A moment of clarity is precisely that—a moment. But not just any old, run-of-the-mill moment; it was a moment transcended, stretched beyond the limits of perceivable time, perpetually flirting with its own termination but never quite closing the deal. Unexpected and impetuous, sparked by frictions of commonplace experience, it arrives in a flash—blinding at first, then dimming to a canny light that blankets the mind in layers of meaningful snow.

Richard’s was immediate and edifying, but it came only after he had gnawed on a hypothesis that seemed too self-explanatory to be true: The sphere jaunts were two tellings of the same timeworn story, the one about the destitute exile. It still seemed a little nutty to think of the ice caves in terms of actual, physical reality—the only sensations he could recall with any certainty were darkness and cold followed by light and warmth—so he had to resort to literary qualifiers. The Kafkaesque, the Coleridgian, Pilgrim’s Progress. A man thrust into a bleak allegorical world, in which his self-doubt and personal shortcomings were exteriorized as wind, hills, ice, and barren landscape, must scrabble his way toward some kind of self-realization. Richard struggled to fit the pieces together. His alleviation (salvation?) from the freezing cold (despair? fear?) comes only when he retrieves (rescues?) a piece of writing (knowledge? power? identity?) from a self-sustaining fire (forces of fate? divine authority? death?).

The sea voyage was less allegorical and more in keeping with what he now knew of Saxon elegies. Surrounded by a cold blue expanse, the exile-stowaway is driven to an end he can neither fathom nor forsake. He derives whatever assurance he can find from his participation in the tale of his own fate:

                                         Cearo bið genīwad

þām þe sendan sceal swīþe geneahhe

ofer waþema gebind wērigne sefan.

                                        [Care is renewed

for one who must goad his frail will

over the frigid, binding ocean.]

                                                        ll. 55b–57

Richard consulted the glossary. Parsing the phrase ofer waþema gebind, he learned that its literal meaning translated to “over the freezing of the waves.” To fill out the meter, Carver rendered the accusative singular noun gebind (“freezing”) as a pair of adjectives: “frigid, binding,” the latter a descendant of the etymological root. By splitting the word into its connotations, Carver—whether shrewdly or inadvertently—invested it with uncanny weight. The ocean is both cold and remote—“frigid” in two senses of the word. It is at the same time “binding,” perhaps bound to the Wanderer, like a shadow or an albatross. But who can say for sure? Syntactically, the relationship was elusive any way you sliced it. Yet it was clear that seafaring was intrinsic to the Wanderer’s conception of how human frailty and strength can come together in the face of a vast unknown.

(The sea.)

Up until recently, Richard’s maritime exploits had been confined to ferries, rowboats, small yachts on small lakes, and canoes at Smoke Mountain Camp. The only time he had ever beheld open waters was on the longship. He recalled the canvas of blue, the slicing sea spray, the sloshing sounds as waves tumbled in, the adrenaline pumping through his body as he shuffled toward the barrel-chested behemoth, and how everything boomed and shook when the black cliffs loomed into view. Now, blockaded in his basement, he experienced the glum realization that up until clicking his cursor on that white circle on his computer screen, “the sea” had never been a tangible thing for him. In his pedantic conception, “the sea” was an allegorical catch-all for the advancement of humanity across time, from landbound unawareness to toe-wetting curiosity and finally to the hoarded wisdom that comes with ships, exploration, progress. Still, in all his years of existence, he had never experienced the sea for himself, preferring to read about it. The Odyssey, Melville, Patrick O’Brian novels, Baudelaire (Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!).

Ivan taught his son that books and literature can impart experiences that the reader has yet to encounter or that he cannot know first-hand (what it was like to be a silk merchant in the Persian empire, what went through the mind of someone who would slay an emperor for the betterment of Rome), and that this was a sensible compromise for direct knowledge. Because of books, and, most of all, because of Ivan’s guidance, Richard had come to eschew much of the adventurist, rah-rah rhetoric of his compatriots. The oft-repeated phrase “living life to the fullest,” an acid test for the American spirit, was, for Richard, dopily self-serving, anti-book propaganda that was to be resisted at all costs. But now, after all that had happened, he did not know what to believe. All of those stories that had nourished his imagination had been unmasked as charlatans. And all of the world’s lovely prose and high-register musings of the poets had failed to give him what the second sphere could: both the idea of the sea and the sea itself.

