Beyond the Sea

by Paul Lynch

  He persuades Hector to sit in the cooler.

  He sits with the youth, listening to the wild breath giving shape to the mind inside. The mind’s storm-wind and how it moves blind against the dark.

  * * *

  Later, when Hector is asleep, Bolivar remembers the dream from which he had woken. How he was standing before the house of his parents, asking them for something, but they stood with their backs turned.

  * * *

  These waiting days. Their reaching eyes. Watching the sea for boats. Watching the sky for rain. Watching jets pass by distant as comets. Watching a vessel of some kind for hours, the craft red-hulled, shiftless on the water. Bolivar waving and shouting into cupped hands. Hector asquint and half-standing, his hands gripping the gunwale. Then his shoulders slump. His voice falls into whisper.

  It is just a piece of debris.

  Later, Bolivar says, we are drifting westward, one or two knots, maybe twenty-five miles a day.

  The boat carried by a current that starts and stops, spins them a little, then carries them onwards again.

  They watch the east recede. The west vast and silent.

  They move the cooler so that the opening faces north. Spend their days inside it hiding from the sun. Each man sitting knees-to-chin and almost naked. Each man sucking on a dry tongue. How quickly the skin grows a hard coat. The hair thickening with salt.

  Hector sits glum-faced, the hands idle, the tongue licking slowly at the teeth. Bolivar sits taking the motor apart with the knife. After a long time he frees a choke link from the carburettor. I wonder if this could be made into a hook, he says. Then he fondles a spring. Maybe this will work better. Maybe it won’t. For sure we will need some gut.

  He watches the sun in its unvarying expression upon the sea. In the evenings he leans over the glassy waters, watching the bloom and gustings of shoals. He sees pilot fish in hornet coats. Triggerfish feeding off the hull. They snap at his bleeding fingers as he grabs at them. With a whoop he finally lobs one into the boat. The eye bulbed with an unfathomed look. His fingers bleeding onto the fish as he cuts it, the knife greedy, his fingers pulling at the flesh, his mouth pulling on the juices. Hector refuses to eat the fish raw. He says, it always makes me sick. Bolivar stares at the youth as he slowly shakes his head. He says, I’ve never yet met a person who doesn’t like raw fish. It is the one thing everybody can agree on.

  He picks up a fish eye and sucks it like a sweet, pops it between his teeth, watches Hector turn away in disgust. He places some fish on the cowling.

  Maybe if I dry it a little in the sun, you will eat some?

  Hector turns and watches Bolivar clean and fillet the fish, leaving the meat attached to the skin. He slices it into strips and places the meat on the cowling. Hector studies the fish with a soured mouth then shrugs.

  Maybe.

  * * *

  Bolivar watches the world ranged in unbroken colour. Sending thought into the ocean’s depths. Sending thought to meet the shadows that pass beneath – sharks, dorado, tuna. Other unnamed things. Watching a shadow great and implacable deep in the water for much of a day, as though the shadow were a refraction of his own thinking, the thoughts he will not speak. That their water is running out. That the sky signals days without end or rain. That the workings of his mind are slowing. He is having trouble keeping track of time.

  He thinks, the days have only been a handful, it is true, but what was yesterday might have been today or just an hour ago. Out here time plays tricks or ceases to be time in the usual way.

  Bolivar lifts his face to the sky and smiles.

  It will rain soon, he says. I can feel it.

  A breeze rises and Bolivar ties Hector’s sweater to the rail. For a moment the wind climbs inside it, the sweater rousing full-chested to let flag a skull and crossbones. Then the sweater drops and does not rise again.

  Bolivar laughs and slaps his knee.

  He says, they will never believe it when they find us.

  He turns then and stares at the perpetual sea.

  Faint whispers of horror come upon him.

  Where they are now in this ocean and its forever.

  * * *

  He wakes in painted light. Hears a strange schlik schlik behind the cooler. He shakes from his mind a dream of clear water, climbs out and sees Hector bent to the hull. The youth turns when he hears Bolivar yawning. The schlik schlik stops.

