The sea was miles behind him. The earth cut jaggedly high alongside the road. The tall land blasted away so that man could pass on by. Thickets of brush on the roadside accumulated into long brown and green masses catching the peripherals of Jon’s onesightedness on the blacktop blinking with white strips. He drove slowly along the highway. His eyes drifted to the mountains often. The sun sat low in the sky. Then the light ducked behind a swaddling of gray clouds and all the land absorbed the darkling shadows of the twilight dusk. A foggy haze drifted in over the car, steaming up the windshield—moisture clinging in fine droplets to the seams of the glass. He drove for four hours—patient and calm. His eyes fixed on the mountains now. His swerved on the road, looking out to the land beside him until he caught ‘Lambertville’ glowing white on a green exit sign. He steered hard off the ramp. His hands clenching the wheel, slipping the car into a smooth turn. “Almost there,” he whispered. “Almost.”
The sun dipped well below the high mountains. The dark of night eased into the land. Jon stopped at a red stoplight and he looked in his rearview mirror. He stared at the tall peaks of mountains layered—standing tall beside one another. He removed his glasses and the mountains faded into a sea of dark green and black. And then he looked beyond the mirror—out in front of him at an intertwining of trees and brush climbing high to the heavens, above the break of the horizon—cutting off the horizon. “A wall of land is less peaceful than an endless sea. The land is too rigid. No peace,” he thought. “No horizons. Just walls of land unable to see through to the other side.” The light changed over to green and a chorus of horns beeped behind him. He slapped his glasses back over his eyes and he waved out the window to the dismay of his followers.
He continued down the road ‘til he settled the blue sedan along the curb of a white vinyl sided, two story house enclosed in a white vinyl fence—like all the others surrounding it.
“And here I am,” he said aloud. “Back in the world of mountains and plastic.”
The house was dark except for one room to the right on the second story faced with two windows. The room was dimly lit through the cream colored curtains with the shadowy glow of a woman dancing from sill to sill ‘til she stopped and she peered through the shades, down at the blue sedan. His gray eyes met the green in her own. Then she turned back into the shadow that then grew large against the curtains until she vanished, only to appear at the front door within seconds.
Jon exited the car and he made for the house. Her face was veiled by the canopy over the door. And when her face finally drew color, a smile lit by the moon, he held her tight to his body, kissing at her lips.
“You should have called,” Lauren said. “I’m working on a big case. Day four in court.” She backed off his body. She pulled at her dark blue silk pajamas clinging to her skin.
Jon tugged on his beard. He held a smile in her favor. “I don’t mean to intrude.” He drew his hands down to his sides. “But I just had to see you tonight.”
They sat on a white leather couch in front of a large black television hanging like a picture on the wall—broadcasting the local news. The two sat, listening, sipping on the coffee she served with ice cubes. The only words spoken when she commented on the commercial advertisements streaming between the reports.
“It really looks as if that dog is talking,” she said. “His lips move just like a real humans.”
“Computers,” he said. “These damned computers these days. They will make anything seem possible. Feeding us falsehoods of reality.”
“Geez, Jon. Lighten up. Don’t be so sour about it,” she said, pulling off his arm. “It’s cute.”
He straightened up, trying to loosen his tight muscles, but he could not. His eyes stared at the flat television screen unblinkingly as he looked introspectively into himself and into the sea. He saw himself alone—lost in the depths of a forest where tall ceilings of green leaves and brown walls of bark held him captive. His mouth was dry. He quenched for water while in a sea of land. His body longed for the ocean—the savory blood of his Christ—to feed his liquid body—to quench his buoyant soul. Jon blinked and he faded back into the white couch. His muscles were now loose. His body hung to the backing of the white leather.
“It’s quite hot for June,” she said. “It usually doesn’t get this hot at night ‘til August. Late August at that.” She pulled at her pajamas uncomfortably. “I’ll be back. I’m going to slip into something more comfortable.” She got up, walked down the hall and into a room with the click of a door closing behind her.
Jon nodded and he faded back into himself. He thought of how he was going to soon have sex with Lauren and then leave. He thought of driving to the sea. To the edge of New Jersey. To bury himself under the sand as a rising tide rode in over him. He felt it was tonight. “St. Jean Basptiste Day is celebrated all around the world tonight,” he thought. “And it is tonight, I, Jon, son of the Lord, and the ever-fruitful sea, shall celebrate His gift of life and baptize myself. Breathe life back into the sea. Give life to my son.” His eyes rolled over in bright lights of rapture behind the veil of his imaginings of his soul lifting his liquid body. He felt light. His mind filled with translucent thoughts of ecstasy and self-worth. But he soon blinked himself out of his thoughts, focusing in on the sports report on the television. Men dribbled basketballs and shoved them down into nets. Jon flexed his fingers, but he could not feel them. His body still felt light. He felt he was not in control of the commands in his brain. His fingers and toes twitched. He felt he was a mere observer of his own life. A simple viewer of a life he could have never seen coming.
“More coffee,” she interjected into his thoughts from the next room over. There was a silence and then a grunt of approval from Jon. “You like it with the ice or do you want it hot?”
“Hot.”
“I should have known you didn’t like the new invention of iced coffee.” The creak of the microwave door opened and then slammed closed—buzzing throughout the house until it beeped. Then the door opened—closed—and Lauren returned to the living room with his hot coffee cupped between her hands. “You being so particular,” she said. “I should have known to serve it to you hot to begin with.”
