January 6: Good Luck, Furnace Stopped Working, Complete Failure

Santiago heads out to fish . . . 

The door of the house where the boy lived was unlocked and he opened it and walked in quietly with his bare feet. The boy was asleep on a cot in the first room and the old man could see him clearly with the light that came in from the dying moon. He took hold of one foot gently and held it until the boy woke and turned and looked at him. The old man nodded and the boy took his trousers from the chair by the bed and, sitting on the bed, pulled them on.

The old man went out the door and the boy came after him. He was sleepy and the old man put his arm across his shoulders and said, "I am sorry."

"Qué va," the boy said. "It is what a man must do."

They walked down the road to the old man's shack and all along the road, in the dark, barefoot men were moving, carrying the masts of their boats.

When they reached the old man's shack the boy took the rolls of line in the basket and the harpoon and gaff and the old man carried the mast with the furled sail on his shoulder.

"Do you want coffee?" the boy asked.

"We'll put the gear in the boat and then get some."

They had coffee from condensed milk cans at an early morning place that served fishermen.

"How did you sleep old man?" the boy asked. He was waking up now although it was still hard for him to leave his sleep.

"Very well, Manolin," the old man said. "I feel confident today."

"So do I," the boy said. "Now I must get your sardines and mine and your fresh baits. He brings our gear himself. He never wants anyone to carry anything."

"We're different," the old man said. "I let you carry things when you were five years old."

"I know it," the boy said. "I'll be right back. Have another coffee. We have credit here."

He walked off, bare-footed on the coral rocks, to the ice house where the baits were stored.

The old man drank his coffee slowly. It was all he would have all day and he knew that he should take it. For a long time now eating had bored him and he never carried a lunch. He had a bottle of water in the bow of the skiff and that was all he needed for the day.

The boy was back now with the sardines and the two baits wrapped in a newspaper and they went down the trail to the skiff, feeling the pebbled sand under their feet, and lifted the skiff and slid her into the water.

"Good luck old man."

"Good luck," the old man said. He fitted the rope lashings of the oars onto the thole pins and, leaning forward against the thrust of the blades in the water, he began to row out of the harbour in the dark. There were other boats from the other beaches going out to sea and the old man heard the dip and push of their oars even though he could not see them now the moon was below the hills.

I don't think the old man believes in luck.  He believes in the sea, fish, his boat, and his skill.  A person who believes in luck buys lottery tickets.  Bets on horses.  Plays poker.  Santiago has experience on his side.  He knows that, eventually, something will take his bait and his run of "bad luck" will end.

I'm not sure I believe in luck.  As a Christian, I should simply put my trust in God and know that I will be taken care of.  As I've said before in this blog, the opposite of faith isn't doubt.  It's fear.

Let me recap my 2022 so far:

1. I started the year on the couch with COVID.
2. These last couple days, Mother Nature decided to bless us with close to two feet of snow.  It just stopped a few hours ago, and we just finished shoveling ourselves out.
3. My furnace stopped working, and it is 12 degrees and falling outside.  It is 55 degrees inside our house.  The peppermint tea is steeping, and the electric blanket is plugged in and set to "High."
4. The furnace person just performed the postmortem.  Time of death between 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.

There are now currently eight space heaters working overtime as I type this post.

If I were an alcoholic, I'd be blasted out of my mind right now.  If I were suicidal, I'd be dead.  Instead, I'm a writer.  Therefore, I am pounding out a blog post.  Maybe I'll write a poem later.  Probably more Sylvia Plath than Billy Collins.

So, do I believe this series of unfortunate events will eventually come to an end?  Sure.  Unfortunately, at that conclusion, I will probably be five to seven thousand dollars in debt.  I won't ask what else could go wrong, because there's always locust plagues and a nuclear apocalypse.  

I am watching the movie Godmothered on Disney+ right now.  I just had a mug of hot cocoa spiked with RumChata.  Tomorrow morning, I will start to deal with my dead furnace situation.  However, tonight, it's quilts, Hershey's chocolate Santas, some Joan Didion reading, and trying not to feel like a complete failure.  

Saint Marty needs to find a little light tonight.