Come Alive Ch. 01

(While working on 88 I started thinking about things, and this story began taking shape in my mind. Rather than put it off I started work on what you see here. I'll work on both stories this week, and I may revise some of the things you read here. Anyway, I hope you enjoy...A)

Part 1

Henry Taggart wasn't exactly what you'd consider a sympathetic character, at least you might not think so until somewhere near the end of his story. Most people he worked with, and certainly almost everyone he knew, understood that he was a bright man, even a very talented man. At times he attracted a certain following, those hangers-on and serial pretenders who gravitate, like moths to a flame, to other people's money. And, years later, and quite predictably, when Taggart dropped out and disappeared from the cocktail circuit, very few noticed or commented on his departure. It might also be fair to say that he was soon forgotten, but perhaps that's the type of decision we should put off...for now...at least until we know him better.

Taggart grew up in Newport Beach, California, his father was a lawyer, his mother a physician. By the time he was in junior high school his parents had stepped up to a waterfront house on Lido Isle; the Balboa Bay Club was just across the water and Doris Day lived, literally, next door. His father had a Swan 41 tied up at the dock just outside their living room, and Taggart learned to sail on her when he was of an impressionable age. His father campaigned the boat a few times, usually in local yacht club races but twice in PORC series races, aka the Pacific Ocean Racing Conference, which included races to Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan. After he graduated from high school, in Newport Beach, he was the assigned navigator on his second Transpac Race, from LA to Honolulu, and his father's boat placed third in class.

It is, perhaps, relevant to mention these things if only because they have a certain bearing on the events in question, those which we'll come to in short order, but the one thing that you should keep in mind as we move along is that Henry Taggart grew up without a care in the world. His parents were good people, and the Taggart's lived within the blessings of what most would certainly call the very best of the American Dream. And, perhaps, then some.

If Henry's father had one flaw it was that he was a pure self-starter, an ambitious man who simply could not relate to anyone not similarly self-reliant. Which was a problem, as it turned out because Henry was not so inclined. Instead, Henry became the joker, the class clown.

He drifted through school, bored to tears, but was never far from a self-deprecating joke. He played football, and did well, too, ending up an all-conference middle linebacker in his senior year, yet his grades were, at best, mediocre. His father had gone to USC and had wanted his son to attend the same school, but that simply wasn't going to happen. Even UCLA said no, despite his football coach's intervention on his behalf.

So Henry ended up going to a small college up north, a little college in Menlo Park, California, that existed only to help bring up the grades of scholastic underachievers so that they could transfer to colleges like Stanford or USC. Henry was unimpressed, though at least the little college had a football team, and the small classes would provide a good venue for his practical jokes.

This little school, called Menlo College, also had a four-year business school that was held in high regard around the state, and oddly enough, by the Saudi royal family, who sent their princes to Menlo Park with nauseating regularity. These young men drove Ferraris and Maseratis, while the rest of the mere mortals in the student body was consigned to second-hand Buicks and Datsuns. The less than obvious end result of this dichotomy was that all the good looking girls at the college tended to drape themselves over the arms of Saudi princes. This became a source of dismay for some, but not Henry. He simply looked at these girls as transactional beings, trading their bodies for an otherwise unattainable lifestyle.

Because, for whatever reason, Henry just wasn't into dating. He liked girls, enjoyed looking at them, and even, occasionally, talking to them, yet he never put two and two together. In case you're disposed to think that Henry was 'in the closet,' no, that simply wasn't the case. He had a few friends on the football team and made a few in class during his two years there, but nothing ever came from his associations with the girls there.

He transferred to Claremont College, and by then he'd decided he wanted to go into computer science. Keep in mind that this was at a time when Microsoft and Apple Computer did not yet exist, and when computers stored information on huge reel-to-reel tapes. Coincidentally, he met a girl in his first year at Claremont, and he finally did the deed, lost his virginity. It's also fair to say that Henry was completely unimpressed by the whole thing, but perhaps that's because he found he'd picked up a raging case of the clap in the aftermath. He decided to focus on his studies after that and found that he enjoyed hard work.

