To Sea

  Jon slept on his stomach in the sand. The sun rose slow over the neighbor’s large house. The sandpipers call resonated off the strong waves. A stray sandpiper stepped on his head—the bird’s beak pecking at the whiskers on his chin—awakening Jon with his hands already waving about.

  “These damned pipers,” he yelled. “Stop messin’ with me.” He swatted at his beard. Then he got to his feet quickly, kicking sand up at the piper retreating back to the dunes.

  The sun was well above the land now.

  Jon picked his beard nervously whenever he heard the sandpipers chirp in the dunes. But he soon relaxed, walking to the beat of the waves. The sun shone as if it came right out of the ocean. The water rippling rays of light in an intoxicating pattern of repetitiveness. The fisherman blinked hard—his head staggering back and forth. Then he steadied himself and he looked out at the point where rippled distortion met the clear blue sky. He leaned over, regurgitating into the low waves. His body swaying with the current pressing in from the east.

  “Yesterday was Easter,” he mumbled between spits of phlegm. He looked out at the sun, smiling. “I repent. I shall serve. I repent.” Jon slowly closed his eyes, blinking out tears.

  He looked down, watching bits of his vomit drift through his legs—rubbing up against his skin. He jumped back, splashing about the water, eventually falling to the shore. His clothes covered in a film of sand. He sat with his back arched to the sky. His mouth perched open. “Oh,” he cried. “I need to walk this hangover off. Come on body.” Jon lifted his dehydrated self out of the sand and he headed west down along the sea. He washed his face in the passing waves. His knees wobbled. His feet sinking into the sand.

  After a couple of hours of walking, Jon found a cove cut from the cliffs with charred wood and burnt sand surrounded by a couple of felled trees used as benches.

  “This overhang will block the sun,” he said to himself, pressing three fingers into his forearm. When he released, a white flash gleamed and then it faded quickly back to red. Jon winced and he rubbed his arm. “Damned sunburned. Goddamn son of a bitch.” He kicked the charred wood with his left foot, then with his right and then again with his left foot before tripping over a large log not burnt all the way through and he fell on his right arm.

  “Goddamned sunburn,” he shouted. His voice echoing back to him under the low ceiling of the cliffside. Jon picked himself up out of the carbon pit and he sat down on one of the trees. The sea’s salt had rubbed its bark down to a smooth finish. Jon batted at his clothes. He removed the fine chards sticking to him. Then he pecked at his beard, discarding grains of sand and fragments of burnt wood. He took slow, deep breathes and he closed his eyes, relaxing his body to the smooth sound of the waves tumbling over the sand.

  By the time he opened his eyes, the sun had sunk down two-thirds below the water. A crisp breeze blew in off the sea, biting at his cheeks. He quivered his head, jerking it quickly back and forth.

  “Geez,” he said, scratching at his beard. “Must have dozed off for a few.” He ran his fingers over the lids of his eyes, yawning. The sea reflected all the purples, oranges and reds of the setting sun sky. There was a whisper of hums from the water running up over the sand before falling back into the sea. Jon shivered at the cold evening air coming in off the shore. He got up from the driftwood log. He stretched his muscles, bending over, touching the upper rubbers on the toes of his boots and then he looked out at the sun sink below the gold horizon. Then all the world turned dark. A sliver of moon dangled among a bed of speckling stars. Jon began to walk along shore where the waves peaks—painted white by the moon—lined the divide between water and land. He trudged through the low tide—sometimes falling into the low tide—‘til he walked up on the shore, tucking himself between the gully of two large dunes, casting a dark shadow on him. The soothing sound of waves comforted him. He felt safe hidden from the moon’s light. He cleaned his glasses with the bottom hem of his shirt. Then he placed the frames back over his nose. He looked up at the stars twinkling a silent song. He closed his eyes and he imagined they were singing the lullaby his mother had sung to him on the shore behind the home that was now his. He could not make out the words from his memory, but he could remember the tune, and he hummed the gentle hum of the song the stars could not sing.

  Jon’s mouth pulsed with the smooth sounds buzzing from behind his lips. The vibrations drifting him into a slumber beneath the bright blinking sky. And as Jon slept under the sliced moon and the twinkling stars—the waves tore at the shore, the mice scurried across the cool sand, and the nights wind wisped up grains of sand tangling in the long whiskers on Jon’s cheeks and chin.

