Glimmering

It was early April, but on Moody’s Island winter still held court. The sky was icy blue laced with silver. Underfoot the stones were greasy. More than once Trip nearly fell, his sneakers sliding into declivities filled with kelp and mussels and water the color of lager. His feet grew numb as he stumbled down the shoreline, periwinkles crunching like acorns beneath his heels. Sea spray and sweat coursed down his back; his flannel shirt grew stiff with rime. Stones went flying as he walked, and he swore at them, all the words he’d never been able to say aloud, all the words he’d never even been able to think—

“Shit fuck p iss shit piss fuck fuck fuck.”

The sky darkened from pale green to metallic indigo, shot with threads of lightning. The brilliance made his eyes ache. He stumbled across the beach, blinking painfully. He’d always been thin; now he looked emaciated, his eyes sunken and the corners of his mouth crosshatched with sores. He jammed his hands into his pockets, shivering, pulled up the collar of his shirt, and stared out across Grand Manan Channel, across the steely Atlantic to where a lone lobster boat plied the unsettled waters.

He had lost all track of time. He’d thought it was early when he stumbled onto the beach, but with the sun lost within lurid clouds there was no way of knowing what hour it was. The ominous sky made him think that a storm was blowing, but such portents were all but meaningless now. Fireflies no longer flew low before a rain, but clustered close upon screen windows at midday, blinking madly. Locusts brought not fine weather but sudden snows; spiders undid their webs and hid, storms or no. Jellyfish and crabs washed up on shore in the millions, and loons flew out to sea in the middle of lashing rains. Everywhere the natural order had been betrayed by the skies: you could fly from Newark to New Delhi and back again (if your navigational systems worked, if you had fuel enough, and money), and never see sunset, never see dawn; never see the sun nor true night at all, only the shifting spectacle of the world falling apart.

He turned and stepped down onto the long ledge of stone that stuck out over Hell Head like the plank on a pirate ship. Bladder wrack scrunched and popped underfoot. Acorn barnacles tore at the soles of his sneakers. When he stooped, he saw that some of them held their feathery cirri aloft, fooled by the whirlpool’s heavy spray into thinking they were still underwater.

In the distance the lobster boat appeared to stand still, buffeted by waves. A nor’easter blowing up, his grandmother would have said. What would she have thought of a storm that lasted six weeks, of the sight of the Mississippi delta spreading across the Midwest like a red stain? What would she have thought of her grandson fucking a young girl in a planetarium, then taking a drug that made it possible for him to have sex with his own double while a perverted homosexual watched?

His stomach clenched. He shut his eyes, fighting tears, then opened them. He took a few steps toward the edge of the narrow outcropping, his feet seeking familiar pockets in the stone hidden by rockweed. He could hear the grinding roar of the whirlpool, magnified by the rising gale. His clothes were soaked through, his hair stiff. The gold cross felt like a brand upon his chest.

A sharp cry made him look up. He almost lost his balance, flailing as he sank into a half crouch. When he stood again he saw a cormorant, perhaps ten yards off, futilely beating its wings as it sought to head inshore. The wind sent it keeling down and up, its long neck arcing and the yellow patch of its chin seeming to glow in the weird light. Its wicked beak opened, and it cried out: a desperate keening sound, cut off as a sudden downdraft caught the bird and it spun end over end and plummeted into the whirlpool.

The bird struck the water headfirst. For several moments it spun, caught in the curved lip of the whirlpool’s perimeter. Trip glimpsed the pale-flecked feathers of its throat, its staring eye already dulled and insensate. Its wings spread across the water like the shattered ribs of a Chinese fan. Then it fell into the center of the vortex. There was a froth of bloody spume, a prickling of stray feathers like the spines of a porcupine; and it was gone.

On the ledge Trip gazed into the black water. It seemed there should be something to show that a creature had just died there, but of course there was nothing, not even a feather. The wind wailed and sent grey sheets lashing above the waves. He could no longer feel his fingers; could no longer hear anything except the roar of wind and water. Rage built in him that something so strong and wild could so quickly be lost, and unmourned. He was shaking from the cold but still he stood there, still he gazed into that mindless eye, until finally he began to sing.