Read Of Sea and Cloud for Free Online Page A

hair. That’s what you’re figuring? You aren’t too bright sometimes.
    The wind rushed against the walls and the trailer shifted and Jonah cupped a hand over the top of her hip and said, I love you.
    I love you too. But I’m too young for you. You need a girl your own age.
    You’ll be my age by the time we’re old. When you’re eighty I’ll only be ninety.
    She touched his cheekbone and traced her hand around his jawline. Are you going to be okay, Jonah? I’m worried about you.
    I’m fine. I didn’t know him that well anyways.
    He tucked a flake of her hair behind her ear then set his thumb on her chin.
    I know, she said. But he was your father.
    Well there’s not much to do about it now, is there?
    I guess not. But I’m still worried about you.
    I’ll be fine. Bill’s the one we got to worry over.
    I know it, Charlotte said and her voice became loud and animated. It’s crazy about him and Erma Lee, isn’t it?
    People get pregnant all the time.
    I know. But it’s different. I never figured on your brother knocking someone up, you know? He doesn’t seem like the type. You, I’d believe that. I could see it if you knocked Erma Lee up.
    I bet you could.
    Charlotte leaned down and kissed him then went to the bathroom. He heard her piss and heard the toilet flush and she returned and dressed in the darkness. She sat on the bed and pulled the blankets up to his chest and leaned over him with the ends of her hair on his cheeks and said, Are you sure you’re going to be all right?
    Why don’t you stay? I’ll deal with Virgil if he says something.
    She kissed him for half a minute then said, I can’t tonight, Jonah.

Two days later in the predawn black with a waning moon slung like an anchor in the south sky Jonah fired his boat’s engine and the diesel roar echoed across the harbor. He flicked the overhead running lights on. The light bounced off the water. The point glow of his single cigarette moved about the boat deck. The wind blew cold and empty out of the northlands and knocked the high seas down but the broken waves still slopped and slammed against the granite shoreline.
    Jonah wore his hood up and he flicked his cigarette overboard. This was the first time since his father disappeared that he’d been on the water and not searching for a body and it felt good. He’d grown up surrounded by talk of deaths at sea so had always known drowning to be a separate and feared form of death and it wasn’t just the absence of a body to mourn over that made it so. Since his father’s disappearance Jonah had wondered if what separated drowning from other deaths was the sea’s claim on the human soul. He’d never been one to believe in the idea of a soul but lately he could not fight the feeling that some remote piece of his father now belonged forever to the sea.
    His boat slid through the black water. A few houselights glowed in the small village but most of the coastline was dark land that pinched the harbor like a claw. To the south the open ocean lay empty and calling and every eight seconds the whistler buoy off the western edge of Two Penny Island flashed and seven miles beyond that the light on Drown Boy Rock made its 360-degree sweep.
    The air was cold on his face. He tapped the brass throttle lever down with his knuckles and the bow of the
Jennifer
lifted and sprayed. He stomped his feet to warm himself as the boat rocked and pitched in the slop. The island called Ram’s Head appeared as a green blob on his radar screen but as he veered westward the actual black island built of cliff and nettle rushed past not ten yards off his port rail.
    He passed the red can whistler buoy off Two Penny as the sun wove like a stitch through the horizon. He heard static over the two-way radio then heard Bill’s voice, Don’t the harbor look empty without the
Jennifer
this morning?
    Jonah took his microphone from