The Day The Son Of Man, Jesus, Saved A Wretch Like Me-I Once Was Lost But Now Am Found, Once Was Blind But Now I See- The “Fallen” Speaks-A Rebuttal

By Allan Jackson

     

I had a strange dream last night that my dear old friend whom I have spent many an hour planning some mischief although that mainly in the distant past, Bart Webber, a guy from the old neighborhood, the Acre down in North Adamsville south of Boston found himself in Neptune’s ditch, found himself sucking salty air searching for Davey Jones” locker, found himself like a million other tars, sailors you know gung ho sea guys, dreaming about voluminous rescuing mermaids coming to wipe away their sins as they lose all senses, about going home to our mother the sea. Yeah, I was dreaming the dream about old Bart going to sleep with the fishes. A strange dream granted under usual circumstances but even stranger since Bart had the ill-disposed idea that he would, what did he call it, oh yeah, snitch on me about the time that I almost drowned when I was eight, nine years old down at Nollie Point, the beach nearest the Acre. Decided to snitch, what the hell were the words we actually used, yes, drop a dime on me after I had sworn him to never tell of the incident, especially not to my mother who would have still had me grounded. And who knows what other hells.  

Bart forgetting for a minute the Code of Omerta (yes, in capitals) attached to all selected information deemed to be kept from the public, including coppers and “the authorities.” No, especially coppers and that ilk. Decided, perhaps unwisely given that dream and how vivid it was, to bleed all over the place about a very small incident. Decided to risk some feckless fate and all for, well, all for some momentarily inside track with some female classmate whom he (or I) hadn’t seen for some fifty years but who struck his fancy, especially at my expense. Under the norms of the ancient brotherhood feeding gossip, bullshit mostly if we gave it a real name, to interesting women would be a yawner, wouldn’t draw an hard breathe never mind strange portentous dreams but under the seal of the code something very different.                   

[Let’s use this bracketed space to get some “housekeeping” chores out of the way. First when I say “last night” it does not literally mean last night but merely serves as a frame of reference after I saw the scandalous and maybe libelous article by one Bartlett Webber, that Bartlett some kind of poor as church mice affectation from his people, people from the North, the North of Ireland for the geographically clueless so you know what awful things that brethren are capable of, concerning privileged information he had about a long ago incident at Nollie Point when we were mere kids.

Moreover since Bart decided in that same piece the world needed to know that I am no longer the editor at this publication, and have not been for years, he had to go on and on about how I am now a contributing editor meaning I can write whatever I want, whenever I want without worry about nervous Nellie editors redlining every other sentence and such. The gist of the sentiment being that in the old days I would take forever on my own for publication assignments and this dagger at wayward Bartlett’s heart I have done in super-speed time of a couple of days. But back to the transgression]    

The attentive reader here may already know the outline of the tale Bartlett Webber thought he had to tell but let me go through a quick summary and a couple of necessary corrections. Yes, Bart had been at the beach that day with me as I faced my first uncertain confrontation with Father Death (see singsong Allan Ginsberg). He is also correct, and admits as much, that he was sworn to secrecy around the facts of the event under the long-held Code of Omerta standard. What he has failed to tell the candid world, the unsuspecting reader, is that while he was physically present at the beach that day he was busy with another more pressing task, more pressing to his mind which he freely admitted to me later.

Bart is what we today would be called an early bloomer in the boy-girl universe. Meaning for one thing I think we were closer to ten, eleven than his silly eight-year old bullshit that I truly believe he used just to deflect his real motives that hot as hell in Hades day. Meaning for another that he had seen a classmate, had seen a girl named Ginny Garland from our class whom he had a serious crush on and whom even before I hit the tepid waters with my newfound “canoe” (read: tree log) he was chatting with intensely. More about that later but for now any good lawyer like Frankie Riley our mutual corner boy from high school who did pretty well for his larcenous self would have Bart hanging by his thumbs as any kind of witness to the day’s events, to my dire situation.         

