Writings and Reflections

The Sea is Me...

by Lloyd B. Abrams

Some people would recognize the fact that Lawrence Wylie was a fool, and maybe even bordered on insanity. You see, Wylie, or Pudgy, as his best friends nicknamed him, was about to embark on a raft, by himself, to travel as the trade winds would take him.

Wylie had been constructing his craft with maple boards sawed down from the only two trees on his meager property. He used pegs instead of nails to secure the boards, and his sail was an old, dilapidated bed sheet which looked as though it had seen use in an abandoned manure field. With the pegs, he secured a two-foot cubic oaken box near the sail which was to hold all of his water and foodstuffs. Put together out of twenty separate boards, the boat measured approximately ten feet wide and an irregular seven to nine feet long. With this feeble raft, he expected to travel all around the world.That is why Pudgy was considered to be demented.

"Ya know, you're a fool, Wylie," one of his best friends, Arnold Schumacher, the butcher, said to him as they were discussing Pudgy's idiotic plans, as they were guzzling a round of beers down their throats in the neighborhood town tavern.

But the foolish old man, Pudgy, was undaunted by their cruel ridicule and belittling. He had his mind set on travelling as the trade winds would take him.

"Do you really think that ya are gonna come back alive - ya don't even have enough food t'support ya self for a whole week?"

"Who cares," Wylie would answer to his fellow fools, "the sea is my destiny and if I die, my death would be warranted by the sea. lf I live, the sea would want it that way. Ya see ya fools, the sea is me and I'm the sea."

Pudgy, a wine-maker by vocation and an inebriate by avocation, was a religious fanatic. But there was a big difference from his religion to the religions that we, as intelligent human beings, are accustomed to. He didn't worship Christ, Buddha, Allah, Jehovah, or the Good Book - he worshipped his own god, the Sea. (Out of respect to Pudgy's religion, from now on the Sea will be capitalized.) Not only had he had his greatest devotion to the Sea, he would worship the trade winds, currents, typhoons and tides. Logs and diaries of sunken schooners and clipper ships made up the books and chapters of his own Bible; the Wreck of the Mary Deare took the place of the Book of Genesis.

In fact, Pudgy would even hold his own religious service on Tuesday, his high-holy day, and deliver a moving sermon on the power and the glory of the sea. Afterwards, he would fast for the rest of the day and would sit in deep meditation.

Fish and all foods from the sea were considered holy by the Reverend Pudgy, so he abstained from eating shelled or scaled foods at all, even if he had to starve.

On the morning of Tuesday, July 19, Pudgy Wylie held a final "bon voyage" service since his raft was finally completed. He stocked up his food box with peanut butter sandwiches, potato chips and warm beer and boarded his boat to deliver his sermon, which began: "Art thou not me, and me, thee? Thou art all powerful." For two hours Pudgy continued to deliver his sermon and asked for a miracle--a miracle which was to allow him to survive when travelling as the sea breezes blew him. With a slow bow of his weathered head, he untied and threw the anchoring ropes onto his dilapidated dock and was slowly shoved out to sea by the out-going tide.

The Reverend Mr. Wylie stood up to look around and had to kneel down again to pick up his telescope. "Oh, my Sea!" he exclaimed as he noticed black, menacing storm clouds gathering just above the horizon. He reched for a dark grey collection of short, rabbit-eared pamphlets, which were his Bible. He delivered a three-hour sermon (with a five-minute respite for a peanut butter sandwich) which asked for another miracle - to evaporate the storm clouds and to make them disappear. Fortunately, the storm clouds did disappear, but only after a two-hour calm, which was finally disrupted when a brink wind billowed in his bed sheet/sail and propelled him directly to the south. "Thank the Sea!" he hollered to the fish, to the water, and to the raft. With a final sigh of relief, Pudgy drank a disgustingly warm beer and fell to sleep on the hard deck, but only after striking his head on his hard, oaken food box.

A sharp greyish fin appearing just beside the boat heralded in the next day, Wednesday, July 20. A flat head and menacingly sharp teeth caused some alarm to the Reverend Pudgy, but he decided not to annoy, bother, or tease the hungry shark as he thought that it might go away. He even pinched himself to make sure that this wasn't one of his ridiculous dreams. Only one bit of bad luck marred his rendezvous with his finned friend - he forgot that his left foot was cooling in the clear water around the raft. In his sleepy, semi-conscious state, Pudgy didn't realize the fact. The shark was obviously attracted to this delicious morsel and he proceeded to nibble upon it. Pudgy was not very pleased by this incident; he, therefore, whacked the shark on its head with a full can or beer, and immediately delivered a sermon apologizing for his violence in repelling his unwelcome visitor.

