ALAN BRENNERT

THE MAN WHO LOVED THE SEA

It's a long haul from practically anywhere to Chincoteague: a barrier island off
the eastern shore of Virginia, it's completely inaccessible by train, and the
nearest major airports are hours away -- in Baltimore, or Washington. I left
Atlanta at eight A.M. Thursday morning, arrived in D.C. a little after ten, and
was on the road by eleven: across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, stop-and-go through
a numbing procession of small dull towns, lunch a burger at Hardees, then back
behind the wheel. The little Ford Escort weathered the journey better than I
did: by the time I finally crossed Wallops Island into Chincoteague, I felt hot,
tired, irritable -- same as I'd felt twenty years before, when my parents, in
the throes of the marriage spasms which would ultimately end in divorce, brought
me here for my first summer with Uncle Evan and Aunt Dierdre.

But the minute I started across the Black Narrows Bridge-- the moment I drew my
first breath of the briny air, and saw my first great blue heron loping casually
through the marshland below -- my fatigue and irritation receded like a tide,
and the memory of two glorious summers came back in a rush, etched brightly onto
everything I saw.

I hadn't been here in almost five years, but in many ways the town didn't look
all that different than it had even twenty years ago. There was still only one
stoplight on Main Street, and the town dock remained sleepy to the point of
narcolepsy. Gone were the neighborhood stores known only by their owners' names
-- Dave Birch's store; Charlie Gold's store -- but the storefronts along Main
were still small, mom-and-pop operations, not a single tri-level, escalatored
shopping mall anywhere to be seen. Further south (or "down the marsh," as they
said here) one-story bungalows with screened-in porches fronted the tidal flat;
kids drove five-speeds across neatly mowed lawns; out on the channel, motorboats
traced foam contrails in the water.

It was so much like the Chincoteague of my youth that for a moment I forgot what
brought me here; for a moment, as I pulled into the driveway of the white
clapboard house on Margarets Lane, I half-expected to see the tall, rangy figure
of Uncle Evan ambling out of the house to greet me.

But it was Aunt Dierdre -- heavy-set, middling height, white-haired -who
appeared on the front steps as I pulled my travel bag from the trunk, and she
was alone.

"Steven? You came --"

Though she didn't intend them to, the words cut deep: You came. For too long I
hadn't come. For the five years I'd been married to Rose, I'd been too busy with
my own life -- had only spoken to Dee and Evan by phone, the occasional holiday
call. And now Evan was gone, and it was too late to make up for the lost time
between us, to make amends for my thoughtlessness.

Maybe I could make amends to Dierdre, at least. As she approached, I dropped my
travel bag and hugged her.

"How you holding up, Aunt Dee?"

I could read the pain in her eyes, but she shrugged in a way she shared with
many residents of this fragile island: a stoic acceptance of the sort of
calamities-- floods, hurricanes, fires -- which had always been part of life on
Chincoteague. "Better," she said, trying for a smile, "now that you're here. But
come on, come in, let me take that." Faster than the eye could follow she'd
grabbed my travel bag and was bustling into the house -- happy, I suspect, to
have someone to look after again.

Both Aunt Dee and Uncle Evan were "Teaguers" -- island natives. (Non-natives,
even long-time residents who weren't born here, were invariably known as
"come-heres" or "come-latelys.") My mother left Chincoteague for college and,
after that, Baltimore, but her brother Evan stayed behind, becoming a "waterman"
-- a fisherman -- and marrying his high school sweetheart, Dierdre. They were
never able to have children of their own, which could account for why they so
readily agreed to play host to a surly, restless ten-year-old city brat.

"You were a handful," she admitted, half an hour later, over cake and coffee.
"But you settled down soon enough."

I smiled. "Yeah. But only after hijacking Uncle Evan's skiff." By the end of my
first week on Chincoteague I'd contracted a near-terminal case of island fever;
bored out of my mind, I liberated a small dinghy Evan had been restoring in his
back yard, launched it (not without a skinned knee) into the channel, and
tried-- insane as it may sound, in retrospect -- to paddle back to the mainland.

Dierdre laughed, eyes bright for the first time since I'd seen her. "When he
found out what you'd done, I thought he was going to shellac your behind, but
good. But when he caught up with you and saw you'd made it all the way to Willis
Point, he told me, 'Dierdre, the boy may have the makin's of a waterman,' and
after that, you could do no wrong, even when you did."