He went to Palo Alto next, to Stanford, still studying computer science. He met two rag-tag developers working nearby and soon hooked up with them; a few years later he was in on the ground floor at Apple. Still, he was bored, if unfulfilled, and an unrealized need to move on grew incessantly.

He moved to Seattle, started working for a company that was creating a page layout program for newspapers and magazines, but he struck out on a new path, went to work on a new product line developing a so-called digital darkroom that could be used on personal computers, and there he met with his first real financial success. Even so, after a few years in Seattle, he found he was bored and felt compelled to move again.

So he joined a special effects company. Special effects for movies, that is, after someone from Stanford recommended him to people at MGM. He moved to Hollywood, which meant he could go home to Newport Beach, but he soon discovered that his father was not immortal, that his father had, in truth, grown old, and was now very frail. This dawning awareness stunned Henry Taggart because, indeed, the sight alone scared him to the point that, for the first time in his life, he became aware of death. How, he wondered, could you run away from that?

So he worked on code most days, compiling and troubleshooting, for the most part, coming up with new ways to create realistic effects, yet he wasn't in on the artistic side of the business because, really, he had no interest in art...or even the movies that his company brought to life.

His father called him one Friday and asked that he come down to Newport, and he did as soon as he finished up a minor project, which meant sometime Saturday morning.

His mother was sick, as it turned out. Very sick. Breast cancer. Actually, her second bout with the disease, which surprised Henry because he'd never heard she had it the first time around. The idea that death stalked everyone began to consume his waking thoughts, then his dreams - and, eventually, his nightmares.

His mother was an internist and so knew the score. When her cancer was staged at level four she simply discontinued treatment and retired from her practice, then went home to spend what was left of her time with the only people who mattered, her family. It was, unfortunately, simply too much to expect Henry to spend much time with her.

Which turned out to be the case, though he dutifully went home when his father called and asked him to come down for the weekend. If Henry had been in a position to talk about his feelings he might have said that he was most afraid of his father's manifest deterioration, and not long after his mother passed he learned that his father had inoperable prostate cancer, and that it had spread into the spine before it was detected.

So, within the space of a year, Henry Taggert lost his mother and his father. He had no other family. None. Anywhere. And for the first few months that one simple fact didn't concern him the least.

But, for the first time in his life, Henry Taggart came to understand that he was utterly alone, and in time he found the sensation annoying, though perhaps just mildly so, then, over time, somewhat more bothersome. First, he'd had to decide what to do with his parent's house, which after some hand-wringing he sold, and then what to do with the rest of the holdings, which were, as you might expect, substantial. Oddly enough, working through all these duties only increased his sense of isolation.

Another odd thing about Henry? He was frugal, always had been. He lived in modest apartments everywhere he ventured. He drove simple cars, like beige Chevy sedans with vinyl bench seats, front and rear. His clothes were off the rack, and usually from a cheap department store in a mall; same with his shoes. His one extravagance was running shoes because every evening he ran at least five miles. Until his knees began to fail, as these things surely do.

He noticed one morning that his hands were trembling. A week later other people noticed they were shaking, sometimes jerking violently. One of the co-founders of the company he worked for drove him to UCLA; within an hour a team of neurologists was testing him for Parkinson's. The results were positive. He was told his symptoms would, more than likely, remain mild, and therefore controllable, for several years. As long as he took his medications.

Suddenly he wanted to go home, to Newport Beach, to talk with his father. But his father was gone now, wasn't he? Instead, his friend drove him home; someone from the office drove his car to the apartment complex where he lived now, and he went into his apartment and for the first time in his life he really looked around, really took stock of his situation.

There were no paintings on the wall. There was a record player sitting on a shelf on a mail-order bookcase, and the thing had been state-of-the-art...twenty-five years ago...but that hardly mattered because he'd not bought a record in at least a decade, maybe two. He went to the refrigerator and pulled out some kind of soda and found stuff to make another kind of sandwich, then he went to his bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the TVs remote and turned it on. Some kind of game show. He turned to another channel and saw Captain James T Kirk dressed like an Indian, holding a dying squaw as she lay dying, and that was just too much to bear. He flipped to another channel, and another - then turned the TV off, frustrated.