Tales and stories were Richard’s food and drink, and Ivan, as a good father should, provided for his child. Richard remembered those nights when Ivan would retire to his plush chair with a snifter of brandy and go nonstop for twenty, thirty, forty minutes, however long he could last before nodding off, telling anecdotes and spinning yarns about growing up on the “mean streets of Englewood,” a phrase Richard only later realized was spiked with absurdity. Young Richard would sit in the middle of the rug cross-legged on a sofa cushion, rest his head in the crook of his palm, and gaze up at his father’s Laughing Buddha face.

Richard, dear boy! Here’s one about the time I met this soul-capturing little sparrow named Queeny—yes, that was the name she was christened with, I say true—while I was chasing my Cousin Benny’s bulldog—Brutus by name, a most plagiaristic name for an effin’ bulldog, wouldn’t you agree?—down the street. Brutus was prone to jailbreaking, particularly on that one weekend a month when Benny’nd I’d try—try—to give him a bath. You’d think a bathtub of warm sudsy water was scalding oil the way Brutus yowled and twisted like he did. Well, on this particular day, he waited until we slicked him up with soap and then he slid past us—busted out, the bastard! Anyway, I was, eh, about a year older than you are now, huffing after this soaking-wet, soap-slippery harebrained mongrel. The bastard barreled into a hairdresser’s place down on the corner. Let’s see, this was Englewood, so it would’ve been the hairdresser my mother, your grandmother, did NOT frequent. She preferred the one on Chestnut. Anyway, Queeny was in there getting her hair done up in one of those bouffant deals, and Brutus—god love that old jolly, jowly, ball-dragging bastard—jumped right into her lap, as if he’d picked her out for me. She screamed, of course. “Eeewww, he’s all WET!” And when she saw that I was the one responsible, she shoved poor Brutus into my arms in a huff. But oh, Rich, she was, pardon the cliché, an angel. Sent from heaven, I tell you. I didn’t slink away. No, I set Brutus down, knowing he’d run off. (To Hell with THAT.) Then I turned to Queeny and said, “When you’ve finished with your hair, would you like to take a walk with me?” Oh, how mature I was! Just a kid like yourself. What happened next was innocent enough, but still, don’t relate any of what I’m about to say to your mother…

It didn’t matter that Ivan’s stories were more grandiose than factual (the one about Ivan sending all four MacKenzie brothers to the hospital? Impossible.); what mattered was how they took shape in the telling. Richard often imagined himself the unofficial thirteenth member of his father’s “gang,” the Twelve Dragons, which, believe it or not, did exist. Somewhere in this very basement were the grainy photos to prove it. The Dragons had matching jackets with stenciled logos on a background of dragon scales, secret code words, and an after-school hideout. The founding members lived within five blocks of each other: Ivan Waters, Cousin Benny Waters, Queeny Koppelman, Queeny’s sister Henrietta, their cousin Fat Petey, Petey’s chum Patel Farnsworth, Patel’s brother Samson, Paul Scroggins, Davey Klein, Dick Albright, Mary Lamb (real name), and Mary’s best friend Jeanne. The Dragons started out small-scale, harassing policemen, scaring old ladies, lobbing urine balloons from overpasses. They graduated to sneaking into back-alley storerooms and stealing liquor from the petty mobsters who ran the bars. (“Who’d miss a bottle here, a case there? Not those goombahs.”) It all sounded dangerous and exciting to young Richard. In his versions of his father’s stories (hence doubly exaggerated), Ivan was the tallest, smartest, and bravest Dragon. He was also the most respected because he was the one who made sure no one ever got caught.

