Nick Haverland, I Remember You

When I moved to Ventura, I met a guy named Nick.

I hadn’t seen him in close to five years when I heard he’d been killed by a drunk driver on May 11, 2011.

I was devastated.  Nick had been one of my first friends in this city.  While we had only spent short amounts of time together, he moved something in me with his uncommon kindness, his superior intellect, his patience and his love of animals.

Around Christmas, boat owners bedeck their vessels in lights and glide through the Ventura Keys and the Harbor in winter celebration.  I think I was 7 or maybe 8 when Nick came to my house to watch the Parade of Lights.  His mom and my mom knew each other somehow.  Nick and his brother, Griffin, strode out onto my deck.  Nick made a beeline for the ramp to the boat dock, running his hand down the white light-wrapped rail.

Ventura, CA

“Do you ever catch crabs?” he asked me.

“What?”

“You know… put meat on a string and try to catch crabs.  They come pretty easy if you let them nibble on the meat for a while then you can put them in a bucket and play with them.”

I was stunned and surprisingly happy this older guy was talking to me.  Shaking my head, I followed him onto the ramp.

Even though it was getting dark, he swung down from the ramp, landing lightly on the rocks several feet below.

“Come on,” he said, holding his hand out to me.

I took it, still happy and slightly confused.  He helped me down and knelt near the waterline, his eyes darting back and forth across the rocks, searching.

In a blur, his hand flashed forward and he held a small red and green crab .  Sandwiched, the crab’s belly was pressed against his thumb and its back trapped by his forefinger.

“Hold them like this, so he can’t pinch you,” he grinned, holding the crustacean out to me.  I eyed it warily and slowly extended my arm, taking the crab gingerly between my fingers.  It was cold and hard and a little bit slippery.

Looking up I said, “I thought you needed meat and a string.”

Nick laughed, “Not if you’re fast,” and winked.  He took the crab from me and put it back in the water.

He asked me if I studied all the marine life on my dock.  I told him I didn’t.  He offered to teach me and I happily agreed.

The sky was black by the time we got together the stuff we needed.  A flashlight, a lemonade pitcher, a red plastic cup, and a magnifying glass sat beside us as we leaned over the side of the dock, our arms deep in the cold green water and our hair dripping in our faces.

Nick poked around at tendrils of flowing, filmy algae, seeking the creatures that surely lived among them.

“Ouch!” He exclaimed, pulling his hand up sharply.

“WHAT?!” I practically yelled.  He laughed again,” Just kidding.”

He opened his hand to show me a small, pinkish-beige worm with a creepy fringe all over its body.  “It’s a ragworm,” he explained, “they’re kind of like fire worms but they hurt a lot less when you touch them.”

He told me to hold the flashlight over the water.

“The fish like the light,” he said.

And he was right.

Dozens of shiny fish, no more than slivers of silver darted and flashed beneath the halogen beam.  They jerked and turned as if running into invisible walls, swimming around and around, creating a tiny whirlpool on the surface of the water.

Not quite knowing what to say, I said, “Weird.”

Nick looked back at me, still hanging off the side of the dock.

“Weird is better than ordinary.  Weird can be fantastic.  I’d rather be weird than normal.  Normal is boring.  I think it’s much better to be fantastic.  Don’t forget that,” he said.

I still haven’t.

He showed me a few other things, barnacles encrusted on the cement, a hard tubular thing I can’t remember the name of and a few fish.  But it had gotten dark and it was time to get out of the water.

After he left that night, we had several other educational excursions.

I took up crab fishing or “crab catching” as he liked to call it.  My record was 5 straight hours of crab catching, just sitting below my ramp with a ball of yarn, a pack of turkey meat, that same blue plastic lemonade pitcher and a Capri Sun.

I find it amazing that he was so willing to teach and hang out with a little girl he didn’t even know.  He was exceptionally eloquent when teaching, charismatic and tolerant.  I never got the impression that I irritated him.

To me, you will always be the marvelous, incredible person I met all those years ago.

Nick Haverland, I remember you.

Annabel Lee: Part I

This post is going to be part of a series based on the love story of Edgar Allan Poe‘s poem “Annabel Lee.”

It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

Than to love and be loved by me.

Than to love and be loved by me…

The words roll around in my mind, marbles on a marble floor.

I stand alone on a grassy hill, watching the gray clouds reflected in greenish water.  A storm is coming.  The ocean churns and froths beneath my empty stare, bubbling up like pus from a great wound.  But all I can think about is my heart, lying in the tomb.  Cold, lonely, lost.

My Annabel is gone.

Sweet Annabel Lee, my first, my only love.

I had never loved God or His angels.  Even as a boy I was ever skeptical of the mercy and kindness others painted Him with.  But I have never hated those divinities more than I do at this very moment.

Those jealous seraphs killed my beloved, and God Almighty allowed it to happen.  I feel myself shaking with rage and grief.

Closing my eyes, I think back to the day I met Annabel.

I had been playing at the beach, frolicking gaily at the shore just beyond the reach of the waves.  The sky was vivid lapis lazuli, the breeze, light and sweet.  I do not remember the water being particularly warm, but it was clean and clear, refreshing.  The dry sand sparkled white and the wet sand was soft gold, silky and fine.  Gulls cried, their voices carried across the beach by the breeze, breaking sharply in my ear.  Waves rolled, the low, melodious hiss of the surf soothed the birds’ shrill shrieks.

I was perhaps one and ten years.  By my mother’s accounts, I was a handsome boy.  She loved to run her fingers though my wavy blond hair and tousle it gently.  My skin was barely three shades lighter than honey, but still fair and unmarked.  However, what people first noticed were my eyes.  Large and uncannily bright, they were the deep blue of a summer ocean.

I had just scooped up a handful of sand when a shadow fell over my head.  Annoyed that this new obstacle was blocking the sun’s warmth, I looked up.

Probably appearing rather ridiculous, I shielded my eyes with one sandy arm and squinted, opening my mouth and cocking my head to the left.  What I saw slackened my jaw and made my arm drop like a stone.

A girl about my age stood in front of me.  The waves tugged at her long, pale pink dress, twisting it around her ankles, bits of white foam caught in the hem.  Long dark hair, locks of chestnut laced with amber, danced around a heart-shaped face.  Her magnolia white skin held the faintest flush across her cheekbones.  Lips, the dewy fresh color of roses, slightly parted, revealed pearly white teeth.  Luminescent eyes started down at me.  The incredible green of gemstones, they reminded me of my mother’s emeralds or the exotic lumps of jade she kept locked in a special velvet box.  Dark, curling lashes ringed the eyes and cast shadows down on her face like the silhouette of delicate black lace.

She knelt before me and sat with a grace I hadn’t thought a girl her age capable of.

“May I join you?” She asked, her voice soft and clear as a crystal bell.

I could only nod and stare.

She reached down and began digging a little hole, then proceeded to pile up the sand and shape it into a small mound.  Fascinated, I watched as she grabbed handfuls of sand, still dripping with seawater.  She turned her hand so that sandy drops trickled through her slender fingers and fell onto the mound.  The droplets created a strange and intricate castle of frozen tears.

“It is called a drip castle,” she smiled.

Without a word, I picked up a handful of sand and copied her actions, adding my droplets to the growing castle.

Hour after hour we did this, building upon the castle until it was as thick around and as tall as I was.  Only then did we stop to admire our work.

The sun was setting and a pinkish glow had stolen across the water, casting a coral light on everything.   Toward the shore, the color deepened and each wave looked like panes of rose and violet glass shattering against the sand.   Magenta and lavender clouds gathered at the horizon and the sun turned to wavering orange fire as it wobbled at the ocean’s edge.

I looked over at her.  A smear of sand smudged her right cheek and a few flecks dotted her forehead.  Her long hair had tangled in the wind but that only succeeded in making her more beautiful.  The green eyes peered at me, inquisitive, alight and devastatingly lovely.

“I am Annabel Lee,” she said in that musical voice, “what is your name?”

I realized then I hadn’t uttered a single word in all the hours we had spent together.

“Alexander,” I replied.

She nodded and smiled again.  Fluttering her eyelashes shyly, she looked up at me, demure, coy.

“I will see you again, Alexander,” then dashed off, a flash of pale pink satin and chestnut-amber hair.

STAY TUNED FOR THE FOLLOWING INSTALLMENT NEXT WEEK!