Of Sea and Cloud (10 page)

You should be.

Her eyes dulled and the lids closed slightly. You were the one that kept telling me to apply to colleges. I wanted to stay here.

I know it. He flattened his hand on the table then lifted it a few inches and swatted down as if to kill a fly. When he spoke his voice was quiet the way it was late at night. I know it, Charlotte. That's good. I'm proud of you.

She stepped toward him. Are you okay, Jonah?

Fine. I'm fine.

She rounded the table and set her purse down then took his head in both of her hands and turned it so he faced her. His face was pale. She bent down and kissed his lips and said, I'm worried about you, Jonah. You seem so—I don't know. Cold or angry or something.

Imagine, he said.

She held his cheeks in her hands. She blinked. Look at your brother and Erma Lee, Jonah. I don't want to be like that.

They're happy.

She's not happy. Me and Mom went and saw her the other day and she was sitting in that house all alone bawling her eyes out. That's not happy, and I wouldn't be either. And neither would you. I love you, Jonah, but I'm going away and that's that.

That's that, Jonah repeated and as he heard his own words cross the room like a pair of flies he felt something inside him tamp the sadness down like dirt. Charlotte still stood in front of him with her hands on his shoulders. He gripped her thin wrists. He felt bones. He slid his hands along her arms and shoulders and down her rib cage to her hips. Then he pulled her forward lightly but she braced herself and stared down at him. He forced a grin. He unzipped her jacket and spread it open and lifted the side of her shirt to expose the top of her hip. He leaned his head in and kissed the skin.

Jonah, she said.

He reached up and worked her jacket from her shoulders. It dropped quickly to the floor. Her hair hung past her cheeks and shrouded her face. Her eyes were narrow and dark.

Jonah, she said again.

Jonah leaned back in his chair. He crossed his legs at the ankles and lit a fresh cigarette. What? he said.

She straightened her shirt and straightened her hair and lifted her jacket from the floor. She faced him and said, Please, Jonah. Don't.

He reached out and rolled the ashes from the tip of his cigarette onto the edge of the scallop shell ashtray then abandoned the cigarette and stood. A twist of smoke cut the air. He cupped his left hand around the back of her neck and after a pause with their eyes locked together she took a step to him. She closed her eyes and so did he. He pressed his lips softly against her forehead.

• • •

He stood in the window and watched her walk away. He felt a fist in his chest clench and he took his breaths one by one as if reminding himself to do so. He watched until she was gone and he watched until it was full dark hoping she'd reappear but he knew her too well for that. In his cupboard he found a half bottle and he took one quick swig then went out the door. He walked slowly to the wharf. Two trucks passed him and the fishermen waved at him but he didn't wave back. He kept one hand in his pocket while the other held the bottle tight to his hip and there seemed to be yet a third hand still clenched fast in his chest.

Aboard his boat he fired the engine and idled his way out of the harbor with his running lights aglow. He held a course due south. He sipped the whiskey. He passed Ram's Head and Two Penny without a glance and continued on through the up and down of the sea and into the smooth black darkness. Slowly as the few scattered lights of the coastline dimmed behind him he tapped the throttle lever down and the boat lifted to a plane and disappeared into the night.

He drummed the bottle against the bulkhead. He did not look back for a long time and when he finally did he could see no lights at all. He continued on and swallowed more and finally when his knees began to feel the warmth he reached down and turned the key off so the boat rose atop its own running wake and came to a lurching halt. Everything fell silent save for the last tumble of the wake which dissipated fast. He stood there at the wheel and looked at black sea and sky all around him. After a moment he swung his legs over the side and sat on the washrail and faced the sea as if facing the long void of his own future.

He took a final haul off the bottle and threw it and watched it glint through the starshine then heard it splash. He lit a cigarette. His entire body quivered with fear but what exactly he was scared of he wasn't sure. He leaned forward and squinted at the water and whispered as if the wrong person might hear, Fuck you, Dad.