Richard set aside the Carver and sat in silence for a long moment, engaging in what the Anglo-Saxons called dustscheawung, “contemplation of the dust,” reflecting on everything that had come before, knowing that whether it be a single life or a civilization, in the end wyrd enters with his hammer, smashing.

What does this have to do with me? He almost cried it to the gods. The ship, the men, the mucky shore, the herald on horseback…

A loud click went off in his skull. (The Moment was close.) The herald. The steed. The brigandine and the spear. Think, Richard, think!

As if controlled by impulses from another brain, his right hand slid across the table to where Edward Corgan’s Beowulf was lying. He picked it up and opened to page 1:

What!

     We have heard of the glory of the Spear-Danes

In days long gone…

He read. When he came to line 205, the click became a cannon.

The virtuous man had chosen from his people

Fourteen of the most courageous warriors

He could find. They followed the good man,

Their sea-skilled captain, to the wooden ship

Idling in the shallows. It was not long 

Before they were on the water, close under the cliffs.

The crewmen, outfitted and eager to be off,

Crowded the prow as the currents eddied,

Sea against sand. They carried

Bright trappings, gleaming metal and shields,

Into the bosom of the well-braced vessel,

Then shoved off, hungry for exhilaration.

Over the waves, driven on by the wind,

Sped the frothy-necked sea-bird.

At the destined hour, as dawn broke, 

The ship with curved prow had come far enough

For the sailors to spy a sliver of land;

Then glistering rock faces, high crags,

And broad headlands loomed up before them.

Their journey at an end, the Weather-Folk

Stepped up onto the shore and secured

Their vessel. Chain-vests shook,

War-gear rang out. They thanked God

That the sea-voyage was uneventful.

     From a high distant wall, the watchman of the Scyldings, 

Who was tasked to guard the sea-ways,

Saw the gleam of shields on the gangway,

Weaponry being unloaded. Doubt gripped him.

He needed to know everything about these strangers,

So he mounted his horse and galloped toward the beach,

Hrothgar’s sentinel brandishing a spear,

Waving it wildly. He spoke these words …

The crew, weapons, cliffs, the giving thanks to God, the mooring of the ship, the guy on a horse waving a spear. Somehow—(No!)—somehow—(Yes…?)—the sphere had transported Richard into Beowulf. Even the number of men was the same—fifteen. He recalled the pride in the young captain’s eyes as he led his men into what must have been Denmark, the land of the Scyldings, on their way to Heorot, the meeting-place of King Hrothgar, to rid the kingdom of the demon Grendel. Richard took several short, quick breaths, hoping he didn’t hyperventilate before he could read more. His feet pistoned up and down like a speed-metal drummer’s. Random muscles twitched. Hands trembled. He had been there, in the presence of English lit’s original monster-killer, dragon-slayer, ass-kicker, the bane of disinterested high school students everywhere.

This was more like it. To be flung into a thousand-year-old epic poem Buck Rogers–style, to live it, feel it, drink it in with all five senses. Here was the validation—books are real life. Ivan, are you proud of your son?

Richard’s elation soon dulled as he deliberated on why the Sphericals chose that scene out of all the others. The passage on the longship was a transition scene that truncated time and geography, moving the hero out of his homeland to where the central action would take place. That Richard’s moment in the Beowulfian sun was aboard the ship on the way to Heorot and not within Heorot itself was significant. He’d been present as an onlooker, a nonentity unable to penetrate the story’s velvet-roped areas, where he might “rewrite” events. The section of the story he’d experienced was essentially a safe haven. He had not needed to best the behemoth in combat or perform a series of arduous trials involving arcane lore and ritual. The weapons that were now in his basement had been there for him to take, in his old trunk. Did this imply the Chekhovian mandate that they be used? (What if he had stuck around for Grendel’s attacks? Would he have been in real danger?) Did he see and do all that he was meant to see and do? He reread the passage.

He had stopped reading Corgan’s translation at the moment when the sphere-portal appeared on the beach. Now, ravenous to hear what the watchman said, Richard read further.

