All of East Marion was under a blanket of snow. All of the trees encased in ice.
Jon drove the blue sedan down to the East Marion Piers, where he parked next to the only car—the only other color in the lot.
The rising sun beat down hard on the crisp white land. Jon sat on his hands, giving them warmth as he stared at the masts bobbing with the tide. Eight boats tied still. Cleat-hitched and bow-lined to the dock.
He had always adored the sea. As a child, he felt a close bond with the waves. He would place both hands over his heart, close his eyes and let the waves crash against him to the beat of his blood. He felt the heart of the sea flow through him. He felt at home in the water from the start. And when he aged, the love for the voyage soon adjoined his adoration of the sea. Each summer tour, Jon would stand atop the stern—bare-chested—and take the sea head on. The water would splash up, sticking to his flesh. Salt speckling his beard and his chest hairs. He would shake his face and bits of sea would fly every which way as he growled into the current. But it would not take long for his love for the catch to succeed his love for the natural. He would soon be swept deep into the lush blue. He had acquired a greedy pride of his profits. And when he began to cast out a month after the season, or come back days late from a tour, the old men on the piers warned him of a drought. “You’ll dry the seas,” they scorned with glittering eyes. “You’ll see. There’s a balance in the waters. The Son of Man is a biological species in a biological environment—a mere speck in this vast web of life.” But Jon would blow steam at them, setting out for the catch.
The shipmates feared Jon’s gray bright-eyes when they set out on the cold sea. For the crew knew they had set out double—maybe even triple the tours from seasons past. But who were they to question the Captain? His intuition thus far had fattened their stomachs and widened their wallets. The extra cash helped blind the fishermen’s sea-loving, now, profitable eyes.
The car aside Jon’s own was his boss’s—a lush, hunter green luxurious wide body that shined the sun into Jon’s eyes as he passed. He grinded his teeth. He caught his knuckles deep into his palms, cracking his fingers. “How could he drive this thing while we are all trying to keep the clothes on our backs—the food on our tables? The damned sea is dry but he remains quenched.” He walked up the steps to the marina house, stamping out the snow stuck on his treads and he turned back to the white lot. He could see his footprints leading right to himself. But he did not feel he was the person whose shoes made the marks in the otherwise untouched snow. He did not feel as if he was wearing those shoes that lead right to him. He felt deadened. Lifeless. His face hung without a feeling of sorrow. He wondered why he felt inert.
The wind blew a dusting of snow on the two cars windshields. Jon’s beard, too, caught a light coating of white. But he did not budge at the biting wet wind.
A buoy dangled out on the sea, tolling a shallow sound over the water to the shore. He could hear the muted voice of his wife in the ringing echo mixed with a flurry of gulls that drove overhead, spitting loud cries into the air. Jon breathed in. He puffed his chest out at Mister Monroe’s door and the fisherman knocked. He then turned the knob, entering into the small office.
An oil painting and photographs of vessels hung on the walls in no particular pattern.
“Jon Brand. Good ol’ Jonny ‘The Catch’ Brand,” Monroe said. He sat at his desk with a match lit over a cigarette perched from his tight pale lips. “It’s been awhile, boy. How’s the lady?”
Jon scanned the room before reading the headline on the newspaper in front of Monroe Bragg. ‘Stream Flows Right into His Pocket’. Jon thought about it for a moment—frozen eyed on the gray paper.
“Your wife, Jonny? You there? How’s the old lady?” Monroe ashed his cigarette over the news.
“Elea,” Jon said. “She’s doing fine. Always going out to lunch. You know how they can be.”
“Ah, money-eaters. Jeanie burns a hole right through my pocket. Oh, boy. That woman thinks money was gone on made for her to spend and for her to spend, only. Let me tell you.” Monroe’s green eyes bulged from their sockets, surrounded in thick red lines that grew thicker with each drag of his cigarette. He stared down at the ash elongating from each pull and then he flicked the embers around the room carelessly. “How’s Barry doing? That boy got it going for him. Yup. I seen it in him when he was just a babe, yanno? College bound for that one, yet?” He shot his legs up on the table, leaning back into his leather chair as he waited for Jon to respond.
