Mona hummed along with the gentle tune streaming through the radio. Jon’s body took the shape of the passenger door until the car bounced into the depths of a pothole, awaking him from his sleep. His body straightened in his seat. He rubbed his eyes. Then he searched the grassy darkness for signs posted of their whereabouts. But it was too dark. And he could not decipher trees from signs and signs from trees.
He looked over at the driver. Her eyes fixed to the striped yellow lines paralleled to her left. Then she glanced over at the single solid white line to her right, catching the eyes of Jon.
“You up?” she asked.
Jon ran his fingers down his beard. His eyes burned a bright crimson shade of bloodshotedness around his cool gray stare out the window into the oblivion. “Yea,” he said, turning to her. “I’m up all right.”
“Good. Are we almost there? I didn’t realize you lived this far out.”
“Yea. It’s a bit of a ways,” he smiled, relaxing himself into the foamed seat. He felt his sleep weakened eyes shutter to the beat of the rhythmic bumps below him. “This should be good,” he said, unlatching the belt from its fastener.
“What should be good?”
“Right here,” he said, nodding his head at the land outside the window. “Right here should be fine. I can walk the rest.”
Mona’s mouth opened wide. “I can surely drive you home. It’s the least I could do.”
“You have done quite enough. This will be just fine. I insist.”
Mona pulled the car to the shoulder. The right side sinking into the grass. She turned the ignition off, resting her hands on the top of the steering wheel. She looked straight through the windshield. The sound of waves echoed off the low lying clouds in the background. “I have driven you all this way while you slept.” The words left her mouth quickly. “Not to mention you are still wet from the time you ran into the water, yelling out to whatever God it is that you follow.” She switched the doors unlocked with the flick of a button. Then she looked into Jon’s eyes. “And I know your name is not Mare. But if you really want to just go, and never meet again—I suggest you leave right now. Just go.” Water fell from the corners of her eyes, dripping down to her white blouse.
Jon sat stilled. His eyes blankly staring out of the window. His ears keenly listening to the faint waves crashing up over the rolling hills along the roadside. He noticed the words stop pouring from Mona’s mouth and he turned his head, focusing in on her. He first saw the glistening path of tears falling down her face. He watched the moisture collect, spreading in dense circles on her blouse. He blinked hard. Then he looked back into her eyes before exiting the car without a sound.
Jon heard the ignition switch over. Then the sound of the tires sprawling across the concrete slabs in perpetual beats—distancing down the road. He stopped, rubbed his feet in the dark tall grass, listening—ka-lump after ka-lump—over the concrete. But he did not turn to look.
The moon’s dulled light shined off the smudged glare across his glasses, causing Jon to squint slightly.
The thick damp grass smelt of the salty sea. The waves in the shallow distance made Jon shiver—making him think of the swing that swayed in suspension on his back porch. He had sat in his father’s lap and listened to the old man’s stories of over exaggerated Atlantic voyages. Jon had even sat with his own son, sharing his own indulgences of the sea. But Jon had now spent the past year swinging in the woes of his own denial. His own defeat. His own downfall. The swing had swung to a new beat—slowed and creased with squeaky creaks. The swing took no mind to the man who sat in its britches. And justly, it caught the sea’s misty breeze, swaying each day away into the moonlight.
The grass shortened to nothingness, subsiding to sand. Jon’s feet shuffled slowly through the soft ground, collecting grains in his boots, curling around his toes.
“Damned sand,” he muttered aloud. “Always did despise you.” He removed his shoes and he peeled off his socks, tossing them to the dunes. “Always was a man of the sea, myself.” Jon gripped the sand between his toes.
He looked up at the sky of sparkling stars blaze holes into the black night. He watched the moon’s shine slip in and out of lacy clouds. But soon, the thin silky clouds began to draw into dark plumes of smoke collapsing over the moon and stars—smothering the light into a blanket of black.
A pungent smell of chard wood and gasoline descended upon him. He stopped, letting his feet sink into the soft grains. He closed his eyes and he tilted his head back, pointing the chin-tip of his beard to the horizon. He sniffed in the fiery smell burning in the distance. He rubbed the hairs under his nose, flattening them down to the ridge of his upper lip, licking the ends with the point of his tongue.
“The smell of sea and fury,” he whispered. “Hatred fills this crisp spring air.” He opened his eyes and he watched the sky above him fill with ever-blackening smoke. “No lightning in this sky.” He sniffed the air again. “And a rich smell of gasoline. This is man’s work. This is hatred.”
