a friend at sea
kristopher kennedy
Jimmy Clark revisited the past in each moment, contemplating old memories at length. This tempestroar of time buffeted him on all sides. He remembered the other night. Dad visited him in a dream. They were on the old boat, Jimmy’s grandfather’s. They sat in total silence. The ocean settled about them in doldrum tranquility. All was paralyzed with calm.
Jimmy woke up draped in feverish nightsweat. He felt a cold chill tinglerush his body. How could it be, he thought, that the dead live again in dreams? That was so real. But dad’s just a memory now, like all the rest. Like all the rest but now, til now’s like all the rest.
Since his dad died fifty-two years ago, Jimmy had fished with no one else.
All in the past, he thought, best not to remember. Though sometimes it gets so hard to forget. To quiet the steady, welling tide of a long life lived. The cruelty that your own life won’t let you be.
Another day alone out here. Yes, he thought. This is how I’ll make it. As I have so many times before, fishing on the sea.
He looked at the sea, apprehended its pellucid green glimmershine and inscrutable depths of mystery (which he did not understand), and he remembered how it laid before him all those years ago: that same color, that same mystery, that same stillness. And today he was upon it still. Yes, he thought. The sea is my friend.
The sea had shimmered much the same that last day with dad. He died just two nights later, alone on a hospital bed. Jimmy was out of town with his mother, looking at colleges. For Jimmy. They were at Amherst when the phone call came. The voice from the other line still rang cold in his memory. His mother’s scream still chilled his bones. The doctors said it was a heart attack. And so it surely was.
He needed a catch for money and for pride. Too many days empty-handed. What’ll happen, he wondered, if I don’t catch some lobster? Don’t think like that, he scolded himself, remember what dad said. “Don’t think about it. Just breathe, and hope for the best. And by the time you’ve left, make sure you’ve caught some goddam lobsters.”
Grandpa had always offered more colorful advice. “Don’t hesitate!” he always shouted, “Get them fast and firm! The slow man does not the lobster get!” Jimmy was just nine when grandpa died. It was the first time he’d seen his dad cry.
Back then, they’d still used wooden traps, slatted, with rounded ends and hand-knitted heads, surprisingly heavy. He was glad to have the modern traps with their plastic-drenched wire, heavy and strong. But sometimes he missed the old traps. But really he missed what they reminded him of. So much more than traps he’d lost.
He moved the boat east past Kimball Island and the Isle au Haut thorofare on its southeast corner. The sea swelled. The waves were large and lulled interminably. He asked, where should I drop the trap? The same spots from earlier? Press my luck someplace else? What secrets are hidden below at the ocean’s floor? This life, he thought, is led by chance. If I weren’t a lobsterman, I would probably believe in God. But to Jimmy, fate was chaos. And the world was fickle blindness. He only believed in the sea, where life unconquerable manifested, devoid of sense or purpose. Simply there. An endless gallimaufry. There was no beauty in creation because there was no beauty or creation. Just a motion and a sorting of all things, a ceaseless rearrangement. Perhaps today would be his day. Perhaps not.
He released his trap at a familiar spot. He slowly lowered it, his gloved hands on the rope. Then it hit the ocean floor, and he waited.
The waiting was his life’s great excitement. The number of the catch was something to measure his worth against. Hopefully make dad and grandpa proud. He pictured them at his side, smiling and clasping his shoulder.
“Great catch, son.”
“That’s our boy!”
And they would all be happy in that imagined moment.
Stop fantasizing, he thought. Your imagination’ll kill you. The blotchy time-stained memories. The intoxicating dreams. The difference between memory and dream becoming too hard to tell.
Just wait, and breathe, and catch the goddam lobsters.
“Patience, Jimmy. Patience,” he said aloud to himself, echoing grandpa’s words. The time will pass. It might feel like a long time left now, he reasoned, but soon this will all be a memory and I’ll wish I was living in it again. Try to enjoy it.
But the harder he tried, the less he liked the way his feelings sat in his body. So heavy, like cruel lead. What a sick trick of the mind, he thought, that we can’t enjoy something on command. He remembered the saying “ignorance is bliss” and thought to himself, that must be true.
