To Sea

  The sun’s rays shined a bright haze over the beach. The sky faded with the sea on the horizon. And the sand meshed with the water where the waves broke. Jon looked down at his feet that seemed to float above the blurry sand. The world was natural. For the first time since Jon was six—the world was the way he was designed to see it. “The way it should be,” he thought. “I knew we were closer to nature than we believed.” He squinted at the portrait of the beach and he smiled. It was real.

  He walked along the shore, listening to the gulls flying overhead, or so he believed. He had to trust his ears, for his eyes were blind to the birds high in the sky. Jon kicked shells at the waves, watching the cloudy image of the sea fold in on the land. For the first time, the image was not defined. It was distorted. Blurry. “The way it should be.”

  He stopped on the shore—the waves kissing his boots. He thought of where he blended in with the water. How he would return to the sea. He tried to envision himself above the break where the clouds would be—but he could not picture it on this cloudless day. “This place is not right,” he thought. “I do not blend in with Her here. This is not right.” Jon looked around. He watched a small group of sandpipers waddle past him, squeaking sharp chirps into the windless air. A wave moved in and the birds flew off over the water, disappearing quickly out of Jon’s view.

  Then he sat on the shore until the sun touched the sea and the entire world was a pink and lavender hue with a yellow blur fading under the horizon.

  He still smelled the coffee from Elea tossing her mug-full in his face earlier. The sun soon gave way to the moon and a cool breeze brushed in over the waves—dancing with the sand—bringing Jon to his feet. He started back for the wooded path. The darkness enclosed deep within himself. The dim moonlight allowed him only to see the first few trees—thick outlines of trunks. Once he was well down the path, he could see the weaved web of browns and greens of the small forest until an orange glow beamed from out ahead. The light grew thicker and thicker in a distorted blurry glow until he reached the end of the path, stepping out onto the lighted parking lot. The wind stopped. The lights droned a heavy buzz cutting through the silence. Jon’s vision of the hazy tint of orange made him see the buzzes in shifting lines—bouncing to the buzzing beat filling the air. It made him sick. The world shifted this way and that quickly, making him dizzy. His entire world was a blurry buzzing orange. He closed his eyes and he walked straight, or what he believed was straight—opening his eyes after several steps to readjust himself into lines. He began to gain confidence, walking longer before he opened his eyes. He felt he had controlled his environment with the sound of the lights. He trusted his senses. All until a sudden screech of tires filled the air, roaring above the buzzing lights.

  A car—a blue car—was inches from his legs. The car quickly faded into the orange and he too faded back into the buzz. Jon’s world was fading, weaving in on itself in his natural vision.

  “Jon? What are you doing wandering about the parking lot?” The car’s window rolled down and Elea peered out. “And where are your glasses?”

  Jon walked over to Elea until he could see the brown in her eyes. “I wanted to go out. I wanted to go out and really see. With my own eyes. With the eyes my God intended me to see with.”

  Elea rolled the window up and she pulled the car into an opened space in the lot. The engine ceased and Elea stepped out. “Your glasses?”

  “On the bed.”

  “Is Barry home from school?”

  Jon tugged on his beard and he walked towards Elea. “I’m not sure. I’ve been out all day.”

  “By the water?”

  “It is my home, El. Where else would I be?”

  Elea leaned up against the car. She pulled a cigarette from her purse, flicking a light over the end.

  “When did you pick that up?”

  Elea’s first drag was long and thick. “In high school. Just been off them for a few decades.” She sipped on the stick and she looked at Jon dangling under the orange light. “I talked to Ethan today. He said it would be okay. And he said his friend’s wife is realtor.” She took another drag. “He said she can get us a real deal. Real quick.”

  “But I cannot leave the sea, Elea,” he said. “I cannot.”

  “Listen to me, Jon. We are moving upstate. We can deal with us afterwards. Let’s just move upstate until Barry gets settled into a good college and then we can patch things up or go our separate ways.” She kissed the cigarette, sucking the smoke deep into her lungs. “Do this not for me. Not for you. But for Barry.”

  Jon remembered the words of Ms. Fitter on the phone earlier. Of Barry’s sea stained jeans and his sandy shoes. Jon knew it was too late. He knew that he must return to the sea for Barry. For Barry was a Brand. The sea was the boy’s home. All he had ever known. He might be forced into a college upstate, but he would soon return to the sea like his father—like a Brand.

  Jon knew he, himself, would return before the autumn washed away all the leaves from the trees. Before Barry would be forced into college. “Okay, Elea.”

  Elea’s eyes widened with surprise by the ease of her persuasion. “You mean you will come up north?”

  Jon nodded.

  “You’ll do it for Barry?”

  Jon nodded.

  “You’ll work on the farm? Ethan said you can.”

  Jon nodded.

  Elea stepped out her cigarette and she fell into Jon’s arms. “Thank you, Jon. Barry thanks you. He just can’t say it now. But he will one day.” Elea pushed herself off Jon in a rush, pressing the wrinkles in her clothes out with flat hands up against her body. She nodded at Jon. Then she walked towards the motel, fading into the blurry orange glow—shifting to the sound of heels pattering over the stairs—the door closing—and then Jon slipped back into the buzz of the orange lights overhead.

  Jon felt himself fading into his environment. The orange rained on him and all the land around him. He was no longer defined and he flowed out onto the world. He had finally seen the truth. He was beginning to see the natural world through his natural vision. He was no longer blinded by the clear images painted by the glass in front of his eyes. The images he now saw were true. Real. He had returned to nature.

  Jon walked to the stairs and he made for the motel room. But before he entered, with his hand on the doorknob, he looked over the edge, above the orange lot—above the buzz of the lights—out at the moon’s reflective string of light across the sea. Jon rubbed his eyes. Then he looked out at all the blurred world before him. “And now I must return to sea.”