A boat hadn’t returned in two or four or so years. It was hard to for him to remember. The folks at the fire on the pier seemed familiar but every night he had to squint to try and make out their features. Remember, he thought, come on, and most nights he paced in the firelight pounding the side of his head like a madman coming to terms. The glittering smiles around him were teeth one minute, sinister the next. Gaping, black holes. The people who wore them floated by in a great rush of noise, brushing against his arms, standing his hairs on end, and the old dog he was sure had disappeared into the forests some way back had returned, back on her line, barking at the seals who paid her no mind. They all knew each other, and seemed to know him, but they offered him nothing in the way of words. They only looked at him, smiling. They were hungry smiles all of them, and he swam amongst them, looking for plastic cups of beer and a place to delve off the many things he knew. He spoke at the fire and wondered at the lights atop the bridge. There they went, one side to the other, and back again, little lights running here and there, like drops of ocean on a line, but a car hadn’t parked down here at the pier for some years. Not since the last boat left. He stopped now. Tried to remember when. When. But that was the hardest question. He almost pounded on his head again; he wanted to scream. He turned to ask them—they, anyone—but the sun was coming up, and they all had floated home for the day. The fire burned low and sputtered out, and even the dog stopped barking.
Maybe they were born for it. Their legs were light after all, their eyes narrowed from looking out across the water. The boat seemed to listen to them more than it did others. The smallest inclination in their wrists guided the bow around rocks. With only a flick, a pull, their craft avoided everything, flowing under reaching tree limbs and around rocky crags as though they were nothing more than water themselves—as though they were the current. When they crouched low in the stern and drove the paddle hard, the boat cut through the rapids. Others tried and fell. Others ran aground, or bashed against stone, but not they. All of them rode in the boat young, their fingers trailing lines in the water, their eyes only beginning to squint as the wind blasted them and threatened to push the boat back, to turn or capsize, but when each generation grew unsure and looked back, they saw their father with sinewy arms smiling into the sun, wooden oar in hand, wielding an answer to everything that came at them.
Among the paper fliers tacked to boards throughout that town, there was an announcement of a show to be held that Friday. “For the boys of the bus stop,” it read, “all others will be shown out the got-damned door.” The font fell near the end of the line, as though the one responsible for the handwritten banners had fallen into a fit of laughter at the end of the task. There were six of these fliers tacked to walls throughout the town and all fell off in jittery letters like the first. Trash blew by the sign and down the road and fell into the ocean. Ravens picked at the trash and spoke to passerby's, never asking for money but only heckling, bouncing their heads where they perched atop the wooden fences. The vagabonds laughed with the ravens and they never asked for anything but coffee, and that was only after they heckled any and all who passed by, their cigarettes lighting yellow teeth and feral grins. Soon, no one would travel on the side of the street where the tiny wooden hut of the ancient bus stop rested. Soon, all fled the ravens. And so the shops stayed closed and it was only the playhouse that roared with warm light in the town. Rain fell and the sea threw herself at the cliffs but the travelers and the ravens laughed and trashed and wrote signs and took the stage in the town where no one would walk by the ancient bus stop. The raucous ringing of their shows fell off in the crash of surf. The carpenters stopped coming. The town melted in the rain and madness settled over it like moss until there was only the sound of the sea and a few of the ravens who’d stayed on after the others left.
He remembers the moment she first stepped into the house. He can see her sneakers playing across the floor, her chin tilted up, her eyes marveling at the beams above. She moves to the kitchen, then to the walls, touching everything softly, her fingers resting on this edge then that, feeling the texture. He follows without words as she works her way through the house, marveling at every inch. And now, his mind puts all the moments together that came after, the years of days in that room of sunlight. Quiet, then with music playing, then he hears a pan on the stove, the sizzling bubbles of grease as something fries. He sees her shape move across the room. She is walking but in his mind it is a dance, and she glides by as though she were made of air, as she is now. He hears piano and sees her sitting before the sunset. He hears violin and they’re walking through the wood, the rushing winds tossing her hair as it tosses the tree limbs above, and he tries to hold there, to stay there as she turns and looks at him, but before her eyes can find his like they used to the memory slips from his mind. He opens his eyes and the room is empty. The house is quiet. He is alone.