As the sun went down, Ryan learned to ID aquarium fish from their Halloween costumes; scaly colours, stripes, dots, eye patches, fins and the way they winked at him. Wearing old running shoes to keep his blood off the coral, they told him, he walked slowly in the shallows, tossing a throw net ahead to drop down on unsuspecting schools.
Next morning found them unloading fish traps, picking out the suggested number of each species for market and releasing others to a freer, more dangerous life in the wild surf. They raced other cars up the autopista, shirts drying stained in the highway breeze and mountain coolness, straight to the airport to beat the leaving plane.
The weekend took Ryan into the city of San Jose on his own, leaving Uncle Nick with some magazine writing. He’s editing an article about environmentally friendly uses of tropical beaches, on suggested limits of aquarium fish to keep. Nick gave Ryan some directions, but Ryan got lost in the city. He found a nightclub, El Tiburon, and met a guy speaking broken English. The conversation turned to the realities of the drug trade.
###
Sid can’t help breaking in again.
“So the guy was a dealer or something?”
“I dunno. He talked about cocaine. It won’t even grow in Costa Rica, it all comes from South America. But he has connections, and they ship it through. All the money’s up in the U.S.”
“So he was selling?”
“Who knows. I remember Franco and Little Buda at the reunion. I just drank my cerveza and listened to the stories.”
###
One surprising morning a couple days later, Ryan met Pepe. The old man was out in the street shaking all passing hands, and Ryan, happening by, felt his firm grasp. Armed with pescado in his vocabulary, Ryan turned the conversation immediately to the pole and line slung over Pepe’s shoulder. Pescado, grin, quizzical look, point point. And he found himself invited. Rushing to the house to grab his tackle, Ryan followed Pepe off down the winding road.
The paved street, rapidly degrading to a dirt trail, led them along fence lines between fields, to the end of a row of sugar cane. Over an edge, an almost vertical corner, they plunged down a series of switchbacks clinging to the steep side of a ravine through a wild tangle of jungle. Like diving under an earth-ocean wave of vegetation, sunlight fading, hidden deeper and deeper in greenish shadows, they descended into the secret valley. Like a brand new world, cooler, wetter, wind noise replaced by a new orchestra of sound. Tiny lizards rustled through the leaf litter, birds twittered from the branches, flashing reds and yellows against the leafy green. Every bug was out for its life’s performance, flying, buzzing and chirping. Silent ant strings tirelessly carried their burdens along their trails down at ground level, to and from projects on either side of the human highway.
On the way, Pepe stopped at one bush, to pick off insects with long reddish tails. For his bare hook, Ryan assumed. He showed him the lures from the north, and Pepe gave the most approval for a silver wet fly with a red curling streamer. Ryan studied the movements of these creatures of the tropical valley, calculating his fisherman’s need to make his plastic mimic them for the fish.
The sharp staccato of Spanish came floating up the trail as they approached the bottom of the murky depths. The river, gurgling and churning at human voice octaves muffled the talk. The high-pitched voices were mostly younger and at play. They greeted Pepe respectfully as he led Ryan off in the direction a serious fisherman would go. Ryan felt like a fairy tale as he took his rod from its case.
Pepe squatted, pointing out the fish rising for the flies touching water’s surface. Then he showed a larva clinging to the water grasses along the river’s edge. He rustled the grass, and some broke loose to tumble downstream. A hatching, another fish’s dinner. Minnows of all sizes made habitat of the almost clear water in the shallows, scooting in and out of their version of the depths. Ryan intuitively read the stream, and settled in. Any other version of heaven could wait as he began to cast.
###
“So you must have caught something,” Sid says.
Ryan’s grin spreads from ear to ear.
“Did we ever. Catch and release mostly. Pepe called them pistas, they were tough little buggers; they fought pretty hard. We caught padre-pistas that day too. And one tubera. We kept a couple nice padres and took them back to Pepe’s place.”
“So you saw Pepe’s place that day?” Sid says.
Ryan’s smile twists into a puckered lower lip as he nods his head slightly. His eyes take on an exploding twinkle.