‘Who are you men, hidden by armor,

Protected by mail-coats, who have arrived

From across the waves, steering a tall ship 

Over the sea-lane? I have stood guard here

For many years, and have kept the watch

So that no hostile foe arriving in warships

Could enter the Danish land and cause damage.

Never have men armed such as you

Advanced so openly and without consent,

War-makers who never bothered with courtesy.

I declare, in all my days I cannot recall

Ever seeing the equal of that one who leads you—

The well-armed man, there. He is no newly-exalted 

Hall-thane, unless his appearance

Is designed to deceive. Now tell me

Where you came from. I will know this

Rather than allow you to go further

Into Denmark to be captured as spies.

You far-dwellers, you wave-crossers,

Pay attention to my simple request.

It would do you good to make haste

And tell me the name of your homeland.’

Richard smiled in approval when the spear-wielding watchman attempted to mask his wonderment at the appearance of the far-off stranger, a champion judging by his regal bearing and the brace of warriors at his back. For Richard had had the same reaction. So young, so fearless, not a lackey by any means. A nonpareil, yet still a boy.

As he read on, Richard’s amusement eroded. After the watchman questioned the courtesy of the Geats, implied that Beowulf might be a nobody in disguise, demanded the visitors to reveal their identities and be quick about it, after the suspense was brought to a boil, what happened next? Not much, really. In the end, civility and mutual objectives prevailed. With Bogart-esque suavity, Beowulf responded to the Danish questioner by relating the plight of his father, Ecgtheow, a renowned Geatish warrior who was a thorn in Hrothgar’s side but eventually earned the king’s respect. He then laid out his mission—no deception, no obfuscation—explaining that though there was long-held animosity between their peoples, he was here now on friendly terms to aid Hrothgar and rid his hall of the “night-enshrouded shaker of men.” The watchman responded that he had heard great things about this Geatish warrior and knew him to be an honorable ally to the Danes in this time of trouble. He offered to lead Beowulf and his men to Hrothgar’s hall and set guards to protect their boat from any who might wish to do it damage, until it was ready to take them back to “the land of the Weather-Geats.” The hero and his troops follow the watchman into Denmark, where Grendel, and the meat of the story, awaited.

Richard leaned back and stared at the ceiling. A rusty nail was protruding from an exposed lath. The nail’s ruddy coating siphoned all color from the edges of Richard’s vision while the graying plaster and brown stains melted into the periphery.

He refused to read any further. He had taken in more than he could handle. Vortices of supposition (Inside the poem? How could I even consider…?) dwindled to breezes that rustled the treetops of his memories, sweeping across the day when he moved into this house on Tappan Street. That was over a decade ago now. Back then, the house was “moderately sized,” to quote the realtor, “a bachelor pad, but easily converted into a home for a young couple.” The house had since become dwarfed as palatial McMansions sprang up around it, as if they’d been belched from the ground fully formed.

Once Richard was settled, Ivan and Grace came for a visit. They arrived on a crisp October afternoon. Richard opened the front door as his parents negotiated the stone pathway that bisected the soon-to-be front yard of crusted mud. He noticed that his mother exited the rented Honda from the driver’s side. This was odd. Ivan loved to drive, even through sloppy Boston traffic.

“Hi there!” said Richard. “Didn’t feel like driving today, Dad?”

“Naw. Back acting up again." He was bent over a little and massaging a tender spot just above his left buttock, but he looked to be in high spirits. His con brio handshake torqued Richard’s elbow.

Richard’s mother leaned in to kiss his cheek. “How are you?”

“Good. Good.”

Ivan’s attire was Floridian Geezer chic. Pastel shorts that terminated above the knees. A gray-and-black Panama silk shirt with pink-embroidered lilies, the first two buttons left hanging, unleashing a flurry of silver hair. He looked like a wingless pigeon. On his feet were flip-flops manufactured during the Ford administration. The taupe rubber straps blended nicely with his fungus-infected toenails.

