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WHEN WES WAS FOUND face down in the sand, in the just-orange-dawn, he was rushed to a small hospital a mile or so inland. He had very few teeth left in his mouth and the side of his face was swollen and purple like a mountain range on its side. There wasn't much of anything they could do for him. His bleeding had stopped and the swelling of his face would subside on its own in time. His teeth were washed away in the tide so their retrieval was not possible, though even if they were right in his back pocket they couldn't just place them back into his gums. They were nearly shattered to dust and now they were gone. Wes sat there in that hospital bed for less than a few hours before he was discharged. They patted him on the back and sent him on his way with a card of a man that could get him dentures.
Before he left the police questioned him about what happened. They asked over and over again, and pressed him for details on a suspect he never mentioned, and asked about a scuffle that never took place. They were unsatisfied by his response of it just being a shark attack. They were annoyed and the authorities eventually decided that he must not care about whoever did this to him. They decided that perhaps it was a fair fight. Mano-a-mano. And that this poor sap just lost badly. When it came down to it, they were pressed by their superiors to lay off the poor guy, since he wasn't even pressing charges. In fact, Wes's demeanor was reserved and almost catatonic throughout the day's proceedings. When asked about anything that happened that night he simply explained that it was a freak shark attack, but deep in his mind, beyond anybody's gaze or mental grasp, he replayed the event on a loop, an endless vinyl rotating beneath the needle. In his head you couldn't convince him otherwise and even you yourself would believe him. His brain blotted out the truth of what he saw. Shielded him from the unfolding terror of the man disappearing into the froth of tails and fins. Nobody could even remind him of the girl that night. All he had once known was slowly sinking to the bottom of the ocean like a waterlogged nightmare.
Chalking up his silence to a resistance to cooperate, the exhausted investigators released him fully. They penned down that it was just a fight gone wrong and that nobody wanted to tell on the other. Wes left the island that day and drove south to the keys. He has a family in this world that will never see him again. They won't get answers. They won't get closure. They'll understand none of it. In several days he will park his car on a public beach late at night. He will hear a calling to him from the gulf water and he will answer the call. Then he will walk into the cold and salty water and swim out until eventually the gulf will swallow him whole.
When P.J. woke up, his back was to Nina's and she snored softly towards the wall. P.J. sat up and looked out of the window from his bed. It was one in the afternoon and so he put on a pair of shorts and walked to the kitchen. He was late to work but Dennis was out of the apartment and so maybe he had already gone and taken care of it all.
He made himself a bowl of cereal and sat and ate in silence. His phone had no news of the night prior and he ate his breakfast and was quietly pleased with himself for having sex last night. He started to think back to the last time he had it. It must have been in college, before he graduated. A spin the bottle game gone wrong (or right) that let him and Dominique Sayzo walk to her room. She told him she had been wanting it for a while, but that didn't mean anything to him. Now, eating his cereal in the sunshine of a new morning, he wondered why that time with Dominique meant nothing. Or more importantly, why he wasn't flattered when she confessed that.
Around one-thirty Nina came shuffling out of his bedroom with a smirk on her face and P.J. was pleased that there was no awkwardness and there were no signs that there would be.
"Good afternoon," Nina said. She smiled. Her voice had a Colombian curve to it. One that P.J. did not hear in the bar.
"Good afternoon," P.J. said carrying his dish to the sink to hand wash.
In the most respectful way possible, P.J. wanted her to leave. He wouldn't tell her this. He'd be as polite as a lamb. But he wanted her to leave.
Then she started.
"Hey, I have plans with some friends in town right now. But maybe we can talk later?"
"Sure, maybe," P.J. lied.
Then he showed her to the door and she smiled at him.
"I had fun last night," Nina said. She stood in the threshold of the hallway.
"Yeah, I had a good time. You're a good dancer," P.J. said. It was the truth too.
"Thanks."
"And you're good at that other thing," P.J. said. Also the truth.
"Thanks," Nina blushed. She pushed her own hair back behind her ear. P.J. noticed that. For a second he wondered what would happen if he pushed her hair back for her, glided his finger along her face, lifted her chin with his other hand and kissed her just to do it. But he didn't.
"Maybe I'll just swing by sometime and we can drink and do it again," Nina said.
