intensified the terror that the ocean invoked. That there was a start and a finish to it was inconceivable, but there
was
a start and a finish, surely, because how could something just be there, infinitely? There in the darkness, in the cold, whole periods of my own life made themselves suddenly and shamelessly apparent, but they, too, were always the middle part, never a beginning or ending. I remembered having been an altar boy, for instance, but could not remember when I had stopped being one. Did I draft a letter of resignation, or had I simply stopped showing up? Because, surely, some church representative would have called my parents, or would they? And what had happened to those hours I had unmoored myself from? What part of me started there, in that dark hole I had ripped for myself?
I stayed on the deck throughout the night. The world around the boat was the darkest, densest possible thing. It just ended there over the railing. There ought to have been some lights blinking somewhere, if only to defeat the suggestion that people had not been out there before. I thought about the darkness as a sort of blindness, but it was really nothing like blindness, which is when there is actually something in front of you to see.
At dawn, the sky turned brown, then yellow, then brown again. The elderly passengers began lining up at the buffet table, cupping their plastic bowls eagerly while staff members carefully served steaming ladlefuls of cream of beef. If I’d been able to drive a robot, I would be far away from this place, sailing quietly above some heaving city, hovering over all of the pointless, overwrought lives metastasizing below in crowded rooms.
Marian came up beside me.
“What are you —”
She was feeling better, and suggested that we sit in the stern of the vessel, as far back as possible, where there couldn’t be any more people.
There were some deck chairs, and a model of an old captain’s wheel. The sun was half out, mincing behind an obsidian cloud mass. We stood at the rail for a while, leaning far out enough so that the only trace of the vessel we could see was a small, tattered flag hanging off the back. Marian’s face was puffy and splotched. I put my arm around her waist. The ship cut a deep, ragged swath through the water. We felt its motion most clearly there, felt it go up, then down. On each downstroke, the ship seemed to say, “Damn.”
We sat. “This doesn’t mean I don’t hate this, every bit of it,” she said, reaching over for my hand. An older couple came up right next to us, a man and a woman. The man had on a captain’s outfit, bought from the gift shop, complete with a hat and false beard. He handed the woman a camera. “Try and get some of the ocean in the background,” he told her. She fingered the buttons on the camera while he took the wheel, posing stoically, stiff-armed. The woman edged herself against the metal stairwell. We watched the whole thing.
“Let’s not stay out here long,” Marian said, and I agreed. It hardly mattered what we would miss by going inside; there wasn’t a trace of land in sight. The man and the woman took their photographs and left. I chose a spot in the ocean with my eyes, a swirling eddy, bright with foam, and focused on it as we bore on through the morning. Marian slipped a foot out of her sandal and ran it over my calf. I watched the little eddy until it was nothing, until it was water again.
Sky Harvest
W e were in the sky tent, harvesting air.
“Push off, guv’ner,” said the terse, black-veiled Minister, and the hard, black cloud lurched underneath us. “Push off, push off. On to the next we go.” The bellows heaved with the sudden current, swelling with the dilapidated gusts of colored air we gathered into the tent.
Chunk finished his cigarette and tossed it off the side of the cloud. We leaned on our harvesting wands — long poles with soft, absorbent swab tips — and watched the tiny embers of the butt sail away
was
a start and a finish, surely, because how could something just be there, infinitely? There in the darkness, in the cold, whole periods of my own life made themselves suddenly and shamelessly apparent, but they, too, were always the middle part, never a beginning or ending. I remembered having been an altar boy, for instance, but could not remember when I had stopped being one. Did I draft a letter of resignation, or had I simply stopped showing up? Because, surely, some church representative would have called my parents, or would they? And what had happened to those hours I had unmoored myself from? What part of me started there, in that dark hole I had ripped for myself?
I stayed on the deck throughout the night. The world around the boat was the darkest, densest possible thing. It just ended there over the railing. There ought to have been some lights blinking somewhere, if only to defeat the suggestion that people had not been out there before. I thought about the darkness as a sort of blindness, but it was really nothing like blindness, which is when there is actually something in front of you to see.
At dawn, the sky turned brown, then yellow, then brown again. The elderly passengers began lining up at the buffet table, cupping their plastic bowls eagerly while staff members carefully served steaming ladlefuls of cream of beef. If I’d been able to drive a robot, I would be far away from this place, sailing quietly above some heaving city, hovering over all of the pointless, overwrought lives metastasizing below in crowded rooms.
Marian came up beside me.
“What are you —”
She was feeling better, and suggested that we sit in the stern of the vessel, as far back as possible, where there couldn’t be any more people.
There were some deck chairs, and a model of an old captain’s wheel. The sun was half out, mincing behind an obsidian cloud mass. We stood at the rail for a while, leaning far out enough so that the only trace of the vessel we could see was a small, tattered flag hanging off the back. Marian’s face was puffy and splotched. I put my arm around her waist. The ship cut a deep, ragged swath through the water. We felt its motion most clearly there, felt it go up, then down. On each downstroke, the ship seemed to say, “Damn.”
We sat. “This doesn’t mean I don’t hate this, every bit of it,” she said, reaching over for my hand. An older couple came up right next to us, a man and a woman. The man had on a captain’s outfit, bought from the gift shop, complete with a hat and false beard. He handed the woman a camera. “Try and get some of the ocean in the background,” he told her. She fingered the buttons on the camera while he took the wheel, posing stoically, stiff-armed. The woman edged herself against the metal stairwell. We watched the whole thing.
“Let’s not stay out here long,” Marian said, and I agreed. It hardly mattered what we would miss by going inside; there wasn’t a trace of land in sight. The man and the woman took their photographs and left. I chose a spot in the ocean with my eyes, a swirling eddy, bright with foam, and focused on it as we bore on through the morning. Marian slipped a foot out of her sandal and ran it over my calf. I watched the little eddy until it was nothing, until it was water again.
Sky Harvest
W e were in the sky tent, harvesting air.
“Push off, guv’ner,” said the terse, black-veiled Minister, and the hard, black cloud lurched underneath us. “Push off, push off. On to the next we go.” The bellows heaved with the sudden current, swelling with the dilapidated gusts of colored air we gathered into the tent.
Chunk finished his cigarette and tossed it off the side of the cloud. We leaned on our harvesting wands — long poles with soft, absorbent swab tips — and watched the tiny embers of the butt sail away
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