"Maybe I should have listened to him," I said. "There are days when trawling for
flounder off Tom's Cove sounds a lot more appealing than putting out a trade
magazine."

"Oh no," she said quickly, "it was hard work, Steven, a hard way to make a
living. He loved it, but I think you have to love it, to keep at it, year in and
year out."

I hesitated a moment. "Where. . . was he?" I said, finally broaching the subject
we had so far avoided. "When it happened?"

Her eyes clouded over. "Right there," she said, nodding to the old leather
recliner in the comer. "He'd had some angina, the month before, but we really
had no idea. No warning." She looked down. "I know the Lord has His reasons,
but. . . I must admit, I'm hard-pressed to see how He could need Evan more than
I do."

I looked at the chair in which he'd spent his last moments, and felt an odd
anger, a vague sense of. . . injustice. It must have showed on my face, because
Dierdre just nodded sadly. "He should have been out there when it came," she
said, glancing toward the waters of the bay. "It would've been awful for me --
his boat being late; the search-- but even so. He loved the water; loved the
sea. That was where he should're passed on. . . not in some fatty old chair in
his living room. Out there, in his element."

I didn't want to go see him; didn't want it all to become real. But of course it
was real, whether I wanted it to be or not. And so, too soon, we were in Salyers
Funeral Home, and I was gazing down at Evan-- at his creased, craggy face; at
his big hands, calloused from years of dragging nets and shucking oysters; at
his scarecrow-thin body laid out in a simple black suit -- and my memories truly
became memories, then. Until that moment, I could pretend that I could come back
here. . . join him for an afternoon on his boat. . . go wading for clams with
him. Now all that belonged irrevocably, and only, to the past.

The satin lining of the casket, the crushed velvet pillow on which his head
lay-- Evan would have snorted derisively at them. A little too frou-frou for me,
he would've said -- and it was then I remembered something he'd once told me. I
turned to Aunt Dierdre. "Didn't Uncle Evan want to be cremated?" I asked. "His
ashes scattered across the bay?"

Dierdre looked embarrassed; almost guilty. "I. . . I just couldn't, Steven," she
said quietly. "It seems so. . . final. I want a place I can go to, to visit him.
He was out there, on the water, for so much of our life together. . . I'd like
him near me, now, for as long as I have left." She looked away. "Is that selfish
of me?"

I shook my head, and didn't protest.

What would have happened, I wonder, if I had?

The funeral was scheduled for the next day. I made dinner reservations for seven
o'clock at the Village Restaurant for Aunt Dee and myself; that left me with an
hour or so of free time. Stiff and sore from the long drive, I decided to take a
swim on Assateague, another barrier island-- and wildlife refuge-- due east of
Chincoteague. Both islands are rife with tourists at the height of summer, but
this was mid-September, and though the ocean was still warm, the beach was only
sparsely populated, particularly this late in the day. I laid my towel and car
keys on a sand dune, peeled off my T-shirt, and dove into the water-- limbering
up with a few kicks, then swimming parallel to the shore for about ten minutes
before flipping over on my back and floating there in the waning sun.

As I floated, the sun a red mist beyond my shut eyelids, I felt the slow,
languid pace of life here take hold again. . . my thoughts drifting back to the
ways I used to pass the time, things I hadn't done in twenty years. 'Signing'
for clams -- poking a long, two-pronged stick into the tiny keyholes in the sand
where innocent shellfish fell to my youthful appetite. Rashly trying to pet the
wild ponies which ran free here on Assateague (and narrowly avoiding being
kicked in the head by one particularly testy little foal). Bicycling through the
refuge, learning to spot and name all manner of animals and birds unknown in the
city: heron, ibis, deer, tree frogs, geese. . .

The water gently rocked me back and forth, tiny waves tickling the backs of my
legs, elbows, neck. I was wearing a loose-fitting swimsuit; the water flowed
through it, seeming almost to caress me with each rolling motion of the surf. I
smiled, remembering the times I'd skinny-dipped here as a boy. I lay there,
feeling happy and oddly aroused, the touch of the waters feeling almost like
that of a human hand --

A hand which now, slowly and gently, began to. . . stroke. . . my genitals. . .

