Of Sea and Cloud

by Jon Keller

  He paused at the tidemark and stood ankle-deep in the water. He faced the open ocean. He watched the crescent moon set in the southwest and all faded to black. The Two Penny buoy flashed and Drown Boy Rock spun and suddenly the ocean receded and left Jonah on bare rock. He looked around wondering where the water had gone and as he did so the sea surged back and nearly filled his boots but then again it receded as if the entirety of the Atlantic was subject to the maelstrom of humanity and not the strict order of the universe. Jonah whispered the word Dad out loud and his voice disappeared into the air. He followed the tidemark toward Burnt Island and climbed the ledges gone purple in the darkness. He turned toward the pound and as he crossed a bank of dead rockweed he saw the skull. He stood over it for a full minute before picking it up. The bone felt as if it had been at sea for years.

  He slumped down onto the heap of seaweed and perched the skull on his knee and balanced it upright with one hand. He quickly remembered so long ago gripping that head in his arms as he bounced upon his father’s back to the ringing of his mother’s laughter. The skull glowed white and the eye sockets loomed like black holes large enough to encompass a fist. For much of his life Jonah had rehearsed the blows he would deal his father but now nothing would come as if the skull held the same power as the man. Jonah stared at the skull and wished he were stronger than he was.

  The house was quiet when Jonah returned. He went straight to the guest room and stripped his clothes off and climbed into bed. He lay awake with images of skulls and lobsters and waves crashing through his head but soon the crashing ceased and the frenzied sound of thousands of feeding lobsters erupted like an infestation in his eardrums. He rolled and folded the pillow over his head but that was no help so he shoved a finger into his ear and wished he could sink it to the knuckle.

  Finally he fell asleep but after only an hour he awoke to Virgil’s horn. He dressed and when he opened his door Charlotte stepped out of her bedroom. She wore white flannel pajamas and her hair was in a ponytail and her skin was pale and blotched with sleep. Both stopped but neither spoke. He caught her eye for a moment and when she shifted he thought she would speak but instead she stepped into the bathroom and shut the door.

  He heard the shower turn on. He grabbed the doorknob and was about to turn it when he heard Celeste yell for Virgil to stop honking.

  Get the Highliner out here, Virgil hollered.

  I’m coming, Jonah yelled down the steps.

  He listened to the shower and heard the splashes as Charlotte moved. He opened the door and stepped inside. He shut the door. He crossed the room full of steam and stood next to the curtain and said, Charlotte.

  Jesus Christ, Jonah.

  He pulled the curtain back a few inches and saw a slice of her body.

  Get the fuck out of here.

  He started to say something but she cut him off.

  I don’t care. Get out before I scream.

  The lid was down on the toilet and he sat on it. I’m sorry, he said. His voice was gentle. Charlotte stuck her head out from behind the curtain and peered at him then stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around herself. She put her hand on Jonah’s head and dug her fingers into his hair.

  Jonah, she said. Look at me.

  He tipped his head back so he could see her. Her skin was red from the heat of the shower. Her hair was slicked back. Beads of water slid down her forehead. He saw the shape of her hips beneath the white towel and he reached his hand up and set it on her waist and pulled her to him. She took a step and their knees touched. He leaned his head into her breastbone. He shut his eyes. She put her other hand on his head and held him pinned to her.

  The shower was still running and the room was hot with steam. The windows were fogged and outside lay full dark. He coughed and choked several times and when he settled she stepped back and lifted his chin and kissed his forehead. I’m sorry about your father, Jonah. And about us.

  I don’t get it.

  You’re ten years older than I am.

  You got to give it a chance to change, Charlotte. He still had his hand on her hip and he put the other hand on her other hip.

  I’d rather have you as a big brother again.

  What?

  I miss being friends, Jonah. I miss feeling like you and the Captain are my big brothers. Like when I was little.

  Christ, Jonah said. He heard the whir of the exhaust fan as if it were within his head and he looked around the bathroom and he looked back up at her. You’re not little anymore and things aren’t always going to be the same.

  I know you don’t understand, she said.

