Of Sea and Cloud (38 page)

Jason leaned back and laughed. Go get Turtle, Julius, would you please? Tell her to come in here before she freezes to death. It's cold out there. And ask her to bring the food with her.

When Julius went out Osmond poured a glass of scotch and tipped it back and looked at Jason and said, Don't fuck with us, Jason. I know you are big and I know you have friends and that is good and that is fine but you shall not interrupt my family life.

Business is family, Osmond. Settle down.

The vertical lines on Osmond's face were deep and lined with glistening sweat like flooded irrigation ditches. He could smell his own sweat like pesticide and it repelled him.

Julius came back followed by Turtle. She had a white cardboard box of sushi with her. She smiled and nodded at Jason then set the box on the bar and opened it. Jason plucked two out and swallowed them one at a time.

Big eye from Hawaii, he said. Caught two days ago. Goddamned Filipino crews down there pay attention. It's all quality.

Jason slid a glass of sake to Turtle and she drank it down in one gulp and said, Are you boys done with your little private talk? Fuck me waiting in the car.

We're here to come to an understanding, Jason said.

Understanding of what? Julius said.

Of you. First off, I'd like to know what happened to your face.

None of your business.

Virgil and the boys, Osmond said.

Virgil, said Jason. Virgil Alley did that? What for?

Caught me fucking his daughter is why. Julius glanced at Turtle but she was looking at the lobster in the tank.

Jason grinned and Osmond leaned over and whispered into Julius's ear, Please watch yourself here and now, Julius. Please do it for me.

I ain't got to watch nothing, Julius said. His voice was loud.

Was this fucking similar to what you did to my friend Gwen?

Julius sipped his cola.

They had a disagreement over traps. Territory, Osmond said and wished he hadn't spoken. He sat down and he looked at the bar then at his grandson then at his own palms. He tasted scotch. He looked at Jason sitting quietly in his white lab coat. Jason looked big and oafish but he was peeling back the layers that covered Julius and seeing Julius so exposed had exposed him as well and within that exposure Osmond saw so incredibly clearly that he had stepped to the side as his grandson Julius Wesley took his fall.

Jason leaned over and spoke to Turtle. She nodded and said, I think so too.

Jason turned back to Julius.

Julius put his empty cola can on the bar. Me and my girlfriend are none of your business.

That's right. I don't care about you and your girlfriend. I do care about you and Gwen, but we'll deal with that one later.

Osmond stared at a thin slice of tuna. He couldn't look at Julius.

Julius watched his grandfather then said, Fuck it, and walked out from behind the bar and began out the door but Jason held a hand up to stop him.

I'll walk you out, Jason said. He rose and put his hand between Julius's shoulder blades and gently pushed Julius toward the door. Osmond started to say something but his jaw felt locked and his throat too dry. Turtle stood before him staring at him with eyes that made him want to leave his own home.

Soon Jason returned. He sat at the bar and finished the bottle of sake. His neck gleamed with sweat. He watched the big lobster and Osmond watched him and on Jason's white lab coat Osmond saw a smear of wet blood that he could not take his eyes from. No one spoke and it was almost ten more minutes before they heard Julius's truck start and spin around and run down the long clamshell driveway. Osmond pictured the boy in the truck now beaten once again and he wished he could chase Julius down and hold him in his arms and tell him that someday soon they would start over.

Go, said Osmond.

Maybe we'll talk later.

No. Go away from here.

Jason stood. He slid the box of sushi toward Osmond. He took Turtle by the hand and left.

Osmond sat at the bar and listened as Jason's small car started and drove away. He looked around the empty room. His gaze settled on Julius's empty cola can. Something was perched atop the can and Osmond stood and took two steps and there atop the can sat a single gray tooth. Osmond lifted it into the air. He knew it was Nicolas's and he understood it to be the last words of a hangman so without pause he turned and dropped the tooth into the lobster tank.

All that remained was the ocean.