Then leaned forward a bit more and felt a line which all he had to do was teeter over and he'd plunge headfirst into the water. He leaned back to safety. Then forward and he hit the line and felt a rush of solidity. His father was gone and Charlotte was gone and he'd started a trap war with Osmond Randolph and Virgil and Bill may as well be gone and what else was there? Only the line and the water beneath the line.

He leaned forward again and the sky swung and the water felt close and concave in the darkness. The davit for his pot hauler hung beside his head for him to hold on to but he did not. He only leaned into that line across which lay the same cold waters that held his father. He stayed there for full seconds willing and uncaring with his boat beneath him riding up and down on each piece of swell.

Then shut his eyes and fell.

The noise of the water around his ears shocked him awake and the cold came next. His clothes and rubber boots were heavy and his boat loomed above him silent and still with its old chips and grooves from thousands of traps banging against the hull on their way up from the seafloor. But he himself was on his way down. The story of an old-timer falling overboard flashed through his mind. The man's wedding ring had caught a screw head on the splash rail and there the man had dangled until someone heard his shouts. But that was in the harbor. Jonah was out here alone with no wedding ring to save him and the side of his boat came up and down and he grabbed but could not reach the gunwale and there was nothing else. He was not frantic but the cold was biting deeper and his teeth felt brittle beneath his jaw's tight lock.

The gunwale rose on a wave then dipped and he reached and missed and the next time he nearly got it but his hands were too cold to hold. Again and nothing and one more time because that was all he would have. This time he locked a single row of fingertips onto the brass coaming. He gripped and his hand tried to betray him but he held and the boat rocked and lifted him out of the water to his thighs then dunked him again. On the next rise he got his other hand up and he dunked then pulled and got his chest over the washrail and there he locked his elbows and hung his head into the boat and breathed.

Once in the wheelhouse his fingers would not turn the key. His entire body shook as if somebody's angry hands were upon him. He slammed open the door and dropped below and pressed his hands onto the engine block. He could not tell if it was too hot or not but he heard no skin sizzle so held his hands there despite. Finally his hands began to ache then burn and as the pain ran up his forearms he was able to pull his wet clothing off. He started the engine and went back below and stood naked in the small space and the bright light with oil and tools. The engine chugged and banged all around him. He found a dirty sweatshirt and a pair of oil pants but that was all. He put them on and stayed below with the noise of the engine loud but all of his thoughts and fears stunningly silent.

• • •

He went that night to his father's camp. He was too cold to start a fire but buried himself in the old bed with piles of wool blankets. He lay on his side with his hands between his thighs. His entire body shuddered. From time to time the trembling slowed enough for him to wonder if he would survive and to wonder at what he'd just done out there on the ocean. He knew he had not meant to go overboard but the fact that he hadn't cared one way or the other shocked him. He gripped his hands together. He trembled and cried.

• • •

The camp was a single-story cedar shake cottage with a wood cookstove and a small bedroom. Propane lanterns lined the ceiling and a propane refrigerator rusted in the corner. A water line ran from a boiling spring into a soapstone sink and when the ocean was calm the smooth overflow of spring water filled the air.

The camp sat perched atop a slab of pink granite ledge at the end of the peninsula. A mile-long skid road led east along the southern edge of the peninsula from the pound to the camp but the path was overgrown and rarely used. A small cove shimmered below and spruces towered above. Stone Island protected the cove from wind and surf but the height of the ledge enabled Jonah to see overtop the island and far out to sea. In the morning he searched through some of his father's things and was surprised to recall that his father had bought the pound and built the camp after Vietnam.

The previous night echoed in him like a distant memory but no matter the distance it still shook him how close he'd been to the end. He told himself that he'd been drunk and that tale worked only in increments because like a blade came the truth to his chest that for a moment he'd not cared what happened out there.

• • •

Later that day he moved some of his things by boat into the camp. He started a fire in the wood stove and waited as the flames caught and grew. His father's old Winchester 30.06 hung from a nail on the wall and he took the rifle down and turned it in his hands. It smelled of oil. The stock was scratched and gouged but worn smooth. He opened the bolt and it was empty so he closed it and sighted out the window at a rock on Stone Island. He dry fired once then hung the rifle back from the nail.

