August 5. A warm breeze; rumbles of distant morning thunder.
Sailors called this the “time of no horizon,” this brief stretch of transition from night to dawn, when light had begun to infiltrate everywhere without quite showing itself. Neuroscientists said it was in the moments between sleep and wake that the boundaries roping off conscious from subconscious were at their most permeable, imagination and intuition at their peak.
The time of no horizon was the ocean’s intuition time.
This morning Finn sat out on the ship’s fantail, perched on that big capstan, sketch pad on his knees, gazing out at the total absence of distinction. No sounds but the scratch of the pencil, the steady churn of the big brass screws below, and the wash of the sea.
Was this where Schofield had gone over the edge?
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” that’s how they always put it in the funeral services, but it wasn’t really like that: ashes and dust weren’t where we came from, no, we came from the water, and the water was always there, waiting to claim us back.
Finn tried to picture the man, a few yards away, putting one leg up over the rail.
Not his mess.
Just a passenger.
Ignoring the lingering stench of garbage, he went on sketching the shifting shades of charcoal gray, pewter gray, battleship gray, ash gray.
Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the time of no horizon receded and distinct masses of color began to resolve. The sky grew lighter, the ocean darker. Up and down reasserted their presence.
Now, in their second day since threading the Strait, the air was already changing. It was strange to feel less humidity when you were completely surrounded by water, but on the open sea the atmosphere was drying out, leaving the cloying feeling of the Gulf behind them.
The ocean, too, was different here. In the Gulf it was always calm, as if it were going along with a pretense of domestication. Out here the sea didn’t hide the fact that it was wild.
“Still here, Ray,” whispered Finn. “Still here.”
A low wind whipped around from the starboard and carried his words away.
Ssssss. Ssssss. Sssssstillhhhhheeeeeerrrrrre…
“You hate ships.” That was Carol explaining Finn to himself, a task at which she was considerably skilled.
“Not true,” Finn had objected. “I love ships.”
“You love water. Everything about it. You love being in the water, under the water, out on the water. You love small boats, where you can smell and feel the water. Big ships, where you’re shut in? Those you hate.”
Finn didn’t relate to the word “hate.” But otherwise she had him nailed, dead to rights. As usual.
Carol said she felt safe with Finn because he was “such a fucked-up mass of contradictions.”
Not true, Finn had said, knowing she would then demonstrate that it was.
“You love hunting, especially underwater,” she said. This was true. He was lethal with a speargun. “But you’ve got this weird thing about guns.”
Also true. So?
“So, you’re an elite sniper who doesn’t like guns. You despise authority figures but worship your lieutenant. You love water, hate ships. You’re a fucked-up mass of contradictions.”
So how did that make her feel safe?
“Your shit is out front, where I can see it,” she explained. “It’s the assholes who keep their contradictions hidden you have to worry about.”
Finn smiled as he sketched.
Ssssssstillhhhheeeeeerrrrrre said the wind.
He thought about Schofield. Thought about that hot prickling he’d felt up the back of his neck. He still didn’t know what it was telling him, but he recognized the language.
Death had come to call.
“Death and I are old friends,” he’d heard teammates boast, but he knew that was a lie. Death didn’t have friends, only acquaintances. Death was still a mystery, even to Finn.
The prospect of dying did not especially disturb him, though. He’d spent his life knocking at death’s back door. For as long as he could remember, Finn had always pictured death as a creature with a massive head and no arms or legs. Like a great wriggling invertebrate shark. Why, he had no idea. Maybe one day he’d find out.
Maybe soon.
Because death had come to call, and wasn’t leaving yet. Finn could feel it stalking the ship.
For all he knew, it had already brushed right by him.
“Reveille, reveille, all hands heave out and trice up.”
Oh six hundred. Finn closed the sketch pad and stood. Time for breakfast.
He needed to ask someone for a favor.