Richard’s mother, as always, incarnated her name. Sly, ironic, poised, ageless. A halo to Ivan’s corona. Her hair was pulled into a prim bonnet, and her glistening raincoat covered a navy pullover and smart-looking slacks. For most of the visit, she toted a furled umbrella, which doubled as a walking stick. Richard suspected that she had wanted to look ultra-presentable for the housewarming (to offset Ivan’s blasé appearance), but had then decided at the last minute that it was going to rain, even though the only clouds in the sky were of the frosted-marshmallow variety.

Richard led them into the living room. Their soft-soled footwear made loud hollow notes as they crossed the spiffy hardwood. The space was mostly empty, so it was not particularly inviting. Boxes were stacked against the walls, and only three pieces of furniture were arranged: a fully-stocked bookcase; a coffee table; and a pea-green, damask, thrift-store sleeper sofa with stuffing poking out of the armrests.

“Care to sit down?” said Richard to both Waterses. They looked at their son as if to say Sit down? You mean here? On this?

“Love to,” said Grace.

She didn’t so much sit on the sofa as perch on top of it, making an effort to position her birdlike frame so as to avoid being sucked into the cushions. Lucky for her, she had the umbrella to steady herself. Ivan remained standing. He orbited the room with his head tilted toward the ceiling, scratching his veiny neck, his pronouncement imminent. He was about to speak when something caught his eye. He had noticed that the living room was connected to a small study. He entered silently, Richard following behind. There was a large window that took up almost the entire back wall. It looked onto a backyard that was not much more than a shallow ditch that bordered the neighboring property. The room itself was bare. Ivan turned to his son and muttered something.

“What was that, Dad?”

“Too much light.” (Which was exactly what Richard thought he’d said.) Ivan twirled his hand around, drawing attention to the streaks of sunlight on the floor, walls, and ceiling. “Too much light. Are you really going to need this much light?”

“Well, I haven’t bought curtains yet,” said Richard.

Ivan didn’t seem to hear him. He just stood at the window, squinting. “You’ll need a dim quiet place, if you plan to continue your writing. Too much light is not good.”

“Right, Dad. I’ll be sure to follow your wishes and toil in darkness.”

Ivan huffed. “I’m serious, boy.”

Richard said nothing.

They returned to the living room. Grace had taken off her raincoat and now stood next to the bookcase, perusing the spines. The coat was folded neatly on the couch. “Oh, it really is lovely,” she said. “I absolutely love this room. Are you going to show us the rest of the place?”

“Sure,” said Richard. “Then we’ll have some lunch. I’m starving!”

“How long have you been married?” said Ivan to his son. Richard was baffled.

“What? Married? Dad, you know I’m not married.” He flushed with embarrassment, both for his father’s slip and for his own exasperation.

“When you do, she’ll take your name.”

What’s gotten into him? Looking back, Richard identified this moment as the one in which real worry had trickled in.

“If you want my opinion,” Ivan continued, his gaze affixed to a random spot on the wall, “I think the wife should keep her own. The name a person is given at birth is a link to one’s past, don’t you agree?”

“Sure, Dad. Sure.”

“Hmmph. Waters. I’ve never been fond of it. Never felt I belonged to it. Just carrying around my father’s American name he gave himself when he fled from Stalin’s goons. It’s as if I’ve been stripped of my armor. Waters is strong, but it’s ill-fitting, itchy. I wonder if I should change it back. Before I’m gone. But I can’t…I can’t remember…what it was.”

Grace took her husband’s hand and patted it, brought it to her lips. She looked at Richard. Richard never forgot that look. When she let go of Ivan’s hand, it slipped back to his side, and she herself slipped back into her usual shell of composure.

“Let’s see the upstairs!” she said. “I can’t wait to hear what you have planned for the master bedroom.”

“Mom, you know I’m not like that,” said Richard. “I don’t have an eye for that stuff.”