  The air is cool and Bolivar rests his eyes upon the ocean. What moves as light could be a boat or a far-off signal or even a piece of refuse. Light resting in the water’s eaves. Light golden at the morning’s edges. He thinks about how in light like this he would watch the world come to be from his cabin door. He leans over the side of the boat and watches for triggerfish. He turns to speak and it is then he sees what Hector has done to the hull.

  He moves towards the youth with a pointed finger.

  What is this?

  Hector shrugs indifferently.

  Bolivar bends to see six fish-bone lines scratched into the boat. One more day and Hector will be able to scratch a line through it.

  Bolivar maddens, sees the rage before him, steps into its pleasing rush. He steps before Hector’s face, jabs him with a finger.

  What are you doing? Hey?

  Hector shrugs but does not speak.

  We are not in prison.

  Bolivar leans closer still.

  Hey! Look at me when I talk to you. We will be rescued today or maybe tomorrow. Or the day after that at the latest. This is a fact. In the meantime, do not put another mark on my boat.

  He rubs at his throat for it has hurt his voice to shout. There is no saliva in his mouth. He takes the knife and begins to scratch out the markings.

  Hector stands slowly blinking. Then he sits and watches Bolivar working the knife into the hull, Bolivar cursing, turning then to see a smile resting in Hector’s mouth, the smile passing.

  * * *

  The sun beats upon the panga. They sit in the cooler, Hector’s mouth hanging open. Bolivar stares at his own hands. He closes and opens them. Slowness now has entered the body. A tightness in the mind. He closes his eyes and can see the blood congealing within the body. The thick blood slowing the fingers. He closes and opens his hands again. These hands that still seek the doing thing.

  He fondles the empty five-gallon container then climbs out and places it carefully under the stern seat.

  Hector sits pulling at his cheeks, the skin taut about the upper neck, the short jaw hanging as though in readiness to shout. But he is silent.

  Bolivar sits back into the cooler and with a sideward glance studies the youth. The skull seems to have lengthened, he thinks. The limbs grown longer. Only a few days have passed and already he has changed.

  * * *

  Evening light, a jet plane prising open the distant sky.

  * * *

  Bolivar leans over the hull watching for small fish. He watches the shadow of a shoal pass by. Then, six feet away, a commotion in the water. He sees a dorsal fin break the surface then smoothly disappear. A moment later the fin resurfaces and gleams within reach. Without thought he is his hands reaching. He grabs hold of the fin and with a roar pulls a young hammerhead shark six inches out of the water. The gills flare and the sickled tail cuts the ocean top as Bolivar roars at Hector for help, then roars at the youth again, but the shark slips from his grasp and falls in.

  Bolivar stares as the ocean folds over the moment.

  It is then he turns upon Hector.

  He shouts, why didn’t you help?

  He moves towards Hector, his hands rising off his hips.

  Hector does not look at him.

  Bolivar roars. I said, what is wrong with you?

  Hector turns and squeezes his hands so hard it looks as though he is wringing water from the finger-bones.

  He says, I don’t know, I just don’t know.

  Bolivar stares into the face before him.

  Then he turns, paces up and down the boat fee
ling what just happened move inside him. The fin rising from nothing. The fin returning to nothing. How nothing gives to possibility. Something can come from nothing, he thinks. It is so.

  He turns again upon Hector.

  Look. This is what it is. It is not something else. It is not what you want it to be. It is what it is now and cannot be anything other. Do you understand?

  Hector meets Bolivar’s eye and nods.

  If you do not understand then soon it will become something else again. You need to wake from the dream.

  * * *

  They watch marine debris pass beyond reach. Unidentified objects of different colours. What looks like a car tyre floating among tangled netting and line. Something inside Hector seems to waken. He stands with a light foot upon the trim as though ready to dive in but Bolivar pulls him back by the elbow.

  He says, sharks are everywhere. You can’t risk it.

