André’s eyelids blink at the darkness, unsure if he is awakening from sleep or death. He struggles out of the chaise lounge and holds to the balcony rail for equilibrium as he floats amid the Milky Way. Between Ursa Major and its quivering reflection on the placid bay, a strand of minuscule Christmas lights twinkle, the shoreline of Anguilla twenty miles away. The beacon at the airport swishes bright and then fades as it rotates.
The sky begins to gray and separate from the blacker ocean. The shadow of Anguilla sits atop this split with a puff of purple clouds above it. When the emerging sun peeks over the ocean’s rim, the fringes of the clouds glow salmon and Anguilla turns the green of the namesake lizard. André’s world is created this way from a void every sunrise and then dissolves in reverse order at sunset. It is always the same, yet always different.
Below in Grand Case Harbor, something is changed––out of place. Their red jon boat, usually tied to a mooring directly in front of their cottage, is missing. He spots it in the middle of the harbor twisting and bucking as the ebb tide pulls it away from shore. Its ropes must have worked free during the night. If it reaches the reef a hundred meters farther out while the tide is still low, it will be splintered and sink.
Underneath the balcony, André hears his uncle Jonah loading fishing gear into his wheelbarrow. If he were to yell down, Jonah would immediately dive in and swim after the boat. Even if he were able to catch up, he wouldn’t know what to do next. He could put the painter in his mouth and swim it back to shore. But he wouldn’t think of that. He would heave himself over the stern and, without a paddle, just sit there wondering what to do until the boat crashed onto the reef. The boat isn’t worth that risk.
His uncle uses the tethered boat as a weather vane to predict the fishing, so he will see the boat is missing in a few minutes. By then the boat will be too far out for Jonah to reach by swimming. André waits.
“Whoop!” his uncle yells up to him.
André struggles to stand and then holds to the banister looking in the direction his uncle is pointing. André covers his face as if hiding his sorrow. When Jonah moves his arms as if swimming, André crosses his arms and shakes his head. They both quietly watch the lost boat a moment before Jonah begins to fish from shore a few feet in front of the balcony.
Jonah sails a slice of day-old loaf bread just beyond where the surf begins to curl and froth against the beach. He collapses into a squat with his buttocks resting against his heels, his lower arms propped between his knees and jaw. For him, this transition into a crouch is as practiced as a gull folding its wings after landing. His canvas trousers, a lighter shade of the same color as his bare sunbaked chest, are as natural to him as feathers. He waits patiently, as motionless as the blue boulders protruding from the sand beside him. There’s no breeze yet. Except for the gentle lap of the waves, the beach is deserted and quiet. Jonah’s tongue darts in and out of his toothless mouth to taste the air like an iguana.
The bread begins to twitch as if coming alive. Little by little, the slice dwindles to crumbs as the water around it swirls. He breaks apart another slice into stamp-size pieces and throws these to the same spot. Immediately the water churns. The water is clear, but Andre cannot see anything moving except the bread.
His uncle stands and gathers his nylon throw-net onto his arm, carefully adjusting the tiny edge weights to dangle uniformly. With arms and legs perfectly coordinated, he pirouettes like a ballet dancer ending in an arabesque. The net spirals open before hitting the water in a perfect circle. With short jerks, he cinches the net closed before pulling it onto the beach. Dozens of finger-size flashes of silver flop in the web.
He sorts the fish of the right species and size into a gallon pickle jar of water. The rest are flicked aside to the waiting gulls. The net is cleaned of shells and sea grass in the surf before being rolled neatly and placed in his wheelbarrow. He picks up a liter plastic soft drink bottle with thin wire wrapped around it. As he walks back to the water he tests the sharpness of the hook on the end with his thumb. The wire is carefully uncoiled to full-length parallel to the beach, and then he walks back with the hook end so that wire lies doubled and untwisted. A baitfish is impaled just below a lead weight. He twirls the end like a shepherd’s sling. The wire whines as it cuts through the air. When he releases it, the line arcs out beyond the breakers. He tightens the line so he can feel a bite and again waits in his crouched position.
The sand bottom seems to undulate as the swell of waves pass over. Tentacles of sea grass stretch first toward shore and then, as a wave ebbs, out to the ocean. They seem unsure to which world they belong. One of these patches of sea grass keeps André’s attention and he doesn’t immediately know why. But then it definitely moves, slowly like the shadow of a cloud passing over. When it lies still again, the shark cannot be distinguished among the dark rocks and seaweed.
The first morning breeze cools André’s sweaty forehead. His legs feel rubbery and he lies back on the wicker chaise lounge and pulls a patchwork quilt up to his neck. A shiver stiffens his body.
The front door slams and he hears the creak of the floorboards as Paul walks up behind him.
