The Green caldron - University Library

14
THERE
A Veritable Wonderland
Roberta Taylor
Rhetoric 100, Theme 8
The Green Caldron
IS AN ISLAND IN THE GULF OF MEXICO, NOT FAR
from the Southern tip of Florida, where seagulls rest on their fishing
trips and seashells are caught on the long beach to bleach in the sun,
but where human footfalls never trod the sand, and the shells rest until
another tide washes them back into the sea.
At Qiristmas time the island is warmed in the day by the blazing sun,
and at night the tropical winds blow over the warm sand. No snow falls
no blue spruce or winter pine raises its branches above the curving beach.
But the stars that shone two thousand years ago on Bethlehem shine with
equal radiance on that little island, and the reality of Christmas lives there.
We first came to the island on the day before Christmas, two years ago.
We motored out from the mainland—my parents and brother and I—and
the boat was packed with fishing gear, swim suits, boxes of food, and sleeping
bags, for we planned to camp there all night.
While the sun was still bright, we anchored oft shore on the lee side,
away from the gulf, and the curving banks made a half-atoll around a calm
bay. Here we dived in the crystal water and speared the fisli that swam
and hid among the shale ledges—fat red fish with black dots on their tails
and zebra-striped sheepheads, gauzy angel fish and black groupers. We
lifted them into the boat, the barbed tips of the spear buried in their flesh.
Mother gritted her teeth and ripped the spear free.
We enjoyed the sport of the thing but we stopped as soon as we had
enough fish for supper. Then, cold and damp, we climbed back into the boat
and stretclied across the bow deck, liaking in the sun while mother fileted
our catch.
Back on the island we gathered a huge pile of driftwood high on the
beach ; the gray sticks and planks glowed faintly silver in the deepening
light. Driftwood has a spiritual quality, for it has been washed in the ocean
and bleached and dried by the sun for months—months and years. The tar
and scum, which were life and therefore mortality, are dissolved away, and
the wood is as pure as the eternal sand and sea.
The driftwood pile was lighted, and we sat around the blaze and stared
into its depths, each of us remembering that it was Christmas Eve.
Maybe my father wondered if he had done right to take us away from
home and the things that had always meant Christmas—snow and lighted
trees and gay parties. And maybe my mother wondered if we minded that
there were no elaborately wrapped presents.
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