Out at sea the waters of the Atlantic Ocean seemed impossibly vast to John Bryant, today working as a striker on a shrimp boat owned by one Captain Edwin Walker of Summerville, Georgia. He could only assume that they appeared so to others.
But it was an illusion. Everyone knew better—yet some knew better than others. John fell into the category of the more informed.
These waters, like everything else in the cosmos, were finite. The sun now rising in the east—so magnificent, so triumphant at dawn—was no more than a sphere of light and fire and heat, just as the Earth, like its sister worlds, was but a lump of rock in orbit around that sphere, and all of them specks floating in the great dark infinite. The only difference between Earth and other planets known to Man was that conditions on Earth had been right to give rise to a variety of life forms, some simple and some complex, while those on others, so far as anyone knew, were not. But conditions could change. Subtle shifts in the planet’s rotation might bury its surface in ice; a minor convulsion of the sun might render that same surface a wasteland; a slight change in the composition of the sweet and life-giving air could turn it poisonous. Scientists said these things were unlikely, but how did they know? How did anyone ever truly know anything? The truth was that they didn’t. They could only guess—and an educated guess was still a guess.
The fragility of life was shocking to John. Small adjustments in nature’s balance were enough to make it untenable.
And yes, everyone knew that. But, again, it was something John knew better than most. He lived with this knowledge every waking moment.
He had come to look at the world around him as an hourglass, turned upside down, its sands running thinly but steadily from top to bottom. Even his job—the very thing that kept a roof over John’s head and paid his bills—carried with it a mild sadness. The industry in which he worked had seen better days. While the appetite for shrimp in the United States was more robust than ever, it was being satisfied, increasingly, by shrimp imported from Asia and the Caribbean—and the saturation of the domestic market with foreign shrimp had depressed shrimp prices all around. The result was that fewer shrimp boats were trawling, if not with each passing year, then certainly with each passing decade.
Just this morning, as Captain Ed was taking the boat out to sea, he had made one of his patented “It Won’t Last” speeches about the demise of the local shrimp industry.
“I hate to see it go,” he said to John as they moved over the great placid Sound toward the ocean. “But there’s no saving it. Just can’t be done. I don’t blame Eddie for wanting to do something different with his life.” He was talking about his only son, Edwin, Jr., who was seventeen years old and intent on going to college. “This boat won’t give him the things he wants out of life. It’s not able to. So I don’t blame him for wanting to do something different. I don’t blame him at all. If I’m the last Walker to shrimp these waters, that’s fine—because everything changes. Still, I hate to see it go.”
“Yeah,” John said.
Captain Ed smiled and said, “I don’t guess I could sell you this boat when I retire, maybe?”
“That depends,” John answered. “Can I pay you in Monopoly money?”
It was a joke, but John instantly regretted making it, because the mention of currency launched Ed into yet another discussion, this time about how a dollar just didn’t go as far as it used to and that probably the greenback would be worth about as much as Monopoly scrip one day. So he did what he always did when Captain Ed got long-winded. He tuned him out, just offering the occasional grunt of acknowledgement as the good captain held forth on the many problems of the world.
I can feel Time moving around me, Ed, he thought, only half-listening to the older man speak. Be glad all you can do is speculate. That’s all I wish I could do, but unfortunately, it’s not. For me, the currents of Time are like the currents of the ocean we’re floating on top of right now. Those currents have an ebb and flow, Ed, just like the ocean; sometimes their pull is strong and sometimes it’s faint. Often, without even trying, I can make out where those currents are headed; the places they’ll take you if you relax and let them carry you forward. But there’s more, and this is the scary part. Sometimes I can see the things that swim in those currents; I can see their bodies flashing through the dark waters, like the scales on a fish. But I’m thankful, for now, that brief glimpses of them are all I get, because I think if I saw more, I might go crazy. What worries me, though—what terrifies me, actually—is that sometimes I think they can see me too.
But there was no way he could tell Ed this. It was impossible for someone else to understand, which meant that, even in the presence of other people, John Bryant was alone. Over the last couple of years he had started to get used to it.