“Are you having a fever?”
André doesn’t answer or look at him. Paul reaches to André’s forehead but André shrinks back from his hand.
“Stop that. I can’t catch anything from just touching you.”
Paul goes to the rail and watches Jonah crouched below with the wire taut between his fingers.
“Tell me,” André says.
“No. The fever will pass in a moment and it will be too late. I’ll fix coffee.”
“Tell me.” André does not look at Paul directly, but he knows Paul is looking out at Anguilla and thinking where to start the story André always asks for when he gets a fever.
“Snow is like—”
“No. Start with the river. Start with the fishing.”
“I’ll make coffee first. I could use a cup myself. Give me a minute.”
The coffee pot and cups clink from behind. The breeze is pushing the boat faster now toward the thrashing water at the reef. Below, the shadow in the water moves again, closer to shore, just in front of Jonah. The glare keeps Jonah from seeing it.
Paul returns with two pottery cups. André cradles his coffee in trembling hands. Paul goes back for another blanket to cover André until the uncontrollable shivering is over, and a kitchen chair to sit beside him.
“The Hiawassee River is like liquid ice in the winter. It runs too fast to freeze, but the rocks along the shoreline shimmer with a glaze. Behind the rocks are steep cliffs with tall white pines and cedars on top. The cedars are like black boats with their bows pointed into the sky.
“Tell about the other trees…the ones with no leaves.”
“And there are oaks and maples that lose all their leaves in the winter and look like skeletons. But they are still alive––down below ground in their roots––and in the spring they put on leaves and become beautiful again.”
“Deciduous. They’re called deciduous.”
“That’s right. And I thought you didn’t really listen.”
“It’s a miracle, don’t you think? We don’t have that kind of tree here.”
Paul looks out to Anguilla again. “Yes, I guess it is. I’ve never thought about it, but I guess if I’d never seen it before, it would be a miracle.”
“Tell about the water…how the water feels.”
“The only reason to get in the water is to fish for trout. Dad took me once when it was snowing and made me wade out so he could teach me to cast. Even in the insulated waders, my feet began to throb and then went numb. It’s stupid to go through all that for tiny fish.”
“I wish I could do it. I’ve never been cold before. When I get the chills, I think I know what it would feel like. Is it like that do you think?”
“Yes, it makes you shake and your teeth chatter. I had chills when I was about ten––when I had pneumonia. It feels just the same.”
“Tell about the snow now.”
“You’ve already heard everything about snow. Don’t make me tell it again.”
They are quiet, watching the old man below crouching like a bird.
“Did you see that?” Paul jumps to the rail and points down at the water.
“Yes, I saw it earlier. It’s a baby whale shark. Keep your voice down and stop pointing or you’ll kill it.”
Paul turns with a puzzled face.
“If Uncle Jonah sees you pointing, he’ll stand up and see it too. He’ll wade out, sit on its back, and kill it with his knife. It will just lie there and let him do it. Whale sharks are too big and dumb to be afraid of anything.”
“He wouldn't do that.”
“Call to him then. It will be quite a show. But in the end, the fish will die.”
“Would he eat it?”
“That’s not why he would kill it. I don’t think he would know why either, but he would have to do it.”
Paul watches Jonah fish just yards from the shark. When Jonah looks up at the balcony, Paul turns his head away and sits back down.
“Whoop!” Jonah yells.
Paul jumps back to the rail in panic.
Jonah is pulling the wire hand-over-hand as it jerks. “Whoop!” he yells again as he glances at the balcony to see if they are watching. A glistening tube the size of Jonah’s arm is pulled onto the sand. Its body doubles back on itself as it flops. Jonah kicks sand on it to make it easier to grip before picking it up and breaking its spine across his knee. He holds the limp fish above his head for them to admire before washing it in the surf and dumping it in his wheelbarrow.
“Bien cuisiner,” André yells down to him through the balusters of the handrail.
Jonah’s toothless mouth gapes wide as he laughs. His arms wave about and his hands bounce off each other.
“It’s a needlefish and he wants to cook it right now for breakfast.”
“He said all that?”
André smiles for the first time. “Yes, and more. The fish fought bravely and the wire cut his hands.” André chuckles. “You’ve never seen him talk before, have you? Only ma gra-mère and I can understand him. Bella is a deaf mute and Uncle Jonah is simple-minded, so I guess they kept to themselves when he was growing up. Uncle Jonah never learned to talk like other kids. Those two worked out their own sign language. When I was twelve—when my mother found out I was different—she dropped me off for Gra-mere to raise. Over time, I’ve learned how to read their signs.”
