Envious Moon (6 page)

L
ater that night I sat on the rocky beach and I finished the last of the wine. The breeze coming off the sound was cool and I wanted a fire. But I could not have a fire since it might attract attention. Instead I pulled my coat tight around myself and I smoked until I grew tired.

I laid my bedroll out under the shadow of the large rock and climbed onto it and pulled the open sleeping bag on top of me. I looked up at the stars, clusters ancient and endless. I traced Cassiopeia and Andromeda and Pegasus, constellations that for as long as men took to the sea, they have used to find their way home. Home for me had always been Galilee but now it was this camp, this beach, this water rolling in toward my feet. And when I thought this, I also suddenly felt displaced, like I didn't belong anywhere. The truth was, I was not fully of this beach, and I was not fully of Galilee and I was not part of the
Lorrie Anne.
I had left all that behind. Somewhere out on the Grand Banks my old boat was scouring the fishing grounds for swordfish. And I wondered if the men missed me but then I decided that they did not. Someone had taken my place and fishermen only dealt with the living. Berta missed me, I'm sure,
and Victor probably did, too, though he would never admit it.

Once, when I was just a small boy, I was out on the skiff with my father. It was a warm summer night and a clear sky. We were fishing, as we often did, and during a break while my father leaned against the gunwale and rolled one of his cigarettes, he looked up at the full moon, and he said, “The moon is jealous of the sun.”

He talked like this to me a lot and he usually had a sly twinkle in his eye and I did not think anything of it. “Why?” I asked.

“Because the sun is always full,” he said. “Always fat. The moon only gets to be full once a month. The rest of the time it's hungry. And as soon as it gets full, it has to start all over again.” He chuckled. “Kind of like the life of a fisherman.”

I remember that I looked up at the moon then, pale and yellow against the black. “It doesn't look jealous,” I said.

“Trust me, Anthony,” he said. “It is. It's envious. It's an envious moon.”

And years later, lying on the beach on Cross Island, looking up at the same moon, I thought that my father probably had it wrong. The moon had the stars. The sun had nothing. The sun was all alone. And no one, I decided, should be all alone.

W
hen I finally fell asleep, I dreamed again about the girl. She was on the stairs and then she was in the window. She told me she was afraid and I said that everyone was afraid. I told her that if she gave me a chance, I could help. Then she lay down next to me and she slung her arms lazily over my chest. I felt the beat of her heart against mine.

I woke once during the night. It was not quite dawn and the sky had turned a robin's-egg blue. I relieved myself against the cliff and for a moment I listened to the shrill cries of the morning gulls diving at the water. I returned to my bedroll and this time I slept without dreams. When I opened my eyes the sun had risen and it was warm. I sat up and shook my head and there, some ten feet from me, was the girl. She sat on a driftwood log with long rubbery pieces of brown kelp at her feet.

I looked over at her. Was I still dreaming? Was she real? She certainly looked real. She wore a white T-shirt and faded jeans and had leather sandals on her feet. Her hair was reddish brown. And, as I had hoped, it was her eyes that brought together the promise of her face. They were green, as green
as the phosphorescence that floated under the ocean at night. She was slender and lovely and I had never been happier to see someone in my whole life.

She said, “This is private land, you know.”

“I didn't know,” I said.

“Are you homeless?”

“No,” I said. She picked up a stick and twirled it in her hand. I watched it spin. She wasn't looking at me.

“How old are you?” she said.

“Seventeen.”

“Why are you sleeping on the beach?”

“I missed my boat,” I said.

“Your boat?”

“The
Lorrie Anne.
It's a longliner.”

“A longliner?”

“A fishing boat,” I said. “Swordfish.”

She looked out toward the ocean, as if maybe she could see the boat I was talking about. “How do you miss a boat?”

I shrugged. “They thought I was crewing with someone else. They left me on the island.”

“How could they just leave you? I mean, wouldn't they notice you were missing?”

“I work for a couple of different captains,” I said. “If I don't show up, they figure I'm with the other one. It happens more than you might think.”

She kept twirling on the stick with her narrow fingers and I saw that she was digesting my story. “You really a fisherman?” she asked.

“My whole life,” I said.

She stood then. “I don't care if you stay here. But others will. There's been break-ins. You could get in trouble.”

I nodded and she turned to leave. She started to walk away from me, down the beach. “Wait,” I called, and she stopped. The sun was behind her now and in its morning light she was perfect. “What's your name?” I said, though of course I already knew.

“Hannah.”

“Hannah,” I repeated, finally getting to say it out loud. “I'm Anthony.”

She smiled at me and gave me a small wave. I watched her walk until she followed the curve of the coastline out of sight.

A
bout a year after I came here, I got a letter. It is written on yellow legal paper. It's five pages long. A woman's handwriting, a beautifully flowing script. The kind they don't bother to teach anymore. Over the years the paper has gotten beat up a little bit from being folded and unfolded so many times. It is creased and the edges on a few of the pages are frayed. When I first got it, I read it all the time. I carried it in my pocket wherever I went. Now I read it less frequently, and never all at once. I like to read it in small pieces. I'm not sure why that it is. Maybe it's just part of getting older. That I prefer to see her in fragments so that I can put her together in my own mind and on my own time. An unadulterated view. In this way, the letter becomes almost an aid. A tool. Something that jump-starts my memory.

