At sea! At sea, a vessel impelled by the breath of the world, a cupped hand with tendons of steel and veins of Dacron and skin of thin fiberglass laid wet over balsa; a cupped hand in a wide cool bath of blue; two sails, one rigid and pale as a workingman’s back, the other smaller, tight and strong and wind-shaped as a bicep contracted; at sea, and Bermuda just below; and beyond, the Azores, and beyond, Gibraltar, and beyond, Good Hope, and beyond, the earth’s basin, and beyond, its crown. At sea, mates in love with the work, in love with the weather, in love with chill night watch, with the pilot whale, blue fin and cod, with the pumpkin dawn beneath the arc of it all; in love with the discipline of a jib and the intuition of wind upon cheek and the grace of a downwind spinnaker stretched as a pregnant belly over the chop; at sea, mates, honeymooners, cruisers, lovers; sunburned, salt-skinned, coordinated and balanced as never realized on land, as never required; a discreet language of glances and nudges, tugs and jerks, the fleeting muscular argot of two alone.
Aloft, dangling from the pinnacle of the mast in a bosun’s chair, a slick nylon sling, a gantline tied with a fisherman’s bend and cleated and coiled at the deck forty-five spans below, a burned-out bulb in the grasp of one hand, a screwdriver in the other, her mate unseen for the distance of the horizon astern. Below, wedged inescapably within the engine compartment, a flashlight in one hand, a wrench in the other, legs draped into the companionway; arms, shoulders, twisted about hot rubber hoses and tough wooden braces, neck locked between hull and heat exchanger, face squeezed to the engine block, and gas and oil and carbon soot a minstrel-black mask of slick pollution and sweat; his mate above riding a violent pendulum between sea and sky.
And dark, with the turning of the earth suspended nowhere without reckoning, but bright with the white whisk of wind and dash of spray and crack of sea on hull; but dark as the pit of a stomach roiled and churning with brine, convulsing and contracting and heaving; slender palm frond arms, goose pimpled arms with strength enough to cross and embrace the mast, to cling to cold aluminum, to halt the buffeting of hips and knees, but lacking sinew for shimmying or slipping down shrouds or sliding to spreaders; her mate below succumbed to violent trauma, treachery, the mystery of Neptune, or Cthulhu, or the Flying Dutchman; and she screamed and the wind dashed that noise into nothing; and she screamed and the rattling rigging answered; and she screamed and pitched the burnt bulb and stabbed the screwdriver into the mast with the force of adrenaline, and despair, and fear, and so raised a sharp white spark and a resonant tone.
And dark, closed-casket black, straightjacket still; immobile shoulders, halyard hauling shoulders, winch cranking shoulders, shoulders at the helm and anchor and jib sheet, fruit of ambition and work and vanity, frozen shoulders ensnared by braces and impossible angles and sinister design; and no oxygen to ease the cramps, no breeze through the stopped hatch, no air save recycled exhalation fouled with noxious mechanical lube and sour bilge and fuel; and he screamed and the sound was combustion and the smell, exhaust; and he screamed and tasted grease on his tongue; and he screamed - then repented and hushed; and a vague musical hum at his throat, a sweet whisper, a one-note seduction, a Jew’s harp at his teeth; and he struck his wrench at the crankcase anticipating the responding chord.
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A song, cool struck metal, atomic resonance through mast and fiberglass and balsa, deck and keel and compartment; a voice, a cry, a heartsick vibratory prayer; an orison rushing down, drifting up in blooming oscillating waves, the telegraphed poetry of one for one other.
An answer, trembling in affirmation along the path just stilled, hand to wrench to engine, engine to bolt to frame, frame to deck to mast, and a touch at her thighs, a mournful hum of regret and stupidity and humility; and out, as thread thin ripples consumed at once and gone, but still at her thighs, a tentative touch, the breath of her mate.
A chorus, a Morse-hammered harmony of quivers and pings sung in the tactile registers of throats and thighs, voices of worrisome treble and conciliatory bass, a hand tool polyphony in the octaves of promise and fresh comfort; and they sang until dawn where the sea smoothed and the sun proceeded in its lazy diurnal climb; and the morning notes grew bold, a crescendo of resistance and emancipation and fury, an epic coda struck from below, from aloft, one to the other. To her mate, a nylon strap let go, slipped from the sling, forty-five spans in a single beat.
To his mate, a chest-reducing exhalation, a fortification of will and a brace of spirit, a draft horse pull of dislocation.
On deck, prone and still and silent, impossible legs, bone beyond reason, hair as a frozen wave broke upon the hatch, fingers ceaselessly searching the tackles and blocks and lines, the hatch cover and canvas and teak, seeking; on deck, a drunkard’s walk, a determined, clumsy, slick gunwale balance, loose feeble shoulders, limp ballast arms swaying from lumps of gristle meat bound by black oil skin; collapsed, together, the grime of his face smeared in her palm; together, beneath the ivory sails and the silver mast and the yellow gold sun; at sea, in a hard cupped hand, in a wide blue bath.
A song, a song between mates, an opera without voice, a symphony with no woodwind, no string, no brass, a lag beat syncopation, the rhythm of hearts at the deck.