Startled, I yelped, kicked out of my floating position, tugged on the waistband
of my shorts and peered inside, looking for. . . what?

Of course, there was nothing there. I laughed, embarrassed: Helluva riptide. And
in fact the current had carried me, unknowing about a dozen yards from shore. I
paddled back to the beach, toweled off, and went back to Chincoteague for
dinner.

The funeral was well-attended; the island, even now, is a tight-knit community,
and Evan was particularly well-loved. A few of his fellow watermen spoke of
their days together on the island, before the bridge was built connecting it to
the mainland -- back when boats were more than a livelihood, they were the
life's blood of the community. His best friend, Ben Sanders, who owned the
Channel Inn, said a few words. The minister read from Psalms. And that was about
it.

We buried him in a small cemetery about a quarter-mile down Church Street, and I
threw the first handful of dirt onto the coffin, saying good-bye to the uncle I
had cared so much for--the uncle who, with his wife, had showed me that men and
women could love each other, that people could make a safe place for themselves
in the world. My marriage to Rose may have ended in divorce, but I took pride in
the fact that it was a quick, amicable parting, nothing like the pitched battles
my parents engaged in for so long; and I like to think I had Evan and Dierdre in
part to thank for that.

When Aunt Dierdre asked me to stay the weekend, I agreed gladly -- as much to
assuage my guilt over my long absence as to comfort her. When she suggested I
take Uncle Evan's boat, the Sea Breeze, out onto the channel, I was both
surprised and flattered. She knew how much I loved the old tub, and knew as well
that I had never piloted her without Evan at my side. I protested (not very
strongly, I admit) that it had been at least six years since I'd been at the
helm, but she dismissed that with a wave. "Your uncle thought you'd make a good
waterman," she said. "That's good enough for me."

The Sea Breeze was an old trawler, white paint flaking from its cedar hull,
green trim similarly chipping off oak railings. Its deck was scuffed, and
mottled with thirty years' accretion of fish oils, but the moment I stepped into
the small pilot house and took the wheel in my hands, I might as well have been
at the helm of a luxury liner. The old diesel engine wheezed like an asthmatic
at first, then settled into a steady (if somewhat tubercular) drone. I cast off,
maneuvered the boat away from the town dock, and headed out into the channel.

The channel wasn't too crowded-- one or two fishing boats, a half dozen
speedboats. I glided past pilings and buoys, veered to port as I approached
Chincoteague Point, then guided her slowly into the waters of Tom's Cove.

After about fifteen minutes I cut the engine and let her drift for a while, as I
stood by the railing and gazed into the misty distance. Waves slapped gently
against the creaking hull, lulling me into remembrance and reverie. I had it in
mind, I suppose, that out here, on the water we both shared -- the water he
introduced me to -- I would say my true good-bye to Uncle Evan; but it wasn't
meant to be.

As I stood there, all fuzzy-headed and sentimental, I suddenly felt a huge jolt,
the Sea Breeze shuddering beneath me. Rudely propelled out of my daydreaming, I
noticed at once that the gentle rocking of the boat had ceased; it was
essentially immobile. And that could only mean one thing. I hurried forward and
looked out at what should have been the waters of the cove.

An oval of sand extended outward for a good ten yards ahead of the Sea Breeze's
bow.

Damn!

I felt mortified. Aground on a sandbar; Uncle Evan would never have allowed this
to happen. I told myself that this happened to the best of sailors, particularly
here in Chincoteague where sandbars appeared and disappeared like cards in a
magician's deck; but I still hoped to hell that wherever Evan was, he couldn't
see how his clumsy nephew, first time out of the box, had managed to beach his
beloved Sea Breeze on a spit of sand.

Luckily I knew what to do. Well, no luck involved, actually -- Evan had drummed
it into me. I slipped off my sandals and climbed over the side of the boat, onto
the sandbar.

Rather than immediately trying to push the boat off-- the most common mistake
you could make -- I started to pace out the sandbar: that is, walk straight away
from the boat in every direction until I began to hit deep water, so I knew in
which direction to push the boat. I walked twenty paces south; there was a slow
dropoff before I found myself up to my waist in water. I backed up, then went
twenty feet to the west; a steeper dropoff this time. That might be the best
bet. Still, to be sure, I headed twenty paces due east.