  When a plastic bag washes against the boat, Hector fishes it out. He finds within it a plastic engine fan, some copper wiring, an engine oil bottle that can be washed out. The same day he rescues with the plank a piece of styrofoam three feet long. He scrapes off the barnacles, pulls one out yellow and wriggling by the stalk.

  Bolivar counts them.

  He says, we will save half for tomorrow.

  They chew carefully each mollusc.

  Then Bolivar examines the wiring. Maybe we can use this as fishing gut if we strip the plastic. What do you think?

  Hector reaches out. Let me have a look.

  Bolivar takes the styrofoam and props his feet up on it and points to the ocean.

  He says, this sea is like a supermarket.

  * * *

  The waters grow obscure. An ocean swell thickens and rolls the boat. What carries in the water is the dissipate energy of some distant storm. They watch the north-west horizon grow uncertain. Bolivar pointing to seabirds – a shearwater, then two fulmars that dive the wave-tops. He begins to smile. A sure sign of rain, he says.

  All day Hector watches the sky and whispers. Slowly he gathers the cups and the engine oil bottle and arranges them on deck. He blesses himself. Sits pulling at his face, the tendons tight in the throat as he chews the inside of his cheeks.

  When the waning moon ghosts the sky, Bolivar points towards it.

  Look, he says. See how pale it is. The old wisdom says that is another sign.

  * * *

  They taste faraway rain. They watch lightning flare so remote it seems to belong to another age. By early morning, the hull is bone dry. Bolivar sits with his arms wrapped about his chest, a slow knotting in his temples. Hector moves on hands and knees slowly about the hull, his tongue in search of dew. Then he sits and slumps forward pulling at his face.

  When the sun opens the water, Bolivar grabs with bitten hands at triggerfish. He is silent now, the saliva gone, his mind growing absent. Then he lets out a small yip. He pulls into the boat a pale triggerfish. A bead of blood drips onto the hull and Hector’s stare inhabits it, the eyes reading the moisture within the blood.

  Bolivar cuts the fish into portions. They sit in the cooler and suck the juices out of the meat.

  Afterwards, Bolivar stands and takes a plastic Coca-Cola bottle he has found in the water. He squeezes into it some drops of urine. Then he closes his eyes and puts it to his lips.

  He says, so what if you drink your own piss. It will taste a little salty but it will get you by.

  Hector’s mouth opens and closes as though some thought has arrived but he has not the words to meet it.

  Bolivar studies the youth’s face. For sure, he thinks, the skull is growing longer. The eyes are losing their juice. I do not want to be rescued looking like this.

  Hector sits looking at the sky.

  He whispers, I am very cold.

  A jet contrail thick as rope loosens and falls away.

  * * *

  At night Bolivar dreams his thirst. Dreams drinking water just beyond reach. Walking with an empty cup. The dryness spreading about the body – the flesh withering, the slowly baking bones, the blood turning to powder. He dreams he wakes in sudden panic before the absolute night sea. A fear in the dream that is the world moving beyond him. Then a voice speaks. It is a simple voice and sounds like his father. What the voice says.

  You are a fisherman. It is a simple faith. The sea works its miracles.

  Hector says, I have been having dreams where I am running all the time. Just running and running.

  Bolivar turns and looks at Hector and sees he is asleep. He shakes the youth but Hector does not stir.

  He slaps his own face.

  Be careful, he thinks. You are losing your grip.

  * * *

  Bolivar rescues white plastic sheeting from the sea. It is crinkled and yellow with age. Hector folds it and climbs out of the cooler, puts it over his head. He sits sorting through sea junk. Bolivar leans out of the cooler and watches the youth twisting at wires. He can see Hector’s shoulders are burnt. A footway of stones across water that is the spine leading to the skull.

  * * *

  Later, Hector stands up with a pleased look on his face. Bolivar stares and blinks upon a small figurine fashioned from wire and plastic. A blank face from the blade of a car fan. Strips of canvas for a headscarf. Wire looped into hands.

  Bolivar says, what is it, some kind of voodoo?

