Ned

“This came in the mail today,” Doug sets the box on the extra couch we have by the garage door. He reaches in and pulls out a large, red raincoat.

“That’s…”

“Ned’s,” he finishes for me.

“Ned’s,” I finish for myself.

He holds the jacket up so that it straightens out, takes on the two-dimensional shape of a tall man’s upper torso.

I swallow. It is Ned’s jacket. It is Ned’s shape that should be beneath it. My face must look confused because Doug answers my question before I get to ask it.

“David sent it.”

“Oh.”

My fingers touch the bright red of it. It’s such an alive color, a vibrant color.

“That was really nice of him,” I manage to say.

David is Ned’s son. He does some kind of medical stuff at Duke. He looks just like Ned, same kind of squirrel gray eyes, same voice that’s even and soft and crackly like a fire that’s just started in a wood stove, like a fire you know is going to warm you up.

Then I say it, “You’ll have to wear it.”

Doug nods. “I’ll wear it all the time. Whenever it rains.”

My arms reach out to hug him. Ned’s jacket presses between us. “I know.”

I know a beautiful man. His name is Ned.

One weekend not too long ago, Doug, Ned and I were trying to get Doug’s sailboat from the boatyard to the mooring.

This sounds all pretentious. It’s not. Doug’s boat is a 20-something foot Catalina. It is older than I am. Seriously, and since I don’t have any mold or black rotting places and my own engine still purrs, I am aging much, much better. That’s really not saying much.

Despite its age and flaws, the Catalina is a lovely, graceful boat. It is the kind of boat that Doug has fallen in love with. It is the kind of boat he could never and should never give up.

I am still talking about the boat here and not me. Really. I swear.

The other weekend, Doug really wanted to give up that boat.

The day started off well with warm weather and a beautiful Maine blue sky.

We met Ned at his boat. He motioned towards the heavens and the lack of clouds. He put his arm around Doug’s shoulders.

“It can’t get any better than this,” he said. “Two of my favorite people. A gorgeous day.”

Then we rowed out to his boat, a beautiful wooden boat that looks like a photo of the Wooden Boat calendar Ned gives to Doug every year for Christmas. We climbed on board. Ned’s knees creaked. He walked fast and well even though he was in his eighties, but getting on and off a boat was a harder thing to manage, but he managed.

He smiled when we were all on board. He looked skyward. He turned the key. The engine doesn’t start.

Doug rips up the battery, hauls it out of the boat, rows back to shore. He finds some jumper cable contraption, rigs it up. While Ned and I watched, Doug made Ned’s boat engine come back to life.

Ned shook his head, smiling. “He knows how to do everything, doesn’t he? He’s such a hero, this guy.”

Doug is also a beautiful man. He is a paperwork/hospital CEO kind of man, but he can build a tree house worthy of a princess. He can jump an engine (car or boat), build a pantry, bike 100 miles.

Ned thanked him again and again and apologized for slowing down our day.

“It’s nothing, Ned. There’s nothing we’d rather be doing than be with you,” Doug said as Ned’s boat sped through Blue Hill Harbor toward Doug’s embattled sailboat, Affinity.

The whole way Ned marveled about Doug’s mechanical ability. Then we boarded Affinity where the engine temperature was running at 1,987 degrees Fahrenheit or so. Doug diagnosed the problem as a hose block. After climbing into the nether reaches of the boat, with only his feet sticking out, he brought out the hose, snaked something metal through it. Pieces of mussed shell and black goo crawled out.

“Yuck,” I said, backing up. You don’t want to be too close to black goo, especially crawling black goo.

Ned just smiled again. He ran his hand through his silver hair. “This man is amazing. First my boat, now his. Do you know what you have in this guy?”

“Yep.”

Ned shook his head. “I’ve never seen such a man.”

Doug ducked back into the engine so he wouldn’t hear the praise.

His feet wiggled.

“How does he crawl in there?” Ned asked.

After a few minutes, Doug came back out. Ned returned to his boat. Affinity’s motor started. We were off, but Ned refused to go too far ahead of us on the return trip.