He used to listen to the radio at sea, but now he maintained silence. The radio was a private sacrament. Between him and his father. Since Jimmy commandeered the boat after dad’s death, at seventeen, he had never done anything but wait for the lobsters in silence. I have all the sea alone to me, he had then reasoned, so I will never get bored.
Now, he was bored. He resisted the onslaught of memories, teetering faintly at the edge of his mind, ready to invade. Unwelcome visitors from within, his conscious was cultivating domestic xenophobia. But the fighting sapped his energy. I’m my own worst enemy, he thought. Can’t do myself any favors. Just problems. Enough of that, he scorned. Just focus on your breath, and think about the sea.
He looked out and imbibed the greenblue constant of his life. Old and only friend. The roiling waves, and lolling rests between the undulations. He wanted to tell the sea he loved it, but couldn’t bring himself to. Maybe some other time.
Jimmy’s eye caught a bird flying in the greyblue morning air. It fell into his line of vision and grew before him with each flap of the wings, and what had been a shadow gradually became a discernible form: a seagull. It gleamed luminous, a brilliant white set against the brooding marriage of restless, dark waves touching the heavygrim sky.
The gull swooped over Jimmy’s head and landed on the bimini. It looked at Jimmy and cocked its head sideways.
“Well,” Jimmy cleared his throat, “Hello there, little friend.”
The bird kept staring.
Jimmy looked away, unnerved. Why am I afraid of this bird? he asked himself. I’m a man. I can speak to it. A homo sapiens —I’ll be okay.
He looked the bird and said, “Welcome to my boat.”
The bird continued to stare at him with its head cocked, quickly blinking its spastic eyes, which Jimmy noticed were surrounded by thin red circles.
Jimmy cleared his throat. “My name’s Jimmy. I would shake your hand, if I could.”
The bird did not laugh, and Jimmy was offended.
“Well. Welcome to the boat.”
The seagull blinked its eyes, squawked, and took off, flying away.
“Oh—well. Goodbye, then.”
This miffed Jimmy. The gull had rejected Jimmy’s xenia and flown off. Such audacity! he thought. Some strange bird. Those red circles around the eyes. And not to take up my favor!
Not much more waiting, only about half an hour more, he told himself. It’s all I can take. Be back home before sundown. Beer and a movie. Leftovers. That’ll be good. Back out again tomorrow if this doesn’t go well. Might sleep in, been a long time since I had a good night’s sleep. Maybe dad’ll be in my dream again. Maybe this time I’ll hear his voice.
A bird squawked above his right ear, and Jimmy started, startled. He snapped around and saw them, the rude gull’s red-rimmed eyes.
“You again!”
The gull squawked.
“Come to give a proper farewell? You left me high and dry last time, you know. This generation of gulls has no respect. Did you parents not force you to go to Cotillion?”
Jimmy looked at the bird and cocked his head sideways, blinking spastically. Yes, he thought, this will show him. A bit of mockery. That shall really stick in his craw — and ruffle his feathers.
Heh, he thought. Nice. ‘Ruffle his feathers.’
But the gull doubled down, unperturbed, and the two found themselves suspended in this man-gull mirror for seconds before Jimmy got uncomfortable and acquiesced, surrendering the contest.
“Alright, you win. Well played, little friend. I was trying to rankle you!”
The cock-headed bird squawked.
“Don’t rub it in.”
The old man looked down at the deck and licked his chapped lips and looked back up at the bird. “Well, make yourself at home. I hope we can be good friends, despite all that ‘rankling’ business. I was just trying to ruffle your feathers.”
The bird squawked.
Jimmy blushed. “Thank you. I think I’m hilarious, too.”
Jimmy checked the time. Thirteen more minutes. He felt he’d caught a second wind. He was going to make it. He sat down and watched the bird for many minutes, admiring its life in action. The bird sat on the bimini, flew around the boat, walked about the stern, up and down the gunwale. It took off for the air and dove down into the water, snatching a fish. Returning, it ate the brown hake snack in front of Jimmy.
“Quite the catch, little friend. I hope to do the same with these lobsters. Perhaps this is a good omen.”
The bird looked up midbite and squawked, revealing all the fleshy fishy bits in its mouth.
“No manners,” muttered Jimmy.
He didn’t even notice the time. When he checked his watch again, eighteen minutes had passed.
“Well, would you look at the time! We’ll see how much luck you are, little friend.”
