Chopping Water: Book Two

By Bruce Langford

In The Island Chronicles Book 1, Conscious, Christopher, whose name has been changed to William, is drawn by the music to the mysterious woman, Eleutheria, who lives in the house with the thatched roof overlooking Bourani Cove and the ancient lime kiln which still burns hot for those who know how and where to look. There, she tells him about trapping time in the old tower, inadvertently creating the dragon, and how he must contain the monster while she searches the world for a way to repair what she has done. Having made his choice to believe her, the story continues in book 2, Chopping Water, part mystery, part philosophy, and part historical fiction, in which William tells Lexi the story of how Eleutheria came to America three hundred years ago only to watch her life shattered before sailing halfway around the world to Orcas Island in search of ultimate freedom. Contemporarily on the island, William encounters investors who have come to create a profitable paradise while he continues to struggle with the mystery of Nazdehda Retovna, the woman who rescued him fifty years ago. Now she has apparently reappeared as Julien Darville, debonair dandy and owner of the bookstore. Eventually, William is confronted with an evil that threatens him, his mission, and those he loves. And we learn to what lengths he will go to survive. With the aid of his companions, Winston, the Belgian Malinois, and the playfully dangerous Lexi, William continues his search for the truth. Do we really matter, or are we just characters playing our parts, nothing more and nothing less, than conscious stardust pretending to be free?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646287512

Book preview

1

Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.

—Zen saying

Eleutheria, in her final manifestation, was a recluse, no longer interacting with the local community. She and her mysterious house with the thatched roof overlooking Bourani Cove were not experienced by anyone else on the island. For all intents and purposes, a sixteenth-century English legal term with which she would have been familiar, she had ceased to exist on Orcas Island by the time I met her. It’s the way she chose to finish.

It was not always thus. There had been many manifestations. The little girl on the swing, sailing into the sunset over and over again, only to be dragged back, every time, into an empty life. Who could not have loved her then?

Mary Anne, the island pioneer.

Rose, the businesswoman and architect. The changes she wrought still standing as a testament to her increasing strength.

The old Greek woman known in passing to Roberta and other shopkeepers in Eastsound. Eccentric, doddering, kind to animals. Always with her dog.

So many lives. Until she just faded away, weary of the pretenses, the illusions sapping her strength, her will to live.

And thus, as Eleutheria, she found me.

But I did not know all this at first. It had to be learned.

I had made a conscious choice to believe her, to accept what she showed me as true. When she changed my name from Christopher to William, she changed who I was. Or at least who I intended to be. Everything that follows should be seen in that light.

* * *

Those first days in her house remained just that—her house. But slowly I settled, finding almost every day something she had left for me. Tucked in a book, behind the pewter plates in the kitchen, sometimes on my pillow. Notes, flowers, books, bottles filled with wine that tasted of forest floor and myth.

The answers came slowly, far outpaced by the questions. But I learned to wait. Looking out to sea, from the deck, my bed, the platform atop the intertwined tower-tree lovers, the roof of the kiln. I visited the old dragon almost daily. I chopped wood and carried water.

Not literally, of course. The road to consciousness is one thing, living the austere, deprived life of a monk quite another. I was not cut out for the life of an ascetic. It seems disrespectful of the generations before us who crawled out of the bat guano and created a civilization of controlled climates, the all-night sun, and 3D wraparound entertainment. It’s insulting to their sacrifices. An affront to god, turning our backs on the creature comforts with which he endowed us.

For that reason, and others, I chose not to live the life apart that Eleutheria had, just before he came back for her. But I do not fault her. In her years of struggle, unwilling merely to survive, she achieved the only thing that matters: understanding.

Anywhere else, people would have asked more questions about me. Who was I? Where did I come from? What was I doing here? But on Orcas, privacy is a quantifiable commodity. People may wonder many things, but to ask would violate the cardinal rule of the island: thou shalt not inquire.

To be offered information in island society is considered a great honor. Young couples in the throes of early passion might well engage in coitus long before discussing family, points of origin, or even domicile. Full knowledge of another person’s history and personal opinions, even among old friends, is rare, and cobbling together a complete story requires multiple sources. Even then, pieces of the puzzle would inevitably be missing.