Of course, sixty years later old Bart claims some razor- sharp memory somewhat akin to his presidential favorite Sleepy Joe Biden. To set the scenario up, to set me up he has declared on the basis of no evidence that since that time I have been deathly afraid of the seas, have gone well beyond the rational fear than anybody, maybe even more so today when Mother seas are furious for some reason to do with climate change, to avoid contact beyond the beach with our dear homeland. Like a lot of corner boys over the years before we started losing them to sickness and that dreaded Father Death (you really should check Allan Ginsberg on that) Bart and I lost some contact as he went to his family life and I to my families lives so he did not know of my California island surf times. Had not seen the ten thousand photographs my first and second wives had taken in sunnier days (and less expensive in several ways). Now seen all young, long-bearded, long brown haired with some swimsuit deep in surf, deep in towed boats filled with collective wives and broods of children. Photos on request for the curious and family-dwelling.      

Then Bart compounded his error but stating that he could not vouch for whether before this incident I was much of a swimmer. That part was actually right although he seemed to think that reducing me to some life raft suck ass, to some lifesaver float bullshit hanger-on or no was a real state. Again time and elsewhere would have shown him with a very vivid photograph of me in college, NYU, swimming competitively against Hobart for glory and love. No question I would not have been an individual candidate for an Olympic berth unless like with the rowing eights, say that fantastic Yale club that blew them all away in Melbourne in 1956, in those days if the whole team would be represented in some relay and I would get tagged in.  

I will merely quote what Bart thinks happened because what he actually knew was what I reported to him later and what he has blabbed all over the Internet-“ Somehow he (me) got in his eight-year old mind that he would “ride the waves” on an old washed-up log as the tide was coming in to see how fast he could come ashore. I had seen the log and frankly to this day thought nothing of it, although I should have.  Should have realized that I would not have attempted such a feat and I was a pretty fair swimmer.

“To the plot though. Allan rolled the log into the wash and hung on for a while until the log was heading across the point to a place where he would be over his head. That decision is the key because somehow during that period when he was over his head he decided that he would let go of the log, would try to swim to shore. Fatal, or almost fatal. Somehow the surf started coming up, the water got green and edgy meaning that it would be serious work to get to shore. Allan (as he told me later) went down once, then he yelled out to me, told me to get somebody because he was drowning, couldn’t make it to shore. Fortunately in the height of summer there was a lifeguard there. Not some muscle-bound college guy or slinky college girl with connections to get some summer dough but a young mother who had her daughter in tow. In any case after I screamed bloody murder she swam out to Allan (who said he went down twice and did not think he was coming up the third time.) He did since she saved him.”  

A sad little childhood in America story mostly bullshit and filler if I had been the editor even today. Finally, Bart gets to the real point, what he called irony- “Here is a bit of irony, a bit of why I am spilling the beans, snitching as old as I am and as dedicated to the code of silence as anybody.  A few weeks ago I was at a class reunion and started talking to one of the fellow classmates whom I had not known in high school except she was a Squaw Rock girl and hence out of reach for Acre boys. I mentioned Allan Jackson’s name whom she remembered not for whatever publishing skills he possessed but because she had been on the beach that day when Allan almost drowned. Apparently Allan had given his name to the worthy young mother lifeguard in her hearing. She confessed to me that she had known all about Allan’s situation for as long as I had. See she was the little girl in tow while her mother did lifeguard duty on Nollie’s Point that day.”

What whistle-blower, truth-teller Bartlett Webber has failed to tell the candid world is that the girl whose mother had dragged her to the beach was one Ginny Garland, the same young thing he had had a crush on in elementary school and somehow had amnesia about that high school stuff which was true enough about hands off Squaw Rock girls for lots of reasons but which did not preclude him a few times from making some play for her. Finally, fifty years later at my expense he connects with a more chastised Ginny Garland with me as the bait. And you wonder why I had strange dreams about one Bartlett Webber sleeping with the fishes.