Pretty much every day was a demanding one in the shrimping business, but demanding could be a good thing. The trawling nets would deposit hordes of sea creatures big and small onto the deck, after which John would set about separating the catch—the shrimp—from the by-catch, which ranged from mullet to horseshoe crabs to small sharks, in short, everything else. They had caught a lot of shrimp today, which put Ed in a good mood. This was especially fortunate because for the last couple of days John had been carpooling with him in his Ford F150; John’s own truck, a 1988 Chevrolet S10, was ailing of late; transmission problems had sent it to a local garage here in Summerville, Georgia, and its prognosis was uncertain at best. Had their catch been lousy, John might have been forced to endure another “I just hate to say it go” speech all the way home.
“Oh, I meant to tell you,” Ed said, “Kate—” his wife “—wanted me to give you a message. I forgot to tell you. A little girl named Sarah called our house looking for you.”
John’s eyebrows rose. “Sarah? Do you remember what her last name was?”
“No, I don’t—sorry. I’ll find out from Kate and let you know. Apparently this Sarah girl found out from somebody that you were working on my boat and wanted to get in touch with you. Nice girl, according to Kate; said she was sorry to bother us, but she just couldn’t seem to track you down any other way.”
“Sarah Pollard,” John said, sighing.
“Say what?”
“Her name’s Sarah Pollard.”
“Is she related to the family that has the Goodyear dealership?”
“She’s the granddaughter of old Mr. Pollard, the guy who started it.”
“Hey, well, that’s pretty good, isn’t it? They sell quite a few tires, you know. If she’s really interested in you, who knows where that could lead? And, hey, even if she’s not much to look at, all that tire money should help balance things out.”
“She’s beautiful, Ed.”
“Even better!” he cried. “Well, listen here, you lucky son of a bitch: you had better not forget who’s been looking after you all these years. Don’t worry, I’m not asking to be invited over to y’all’s house for dinner or anything. Maybe you could just give a little wave to old Captain Ed as you’re passing by in your big new yacht.”
“I really don’t think it’s going to be like that,” John said, smiling.
“Just a little wave,” Ed continued, “that’s all I ask.”
***
That evening John opened a beer and walked out onto his dock, took a seat at its edge. The saltwater creek over which the dock extended was only navigable by boat at high tide; at low tide, especially dead low tide like now, it was a ravine of oyster beds holding only the barest trickle of water. The marshes spreading out before him rustled under a strong breeze from the southeast. His gaze traveled skyward.
What’s it like to look up at the stars and be amazed by the size of the universe? John asked himself. What’s it like to look up and dream about what life on other planets is like?
He looked out over the marshlands, awash in dark gold under the gaze of a dying sun.
These are things other people feel when they look up at the night sky—things other people feel, but I don’t, because I know too much about that night sky. I know what hides in the darkness between the stars.
It hardly seemed fair.
That’s why, when I looked up at the sky, all I see is shadow. All I see is shadow with tiny, fragile bits of fire scattered across it, and all of them in danger of being snuffed out at anytime.
No different, he imagined, than a human life—
***
—Shortly after turning sixteen, John had been invited to a friend’s house to watch the Georgia vs. Florida Football Classic. The 2002 Georgia-Florida game would not be a happy one for Georgia fans, as the Bulldogs would enter it as heavy favorites only to end up losing to Florida in an upset.
But for John there was another reason—and it was a far unhappier one than the outcome of the football game.
At one time he had done yard work for Raymond and Martha Jenson. It was nothing much, just a few mundane tasks like pulling up some dollar weeds in their front yard and pruning the azaleas around the couple’s house. He had not seen them in a couple of years, but he recognized them immediately: tall, substantial Martha Jenson with her cotton-like hair; once-tall, though now hunched over, Raymond, wiry and weather beaten, bald head covered by a tattered John Deere hat.
“Hello,” he said as they neared him.
“Oh, why hey, John,” said Martha. “Raymond, this is John. Remember him? He used to help us take care of the yard. How are you, John?”
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Are you going to be watching the football game today?” Raymond asked. He had always struck John as a bit rickety on his feet, and today especially so; but his smile was warm and his eyes were bright.
“Yes, sir,” John said, nodding down at his basket full of snack food. “That’s what all this is for.”
“Good, good.”
Intent on being on his way, John said, “Well, it was nice to see y’all.”
“You too,” Martha said. “Say hi to your mama and daddy for us.”
“I will,” John promised, giving a farewell nod and continuing down the hall.
“Don’t touch any of it,” he heard Martha say.
He glanced back at Martha, wondering what she meant. But she and Raymond were already making their way down the aisle. Obviously she had not been talking to him.
“I said, don’t touch any of it. Don’t touch anything in there.”
The second time he heard Martha’s voice John realized it was coming from inside his head. He was imagining her speaking these words: why, he didn’t know; but that was the answer, and while the revelation shook him, the event that followed it—right here in the middle of the store—was even more unnerving.
For a moment John’s vision went black; and then, suddenly, he could see again, only not the aisle of the grocery store, but an open closet, in which hung a dark suit, what looked like a couple of old Army uniforms, and an untold number of plain, conservative shirts—a man’s clothes, likely belonging to an older one at that. Accompanying the image were two disembodied voices: one was Martha’s, the other was also a woman’s, similar in accent and inflection, but younger. He could not see the bodies attached to the voices, both of which were strained and emotional. Martha sounded especially upset, shouting, “Don’t touch anything in there. Do you hear me? Don’t touch anything. I want it to be left exactly like it is.”
The other woman answered: “Mom, please, if you would just calm down and listen—”
Martha again: “Don’t tell me to calm down. This is my house. You have no right to come in here and tell me that I have to change things. I’m going to keep this exactly like it is.”
The closet vanished; the voices disappeared with it. And now, once more, there was only a grocery store aisle in front of him.
I’m going crazy, John thought.
But he heard nothing more. Whatever had happened to him just now, it was over.
He looked back one last time at Raymond and Martha, about to turn into the next aisle, and a terrible idea occurred to him. He had no idea where it came from, or why he would even think such a thing. Immediately he tried to put it out of his head. But, watching the couple disappear around the corner, he couldn’t shake the awful feeling:
That man is going to die.
Unsettled, John took a deep breath—as if by cleansing his lungs he might also cleanse his mind of this awful notion.
But it didn’t work.
He’s going to die here in this grocery store, with his wife standing right next to him.
Yet how could he know that? How could a brief, intrusive vision of two women arguing over an open closet tell him all of this?
The answer: it couldn’t.
He was just a bit mixed up right now. Maybe he hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night. Maybe his imagination was running a bit too hot, for some strange reason; that had happened before, after all.
Standing in the checkout lane a moment later, he decided that his hunch was correct: lack of rest lately had made him spacey. Additional confirmation came when he tried to hand the cashier a five dollar bill in order to cover what was well over three times that amount worth of junk food.
“I don’t know if that’ll cover it,” the cashier said.
“Oh,” John said, looking down and seeing what he had attempted to do. “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry.” He gave her a twenty and she handed him back the five. He was rather embarrassed.
After getting change and a receipt, John gathered up his plastic bags and made for the automatic door.
Then he heard it: a series of thuds, several small cans—Campbell soup cans, perhaps—being dropped on the floor; and over these sounds, a woman’s voice cried out in shock, in horror: “Raymond! Raymond, what’s the matter? Raymond!”
John froze.
There was a much larger thud now, followed by an eerie slap: a skull, John’s gut suggested, thumping against hard tile.
The cries became a wail. Over and over, the name of “Raymond” was offered up as a plea, a cry, and a lament; offered up as a young assistant manager and two other market personnel sprinted in the direction of those desperate calls.
And now, all around John, people were reacting, in any number of ways. A young mother, anxiety contorting her pretty face, lifted up her toddler and held him in her arms, cupping his head on one side and bringing the other side closer to her chest, as if to block out the noise. Another elderly couple—even older than Raymond and Martha—remained in place with their cart, both looking in the direction from which the cries were coming; the woman had her hand over her mouth and the man was anxiously clenching, unclenching his fists; perhaps they wanted to help, but knew that if they tried they might only end up getting in the way.
John’s breathing turned shallow; his guts iced over.
You know what happened, don’t you? It was his own voice now, mocking him inside his head.
He took a step forward.
Go and look if you have to, but there’s no need. You already know what’s gone down.
The plastic bags fell from his hands as he slowly made his way toward the commotion.
Go and look, and see that Raymond Jenson is dead.
Everyone was in motion: some people moving away from the scene of the tragedy, others moving towards it. But John was oblivious to all of them, coming or going. His gaze, like his thoughts, was fixed entirely on the tragedy unfolding just around the corner.
He found Raymond Jenson on the floor, just as he had expected, with the assistant manager performing CPR on him as customers and staff alike looked on; but he knew at once there was no chance of bringing the old man back. Raymond was dead. His eyes were open: whatever had killed him—heart attack, John later learned—struck so swiftly, and with such severity, that he’d not even had a chance to close his eyes. John looked over and saw tragic, anguished Martha Jenson, palms pressed against her temples, shaking her head, oblivious to the efforts of other customers to try to comfort her. Hysterical, she was demanding of the assistant manager, “He’s all right, isn’t he? Is he breathing? Can you tell if he’s breathing?”
She didn’t see John. He imagined she couldn’t see anyone right now, except her husband, lying there on the tile.
I have to get out of here, he thought. I have to go.
He backed away, then turned and walked quickly toward the exit.
But Martha’s voice followed him.
“When we got up this morning he was fine!” he heard Martha insist to the crowd; her voice was rapid and shrill, mad with grief. “I asked him how he was feeling and he said he was fine! So he’ll be all right when the ambulance gets here, won’t he?”
The blessed automatic exit doors were within John’s sight. He was almost there.
“We always get up at six o’clock in the morning, even on the weekends, and when I asked him how he was feeling this morning he said he was fine! He was fine!”
The exit sign over the doors suddenly didn’t seem as vivid to John. His vision was constricting. He felt he could not get enough air into his lungs. And yet on he walked, desperate to escape Martha’s pitiful voice: “Look! Look, I think he’s breathing! Can you see? I think he’s breathing! Raymond, can you hear me? Fight back, Raymond! Fight back!”
Then it was over. The doors opened before John and he stepped through; the fresh autumn air and that sweet morning sun hit him simultaneously, in a cool, bright wave. His relief was so great that he failed to notice the car that had to slam on brakes to avoid hitting him as he crossed into the parking lot. And yet, though dazed, he had no trouble finding his way back to Shawn’s truck. But it was pure survival instinct that got him there: the knowledge that a means of escape was waiting for him in the parking lot, and muscle memory alone could take him to it.
Shawn was incredulous when John tried to climb inside empty-handed. “Hey, asshole,” he stormed, “where’s the food?”
“I forgot it.”
“You forgot it? But that’s the whole reason we came here, dumb ass. How could you forget that?”
“I just forgot.”
“Okay, so where’s my twenty?”
John shook his head; this time he could not even answer.
“Give me back my twenty dollars so I can go in and buy what we need. Give it back before I kick your ass, John. I’m not dicking around here. Give it back right now.”
He noticed then that John was trembling. He had balled up his hands so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.
“What’s wrong with you?” Shawn demanded, but his tone was less aggressive this time.
Voice straining, John said, “Don’t go in there.”
“What do you mean? Why not?”
“I’ll give you twenty dollars when we get back to the house,” John answered, in little more than a whisper. “Let’s just go.”
Faint in the distance, a siren rose. Hearing the sound, Shawn looked up.
“Someone died in there,” John told him, “just now. We need to go. The ambulance is going to be here soon. I’ll…tell you about later.”
Shawn nodded. “Okay, John. We can do that.”—
***
And now, back in the present, John Bryant got up and went inside, wishing once again he had never traveled to Kings Inlet that day long ago—the day he had lost control over his own life.