  The sun rose over the cliffs and the moon faded into the lightening blue sky. The sun’s warm rays struck Jon’s red sunburnt skin—awakening him with a twinge of pain.

  “Morning, already?” Jon questioned. He looked up at the sun rising slow above the cliffs behind him. His eyes then scanned over the steep dunes to a small opening with a chain link fence surrounding a small patch of asphalt.

  Jon picked his body up out of the sand. He brushed the grains from his clothes as he walked quickly to the enclosed area. He peered in at a small sign dangling with one screw in the top left corner. “Private,” Jon read aloud. “Please keep gate locked.”

  He ran his fingers through the curls in his beard, picking at the grains embedded within his whiskers, throwing the sand to the ground. His feet stumbled through the uneven sand and the thick rocks lining the shore until he reached the smooth paved stones that led up the cliff and to the gate. He rested himself on a bench made of recycled plastics. He watched a group of people down, over to the left on the sand. He hid himself behind a large stone, making sure his viewpoint was out of the reach of his prey.

  A small African-American child, who wore small braids close to her head, played in the sand in front of a large Caucasian woman and a thin tan woman. The large woman offered the little girl water from a small plastic bottle. Then the woman squeezed the water over the child’s head before handing the bottle to the girl. Jon could hear the young child squeal with chilled delight. And then he could hear the higher tones of the thin woman’s voice trailing off through the gusts of wind passing up over his ear behind the tall rock.

  Jon swallowed hard and he looked up at the sun. It had moved out up over the cliff, directly overhead. Its rays dancing through the needles of the pines lacing the side of the steep hill. The young child abandoned the drink and she went back to tossing about the sand. Her think calves waving in the wind. Her stubbed toes clenching the air tightly with her bottom pressed deep into the sand.

  Behind Jon, a small white sports car with an elderly man who wore oversized sunglasses folded the morning newspaper under his arm and then he started his car. On his retreat from the lot, he leaned out of his window, offering his paper to a young mother who hoisted her youngling from a small car seat. She declined and the white car sped off. Jon whipped his head around quick. He took in the social interactions of the beach. The day had begun all around him. The people of the earth had begun to interact under the shining rays of the mid-April sun. He slid his glasses off to the edge of his nose. Then he huffed a fog over each lens, wiping the condensation off on the bottom of his shirt as he started for the parking lot.

  Jon licked his lips with his parched, white tongue. His legs, now stabilized on the hardened ground, swayed his steps slowly. He felt the weight of his beard pulling down the lowers of his jaw, tugging his head down to the ground.

  “I need some water,” he thought. “My mouth is so dry.” He licked his lips again, but more quickly. “A town can’t be far in. A main street is sure to be only a couple blocks up. Long Island ain’t too long.” Jon dusted the sand from his boots and he began to walk up the road built into the steep cliffs of the north fork.

  As he walked, the hills alternated. And when they c
rested upward, he leaned into the hill—exposed to the warm rays of light untouched by the leaves of trees. And when the hill would peak, he would soon fall into low lying shady troughs. This continued for a little over a mile until Jon could make out a single traffic light hanging along a wire in the middle of a crossroads. The light bobbed in suspension—a monotone red blinking in all four directions.

  He took to the right, heading west down the road enclosed by trees on either side with trunks tied tight with vines.

  “These small roads were never built for all this damned traffic,” he moaned when cars buzzed passed his staggering steps. But the walk was short. And in no time, he began to see storefronts lit up with the day’s sales lining the sidewalk. “I really could use a cold drink,” he said, licking his lips with his dry tongue. “Wonder if a guy could find a bar ‘round these parts.” He stood in front of a novelty gift shop, the kind that sells greeting cards and lotto tickets, and he traced his shadow in the storefront window with his finger. His jaw dropping low and his legs wobbling a bit under the weight of his body beneath the warming sun. After his finger ran over the outline of his head, tracing the outer edges of his scruffed beard, he looked down the road, catching the sight of a dark windowed building with neon beer bottles cheersing—glistening. The door swung open in the distance and a tall gentleman wearing a denim jacket and denim jeans, holding a cigarette in one hand, a lighter in the other, leaned against the side of the bar.

