"I have the opportunity for hope. I have time to pray to God and thank him for the wonders of my life." - Eric Kline
On a Summer day in my fourteenth year, beneath a gray sky peppered with the figures and sounds of seagulls, I stood with four of my best friends looking out upon the unusually placid Atlantic Ocean. The waves, which roared only moments earlier during a storm, diminished beneath a light rain. It was as if the great ocean was resting while vacationing families waited inside their condominiums for the poor weather to pass. No one else was on the beach.
"What do you want to do?" Andy Watts, age 11, asked. "Let's build a sandcastle," Eric said. Before anyone consented to Eric's idea, a small fish jumped out of a cresting wave, its shinny skin reflecting in the dulled light of a hidden sun. John (JW), Andy's 15- year-old brother and oldest among us, turned and said, "I'm going to get my net."
He returned with a rather large casting net. It had a draw string at the top and small weights lining the opening. Not one of us knew how to use it properly. JW put it between his teeth while grasping the edge, poised to cast it into the next wave. My little brother, also named John, known as "Big Man," helped JW pick up the net and position it for casting.We were a group not all that interested or necessarily experienced in the ways of fish. We were kids from the suburbs, experienced in bicycles, big wheels, imaginary gun fights and kick the can. Football games in the yard followed by meatloaf in air-conditioned homes were the hallmarks of our life. If left alone on an island like Tom Hanks, not only would we have been unlikely to catch a fish, we would have perished from sunburn in the first 48 hours. The Watts brothers were the most experienced of the five in outdoor life, but that wasn't saying much. Eric Kline, who was 12, had little experience with reeling in the fruitti' de mare, and the Pryor boys could only claim several visits to the Cross-Eyed Cricket as the highlights to our fishing resume. On those handful of occasions when we ventured to the "Cricket" with our father we cast our cane-pole lines into the heavily stocked pond and pulled the trout out at an alarming rate. I thought that was how you fished.We'd been downright unstoppable in the trout catching business, but these were the open waters of the Atlantic. I didn't think that casting a small net into its shoreline had much potential, especially since the sight of a fish near the shore was such a rarity. However, we were bored and JW, the eternal optimist among us, saw one fish and was ready to go get it.
The net was thrown.
Two hours of pure adrenaline followed. When JW pulled the net taught it was filled with surprised and uncooperative fish. They were not minnows or bait fish. They were Whiting, each measuring a good 6 to 10 inches in length and weighing as much as 2 pounds. The sound of ecstatic boys filled the air. "What are we gonna do?!" I yelled. "We need a bucket," said JW our leader. The tide was out, leaving over 200 yards of beach between the water and the boardwalk. The Big Man volunteered for the assignment of acquiring a trash can for our collection and ran to the vacation complex as fast as he could. We didn't know if another cast would result in such a bounty. Therefore, we couldn't bring ourselves to throw any of them back. The Big Man returned with a garbage can from our condo kitchen. After we placed the catch in the make-shift live well, the net was gathered up and released once more into a wave. JW jerked the string, and it nearly pulled him over. It came back so heavy with fish that it took three of us to drag it back to the shore. All of our parents and other friends were either shopping or in their condos. The beach remained empty except for the audible excitement of five friends, the waves falling into the sand, and the flopping of the conquered Whiting inside their plastic prison.
Eric, or "Kline" as we called him, lived two doors down from the Watts boys back in Knoxville. I don't remember ever being in the Watts home when Kline wasn't there. He was like another brother for Andy and John Watts and, subsequently, he became our brother. Kline had only an older sister and welcomed being the playmate of two sets of brothers. We'd grown up together and all of us were aware of his diagnosis of Hemophilia, an inherited disease that sentenced him to a lifetime without contact sports. Whenever a football game or wrestling match broke out, Kline would refrain from participation, fighting the natural boy inside. His condition made him cautious and quiet. It allowed him to find the artist in him. Kline may not have been allowed to play linebacker, but with a pencil or brush in his hands, he was an All-American. On that glorious day in the Summer of 1983, he ran with his four brothers in reckless abandon as we darted into the surf and carted the net and the fish to our garbage can. The shy kid with the sharp and dry sense of humor was as loud as any of us as we dragged the net in with a large share of the New Smyrna Beach Whiting population.
We smelled of surf and wind and fish. We tackled and high-fived each other in the water as our bounty thrashed and pushed against the sides of our garbage can and each cast came back with more to join them. We were overcome by a sense of accomplishment, amazed at our dominion over the great ocean and all of its creatures. Once the can could hold no more, we pondered the next step. "Let's cook em and eat em!" Andy said. I'd never cleaned or cooked a fish in my life. JW thought he knew how to clean a fish, but after an informal poll, it became apparent the rest of us were virgins in the fish killing and cleaning game. The Watts boys suggested we go to their condo, which was on the first floor, to carry out the next step of our master plan. The Big Man and Andy carried the fish-filled can to the porch, water sloshing over the sides, the occasional fish leaping out and onto the grass in a failed escape attempt. This is where JW sort of showed us all how to clean a fish. He slid the knife in and up, removing the guts and head. Each of us took our turn, knowing that our labors would soon satisfy our growing hunger. As we cleaned the fish, the sizzle of the pan could be heard as our Captain fired up the stove. We didn't know what we were doing, but we each one knew that we were in it together. No adults would be consulted, no questions asked.With a bit of corn meal and butter, fish which had just been swimming in the ocean and cleaned with our own hands fried in the skillet in a rented condominium on the coast of Florida. We had enough for trial and error. The five of us stood in the kitchen and waited with an irrepressible excitement to taste the fruits of our labor. We ate fifteen fish between us, each better than the last. We froze another 20 and let our friends and parents, who returned from shopping, take what was left on the stove. Nothing I've ever eaten tasted as good. We ate with great pride and satisfaction.