“Barry,” Jon said. “He is doing just dandy, I guess. He’s still over at East Marion High. Vice President of his class and all.” He dug his hands into his pockets.
“Ah, so what he plan on studying at university?”
“Well, we aren’t sure yet. A doctor is respectable. But so is a lawyer.” Jon took his hat off. He looked out the window, watching the small waves crash against the dock. “But we are weighing out all of his options, yanno?”
“Oh, I see. But what interests him? Is he an ol’ fish mongrel? He is a Brand, yanno? He might not be cut out for the whole schoolin’ thing.” Monroe rubbed the bottom of his lip with the filter of his cigarette. The man’s gray hair was oiled and slicked over to the right of his head. His stomach protruded outward—tugging at the lowermost buttons on his faded blue button down. “You got to let the boy think for himself, Jonny. You can’t go on pressin’ him to save the world, now, when you can’t even save yourself.”
Jon’s arms tensed. He dropped his hat to his feet. “He does what he wants, sir. He’s a smart boy. He’ll show the world. Save us from this curse. Barry’ll fix things right.” But Jon’s face cringed with his words. He could not believe them. He did not believe them. The bell on the buoy at sea rang out loudly—the chime pressing through the seams of the marina house. Jon looked back into the green in Monroe’s eyes and a relaxation flooded through Jon’s vessels. His muscles eased. He settled a distance between his stance. “You are right, sir. The boy got to choose for himself.” Jon bit at his lies. He knew he needed the sea. He needed a voyage soon or his house would become a boarded up image of failure.
“Don’t go on buttering me all up, Brand. You cursed these here seas. Now we’re all out on our asses. Your father was a greedy man, but you,” Monroe snuffed his cigarette into the table. He pointed the steaming stick up at Jon. “But you—you caused the end of ten-thousand voyages to come. You made all of mankind—the gulls—all the world go hungry.” Monroe planted his feet firmly on the floor, kicking his feet deep into their soles. “We have been through a lot, Brand. A lot of good and a little bad. But the little bad outweighs the good, one-hundredfold. I am afraid your greed has caused the deterioration of this fishing company. The old men warned you and your father, but y’all never listened. And when you took to the seas, under the guidance and greed of your father, the sea had to teach the Brands who is truly the almighty and all powerful. The balance needs to be kept. And now, Jon,” Monroe cuffed his eyelids. He looked into Jon’s graying eyes. “I have to ban you from the Piers.”
“But Mister Monroe, the Brands are a staple on the docks.”
“But nothing,” Monroe said with an interrupted foot stomp. “The men been callin’ me to do this for some time, now. Ya had to see this comin’, Jonny. And it just so happened that you came in today. Son, this was inevitable. Just think of today as fate. If it wasn’t today, it would have been tomorrow, or the next day, or the next week, or the next month. But it was fate you came in today. Sorry, son. Perhaps ya look west. Go to the city for work. But a Brand is no longer welcome on these here docks.” Monroe got out from behind his desk. He placed his heavy arm around Jon. “You got to understand that I am runnin’ a business. A business with nature. And nature always wins. I don’t want to go on pissin’ Mother Nature off anymore than ya already have. Ya name’s the plague
‘round here, Jonny. Good riddance and good luck, son. So long.” And Monroe casually walked Jon through the door, clicking it locked behind him.
The flesh on Jon’s face hung loose off his cheekbones. His beard shifted quickly in the passing wind. Stray ice and sand embedded into his thick curls. His mind regained a cool contentment on his jobless future. He thought he should be angered. Elea would burn him at the stake. Eat at his heart if she knew he was banned. But he felt at ease. He had known for some time the inevitability of his greed. He felt an easeful stream of blood pump out of his chest. He turned his head to the sea to watch the masts bob above the treeline. He could see the ship that was his. ‘The Catch of a Lucky Brand’ ran across the back of the boat, chipped and wearing away from a salty decay. It was named for his father who ran tours for several years until Jon got to head the hull.