Storm clouds gathered in the morning of Thursday, July 21and Pudgy again delivered a sermon praising and appeasing the Sea. Lightning struck the mast and it ripped into two pieces and the bed sheet/sail was torn off by the squalls which followed. Pudgy tried to appease the Sea - he threw a can of beer into the water (in his semi-inebriated state of mind, he thought that the sea was thirsty), but to no avail. The tremendous winds continued and he ripped off his torn shirt to make a new sail. As he retrieved the remaining parts of the split mast, he slipped into the water. Fortunately, he scrambled on board his raft again. He was blown quickly along in his craft and he prayed for deliverance, for thanksgiving, or for whatever entered his mind, in his dazed state. Pudgy thereupon started to nibble upon several potato chips which immediately made him extremely thirsty. He pried open a can of his repulsive warm beer and flinched as it gurgled down his dry throat. Only one thing now seemed to annoy him - he was running out of water and he estimated that he was approximately one hundred miles from the nearest shore.

Pudgy was awakened the next morning (Friday, July 22) by the scratching of sharp coral underneath his craft and he started to push the raft along by jumping into the shallow water and pushing the raft. Again he prayed for help and his prayers were not very well answered. A school of large jellyfish attacked him and he suddenly became a mass of red cuts and gashes. "Damn Sea!" he shouted and he suddenly achieved Herculean strength and freed the frozen raft from the sharp, prickly corals.

Pudgy was slowly admitting to himself that during the past several days of his voyage, the Sea had been quite unkind to him. For instance, he was attacked by the school of jellyfish, a storm split his mast into two pieces, and the shark bit off part of his left leg. Even though he worshipped the Sea, he decided that he would deliver just one more long sermon and then he would head back to shore, as he would not trust his bad luck any longer. There was only one thing wrong with his change of direction - the wind was blowing the wrong way and was pushing him farther out to Sea.

He secured his shirt onto his split mast and removed his pants, which he tied around his waist and attached to the boat. He was attempting to pull the raft back while swimming back to the shore. His food rations were becoming quite lacking and his supply of beer and water was especially low. Three sandwiches, which then remained, were to feed and nourish him for the entire voyage home. Also, Pudgy was especially chagrined by his diminishing supply of beer, as he was an inebriate.

Slowly but surely, Pudgy propelled himself and the raft through the chilly waters. He estimated that approximately one hundred miles separated him from the nearest shore. He gulped down a sandwich - the bread, by then, had become moldy, and he winced from its disgusting taste. Now his extreme thirst was beginning to dehydrate his throat and his tongue was beginning to become swollen. He remembered that he could not consume any of the salt water, or its after-effects would mutilate his body. Hunger was plaguing him also - he didn't want to become a heretic and catch some fish. No, he would rather starve than become a heretic to his own religion.

After estimating that he had travelled approxiately two miles from the point of turning around, Pudgy became very exhausted from hauling his heavy craft. He decided that he wouldn't leave the raft and swim to shore as he continued to drag the raft. Again he approached the coral, but this time, no school of jellyfish appeared. Instead, he was horribly scratched by the prickly coral and he started to bleed from the gashes covering his emaciated body. Luckily, the salty water served as an antiseptic and his skin was quickly shriveled up by the prolonged exposure to the water. He cried out from his agonizing pain, but there was nothing around to hear him - nothing except his raft, the Sea and the fish. He recited a quick prayer to ask for a miracle, a miracle which was to allow him to reach the shore alive. Now the bedraggled body or the Reverend Mr. Wylie lay prone on the raft, his left leg bitten off by the vicious shark, and his body covered by horrendous gashes and wounds.

Fortunately, Pudgy fell asleep. His tormented body lay in a state of semi-consciousness and the unpalatable food had caused a horrible stench on the little raft. Suddenly, a breeze started blowing in the direction of the shore, a breeze which would propel him into the shore. The raft started to move; Pudgy's shirt, which was attached to the split mast, billowed up and slowly but surely, the raft accelerated. Pudgy awakened from his tormented state and he thanked the Sea for thanksgiving and for the miracle of the wind.

The next day, the raft touched on shore. Pudgy pushed the raft out to Sea after awakening his tortured body (he had fallen asleep again after the raft started to accelerate). Suddenly, he changed his mind; he retrieved the raft to prove to his disbelieving friends that he had at least embarked on his torturous voyage. But his friends - they probably would think that he had failed to embark and that he was a scared fool. No, he couldn't face his heckling friends. But he couldn't face his high-holy-Sea, the all-too-powerful Sea again and be exposed to all of the heinous incidents that had marred his voyage.

In his steps, the Reverend Lawrence "Pudgy" Wylie, decided that he had had enough of his ridiculous, unrewarding life and he pulled his fishing knife from his hip pocket and pushed it through his heart. Only then was he relieved of the tension resulting from, on one hand, his heckling friends and, on the other had, the tremendous attraction of the omnipotent Sea. His parting words, between gasps, were: "My Sea, my all-too-powerful Sea - thou hast won."

Written April 19, 1963
Scanned and cleaned up September 28, 2004

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April, 1963…Copyright © 2004, Lloyd B. Abrams
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