  Understand what?

  We’ll talk later, Jonah. I love you but I’m leaving and right now I just need a friend. She rubbed his shoulders and kissed his forehead again. You need a friend too. Aren’t you scared, Jonah? About your father and stuff?

  The hell with it, he said. We’re going to dump him overboard right now.

  Charlotte’s head tilted to the side as she looked at him.

  I found his skull last night, Charlotte. Down below the pound.

  Charlotte settled onto her knees so that her face was level with his. She refitted the fold of her towel between her breasts. She ran her hand over his cheek and held the back of his neck and he leaned his head into the hand as if it would hold all of him.

  I always wanted to yell at him, he said. I planned the shit I’d say but never did. I thought I’d find that skull and smash it but I just held it like a little fucking kid.

  Jesus, Jonah, Charlotte said. Maybe you need someone to talk to. Like a counselor or therapist to talk to about this stuff. It’s too much for anybody.

  I need you.

  Charlotte stood up. Jonah, this is serious. You need help. You should call the police.

  Fuck that, Jonah said. He stood up and put his hand on the doorknob. And don’t you go whispering a word about this to a soul. And that means Julius too even though he ain’t got one.

  • • •

  He didn’t see Celeste when he went downstairs. He met Virgil at the truck.

  Get the hell in here, Jonah. We got work to do.

  A layer of ice covered the driveway. The wind blew steady from the southeast and rocked the birches in long sways.

  Jonah got in the truck. I guess we’re having another funeral, he said.

  That’s right.

  The truck cab smelled like old tobacco and brandy and Virgil had stains down the front of his gray sweatshirt. The heater was on and the truck was hot. All that remained of Nicholas Graves was in the truck bed.

  Virgil looked over at Jonah. Are you okay?

  I’m fine.

  Virgil sighed. He went silent as the truck idled. When he spoke his voice was so quiet that Jonah had to struggle to hear him. You don’t have to do this. I know it’s hard, and I know it’s wrong.

  Jonah looked out the window.

  Jonah, Virgil said and he reached over and gripped Jonah’s wrist. Jonah, this is something that no one should ever have to go through and I’m sorry for that. You can stay here and Bill can stay too. Neither one of you should have to do this. I’ll do it. Nicolas wasn’t my father.

  I know it. I just want all this to be done.

  Virgil held his grip on Jonah’s wrist. Stay here, Jonah. Go take a shower and get in bed. Eat something. I’ll tell Bill the same thing. This isn’t the sort of thing that leaves a man once it’s finished. You’ve already been through too much.

  Thanks, Jonah said. Tears pooled in his eyes. He envisioned his brother handing his father’s bones out of the pound one at a time and the skull set in a bed of seaweed and then he envisioned Charlotte and he said, I’m going.

  Bill was waiting in his truck when they pulled onto the wharf. His face was pale and bags hung like bruises beneath his eyes. The rotted and paint-chipped bait house doors were closed and locked and the bait buckets and lobster crates were inside and the ropes had been taken off the winchhead gallows. Most of the lobster fleet had be
en hauled out although three boats had makeshift plywood and sheet plastic houses built over the work decks for tending winter urchin divers. A half dozen other boats had been rigged with drag gear for either scallops or urchins. The three quahog draggers hadn’t moved in days and a handful of offshore draggers both gypsy and local had arrived for the season and their rigging tinked and slapped metallic in the cold air.

  Nicolas’s mooring was the closest to them and the Cinderella’s white hull was lit by the small wharf light so the boat looked somehow alone among the harbor fleet. Jonah and Bill both took a moment to look at the boat then loaded the fish trays full of bones. The three of them steamed out of the harbor in Virgil’s boat Charlotte & Celeste. Bill stood next to Virgil with his arms on the bulkhead. They both smoked and they both looked as if they’d already survived something they should not have. The sky was still dark and the head of the cape was a black arm grasping at the water and the rocks were fingernails slicked with salt ice and starlight. A half mile out Ram’s Head rose above them in a sheer cliff face.

