Oars
By Ken Ely

The breakfast sun shown through the kitchen window of the Vicarage, illuminating our Grape Nuts, our grapefruit, and the sweet concords of my 15th summer.

'What are you planning today, Cap?' the Rev. Glion T. Benson asked, suspending a spoonful of cereal midway between his bowl and his mouth.

'I'm going to row down to Rosario to see Peter.'

Peter was my age and lived in a house just across Cascade Bay from the Rosario Mansion. We had become friends while serving as acolytes together in Fr. Benson's Emmanuel Church, Eastsound.

'It's five sea miles from here to Rosario, Cap. The wind will be against you coming back. Figure out some other way to see Peter.' Fr. Benson, whom I called 'Grampa' although I was not actually related to him, signaled his desire for this ruling to be accepted sans appeal by summarily pursing his lips around the attendant spoonful of cereal.

But at fifteen, I thought all rulings could be appealed; and East Sound, that long arm of water that divides Orcas Island nearly in two, was my own private sea. 'I've been watching the tide, Grampa. Flood should start sometime around four this afternoon. The wind usually dies at slack water and comes up from the other direction when the tide starts running again. I figure to shove off with the ebb this morning and come home on the flood.' I smiled triumphantly. 'And I'll have the wind with me both ways!'

Grampa wiped his short-cropped moustache with his napkin. 'You'll have the boat stuck at Rosario, Cap. Can't always bet on the wind changing with the tide.'

I regarded him uncertainly while he took another bite. So, I can't go?'

Grampa chewed everything twenty times. Silence reigned until he swallowed. Then, because his spine had fused from a three-deck fall in an engine room when a young man in the navy, he shifted in his chair so that he could look me in the eye. 'Are you willing to row for as long as it takes to bring the boat back?'

'Yes,' I replied, with complete sang-froid.

Folding his napkin, he said, 'I'll be gone to Friday Harbor for the day. I don't want you calling here asking Grandmother Benson to drive down to get you because the wind is too strong.' He put the folded napkin on the table, flattened it with the palm of his hand in a very judicial manner, and held my eyes with his own once more. Behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, his eyes told me with all certainty that he had had enough of my maritime adventures for one summer and that perishing at sea would be everlastingly better than for me to leave the boat at Rosario.

'As long as it takes.' I was rather old fashioned at that age and extended my hand. 'My word as a gentleman.'

Ignoring my word as a gentleman, he said, ' I'll see you and the boat here at supper time.'

'No problem.'

- * -

'No problem,' I rejoiced as I scudded downsound with the tide, the breeze, and the whitecaps.

'No problem,' I assured myself as Peter and I roamed the Rosario grounds, drinking sodas, discussing boats, and discretely surveying girls.

'No problem,' I muttered under my breath as four o'clock arrived. The tide changed but the wind showed no sign of shifting.

Peter picked up a flyer lying on the grass. 'Let's see what's playing at the Sea View,' he said. 'Hey! "The War Lord," with Charlton Heston! Want to go?'

'Want to help me row the boat back to the Vicarage? You could spend the night.'

Sure.' And with that, we charged off to find Peter's mother, her telephone, and the necessary permissions.

- * -

It was four-thirty when Peter and I began to pull for home, five nautical miles nor'west by north. The movie started at eight. Had the wind gone round with the tide, we would have had time enough and to spare. With the wind against us, it would be nip 'n' tuck. We had planned to take turns at the oars; but once we were out of the lee of Cascade Bay, our fatigue and the frequent necessity of changing positions slowed our progress dramatically - until it stopped. We decided then to make rowing a combined effort: I would push while Peter pulled. In this fashion we labored a while, expending enough energy to have propelled ourselves across the galaxy on a day without wind.

'What time is it?' I grunted as I pushed against Peter's hands for the millionth time.

When we swung upright to begin the new stroke, Peter glanced at his watch. 'Quarter past five. We're not doing too good.'

'We're not doing anything at all. I've been watching those rocks over there. The raggedy ones at the base of the cliff. I think we've been in the same place for quite a while.

We heaved the next two strokes in silence. Then Peter said, 'Let's forget this.'

'Not possible. I gave my word of honor.'

Peter rolled his eyes. 'God!'

'Well, there's an idea. We could pray. Shall I?'

'Go ahead.'

'Okay. Here it is, then. Father, I ask you, in Jesus' name, to kill this da- , I mean, to kill this wind so we can row home in time for the movie. Amen.'

'Amen.'

We continued to row, the wind continued to blow, and the raggedy rocks remained where they were.