Ivan started up the stairs, while Richard and his mother lingered below. She leaned in and whispered, “He went to the doctor on Thursday. Just getting older, that’s all.” She made a valiant attempt to pitch her trembling intonation into a heartening register with the “that’s all”—and failed. An unintentional wilt at the corner of her lips further diluted the sentiment.

In his last days, Ivan was confined to a hospital bed. Wizened from an apoplexy, his erstwhile shiny dome gone ashen and flaky, three-day stubble on his sagging cheeks, he faded fast. Yet up until the end, he was acutely aware of his surroundings. Richard played nickel-poker with him the night he died. There was a side bet going. Ivan would recite a Shakespearean line from memory, and Richard would have to come up with the play and the character who spoke it, earning an extra penny if he knew the act and scene.

Ivan set Richard up. He recited from the most memorable speeches for the first few rounds, but by the end of the game, he was sweeping pot after pot, stymieing his son with the most negligible of lines, spoken by Messengers, Servants, and 1st Lords. He even mixed in some stanzas from "Venus and Adonis" to keep it interesting. Richard went from over six dollars in pocket change to fifty-five cents in the hole. “I’ll owe you,” he told Ivan. That night, Ivan passed away in his sleep. In the morning, with the curtains drawn, the room was awash in shadow, just the way he liked it. His winnings were pooled on the bedside desk, next to a small reading lamp that had blazed throughout the night. His head lay to one side on a therapeutic pillow, and his reading glasses had slipped onto the floor. A paperback of Villon’s poetry was still in his grip.

Richard set Beowulf aside and turned to “The Wanderer” for the final time that day. He yawned, reached around to scratch his back, winced at a cramp, and yawned again. It was already six-thirty. Dusk, dinnertime. Richard concluded the day’s proceedings with a rendition of The Wanderer’s opening line:

“Oft him ānhaga āre gebīdeð”

[Always the solitary one waits for favor]

Anhaga. Noun. Masculine nominative singular. Solitary one; recluse; one who dwells alone. A compound of an (“one” or “only”) and haga (“hedge,” “enclosure”).

Richard closed the Carver and ascended the stairs.

Scooter was not in the kitchen. Or the living room. Or the first floor bathroom. He checked the rest of the house, calling the cat’s name as he peeked in room after room. He was gone. You too? You left me, too? He returned to the kitchen, and was overcome with relief when he saw the Scoot perched on top of the refrigerator. The cat meowed and hissed.

Rays of sunlight, lengthened to a crisp golden orange as the circumvolving earth conducted the Eastern Seaboard toward its assignation with darkness, blazed through the kitchen window onto the stainless steel Frigidaire and recently scrubbed granite countertop, producing a confluence of glints, tints, and shadows that seemed to endow each appliance and decoration with life. Scooter leapt off of the appliance and crouched at Richard’s feet, gazing upward, as if he, too, were transfixed by the day’s death-throes. He mewed with that bemused-child intonation that housecats mimic with such eerie accuracy.

“You must be starving,” said Richard. The cat responded by rubbing his pencil-eraser nose on his pant cuff. Richard picked up Scooter’s dirty bowl to wash it. At the sink, his upper body eclipsed the light that had coated the metallic basin with a silvery yellow. He tried to position himself so that he would not obliterate the phenomenon, but his bulk was too wide. Unlit by the sun’s rays, sink, bowl, hands, and soapsuds blended into an abstracted monochrome undifferentiated by color or form. Finished at the sink, Richard retrieved a manual can-opener from the silverware drawer and unlidded a can of Fancy Feast as the Scoot paced and salivated. He slopped viscous tuna-turds into the bowl, which for all of thirty seconds had gleamed like a fairy princess’s chalice before being put to use as a feed trough for one of the most olfactory-offending substances ever concocted. Scooter, however, seemed pleased as punch. He retired to his area beside the fridge to enjoy his meal, one that had never deviated for his entire life and likely never would.

Next Chapter: Part Three: Diversions, Digressions, Discoveries, Chapter XV