Hours before daylight. Jonah alone walked the dark woods to Nicolas's wharf. He paused at the edge of the trees. He lit a cigarette and his unshaven face flashed orange against the night. Before him spread the small cove shot silver from the moon. The wharf like a thumb jutted toward Stone Island with planks heavy and glistening with frost. With one hand he climbed the ladder down to the float and with his other he held his father's rifle.

His skiff was upside down on the float and caked in ice. He slapped at the ice with a single palm and the cakes broke off in soft sheets that slid to the float planks and crumbled. He reached beneath the gunwale and righted the skiff then slid it into the water. Tails of kelp swished and frames of ice glowed and the small waves shifted white then silver then gray as the water tilted and swung beneath the sky.

He braced the rifle against the stern and fitted the oarlocks into their sockets then the oars into their locks. He spun the skiff and rowed stern-first to the mouth of the cove. The
Cinderella
lay at anchor with the beggar gull perched on the bow. The skiff banged against the fiberglass as Jonah climbed aboard. He opened the baitbox and tossed a herring to the gull and watched as the gull batted its wings then swallowed the fish in a single choking gulp. He fired the engine and tied the skiff's painter off to the anchor rode. The big diesel grumbled in the cold air then settled into its easy throaty rhythm.

Jonah throttled south to open sea. Water sprayed from the chines. Wake tumbled like snow from a plow blade. Two Penny flashed and Drown Boy revolved and beyond both and beyond the bright shining moon lay Orion perched in the sky as if guarding the holds of the sea with bow and arrow and Jonah wished for such simple weaponry.

The sea was plate steel. An archipelago of islands like thrown stones spread to the south and to the east the bridge with its archway of lights led to the village on Mason's Island. Jonah ran the
Cinderella
at half throttle. The rifle was on the bulkhead before him and he nested his left hand atop it. He rounded the point that sheltered Osmond Randolph's home. A single light in the end window cast a smooth glow on the surrounding snowpack. Jagged points of spruce and fir pressed the skyline. Osmond's boat floated a black shadow atop the water and beyond the boat the small wharf stood silhouetted against the granite ledges.

Jonah stopped less than a hundred yards off. He took three cartridges from his pocket and fitted them into the magazine. He chambered one. The working of the bolt clicked against the sound of the diesel. He held the rifle to his shoulder and peered through the scope at Osmond's home. In the crosshairs he saw a bedside lamp. He pictured Osmond reading beside it then pictured the bulb shattering.

With the boat in neutral and the rifle butt braced on his hip he slammed the throttle wide open for a breath. The engine howled and ripped. He watched. Sweat beaded in his armpits and rolled down his ribs. He leaned against the wheelhouse wall and tried to sight on the lamp as the boat rose and fell with the movements of the water. He reached down with one hand and pumped the throttle again and the noise was like a hole punched in the nighttime. A flaw of wind pushed him toward shore so he spun a quick circle to keep the boat off the rocks and just then he saw Osmond glide like a bird past the window.

Jonah aligned the boat with the bow facing the house. He cranked the windshield open and pointed the rifle through the opening. He reached down and flipped the overhead lights on and blasted Osmond's house with light and suddenly there in the window stood Osmond Randolph naked and white and frozen in time with his black hair wrapped along his jawline and his arms spread like the reaches of a cross. Jonah's blood surged and he heard pistons slide in his ears. He struggled to catch his breath. He tried to settle the crosshairs but his mind flashed to Osmond's hand upon his face and he remembered feeling from that palm that death was on its way.

The crosshairs danced over Osmond's body. Jonah shouldered sweat from his forehead. He jammed his eyes closed then open and felt the salt sting. He thumbed the safety off. He smelled gun oil. He worked his finger against the trigger and even with the rise and fall of the sea and the shaking of his body the crosshairs found Osmond's trunk.

The
Cinderella
drifted toward shore.

Jonah whispered to himself,
You, Osmond, you
.

He thought of his brother. He blinked over and over and tried to refocus. He felt the stock now warm against his cheek. He told himself that Bill would have shot by now but in truth he doubted it. He tapped his finger against the trigger and the barrel end wavered out in front of him. He wished Osmond would duck or run or charge but all Osmond did was stand like a target with his arms spread wide.