He went to the living room and ate his sandwich, then went to the bookcase. He'd picked up a few books from his father's shelves before the estate movers cleaned out the old house, and he looked at a few of them now.

They were all about sailing. And not just sailing in general, but about cruising. Taking a long trip to nowhere. Maybe a years-long trip. And they all seemed to be about cruising in Scandinavia...Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland. He picked one and pulled it from the shelf, popped the top on his soda, and went to the sofa. He sat and started to read, and he found that if he put the book on a pillow instead of holding it in his hand the trembling wasn't nearly so annoying.

He read and read, and at one point he looked up and it was four in the morning. When the sun came up a few hours later he closed the book and thought about what he'd just read. He opened the next book and found a piece of neatly folded stationery from his father's office; on this paper, he found a proposed itinerary for sailing around the Baltic; when he looked at his father's precise handwriting he felt an overwhelming sadness, and more than just a little regret. He'd always worshipped his father but, he realized in that moment, he'd never really known the man. Let alone understood what made him tick.

He opened the next book in his little stack and found another piece of precisely folded paper, and here he found more notes. What items to take on the trip. What charts he'd need. Things he'd need to learn before he could go.

In the next book, he found an analysis of the ideal boat for a trip like this, premised on starting from New England so that a trans-Atlantic crossing could be included in the itinerary.

He sat back, lost inside a passing thought...'What would it have been like to actually do that with dad?' Then he found himself thinking about such a trip and, logically, he asked himself why his father hadn't tried.

And the answer he came up with was simple enough.

Because he'd disappeared from his father's life, and when the time came to make such a trip his father was all alone, and such a trip was beyond the scale of his failing health.

And Henry Taggart had a hard time digesting that shard of glass.

He went online and found that there was a boat show in Newport, Rhode Island going on for the next two weeks, so he booked a flight to Boston and packed a bag, then made a hotel reservation. He called an airport shuttle and made it out to LAX with a few hours to spare, so he had some coffee and a bowl of chili. Which sent his stomach into convulsions. He drank a bottle of pink stuff and walked onto the airplane trailing a noxious plume of methane-like gases, plopped-down in seat 2A and promptly fell asleep.

"Are you alright, sir?"

"What?" He opened his eyes, looked up, saw a flight attendant looking at him, and she appeared concerned. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"You're shaking a lot. Are you cold?"

"No, I just need to take some medicine. May I have some water, please?"

He turned, looked around the cabin and saw several people looking his way. Some were shaking their head, others looked at him with something akin to sympathy in their eyes.

'I guess I'd better get used to that...' he thought. 'Because I'm the proverbial stranger in a strange land now.'

He picked up his bags at the carousel and found a shuttle to Newport; by the time he arrived at his hotel it was dark - and he was exhausted. His hands were shaking and he read the directions on the bottle of pills again; time to dose-up, he saw. He went out on the terrace and looked at the waterfront below, saw hundreds of sailboats festooned with flags and posters filled with feature after feature.

How many years had it been? Since he'd been sailing? Twenty-five? Thirty?

"This is insane," he said to the night. "But why does this feel so right?"

+++++

After two days of solid looking, he settled on one boat, a thirty seven foot Nauticat. She was made in Finland, built like a tank and had both an exterior cockpit as well as an inside steering station. There were two heads, three sleeping cabins - though one was ridiculously small - and the workmanship on display, especially the interior woodwork, was beyond stunning.

The dealer had seen him crawling through the boat more than once, but he'd also seen the shaking hands - and so dismissed the man as a wannabe, and long past his prime.

"Is this your best price?" Henry asked.

"Yessir." the salesman replied.

"I've seen other reps here with boat show pricing. You have anything like that?"

"You know, if you were a serious buyer perhaps we could talk about that..."

"What makes you think I'm not?"

"Your hands. You have Parkinson's, right?"

"Right."

"So, you won't be sailing much."

"And why not?"