He slowly pulled up the crate. It was heavy. When he saw, he could scarcely believe it.
“Ten!” he rejoiced, “Ten!”
He turned to the gull, “You, my little friend, are the best luck I’ve ever had!”
He smiled at the unsmiling gull. He pictured dad and grandpa telling him how proud they were, and they clasped him on the shoulder. When fantasy feels real, he thought, you must be doing something right.
“Let’s head back.”
About halfway home, the bird departed and flew off for the open ocean behind.
“Goodbye, friend.”
The bird squawked.
Jimmy was pleased. He had caught the goddam lobsters. He’d made his phantom family proud, and he’d also made a friend.
He smiled and thanked the sea.
He returned after a three-days’ respite.
Ten lobsters! The second-largest catch of his life. He’d caught eleven one day in the summer of ’03, and he’d thought life was finally prepared to compensate him for his years of suffering. Settle the score with sweet coming years of bliss. However, that October, the Red Sox lost to the Yankees in seven games, and Jimmy knew that nothing had changed. Life would be forever torment. Those eleven lobsters had been an aberration, a cruelly mocking turn of fate. This was the fisherman’s life: chaos. Pure permutation. Unstable mutability.
Inherently, though, he knew ‘ten’ was a meaningless number. Nothing more than a good day’s catch.
Yet he’d felt a thin whisper of joy the other day. A passing moment, nothing more. But that was significant to Jimmy, such a rare feeling. The joy of something actually happening beyond the mundane. The memory of that rush brushtickling his bones hung over him like the morngrey sea-mist, a residual blush enticing him to reclaim that feeling as soon as possible. Had it been the seagull? he wondered. A wink of sentience on his boat? Relative, life-affirming life. Concomitant existence intermingling in spacetime.
He thought, I’m going to miss that bird.
“It’s just you and I again, old friend,” he confided to the sea.
So it goes, he thought. So it goes.
He wafted listlessly about the ocean, returning to the other day’s spot. It had proved fruitful, and he felt like doubling down on chance. Secretly, he hoped to see the bird, though he knew that he would not.
He skirted south of Kimball and Isle au Haut. He deposited himself in the reprisal waters. And immediately there came a crackling squawk — startled, he turned and saw them, those red-hugged eyes.
“Well, look who it is!”
The bird landed, and ambulated about the deck.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Jimmy whispered quietly to himself. He cleared his throat, “I’m glad you’re back,” he repeated aloud.
He dropped the trap to the ocean’s floor and they waited.
The bird flew around the ship, walked about, rested. The old man watched it, smiling. He even laughed. He asked the gull questions.
“Did you watch the Sox last night?”
“How many lobsters you think we’ll catch?”
“Do you like gray skies? They’re my favorite.”
“Ever look at the stars and wonder?”
“Have you ever heard Jim Croce? Maybe one time you were somewhere where Croce was playing. I wonder! Maybe you heard ‘Time In A Bottle.’ That one’s my favorite.”
Six lobsters today.
“Not bad, my friend — no, not bad at all!” the old man laughed. He sighed.
Best introduce myself, he thought. Then we’ll really be friends.
“My name’s James Clark. But people used to call me Jimmy.”
People all dead and gone now. Mirages in the shadowed dust. Dissipated teardrops on the sepia worn.
“What’s your name?”
The bird cocked its head sideways and looked at him.
“I’m going to call you Red-Eye.”
The bird squawked and perched at Jimmy’s side.
“Hello, Red-Eye.”
He looked over and saw Red-Eye. And he felt that Red-Eye saw him too.
“Thanks for being here.”
Red-Eye visited him every day. Some days, the old man forgot about the lobsters. He’d just go out to sea in the hopes that Red-Eye would find him. And each day Red-Eye did.
One day, Jimmy brought out his old Califone CAS 1500 cassette player. He had to show his friend Jim Croce.
“You Don’t Mess Around With Jim. One of the greatest albums ever made.”
After dad’s death, Jimmy’d fled his childhood home in Camden and moved to Belfast, where he’d lived alone ever since. Jimmy spent that following decade — basically all of the 70s — getting high and listening to music (when he wasn’t fishing). Weed, vinyl, and lobsters. It was a fine life, alright enough for him. He’d sold all his records a few years back at a yard sale, but he couldn’t part with this one.