  Jon wiped his hand over the smudged tracing of his face on the glass and he raced over towards the bar. “A glass of water and a tall pour of scotch should do,” he thought. “And perhaps a sandwich to fill me proper.” He patted on his stomach and a shallow echo sounded. As he walked, he watched the traffic glide passed him. He gazed at his reflection glow in and out of perspective on the fancy, high buffed cars. He could see his hair all matted and oily—his beard uneven, pressed in on the right side. His clothes—soiled and sandy. He had spent the last two days on the coast and he surely had looked like it.

  “Spare a cig?” Jon asked as he tapped the man’s denim shoulder.

  The man nodded, pulling a cigarette from behind his ear, presenting it to Jon.

  “How ‘bout a light?”

  The man fiddled around his front pockets with his upper lip stiffened in his quest until he drew a lighter, flicking fire in front of Jon’s mouth.

  “Thanks, man. I could really use one of these right now.”

  “Sure looks it,” the man said, turning his back, flipping up his collar. “That and a shower, pal,” he mumbled, throwing his half smoked butt down the gutter, heading back into the bar.

  Jon stood with his back pressed against the side of the building. He relaxed his muscles, letting the stucco wall press into his back as he watched the white stick in his mouth crawl into smooth gray ashes towards his lips.

  When he smoked all but the filter, he loosened his grip on the soft sponge, letting it drop between his feet. He pushed himself off the wall. He bent his knees, closing his eyes. He shoved his hands into his front pockets, widening his mouth as he released a smooth smoky yawn that fell into his beard. Then he walked into the tavern, sitting at the end of the bar on the far corner away from the door.

  “Make it a double scotch and a tall glass of water,” he said.

  The bartender nodded.

  Jon folded over a paper napkin that was left in front of him until the bartender returned with his order. The fisherman then tipped the glass of water to his lips, swallowing its contents in a single gulp before he moved to the scotch, doing the same. Then he waved to the bartender for another scotch—which Jon would then drink slower.

  Once the second drink arrived, Jon placed his nose in the glass. He savored the sweet smell, loosening the muscles in his face. He looked down the bar instantly locking eyes with a woman who sipped on a pink drink frothed with foam on the top of the high glass. She tipped the drink slightly towards herself, wrapping her painted pink lips around the white straw with two yellow lines stripping down into the glass. Her eyes batted quickly. Then she looked back up into Jon’s eyes buried within his sunburned face—his nose in his scotch. Her blonde hair hung loosely over her white blouse snuggly fitted around her busty chest. Her capri jeans tightly hugged her thick ankles where her thick feet slipped into dirtied white sandals.

  Two more drinks passed through Jon’s lips. And by this time, the woman had winked and smiled her way to the stool beside him.

  “Mona,” she said softly. “My name; it’s Mona. I haven’t seen you ‘round here, ever. You must be new.” She smiled, motioning two beers to the bartender. “So, how you like it?” She winked and she edged her seat closer to Jon. But he could not hear her over the jukebox streaming monotonic classic rock. He simply nodded and he tipped his drink back at her. “You new ‘round these parts?” she said again.

  “I’m from the sea,” he said, pushing his drink onto the coaster.

  “Now don’t be silly. No one is from the sea.” She paused, drinking on her beer. “You must mean you are a fisherman? Or a captain? Or something of that sort?”

  “I mean what I mean, miss. Take no interest in me. I am from the sea, and that is how it is.” Jon turned his shoulder from the woman. Then he rimmed his drink with his finger ‘til it hissed a smooth whistle.

  She leaned over, placing her hand on his inner thigh. Then she pressed her lips to his ear. “It’s okay,” she said softly. “You sailors are all the same. But trust me, once you go for a ride with ol’ Mona, you’ll find your land legs real quick.” She winked, running her hand further up his thigh and into his front pocket. “Let’s just get to know each other a little better over a few drinks, and then we’ll see where this night takes us, Hon.”

  Jon stared into his scotch. He watched the amber liquid wiggle under the dim lighting. He heard only fragments of her words, muffled by the crooners in the quarter jukebox.

  She ordered another round. And then a third. And soon after, a forth. And then a fifth. They had gotten drunk. But Jon’s lips did not loosen. Mona controlled the conversation, mumbling about her mundane life as a divorced, middle-aged woman, still drinking in the same bar she drank in as a teen. All of which Jon reluctantly listened to between the loud songs from the jukebox that played the same tracks from when Mona first came to the bar. They sat for a long while before Mona tapped a pack of cigarettes into her palm and she walked to the door with Jon following close behind.

