Shorelines

2

 

     From behind the walls he had called home for the past thirty years, the sun hadn’t been much more than a bully. Shining down from some far off horizon, it seemed to point and laugh at him each time he saw it; reminding him of the great Out There; the world he hadn’t had a hope of ever seeing again. Now, standing in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, his clothes soaked through as the waves bombarded him, he basked in a different light. He wept. The tears that rolled down his face to join the waters of the ocean, and his soaking clothes were bastions of a reality he still could not quite fathom. 

Jake took a few more steps and dove for the depths, searching the bottoms for signs of life until he ran out of air. He reluctantly swam towards the shimmering sun, disappointed in himself. He remembered being the best of anyone he knew at holding his breathe. He hadn’t even been under a minute, he figured. After a reminiscent laugh, he went back under, this time focusing solely on the sun from the waters lens. How long it had been for him; how long had he dreamt of that exact view. Losing himself in the moment, he almost floundered. He surfaced again, looking out into the vast waters, wanting nothing more than to swim all the way to Mexico and drink a real margarita with his lost lover; but he knew he was too old for that now, and she was long gone.

 He thought back to when he had been a young man swimming the exact same shoreline, dreaming the same things with her by his side. Perhaps then they might have had a shot at; not anymore though. Now he was pushing 50 and unpracticed - washing back up on the shoreline drowned and alone was the best he could hope for.

A baitfish of some sort he couldn’t identify brushed by his leg, and even though he was startled for a second, he laughed and put his face into the water, wondering if more would come. He longed for a close-up with a wild ocean creature that would stare back at him with a stupid look upon their faces. He laughed again at the thought of holding a wide eyed fish into the air just in front of his face. It had been a long time since he had been fishing; it would be longer still. He didn’t have the money to buy any fishing gear, and hadn’t had a lot of practice in spear fishing while incarcerated. Hell, he couldn’t even remember the taste of fish anymore, like so much else he had forgotten; like the feel of his lovers touch, the smell of her hair, the joy of holding her; though he hadn’t forgot her face, her voice, or the love and the dreams that they shared.

As he gazed still into the sun dancing across the water, he thought back to the final letter he had gotten from her, telling him that she had to move on, and that she would be going down to Veracruz without him. She had asked his forgiveness as well. For a long time, it was something he couldn’t bring himself to give, and he had even tried to kill himself- but he loved her, and eventually came to be as content as he could be given the circumstances with the thought of her finding happiness.

He backstroked to shore, never taking his eyes off the horizon, searching for some far off Mexican coast, where she might be sitting and waiting. He found his pack of possessions and built a fire to heat a can of chunky soup as the sun began its dive beneath the water. He picked out a few other letters he had held on to, some containing pictures. There was one she had sent him of her standing on this very beach in a red top and bottom, standing against the sun. Her brown hair waiving in the wind, her smile driving right through him- her eyes saying “I wish you were here.”

In another, she was with a few of their friends at a reggae festival on some other beach line. Some of them had been his best friends. They all posed for a picture dedicated to him, but he had never cared or focused on anything in that picture but her. Even in pictures, she seemed to look right into his soul, calling him. She hadn’t sent a picture with the last letter. He considered it a good thing, because the other pictures had always given him an odd sense of hope… a dream that the end letter had been a lie, a fluke of sorts.

Jake suddenly remembered the can of soup on the fire, and was quickly jolted back into the present. He set in in the sand to cool, and pulled a pint of Jameson from his pack. Leaning back in the sand, he watched the waves crash towards him, entertaining the fantasy of the very same waves carrying him out to sea and all the way to Veracruz for a few minutes before he ate.

 Jake considered what options he might have, as a convict and invalid, as far as a quest to Mexico, hopeless as it may have sounded, even to him. He obviously couldn’t attain a passport, and he sure didn’t want to walk the hot and desolate immigrant highway southbound. He might be able to find work on a fishing vessel, but finding a willing captain seemed just as impossible as a passport. The thought of stealing a boat crossed his mind, but thievery had never been his thing, and she certainly wouldn’t approve.  He thought some more on it under the counsel of the stars for hours until he fell asleep, and then while he dreamt, as was his custom these past few years.

When he woke, he knew what he had to do. He tucked the letters and their pictures carefully into the empty Jameson bottle, and counted the bottles of water he had. There were six. He tucked it all into his pack and slung it over his shoulders. He ate his last cold can of soup and buried it with the other trash and the coals from last nights’ fire in the sand. Then, with the rising sun, he dove into the water, giving himself to Poseidon’s mercy. Fate would decide his destination; where that might be, he chose not to speculate.

Here I come, I’m coming home” he said.