  Jonah sat on the stern with his sweatshirt hood up and his orange oil jacket hood on top of that. He held his hands together in his sweatshirt pocket and his chin tucked against the cold hard wind. He watched the black water slide by and he listened to the boat’s splash and he told himself that this was what his father would have wanted. The sea was heavy and came southeast and Jonah felt a shadow that would haunt the three of them for the rest of their lives forming but he saw no alternative.

  The abandoned lighthouse on Two Penny looked like the remnants of a stormed castle and once past the island there was no more protection from the Atlantic. The boat rocked and heaved and Jonah caught a shield of water across his body. He went to the wheelhouse with Virgil and Bill and grabbed the bulkhead and fit himself between Bill and the port wall. They crested a wave and a line of spray drove into the windshield and poured over the house.

  Jonah looked to Virgil. Virgil was lit by the scant wheelhouse light. Jonah said, You okay, Virgil?

  Finest.

  You don’t seem so good, Bill said.

  I ain’t the best, Captain. And you ain’t either.

  I’m fine. Considering.

  Virgil turned his head to Bill. The bow dove into a wave trough and shuddered against a wall of green water. They rose with a surge. Explain to me this pound business with you and Osmond.

  There ain’t no business. We sold a truckload. We’ll run things the same as he did with the old man.

  Did he give you any paperwork yet?

  No.

  That’s not right. You need a title. He should have given you a title by now.

  Bill rubbed his eyes and adjusted his glasses and wiped his hand along his jawline.

  Osmond isn’t in this to be partnering with you, Bill.

  How do you know that?

  How do I know that? Because I pay attention, and because I know Osmond.

  So you think Osmond shoved the old man in the pound thinking he’d own it free and clear?

  I’m not sure what happened yet, Captain.

  Bill rapped his knuckles on the fiberglass bulkhead. That’s bullshit. Osmond’s not got shit to do with it.

  Virgil nodded. He turned and grabbed Bill’s head with both hands. Bill tried to shrug him off but could not and Virgil turned Bill’s head to face the stern of the boat and the boneyard held there. Look at that, Captain. That is your dead father. Right there. That is your father.

  Then Virgil released him. He held the spoked wheel with one hand and his cigarette butt in the other. His head hung as if held by vertebrae alone. The sun was beginning to rise off to the east. In front of them a dark spread of clouds crossed the horizon but far offshore the sea and sky together shone as a single light.

  Virgil spoke again. Things aren’t as black and white as you want them to be, Bill. You got to get used to that. It’s okay to not know something. You understand me?

  Bill continued to stare at his father’s broken skeleton. Jonah put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. Bill turned to him and the look in his eyes wasn’t the brotherly look Jonah had expected so he removed the hand. Bill’s eyes were red and his pupils were tiny black puddles.

  Fucking Jonah the Highliner, Bill said. You standing there smiling at the old man being gone? You think this is all so fucking funny?

  The bow rose on a wave crest then piled downward and drove through the next wave and green water poured over the boat and cascaded down the washrails and filled the stern. The diesel engine groaned. The bone fish trays went afloat and slid to the starboard rail as the water drained out the scuppers.

  Bill stared at Jonah. You always hated him, ain’t that right? Ever since Mom died you hated him.

  Jonah didn’t say anything. He watched a wave crest and break as the Charlotte & Celeste heaved. He felt everything inside of him collapsing but a surge of adrenaline kept him afloat like a life vest.

  You done blamed him his whole life for that, Bill said. And you’re too chickenshit to say anything when he’s living.

  The hell I blamed him for that. I blamed him for near drowning me is what I blamed him for. And you near drowned yourself, or you forgotten that fact?

  You blamed him for Mom and he knew it. That’s why he threw you overboard.

  She died in a fucking car wreck, Bill. How the hell would I blame that on him?

  You wouldn’t even so much as visit him when he was living right down the way and when he up and dies you think it’s a big joke is what you do.

  You think he ever visited me? Ever once? You think he ever set foot in my trailer, all the times he drove by? I’ll tell you how many, Captain. Not one single time. Six years I been there and not one time did he knock on the fucking door. So fuck you, Bill.

