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THE MISSING PERSONS report that will reach the Neil residence will shake his father to tears, and he'll never smoke again - that punctuation gone. A sentence without end. P.J. will stay up at night and toss and turn in his childhood bed. He will not be mad at himself, not yet. He will do that years later. He will not lash out or cry in frustration. He will simply nod his head when he hears the news, and he will know that there was no other way it could've turned out.
He knew Dennis wouldn't have walked away from the fight, wouldn't have turned his back to the evil on Marisol Island, and, in truth, a hero's death was the only one suitable for him – if that's what you'd call it, a stretch to say the least. Dennis died a fool, and he was fed to the only one that could've ended him. He was headed to it from the start, since birth, a slow conveyor belt of ignorance gently guiding him to the leer of the God-Devil.
Dennis's body was never recovered, and in a few months, his father's hope dwindled until it sat like a loose pile of branches from what was once a great oak. They put up a memorial stone in a cemetery and kept the end date open, in case he was ever to return. It sat bronze and stout, an angel with crude wings and a sharp face. When the ceremony happened for this, all of the gathering family and friends said their pieces of how great Dennis was and how they'll never give up hope and never stop looking, and everyone wanted P.J. to talk. The day was the sunniest of the week, and the field of the cemetery was sweltering. People sweated pink under their black obligations, and women cried softly, their tears hot on their cheeks. The grass was dead, and there were no trees around. The bronze statue cast a shadow, crooked and long. P.J. took the lectern slowly and watched the red-eyed and swollen faced relatives.
"Dennis was a good brother," he started. "Nobody loved him more than me. I'll never stop looking for him," he lied, and then he descended from the lectern and rejoined the mass to let the priest finish his talk. And he stood there sweating in the heat. And all he could really focus on was how he'd rather be indoors with air conditioning.
Years would pass, and, for P.J., Dennis Neil would become a memory. His pictures would still hang in their home, but they'd grow dustier with each passing month.
Soon P.J. stopped going by P.J. and went as Perry. Soon after that, he stopped visiting his father, and he moved to the Midwest, where he got a job as a hotel manager.
Years would slip by, and Perry would slowly replace the memory of Dennis with the nightmares of the Gulf. He would grind his teeth to the sound of the lapping waves and squalling birds. Deep in the midnight hours, he would be able to hear the people on the beach running and having fun. Maybe the motor of his glass-bottom boat. Maybe the sound of the wind and the cars from his balcony. Maybe even on the coldest of days, he would see the faint image of Haley and how pretty she was back on the sand so long ago, her face translucent, stuck on the ceiling of his room, or in the black of his eyelids.
In his forties, Perry returned to Florida to visit his father. He was clean-shaven but was starting to have a belly. The muscles of his youth would be under thick arms, and the mirth and sex of his brown eyes were now gone. His hair was now cut low to his head for easy grooming. He would not have seen the sea in over twenty years.
At the house, Perry sat in the lanai and watched faint raindrops plop into the pool. He didn't drink, and he didn't smoke. He simply watched the pool water darken with the passing hours. Intermittently he shifted his weight in the creaking wicker chair and scanned the pool's surface back and forth, left and right. In the backyard, the shed was gone, but the lake was still there.
"Are you going to come inside?" the old voice said, his father just behind him.
"Yes," he replied, looking out past the pool to the neighbor's fence. He tried to listen to the babble of the koi pond. Maybe it was gone too.
His father did not recede back inside, though. He took up his seat right beside his son. "I'm glad you came down. Even if it's just to do this." The hair on his head was thick snow. His eyes gray like his cheeks. "How much do you still think about Dennis?"
"Now and then, I suppose," Perry replied.
"Between him and your mother," the father said. Then there was a silence. "Between him and your mother," he said again. Then, "I bought a boat."
Perry took his gaze away from the pool and turned it towards his father.
"A boat?"
"Yeah. I bought it some years ago."
"You never told me that."
"Well, I didn't see how it was important. You moved away and hardly came down."
"Where do you keep it?"
"Marisol Island. On the wharf on the south part. Tony keeps it there for me at a discount. Remember when you and Dennis lived out there? That was maybe a giant mistake. People shouldn't live in paradise. They'll never get anything done."
Perry contemplated. His brows furrowed, and he breathed heavily.
"Where are the keys?"
"Somewhere in the drawers over there, I imagine. Gathering dust. I'm too old. I like being on the water, but I can't handle all the rest of it."
"You want me to sell it for you?"
"That'd be nice. Yes."
"I'll deal with it in the morning," Perry said, smiling to his father. Grinding his teeth behind his lips. Together, the two watched the pool darken.
The boat was a simple white fisherman's boat, and it cut through the water like a sailfish. It had simple leather white seats on either side and a forward cabin big enough for some seats and a toilet. The wheel was stainless steel and shined in the bright sunlight that came through the blue Plexiglas windshield. The boat bobbed heavy and had a weight to its stream greater than Perry had operated, but it was a negligible difference. He sat in the white pilot seat, and with a single hand, he maneuvered the boat far out into the blue of the gulf, the island of Marisol growing smaller and smaller behind him. Soon all he saw was the dark blue behind the wake of his path, the froth of the edges, and the chop from the wind.
Perry wore a yellow polo and a pair of white linen slacks and topsider shoes just for the occasion. His stomach hung slightly over his brown leather belt, and in the cabin with him was nothing else. He had a large fishing rod with him that was already on the boat, and he truthfully had no intention of using it. He just drove the boat out fast and hard, and when he was surrounded by blue for miles and miles, he stopped.
The sun beat down hard on the deck of the boat, the white growing hot to the touch, the cleats blinding from the sun. He stood there with his hands in his pockets and watched the water, and without fail, the fin he sought cut through. The great fish moved silently through water with short sweeps of its crescent tail. It was pure and clearly visible from where Perry stood, and it looked new and tight and well proportioned like it had been forged from the same fire that bore Gabriel's trumpet. Whether the great fish came to him on purpose, having recognized him from years long ago, was unclear. But it circled the vessel unbiased and unflinching. The fact that Perry knew the fish made the arrival much more severe. He felt it in his core. The way the skin looked in the sun. The way it moved softly, pushing the water along with its great tail, to the left and to the right. But Perry could've been wrong. There's no way he could've known. To trust senses in a scenario so otherworldly bordered absurdity. He knew nothing for certain. Hadn't for twenty years. But he stood there. Watching the maybe familiar Beast. The Beast watching the maybe familiar Man.
It was only when Perry stepped off the edge of the boat that he knew for certain what it was; when it came like a dart, and he was carried to the altar by the very acolyte that had set it.