Jon frowned. He dug his feet deeper into the sand on the side of the highway. He was a hundred meters or so ‘til he had to turn off the highway to the road to his house. The smooth sound of waves echoed over the hills—over a dim crackle of fire in the distance. The smoke bit at his eyes. Tears boiled ‘til drops fell smoothly down his face. He pulled his feet from the sand and he continued down the path aside the highway. He watched the smoke bubble overhead, listening to the crackling fire slowly overpower the crash of waves.
When Jon made it to the street of his house, he could see the new-age Victorians aside a ranch burning—his ranch—his house. The smoke blocked the bell held high in the steeple. He stopped at the cross-section, watching the high flames reflect off the gentle waves rolling in along the coast. Orange and red strings of fire flickered through the ripples. Bright light danced on the dark waves. The sand flooded with a black fog hanging around Jon’s ankles. He stood motionless. The smoke worked its way up his legs ‘til it entangled all his body—poisoning his lungs. He leaned over, letting the smoke hold him up as he watched a skinny dog strut from the dunes, over the road in front of him, and then run off down the shore. The dog’s skinny frame hung its black fur loosely off its bones as the beast stared back at Jon from the shoreline, growling, and then the mutt continued into the crash of waves, engulfed by the dark blue water. Jon rubbed the stub of his left pinky—his left thumb tracing over the missing knuckles.
The house in front of him continued to burn up to the heavens. Thickets of black draped over all of East Marion as a gentle sea breeze swept the plume over the low waves out to sea.
His frozen stance shattered once the voice of his wife sounded over the crackles of the wooden house—over the crashes of waves to the sand. Jon’s eyes scanned from the red sea to the red house to the woman with palms pressed to her face. A woman holding her worries in the depths of her opened hands doused in droplets of tears running from her eyes. Jon sunk to his knees in a slight crouch before he began to run towards the fire. The memories he had made in the house inundated his mind as the house flooded upward in a heated fury to the dark heaven above. He ran without the knowledge of running. Time stood still, wrapped within the blanket of smoke—wrapped within his captivated thoughts burning at his mind.
Elea stood stilled at the base of the house, catching the heat radiating from the flames. All she had, all she knew, all she had done—all melting, burning and dying.
Jon made it to her quickly. He swooped her into his arms and he carried her to the rock bed along the shore. He rested her on the cool rocks as they could still feel the heat of the house on their faces—thick smoke pressing up to their flesh.
Elea picked her tired body up off the rocks as she dried her sobbing eyes. She looked into Jon’s eyes. Then she made for the sea with a bucket wretched in her fingers. She sunk the bucket into the sea, filling it, running back toward
s the house, dumping its contents on the enflamed porch swing—hissing as the water eased the flames only temporarily. She ran back to the shore and repeated. But Jon hugged her in her pursuit back towards the house.
“It’s no use, El,” he said with his arms wrapped tight around her ‘til she dropped the bucket to the rocks. “The house it too far gone. It’s no use. It’s gone.”
Jon’s beard sat heavy on Elea’s cheek. She started to cry again. She loosened her nerves and she sunk her weight into him. She could not remember the last time she had given herself to him. She could not remember the last time she let him comfort her. The sound of sirens echoed in the distance. Jon laid Elea back down to the cool bed of rocks. He shifted her hair off her forehead with his fingers combing the strains back along her scalp. His heart pumped a beat against her head, soothing her as she silently released a string of tears falling into Jon’s beard.
She looked into his eyes, still reddened from the lack of sleep, the excess of alcohol and the smoke that had now filled the air—and she stopped crying. He looked at her, weak and defenseless. He then looked up at the house collapse inward, shooting up a large spur of fire into the sky followed by a mushroom plume of black smoke. Jon tucked Elea’s face into his chest. Then he rolled her face back out after the flash of heat receded.
“I hold you,” he said, looking into her tear swollen eyes. “I encapsulate you. I protect you.” He paused, looking at the sea’s reflective image of the demise of a household. “My arms protect you from all that is thrown at you. My body is my sacrifice to you.” He squeezed Elea in close. He released a long breathe of air, catching the lobe of her ear, making her twinge slightly. “I am your protector. I will save you from all this.”
Elea looked up at Jon’s face in search of his stern gray eyes—but they remained fixed on the warm colors beating off the rippling waves crashing to the shore as piercing sirens screamed and flashing lights danced off the black smoke skyline.
CHAPTER 18