Only moments after my feet entered the water, I plummeted straight down. A very
sheer dropoff.

I bobbed to the surface, started to swim the two feet back to the sandbar -- but
something stopped me. Almost as though I'd hit a wall, or a reef. . . yet there
was nothing in front of me but water. I felt a brief surge of panic, then calmly
turned in the water, figuring to swim around to the other side of the sandbar,
the part I knew had a slow dropoff.

Something stopped me again.

But this time, it wasn't like a wall. It was like being held back.

Heart pounding I looked down, terrified I might find a Great White circling
below me. . . but there was nothing there.

Nothing. . .

That terrified me more than a shark would have. I flailed my arms, trying to
move in any direction at all, but suddenly I could get no purchase at all on the
water -- couldn't move more than an inch or two in any direction.

Winded, I momentarily stopped treading water. . . and realized it made no
difference whether my legs kicked or not. I was being. . . upheld, somehow. And
the grip -- there was no other word for it -- seemed suddenly familiar. It was a
gentle grip, firm but not creel; in fact just the opposite. I could feel the
water beneath me swirling and flowing around my legs, like fingers tracing
spirals up my calves, my knees, my thighs. Beneath my cut-offs I was wearing
only a swim support, and now the water seemed to press against my groin,
caressing the bulge of my cock, making little tugs at the cotton fabric. The
fingers of water ran up my stomach, teasingly, swirling and tugging at my chest
hair, massaging my ribs, my pectorals, my shoulders. . .

My shoulders! I realized with a start that they were under water now. The hands,
the water, whatever the hell it was, was pulling me under. I screamed for help,
fighting wildly now against the force which was dragging me down, the water
lapping at my chin, my lips --

I took a deep breath just moments before my head was dragged under the waves.
What the hell was happening? Who are you, I wanted to scream, why are you doing
this to me --

I opened my eyes. The salt stung them, but I saw nothing in front of me; nothing
but water. My heart hammered in my chest. I knew I had only thirty, forty
seconds before my air ran out; I had to do something. But what? How?

I kicked furiously, but remained rooted in place.

I felt something press against my lips. Cold. Wet. Strangely soft.

It was trying to force my mouth open. I resisted with all my strength, but it--
whatever the hell it was-- was stronger. And as my mouth began to open, I
suddenly recognized what was pressed against my lips.

Another pair of lips. . .

I started to gag, reflexively fearing the intake of water into my lungs. . . but
it never came. I tasted a salt kiss against my open mouth. . . but I could
breathe. Almost as though I were somehow drawing the oxygen directly from the
water itself.

As soon as I realized I was not going to die. . . as I understood that this
force, whatever it was, did not mean to kill me, or even harm me. . . I relaxed
a bit. And in that moment of relaxation, I could suddenly appreciate the
pleasurable aspects of what was happening to me: the caresses to my body, the
gentle eddies of water around my penis. . . and with my fear ebbing, I could
even feel myself getting hard. My God, it was true: Given half a chance, men
would fuck almost anything!

The thought made me laugh, and as my mouth opened further I felt a tongue of
water gently dart inside. Salty and a little coarse, in some odd attempt at
simulating human flesh, it licked at my own tongue, teased it. . . and I found
myself reciprocating. The very perversity of what was happening began to arouse
me. I wasn't going to die; I might as well enjoy whatever was happening.
Tentatively my tongue explored these strange, liquid lips pressed against mine,
cold and wet and somehow thrilling. They tasted of salt and brine and everything
I loved about the sea. I was half aware of something inside my shorts, fingers
of water gripping the shaft of my penis, moving easily from the base of the
shaft to the tip, briefly stroking the foreskin, just long enough to bring me
close to orgasm and then back down the shaft again, a gentle squeeze to my
testicles, then up again, faster now, back and forth --

I came, and the ocean closed tight and warm around me, and the next thing I knew
I was bobbing to the surface, free.

And alone. That much I knew at once.

With nothing holding me back any longer, I swam to the sandbar and lay there a
good five minutes, trying to make sense of what had just happened -and failing
miserably. It wasn't a delusion, that much I knew; but I could think of no
rational explanation for the forces which had taken me (in every sense of the
term!). After five minutes, I looked around me and saw that the sandbar had
shrunk to half its size, and that the Sea Breeze was afloat once more. I took a
deep breath and got to my feet.