He fed the fire and unpacked his things then took two bottles of beer with him to the wharf and sat on the end with his legs dangling. He watched the cool flight of gulls above Stone Island. The
Jennifer
was moored in the small cove before him. The water was clear green and he could see the shadow shapes of boulders and the tall sway of old growth kelp. In the warm months those kelp beds held fleets of lobsters living lives built on an ancient and simple pattern. In the fall the lobsters fled the icy inshore waters for the relative comfort of the offshore depths. Then returned in the summer as the shoal waters warmed and in those warm shallows they dug their mud caves and shed their old shells only to emerge new and soft and vulnerable. These migrations were huge and the seafloor would seethe as the lobsters fanned like cavalries across open flats then piled atop each other to enter underwater corridors or skirt mountainsides and anything that was in their way was either food or not food and all they did was fight to eat and fight to breed. Fight to live and fight to die.

That night Jonah lay in his father's bed listening to the waves touching the rocks and the distant grinding of the sea. The bed smelled like his father even though he'd changed the sheets. The smell was Nicolas despite the fact that Jonah couldn't remember his father ever smelling like anything but lobster bait and diesel fuel and cigarette tobacco. And occasionally bourbon. Now this familiar and strange scent made him feel suddenly close to a man he'd thought in many ways to be a stranger. In that smell he was six years old again and it was a good feeling but not one he was ready to surrender himself to.

He ran his hands over his face and blinked in the darkness. He thought of armor and claws. He thought of underwater caves and of shedding a shell. He reached to the bed stand and searched for his cigarettes. He knocked one out onto his bare chest and dropped the pack onto his stomach and reached for the lighter.

One week later. Julius Wesley stood at the boat landing with the wind blowing the water into breaking curls that piled against the steel pylons. The sky was blue and trains of clouds rode the offshore winds. Julius's sisters stood one on each side of him. He held their hands. They both wore dirty pink jackets with the hoods down and their braids hanging. Dolly wore a small backpack and from time to time she looked up at her big brother. Osmond stood next to them with his oiled hair tucked behind his ears. He was a head taller than Julius.

The truck and trailer carrying the new 42-foot boat
Dolly Rhonda
turned in the parking lot and backed down the slick pavement. Julius and Osmond and the girls walked up the galvanized float ramp and Julius ran his hand over the mirror black gel coat on the boat's hull. Osmond eased a stepladder from the bed of his truck.

This sure is big, said Dolly. It's beautiful, Julius.

They stopped at the stern. I know it is. And so are you two. Here are your names, right here, he said as he traced his finger over the white letters.

That's us, Dolly said. Do you see, Rhonda? It says,
Dolly Rhonda
. You and me.

Rhonda stared openmouthed at the stern.

Can we fish with you? Dolly said.

No, he said. No you two better keep fishing with Grandfather. He needs your help. You're his new sternman, aren't you?

Dolly nodded uncertainly.

We'll see, Osmond said as he propped the ladder against the boat. You better get aboard.

You coming? Julius asked him.

We're coming, Osmond said. But you go first.

Julius adjusted the ladder and climbed aboard the boat and ran his hand over the bulkhead. He smelled fresh fiberglass resin. He leaned over the washrail and Osmond handed the girls up one at a time then climbed the ladder himself. He began to pull the ladder up.

Don't bring that aboard here, Julius said.

Osmond stopped.

I don't want that up here.

Why not?

I don't want shit like that aboard is why.

It will be fine, Julius.

Just throw it, Julius said.

Osmond shook his head and swung a leg over the rail and climbed down the ladder and carried the ladder to his truck. Julius watched him for a moment then went to the wheel. The truck lurched and the boat backed down into the water. Bubbles seethed from the hollow trailer frame and the wheels slowly disappeared underwater. The truck stopped and the driver climbed out of the truck and took a control box from its mount. Julius felt the boat drop into the water as the driver worked the individual hydraulic lifts. Each lift made a loud mechanical whir. When the boat was afloat Julius turned the key and the big diesel roared and he smiled at Dolly and she smiled back.