Jonah lifted his head to see Osmond through naked eyes. Osmond leaned forward and pressed his body against the window and with that slight movement Jonah understood what Osmond was after. The
Cinderella
rose sharply on a steep wave and Jonah looked around and saw that he'd drifted into shoal water. Waves lifted from beneath him then curled and broke. He faced Osmond. He held the rifle vertically out over the water with its barrel pointed skyward and with a last glance at Osmond he released it. The rifle fell with barely a splash.

Jonah shut the overhead lights down. The engine rumbled in the darkness. Then easy like a coyote backing across a snow white plain he reversed the
Cinderella
until all that remained of Osmond's home was a distant shining light holding the shape of a man.

• • •

Osmond Randolph moved. He stepped naked from his house into the bitter dark. He eased the door closed. He walked the ledges to his wharf and his bare feet melted tracks into the frozen granite and into the frosted wharf planks but the footprints quickly glazed with ice making it appear that his passage had been long ago.

Osmond made his way to the end of the wharf. He watched the
Cinderella
round the peninsula but the echo of its engine still throbbed across the waters. He held a pistol in his hand. He stood with the toes and balls of his feet out over the end of the wharf. He looked first to the unclouded heavens then to his boat and last to the ebb and swirl of seawater. He said something that nobody heard.

• • •

Jonah slammed the throttle down. He sped east with Orion off to the south and the moon easing into the west and gradually his breathing slowed and his heart settled but the image of Osmond begging for end burned in his mind.

When he reached the harbor mouth he slowed to an idle. He saw to the north the few lights of the small village and the shape of the wharf with its bait house roof sheathed in frost and moon. He looked east to the shape of Stone Island and saw the faint glow of a lantern burning in his camp like the soft reflection of flame on rock.

He looked south and considered the world out there. A smile cracked across his face. He spun the
Cinderella
and charged offshore with Orion over his bow and the full open eye of the moon sliding beneath his starboard rail. A pair of auks bobbed off Ram's Head and scattered as he passed. He swung tight against the ledges off Two Penny and a flock of sandpipers lifted from the rocks and their white undersides flashed in a single wave. The abandoned lighthouse rose in the moonlight and he saw first the reflection of the moon in the glass dome at its peak and then the passing glint of the
Cinderella
.

He held an unlit cigarette in his lips. He braced his hand on the brass wheel that was worn to fit a dead man's fist. The Drown Boy Rock lighthouse rose like a steeple out of the water and far beyond stood a mountain. As he steamed south the mountaintop began to burn with the first trace of sunrise and soon it appeared not that the light descended the mountainside but that the mountain itself rose to the light.

• • •

Clouds came with the sun. Jonah drifted above the Leviathan Ground. The moon had sunk and all was gray and he could not tell where the sea ended and the clouds began. He thought of his father down below. He thought of his brother on dry land. He thought of Osmond with his vertical wheals of skin like ruts and his eyes like rust holes. He thought of Virgil and of going and taking the man in his arms and telling him all was forgiven. He thought of Charlotte asleep at his camp and he knew that the girl he'd known was gone from him forever.

He dropped his fist onto the throttle and spun the wheel. The bow of the
Cinderella
arced through the waters until it faced north and eclipsed the vacant lighthouse on Two Penny. Beyond Two Penny was an island called Burnt and within the grip of Burnt Island stood a slat-wood dam and a riprap causeway which together formed a lobster pound. He sailed north for home and the diesel engine echoed but Jonah heard only the gentle slide of water like voices calling and his eyes searched the mist that sprayed from the chines as if he would find a loved one there. He felt he understood something although he could not say what so he knocked his fist against the boat's bulkhead as if to reaffirm the center of the earth.

Copyright © 2014 by Jon Keller.
All rights reserved.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

Published by TYRUS BOOKS
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, OH 45242. U.S.A.
www.tyrusbooks.com

ISBN 10: 1-4405-8022-7
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-8022-2
eISBN 10: 1-4405-8023-5
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-8023-9