At home, the night before, he’d recorded the vinyl onto his cassette tape.
“Time to play it back.”
They sat there on the deck of the boat and listened to Jim Croce together. When “Time In A Bottle” played, Jimmy cried.
He hoped Red-Eye was listening. He wanted Red-Eye to like it.
“I hope you love Croce as much as I do!” Jimmy beamed, wiping his eyes. Red-Eye mewed.
Jimmy had always wanted to share this music with someone else. Remember this feeling, he told himself. Remember right now. Don’t ever let it go.
He looked over. Red-Eye was still there, incredibly. She wasn’t going anywhere. For the first time in his life, Jimmy Clark felt like he was living inside of music.
One day, in their second year together, Jimmy and Red-Eye had a heart-to-heart.
“Red-Eye —” he started, and the bird squawked in what Jimmy interpreted as recognition of her name. “Hi, buddy. I just wanted to let you know that you’re the closest thing to a friend I’ve had in a long time. You give me so much company, but I feel like I don’t do anything for you. All I have is this boat. All I ever do is talk to myself and play music you probably don’t even like and fish for lobster. You have an entire sea at your fingertips. Or, uh, talon-tips. And yet you come out here and spend time with me each day, in spite of all that I am.”
He sighed.
“Thanks for being my friend.”
But there never seems to be enough time to do the things you want to do once you find them, overheard on the cassette player.
Jimmy fed Red-Eye the fish he’d fetched. Brown hake, her favorite.
“It’s the least I can do for you, my friend.”
I hope she never leaves, Jimmy thought to himself. I don’t know what I’d do with myself. Four straight years she’s showed up at my boat, every time I sail to sea. If she didn’t show up, I don’t know what I’d do.
“Don’t you ever leave me,” he choked, startled by the tremor in his voice. “Don’t you ever fly away.”
In their seventh year together, Jimmy turned 75. He had stopped dreaming of his father long ago; the paternal phantoms no longer lauded or chastised him at each catch. Four generations of Maine lobstermen in his family. He remembered his father, drunk, talking to him about it one night, swelling with uncharacteristic pride. “It’s the one thing we’re good for,” he had said. “When you trap lobsters, the Clarks of the past are always there guiding you.” His father was never sentimental, and it made Jimmy uncomfortable. How foolish I was, he thought, not to connect with my father because of pride. I wish I could go back.
“There is so much wrong with me,” Jimmy confessed to Red-Eye. “Always has been. Seventy-five years. Still feel healthy as a walnut,” he laughed, “Whatever that means.”
Red-Eye squawked. Jimmy interpreted this as happy birthday.
“Thanks, Red-Eye.”
They soundlessly fell through spacetime, drifting down the sea.
“Maybe I’ll live to a hundred. What do you think of that?”
He looked at Red-Eye, who was already looking at him.
“Maybe you’ll still be here, then. What do you think?”
Red-Eye mewed, and the old man smiled. He had never been this happy.
It was a wispyblue June morning, washed greywhite by scattered cirrus clouds hanging dry along the sky. God’s clothesline, Jimmy thought. Though I don’t believe in God.
Here, in the seventy-eighth summer of his life, Jimmy found himself alone at sea for the first time in a decade.
I wonder where she is, he thought. She’ll come along any minute now.
He sailed eastward. Ten nautical miles from the thorofare, the farthest he’d gone without seeing her. I’ll find her, he said to himself. Of course I will.
He skirted the southern perimeter of Kimball, the day breaking through the clouds now, brightlight dissolution, and still he had not found her.
“Where are you?”
He decided to stop and wait. One hour passed. Another. He didn’t set his traps.
“Where is she?” A twitch of nervousness in his voice. He began feeling nauseous. Something’s wrong, he thought. What did I do wrong?
He looked down at the cassette player with his tear-welled eyes as the sun began to set.
“Stupid fucking thing.” He regretted the words immediately, and the eyedam burst, unleashing a desperate wave of tears that fell forth from his soul like heavy summer raindrops battering the bedroom windows. He heaved and sighed them out, choking on his breath. Shivering, he set out for home in the crepuscular gloom. He moved silently through a singularity where tears and sea were blurred together, where all pain and sorrow exhaled in a sigh. He sped back in the dying twilight. The evening air accosted him. This day, this broken day that held this broken man, aggrieved at time undying.
