Of Sea and Cloud (11 page)

It sounds like thunder, said Dolly.

Seven hundred and fifty horses beneath our feet is what that is. John Deere power.

Oh, said Dolly.

Osmond sat in his truck with the heater running. His daughter had been dead for four years and he'd held her hand in the hospital bed and he'd sunk to the bed and wrapped his arms around her as she died. Her name was Neveah Elaine and she had trusted her father to die for her children but Julius was something beyond him. He rolled the window up and watched as Julius eased the boat up to the float and gaffed a rope. Dolly climbed out and stood on the steel grate float and waved Osmond down. Osmond didn't move. Then Julius leaned out and Osmond saw that the boy's face was red and could not tell if it was happiness or sadness or pain but he opened the door and walked down the float and got on the boat.

Too bad Pa ain't here, said Julius.

Yes, said Osmond. He put his hand on Julius's shoulder and gently squeezed the muscle and sinew. You should be proud.

I ain't proud. I got no time for that.

Osmond lifted Dolly and Rhonda onto the shining stainless steel baitbox so they could see out the windshield. He turned back to Julius. You can stay at the house, Julius. There's the mooring there for you.

I got a mooring going in today.

I know you do. But so you know.

I don't need a thing but this boat.

Fine, Julius. But you're always welcome.

Julius revved the engine and pulled away from the float and eased her up to speed as he crossed the bay. Thunder, he said to Osmond with a grin. I sound like thunder.

Jonah stayed at his father's cabin on the end of the peninsula. His head slowly began to clear. Each day the moon rose after midnight and set after dawn. The loud ocean silence descended upon him and that silence felt good. He spent long periods of time watching the sea and its curious combination of motion and stillness. The clouds drifting overhead had the same quiet movement and he wondered why humans after thousands of years of studying sea and cloud had not learned such lessons.

One night while sitting on the end of the wharf with a scattering of constellations rising over the waters and his feet dangling above those same waters it occurred to him that with this move he'd done something nobody had expected him to do. It was a simple realization but for Jonah it had been a long time coming. This was the first time in as long as he could remember that he'd made a decision and done it despite what Virgil or Bill or Charlotte or anybody else said. Even an action as rash as cutting Osmond's traps had been done in part out of the mistaken certainty that those he respected would have wanted him to do so. Then he'd nearly died out on the water when in reality he'd wanted the opposite of death. He'd wanted to feel something and perhaps he had. Perhaps the waters had changed him. He'd packed his things and moved to the camp and it didn't make sense because he should have stayed home and talked to Charlotte and it didn't make sense because winter loomed and he would be so alone but moving was something he wanted and something he needed and it was something he did.

• • •

It had snowed wet and heavy the previous night and through that day. Six inches of slop covered the ground. Now the snow quit and the sun set and the coastline went red and fibrous as open flesh. Jonah heated a basin of water and carried it barefoot outside and dumped it steaming over himself in thick lava-like surges that melted a circle around his feet.

Back inside he dressed. He paused at the window as the sun dropped over the horizon. The chain of islands southeast from Mason's Island to Spencer Ledges dropped black and the sea dropped black but far off in the west beyond Two Penny and Drown Boy Rock and beyond the line of coastal mountains remnant shreds of sunlight clung to the earth rim. A final blood-red surge flushed over the darkness.

He pictured Charlotte. The strips of muscle on the back of her neck. The black curls of hair that he used to tuck behind her ear. The gentle rasp in her voice and the cluster of freckles like a constellation on her shoulder and as the spruce fire crackled he was reminded of the late-night patter of her bare feet on his kitchen floor.

He shook his head. He put his jacket on and blew out the lantern and went outside and down the trail. Thoughts of her lifted and crashed like the action of waves. The two of them picking apples in the old peninsula orchard. Her so much younger. Days on his boat. Days along the shore. The two of them catching snowflakes in their mouths. Heads back. Throats arched. The first time she came to his house alone. Just walked in seventeen years old and stood in front of him and said his name. Jonah.