  You don’t know shit, Jonah. Just because you run off to some prep-boy college don’t mean you know shit. I stayed home and fished with the old man.

  That done you a lot of good, Captain. Lucky you ain’t on the stern with him.

  Bill took a step back and slammed both hands against Jonah’s chest and drove him against the port wall. Jonah’s head rapped the Plexiglas window behind him and Bill held him pinned there.

  Easy, said Virgil.

  Bill’s eyes blinked and his lips quivered. Jonah felt his brother’s whole body shake but he stood calm. Virgil let go of the wheel and grabbed Bill by the hood and pulled him stumbling back and as he did Jonah pushed off the wall and into Bill. He drove Bill to the floor and landed on him and hit him over and over until Virgil pulled him away. With Virgil gone from the wheel the boat turned sideways in a wave trough and dipped a washrail. Water filled the stern. Virgil lunged for the wheel and gunned the engine and the bow lifted into the air as if they’d go over backward. Black water rushed out the scuppers and across the stern. Jonah stood against the window and shook and watched with disbelief as the boat drained and settled. The sun wasn’t visible but it lit the world as if someone had polished the gray dawn silver.

  Bill got up. He looked like he’d been underwater. His mouth and nose bled. His glasses were bent on his face and he took them off and tried to bend them back but couldn’t keep his balance or settle his hands. A wave crested next to them and Bill squatted like a wrestler as the water drove over his back.

  He crawled up between Virgil and Jonah and said, You got my cigarettes soaked.

  Now adrenaline shook Jonah. A part of him wanted to keep hitting Bill and another part wanted to hug him. He watched Bill try to rebend his thick glasses. The skin around Bill’s eyes was soft and white from being hidden behind the glasses his entire life and suddenly the whole of Bill’s face looked like a child’s and everything Jonah felt about his brother turned to a single and sheer feeling of empathy as if he was his brother’s keeper.

  I’m sorry, Jonah said.

  It’s fine.

  You two try that shit again and you’ll drown us all. We’re going to bury your father out here because that is what he would’ve wanted and tha
t is what we want.

  Jonah expected Virgil to say something more but he didn’t. Both brothers nodded and for a few minutes all they heard were the workings of water and diesel. Jonah watched the water and felt a motion within like the first touch of seasickness.

  Virgil looked at Bill. You going to freeze to death or do you need to go below and dry off?

  I ain’t going down there, Bill said. Hell.

  • • •

  They heard the Leviathan before they could see it. It was a roar and a crash like the smash of steel and glass and as they crested the swells they glimpsed spray and foam hanging in the atmosphere like the discharge of a seawater inferno. Soon they saw the first of the waves and it rose twenty feet in the air and broke like thunder over the four-fathom shoal. White foam tumbled and shook the ocean. Everywhere was whitewater and curling waves and they could not see the sky for the spray and foam and the smooth glass rising of the next swell.

  Virgil worked the boat around the edge of the breakers.

  Jesus Christ, Virgil, Jonah yelled and he looked for something to hold on to but found nothing. He watched a comber loom twice the height of the boat and curl and break next to them and the spray piled into them like hits from a shotgun.

  Bill watched the breakers wide-eyed and yelled to Jonah without looking away, He’s going to fucking kill us.

  Another wave broke and the Charlotte & Celeste skated sideways.

  Okay, Virgil yelled. Ashes to ashes. Say what you got to say and get him overboard.

  Jonah looked to Bill and Bill looked to Jonah and neither moved.

  Get him the Christ overboard, Virgil yelled as he worked the boat away from the breakers and into the smoother swells. Bill and Jonah kept their eyes on the tempest as if it were a poorly shackled beast and the beast’s open maw rang in their ears and filled their heads. Virgil’s face was red and grim. Chilled sweat combined with seawater and streamed down his cheeks. The boat pitched and rolled and heaved and the waves came in walls that eclipsed the sky. The breakers broke. Jonah’s mouth was dry and his tongue leather and his entire body soaked. He tried to swallow but could not.