James Brand had become infamous on the Atlantic for pushing his luck all too often. He would run tour after tour, regardless of rough seas forecasted, driving his ship to the limit. Never flinching. Not James Brand. He would grind his teeth—turn his hardened face at the sea and stare out until he got the sea to break. James Brand was a true grit fisherman in the old East Marion days. But his legend will be remembered for his greed. He had caught the flu, growing gravely ill in the height of season back when Jon was still in high school. James refused to back down from the catch. He refused to take a loss from his illness. He listened to no one but the pride in his heart that he had claimed was the voice of the sea guiding him. “The sea’s are swelling. They are ripe for the pickin’s,” James pleaded. But it was his greed that would get him. That voyage proved to be his last. The sea that he loved had sheltered him from medicines needed to survive. And James Brand was thrown overboard as a last plea he had made with his crew. “She’s won,” he had said. “And she deserves the taste of my flesh.”
Jon tried at the cabin door of the Lucky Brand but it only wiggled on its hinges. “Locked. Blast,” Jon called out. His knees wobbled with the waves until he straightened them. Then he searched the ship ‘til he found a hammer in the deckbox. He threw the metal heavy on the lock. The clash of steel echoed loud, but low against the thick snow. “That was easy,” he said, and he entered in out of the white.
The cabin carried a smell of must. A thick covering of dust clung atop all inside. Charts hung with erased lines of penciled voyages. He inspected the room that had once been his home. He glanced over at a photo wedged between the glass cases of dials and meters. The photograph painted a young boy with bluish eyes held in the thick arms of a man on the dock. “The Brand curse,” he thought. “What a hock of crap.” Jon continued to stare into the window of the picture. “The sea will get us all,” he moaned. His lips separated—then they quivered until his head shook uncontrollably. He pulled on his beard, twisting the ends into small dreads before he shimmied the picture out from the glass, wiping off the filth along his jeans. His eyes retraced the cabin for a final time and then he exited. He left the door open behind him as he walked to the end of the dock with his head fixed on the decaying boards below his feet.
When he reached the end, he stood back on the weight of his heels, allowing the tips of his boots to hang over the edge—watching them wiggling with the pressing tide. He ran his fingers through his beard, evening out the twisted curls. He looked at the picture, again. He could feel his father’s presence beat down on him—as if the man was next to him, casting lines. Intense heat rushed through Jon’s body, down into his cold fingers, causing him to let loose of the photograph. He held his breath, closed his eyes and he felt a sudden lightness to him. As if he was floating above the sea—above the world. But when he opened his eyes, he felt heavy again and he could see his image staring back at him through the white caps of the water—through the valleys and crests of waves. The photo was gaining water over its top until the image swaggered to the seabed. In the depths of his stomach, Jon felt a tight knot form. His knees began to wobble. He felt as if he was to fall into the sea. He felt a need to settle to the bottom with his father. Jon closed his eyes and he began to rock his weight towards the tops of his toes.
“Jon. Get the hell off my docks. What did I just tell you, boy? You ain’t welcome ‘round these parts no more. You cursed.” Monroe started towards the docks with his fists pumping up to the heavens. Jon turned around quickly, nodded at Monroe and the fisherman headed for his car. Jon pulled at his neck, rolling his long fingers over his full larynx. Then he worked his fingers at the undergrowth of his beard. Monroe shook his hands under his arms. The large man shivered his lips at the cold before walking back into his office.
Jon was alone. He felt alone. He stared back out to the sea, watching the masts of ships dance with the waves. The wooden vessels banging—squeaking against the rotting dock. This would be his last time down at the Piers. He had known that much.
CHAPTER 6