As a result, when it came to my current whereabouts on Orcas, most did not care. Some assumed it was the Gaudi House, a little less than a mile east of Max’s log cabin mansion. A natural assumption since that is where I entertained.

Some, no doubt, assumed it was Sofia and Roger Johansson’s house where I had stayed before going home, a futile attempt to outrun fate, and before I realized that consciousness is not a one-time experience, but rather an evolving process. Two-steps forward, one step back.

No one knew about my house with the thatched roof, overlooking Bourani Cove, with one exception. Of course, it could be seen from certain vantage points, but on Orcas, it would never occur to anyone to ask who lived there unless they had some vested interest in the information. That would have been tantamount to home invasion. So intense was the instinct to look away from any business other than one’s own. I’m confident the dwelling was, for all practical purposes, invisible. And this suited me well, as it had Eleutheria.

Within a few days of my return to the island, I acquired a 1984 rust-red four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee S. Frankly, I had my eye on a 1993 Hummer H, but that would have played in the village as ostentatious and not have projected who I was or who I planned to be. The Cherokee was plenty for Winston and me and had the added advantage of being able to transport a fair amount of cargo should the need arise. That said, now that spring had settled on Orcas, that delightful rebirth of vegetation and warm weather that precedes the onslaught of humanity seeking summer respite from the mainland, more often than not, we walked.

Good morning, Roberta.

The bell rang again as the door closed on Brown Bear Bakery. It was a pleasant day but retained enough vestige of morning chill to make keeping the door closed more hospitable. I’m sure it also helped reverse global warming, the anti-Christ of island sociology. As a result, while there was no crowd gathered on the deck, the inside of the shop was pleasantly full, keeping the motherly Roberta behind her cash register throne.

"It’s on the way Steamboat."

The voice came from my right, out of the hirsute lumberjack in the flour-dusted apron moving between the center stainless steel island and one of the stoves.

"That’s Showboat, you ignominious buffoon, and it’s Sir William to you," I said, raising my middle finger in a universally known gesture referencing fornication. He laughed, along with everyone in line who saw it, as he removed a fresh tray of scones from the oven.

His nickname for me came as the result of our first of many dinners together when I shared the story of my mother having taken me to see the reissue of the 1951 film, Showboat. There I had been exposed to the deified voice of William Warfield and had my first experience of artistically induced spiritual orgasm. In his delightfully introverted, but fertile, mind, Robert had converted Showboat to Steamboat and William to Willy, and I had become, to him alone, Steamboat Willy.

Not that a confusion of names was unwarranted. When first I came to the island, I had introduced myself as Christopher. But since my return to Orcas, I had gone by William, Eleutheria having changed my name and my destiny.

Pay no attention to my oafish brother.

Roberta came from behind the counter and gave me a big hug, simultaneously delivering my honey-lavender scone, Italian sausage quiche, pastrami slice for Winston, and pumpkin spice latte. When I made to hand her a fifty, she just rolled her eyes and, right there for all the world to see, pinched me on the butt.

Full moon dinner. Dibs on my place. A strange concoction of other locals, you, Winston, and—she paused with an arched eyebrow—a guest should you choose to bring one. She verbally italicized the last word with a smile as she retreated behind the counter.

Wouldn’t miss it for the world, I said.

Damn right you wouldn’t. She returned my smile as I blew a kiss to Robert and eased my way out the door.

Winston, the large brown Belgian Malinois, waited for me on the porch, and we walked down the steps to a table in the front garden, awaiting the first strains of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring before bursting from ground and limb in a riot of color and pollen.

Roberta was not alone in her generosity toward me. In point of fact, thanks to Winston’s well-publicized injury and recovery, my subsequent speech at winter graduation, and the eulogy at Adam’s memorial for which I had just returned to Orcas Island a couple of weeks earlier, I was relatively recognizable.

It’s true I had not much contact with the extremes of the island—the affluent west arm of the Orcas horseshoe, with its high-tech mansions on the beach, at the end of long dirt roads through the forest that even Hansel and Gretel wound find daunting or the hippies on the far eastern shore, caught like ancient insects in prehistoric amber.