He said bye and she left and he didn't watch her leave.
P.J. showered and got dressed and met up with Dennis on the beach. It wasn't until he walked up to the stand did Dennis mention the missing persons.
"What are you talking about?" P.J. asked, preparing his stuff and sitting on a stool. It dipped unevenly in the sand and he had to rebalance himself. Once settled, he put on his sunglasses.
"Nobodies seen Haley or Wes since yesterday," Dennis explained. There was only a degree of worry in his voice. It took a lot to get him there. "Not even a call or text or nothing. T.J. was out here asking me about it. I told them they were probably just fucking in their room. I mean this is a beach resort isn't it? That's what I'd be doing. Hell, that's what you were just doing."
P.J. looked out towards the water. It was calm but far in the distance clouds were coming.
"Is it supposed to storm today?" P.J. said, taking off his hat.
"Here's hoping," Dennis said, "I'd love to close up early. Not like we have any customers anyway."
There was a silence as they both watched the dark clouds make their way over, ever so slowly, like titans creeping towards the land. Massive behemoths colored gray, awoken to lumber forth and crush dissenters. Seagulls squawked and a kid played in the water, but all was barely audible as though the clouds were vibrating black and evil, numbing everything else.
"You didn't see them did you?" Dennis asked.
"No. You're probably right. They're probably sleeping in," P.J. said, cracking open a soda can from their cooler. He felt a pang of jealousy at the thought of Haley and Wes having sex right now. Then he thought of Nina and swallowed the emotions.
"You know, Nina lives here. She's from Marisol."
"Fuck," said P.J., realizing his mistake. "I told her we might hang out later because I didn't think we'd have to. I thought she was leaving soon."
"Maybe she was just being nice too," Dennis said.
P.J. nodded slowly as the dark clouds moved in like colossal ghosts. Soon the water started getting restless and violent and as foretold by the honest sky, a storm broke out and the two brothers closed the stand and surfaced the boat with extra chains and extra tarpaulin and then they went home.
As a child P.J. was terrified of hurricanes and storms and growing up in Florida this seemed absurd. There were two seasons: rainy and not rainy. But he never got used to it. Sometimes the authority – be it his father, his mother, when she was around and was inclined to speak to him, or people on TV – said words like hunker down or lock up, and he never quite knew what to make of it. He had memories of staying locked in his house away from the windows, lights off, listening to the wrestling of the gods and the steady barrage of rain and thunder outside. Like someone was firing off mortars in his small suburbs.
Now, like then, he stayed holed up in his small beach apartment. Dennis watched the TV while it droned on without luster or excitement. Midday programming barely heard over the wind and patter of the rain on the windows. P.J. laid in bed and closed his eyes. The sheets still smelled like Nina and he wasn't mad about it.
The sex was fun and dizzy and he had handfuls of her and when he fumbled and pivoted directions she was generous and followed him or helped him recover. She liked him more than he did her, but even still, it was primarily lust. She liked to see his muscles quiver and shake on top of her and liked to feel the weight of his pelvis balance between her thighs. Looking back to earlier that day, there was a small part of him that missed the pillow talk and wished he had stayed in bed a bit longer. People are always ready to be vulnerable when they're horizontal with each other. Maybe he got out of bed fast because he wasn't ready for that.
Before he knew it he started to doze off. The colors behind his eyelids expanding and darkening. That thread of sleep untangling and pulling at the back of his mind, pulling him down, deep down into the pillows or the sheets or whatever realm lay just under there. Then he began to see things.
A great movement of stone grinding across a platform of concrete and sediment worn down over millions of years. The calcified remains of fish texturing and laying bare a mosaic of flora and fauna.
Then he saw an island, a small crescent in the vast ocean peppered with trees and cliffs with running water, catching the sun. Then he saw skeletons. Bodies of men and fish and hybrids in between with malformed hips and double-jointed arms. Swollen knobs at the end of sun-bleached bones. Mouths cranked open in garish unworldly widths, like snakes or a kitchen drawer off its rails. A man crawls on all fours. He is eyeless and boneless and his form slugs across, filled with water and some nameless undulations and it seems like he's crawling towards a behemoth. A massive, titanic skeleton of a monster so large you could never believe it. A maw with the expanse of a school bus. Teeth like stalagmites and stalactites reaching down to crush each other. Bright bleached bones as large as archways and flying buttresses. This man crawled to it.