He pushed the skiff across the frosted planks and into the black water. The last of the tide rushed out like a cloth pulled from beneath him. A gull from somewhere unseen swooped and landed on the bow of the skiff and watched him as he rowed. It batted its wings and stamped its feet. A hush descended and the timeless clatter of wood and water and boat rose into the night sky.

Jonah tied the skiff off to his boat and checked the oil and turned the key and the engine ground to life. He ran the bilge pump and watched the oil and water piss from the chine. It was cold and getting colder and he stuffed his hands into his pockets and hopped up and down as the engine settled into its deep rhythm. The deck hose was frozen and he cursed and went below and removed the belt from the pulley so the rubber impeller wouldn't thrash itself to pieces any more than it already had. His fingers went numb with the cold wrenches and the cold grease and the cold oil.

His wake sparkled white and phosphorescent. The stars glinted. He imagined returning to the camp with Charlotte beside him. He imagined her to be pregnant. He imagined the smooth sea-swell of her body. He listened to his engine pound the shoreline only to drive back at him like fists. Perhaps going to find her was a mistake but he was beyond that so he continued on and rounded the ledges and entered the harbor. The tide turned to flood and the Big Dipper lifted above the harbor as if ladling saltwater into the sky. The pound slid by in the night light with its wood slat dam like baleen and Jonah had the instantaneous image of his father building the dam and he felt a pang for the simplicity of those days.

A half mile ahead of him he could see the small wharf with its single light bulb hanging from an old wooden post. A lean-to hut was built on the float below. Inside the lean-to was a single stool and a scale for weighing crates of lobsters and a shelf stacked with rusted wrenches and dirty gloves. The seawater around the wharf and float shifted in the light and as Jonah approached he could make out the familiar and comforting shape of the bait house with its swayback roof and rotted cedar shake siding.

He tied off to the float and climbed the ladder beneath the light. His gloves stuck to each wooden rung and he heard them peel back the chilled yellow herring grease as he climbed. Rusted and broken lobster traps and dirty bait buckets and fish totes and coils of rope were piled haphazardly around the wharf and Jonah had the fleeting childhood memory of afternoons spent jigging for mackerel with his brother and mother while they waited for Nicolas to return from a day on the water.

• • •

Snow banks lined the road and the village was dark save for a few porch lights shining orange on the snowpack. He walked down the center of the empty road. The birches lining Virgil's driveway stood white and still. Virgil's truck and Celeste's car were both parked in the driveway but Charlotte's car was not. Its absence hit Jonah like a swallowed stone.

He stepped into the yard and stood beneath her window. Her bedroom was dark. He shivered. His breath rose into the night and he reached for his cigarettes and all of the calmness he'd accumulated over the last week disappeared. He felt occupied by vacancy. He heard Chowder bark. He lit a cigarette. He wondered what he was doing. He packed a small circle in the snow like walls to hold him and he watched Charlotte's dark window as if hoping she would let her hair down but instead the door opened and Celeste peered into the darkness. She wore a short sleeve shirt and a red and white striped apron. The dog kept barking.

Jonah said, Celeste. It's me.

Jonah, she said. What are you doing? Come inside.

He crossed the lawn and stamped the snow from his boots and stepped onto the porch. She pulled him in by the arm and shut the door. The house smelled like heat and like sugar. He hadn't been there since his father's service and despite Charlotte's absence it was comforting to be there now. He kicked his rubber boots off.

How are you?

I'm good, Celeste. Fine.

He stood with his back tight to the door. His cigarette burned in his fingers.

Come in, she said. Virgil's in the kitchen.

Jonah heard classical music as he followed Celeste down the hallway. He looked into the living room and up the staircase for Charlotte but she was not there.

Virgil turned on his stool when they entered the kitchen. Jonah. I thought you'd run off on us.

Virgil looked like he'd aged years in the last week. His back was stooped and his skin was loose as clam meat. His eyes were sallow and cavernous. Jonah put his hand on Virgil's shoulder in an awkward one-arm hug then stepped back.

Good to see you, Jonah said. He felt like he was visiting Virgil in a hospital room though the room itself was warm and comfortable and smelled like ginger and sugar.