###
They climbed back out of the ravine’s depths. The sunlight sent stabbing rays down, penetrating past the wind-swaying canopy, marking their targets from above. Ryan followed Pepe’s spry steps on the now steep upward trail. The back of his head was pure white hair but Ryan had trouble keeping up.
Ambling along through the sugar cane, fish dangling in a bag, they crossed paths with an unknown snake that slithered under the foliage. Pepe winked, waving a don’t worry signal. Ryan, in his state of wonder, hardly noticed. Back on home street, Pepe’s hand was again extended, greeting the neighbors, painting expression of his contagious joy onto any world wearied face.
They came to Pepe’s house, if you could at all call it that. Half the size of Ryan’s apartment, a basic shack of weathered boards nailed on a loose frame. To keep the rain out, most of it anyway. Pepe gave Ryan a wooden crate for a seat, while another crate served as their table. Ryan watched as Pepe cleaned a padre, mimicking the cuts on his. When he finished, he gave his steel blade to the older man, a gift in return. They baked the fish on a charcoal fire in a rusty metal box, heating up coffee in a metal can. Plantain and fresh limes with this river pescado served up as the most decadent end of the day meal ever for Ryan.
Later, Uncle Nick had to give him a super shot of guaro, the local sugar-cane whiskey, to calm him down. He couldn’t stop talking about the day and about Pepe. Such a simple, happy, life. Unbelievable unless you see it. Is Pepe a campesino, he asked Uncle Nick. If he is, he’s got to be one of the cleverest, was all Nick said.
###
For those who have eyes to see, thinks Sid.
“You remember what Uncle told us at the reunion.” Ryan cuts himself off this time, struggling to contain himself. “About credit cards and lottery tickets.”
“Remind me.”
“You know, they didn’t mean a thing to Pepe. He’s totally happy without them, like he won a lottery without ever buying a ticket.” Ryan does a hand-is-a-happy-camper.
###
A few days later, Ryan ventured back down below the green wave of jungle to the fisherman’s sanctuary, to ply his luck with the tropical river fish. He retraced his steps through the tropical landscape, whistling all the way.
Carefully tugging his lure through the eddies, focused, he noticed another hook and line bobbing along, looking just like Pepe’s. He twisted to trace his eyes along the line back to its source, to its owner, but he couldn’t turn far enough. Frowning, he stepped back, and turned to make a stand, to protect his secret spot as any fisherman should with lies. Then he melted into a puddle as his eyes took in a most stunning sight. Completely unexpected, a pretty young woman stood smiling shyly at him.
Ryan almost dropped his fishing rod when she spoke in English. It turned out she was a tour guide, speaking the language of the north as a basic necessity. And she came from the same town, she knew Uncle Nick to see him, but more amazingly, Pepe turned out to be her great uncle. He had taken her down to the river many times, just like he had taken Ryan.
Ryan found himself caught up in talk of hooks and fins, the sign language of her great uncle replaced, but another body language mixing with the fishing words now. She squatted beside him, close, showing him patiently a new hatching, then catching his eye. She looked away, smiling.
They walked together back to town, past her house, bigger than Pepe’s but still average. Yolanda offered to show Ryan around other parts of the Valley. Some turned out to be fishin
g spots, and some didn’t. He learned a short version of Yolanda, Yolita, which she preferred from Ryan after a while.
###
“So you have a long distance girlfriend now?” Sid says.
“Yah. I wanna go back down. We talk on the phone once in a while and I’m actually writing letters. Yolita’s really cool. I never met anyone like her.”
The sunshine pours through just a sliver of the little window now, marking a bright rectangle further along the wall.
“I gotta go, gotta make it back to the city today.”
The cousins shake hands – a long firm grip – and Sid climbs the half flight of stairs to wander out to his van. As he fights to keep a half-focused mind on finding the way to the Rosetown highway, he can’t help wondering about this almost new cousin.
He’s seen significant changes in people before, in AA meetings, people who find a whole new way of living. Serenity appears in their eyes as life takes on new meaning in the no-longer-drinking talk of these spiritually awakened, like miracles. Sid has come to believe changes like these could happen to anyone at any time, why not, the author of the Big Book speculates something similar. His cousin appears to stand as confirming evidence.
