Thursday, October 03, 2024

Tidelines

(This is either a short story or an excerpt from an unpublished novel I stopped writing 20 years ago.)

A tiny slip of land appeared off the coast at sunset, momentarily lit by the arc of the sun’s last rays. As our plane banked toward the mainland, the island quickly disappeared from sight again.

Twelve hours later, we would be setting out from that very spot, heading north, hugging the coastline. 

These waters don’t always forgive careless sailors. Here the water is warm, cloudy with sand. Where the creeks empty out, brown dyes from tannic acid leaks from the mangroves. Predator birds, poison spiders, alligators, stingrays, crabs and other scavengers wait nearby, unseen and unheard.

Most sailors do just fine around here unless they strike an oyster bed, get drunk, or do both. We glide easily, nose into the wind, black mast shining, at our purposeful pace, tracing the beaches that stretch onward without apparent end. Offshore the water is crystal clear; the winds are steady.

For as long as it takes, we’ll drift on the bay side of each succeeding shoreline, some sandy, some mangroved, our silvery fishing lines trailing, seeking dinner. At night, we’ll retreat to familiar, calm places to throw anchor and sip our margaritas, waiting on the stars.

A large shark trailed us for two hours this afternoon: sleek, blue-gray, probably hungry, maybe curious, maybe ill or affected by pollution somehow. We drifted slowly along in our most submissive pose. 

“I think I’ll go for a night swim,” I say to no one in particular.

So as the sun falls, I slip overboard, swim 25 yards out to the tideline, turn over and float, waiting for the strike. After a quarter-hour, still separated by 25 yards, carried at the same speed by the same tide, I return to the boat. The hair on my body falls flat against my skin, coated with salt like a fresh cut of flank steak. 

Hibiscus, palmetto, prickly pears, carissas, wild avocados, wild papayas, key limes, coconuts – they’re what grow in these islands. They get ripe, fall in storms, and rot in the white sand. Rarely does anybody peel back their skins or crunch into their centers except for the drifters like us.

Stopping by one of the clapboard houses on the inland waterfront would be an option tonight. Everybody knows everybody around here. But when twilight merges with purple, our drinks taste big. This is their special hour. Olives never sink into ice out here. Night music suddenly rushes offshore, from a point near the only house overlooking this shallow bay, dark and lonely. 

Inside that house, the smells are dank, warm, and sweet, like memories held closely. Once we ventured there, stoned and dancing, but now its long, loose-boarded dock lays bare, inching out into the bay, covered in white Pelican droppings, lit up by the moon, waiting.

Jessica liked to dance here, her flimsy cotton skirt twirling like seaweed around her long white legs and her girlish figure. We were always watching her, always consuming. Everyone had to watch Jessie, and her showings. She danced and she laughed, always too close to the edge, sometimes falling in, of course. After that, her clothes fit her like an extra membrane; and our voices turned husky from the wanting.

But now it’s Rembrandt-black out here and the only ones dancing are the shooting stars overhead. The poisons I’ve lit scare away a few of the killer mosquitoes. Fat white mullet jump after those mosquitoes in the shallows. I curl my upper lip; another night here and I may be eating them, tearing them apart slice by slice, dropping oily white pieces all down my naked chest.

The next day we’re far offshore, suffering our due from that damned night, those damned olives, those damned lime slices. Damned Jessie, too. “You don’t like my dancing any more,” she pouted. But I‘m already looking away, no longer hearing. Now it’s Susan, pink like a prickly pear, brown and white, tight, soft, wet and curving. 

Into the shore we go, all too happily of course, in search of the foods only these parts know how to yield. My knife has lodged itself in between my teeth. We unravel our ropes and jump into the brown-green water, waist-deep, wading now into the sandiest places, cutting our toes on oyster beds, freeing some of the type-O blood that scavengers love, moving among weed beds where biting worms back their slim little hips into caves, corkscrewing backwards, their tiny teeth bared, waiting for something fresh to rip into.

A storm is building. We can hear its whispers and taste its wetness. My knife peels away a few of the thorns from a prickly pear, my teeth tear into the sweet redness, juices squirt south. Lovely Susan smiles in tonight’s twilight, quivering at my touch. We consume robust offerings, then wash all the evidence away, and sit down again, waiting out a hoped-for death tide. Looking out at this blood-red sky, we are so much detritus, willing to leave a trail of whatever story that seems fitting in our wake.

But no luck tonight. The tide’s going out, not coming in. The boggy coast empties itself, releasing organic odors. This bay is off-gassing. Crustaceans left behind by the tide crawl across the mud, each species with its own distinctive trail. 

Just like humans. 

It’s time to drink all of this discomfort back into its place. After all, this is a mosquito habitat, not a human place, at least not for modern humans. The rafters of that one old house probably host more skinny black tree rats right now than the total number of people who have ever eaten, slept, or made love there. This boat, by contrast, is only populated by me, Jessie, Susan and a few others whose names are probably best forgotten. 

There are shell mounds, poking up along the shore, all that’s left from the thousands of years that Native people fished and hunted here. Now and then a bone fragment breaks free, human bones, old, greenish, broken, thick and blunted by sand and salt. Their owners knew which plants and which juices drove the mosquitoes away. We have only our silly synthetics, which, facing the genetic plasticity of creatures who reproduce in the bat of our eye, do little more than engender resistance, so we mindlessly escalate our chemical warfare in return – a modern cycle of despair.

Tonight, we cook small blue crabs, pulled off of the bay’s soft bottom, in butter. It goes well with sea lettuce, the kind whose salty fibers taste sharp and peppery. This is so healthy, I am proud. Time now to wash it all down with some firewater. Slowly, the ghosts join me. Everything else -- the sounds, the smells, the fears –- retreat, leaving us alone and intimate.

‘Suddenly the sounds of the fiddles and accordions sweetly begin to play...and I can almost hear her sweet voice say.’

”Maybe the storm decided to pass by,“ Susan calls out from below. She steps up and out onto the deck, unwraps her towel and walks boldly into the moonlight, wearing her tan lines like camouflage. Tomorrow the sun will again stroke her body like the tides stroke the bay. 

Everything leaves its mark.

(Copyright: David A. Weir)

HEADLINES: 

LYRICS:

"Come on Joe"

Well, it's a long, hot night
And the stars are shining kinda extra bright
Sitting on the back porch glidin'
Whetting my appetite

Well, I'm a six-pack high
And start missing the light of my baby's eyes
Wasn't it beautiful, the kind of a soul they said would never die

Well, it's muggy in the shack
And the backwoods are black
'Cause the clouds hid the moon away
The light from my cigarette flickers in the dark
The only way she knows I'm here
Then suddenly the sounds of the fiddles and accordions
Sweetly begin to play and I can almost hear her sweet voice say

Come on Joe, just count to ten
Pull yourself together again
And come on Joe, you gotta get hold of this mood you're in
Come on Joe, you gotta be strong
You're still young and life goes on to carry on
'Til we're together again

Hey, I know she's right
But it's hard to fight when you're hurtin' so
I tried to walk out of that door before but I just can't go
With the tears and the laughter in every rafter in every room
Wasn't it beautiful
Wasn't it the kind of happiness and glow

Come on Joe, just count to ten
Pull yourself together again
And come on Joe, you gotta get hold of this mood you're in
Come on Joe, you gotta be strong
You're still young and life goes on to carry on
'Til we're together again

Come on Joe
Hey, come on Joe
To carry on 'til we're together again

-- Written by Tony Romeo, Sung by Jo-El Sonnier 

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