My territory was the great plain where the two worlds met to shop, to drink, to smoke, to go to church and commune with their gods: Eastsound. But for the absence of giant lava bubbles, The Prisoner might have been trying to escape this village.

I had tried to escape myself, of course, only to be dragged back by the music and the mystery. The Island on the Edge of Forever. And now I was here. Learning to wait. Chopping wood and carrying water.

Hey, Obi-Wan.

Lexi’s father, the Reverend Richard Peake, sat down, simultaneously snapping off a bite of my honey-lavender scone.

Is it that people don’t know my name or just don’t like it? I asked, dramatically easing the scone out of his reach.

In fairness, he said, you seem rather confused about it yourself. And honestly, William as a moniker is rather pretentious, don’t you think? He mocked to distract me from my guardianship of the pastry.

That’s what they said to Paul after he got off the road to Damascus. An uppity name for an apostle.

He laughed, bending down to pet Winston and then, before I could stop him, reached around me to grab the last bite of scone.

Hey, those aren’t free, you know.

They are for you. He smiled with a playful dash of irony. By the way, Jedi master, the spiritually hungry clamor for your return to the pulpit. When may I tell them they may expect you?

He knew what he was asking. My spiritual quest had begun in the suffocating arms of the holy mother church, my father in the pulpit and my mother at the organ. As a minister himself, Richard knew the wear and tear that goes with being a preacher’s kid. Few survive intact. The jury was still out in my case. Returning to the scene of so much self-destruction only pushed those buttons it had taken so long to disable.

On the other hand, Richard, and everyone in the church, knew that I did not come bearing the same message with which I had been programmed. And in some ways, it felt like getting back up on a horse from which I had fallen years ago, only this time with the knowledge of how to be one with the animal.

He knew I would come and did not want to lord that over me by making it sound anything other than flip and casual, which it was not.

I’ll look at my old-school paper calendar when I get home and schedule something by the end of the day.

You know you don’t have to. He allowed the offer of a gracious exit to taper off.

Go away. I rolled my eyes as he used the win to make his exit.

After he left, I remembered I had forgotten to ask him about Connie and extract the tawdry details of their budding relationship.

Heading home, Winston and I passed Darvill’s Bookstore. I nodded at the Monocle through the window as he endured a crush of business. He stopped just long enough to give me a maternal smile. I knew, as did he. Sooner or later, we would have to discuss the details. But that could wait. During my two weeks in the house with the thatched roof, I had already come to learn there was…time.

Billy Jr. and Eva were waiting when we arrived, having been told with the music we were coming. They ran off with Winston to gossip while I sat with Max.

It looks good.

I nodded in the direction of his new garage and workshop. The rugged exterior belied a controlled and organized interior, becoming a craftsman with his history. It was his monument to relaxed elegance. His way of coming to terms with what he had seen, and done, in war.

Yeah. He glanced at his work. Turned out okay. Ever the understated hero.

Is Connie around? I had hopes of running into her and making up for Richard’s aborted inquisition.

No, she’s off visiting the sick.

This was Max’s way of saying she had gone to see Richard. It certainly was not that he didn’t like the preacher. On the contrary, despite his belief the reverend dabbled in fairy tales for a living, Max actually respected him. Largely for the way he handled his grief, which is to say, by repressing it.

However, respect aside, no other man would ever be Billy Sr. And when Max lost his daughter-in-law to anyone, he would lose a little more of his son.

Does her good to bring joy and comfort to others. Does her good to bring it to herself. I looked at Max. But you’re never going to be without Connie. She will always honor the past. But something new doesn’t always require the death of something old.

He looked away as the kids, and Winston ran up the hill toward us.

When can he spend the night again? Eva did not even seem out of breath. You know, a little father-daughter bonding with Dani.

Dani was one of the female pups from the litter Winston had sired with Khaleesi, the local police dog. The puppy was their thank-you for taking care of Winston while I was gone. And helped, I knew, to take the edge off his leaving.

Who could say no to that kind of guilt trip? I knelt on the pretense of petting Winston, but really to be eye to eye with the kids. I’ll make sure he gets a night off this week. But don’t keep him up too late. He’s a very old dog and needs his sleep. Winston rolled his eyes.

