Days of Uncle Ernest -

Chesapeake City and the World – Maggie, Chapter 1

A few evenings later, after Uncle Ernest told me about losing Lizzie, as I sat on our pump trough watching the hens scratch up and roll around in the dust in our lane, I wondered when Uncle Ernest would be able to continue his story.

And when I ran on over and, as usual, started riding our porch swing sideways like an airplane, Uncle Ernest strolled out the door, grabbed the chain, and said, “Move it over, Moose the Goose.” As he reclined with a grunt and took a long draw on his freshened glass, I swung the wooden swing gently by nudging the porch post with my bare toes. “What did you do next, Unk, in that flying balloon?”

“Now, Moose,” he smiled, reaching over with his free hand to rough up my hair, “you’re not going to believe what happened after that.” I could tell, Nina, that Uncle Ernest was eager to tell his story that summer evening because of the excitement in his voice.

“You know,” he said, setting his drink between his legs and leaning back with both arms spread and dangling from the back of the barely moving swing, “when Lizzie left me so suddenly like that I was feeling really lousy, so I found the grove of hazels where I had hidden my hot air balloon, rigged it up again, climbed into the basket, and cut the rope that held it. The magic did its work, because it soared high into the evening sky, sailed east with the force of a fighter plane. I was stressed out, so do you know what I did next?”

“Yep. You took a nap.”

“Yes indeed. I lay back in that cozy basket, took a good swig from one of my jugs of Ole Granddad, and slept like a baby. I must have slept for a couple of days, because when I woke up I felt as if I had been drugged. I could feel the basket descending and when it landed with a soft bump I climbed out and gazed at a strange, ancient land. It was mighty hot that morning, Moose, but the humidity was low so I was pretty comfortable.

“ Not far from where I had landed was a river, and as I walked along a narrow dirt road, after hiding the balloon in some bulrushes, I saw a group of men in a long, broad rowboat. They were shaking their heads after pulling in a large empty net. There was not even one fish in that net, and they sat there dejected with their heads lowered.

“ ‘Hey guys!’ I yelled out. ‘Can I come out and give you a hand?’

“ ‘All right,’ the leader said. ‘You can’t make things any worse.’ So I waded on out up to my chest or so, grabbed the gunwales, pulled myself up, and rolled into the boat like a jigged salmon. They were professional fishermen, and seemed to be pretty good guys, even though they didn’t know how to shake hands. When I extended mine and said, ‘Howdy, I’m Ernie, glad to meet you,’ instead of shaking hands each one of them came up to me and hugged me twice, once to the right and once to the left.

“ ‘Peace, brother; I’m Pete,’ the leader said. Then the other three—Andy, Jim, and Jack—came up to me and did the same, and I’ll tell you, when they were done my ribs were sore from all that hugging. After Andy sculled the boat out to about seventy-five feet into deeper water, all set to toss that net out again, we all saw the weirdest, screwiest sight imaginable. Walking across the water, from the east out of the sun, a guy stepped straight toward us. When the others saw him they thought he was a wizard and fell down moaning in the bottom of the boat.

“Now, Moose, I once saw Houdini perform some unbelievable tricks, so I just watched this guy closely as he walked to the side of the boat and stepped right in with us. I mean to tell you, he was a great illusionist and animal trainer, because I saw that he was walking in place on the back of a giant sea turtle, which was swimming swiftly just below the water’s surface.

“As the guy stepped into the boat the turtle dived deeper to avoid a collision and probably swam back underwater to wherever his training area was. But this guy was amazing. He was able to settle us all down with his calm, smooth, fatherly voice.

       “As he hugged each of us, he addressed us by names—every one—saying to me, ‘Peace be with you Brother Ernie.’ All of us fell under his spell, even me. He had shoulder-length hair, a beard and mustache, and was dressed in a long white robe that just barely covered his leather sandals. He said his name was José and that he was on an important mission—a mission for the gods.

“He then asked Pete what they had been up to, so Pete told him that they were fisherman and that they had not been able to catch any fish all day. José then asked Pete which side of the boat they had thrown the net from, and when Pete said, ‘The starboard, of course,’ José told him to try the net again but this time toss it over the port side.

“When they did as José suggested, in about five minutes the net started to jerk and twitch violently, and when they hauled it in it was filled with about a hundred large halibut. Moose, the weight was so great that we almost swamped the boat before we got it to shore. Then we all thanked José and patted him on the back for what he had done. I, too, was completely devoted to José, even though I had figured out—after some thought—how he got those fish in the net. You see, that giant turtle had rounded up the fish and drove them to the port side into the net.

“As we stood on the shore, staring at José with awe, he looked at us with a powerful, mesmerizing gaze and spoke in that wonderful voice that I’ll never forget: ‘Follow me, brothers, and I will make you netters of men,” whatever the heck that meant. But, believe it or not, we threw everything down and walked with him towards town, even though we had no idea in the world what he was talking about. Then José did a strange thing, Moose. He stopped, put his hands on Pete’s shoulders as he looked into his eyes, and called him a stone, and said that the stone would multiply so that a big church could be built in a famous, future city called Reeme.”  [To be continued Tuesday, 9/18/2012]