And then he saw Haley in a hundred different pieces floating like blood red krill in the shallow waves. Bone fragments, skin, strands of her hair tangled like sea moss. Her skinless face struggled to breathe. The saltwater going into each wound with such a sting and sterilizing shock she gasps more.
And then he woke up covered in sweat. He reoriented himself until he was certain he was back in his apartment with his brother in the other room watching TV. With the storm outside just begging to get in.
––––––––
AWAY, IN THE SEASHELL, T.J. and his friends grew restless. He had already seen that Wes's car was gone, but because neither of the two would answer the phone he implored that the front desk let them into the room. The man at the front desk, a thin, tan man, wasn't allowed to do that but he did walk with T.J. to the door and knocked loudly. He also rang the small bell and knocked even louder and claimed that he was house keeping. There was no answer and the man from the front desk said he wasn't allowed to barge into people's room without authority.
"It hasn't even been twenty-four hours, sir. You said his car was gone."
Amanda agreed with, and reiterated it. T.J., reluctant, decided to calm down. Then the two and some other friends watched TV in their hotel room while the storm outside continued to thrash.
The next morning, having still heard nothing from Wes or Haley, the manager of the hotel opened the door to their room. To everyone's grim confirmation the room was just as the couple had left it. The bed was unmade and the used condoms were still in the bathroom trash can, triple wrapped in toilet paper. The luggage was still open and the fridge still had beers and fruit in it. The room was still very much lived in but the air was dense with something evil. The manager called the police and suggested a missing person report. The police explained that Wesley Batter III was in the hospital just yesterday morning and had appeared to be in a fight. "Had a lot of teeth knocked right the hell out of him," they said but other than that, he was fine and they had let him go around eight in the morning. "Guy did not want to help us out. Kept saying it was a shark attack, but what kind of shark is going to walk up on land to coldcock you?"
"Was there a Haley Yearning with him?"
And the answer was no. So T.J. placed a missing persons report for her as well, but the police said it needed to be a three-day period and that they just don't start "wailing away sirens" for college kids that have a tendency to party too hard.
Later, T.J. was convinced, again, to give it more time. The idea was that maybe they went home early. Haley never much liked to party anyhow. In the car, T.J. called Dennis and P.J. and they told him they hadn't heard nor seen anything from the two but that they'd keep him updated.
The drive back to Gainesville was longer than it was down and this was true for all of the friends. Even the optimists like Amanda were heavy with a persistent worry that nestled deep in their stomachs. But no one was as bothered by it as P.J. T.J. explained to him that Wes mentioned something about a shark attack and P.J. thought about Rory. He brooded on it. It felt like something from his dream slipped out and was made real. In his mind he could see the silver scaled nightmare struggle for breath on the floor, gnashing his teeth and turning P.J.'s world into a bluish hellscape. There were klaxons in the distance.
Eventually, Chief Eugene, the officer that was called earlier, would piece together (incorrectly) the beaten visage of Wes and the missing "girlfriend," Haley. He would inform his men that perhaps foul play was involved and the search for both would be expedited. However, nothing and no one would be found.
The board members of Marisol Island refused to announce it as a shark attack because the girl's body was never discovered, and they didn't want to risk such a plummet in tourism. So, rather, Chief Eugene would spend long nights chain-smoking in his office, making phone calls that lead nowhere and gathering nonsense pieces from random jigsaws. It was all to prolong the inevitable, where the chief would call Haley's parents and explain to them, over their crying and sniveling, that she disappeared without a trace. He'd be called horrible names and he'd feel guilty as hell but then he'd just have to call Wes's parents and explain the same. Over time he'd gather breadcrumbs. Wes's car was seen going to the keys, his car was seen parked, his car was seen abandoned, and then that's it. Even had he known what happened, even had he witnessed it, what could he say? Not the truth. Surely not the truth.