He threw their cassette player into the sea, and immediately wished he hadn’t. He felt his heart sink with it deep down to the depths of the Atlantic, brushing up against the seafloor, broken and alone.
He went out four straight days, and Red-Eye was not there. He felt the loneliness gnawing away at the marrow of his bones like some masticating cancer. One friend all his adult life — gone. What had been found was lost again.
On the morning of the fifth day, he peeled himself out of bed. He felt groggy-headed. Another hangover. He pressed a finger to his temples and felt the screaming pulsings of a tattered heart. Still beating, he thought. After all these years.
Weary-boned, he set sail. He knew he wouldn’t see Red-Eye. She was gone. She’s left me, he thought. And I don’t know why.
The sea again. The spectacle of it still raptured him. His home. His friend. His soulmate. Perhaps, he thought, I should die out here. What better day than today?
The kaleidoscope of memories came to him, each one building successively upon the other in a rolodex of lost time: dad, grandpa, mom alone all those years. Just thirty minutes down the road. Twelve visits in eighteen years. Before she died. If there was a hell, he felt he was well on his way. But no, he thought, there is only the sea, and I’m well on my way to the bottom of that, too.
The paradox of unending time, without beginning or end. The only thing it did was pass. It just was. And he was always in the was of it, an unwilling hostage. Ticks of the incorrigible doomclock. It just went and went, he thought, and I went with it.
Time to take control, he resolved. Choose to leave unending time. Sense endness. Claim my freedom as a living thing that time cannot control. I will not die a victim of unending time. I will defeat it and make my own end, and fall at last into the sea.
The boat was stopped. He took one long, final look at the water. Its vast expanse. He breathed it in like it was the last drag of the last cigarette the world would ever smoke. He felt the salt rise in his nose. The tickling breeze. Yes. He closed his eyes. It was time; soon, it would be time no longer.
He heard a fractured crying sound, and immediately he knew.
“Red-Eye!”
He turned his head and saw her, flying fast and wild. She fell down on the bimini, and wailed a broken squawk. He saw it right away: her snapped left leg, broken badly. She needed help.
“It’s okay, girl. I’ve got you.”
The leg looked bad. It all became a blur: the unsettled Atlantic waves exploding in their wake, a phone call, an arrival, the sea and the land. One lucid image persisted for the rest of his life: Red-Eye looking into him with those living compassionate eyes that affirmed everything between them and made all else seem shadows.
Belfast Veterinary Hospital. Paperwork, phone calls. Center for Wildlife. She was going to be okay, they said. A few weeks of recovery, and she’d be good as new. For the first time all day, Jimmy breathed unfettered.
They would call him when she was ready. He could go home now.
“Don’t forget to feed her brown hake. It’s her favorite.”
Driving back up Highway 1, he thought about that last day with dad. They’d listened to the Red Sox lose. June 6, 1968, a day game at Fenway. “16,513 fans here today.” He remembered it all. “Ninety-eight degrees here at first pitch.” In his mind’s eye, dad lowered the trap and sat there by the radio on his hams. Such a clear day, calm sea. Detroit led 2-0. But then, with two men on, Yaz stepped up to the plate. And Jimmy’s ears were electrified by the crack of the bat, the voltage of his love for baseball a charge through his whole system. He looked up and saw dad, and their harmonized yelps coalesced into a victory dirge.
The Sox lost anyway. “We’ll get ‘em next time,” Jimmy heard his dad say for the thousandth time. But he never heard it again.
While Red-Eye convalesced, Jimmy called the Center for Wildlife each morning, afternoon, and night. The third day, they told him, “Sir. Your bird is alright. Don’t worry so much. You don’t have to call three times a day.” On the fourth day, he called four times.
“And make sure you’re feeding her brown hake.”
On the fourteenth day, he got the call: Red-Eye was good to go.
He drove straight down. “Hi, girl.” Red-Eye squawked earnestly and sounded healthy. They drove straight back north.
Jimmy contemplated Red-Eye in the passenger seat. She sat stoic, barely moving. Her red-rimmed eyes peered out the windshield. He thought she seemed content. I hope, he thought, she’s excited to come home.
