither beer nor cigarette would feel left out of the conversation. “I’m just concerned that people today hold their time too dear. They don’t seem to understand that it’s other people they should hold dear,” he said, looking at me as if to underscore the words to follow, “The time is free.”
“Well put,” I told him, again reaching to clink my can to his in proper guy talk fashion. My friend liked to occasionally “bestow a little wisdom” as he put it. I’d come to listen over the years because I’d learned that there was usually a bit of actual wisdom involved. This was proving to be one of those times. Then I remembered how this conversation began. “I ‘m a little confused though,” I said cocking my head and turning towards him, “You said you came out here to keep in touch with your neighbors. Hell, I thought that’s who some of the beer was for.”
“Yes, I did,” he replied emphatically. He had that same look he got when I pounced on what I thought was a free pawn in one of our chess games. The one that turned out to be bait for the beginning of the end. I could feel another pearl of wisdom coming on. I bit any way.
“But we’re on a dock at three a.m. and there are no other people here,” I pointed out, knowing full well I was “pouncing” on exactly the wrong pawn he wanted. We’d played this game almost as much as chess over the years, and the look in his eye told me that he knew I was going along just for the ride.
“Exactly!” he said, as if I’d just somehow proven his point for him. “There are no other people,” he smiled, stressing the word “people” as if that made it all clear. “But,” he continued, “I never said all of may neighbors were people.”
“Now I’m really confused,” I told him, meaning every word.
“People are easy,” he said, “I usually listen to them during the day. The conversations always seem a lot less one-sided when they’re awake.” He chuckled at this. He often amused himself during these talks. “I come out here at night to listen to my other neighbors,” he went on. I could tell he was really starting to hit his stride now.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” I interjected into a pause that was clearly left for just that reason. “What other neighbors?”
“Listen,” he told me, tuning and tilting his head.
It was quiet on the dock. “Why not,” I thought, “It’s a quiet dock in a quiet neighborhood in a quiet town.” Apart from my friend rummaging for another beer, I heard a lot of quiet. Feeling as if this were some sort of test I tried to listen more closely. All I could hear was a bit of the breeze rustling the trees and the occasional fish jump.
“I’m still stumped,” I admitted.
His finger pointed up and behind us, “Do you hear the palm tree?” he asked. At my nod, he went on, “The sound is too high pitched, too brittle, those trees are usually silent in a wind this mild unless most of the fronds are dead and dried out.”
I turned and looked. Sure enough, almost all of the palm fronds hung lifeless and dry, their pale tan color easily distinguishable from the usual darker green of healthy specimens even in the scant light available. I was impressed.
“It’s dying,” he said matter-of-factly, “Probably from the same thing that’s killing off the palms all over south Florida. Man. You see,” he continued, “We’ve depleted the fresh water table so much that it’s allowed salt water to intrude. As the salt level rises in the ground water the palms are dying.” He shook his head, as if in disbelief, and added, “We are drinking them to death. We pull out so much water to keep our lawns green that we’re killing our trees which drink deeper down.” He tipped the last of his beer, tossed it with the others, popped another and asked, “How’s that for stupid?”
The finger pointed now to the islands across the narrow band of the river in front of us. I could just detect a faint whistling like someone barely playing a bamboo flute. “Those are Australian Pines,” he said, “Technically, their an invasion plant brought in by the sugar industry, but they’re some of my favorites. I can’t help it,” he smiled, “ I love the music. Most of them were killed off in the frosts of ‘83 and ‘89, but that sound tells me they’re okay, for now” he hesitated, smiling. “It also reminds me that I’m okay,” he added as if hinting at some past relationship.
“Alright,” I admitted, “You are the Garden Ninja, and the beer’s all for us,” I raised and then finished my beer, ahead of him I noted. Odd, he usually kept pace. I popped another and, sipping, waited for the wisdom to continue.
“Thirst impedes wisdom, hence the beer, and you, Grasshopper, still fail to listen,” he continued in a reasonably good early David Carradine voice. I noticed then, as his face turned up into the pale light of the moon that his eyes were closed! Just then a fish jumped just a few feet from the dock. It sailed a good six feet or so before splashing back into the river. That,” he said, the finger pointing quickly to the source of the sound, “Is a mullet. More than that though, he’s one of the advance guard for a large school of mullet.”
I looked to the south, behind the splash, and even in the dim light I could see the massed heads of a large school of mullet stretching back for eighty feet or more. The swarm of close-packed eyes and snouts jutted up out of the water as I’d seen them do before at this time of year.
“This is the third time this school has gone by since we’ve been out here,” he told me. “They used to school this big every year, like clockwork, but as the pollution levels in the lagoon rose the schools thinned out a lot.” He said, using the more technical term for the waters before us. It really was more of a tropical lagoon than a river in the classic sense. “Then there were the algae blooms that killed thousands as well. There were a few years there when you didn’t hear any big schools at all at night,” he added, his voice almost wistful. “Hearing so many of them tonight, I know that not only are the mullet making a come-back, but also the lagoon itself.”