###
“So you stayed in Saskatoon for a day. Tell me about the cousins.” Jo says later on the phone.
Sid tells what he’s heard of Amy’s trip to San Francisco, and her imagined trip to live like Jessica. Jo listens more attentively than she usually would. She seems to be quite interested in their cousin’s excavation of the television truth. So Sid lets her know about Ryan’s adventures as well.
“So he’s got a girlfriend now. That’ll be good for him.” Women seem to believe strongly in the profitable goodness of romance. Sid has given it a try a few times, a hit and miss investment for him.
“Yah, he seems to be learning a lot from Uncle Nick. And if he hadn’t gone to visit Uncle, he never would have met Yolanda.”
“So what else did he learn from Uncle Nick, oh seeker of the true meaning of wealth? Maybe love is wealth, could it be so?”
Wondering what to say, Sid speaks carefully while his eyes glaze over. “Well, he says it’s the last time he’s going to use credit cards. He actually cut them all up. We’ll see if he gets new ones I suppose, but he really has moved to a smaller apartment, so he’s spending less frivolously on his place.” The haze clears a bit to the new idea. “Yah, love, romantic love, that could be a type of wealth. But it would have to be some kind of true love, wouldn’t it.”
“Oh yes, real love.” Jo’s voice becomes dreamy. “The kind that everyone knows matters the most.”
Chapter 12
The phone call comes out of nowhere, and astonishment rides high when he picks up that day. The long days of June have arrived, marking the third summer since the Sahiya reunion. Still kinda looking … is the way he describes his search for the meaning of wealth to his friends, if ever they ask. Many little drama distractions have set in. But this call sounds like a voice echoing out from the grave, where it should by all rights be, though it resonates with a vigour claiming life, tinted with even a hint of cheer. He listens, struggling to picture the face, and still he has to ask again.
“Uncle … Harry?”
“Yah, it’s me, Sid.”
“So you’re here in Calgary?” Bewilderment fades gradually into acceptance.
“I’m in Claresholm … at the AL treatment centre. I haven’t had a drink for … well, it’ll be three weeks Thursday.”
“No shit.” Sid whispers under his breath. “Hey, that’s great Uncle. In Claresholm, right on. How long are you there? I could come down for a meeting.” Sid remembers his own treatment centre days a few years back.
“OK, well there is a meeting this Sunday, if you’re not too busy. This is my first few days in this damn place. I had to quit for a couple weeks before they’d let me in …” Harry tells some of his story.
Sid looks out the kitchen window, while his uncle talks. The weather has been a rolling script that day. A hot morning to start, it switched an hour ago as a cold front swirled in and the temperature dropped sharply, and now, raindrops are turning to large drifting snowflakes. High country surprises punctuate the sunshine of this big sky country.
Not going just on Harry being his uncle, Sid has learned to be there for any AA request. Step 12 tells each member clearly their own option to stay sober directly depends on helping others. The 12 steps lead one to, in Sid’s terms invest in God’s will, and for him it’s been a growing proportion of his portfolio. Doing God’s will pays off first of all with sobriety and after that, a much better life; how much better being the operative here. Of course anything short of the minimum leaves one back looking up from the filthy gutter. You can’t keep it if you don’t give it away, the AA posters inform.
“What time’s the meeting? I could come down for lunch or something …”
“OK, well meeting’s at seven. So how about eating out before?”
“Sure Uncle Harry. I’ll be there at five thirty, how does that?”
“OK, Sidney. See you then.”
“One day at a time, Uncle.”
He puts the phone slowly down, watching snowflakes settle on blades of green grass. And what would this be about? Wealth, and its possibilities come flooding back in a rush. He senses this serendipitous contact with Uncle Harry is an offer of a new option on the spiritual trading floor. A new source of potential for an astute trader. A spiritual awakening or even a little miracle seems in the making, another AA story coming together. Sid has heard many, a trip to a living hell, a bounce into AA, and a transformation into productive members of society. Big payoffs … well for some. Some don’t bounce at all, they decide to die instead, quick or slow. But for the bouncers, how could one measure the increased value, the profit, the returns?