It was late afternoon when they returned. Plenty of sunlight left. “Let’s go, girl.” They set out for sea. Home. They passed the afternoon together. The sun began to set, and they watched westward. The night glowed ombre bright, each gradient hue dazzledancing in the sky alight.
Red-Eye flew off for the open sea, and Jimmy sailed home beneath the stars.
Jimmy remembered the surprising pain of 2004, when the Sox were slated to play the Yankees for a ticket to the World Series, which Boston had never won in Jimmy’s lifetime. This was the year, he lied to himself. The Yankees took a 3 games to 0 lead in the series, and Jimmy thought, we’re fucked.
But the Sox won the next two games. The series was 3-2 now and headed back to Yankee Stadium, the cathedral of doom and mausoleum of all New England’s hopes. Boston forced a winner-take-all Game 7, but much to Jimmy’s shock, it was absolute murder.
The Sox won 10-3.
Onto the World Series, where Jimmy knew he’d never see them win. Just like his father hadn’t.
But they swept the Cardinals and won it.
When the final out was made and the surreal realized, Jimmy imagined his father there cheering with him. Jimmy wanted to say, “I love you, dad. We did it.” But he couldn’t. What’s the point anyway? he told himself. Dad isn’t here.
The Sox had won the World Series for the first time in eighty-six years and Jimmy felt hollow inside. This should be the happiest moment of my life, he thought. I always imagined it would be.
It became the bitterest, drunkest night of his life. The next morning, the tv was still on, his head was drumpounding, and he couldn’t even remember if the Sox had won or not. He didn’t really care.
He dreamed about him for the first time in years. They were on grandpa’s old boat again, and the Sox were playing on the radio. He could see dad was trying to speak, but he couldn’t hear him. The ocean was roaring alive. All Jimmy heard were the waves of sea and of radio.
Yaztremski deep to right center!
He heard the call, the bat crack, and the crowd above the cacophony of crashing waters. The bluegreen battleground.
Jimmy’s father spoke calmly.
Jimmy leaned in close, saw the face’s details, ones he couldn’t picture when he tried to remember dad; but dreams are a world of their own, of limitless restoration, recollection and creation. Dad is here, he thought, real as life. Real as that last day.
He leaned his ear by dad’s mouth and at last he heard the question, “Don’t you remember?”
That voice. Immediate recognition. Perfect recollection. Jimmy hadn’t heard it in so long.
“What?” Jimmy shouted above the waves.
“You already forgot?” His father’s voice was calm, even.
“Forgot what?” Jimmy yelled.
“About the gulls?” His dad’s voice was so calm.
“I don’t know, dad! I don’t remember!”
“Four generations of lobstermen, son. Remember what I told you.”
“Dad!”
He woke up, startled, catching his breath. Just a dream, he thought. But God, it felt so real!
He collected the wayward stream of blurgroggy thoughts meandering from his sleep. His father had said to remember something — what was it? The Sox? Seagulls? Yes, that was it. Remember the seagulls, four generations of lobstermen.
Jimmy drifted back to sleep. He thought, dad’s voice! I still remember it. How did I ever forget?
Peacefully, he surrendered to sleep.
He startled awake, remembering.
All those years ago on grandpa’s boat. No older than twelve or thirteen.
Time flooded back to him, a torrent, drowning his senses in a cesspool of lost memory now returned. He and dad sat on the boatdeck. Grandpa at the wheel. They were headed home. A seagull landed on the bimini. Dad pointed and asked, “Son, you know what a seagull is?” I didn’t know, Jimmy remembered. I told dad, “I don’t know.” Then dad said seagulls carried the souls of lost sailors. “That could be your great-grandpa right there.” And the bird flew off, and I thought nothing of it.
As soon as it was light, his boat was on the ocean.
He brought a radio with him for the first time since Yaz’s homer. Sixty-two years later.
It wasn’t too long before she swooped in.
“There she is! Atta girl.”
There they were at sea again, the two living creatures, the very best of friends.
“I hope your leg is feeling better.”
Red-Eye squawked.
He tuned into the radio and found the station: “Good afternoon, baseball fans, and welcome to Fenway Park.”
Red-Eye waddled close and listened. They sat still.
The sea moved alive beneath them, and they breathed alive together. They shared it all right then: their solitude, their company, their life. This is it, he thought. And it is so damn beautiful.
“I love you, dad. We did it.”
