Summer of the Brilliant

I had not changed much in the years since college. I still looked as if I needed a shave most of the time, weighed the same one hundred and eighty pounds, and was still a little over six feet tall. My face had not filled in much so I still had high cheek-bones and looked as if I wasn't getting enough to eat. Most of the time I was a pretty nice guy, but I looked a little nasty. My full name is Winfield Scott Devlin and I have no nickname unless you count "Devlin" or "Dev."

Because of what Dr. Laufenberg told me that rainy day in New Haven, I did find a psychiatrist. I was too busy when I returned to college but the year after I graduated I found a man in Boston. I told the Boston man everything I had told Laufenberg except the things we talked about in Guido’s bar. I did tell him about the suppressed anger but I pretended that Laufenberg told me this in his office. I remembered his exact words and repeated them to the Boston shrink.

"It is my feeling that there is a great deal of repressed anger inside you. When the other boy was beating you up every day and no one would help you, I believe you became very angry at your parents and the school. I don’t think you are aware of it but the anger and resentment are still there. It would take long term therapy to deal with it. I suggest you talk to your parents."

I told him that this was the reason I was seeking counseling and went to him for nearly a year. He listened a lot but he didn’t say much. He agreed that I had repressed anger. He said that I didn’t consciously resent my parents lack of help when Charley Crawford was kicking my ass every day because I loved and respected them too much. He said the resentment was there in my sub-conscious though and that I needed to talk about it. I told him about Charley several times but I got tired of the story and I think he did too. Eventually I stopped going to him because I got tired of listening to myself talk.

I worked hard at staying out of trouble, and I learned how to accept defeat occasionally, but I had grown no wiser. I did get into a few rough situations which no rational actions could solve. Laufenberg had provided me with a set of guidelines but I didn't always follow his instructions. Sometimes I would get to the critical point and know that it was time to stop, but I just wouldn't and it usually turned out badly for me.

There was one time, however, when I got into a real mess, a situation where anyone in his right mind would have done things differently. Nobody except me, and maybe some of those guys that Laufenberg knew at Attica Prison, would have done what I did. He was right about me, though, maybe I was a little weird.

There was a big IF about the trouble I got into. Like a lot of things in life, there was a point when if this didn't happen, then this wouldn't happen, and that wouldn't happen, and so on. People can get very philosophical about the big IF. Joseph Conrad wrote a great novel about it and called it Chance. Some things are inevitable and some things depend on the big IF. My own feelings are summed up in the old saying by Confucius, "If the dog hadn't stopped to shit he would have caught the rabbit."

The point where things started going in the wrong direction for me was the night I ran into a friend called Snake. If I hadn't run into Sean Moran in the bar at the Pilot House in Nassau that night, I wouldn't have gotten drunk and I would have left Yacht Haven Marina early the next morning. I never would have met the people on the big motor-sailer.

I was bringing my boat, Brilliant, a forty-foot yawl, back to Miami in stages, after having kept it in the Bahamas for several months. By flying over for some long weekends and three weeks of straight vacation I had managed to get in a lot of cruising, most of it in the Abacos. I took various friends with me on the other trips, but this time it was a female friend. Her name was Sylvia and she was a really good sailing buddy. We had gone out on dates a few times and for a while it looked like a real romance might come along, but it didn't work out. We did become close friends. I think she had liked the idea of being in love with me and wanted to be in love with me, but it never really happened. I felt the same about her.

Sylvia had grown up on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake and had learned to sail before she could barely walk. She could sail with me for hours without saying anything. I liked this because I don't do much talking when I’m sailing. Actually, I don’t do much talking anytime. With this girl you could have companionship and solitude at the same time. Nobody knew her as "Sylvia" because she had been called "Rocket" for years. She got the nickname when she was eight years old, during a cruise with her parents in a fifty-foot ketch, anchored in a place called Trappe Creek, over on the Eastern Shore. It was a hot August night without any breeze at all. Sylvia was asleep in the fore-peak with the forward hatch open and her father had moved out to the cockpit in search of relief from the heat. There was a sudden crack of lightning and a tremendous bolt of thunder. Her father, who was awake at the time, claimed that she ran from the forward bunk all the way into his arms in the time between the lightning and the thunder, which was about half a split second. He said that she was as fast as a rocket and from then on started calling her that.

Rocket could navigate, steer, trim sails and cook. She thought that an afternoon spent putting bottom paint on a boat was more fun than going to the movies. I was truly fond of Rocket and would have liked it if we had gotten serious. It just hadn't worked out that way.

I had a problem with women. I was too much attracted to very beautiful faces. I also liked cute ones and pretty ones and handsome ones, but not in the same way. For me to describe a woman as beautiful means she has a strikingly attractive and desirable face, with complete symmetry of her features. Also the proportions have to be totally perfect. Sometimes I use the word beautiful to describe a boat, but never anything else, only women and boats. Pretty is a good word, but it means more superficial, less elevated, and a more common appeal than beautiful. A truly beautiful woman is very rare, while merely pretty women are fairly common. To me pretty can mean sweetness and vivacity, but beautiful means elegance and nobility. Rocket was certainly vivacious, sometimes sweet, occasionally elegant but never quite noble. A character in a movie I saw right after I first met her had used the word bonny to describe his lady love. I liked the word and began to use it, particularly in my own imagination. It isn't popular now so I can elaborate and define the meaning my own way, in my own heart.

Rocket had big eyes that were a shade of light brown, kind of a golden butterscotch, smiling eyes. Her hair was also light brown and a little bit curly. The things I remembered most in the nice part of my brain where I keep my scrapbook, were her smiles, all the different ones. She could smile sweetly or impishly or sometimes just pleasantly with a grin that could light up a room or the cabin of a sailboat. She was truly a bonny young woman but she wasn't quite beautiful. If her nose was about one eighth of an inch longer she would have been beautiful. I know about things like that.