Celeste's making us some Christmas cookies here, Virgil said. We were aiming on bringing a batch out to camp for you.

I forgot it was even Christmas coming up, he said.

Sit down, Jonah, Celeste said. Do you want a beer or something?

Give him the gorilla milk. He needs it.

I think you've had enough for everybody, Celeste said. She took a beer out of the refrigerator. Maybe he'll listen to you, Jonah. Look at him. He looks like he got run over by a truck, doesn't he?

A little bit, Jonah said and tried to laugh as though it would be an apology.

Virgil scoffed. The hell with you both.

Celeste tipped the mixer up and wiped the blades with her finger. It's that brandy he sucks on like he's a tiger.

Gorilla.

The Captain hates gorillas, Jonah said. He sipped his beer. He had the feeling that something had happened between Virgil and Celeste but he couldn't figure out what it was or why he felt that way.

The Captain's been knuckle-dragging and mouth-breathing all over town, said Virgil. He ain't right. They're taking lobsters out of the pound in the morning. Him and Osmond.

Celeste disengaged the mixer blades and held one out to Jonah. Do you want that?

Jonah took the blade and cleaned it with his finger and licked his finger then began on the blade itself.

Virgil rocked on his stool. You don't hear shit out there at camp. You saw Nic's boat on its mooring. The Coasties finally gave that back. You'll be wanting to sell the
Jennifer
and use the
Cinderella
.

I don't know, Jonah said. He wondered how it was that he hadn't even noticed his father's boat.

And the wharf is up for sale, Virgil said.

What? The wharf? Benji's going to sell? Holy shit.

He ain't been well, Jonah. I visited him today.

Benji ain't been well for years. But sell the wharf? He can't do that.

He's dying, Jonah. He can't get up, can't piss, can't eat, can't do a thing but be a peckerhead like he's always been. He says he wants to see the wharf go before he's dead. He doesn't care about the fishermen or the harbor anymore. Says that's what gave him the cancer. Now he wants it to go before he goes.

Why would it be so bad if it sold? Celeste said. What else is going to happen to it?

Would it be bad to get bought up by one of these Boston conglomerates? Christ yes, it'll be bad. Sell it to a local outfit.

There aren't any local outfits.

Sure there are. Their pockets just aren't as deep. The big money guys are buying wharves up and down the coast. If they own the wharves, then they'll own the fishermen. Then we get pushed out.

They ain't going to buy all the wharves, Jonah said.

The hell they ain't, Jonah. Look around you. Look down the coast a hundred miles. What do you see? You see a handful of outfits buying everybody and everything up. When they get enough wharves then they control the price. Then we're fucked.

We're already fucked, Jonah said. He sipped his beer and held the mixer blade in the air. He tried to imagine the wharf being run by some company out of Boston or New York but it seemed ridiculous. A small harbor wharf was the center of family and community and he recalled only an hour ago climbing the wharf ladder and thinking about his mother and his brother and his father. He said, But the price is supply and demand, just like anything. You said so yourself.

Virgil grunted. It is for now. But that's what the big boys want to change. They want to control the price. That's when the lights go out. They did it with shrimp in the Gulf and they did it with crab in Alaska and over and over again. All the fisheries are fucked. We're the last one, damn near.

Celeste went to the counter and flopped the ball of dough out of the mixer and onto a breadboard.

Jonah pushed his seat back and crossed his legs. I'd hate to see it gone but who's gonna buy it? Hell, it'll cost half a million just to clean her up.

Virgil shifted his weight. I'll tell you who it is but you don't go telling a soul.

If it's a big secret I don't need to hear it.

Virgil ignored him. I'll tell you but don't go whistling it into the Captain's ear either.

I won't. You going into the bait trade?

You've heard the name Jason Jackson.

I heard of him. He bought from the old man and Osmond.

Virgil nodded. A rogue outfit is what Jason is. He's not aligned with any of the big seafood buyers. He works on his own. Jason's a ruthless sonofawhore but at least he understands quality. So guess who's cozy with Jason Jackson?