  She leaned against the stucco wall. Then she lit the end of her cigarette, sucking in the smoke, exhaling into foggy conversation. “I usually don’t talk to guys I never met before,” she said. “Especially in a bar. Got to be safe these days, you know.”

  Jon frowned. “I’d rather not spark her up anymore than she already is,” he thought. “She lives in this bar. She has probably slept with everyone in there. I know it. She can’t fool me.” He took a cigarette from her and she lit the stick in his mouth.

  “Let’s go to the sound. It’s so beautiful there at dusk. Have you ever seen the sunset below the waves there, yet?”

  “No, I haven’t,” he lied. “But I can imagine it is lovely.”

  She puffed hard on her cigarette, decreasing its contents quickly into her lungs. “Oh, then we must go. I’ll show you my special spot there. It’s simply to die for.” She winked, wrapping her lips around her cigarette, blowing smoke out of her nose. “Come on, stranger. Let’s go.” She took his hand and they headed down the main street, veering down a desolate road taking them to the sea.

  They walked with drunken steps under the falling sun sky with sporadic streetlights switching on. They walked for what seemed to be longer than they had expected, with the sun completely behind the waves when they arrived to the sound.

  “Oh, shucks,” Mona said, snapping her fingers. “We missed it. We missed all the beautiful colors across the sky. We missed the suns
et.” She frowned. Then she collapsed to the shore. “I wanted you to see it.” She slumped her head between her broad shoulders, shoving her hands into the sand at her sides.

  “Don’t worry, miss,” Jon said, placing his hand in her hair, petting it back towards her neck. “I have seen the sunset many times out at sea. I know the magic it can bring. I know the life it breathes. I have seen the sun drop behind the waves my whole life. I know it is beautiful. Those blues. Those purples. Pinks. Reds. Oranges.” He looked out at the darkling sky cast its shadow over the sea and all earth. He took his hand off Mona’s head and he sat himself beside her.

  She picked her head up and she smiled. “You haven’t spoken all night. Not a peep. That was beautiful. I guess you don’t need to speak much when you can spit stuff like that out.” Her language was roughened—filled with the native accent picked up in the bar. He listened to very little of her rhetoric. But he heard enough to hear the ignorance and the arrogance embedded within her speech. The wants and desires that hid behind each word leaving her lips—washing away out to sea. “The dark is pretty too,” she said, pointing up at the stars forming behind them. “It’s like someone turned out the lights and it’s time to cuddle up under the covers.” Mona shifted her weight in the sand, draping her heavy arms around his waist. “It’s just beautiful.”

  Jon tensed and he frowned. His body felt light and loose. His mouth was dry. “The light is pretty good, too, though.” He tried to take to his feet but Mona wrapped her arms tighter around him, pushing him back to the sand.

  “Trying to get away, eh?” Her lips smirked crookedly. “No one gets away from ol’ Mona.” She laughed a drunken laugh, easing herself to Jon’s side.

  The ocean was soft but it brought in a rough breeze strong enough to blow specks of sand over the two.

  “Not a cloud in sight,” she said. “Not a one.” She smiled, kissing her fingertips, blowing her kisses to the blanket of stars covering the black sky. “I can never pick just one,” she said. “You know, to wish on.” She rolled off Jon, hanging her hands behind her head. “So I just blow a kiss to them all and hope that all of my dreams come true.” She winked at Jon and she kissed her fingertips again. But this time she ran them across his lips—then down, deep into his beard.

  Jon stiffened. Then he shifted away from Mona. He connected the stars into constellations. He felt light. He felt the bob of the ocean as if it were underneath him. He felt as if he were floating on the surface of the sea and a ceiling of endless stars dangled, suspended above him. He felt his blood—thinned by the abundance of alcohol—beat heavy warmth through his wrists and his neck. He felt like he was back at home. He felt he was of the sea.

  “You sure are quiet.” She shifted her curves flirtatiously against him and the sand. “You look so stiff. Like you are getting chilly. Here, let me warm you on up.” Mona pinned Jon to the sand. “It’s already dark, can you believe it?”