“Just in case,” he said.

In sailor lingo JUST IN CASE means WAIT A FEW MINUTES AND EVERYTHING WILL SOON BE HORRIBLE AGAIN. BEST HOPE THERE AREN’T ANY SHARKS AND DO YOUR PERSONAL FLOATATION DEVICES WORK?

Just in case became reality.

Affinity wasn’t liking us much that day. The engine started to smell like my car, which is not a good thing. Doug turned the engine off. Some cap had exploded off the top of the engine and had disappeared.

“Like the socks in the dryer!” I said. “Like the forks that magically vanish in the dishwasher. Like twenties in my wallet.”

“Exactly,” Doug wiped black goo from his forehead.

Water covered the engine things that water is not supposed to be on, electrical wires, fuel lines, the engine block, whatever that is. Doug decided to make a plug out of a glass baby jar and a funky-shaped piece or wood that he randomly found in the boat somewhere. This was not good. He was making things up.

Oh my God.

“Ned!” I screamed across the water, waving my arms. “Ned! Come back!”

In sailor lingo that’s termed CALLING FOR HELP.

Ned did come, roaring back in his beautiful wooden boat, the speed rippling his old, navy blue sweater. He kept close as we started the engine up again. Thunder clouds started to roll in. The seals, knowing they’d seen happier sailors, decided to duck their heads back under the water.

We followed him in. Limping with our fingers crossed we made it half-way to the marina when the engine failed again. In technical sailor terms, it JUST POOPED OUT.

“Ned!” I screamed. “Ned!”

He appeared in a moment.

Doug the Defeated adjusted his baseball hat a little lower on his head. “Could you tow us, Ned?”

“Anytime.”

They attached the lines. Ned brought us home.

The moment we got moored and back to shore, Ned the Savior thanked Doug for helping him start his battery. Ned ran his hand through his hair again, trying to make it less Einstein crazy windblown. He patted Doug on the back.

“You’re my hero, man,” Ned said.

Doug shook his head.

It started to rain, just a sprinkle, nothing huge.

“No, Ned,” he said. “You’re mine.”

I know two beautiful men. They both say things like, “It can’t get any better than this.”

They both have kind eyes. They both know how to make people smile. They both will do anything for a friend. They both can handle black goo. They both know how to be heroes and how to tow boats.

It can’t get any better than that, can it?

Two weeks before Ned died of cancer, he called me up from his room in the hospital type portion of Dirigo Pines, a retirement home where he spent his winters. His voice was so weak that when he said, “Carrie this is Ned” I almost didn’t believe him.

“I haven’t been up and about a lot,” he said, “and I was hoping you might do me a favor.”

“Anything.”

“Could you go out and get Doug one of those Wooden Boat calendars for Christmas and maybe get that sweet girl of yours a giant, stuffed tiger.”

“Sure,” I said. I turned off the water for tea. I didn’t want it any more.

“I saw a big tiger at Mr. Paperback. I think she’d like that one.”

The tiger represents Princeton. Ned has always wanted Em to go to Princeton. He went to Princeton.

“Would you mind doing that?” he asked.

“Of course not,” I said. “I’d love to do it.”

“I’ll pay you back.”

“You don’t need to, that’s silly.”

“I know,” he said. “I really love you guys, all of you.”

“We love you too, Ned.”

I put the mug away in the cabinet above the counter. I leaned against the stove. I tried really hard not to cry.

Ned died before Christmas. When I gave Doug the Wooden Boat calendar he cried. He just sat on the couch and tears fell down his cheeks. He couldn’t believe that Ned thought of him. He thought I did it, got the calendar myself, thought of it myself, a sort of spiritual gift from Ned.

He didn’t tell me that until March. I didn’t know that he didn’t believe in how selfless, how thoughtful Ned was, even when Ned was about to die.

We were sitting at Doug’s parents’ table at their condo in Florida. Everything was white, clean. There was no black goo anywhere.

“But how could he?” Doug finally said. “How could he think of me then?”

“Because he loves you,” I told him. “He just loves you.”

A person really can’t get any better than that.