I clambered back into the boat; its gentle rocking felt soothing, reassuring. I
noticed the deck was wet; apparently, while I was gone, a large wave had dumped
over the stem, spilling water and seaweed across the deck. It took me a moment
before I realized there was something unusual about the seaweed.

Strands of the seaweed were arranged like letters on the oak planks. A strand
that looked like a tuning fork was a y; a wobbly little circle was an o; half
that same circle formed a u. . .

I shivered despite the heat, as I took in the entirety of the message which lay
at my feet.

It said, You taste like him.

I guided the ship back to shore, tied her up at the dock, and got as far away
from the water as I possibly could, retreating inland for lunch. I purposely
didn't order a drink, as badly as I needed one, trying to keep my jumbled
thoughts and emotions in some pathetic approximation of order. My whole world
had turned upside down -- in more ways than one.

I was terrified to go back out on the water. Afraid not for my life -whatever
was out there could easily have killed me, had it desired --but of my own
response to what had happened. Afraid of it happening again; afraid of wanting
it to happen again. If the waters could assume the shapes they had, I wondered,
what other forms could they take? Part of me wanted to know, and part of me
never wanted to know.

But what really obsessed me was the message on the deck, and all that it
implied. I didn't know how to answer the thousand questions that were boiling up
in me. I wasn't about to tell anybody what had happened--wasn't about to even
allude to it. And the questions I was beginning to ask about Uncle Evan were
hardly ones I could put to Aunt Dierdre, even in veiled form.

There was only one person I could think to approach.

The Channel Inn, a quaint little bed-and-breakfast fronting Main Street,
occupied a small but choice plot of land with a fine view of the channel and the
marshes beyond. Still spry at seventy-two, Ben Sanders dragged over a white,
wood-slatted chaise longue for me to sit in. "Whoops. Hold on," and before I
could sit he whisked a rag across the back of the chaise. "Gulls," he spat out.
"If I had a nickel for every bird turd I've cleared off these chairs. . . Iced
tea?"

"Sure, thanks."

He poured me a tall glass from an old-fashioned pitcher; handed it to me, then
settled down in a chair opposite. "Ahh," he sighed, "I can't believe he's gone,
can you?"

Ben and Evan had been best friends since they met in grade school, sixty years
ago; they had played stickball together, wooed girls together, gone fishing
together, for the better part of six decades. Now Ben squinted into the
distance, toward the channel. "So," he said, "you took the Sea Breeze out for a
spin today, did you?"

I said that I had.

He shook his head. "It was a fine boat in its time, don't get me wrong, but. . .
you must admit, her engines have seen better days." I laughed. "Every Friday
morning at eight A.M.," he went on, "Ev would pilot that rickety old scow past
my bedroom window, 'cause he knew it drove me crazy. Not Tuesday mornings, not
Wednesday mornings, not Sunday mornings. Friday mornings. Eight A.M. For thirty
years. Ornery old son of a bitch."

He paused. It was quiet on the channel. Ben looked pained.

I waited a moment, then said, "He took the boat out a lot ? Even after he'd
retired?"

Ben nodded. "Six days out of seven. He may have stopped fishing for a living,
but he just couldn't help himself. He'd go out, maybe catch a few pounds of
bluefish, some black drum -- give me some for my dining room, and Mrs. Brattie
down at the Islander, and take home the rest."

"He fished every day?"

"Well, not every day, I reckon. Sometimes he'd just anchor her off Tom's Cove,
or Assateague Beach, and spend the day out there, reading, watching the waves,
whatever."

"She never says as much," I said, "but I think it might've been hard on Dierdre,
having him away so much of the time."

Ben nodded. "I imagine it was. But he was an odd one, that Evan. Knew him fifty
years -- we played chess here every Thursday; went bowling every Saturday night;
he and Dierdre came over for dinner every other Sunday. And for all that, there
was still a part of him Evan kept to himself. Sometimes he'd look into the
distance, and I didn't know what the hell he was seeing. I'd ask him, 'What's on
that fevered little brain of yours, Ev?' and he'd just smile and say something
like, 'Isn't the world an amazing place, Ben?' and I'd agree, yeah, the world
could be pretty amazing, and that was it. I swear, that was all I'd get out of
him. The man could be a goddamned conundrum, at times."