  Jon nodded, trying to wiggle room between the sand, him, and Mona. “I don’t think I like where this is going,” he said.

  “It’s going all right.” She slid her hand across his chest, running her fingers loosely over his stomach, then into his waistband. “And these are going off first.”

  Jon tried to move. But her hand was on his penis. All five fingers wrapped around it. She had control. His consciousness wanted to stop. But his loins were just getting started. “I’m a married man.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “Tonight you’re Mona’s.” She grabbed at his penis and it grew in her hand. “Tonight you are mine. Under all of my stars.” She kissed the tips of her fingers for a third time, blowing her love to the stars.

  Jon tried to loosen her grip from him again, but the alcohol weakened him and his instincts took over his morality. Mona slipped her capris off. Then she took off her shirt. She shimmied Jon’s appendages from his clothes, burying them into the sand as she drunkenly stumbled back on top of him.

  Her moans where muffled by the crashes of waves as she rocked and rode him ‘til they both screamed up over the waves before falling back to earth, motionless in the sand.

  She lifted herself off of him and Jon found himself pressed into the sand. He stared up at the white slice of a moon in the sky. He blinked quickly and rings around the moon radiated out into the shine of stars. He rubbed his eyes under his glasses. Then he headed for the sea—running full speed until he crashed into the waves.

  From the shore, Mona could barely make out his position. But she could hear his limbs flapping in the shallow water to the north. She covered her breasts with her arms and she bent over in the search for the touch of her clothes.

  Jon continued to flop about the waves. Then he got down to his knees with the water cresting up over his face, where he began to shout a prayer to the heavens. “Wash me of my sins, Father,” he shouted through huffs of sea rushing over his face—into his mouth. “Wash me of my forbidden sins. Take me home. I am nearly ready. I am yours. I am yours.” Jon fell face first into the water. Then he picked himself up out of the waves, heading back to the shoreline where Mona was clothed with Jon’s clothing piled up next to her.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “I am sorry, but I don’t think I have gotten your name yet.”

  Jon walked unhurriedly. His legs far apart from one another. His arms dangled—dripping water from his body. “My name?” he said. “My name is Mare. Mare Abyss.”

  Mona frowned at his answer. But she decided not to question the response from the man who had just tossed about the waves, shouting a plea for forgiveness to the heavens. “That is an interesting name,” she said, now scared of his mysterious qualities. She paused. Then she pointed at his clothes neatly folded on the sand at her feet. “Your clothes. I found them. You want to put them on and head back into town? It’s quite dark here. It isn’t safe, you know.” She shook slightly. Then she headed for the streetlamp lighting up the exit towards the road.

  Jon placed his clothes over his wet body. Then he jogged up to Mona who paced under the light.

  “Come on, Mare. Let’s head back to town. It’s getting cold. And late. I need to head to bed.” She watched Jon take his strides slowly towards her as he kept looking back out to sea. “You lost or something? You really live out on the sea or something? What is your deal?”

  “I live out on the north fork. Way out east. But I reside on the waves of the Atlantic.” He pulled the water from his beard. He pushed his glasses up on his nose, watching the waves roll in. “I need to get back home. I’ve been wandering about the coast for the last few days. Living on the sand.” He paused, turning to look into Mona’s eyes. “I have seen the sunset on this sound. I slept between these dunes and these cliffs the last few nights. And then I made it to the bar this afternoon.”

  Mona began to walk down the street, motioning Jon to follow. “Well, how far out you live? You need a lift home?”

  Jon did not want to accept her offer, but he knew he had to get home. His feet hurt and his skin was burnt. “Surely. I mean, that would be a great help. I need to head home. I need to get to my Marion.”

  She shook her head. Her firm smile reflected the yellow streetlamp off her teeth.

  The walk back was swift. And before long, the two made it passed the main street storefronts and to the bar where Mona’s car was the last auto left on the strip. Her car’s black paint glistening streaks of the white moon into their eyes. She opened the passenger door for Jon, slamming it shut behind him. Jon felt a burning in his legs but he could not decipher if it was from the sunburn or from the excessive mileage accrued on his journey westward. He touched the backs of his knees, trying to translate the pain. But he could not. And he slowly drifted into a slumber to the skipping beats of concrete slabs beneath Mona’s car tires.