by James C. Clar
The sea did not finish him, not then. He came ashore clinging to a barrel stave, hauled onto a gray New England beach by men who argued over whether he would last the night. Fever burned away his pain and his memory. When he woke, he knew knots but not faces, tides but not years. He could measure rope by the span of his hands. He slept fitfully, always with one eye open.
They asked him his name.
He tried to say something aloud, failed, and said nothing.
“We’ll call you Elijah,” they declared … unaware of that name’s irony.
Along the coast, silence was considered more an asset than a handicap. A ship’s chandler on Water Street hired Elijah because the man needed help and Elijah, despite his age and bad leg, seemed quite capable.
“You ever kept accounts?” the chandler asked.
Elijah studied the ledgers. “Your sums are off,” he said simply.
The chandler frowned. Grudgingly, he rechecked his books. Elijah was right.
Elijah was exacting, obsessive even. Coils aligned, nails were counted twice and barrels were tapped and re-tapped. He corrected customers without recrimination, out of experience he still could not recall.
“No,” he would say, finger firm on the counter, “you’ll want thicker line and more oakum. You think you won’t now, but you will.” Men listened. He could inventory a ship’s hold with just a glance.
Most evenings at dusk, he’d prop his leg against the pier and watch the tide as though it somehow owned him an explanation, or a past. Peace thereby found him in small doses. The days passed, each closing like an account balanced at last.
I met him by purely accident, in the doorway of the shop, on a morning when fog rolled down the street in waves. I recognized him at once, though I said nothing.
“Lamp oil?” he asked, as though reading my mind. “Take extra wicks. It’s the little things that make or break a voyage.”
I came back, often. We spoke of the weather, of prices, of ships that left port but never returned.
“You’ve been to sea,” I said once, probing carefully.
“I must have been,” he said vacantly. “Sometimes at night, I almost remember.”
If Elijah had a fault, it was that he was too meticulous. It was as though he were correcting some larger error, one he could no longer fathom. Ships with white hulls unsettled him. The word whale closed his mouth like a snapped rigging.
The end, when it came, came suddenly. Fire started on a moored brig; tar, canvas and decking erupted. A boy slipped on the slick planks and fell between hull and pier. The crowd shouted.
Only Elijah, alone among us, dared move.
He flung off his coat and, struggling mightily with only one usable leg, he seized a line, and swung. “Hold fast!” he cried. His tone now was commanding, imperious. He reached the boy and shoved him toward waiting hands. Heat roared. A spar fell.
He looked up once, as if checking the sums on a final column. In that instant, a curious expression crossed his face. Was it resignation or recognition?
The sea, at last, finished what it had started.
I stood long after the smoke thinned, silently mouthing a name I had not spoken aloud in years. Now, I truly do remain alone to tell his tale. Some nights I lay awake and wonder, in that last instant, did memory return and drive his sacrifice as atonement? Or did the cold calculus of the universe finally exact payment of a debt long overdue?
James C. Clar is a writer and retired teacher. Most recently, his work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Digest, Bright Flash Literary Review, After/Thought Literary Magazine, 365 Tomorrows, Antipodean-SF, The Magazine of Literary Fantasy and, of course, Sudden Flash Magazine,
No comments:
Post a Comment
Remember that we are here to support each other.