'You know,' I said to Peter, 'it says in the Bible that if ye ask and ye receive not, it's because ye ask amiss. Maybe I asked amiss. Maybe I should ask again. Only different.'

'Fine. Ask again. Only different.'

'Okay. And I won't be so specific this time. I'll give God a little scope. Father, I ask you to get us to the movie on time. In Jesus' name. Amen.'

'Amen.'

We push/pulled another stroke. Halfway through the next one, at the sharp crack of splitting wood, Peter and I tumbled over the thwart. We both exclaimed, 'The oar broke!'

Indeed, it had: one third the way up the loom from the blade, the port oar had snapped. We were rapidly blowing downsound from the floating fragment - and from our destination - and from my word as a gentleman to bring the boat home. Moreover, if we didn't do something fast, we would be walking home from Olga, another three and a half 'sea miles' beyond Rosario.

'Get the blade,' I barked, giving Peter a shove.

'I can't reach it,' he rasped, straining over the bow.

'Forget it! We've got to get ashore or we're going to blow all the way to Blakely Island. Dam' this wind anyway! Give me the oar!' I said, grabbing it. 'I'll scull from the transom. You paddle over the bow with your hands.'

Peter balked. 'Why do I have to be the one that paddles?'

'Can you scull?'

'No.'

'Well, then!' I looked shoreward, seeking some place of opportunity in the wall of rock. 'There's a little scrap of beach in that cleft.'

Clawing our way across the wind, we rounded a slight promontory and made the scrap of beach as smartly as could be done with one oar in the water. There, we pulled the boat up and stood it on its transom against the rock face. Jamming its painter into a crevice, I pounded a piece of driftwood in on top of it, not even wanting to think about the trouble I'd be in if the boat drifted away.

Peter began to scale the rock wall. 'I know who lives in the house above us. Mr. Dickenson. The old guy that made Fr. Benson's record player cabinet.'

'Yeah? I know him, too. We can use his phone to call Gramma.'

Peter stopped to look down at me. 'What? Are you nuts? You can't do that! Remember your word of honor?' I put my foot on the wall and hove myself up beneath him. 'Of course I remember. But don't you see? This is the answer to our prayer.'

Peter's eyes radiated pure skepticism. 'How do you figure that?'

'Look. The prayer that was not amiss was the one that just asked God to get us to the movie on time. As long as the boat could be rowed, no way could we have made it. But now, there's no way we can row the boat home. The oar broke. I'm released from my word of honor. Now we can call Gramma and Grampa can't be mad.'

'I think you're mad,' Peter said and resumed his climb.

-*-

We scrambled over the top of the cliff and exploded upon Mr. Dickenson like a pair of Viking raiders. In due course, Gramma rumbled up in the old Lincoln Zephyr and drove us back to the Vicarage, where, despite her displeasure, she gave us tea and later, a light supper before we walked into Eastsound to the Sea View theater. The circumstance of the broken oar was equivocal enough to prevent her from voicing any strictures regarding my promise to Grampa, but I had the feeling that testifying to her about the saving grace of God in answer to prayers not prayed amiss might be imprudent - at least until the boat was safely home. Grampa had arrived at supper time. His only response to my account of our shipwreck had been, 'Tomorrow, you can get another oar from the barn and bring the boat home.'

In the theater, Peter and I sat munching popcorn while we waited for the film to start. He turned his head and gave me a long, penetrating look. 'Do you really think God answered our prayer that way?' Sticking a finger into his mouth to pull a stray kernel off his gum, he examined the trophy in the dim light before flicking it to the floor. 'Or was it just luck?'

I considered for a moment before I answered, 'Maybe the more you pray, the luckier you get.'

'Maybe.' He nodded just perceptibly in speculative agreement.

Later that night, as I lay in my bed reflecting on the day's adventure, with Peter's cadenced breathing in the next room rivaling the silence of the night for a place in the darkness, I cast back to the end of another day some weeks before. Michael (one of Grampa's de facto grandsons) had helped me carry the boat up the beach and we had inadvertently set it down hard upon one of the oars. The oar had popped in protest, but visual inspection and subsequent use had revealed no damage. The incident had gone completely from my mind, until now.

'So,' I whispered, 'did You answer my prayer "that" way? Or was it all just luck?'

The only sound to be heard was Peter's breathing, maintaining its foothold against the still of the night; but a very distinct impression stole over me that I had, indeed, hit upon a truth in the theater: the more you pray, the luckier you get.

Copyright June18, 2004

Top of Page

Return to Short Stories Page