I tried to keep my tone measured. "Do you think he might have been. . . that is,
there might have been someone --"

Ben looked at me with suddenly wide eyes -- and laughed. "A little something on
the side, you mean?" he said, and laughed again. "Hell, I don't see how!
Everyone's in each other's pockets on this island. Thing like that would get
around." He paused, considering, then went on: "Truth to tell, there were days I
wondered the same thing, but. . . he never left the damn island; I know it
couldn't have been anyone on the island; and, most of all. . . I know he loved
Dierdre. Really loved her. Old men don't stop talking about that kind of thing,
Steve, just 'cause they're old. I know how much he cared for Dee."

He looked out onto the channel again; shook his head. "No," he said
emphatically, "trust me. If Evan had any mistress, it was the sea."

That night I finally worked up the nerve to return to the ocean. The mosquitoes
were fierce, but the beach, thankfully, was deserted; I stood a few feet away
from the shoreline, watching the surf roll in, foam spilling up onto the sand
and then receding again. I felt like a fool. Already the memory of what had
happened seemed more and more like a dream, an illusion. But I had to follow it
through.

I stood there a long moment, then called out, my voice muffled by the crashing
waves.

"Who are you? What are you?" -- although I thought I might already know.

The waves crashed to shore, oblivious to my presence. I felt even more like an
idiot. But I tried again.

"What do you want from me?"

The waves rolled in. Foam washed over the sand, then receded. . . but this time,
as the tide ebbed back into the sea, it left behind markings in the sand. . .
furrows made as if by fingertips. . . letters. A word. A name.

Evan.

My body shook.

It was a minute before I could speak again. "He's. . . he's dead," I said
finally. "You understand? He's gone."

The waves came crashing to shore, nothing unusual about that, but I shrank back
nonetheless. When the water had retreated, it had left behind two more words.

Know this.

My throat was suddenly dry; hoarse. The only thing I could think to ask was,
"Why?"

The waves came again, erased the message, and left a new one. Simple, and to the
point.

Loved him. . .

My breath caught in my throat. It was true. Everything I'd feared was true.
Before I could say anything more--before I could think of what the hell to say
-- the waves had rolled in again, farther than before, swirling around my feet.
I felt a light, gentle touch to my foot -- not a caress, nothing sexual about it
at all -- more like a hand, a fingertip, touched in supplication.

When the surf receded, two words lay in the sand, a simple entreaty:

Bring back?

I turned and ran, not even waiting for the tide to erase the plea.

I'm not much of a drinker, but as my car headed up Main Street toward the
Chincoteague Inn, I knew it was either stop for a drink or keep on driving
-straight back to Atlanta. So, within minutes, I found myself on a barstool in
the glass-windowed restaurant, looking out at the harbor--surprised to find,
when I glanced at the tumbler in my hands, that I'd downed a seven-and-seven in
something like three gulps. Even more surprised when I ordered another.

I guess it said something about me that the most difficult part of all this to
accept was not the existence of something unnatural, almost unbelievable, out
there in the waters off Assateague-- an elemental? a water spirit ? -- but Uncle
Evan's relationship with it. Well, hell, I'd read Joseph Campbell, but no book
in the world could have prepared me for the idea that my beloved uncle could
have been unfaithful to his wife. It would've been difficult to believe for
anyone who'd ever watched the two of them together: even in their sixties, they
would touch each other on the back of the hand, on the cheek, with unvarnished
affection and understanding. The idea that he could kiss Aunt Dierdre good-bye
in the morning, squeeze her hand fondly as he left for work, then go off for a
perverted rendezvous with some. . . some creature. . . something not even human.
. . it made me --

It made me furious. I hated him, just then: hated the lie he'd presented to Dee
all those years, hated the cruel joke she didn't even know had been played on
her, hated the image of him suspended in the water as I had been, in unnatural
embrace with a preternatural lover. God damn him! How could he do this to her?
How could he do this to me? Everything I believed about men and women, about
caring for one another, about honesty and responsibility, I learned from Evan
and Dierdre. Certainly not from my own parents. And now -- and now --

My anger seemed to sober me up almost as quickly as the bourbon worked on me. I
passed on a third drink, got up, and stood by the harbor side a long minute,
taking in the air. Suddenly I hated the smell of the sea; hated the sound of the
waves lapping against the dock; hated everything about it. I didn't care if I
ever saw it again, once I left here.