He rests his elbows on the kitchen counter, staring out the back window. Graphing the downs and then peaks would show the contrast. Human capital, the education and skills people acquire to apply to society through productive lives, he read it somewhere. How much value, how much human capital does a salvage operation capture by rescuing an entire life from the wreckage of self-destruction? Yah, the borderline touchy question of the value of human life.
The snow scatters light as a sunbeam breaks through the clouds. A sparkle pokes him lightly, and he picks up the phone again to dial.
“Hey Jack. How’s it goin’?”
“Sid. Sober today. You?”
“Same. Hey, I just got a call from my uncle. He’s in Claresholm believe it or not. You got time for a meeting Sunday?”
“Sunday, yah sure. What time?”
“Pick you up at four?”
“Sounds good. See you then, buddy.”
The sun battles the cold mountain winds. Maybe Higher Power has decided to pay the family a dividend, an unexpected market valuation. Has someone done something so good in God’s eyes that He’s passing out dividends? Does God have accountants, and a payback system? There’s oodles of AA evidence, where one who bounces out of hell, conditional on having those 12 steps in hand, is almost guaranteed the better. Before and after is like night and day, like a fund during and after a recession. Kind of a payback, a reward for conditional behaviour.
###
Sid picks Jack up that Sunday afternoon, and they banter back and forth on the highway.
“… some say the 12 steps come from the Bible,” says Sid.
“Well that could be. The 12 steps are based on the 6 steps of the Oxford Group … with the same basic principles. Do a moral inventory on yourself, make amends for past wrongs. Clean house and let God in. And the Oxford Group was a Christian movement. Same with the Washingtonians before them and they had a hundred thousand sober. They just didn’t have the 12 traditions we have, so they didn’t last.”
“I gotta tell you Uncle Harry grew up with religion. Catholic. His sisters are believers, always have been,” Sid glances over at his friend. “So we better not
talk about religion unless he brings it up.”
“Yah, I know, we just listen. And I can tell my own story; what it was like, what happened and what it’s like now.”
“You said you were reading the Bible though, right?”
“Ahh some, and mostly just the New Testament. I go to meetings and read the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, that’s where I find my truth.”
Sid has to reiterate what his aunts and cousin Jamie told him about wealth in the Bible. This isn’t the first time; of course, his friend has heard all this before.
“Man, Sid, you never gonna stop with that spiritual markets idea.”
“I feel like some new evidence is gonna show …”
“I mean, the idea does make some sense. Let me think, OK for me, I have some retirement funds and I guess you could say I have AA investments too. Like the two guys I sponsor, they’re my spiritual mutuals, I suppose. My one guy, let me tell you, is a pretty volatile investment.” Jack grins. “He’s right on the edge of drinking, so many times, then he just bounces back and his serenity hits the roof. A real equities fund. The other guy is a lot more like a values fund or even bonds. Slow steady growth.”
Yes, Sid smiles to himself, he can get this kind of talk going again, start a spiritual market chat-group, a web page, get others to join …
“So what do you think is more valuable in God’s eyes? The returns on your retirement funds or the two sponsees and their spiritual progress?”
“Yah, right, heavy question … I mean I have to retire some day, so I need to have a future income. I don’t wanna be a burden on the world. God as I understand Him wouldn’t like that. But I gotta help these guys help themselves too, for my own sake, and it is a better world if we replace active drunks with recovering ones.” He thinks for a moment. “These guys improve based on the spiritual and supposedly they start helping others, I dunno. God wants both investments, the way I see it.”
Sid can’t help talking about the story of true life, again, the truth in life coming from sharing time and resources, but Jack has heard it all before.
“Yah, yah, OK, buddy. We’ve got the seventh tradition in AA – self-supporting through our own contributions. When I was drinking, I wouldn’t give you the time of day. Things changed, last year I even made a donation to 1835 house. And your uncle’s getting our time today. I mean, helping him helps us too, we know that, but that’s not the only thing that drives us, at least not me. So alcoholics get spiritual, not drinking any more; then I get to know God’s will and that makes me a volunteer and maybe a bit of a giver. This sober life is true life in comparison to the way it was – no question in my mind.”