Chapter Twenty One
I Burnt It
Keturah was starting to stir where she lay on the floating board and trepidation filled me at what lay ahead of me to convince her to come off of it. What I was about to attempt could go so badly and I almost backed down again from attempting it, but Keturah needed to be free and I wanted to help her become so. I just wished my methods weren’t so brutal.
Her eyes opened and she abruptly sat up and looked around in fright.
“Where am I? Where’s my boat?” She exclaimed in question her eyes frantically imploring me for answers.
“You’re on a little island off by itself with its own little lagoon.”
“My boat?” She broke in accusingly.
She was clearly panicking and I regretted my decision to enact this strategy all over again, but there was no going back now. I had to commit to the task, because if successful the prize would be worth it.
“I burnt it.”
“You what!!!” She screamed coming up to her knees on the tiny raft I had made for her.
I’d tied three small logs together. The raft was barely big enough for her to lay down.
“Why?” She screamed out hysterically, as she visibly unraveled before my eyes emotionally.
She didn’t wait for my response but continued with, “You marooned us on this island? You’re a fool!” She screamed out as tears started to fall.
“No Keturah, I am not a fool.”
I pointed to a pile of tools further up the beach near the tree line, “Look Keturah. See those are tools. In specific there the tools we need to build a bigger and better boat than your old one and we have all the timber we need to do it right here on this island.”
Her eyes went from the tools to the trees and the level of fright in her eyes went down a little.
“I need you to help me Keturah. I need your help to build a boat that both of us can share and be proud of, but to do that I need you to get off the raft and come ashore.”
She immediately glanced down to the shallow two feet of water that the raft floated on and said, “No!”
“Keturah honey I need your help. Please come ashore.”
She looked up with misery showing clearly in her eyes, “You don’t understand!” She screamed out with raw emotion.
I kept my voice calm and loving, “What don’t I understand honey? Talk to me darling.”
She gazed down at the raft and said, “You know that I was offered by my own people as a sacrifice to the water gods when I was a child?”
“Yes. Elizabeth said they tied you to a board and sent you out to sea.”
Keturah nodded and said, “I floated for a long time and then there was a storm. A terrible storm!”
I could well imagine the kind of storm she was talking about as I’d lived through one.
“When I woke up the board was gone and I was laying on the beach of an island even smaller than this one.”
She paused for a moment and then with her voice raw she said, “I was marooned on that island for two years. I was six years old! I didn’t know how to do anything like build a raft or successfully fish. The island had one fruit tree on it and that was how I survived along with whatever I was lucky enough to catch in the water. I couldn’t take it! I went crazy or at least I lived in fear of going crazy. Finally one day I decided to end it, because I couldn’t take living on that miserable little island even one more day! I swam out of the lagoon and into the sea. I swam till I exhausted myself too much to be able to return to shore.”
She stopped talking and gently I interjected, “That’s when Dimbo found you isn’t it?”
She nodded, “I thought he was trying to eat me instead of save me. I don’t know why it mattered as I was trying to kill myself anyway.”
She looked up at me miserably, “Do you think I’m crazy?”
“No honey I don’t think you’re crazy.”
She looked back down as she said, “So now you know why I can’t come ashore with you. Every time I’ve tried to go ashore it overwhelms me and all I can see is the island I was so miserable on as a child. I’ll stay on this raft while you build the boat.” She finished in a small voice.
I wasn’t letting her get off that easy. “Do you know how my wife and two girls died Keturah?”
She glanced up looking surprised that I would bring that up at a time like this.
“Matt said they died in a bad accident and that there wasn’t anything you could do.”
“That’s a very mild way of putting it Keturah. We were at Matt’s house for Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is a holiday up on the surface. When the day was over we left in our car to go home. A car is like a box on wheels that goes very fast. Its how a lot of people get around on the surface. We were driving along and another car came along and hit us. Its driver was drunk. My car flipped over a bank and tumbled down a ravine and landed on its side. The engine came back into the car and had my legs pinned against the seat. My back was thrown out as well and I couldn’t move my arms. I was helpless. My wife’s head had been hit in the crash and she was unconscious. She was hung up above me by her seatbelt. For hours I felt her blood drip down onto me, but there was nothing I could do. She regained consciousness briefly and we talked for a little while before she died. My oldest girl’s neck was snapped at the moment of impact, but my youngest girl was alive and crying. I listened to her cry all night long as I told her everything was going to be all right. It was very cold that night and she died of shock and exposure an hour before the rescue crew got there. I went crazy Keturah. I was in a psych ward for six months under constant surveillance to keep me from taking my own life. For the next seven years up until recently I’ve been in a prison in my mind every bit as bad as the two years you spent alone on your island Keturah. I know what it’s like and I don’t want you to stay there any longer! For years I’ve fought to keep the memories of my family both good and bad fresh in my mind because I thought that if I lost the connection that I’d lose everything and really go crazy. I lost my faith the night of the accident and it’s taken me over seven years to get it back. Seven years of my life that I’ve wasted and can’t get back. It wasn’t until I came to this inner world that things began to change and I actually started to notice that I was breathing. You have been a large part of that change in me Keturah. More so than you know. You have helped me so much and I am so grateful to you! I want to help you Keturah. I want to help you like you’ve helped me. I want you to be free to experience life like I am right now. Keturah, honey, get off the boat and come to me.”