Bring back?

I shivered and decided to walk the quarter of a mile back to Aunt Dierdre's. I
let myself in -- she was asleep, upstairs -- and eventually I suppose I got to
sleep myself, but it was the kind of jittery, superficial slumber in which you
dream you're in bed, trying desperately to get to sleep, and you wake up at dawn
feeling as though you've gotten no rest at all. The next morning at breakfast I
drank three cups of coffee. I looked like hell.

"You look like hell," Aunt Dierdre said. I smiled. Nothing got past Aunt Dee.

Well -- almost nothing. "Just a bad night's sleep," I lied. "Did you want to do
some shopping today?"

"You go back to bed and get some rest. I'll take care of the shopping."

"I'm fine," I said. "Nothing a little coffee can't cure." And so, over her
protests, we spent the next hour stocking up on canned goods and household
supplies at Parks Market, then browsed the Corner Bookshop and Memory Lane
Antiques before having lunch at Don's Seafood -- one of the few restaurants on
Main Street not directly on the water, much to my relief.

I wasn't very hungry, and my anger had cooled only a little. I felt awkward here
with Aunt Dee, feeling somehow complicit in Evan's dirty little secret. . . if
not worse: I had had relations with the same thing he had. I was more than
complicit -- I was just as bad as he was.

Dierdre may not have known my thoughts, but she sensed my mood. Quietly she
said, "Thinking about Ev?"

Not in any way she could imagine. I nodded.

"Angry at him?" she asked. I looked up, startled.

"For leaving?" she said, and I thought that was as good a way as any to explain
my sullen mood, and so I nodded: "Guess so," I lied again.

"Me too, a little," she admitted. "But, Steven. . . people who love each other
always will hurt each other. You try not to, but it happens. No help for it. All
you can do is forgive. God knows Ev wasn't a perfect husband -remember the time
he and Ben went drinking in Franklin City and nearly wrecked the boat coming
back? -- but I forgave him that, as he forgave me not being a perfect wife. If
we could do that, you can forgive him for leaving."

I thought about that. I thought about it a long while. We ate in silence a
minute or two, and then I heard myself saying, "Aunt Dee. . . was it really
important to Evan that he have his. . . his ashes. . . scattered at sea?"

Dee looked uncomfortable at the subject, and I was sorry to have brought it up
again, but I had to know. "I think it was," she said. "But --"

I put a hand on hers. "It's okay," I said gently. "I'm not recriminating you. I
just needed to know."

I dropped Aunt Dee at home, and without much pleasure a t the prospect, drove
back to Assateague and the beach. There were more people there now than last
night, so I just stood at the shoreline watching the surf break in the distance,
the steady, stately roll of the waves, rising and falling as they'd done for
millennia -- as they would for millennia to come -- and I had an inkling,
perhaps, of why Evan wanted to make this his resting place, this place of
eternal life and motion, so much bigger and grander than any one human life. I
even came to have an inkling, perhaps, of why he had done what else he had.

Loved him.

Yes. Yes, I did.

I could not quite believe what I was planning to do; it made me queasy just
thinking about it. But I had no choice, really. If I felt any kind of debt to
Evan -and what I'd gotten from him over the years far outweighed whatever anger
I was still feeling-- then I owed him this much. And perhaps, this way, I might
even make some small amends for those five lost years; time I could never
recover, and would always regret. That afternoon I deliberately parked my car a
block down Margarets Lane, so when I slipped out of the house a little before
one A.M., the ignition start wouldn't wake Aunt Dierdre. I drove through the
deathly still streets of Chincoteague, coming-- it seemed like hours, though it
was only a matter of minutes -- to the small cemetery on Church Street. . .