“No worries,” he said. “I like it cold or hot all the same. I just happen to prefer it hot.” He smiled, sipping slowly on the artificially warmed brew. The coffee made his heart race and he unzipped his jacket and he unbuttoned the top two buttons on his shirt.
“Coffee little too warm?”
“No,” he said, blowing ripples into the brown liquid. “It’s just right.”
They sat silently for a few moments as Jon drank at the cup never leaving his hands ‘til he placed it empty on the table.
“You know African elephants?” he said, interrupting the silence.
“Yea, of course I know elephants,” she said.
“No. African elephants. And not desert ones. But the ones that live in the jungle. African jungle elephants. You know of those elephants?”
“Sure. I know about them.”
He sat back into the couch. Then he hurled himself forward to the edge of the cushion, looking into her green eyes. “They have developed a network of highways in the jungles in Africa. They are the world’s largest land species and probably the most sophisticated.”
“And what are we?”
“Listen.” Hear me out.” He waited until he knew she would no longer disrupt him. And then he continued. “Well, they converse on a lower decidable of sound than what humans can interpret. The low tonality of elephant speech can travel for a few miles through the thickets of forest in the jungle. To warn each other of danger. To warn each other of humans.”
“And that makes them smarter than us?”
He folded his glasses into his hand and he stared into her distorted image. Then he looked over at the light raining from television
. “They never disobeyed nature. They have learned to survive with humans. Even adapting a language blind to our ears so they can still communicate without the interruption of savage humans exploiting them—killing them to make piano keys. They never exploited humans.”
“What are you talking about?” Lauren eyed Jon who pulled at his beard, still staring blankly into the television. She moved in close to him, smoothing out his shoulders. “Relax, Jon. Just relax.” She unbuttoned the rest of the buttons on his shirt and she slid her hand through the hairy flesh of his chest. “Relax and stop being so crazy. I missed you too, but no need to get crazy about it.”
Jon placed his glasses on the table. He looked into a blur of green that he knew were Lauren’s eyes. They were greener than he had ever seen—shining bright in the dull of her shadowy face. Jon’s world grew small as his background closed in on him in the blurry darkness of night. The whole world to him was Lauren’s body in which he saw with his hands. Her neck was smooth. He reached down and he felt her warm chest—her ripe dimples at their rounded peaks. He felt the rush of a wave brush up against him. The grains of the ocean floor on his feet. Her body floated against his. They became liquid. They became one. He felt suspended in the ocean—then above the sea—then back on the white couch—naked—alone—staring at the television streaming the news.
“Did you want to stay over?” Lauren entered in through the kitchen—back in her pajamas. She sat beside Jon. She threw a white robe over his body. She pulled at her dark blue silk pajamas, showing the finest of details of her slim curves.
“No. I cannot.” Jon threw the robe to the floor. He jumped into his pants and he quickly buttoned up his shirt and he zipped up his jacket. “I must leave.”
“But you just got here.”
“I should not have come. I should have called first. I should not have come.” Jon kissed the side of her cheek. He smiled. Then he walked to the door.
“But it is so late, Jon. You mustn’t drive home now. The highway, Jon,” she said. “Only the crazies are on the highway now. Sleep over and leave in the morning.”
Jon rested his hand on the doorknob, looking back at Lauren who waited, leaning up over the back of the white couch. “Tonight was good,” he said. “In its instance. It was pure and real and good.” He looked past Lauren—at the television screen behind her—the bright pixilated colors of light flashing across the screen. Then he looked back into her green eyes. “Goodbye and goodnight.”
Jon walked out to the car. He turned the ignition over and he drove away from the white plastic house. He knew it grew smaller in the rearview mirror, but he did not glance over at it. He kept his eyes on the road and he seldom looked up at the dark sky where he could make out the gray clouds glowing from unsheathing a full moon.
He drove back onto the highway. At the tallest peak of the road he could see the moon’s shine on the sea out over the horizon. The car then descended down the hill and a mountain peak in front of him cut off the horizon—cutting off his view of the sea. “Not tonight,” he thought. “Not tonight. It is not right. Close. But not right. Not here. Not away from my home. Not here.” He kept his eyes open to the road but he could see images of his future blur before him. He slipped through the darkness of the night. He thought briefly of the hell he would catch from Elea for leaving her at the meeting. His mind then floated to how he must save Barry. Then he was back on the sea. Back to saving Barry. Back to saving the sea.
The car bounced over the breaks in the concrete road ‘til he parked the sedan outside the motel aside an array of cars in the orange lot. He listened to the sea lightly groan in the distance. He thought back to the language of elephants. “The sea,” he thought. “It speaks, but only in tonalities lower than I can perceive. I know it speaks to me. I feel it moving me. But I cannot hear it fully.” He stood outside the car with his arms loose at his sides. His body silently still as he listened for the sounds he believed were in the sea’s mist. But all he could hear was the buzzing lights that illuminated the lot. “I know the voice is here,” he thought. “I know you speak to me, my God. My sea. I am yours.” He paused, opening his eyes and he was in front of the sea—ankles deep in the sea. He looked out at the waves tumbling over his feet. He bent over, sinking his hands into the wet sand. He closed his eyes again. “Lord,” he said. “‘I am not ready to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed’.”
He cupped the wet sand in his hands, pouring it over his head. Then he pushed the grains up into his beard. Jon opened his eyes. He fell to the shore, sprawling out atop a cool bed of rocks. The cold stones chilled his body against the warm air blowing in off the summer sea. He watched the waves curling under as if he had never seen them crash before. Then he sat back on the cool rocks, closed his eyes, watching the waves crash behind his lids.
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends