A Season for Endings

Prologue

What makes for a happy ending?

I think it depends on when the story finishes. I think it all comes down to the exact moment when whoever is telling the story chooses to say or write, "The End," thereby sending us—those following the story—back into the ordinary world to continue on with our ordinary lives, at least until we find another story to lose ourselves in.

And it's a mercy when the storyteller gets that decision right.

It's a mercy because we can watch as the hero and the heroine ride off into the sunset together; we can observe the bad guys defeated, the children of the town rescued, the narrator to whom we've become attached finally solving his or her once-overwhelming problems. And we're able to assume, because we have no reason to think otherwise, that everything's going to be great from now on. We'll be spared from having to stick around for when it all turns to shit later. The storyteller has shown us all we're going to see, which means there's nothing left for us to learn, which means, in turn, that we can all go home now and be happy.

And speaking of happiness...

"They lived happily ever after."

I love that line. Most people don't. Most people say, "That's not realistic."

To which I reply, "So what?"

Isn't reality realistic enough?

But like nearly everything else in this world, it's a matter of personal preference. I can tell you this much: I've never minded being filled in on how a movie or a book concludes in advance. You're doing me a favor if you tell me beforehand how everything turns out. I don't like surprises, especially the kind where something bad happens to the good guy at the end.

I've got a surefire remedy, though, for when it happens. It's a trick I've been using since I was a kid.

Here's what I do. If everything about a story was perfect except for the way it tied up, I just change the ending.

If it's a movie, I write up a new, short little script in which the original ending never came to pass. I bring people back to life. I heal grievous wounds. I make sure the monster actually stays dead.

If it's a book, I sometimes do the same thing, just in narrative form rather than a script. Or—and this is the easier way—I strip out the last few pages so the story ends on a positive note. So its characters get the easy life I think they deserve. Childish, maybe, but it's just how I do things. Please keep that in mind, if you want to accompany me any farther.

Still there?

Great.

Because I have a story to tell you.

***

Swim with me.

Let's begin in the middle of the ocean. Don't worry. You won't get tired, no matter how many strokes you take. You won't have to breathe either, meaning we can travel the entire way underwater. That makes the trip a lot more interesting. If you like, you can even grab ahold of my ankle and let me pull you along. I don't mind. Just swim with me for a while.

The water here is dark, cold, and strangely empty—but we soon discover we are not alone. We watch a giant squid sink into the eternal night of the Great Deep below us. We find ourselves clothed in shadow as a sperm whale passes overhead. And once in a while—at the very limit of our vision—we see the shapes of animals we cannot identify: strange forms that vanish so quickly into the grand churn of the open sea we wonder if anything was ever there at all.

But as we swim closer to shore the water warms up, becomes greener, brighter. We find more life in this part of the sea. We see tiny organisms glinting in the shafts of sunlight that now grace the water; the shine of fish scales all around us; the bolt of silver lightning that is a bottlenose dolphin chasing after a school of mullet; the ominous glide of a hammerhead shark over the now-muddy ocean floor.

We enter now a shallow inlet, the confluence of several tidal creeks. These creeks are the veins of a wide swath of emerald saltmarsh, and we follow one of them into this whispering realm that belongs to both land and sea, although the tide is low and we haven't enough water in which to swim anymore. The black banks of the creek are studded, at various places, with large oyster beds, grayish-white like boneyards. And on one of these beds we spot a boy of about nine: blond; tall for his age, but fragile. He wears brown shrimping boots. A white bucket sits next to him. He is throwing a cast net into the water

The boy is me.