You have no items in your cart. Want to get some nice things?
Go shopping
By Gerri Brightwell
A dying afternoon and for all that he’s been heaving on the oars, the current’s dragged his boat out past the headland, out to where the rocks of the Devil’s Teeth snag waves that split and curl and froth. What an old fool he is for going out in the wake of bad storms. A few fish for supper, he’d told his wife, and he’d been too absorbed in flinging out the net and hauling it back in to notice the shore slipping away—hidden in the sea, a current swollen with runoff rushing through the sound and carrying him with it. He could break his back fighting it and not make a whit of difference, and yet he keeps pulling on the oars. Years living off the sea haven’t made him wise, he thinks. No, they’ve made him careless.
On the edge of his hearing, a hiss then a cold touch of spray. He glances over his shoulder. The Devil’s Teeth, so close that the spindrift of smashed waves is settling over him, and now everything is glistening—his oilskins, his boots, his poor hands growing numb and stiff, and yet he keeps dragging at the oars. Over the centuries, how many boats have foundered here? Galleons and clippers, sloops and caravels, all broken apart and their men struggling against the water, bubbles leaking from their mouths until they grew still and drifted down to where pale creatures bit at their flesh.
When he strains at the oars again he’s so exhausted and clumsy that one hand loses its grip. Off the oar goes, riding merrily over one wave then the next, buoyed along, and isn’t that the way of things—an oar, a blanket, a spoon—that they outlast us? He sucks in a breath: the Devil’s Teeth so near that he can make out the barnacles clinging to them, and a bright splash of bird shit not yet worn away. He ducks his head and takes hold of the gunwales to steel himself because he knows how it will go: the hull crunching against the rocks, the freezing water surging in.
He thinks of his wife and the lonely life he’s leaving her to. Perhaps she’s sensed that something’s wrong and has come outside to peer across the sound. From the doorstep she’ll see nothing except the water’s shifting greys, and her fingers might lift to her mouth, as they do when she’s anxious. But she is nothing if not a practical woman, and once outside she’ll busy herself, eyeing the bulky clouds that promise more rain, then moving along the clothesline where the wind’s sending his shirts dancing like ghosts. She’ll pluck away pegs, folding those shirts over her arm then carrying them inside to finish drying by the fire. There they’ll wait for him while his lungs fill with water and his body’s drawn down by its own weight to settle amongst the bones of other unfortunates.
Those shirts, waiting for him. Those shirts flapping in the wind like loose sails. He can scarcely breathe because he’s fumbling with the buttons of his oilskin coat, and he’s hauling himself to his feet with the edges of that coat stretched wide in his hands. At any moment his boat might capsize, at any moment a wave might topple him into the sea, but for now he is a mast, his coat a sail, and as the wind fills it with breath, he closes his eyes and holds on.
—END—