When he first heard the news P.J. didn't know what to think. He looked at Dennis and then out at the sky. The storm from the day prior was still lingering, the beach still gray and humid. There was static in the air. P.J. thought of his father. He had this feeling that if he didn't search for Haley himself, then he was not a real man. He thought if his father was in this situation he'd certainly hit the road, knock on doors, ask questions, a real man raised off the Hardy Boys. But this wasn't the Hardy Boys' world anymore and if a man like Wes was hospitalized, P.J. best stay out of the way.
"What do you think happened?" he asked Dennis.
The two sat in their room flipping through the channels. The weather had yet to clear up so barely anybody was on the beach. Over the TV you could make out the laughs and cheers of the few that were there, playing with a kite in the harsh wind, having it flip around and go crazy.
"I don't know, man, I try not to let my mind go to the negative things, you know?"
"I think they put out a missing persons. Or are going to," P.J. said. He looked down at his brother. Dennis was sitting on the floor, his back against the couch, his strong legs extending beneath the wicker and glass coffee table. Dennis didn't turn from the TV.
"Like I said, I try not to think negative things," Dennis said again.
"Yeah well you can not think about it, but that doesn't make them not happen."
There was a silence. This had always been true about Dennis. He was forever the optimist. Even as a kid when he would be grounded he'd just plan all the things he would catch up on once liberated. In a way, P.J. envied that. It was chainless to never be burdened. Even if the horror of the world were right smack in front of Dennis's face, a bloody machete under his nose, he'd look at the sheen of the blade instead.
"But I'll miss them. They were cool," Dennis said. Look at that sheen.
A beat.
"He said Haley was attacked by a shark and nobody is saying anything."
"People say weird shit when they're distressed, I don't know."
Dennis finally turned around and looked at P.J.
"Well?" He prodded, "Do you think it was a shark or something else?"
And there it was. The million-dollar question. P.J. wanted to grab Dennis by the ears and scream into his face, but he didn't know what. He wanted to make Dennis worry or feel concern or something. To pass off this nameless coil of dread so that for once Dennis can have trouble sleeping. Just for once. Put he didn't say anything and the little pit deep inside him just got a bit bigger and a bit darker. He didn't know. He just didn't know.
Days passed and P.J. explained to Dennis that he no longer wanted to work the boat stand and instead wanted to work in the building. He said he was growing tired of the beach and was starting to hate watching the sea. But the manager had none of it.
"You can't run the stand with only one person," the pink old man said. He clicked his pen.
P.J. said okay and went back to work for the absent customers. Just standing there at the hut, his only audience the ceaseless tide.
One day he crafted a sign that read: "Test Driving Boat" and he took the small boat out to the water to be alone for thirty or so minutes. He cut the engine and drifted down the beach with the current. He didn't read or listen to music. He just watched the people, small and colorful on all that white sand. He drifted south and watched the people pan towards him and then away, far off to the left, the north, growing smaller and smaller. They were on a conveyor belt it seemed, being fed into some factory maw. He stood there under the hot sun and thought about back home, the water bobbing him up and down like a cradle, the breeze and gulls the forgotten lullaby.
His father had enough money to support the three of them: P.J., Dennis, their mother, but still she left. Without a word she left into the night. Came back once in a while. Phone calls turned to emails and then it was over. Dennis took it in stride but at night P.J. would catch his father sniveling and moaning in his room. That was his big sadness. There was a stretch of years where P.J. was paranoid that Dennis was still talking to her behind all of their backs but this wasn't true. He still doesn't know why he was so convinced about it. But he was convinced. He shook the memory out of his head.
A couple nights later, after a day of five or so boat rides, P.J. returned the boat keys and lingered around at the bar of the Seashell. The sun had just set and the beach was emptying fast. The sky was dark violet and the sea breeze was cold and blew through the open bar. People headed back to their rooms. Some passed by, some got drinks, but most didn't. Dennis had already gone back to the apartment leaving P.J. to sit alone. He ordered a few large beers and thought about Haley's smile less and less the more he drank. He felt stupid. He hardly knew her. But that was something that made it worse. Like a brief glimpse of great moments before they're snatched away – or goes back home, he told himself, probably.