I parked along a deserted stretch of the street, got out and looked around --
not without a certain dumb foundment that I was here, that I was even
considering this. The houses across the street were all dark; the only sound for
miles was the trilling of a few nightbirds. I popped the trunk. . . took out the
large garden shovel I'd hidden there earlier in the day. . . and set off, as
stealthily as I could manage, through the empty cemetery. (It was pitch dark,
yet I couldn't quite rid myself of the feeling that thousand-watt searchlights
were following me all the way.) Finally, after several minutes, I came to the
simple granite headstone marked
EVAN McCONNELL
Husband, Neighbor, Waterman

I stood there a moment, drawing a deep breath, working up my nerve. . . then,
with a sudden spasm of courage, dug the blade into the soft, newly turned
ground. I lifted up a big chunk of earth; tossed it aside. I felt as though a
threshold had been crossed. No turning back, now. They hadn't seeded the plot
with grass just yet, there was no sod to replace; with luck, I would finish in
an hour or two, replace the earth, and no one would ever know. Already I dreaded
the moment when my blade would strike the metal lid of the coffin; I tried not
to think about having to open it, having to reach inside, and about what I would
find there. I concentrated on the shovel, on plunging it into the ground, then
out, flinging earth to the side; again the blade goes down, another chunk of
earth uprooted, and another, and --

"Steven?"

I dropped the shovel, reflexively. I suddenly had a pretty fair inkling of what
cardiac arrest felt like.

I turned to discover, to my horror and embarrassment, Aunt Dierdre standing
about five feet from the foot of the grave-- the grave of her husband, the grave
I was desecrating!

I wanted to die. My mouth was dry as sand; I seemed to have forgotten how to
form words. "I -- I --"

But there was no anger in her face-- no surprise, even-- just sadness. She took
a step toward me and said, with unexpected gentleness, "It's all right. I know
what you're trying to do. I know why."

I could only shake my head, helplessly. "No," I said. "No, you don't."

But she just smiled, softly and sadly. "I know more than you think," she said.
"I know Evan loved the sea. He wasn't a very religious man, never went to church
with me, but. . . there was something about the ocean that moved him, deep
inside, ever since he was a boy."

Her gaze drifted to the east; toward the ocean. "If you love something that
much, for that long," she said quietly, "eventually, I suppose. . . it loves you
back . . . "

I was stunned speechless a long moment.

"You. . . you knew?" I said, finally. "He told you?"

She shook her head.

"No," she said, "of course not. Evan would never have hurt me that way. But I
could tell. When we were on the boat together. . . at the shore. . . the way the
water moved when he was around it. . . I came to feel her, her presence, after a
time. But I also knew that she was no threat to what Ev and I had together, so
we. . . shared him, in a way."

She looked down, ashamed. "I only got selfish after he died," she said. "Wanted
him for myself." She looked up again. "I was wrong."

"No," I said, "you weren't --"

She nodded. "Yes, I was. I'm a good Christian, Steven. And I should've trusted
in that." She glanced toward the soft susurrus of the ocean's voice, whispering
in the distance.

"Let her have his body," she said. "I'll trust the Lord that when my time comes,
his soul will be with me."

I stayed in Chincoteague another three days-- long enough for the body to be
exhumed and cremated. And on the morning of the third day, Aunt Dierdre and I
got up a little before sunrise, drove to Assateague, and stood at the shore's
edge, the horizon burnished gold and red, the wind light and dry from the south.
Carefully I took the lid off the urn, and poured the first ashes into Dierdre's
cupped hands; she looked at them a moment, lowered her lips to her hands,
breathed a good-bye onto them, then held out her hands and let the wind take the
ashes from her, fanning them across the glassy surface of the sea. I took the
next handful, and let the wind take those as well; and within a minute, it was
all over. Uncle Evan had returned to the sea.

I stayed with Dee the rest of the day, finally leaving around six P.M. to start
the long drive back to Washington. As I drove down Main Street, something made
me stop at the town dock for one last look at the Sea Breeze, rocking gently in
its berth. I noticed from dockside that the deck was wet, although the waters in
the harbor seemed calm. I jumped the railing and boarded the old trawler for
what was very likely the last time. There was indeed water on the decks -- and
seaweed as well, strands arranged ever so carefully on the scuffed, oaken deck.

They read: He loved you too.

I went back to my car, and in moments I was crossing the Narrows Bridge, the
waters of the channel black and bright below me, flowing back endlessly,
eternally, to the bosom of the sea.