He had pulled him from the oily ocean, which clung and pulled like a reluctant child, dragged his sodden plaid-shirted body onto the shore and, frozen hands shaking, had placed his own lips to the blue-cold of his mouth. Out, he blew, and the chest rose, nose plugged, eyes closed. Circles of salt already drying on his face, like the ringworm they’d had as children.
Jim had watched him sink. He’d watched the slow ascent of Elliot’s bow, the majestic and horrifying rise, like a boy reaching for a basketball hoop. He’d seen the plunge that followed immediately, deep into the murky depths, just like the Titanic. Up and then down, found and then lost. Bottoms up, best foot forward, eggs in a basket, there was always some truth in clichés. The trouble came when you tried to find it.
Vomiting sand and sea-water, Elliot turned to his side, away from the mouth that came again to breathe his breath for him. Enough, he knew. One can only rely on the kindness of strangers for a very small time. His salty hair lay sadly across his eyes, his cheek in the sand, sharp with broken shells. Jim hovered hazily, a mass of pink hair and uneven breath, crows of delight and whimpers of inquiry. Enough, said Elliot. I am alive. After a fashion, knowing Elliot, Jim had sunk to sit quietly beside him.
It is a cold night, some moon, a little cloud. Jim’s ears ring with leftover panic, but the need for it is long gone. Pants soaked to his knees, clutching his calves clammily as they stretch to dry in the chilly breeze. Upper arms cooling quickly, growing red as do his eyes.
He had hated so many things about Elliot. Focusing, he brings up three, runs them over his mind like a damp cloth, soothing it, cooling it. He had hated his smallness. The sicknesses that came and went, in his body and in his head; how he could never amount to much because he was just not big enough. He had hated how he would hold his rifle while he wore his undershirt, balanced across his shoulders, wrists hooked over butt and barrel, elbows hanging casually, shoulders slightly shrugged. So casual, so disrespectful of a thing that could kill. The way he would turn his whole body to speak, the rifle’s muzzle pointing at your throat as he faced you, then past, then at you again as he turned back. And he had hated how Elliot never let anyone in, never let anyone know where he was or how he was or who he was.
Jim is crying now, hiccupping sobs that break as they emerge, head low between knees as he waits for the sun to come up. Even alone, in the dark, he hopes no one will hear. He considers, as he considers every day, the loss of a brother, the end of a life, the shortfall of love, the failure of faith. There are tears dripping from the end of his nose, mucus clogging, a deep howl somewhere far down his throat. He remembers Elliot’s face caked in sand, like breaded meat, or a leper’s scabs. Jim doesn’t believe in sorrow, but maybe grief is a different thing. Maybe it is more like this sea he hates so much. Ever-present, arriving in waves, dumped on the sand, retreating. But it is too much symbolism, he decides, for his current situation.