"Have you done much sailing, sir?"

"Two Transpacs and a bunch of ocean racing on a Swan 41. Does that count?"

"I see. What are your plans?"

"Cross to the Baltic, take the canals through Sweden, then hit the fjords in Norway, back to Denmark, then through canals to Amsterdam, then Paris, then the canals to the Med."

"Well, with the shallow keep option on this one, this is the boat you'd want for that trip."

"I came to that conclusion about an hour ago."

"When would you be leaving?"

"Probably late April, early May, next year. That would give me a few months to get to know her, get her fitted out."

"So, you're telling me you're actually going to do this?"

"I am."

The dealer shook his head. "Ya know, I think I'll have to check with my lawyer, see if I'd have any liability for selling a boat to someone like you."

"Fine. Do it. In the meantime, what's your best price for this thing?"

The dealer shook his head again. "If I knock fifty off, can you do four hundred?"

Henry pulled out his checkbook and wrote the check, handed it over to the dealer...

...who bunched his lips and nodded. He slipped the check into his wallet and looked at the lunatic standing there - shaking like a leaf. "We have some paperwork to do..."

"Ya know what? I've talked to a lawyer here, put him on retainer. Here's his card. You get your stuff together and get it to him. He's going to handle documentation and registration."

"The electronics on this boat are decent, but there are some upgrades you might want to consider."

Taggart opened a file folder and handed the man a list of items he wanted installed. "Think you can handle this stuff?"

The dealer looked over the list. "No problem. I can have everything installed in a week, maybe ten days. Everything but that Icom SSB. Not sure about inventory on those."

"I'll just go over to the Icom booth and buy one. Mind if I do it that way?"

"No sir."

"I'll pick up a life raft, too. Can you handle installing a hydrostatic release cradle?"

"For a Winslow?"

"Yup."

"Sure, not a problem."

"Okay. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Henry came back an hour later, and he noted the red "sold" sticker on the boat...his boat, now...and he smiled at that. He thought his dad would like his choice, too.

After the show began closing down for the night he stepped aboard and sat behind the wheel. He sighted up the mast, visually checked the tension of her stays and shrouds. The electronics would all have to go, better displays would need to be fitted, more capable radios too. He walked to the bow, looked down into the water and imagined his little ship cutting a fine wake through a boisterous sea, then he turned and looked up into the night sky, spotting the primary navigations stars with ease.

"Alright, Dad. You'd better get ready, because we're really going to do this."

"Oh," he heard the dealer say, "is your father coming with you?"

"Damn right he is," Henry Taggart said, grabbing the forestay with his shaking hand.

"What are you going to name her?"

He looked up at the stars and wanted to ask his dad, but then he thought of his father's Swan. Her name was Bandit, but that wasn't quite the right name for this new girl.

"Time Bandit," he said - finally. "I think that fits, don't you?"

+++++

He opened his logbook to the next page and grabbed a pencil as it rolled by, then he looked at the GPS...

"Let's see. Position North 59 degrees, 57', 15.9. West 16 degrees, 20' 08.18. Outside air temp 28 Fahrenheit, Barometer 29.6 and falling." He looked at his watch and duly noted the time, 0830 hrs GMT, then noted the sea temp at the top of the page. "Still 34 degrees Fahrenheit." He went to the wheel and looked off to the north, saw the line of icebergs still about four miles away and he nodded. He'd programmed the radar to make a scan every five minutes and sound an alarm if any bergs slipped inside a two mile guard zone, and so far everything had worked perfectly.

He went to the companionway hatch and slid it back, then he went up into the cockpit. "Sails drawing well," he said to the wind, then he clipped his harness onto the jack-lines and made a quick survey of the shrouds and stays before he made his way aft to the Hydrovane self-steering rig. He checked tension and confirmed their heading was still accurate relative to the apparent wind angle, then he went below again and poured another cup of hot water. He picked a breakfast tea and tossed the bag into the water, then stepped down into the galley, opened the oven door, checked his banana bread and figured it was done. He took it out and set it in the sink to let it cool - just as the radar alarm went off...!