It begins:

A
fter Hannah found me on the beach, I debated for a long time what to do next. In the end, I decided the only thing to do was to bring her a fish.

I spent that afternoon below the lighthouse where the waters came together. I stood on an ocean-smoothed rock and the barnacles were enough to anchor myself. The waves washed over my boots. The beach was behind me and in front of me hundreds and hundreds of birds swooped in great arcs toward the water.

I threw line after line into the churning surf. For hours I had no luck. I preferred live bait but all I had was lures. But the test was heavy and the day was beautiful and the ocean breeze felt good against my bare skin. Behind me now and again tourists stopped to watch me cast and I was aware of their presence but I ignored them. I worked different sides of any obstacles I saw. Fish like to gather against objects, rocks and debris. I teased the line through the busy current and I jigged it a little bit. Finally, there it was. Quick as a whisper and it was gone. I brought the line in as fast as I could and I tossed out to the same spot and this time I was ready for it. When it hit I pulled sharply back on the rod. It was a fighter, I could tell that. It wanted to dive and
I gave it some line and let it. Run a little, I thought. Run and get tired. I couldn't tell if it was a blue or a striper. I hoped for a striper. Stripers were less oily and were better eaters. I gave it more line and when it had run for a while, I started to slowly bring it in. At one point it jumped and behind me someone clapped. I had an audience. It rose and I got a good look at it. It was a striper, the blue-green scales bright and silvery in the sunlight.

I felt it tiring. I brought it closer and closer. I wished I had a gaff or a net but it did not matter so much. I brought the bass right to the rock where I stood. I could see it under the water now, laboring, and I reached down and picked it up by the mouth. I held it up in the air for the tourists to see. It was a good fish. Thirty inches or so and fat. I waited until the tourists moved on. Then I swung it hard against the rock until I felt it go slack beneath my fingers.

Back at the camp I gutted the fish and then cleaned it in the salt water. I wrapped it in newspaper and then I took a swim and washed the fish off my hands. When I made my way to the house, I went through the cove this time, following her footsteps in the sand from the morning.

It was strange to walk up the same path in the daylight. I looked at the beach, where my skiff had been that night. And on the trail I suddenly remembered the sound of our feet pounding down it in the dark.

When I reached the house, I marched right up to the door. I held the newspaper-wrapped fish under my arm and I knocked like I was anyone else who had come to visit. I knocked several times and there was no answer.

I sat on the edge of the porch and I waited. I smoked a cigarette and for a moment I worried that perhaps she had left the
island. She was probably always leaving the island. Like the time I had seen her on the ferry. The fish was next to me and the day was warm. I could not keep it there forever. I looked down the curvy driveway. This was the way she would come and I hoped that when she did that she'd be alone. I hadn't thought of that. What if she was with someone else? After all, I knew nothing about her. Other than how she looked through a window in the dark.

The afternoon got on. I was about to hide around back, just to make sure that when she showed she'd be alone, when she appeared around the bend on a bicycle. The bicycle was old-fashioned-looking and red and on the front it had a basket. She came to a halt in front of me, putting her feet down on either side of it. Her hair was up in a ponytail. Normally I liked it when girls wore their hair down but this afforded me a better look at her face. And for the first time, I noticed her freckles, the lot of them, like tiny brown stars on her cheeks.

She looked at me, and she said, “What are you doing here?”

I held up the newspaper package. “I brought you a fish.”

She laughed. “Are you for real?”

“It's payment. For sleeping on your beach.”

She pushed a barrette back on her hair with her right hand. She had to lean back to do this and when she stretched I got a sense of the small breasts beneath her T-shirt. “It's not my beach,” she said.

I shrugged. “It's a striped bass. A real nice fish.”

Her hands came back to her sides and she crossed her arms on her chest, as if aware of where my gaze had been. Her eyes narrowed. She said, “How'd you know where I lived?”

It was a completely reasonable question and I had anticipated it. I said, “I followed your tracks. From the beach.”

She seemed to be thinking this over. “I don't even like fish,” she said.

“This is nice fish,” I said. “People who don't like fish like it. It's a white fish. Very sweet.”

“I don't know how to cook.”

“I'll cook it for you,” I said.

“I don't even know you,” she said.

I smiled. “I'm Anthony Lopes. From Galilee, Rhode Island. I live with my mother and I missed my boat. I'm a nice guy. You can ask anyone.”

“Who could I ask?”

“Okay, look,” I said. “If you want, I will just cook the fish and then leave. You can eat when I'm gone. I'm telling you, you will like it. Lock me in the kitchen if you want. I don't care. If you ever want me to go, just say so. I'll leave in a second.”

Hannah sighed. “This is so weird. Who does this?”

“I'm a full-service fisherman,” I said, and this made her smile. It was a natural smile, the kind she couldn't help, and as soon as she did, I saw her look away from me as if this was something she didn't want to give me yet. Though it was okay for I had already seen it and it was not something she could take back.

“You're really going to cook it,” she said.

I nodded. “I'm telling you it's nice fish.”

She stepped off her bike and said, once again and to no one in particular, “This is so weird.” I knew then that I had her. She wheeled the bike past me and onto the porch and rested it against the wall. She opened the wooden door and turned and looked at me.

“Well, come on then,” she said, and for the second time in my life I walked into that huge house.