Two large splashes disrupted the murmuring sound of the school, striking it at the rear and at the outer edge, that farthest from us, closer to the shallow flats that run between the islands. Immediately the entire school broke in a sound like water hitting a high boil in an instant, the chaos cascading through the mullet like a domino effect running from the strikes down the entire length of the school, now more clearly defined as over one hundred and twenty feet!
“That,” he said, almost pouncing verbally, his finger yet again stabbing toward the sound, “Is a trout, actually two of them, hunting the mullet. Big ones by the sound of it,” he said. “Of course they could be snook,” he admitted. “Thirty years ago ten to twelve pound snook were as common in these waters as trout, until a combination of our fishing and our poisons almost killed them off completely. Hell, we almost destroyed the redfish, too,” his voice grew grim. “But, tonight I can hear that the big trout at least are back! Just like the big schools of mullet!” He opened his eyes as he paused to drink long of the beer and to hit the cigarette again.
Suddenly a huge splash sounded near to where the trout had just struck. This was some thing much larger. Moments later a “foosh” of sound like a large exhale about twenty feet away confirmed what we both had believed true. “Dolphin,” I said, actually proud to be the first to identify something in this conversation.
“Absolutely,” he agreed, “There’s a pod of five or six that feeds off this dock most nights. Sometimes it’s a snack bar, tonight it’s a buffet!” he added with a chuckle, “ I’m a little surprised we hadn’t heard them before now.” Again he flicked his cigarette, field stripped it, stowed the butt, and lit yet another. Oddly, I could’ve sworn that this one came from behind his right ear rather than the pack in his shirt pocket.
“I’ve loved them since I was six,” he said. “We were on vacation at Virginia beach. I had a new inflatable raft, one of those little four foot jobs,” he held his hand at about mid-chest to illustrate, “And I’d drifted WAY out beyond the shore break.” His eyes again grew distant and he smiled, “I didn’t know it, but my mom was on the beach going absolutely nuts. She went to the lifeguard, who located me with his binoculars. Then she saw the fins, and lost it completely!” “Sharks!” he exclaimed in what was apparently his high pitched "Frantic Mom" voice.
I thought it kind of weird that he was laughing at his point, until he went on to explain, “Then the lifeguard told her, ‘No, ma’am, those are dolphins, he’s safe with them around. Sharks won’t come near dolphins,’ like that was gonna be enough to calm her down.” Smiling, he paused to hit his cigarette, rather hard I thought, and continued, “So there I was about three hundred yards or so off shore, and Flipper shows up! I’d seen him on TV, this was him! Then he and his friends proceeded to bump my raft toward the shore!”
“You’re kidding me,” I interjected, “The dolphins pushed you back to shore?”
“Yup,” he said, grinning widely, “All the way to about a hundred yards off, where the lifeguard had come out to meet me.” He stood up straight, practically at attention, and said in deep mock-theatrical voice, “ You are talking to,” his hands made finger quotes, “Boy Saved By Dolphins!”
With that he took a bow, and drained his beer. Upon reaching for another he found that we were down to the last two, and handed me mine. He then started pulling the empties out of the bin and putting them in the empty twelve-pack, “We’ll drop these off in the recycling bin on the way back,” he explained.
“Okay,” I said, “I got it. Daytime, people. Nighttime, trees and fish.” I flashed my best sarcastic smirk, popping the last beer.
“You’re forgetting the great blue heron that squawked at us and flew away when we first got here,” he told me, “And the osprey that’s been chirping all night in that tall dead tree across the way on the island.”
“Also,” he added, closing his eyes again, his finger now pointing east for the first time in the night, “You’re forgetting Mother Ocean. You can just hear the surf, if you listen carefully.”
I paused and tried to hear it for a moment, “I think that’s the road,” I told him, referring to the four lanes of traffic that ran through the thin three blocks between us and the beach. “Hear how it rises and falls as each car passes?”
“Yeah,” he said, hanging his head as if in despair, “We call those waves.”
Just then a loud noise sounded in the east, a sharp dissonant blaring not at all in harmony with the other sounds of the night. My friend's eyes shot open.
“I think your Ocean just honked!” I informed him, laughing. I couldn't resist adding, “Are the cars your neighbors, too, oh Wise One?”
“No,” he replied without missing a beat, “They’re tourists!” He snubbed out the cigarette on the dock rail and put the remains in his shirt pocket. Then he drained the last beer, and turned to head back up the dock. As he passed me, he looked over to add, “Sometimes at night, tourists can sound a lot like neighbors.”
“Hey, can I ask you something,” I called as I hurried to catch up.
“Sure,” he replied.
“That last one wasn’t a cigarette, was it?”
“No, not really.”

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Author's Note: A shortened version of the last half of this piece was published in the "The Beachside Resident" in Nov. 06. My thanks to the Brothers Bennison. The supporting roles of "Beers" and "Cigarettes" ( Especially that last one!) were deleted due to space constraints. I'm sure somewhere in Cocoa Beach people talk on docks at 3:00 am without these vital ingredients being involved, but I've never done it.