Soon, P.J. was drunk. He wrote his employee ID on the bill so they could deduct it from his paycheck and he walked, wobbly, towards the sand. Something about getting drunk alone felt poetic to him. Sad, but beautiful. He always thought himself as a stone hearted romantic, like a Hemingway type, but he knew he was full of shit. He was just mimicking the greats he saw, the people his father admired, drunk on rum and watching black and whites. A lot of being a young man was that. It was just doing what you saw and hoping no one tested your mettle. You can't get hammered by yourself and then call yourself beautiful. It didn't work that way. Not really.
The sea bounced from left to right and his footing in the sand was poor. He slipped down little sand mounds and fell to his knees but he kept going. He was embarrassed to be seen and mad at himself for getting so drunk. But then he would justify it to himself saying that he is young so who cares. It seemed to him that nobody else his age was much burdened by tying one on. It didn't seem like they were much burdened by anything. But he carried guilt in everything he did. In a way, he thought, he should be excelling. He should be in his prime and be exceeding at every aspect of his young and healthy life. But he wasn't. He felt guilty about that too. Sometimes he saw the videos of the kids with cerebral palsy or the half dead patients with inspiring videos and he wondered how they seemed happier and more successful than him. If that were him he'd just die. Roll over and choke on his feeding tube, too embarrassed to be seen and with no self confidence to live.
Haley popped back into his mind when he spotted his boat on the shore.
"Where'd you go?" he said aloud but the sea breeze dragged it away and crushed it.
"Where'd you go?" he said again, softer, sitting on the sand, watching the waves.
But that question wasn't only directed to Haley. It was to everyone that's come and gone in his life. Nina. Caroline. His mother. He may as well have been asking why did they leave. Or why did he love them? Or more to his core, why didn't he love them? He was small, humbled before the massive ocean facing him. It breathed as it shimmied up the sand. There were no birds. There were no people. He was alone.
Then he felt stupid. He decided he wasn't a detective and that he had no business diving into this absurd investigation. He wanted to leave it to the police and he wanted to not be bothered by it again. He wanted to be like Dennis. But he couldn't. He brooded about everything, whether they concerned him or not. He just added weight after weight on to his neck. It was a lawless and wicked world and P.J. knew that, but for some reason he couldn't make amends with it. Dennis could just look at the chaos and the wickedness and say Okay and It'll be okay and I'm doing my best. But P.J. couldn't. He crumbled every time.
He stood up and stumbled to the water. He looked in both directions. It was blurry and dark on either side of him. There were some lights far off on the pier and some from his apartment the other way. He looked toward the pier and his eyes landed on that dark hut in the middle. It was barely visible so far out, sticking out like a thumb ready to grasp the earth and yank it down.
He unzipped his shorts and relieved himself in the shallow water. The small waves broke against his shins and his sandaled feet sank deep in the wet sand. The water was black and as he urinated he closed his eyes and felt the breeze against his face and against his member and it all felt good.
About fifty feet from where he stood, loud splashing occurred. P.J. opened his eyes and looked and could just make out the frothing of gray foam. He thought it was a bird diving for a fish and he stopped peeing and tucked himself back in and turned to watch. Shortly, though, the show ceased. Then there was nothing. The waves everywhere came to a slow halt and the water stopped and stood still like gelatin. Then the breeze stopped too. P.J. didn't take his eyes off of where the splashing had occurred because if he turned away for a single moment, he would lose the spot in the darkness. Then, slowly, P.J. began moving towards it. His feet were heavy in the water and in the sand, but he slowly shuffled forward to the spot. He was nearly half way there when the placid water bumped. It swelled in a lump and then dispersed. Then it happened again. The water was rising in a narrow hill, then going back down, like it was a tight plastic bag over someone's mouth. P.J. moved forward even slower. The water was calm, and even as he walked and lifted his feet out and back in again, no splash or ripple formed. The black swallowed his feet and then released them, and then swallowed them, and then released them. The water, three yards from the shore, lumped higher in the shape of a small hill, to a high hill, to a smaller hill. Then, the water broke over the lump and a man began to crown. The water swallowed the man's face again and again, in another pulse, it formed and now more of the man's face was revealed. Like he was being formed right there, born from the sea.