≈≈≈
Jonah dumps the rest of the baitfish on the sand. They sparkle as they flip around. Gulls circle above, waiting for him to load his tackle in the wheelbarrow and start for the cottage before swarming in. Jonah disappears under the deck and they listen to the butcher knife hacking against a plank as he cleans the fish.
“Does he know how to cook?”
“Of course. He will cut it into steaks, rub on his special seasoning and pan-fry it. You’re in for a treat.”
“Is your chill over? Can I get you anything?
André turns his head on the pillow and frowns up at Paul. “You shouldn’t stay. I’m not so helpless that Jonah and Gra-mère can’t care for me. I don’t want you here at the end.”
“You’re getting better, don’t you think? We’ll go to the States together…to the mountains. We’ll go this winter when the snow—”
“Stop it!” André throws back the covers and reaches for the balcony rail to pull himself to his feet. The sudden exertion makes him swimmy-headed, so he holds to the rail to keep from swaying. “I’m not a child. You should leave.”
Paul stands at the rail beside him, his face toward Anguilla. “I won’t go.”
“There is nothing you can do here. Your visa is expired. Gendarmes will come looking for you. You have to go.”
“I won’t go.”
“Why do you have to be so…obstiné? Don’t you understand I don’t want you here anymore? You’re hurting me. When I see your pity, the pain is double. If this were turned around, would you want me to watch? I wouldn’t do it, you know. If I had any place to go, I’d leave you and never look back.”
André looks at Paul and then follows Paul’s gaze to a dark splotch under the turquoise water below. If it is the shark, it is lying still on the bottom. “It’s gone,” André says. “I saw it swimming out.”
“You’d stay.”
“No, I wouldn’t. How do you know what I would do?”
“You’re right, I don’t know––and you don’t know either, so stop all this bluster.”
“Take a hint, will you, and stay away from me.”
“André, I’ve never told you the end of that story about trout fishing in the mountains. I hated the fishing, but I’d actually been looking forward to spending time with Dad. I thought out in the wilderness things might be different and we could talk. But after lunch, he started nursing a hip flask. It was usual for him to be drunk before sunset. I knew the routine. He would act chummy for a while; by dark his eyes would be glazed.
“The overcast began to hide the treetops and it started to snow. We pitched our camp under a cliff overhang and built a big fire out front. Dad rolled out our sleeping bags in the tent and I crawled in to stay warm while our cans of beans heated on rocks beside the fire. ‘Your mother’s leaving,’ he said. ‘We can’t stay together any longer.’
“I’d been expecting that; it was a relief to finally hear him say it. He said he didn’t want either of us to have to go through a move, change schools and stuff.
“Dad stuck a plastic spoon into each can and used his fishing vest as a mitten to put the cans on a log in front of the tent. He said, ‘I’ll be the one leaving.’
“After the fire died, he put the rocks from the fire pit between our sleeping bags and we lay on our stomachs watching the glowing coals turn to ash.
“‘You’re gonna leave me too?’ I asked him. He didn’t answer. He just turned away onto his side and went to sleep.
“I lay awake on my stomach the rest of the night listening to the gurgle of the river. At first light, when I could barely make out the tree trunks against the snow, Dad started muttering. I couldn’t see his face in the dark tent and he never moved. I thought he was talking in his sleep. ‘You’ve got to go,’ he whispered. I thought I had imagined it, but then he mumbled ‘Just gotta man-up and get the hell out.’ I rolled toward him and picked up one of those rocks between our sleeping bags. I wanted to bash his head in. If he couldn’t turn me into another him, he was going to desert me like I was nothing. ‘I’ll never be like you,’ I yelled at him.
“Dad got up without a word and started gathering wood for a fire. It had quit snowing in the night and where we’d tramped around the fire in muddy boots the evening before was clean and white again. While I watched from the tent, he scooped snow into a pot and put it beside the fire and spooned in coffee. ‘You can be better than me, Paul. Try to do better,’ he said.
“André, when I needed Dad the most, he turned tail and ran. I hated him for it. But when Dad was dying, I was the one who ran out on him. We were different in so many ways, but in this, we were the same. That’s what you expect from me, isn’t it––just catch a plane and bail out?”
Paul was waiting for a response, but André couldn’t make himself look up.
“I need to do the hard things, André, don’t you see? I have to prove I’m not like that––not just to you, but to me.”
A red dot bobbing at the horizon catches André’s eye. “Whoop!” he yells down. When Jonah walks out from below the deck, André points. Jonah shields his eyes and looks also.
When Jonah turns, his arms wave above his head and his legs dance wildly. “Whoop!” he yells up to them. His tongue darts around in his laughing mouth. Somehow the red boat had made it through the reef. Soon it would be out of sight and gone forever. It might drift into the open ocean or wind up against Anguilla’s rocky shore. But for now it is safe and Jonah is happy.
≈≈≈