I held my hand out to her. She was crying and her head was jerking in a negative rhythm to my spoken request.
“If you won’t do it for me then do it for yourself. The sand is warm. I know you’ll like it.”
For the first time I saw her waver a little and I pressed with more encouragement, “I know how hard it is to face your greatest fear Keturah, but let me tell you there’s fresh air on the other side. It’s worth it. For me a future spent with you is worth letting go of what’s long since been gone from my life.”
She then looked up at me and before she could let herself think otherwise she slid off the raft to stand in the shallows of the lagoon. I could see it then, her immediate knee-jerk reaction of panic with contact of the sand beneath her was to get back on the raft.
“Keturah stop! Look at me! Look over here!” I said, as I clapped my hands loudly and the sharp sound seemed to jar her enough out of the panic of the moment to glance at me.
I stepped to the side and pointed up towards the tree line to something I had been blocking from her view.
“Do you see that Keturah?”
She glanced to what I pointed to and then back to me puzzled looking, “A bed?” She asked.
“That’s right a bed. I’m going to make love to you on that bed, but first you have to come to me right where I’m standing and then I’ll carry you the rest of the way, I promise darling!”
She looked from me to the bed with such a look of longing that it was heartbreaking to behold.
“Don’t you want to make love with me Keturah?”
“Yes!” She screamed out striking the water with a fist.
“Then take a step forward honey.”
She moved. I’m not sure you could call it a step, but it was movement. Any movement as long as it wasn’t backward was a good thing.
I kept my voice warm and even, while inside I was panicking with the lack of what to say next to keep compelling her forward. I never broke eye contact with her though, “You know you were right about something Keturah. I’m a man experienced by the love of a great woman and thus you have the assurance of just how lovingly I’m going to treat you all the days of your life, because I understand just how rare truly great women are in this life.”
She took a step forward and I rejoiced inside, but kept talking as my brain scrambled for what to say next.
“Some may call you wanton for the way you’ve offered yourself to me ever since we met each other, but I don’t. Sure you want to experience my touch and possession of you, but it goes deeper doesn’t it?” I asked rhetorically.
“You’re desperate! Desperate to not be alone. You’ve never had anyone that truly stuck around before have you? Well now you have me and I’m never going to leave you Keturah!”
She took another step, as I fished around for what to say next.
“Companionship and the loving touches of a mate are beyond wonderful on a daily basis, but all those positive feelings and loving touches have a way of paying dividends. Tell me Keturah do you want to feel what it’s like to have a new life of a special baby boy or girl take form and grow within your womb?”
“Yes!” She screamed out unknowingly clutching at her lower abdomen in time with her declaration. She’d taken two steps forward and now a third one.
“I bet you do! I bet you ache to share your loving and nurturing spirit with children of your own so that you can give them the love, attention, and security that you never had as a child.”
She kept walking now.
“A committed relationship for life, between a man and a woman is a special thing, but it really steps up a notch when children become a part of the bond you already have with your mate. Two of the proudest moments of my life were the births of my daughters, Keturah. I want to experience moments like that again. I want to experience those moments with you, just-very-special-you, Keturah.”
She started to run to me then, but stopped with a gasp, as she looked down to see her bare feet in the kicked up dry sand of the beach. She looked up at me in shocked surprise and I held out my arms to her, “Don’t stop now honey! Not when my love is waiting to share the rest of my life with you!”
She launched forward into my arms and almost knocked me over backwards into the sand. I held her as her arms clamped around me like a vise even as she shook me from the force of her emotional sobs.
I kissed her ear, as she stood with her head buried against my chest sobbing and said, “You’ll never be alone again and neither will I!”
Her face tilted back to reveal her teary eyes full of more joy than I’d ever seen in any person’s eyes before, “I love you Eli!” She said with a passionate depth of meaning.
“I love you more!” I said, meaning it.
Her full lips split into a smile, as her eyes danced with the excitement of being free and in my arms. “Prove it!” She said tauntingly.
I smiled in response and said, “It would be my pleasure.”
We kissed each other at the same time then. Her hands held my face to hers with passion, even as I slipped her body meant for loving up into my arms and turned to head blindly for the bed that I had made further up the beach.
I’d been figuring it would take me about a month or two to build our new boat, but I was going to have to revise that estimate upwards dramatically given the living distraction that I held in my arms. I didn’t mind. I didn’t have anywhere to be or bills that needed to be paid. I was wonderfully past all that life draining bother now.
My first life had been worth the living and now at the rebirth of a second life I could say the same about it too. God is good and life is worth the living just because He lives.