I Can Still Hear Her
The boy, who is now nearing the age of twenty, has been talking of this place on the map, where many sailors like to drink and spend their time, but I have never heard nor seen it. And if this place is true, as he says, they spend time giving in to their lust and dark ways, I think. No one honorable hides along the coast. But a new place? How could that be? I know this coastline better than most and it hides few secrets from me. But now I am old and hurt and compromise when I should say no. I can’t fight anymore and a new place for an old man like me is no place to be. However, the boy persists. My seafaring days are mild now and the adventures I participate in are only in the tales I tell. These days I like what is familiar to me: the sea. Her sounds have filled my ears every night as I’ve gone to bed, and I’ll die with her whispering in them. And so, I assume the rabble is held up there. Any place I hadn’t been or heard of contained criminals. But I was cold tonight, even with my long jacket with a matted raccoon hide for a collar. The jacket has served me well in most weather, but tonight was especially frigid, and if derelicts are held up at this ‘new’ place we are headed, so be it. Amen, as the pastor says. And even if I demanded we not go to the island, the sea would claim us if we continued up the coast and braved the winds. A storm was passing through. So, this place of derelicts is where we are headed. Nothing in my mind says this place is innocent, but my mind is aging. It could be I’ve been here. I would have remembered, though. I’m sure of it. Although, it seems every day I have conversations with people who have passed away many decades ago, and the boy wonders who I am speaking to. He told me once that he had been here, but I don’t believe him. Whose boat was he on, anyway? I think. And I said to him, “You’ve not been here, boy.” And he says, “Yes, sir, I have—as a small boy. I have some recollection of it.” And he says this very cheery and certain of himself, a quality which I detest in him being as young as he is, but which means there is some truth to it. Damn. But how could he have gotten there? I think. But then I forget that people walk and live on land, while I have been living on this boat forever, alone or with company. The boy and the dog are company, now. We’ve named the new mutt, River, because his coat, mangy as it is, is blue-hued and squirms when I watch him move around the boat. He reminds me of a tributary that shoots off from the sea, or some would say dumps into the sea, but I look at the sea first and the land as a place for dumping things.