As we turned to go, and Max headed toward his new shop, Billy Jr. called out.

Hey, William. I turned with a smile. They both made the magic carpet wave motion with their arms.

When I first met them almost a year ago, they had described the music no one else in the house could hear as sounding foreign, like a magic carpet. While their stories of music in the night worried their mother and grandparents, hearing them talk about it was the first time I knew I was not alone in hearing Eleutheria’s concerts. Ever since, even though the music had changed, when we referred to it, we used the original sign language.

Thanks, Billy said with a nod older than his years.

They knew.

My house on the point was pleasantly warm, both from the sun on the glass walls as well as from the candles. I changed from jeans into a hunter green velvet robe and read in my office for a while, looking up from time to time at the old dragon waiting for me on the beach. He was more formidable than he looked. I wondered I hadn’t seen it before.

Toward sunset, I made us dinner. I liked working in the kitchen while there was still a view. The floodlights around the base of the house, down by the water, pushed back at the darkness, but nothing could equal the sun dancing on the bay, changing colors in the trees.

After dinner, I cleaned up while Winston watched from his kitchen floor rug. Finally, under his relentless gaze, I said,

I know. I’m taking my time. It’s just…there’s a lot to process.

(He was silent. I searched for a rationalization.)

She took her time as well. From what you’ve told me.

(He watched.)

Apparently, there’s plenty of time.

(I allowed the word to trail off into the evening, watching the movie of her play in my mind. Her floating walk, the cape of her hair, the rich deep purple of her voice. The first time I saw her. The last. The things she had shown me. Finally, I said,…)

It will be done.

(He got up and walked to the door. Just before he went outside, he said,)

Don’t forget to call Richard.

(He always kept his opinions to himself.)

I headed down the hall toward the back of the house.

After I checked my calendar, I called and committed to a Sunday at the church in August when I had hopes what passed for heat on the island would keep most people home.

Finally, Winston and I curled up in the four-poster bed that watched over Bourani Cove. The only piece of furniture in the room, it was surrounded by solid wood walls, giving the appearance of sleeping inside an ancient forest tree.

The fire burned in the fireplace, as well as in the vine enshrouded kiln just across the water, reminding me never to take the old dragon for granted.

And then, we settled in for the night and listened to the music.

2

There are only three big questions in life.

Where did we come from?

Why are we here?

Where are we going?

—Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

Lenore Ellen Peake walked in as though she owned the place. A case could be made for that.

As she had since the first day I met her, she walked straight to the refrigerator and took out a beer before even saying hello, and even that was directed to Winston.

Ever the rebel, she was wearing a white Renaissance princess dress, gathered tightly at the waist, flared to the floor, with a push-up bodice and short, off-the-shoulder sleeves. The gown was completely transparent and obviously the only thing she was wearing.

I had imagined you in something more…dark. I sat in my usual chair by the window while she strutted in front of me.

When the commoners run about masquerading as the undead, it’s time to change up your game. Besides, I dress like that all year. What would be the point today?

She plopped on the floor with Winston curled in her lap like a captured unicorn.

Besides, it’s not really in me to go out of my way to honor the martyrs, the saints, and all the faithful.

I laughed. I often did with Lexi and had since I met her. She was bright, articulate, and incredibly entertaining as long as you had the wisdom to know when to take her seriously and when not.

Over the fifteen months I had known her, she had filled in, leaving behind the amorphous tomboy for the disquietingly feminine. She had never been emaciated in that starving-Biafra-teenager-turned-super-model sort of way. Though had she been a young boy, she would have been called gaunt like her father. But no longer. She was developing a shape.

She had also let her dishwater blond hair grow long and wavy, no longer tortured straight in some all-night ritual meant to look natural the following day. Still the piercing, gray eyes. A cat’s eyes. Hypnotic, and wary, under dark brows bookending a nose she would have preferred more pointed than displaying a child’s innocent roundness. And in just the right light, the soft blond down of her arms still shimmed off the ivory cream of her skin.

She had changed in one other way as well. While she was not yet inherently graceful, she had learned to emulate it when the circumstances required. She had begun, begrudgingly, to modify her behavior on rare occasions to fit the surroundings. It was a crack in the facade.

