You know, I’ve tried about three different ways to think what to say, or if anything even should be said. It’s not like it was, anymore.

All I can do is start at the beginning.

The book arrived, its cover beautiful and bizarre, with a retro feel that hinted at the anachronistic. I didn’t understand the image at the time. I now know it’s perfect. I opened it up. Being as weird as I am, I did what I always do, the thing that tells me about the writer. I read the dedication.

For the Schooner, who loved the gospel,
in part because he knew the dark man

Well, that was mysterious. Slightly ominous, even. Where some dedications provide a moment of mundane insight, these words locked me out. They told a story inaccessible to anyone who didn’t already know it. I turned the page, turned it back, and read them again.

Who was the Schooner? What was his significance to this writer, when so many dedicate their work to Mom, apple pie and Jesus? No clue was given except that obscure second line. It is the sort of metaphor writers use in order to be poetic about their concepts.

I sensed that the Schooner was central to the learning of the concept, that what he’d imparted was in some way a heartwrenching, inexorable shaping, for better and worse. A partaking. And yet, it was something so essential and true that it could not be gone back from. Once there, a person couldn’t think of returning to the shallows.

It was no mere concept.

By the time I set down that book, my own world was turned over in a silent, contemplative way. I read the last page sitting in my room, the large south window full of spring light. I looked out at the quiet countryside, at the wide blue sky where airplanes travel. I didn’t have to see them to feel their existence. And I longed to speak just once with that writer who could do what only dead or distant men have done. I wondered what he’d say, or what I’d ask him. Nothing came to mind that wouldn’t trivialize the threads those pages wove into my sense of truth.

The thing is, such rare meetings never happen in real life. And if they do, they are hazed over by impersonality, all true chance of meaning stilted by the need to mask our inward distortedness. And by then, I couldn’t think of returning to the shallows.

But sometimes what’s true takes over real life as we’ve constructed it.

Now, that writer has a saying: “Well, if people really want to know, they’ll ask.” And that’s perfect, in my world. I have so many questions that I’m not supposed to ask, because it’s impolite to the masks. But I’m not asking to cause pain or bring down a ruling. I’m asking to belong.

When you’ve asked, then you find out. And when you’ve found out, then you already know the story.

“I called him the dark man, but I don’t know his name or if he even has one. Whatever. He haunted me. But here’s the really strange part: he haunts me now. Still. I see him everywhere. In the mirror when I’m shaving, In the rearview mirror when I’m driving, and sometimes in dreams.

“But even when I don’t see him, I feel him. He is always there. He calls to me. He taunts me…If I could have my choice of anything, I would like to find out who he is and get rid of him.”

I know what I’d say to that, but funny thing, just now I could hear a warm drawl attached to the words: “I know exactly what you mean.” It wasn’t real (at least this time), but it’s true.

Because he usually does already know, and it goes both ways. We know each other by the things in the pages. And somehow, through that, the stories behind the pages are intertwined by their Author and Perfecter.

So you see, I already know what I need to know about the Schooner.

I live under the northern sky, in a peaceful place. I fall asleep with the curtains open, crickets singing quiet in the fields, and the stars scattered bright and clear across the luminous darkness filling that south-facing window. I wake up to the wild free blue in a complete half-sphere overhead, unobstructed. Clouds roam there, and every day, there are jet trails. They pass over, and are gone.

But not really. They’re always somewhere, even when eye hasn’t seen and ear hasn’t heard. Maybe as far away as Houston; maybe as far away as heaven.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

~1 Cor. 13:12-13

Three years ago today, death missed its shot. Somewhere, there is a man who’s probably calling some poor seraphim “Ray.” He was the only person on earth who really understood Marc Schooley, because he was Marc Schooley too.

Lord, tell the Schooner, Cat says thanks.