We left the kitchen in a mess. The sun fell and we'd planned to build a sandcastle that night. It was Kline's favorite time. We didn't build ordinary sandcastles. With Eric Kline, sandcastles became artfully designed and built cities rising from the coast. With the rain and cooler weather that evening, the sand was perfect - soft and just wet enough to be malleable. As was custom, the brothers did the heavy lifting. Kline didn't lift or haul sand. He didn't bring shovels and buckets. He brought toothpicks, popsicle sticks and butter knives from the condo kitchen. He always had something you'd never see on a beach. To each bucket load of sand we hauled and poured, Kline set his hands to work, carving stairs, windows and street corners with detail so fine you'd swear it wasn't sand. He wasn't a natural born leader, but when it came to this one glorious task, we all deferred to his direction, listened to his planning, and marveled at his mastery. He told us where to put the sand and how much should be deposited. He taught me how to craft the details, and I was an eager student. We worked long into the night and ended our long day standing on the pool deck looking back over our creation knowing that the surf and weather would lay ruin to our masterpiece by dawn. It had been a day where the beach and the ocean belonged to us. In a time without cell phones or digital cameras, we didn't come away with any photographs, but I can still see it, our creation, there beneath the weathered planks of the Castle Reef boardwalk. All the days of youth, beautiful and otherwise, are wiped clean by star-filled skies and left only to the memories of little boys. That day in the Summer of 1983 was perfect.
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| Eric Kline |
Eric Kline died 18 years ago, today. His hemophilia was severe enough to require clotting factor whenever he had reason to bleed. Factor was made of donated blood and used to control bleeding in hemophiliacs. It isn't fair that Eric needed factor before blood products were screened for the unknown and mysterious virus that began killing so many. It makes me angry, even now. He acquired HIV and AIDS simply because he had a mole removed when he was in high school. He was the kindest and gentlest soul I've ever known. He was talented and funny and loyal. He was my brother. I think of him this week for sure, but I think of him anytime I pass our fraternity house or hear the roar of a Neyland Stadium crowd. I think of him every time I'm with his beautiful sister, Ashley, who is a dear friend, or see a new post on Facebook from his widow, Emilie, who has gone on to a wonderful life full of love and children. I think of him with a smile on my face, especially when in the company of our mutual friends that he loved so much. One of the last times I was with him we talked about the day and others on New Smyrna Beach, the fish, the sand castles. He was a private person near the end, never wanting us, his friends, to see him dying. He was always thinking of others. He never complained. He always asked about me, about my family, even when he was so sick he couldn't walk. He was always full of hope. On this anniversary, I'll leave you with something he wrote in the time of his illness, something that tells you who he was and, perhaps, who all of us should strive to be.
"Why me?" That is the question that rolls through my head so very often. I could probably count the times that I have needed factor on both hands. And yet, against most odds, I have managed to become another victim to the world's most popular disease. So here I stand on the third planet from the sun and scream at the universe, "Why me?" Why me, when I have so much to do, so much to experience, so much to give. My goals, my dreams, my future - lost somewhere along with my CD4's and my white blood cells. Who invited this deadly disease to come and disrupt my precious life? "Why me?"
Then it occurs to me, occasionally, as I escape the everyday sufferings and aggravations and enter that realm beyond reality that we only see glimpses of here on Earth. This is no insurmountable virus designed to eat away at me until I beg for death. Instead, this is an opportunity for a miracle. This is a chance to embrace life, to elevate my awareness, to learn, to share, to love. A chance to live a more full life, experiencing everyday moment by moment. There are those who believe that we choose our lives, along with all of the challenges, sometime in Heaven, long before we enter our mother's womb. That perhaps we have predetermined our pain, and that through this pain growth is found. I find comfort in the belief that something positive is coming from my circumstance.
There have been times when I have seen stories of children dying of cancer, societies ripped apart by violence, families destroyed by the action of a drunken driver. It is in these times when I think how lucky I am. I have the opportunity for hope. I have time to pray to God and thank him for the wonders of my life. And I can pray for the chance to see even a few more. I have not lost my dreams. They have simply been accelerated. It is in these times that the question rolls through my head once more, "Why me?" Then, like a whisper from a loved one that alleviates all fear, the answer comes to me:.."because I can handle it."
I think about that day often. I escape the everyday sufferings and aggravations and enter that realm beyond reality that we only see glimpses of here on Earth - and return to the day five brothers ruled the sand and sea, where the last vestiges of innocence and childhood had one more good run beneath God's approving eye, and where my dear friend was healthy, happy and whole, and it makes me smile.