Today was Halloween and, appropriately, her nineteenth birth, some seven months after my return to the island.

You may blame Pope Gregory III for initiating this particular obligation. I reverted easily to teacher. The patron saint of dentists.

As in Gregorian chant?

Bless you, my child. I made the sign of the cross though directionally accurate for the Greek Orthodox. I adore you for knowing enough to ask the question. She returned a wry smile. But no, that would have been Pope Gregory I, a couple of hundred years earlier. I let a moment of silence pass. But in the scheme of things, two hundred years isn’t much around here.

She looked up at me, slowly. She knew. She had known for months, and now the time had come for her to ask the questions to which she had long suspected answers.

I thought you would have a party tonight. I changed the subject for the last time.

For Halloween or my birthday? She turned her attention, on the surface, back to Winston.

Either. Both.

She just shook her head.

I have other priorities. She smiled and looked around the house.

And still not the same without Adam, I said, refusing to let her pretend otherwise.

I had given the eulogy for her boyfriend, Adam, seven months before. The general rule of thumb is that it takes about half the length of a relationship to get over someone. Of course, that pertains to breakups, not death, the ultimate breakup. Lexi and Adam had grown up together and been in a relationship for only a year. Adam was still very much with her and would be for life. Just as would her mom, who had died five years earlier.

It was a crushing experience for her to bear, so long before she was better equipped to reason the pain away. People come and go instantaneously. Even more disturbing, we ourselves come and go instantaneously. So what difference does anything make?

I asked that question first when I was nine, moments after my father died, and have been formulating theories ever since. Lexi started asking it when she was twelve. And she will be asking it forever. Or maybe not. My job is to see that she survives to complete the search.

At this point, her default coping mechanism was to project a precocious, acerbic, and overtly sexual persona. For example, in return for my not letting her off the hook, she is about to do the same to me.

So time’s up. What are you doing here, William?

Even having watched it coming, I could not help but be entertained though I was surprised by how odd my name sounded coming from her.

Why are you here? In this house?

We had skirted the issue for a couple of months and not because she was too polite to ask. The Spanish Inquisition was courteous by comparison. She did not ask because she knew.

She knew I did not have the answers yet, and she cared too much for me to force me to say so. She also knew it would have been a waste of our time together, much of which we had spent in this house.

But now here it was, the moment I had seen, watching as it came closer. Knowing I could stop it. And knowing better. Today was the day she wanted to know because she knew that I knew and felt she was entitled to know as well. She was right on both counts. What better way to celebrate the departed and the day of her arrival?

I stood and walked toward the kitchen.

Hey, you can’t just walk away after I bared my soul.

She was right about that too. It was a unique display of vulnerability and overt caring on her part. I turned enough to toss over my shoulder.

I’m checking on your birthday dinner.

She positively sprang to her feet, folded her arms, and with all the determination of a tortured Tinkerbell, she pouted.

Stop it.

That was her line. I knew it before she did. But I just wanted to hear the melody of her saying it before turning it into music.

I turned and walked into the kitchen and took a 2012 Opus One Cabernet off the counter where it had been breathing and brought it, along with two Swarovski crystal red wine glasses, toward the table across the room. As I passed in front of her, I stopped and said, I’m going to tell you everything I know. But I must gather strength because, like writing a book, it will be a long, tedious, thankless task with little validation along the way. There’s cheese and crackers artfully arranged on an elegant wood platter in the kitchen. Please bring it along.

She just stared at me, suspicious of my promise, to answer a direct question with a definitive answer.

There were already napkins and water on the table next to the western window, overlooking Bourani Cove. The top was parquet and portrayed a battle scene in which a well-armed, well-attired gaggle of knights was getting its collective ass fried by a large and elegant dragon. He held in one claw a princess, whose expression looked rather more sexually aroused than terrified. Clearly, she had thrown in her lot with the beast.

Two comfortable dark brown leather chairs that swiveled flanked the table, allowing us to face the table for eating and the cove for thinking. When we were here together, we ate at this table or on the deck.

A pewter bowl of gourmet, organic, overpriced dog treats from Pawki’s lived permanently on the table