P.J. stood in a stupor. He watched the ocean give birth to a man. And soon, the man was fully formed. He stood there naked and dazed. Then he collapsed into the shallow gasping for air and he slowly crawled out onto the sand. The stars in the sky spun and P.J. rubbed his eyes. He felt his stomach go queasy, bungee jumping his lunch . The man, naked, was a dark shade, but still his figure seemed sharp and jagged, like he had angles to him. The figure, on hands and knees, made his way further on the sand, panting and crying and puking up saltwater. On all fours he seemed like a figure stuck together with clay, bent in his own weight, pained by the ridges and severity of his own bones. Then the figure turned towards P.J., as if he had sensed his vibrations in the area, and he stood up tall and thin, planting his feet down on the earth. The scene was familiar to P.J. He recalled the silhouette on the dune weeks ago. The scared boy, for that's what he was at heart, at this moment, felt threatened. He took a step backward, but the water picked back up, and the waves caught him by surprise. He lost his footing and fell back into the black. Absorbed by the water, he panicked like he had never done before. It was cold and violating. It was like needles trying to get into him and he screamed underwater and thrashed around until he sat up. He could feel the water burrow into his pores and into his ears like it was boiling and magnetized to his blood. He quickly stumbled to the sand and looked towards the figure expecting to see him close and menacing but instead, he was far off, running towards that black hut in the distance, a tall but stooping gait with spindly legs and a narrow back that caught the moon and appeared piebald and gibbous.
Sobered through terror and covered in sand, P.J. ran home. He burst through his apartment door and ripped his clothes off and went into the shower. But the water was dreadful. It stung and he hopped out. He quickly dried himself off. From the racket he was making, Dennis woke up.
"What the fuck is going on?" He asked from the doorway of his open room.
P.J. turned to him and didn't say anything. He was pale and wide-eyed. Dennis looked around and saw the scattered clothes and sand everywhere. And then he saw the scared look in P.J.'s eyes.
"I ain't gonna be back for a little while," the voice on the phone said. It was Kyle. Dennis had just watched P.J. retreat to his bedroom without a word and when his cell rang he nearly leapt out of his skin.
"Is Abby okay?" Dennis asked. He stood in the living room and looked at the sand that P.J. had tracked in. They were the footprints and streaks of a man in a panic. There was water too. The steam from the bathroom was coming out slowly and with heat.
"I don't know," Kyle said. "She's still having nightmares about the beach and the water."
Dennis sat on the couch and leaned forward. Through the glass doors of the balcony he could see the night sky and the ocean under it. Layered over that, he could see his reflection, darkened and fading like a wraith stuck between two planes.
"I'm saying, if you want the keys to my boat or to go shooting, you don't have to wait for me. I trust you enough and I don't want it just sitting there at the dock forever."
"I can take it out for you," Dennis said, "Keep it running smooth."
"I appreciate that."
There was a pause.
"How's your brother been? What do you do for him when he gets all in a tizzy?"
Dennis thought for a second. He peered over his shoulder to P.J.'s door. It was locked. If he started screaming in his sleep he couldn't shake him awake like he did when they were younger.
"If he starts screaming I usually wake him up," Dennis explained, "Then it wouldn't happen again for a bit." And then Dennis started to get the feeling that P.J. may not wake up again. Literally, he'd open his eyes and start his day. But when Dennis saw him come out of the bathroom he looked scared in a way he hadn't seen in a long time. Dennis worried that P.J. might not wake up from this fear, and then how would Dennis help him. How could Dennis shake him awake if he weren't even sleeping?
"I guess I'll just keep her close. Make her feel safe."
"Yeah, do that," Dennis said.
After they hung up, Dennis walked over and closed the blinds to the balcony. He didn't want to look outside anymore.
––––––––
THE NEXT OFFERING WAS a child. Rory didn't know who the child was as a person, though it hardly mattered. He was seven years old and he had a buzz cut. He wore a waterproof digital watch that was bright green with a camouflage design on it. He always wore a bright red bathing suit and from what Rory pieced together, from watching him every day, he lived in a house about a block away from the beach, a little one-floor bungalow. What Rory didn't know, or care about, was that the boy's name was Gregory Rett and he was the child of Sandra Rett, now Sandra Pat, because she had divorced the father and returned to her maiden name. Indeed, he lived a block away in his mom's house with her mother. It was a small light green house with an ugly lawn and a bent weathervane. People may think that the houses on these small beach islands are quite pricey, but the truth is that they're not. For the land, as theirs was, is very susceptible to water erosion from floods and such. The expensive houses sit on water stilts that will stand above the sea if it were so inclined to rush in. But not this little green one. This house was cheaper than most and as dirty as they come.