  He takes another sip of Coca-Cola, winces as the drink burns his lips. Then he begins to frown.

  He says, you were supposed to strip that wire down.

  Hector goes to speak but instead his eyes fall glazed upon the ocean. When he does speak it is not to Bolivar, it seems, but to the sea itself, his voice a whisper. His eyes upon the sea as though imploring it to listen.

  My grandfather, Lito, he says. When I was a kid we used to visit him. He had a small place down south. There were times when the rain would not fall for weeks and weeks. He would make Mama carry the Virgin into the cornfield and he would pray that the rain would fall on his field but not on his neighbour’s field across the road. Sometimes this would happen.

  Bolivar stares at the figurine, the wires looped into supplicating hands. He stares at Hector’s imploring face.

  Hector says, we can ask the Virgin for help.

  A gust of laughter escapes Bolivar’s mouth. Then he shakes his head and puts it in his hands. When he looks up again he sees how Hector’s eyes have narrowed, the mouth pulled into sneer.

  Bolivar says, the sun has baked your brains.

  Hector says, what would you know?

  Bolivar meets the look in the youth’s eye and holds it.

  He says, you are right. I have known nothing all my life. I am only a fisherman. But I’ll tell you this. It is ridiculous there is no rain. Out here it rains all the time. That is a fact. It is simply inevitable. A cloud will form any minute now. I can feel it.

  * * *

  Maybe a day. Bolivar boring at the sky with black eyes. Hector has fallen into a kind of stupor. A twitching in the pouted mouth. Then Hector leans forward and drops the Virgin idol out of his lap, falls without his hands out of the cooler. He lies there until Bolivar pulls him up, slaps him in the face.

  He says, hey! Wake up. You can do this.

  Later, he says, how much do you want to bet?

  He shakes Hector.

  I am willing to bet the first three sucks of a triggerfish it is going to rain tonight.

  Hector sits closed off, his face a mask.

  * * *

  Upon the western waters, darkness spreading from light. Bolivar sits leaning forward. Then he pulls at Hector’s arm.

  He says, hey, wake up! You will not believe it. There is a change in the sky.

  Hector opens his eyes but does not look up.

  Bolivar squeezes Hector’s arm.

  He thinks, what comes to be comes in its own time and if you wish it nothing might happen.

  * * *

  Ears reach through sleep. Then Bolivar sits up. He climbs out of the
cooler with his ear cocked, staring at the darkness.

  * * *

  Rain suddens upon the ocean and the waters roar. Bolivar wakes from nodding half-sleep, pulls Hector by the arm from the cooler. They fall upon the deck with the warm dawn rain falling into their mouths. The rain succulent upon the lips, the teeth, the tongue, the tongue licking the water off the lips, sucking on the teeth. Bolivar sees that Hector is crying and he thinks he might be crying also. It is hard to tell, he thinks, it might just be the rain on your face. A sob that is a rush of joy escapes his mouth.

  He watches the youth kneel and give thanks with prayerful hands, the eyes squeezed shut, the mouth moving in silence. Then Hector pulls the idol to his chest.

  Bolivar shouts, do you see now? We are really going to do this.

  He begins to dance, grabs Hector by the shoulders, pulls him into a hug. A look of belief in the youth’s face.

  * * *

  The sky gives all day. Pale and slicked, the men sit out and watch the cups fill. Bolivar following the feeling of the water swimming the blood, the blood swimming the heart and muscles, saliva loosening the tongue. They drink and watch the slow filling of the cups. They pour each filled cup into the five-gallon container and when the container is full, pour the water into the bailing bucket. The boat heaving upon a swell that sends a meniscus of water towards the bucket’s brim. Hector trying to hold the bucket steady. Then Bolivar sits the bucket onto the plastic sheeting so that no water will be lost. He bundles the plastic around the lip. They stare at the bucket, at the ever-filling cups. Each bead of water that passes the lips, that fills the cups, that is filling the bucket, is a drop of time and life distilled.