On the weekends, the child ate a small lunch with his grandmother and went out to the beach from around one to four. He played about knee-high in the water and made sandcastles just to kick them down and sometimes he flew a kite.
Rory watched every day from his lawn chair with deep dark sunglasses. He has quit going to his job. His skin, as of late, had grown uglier. Little patches, not yet hardened, started to appear on his back and his calves. His teeth started to grow crooked, and another line began forming behind them, and in between each other, shoving and pushing for the best real estate in his black and pink gums. The pain was immense, like thirty wisdom teeth rushing in at once. His gums bled frequently and he spat it in a little Dixie cup like it was dip. He began to eat trash he found and raw fish he caught with his hands at night. The lights of his hut were always off, because when on they strained his eyes. He no longer read the book anymore, for his eyesight had started to go, but he kept it on his person and new every single word and would recite it to himself like a twisted and vile hymn.
There is a world where Gregory grows up to be the pilot of a small bi-plane. He would have flown high over plains of wheat in the Midwest with that great blue to his back. He would have loved the plains, expansive and wide beyond his rapid propeller. The clouds would reflect off of his goggles and he would smile to heaven for allowing him to fly. He would have been married at twenty-six to a redheaded girl named Izzy, four years his junior, and they would live together in Kansas. Gregory would appreciate being landlocked and he would grow fond of lakes and pools, but mostly the sky. He would have a kid with Izzy and name her Cathy, after Izzy's grandmother, and the three of them would have been happy. But those stars, the ones that predicted that, the ones that foretold that adventure, fell from their rusty mantles and were lost in dust, falling down in a tick tock rhythm, clanging and battering against other fates and hoisted propositions. So loud and deafening was the fall of this future. So chaotic was the crash into oblivion, slipping down to, again, that spinning maelstrom.
Here's what did happen:
At four fifteen, Gregory packed up his towel and his kite and walked through the sand back to the pavement. Rory, the day prior, had bought a kite from a store down the way. It was the classic diamond shape and the graphic was of suns with sunglasses and Rory tangled up the fine string in and around the wooden cross on purpose. He waited around and as Gregory passed Rory asked for help in untangling it.
"I see you with that kite every time," Rory would say, careful to not reveal his teeth. "Y-y-you wouldn't mind helping me with mine, would you?" And Rory offered his kite, an offensive mess to Gregory.
Gregory looked at the kite and then to the direction of home. The sun hung heavy and bright and the asphalt of the way was pitch black with little blurry waves of heat emanating off of it like snakes. If Gregory were keen, then he would have noticed Rory shaking nervously. He couldn't see his black eyes past the sunglasses.
"I dunno sir," Gregory said through the gap in his teeth. His blond hair shimmered with sweat and Rory wanted to rustle it just for the sake. "I gotta get back home." He rearranged his flip-flopped feet.
Rory almost let the child go and live but he heard something from the Gulf and he turned to it. The green encouraged him and then Rory remembered being in there with them, and how fabulous and otherworldly it all was. Dark and light dancing with warmth. Muted and void of angst and the deeper he went, the darker it became, the colder it became, but the more he felt at home. There at the very bottom, nestled under immense stones of ancient rock, or in the cracks of sediment long packed, older than the fish that weaved through it, he never felt more at home. That life beckoned to him in the form of the sighing waves, and he turned to the little boy, Rory now sweating too.
"I really w-w-would appreciate it, buddy," he said, "I got this f-f-for my boy when he comes tomorrow and he would be so s-s-sad if it didn't fly."
Gregory put a hand over his eyes to block out the sun.
"You got a son?" the child asked.
"Of course I got a s-s-s-son. If you help me out, I'll drive you home and explain it to your mommy. So you don't get in trouble."
And with that deal the boy was convinced. He walked with Rory into the cool shade of the hut, being careful not to step on the cracks of the driveway. And Rory pushed opened the dark door and guided the boy in and before Gregory could ask why it was so dark and what that awful stench was the door shut hard behind him.