The Language of Sand

Merle placed the flapping fish in a cooler and shut the lid on it as it thrashed. Initially, that struck Abigail as callous. But what other choice did he have? Bludgeon it to death? Slit its torso with a knife? Suffocation was kind by comparison.

“What should I do?” Abigail asked in earnest.

“’Bout what?”

“About me, my life, what’s left?”

He thought hard before answering, as the fish continued to bump around inside the cooler. “I remember the first time I heard that phrase about the only sure things in life being death and taxes. I always took it to mean that what was for sure was that I was going to die and that I was going to have to pay taxes. Took a while to get it through this thick skull o’ mine that what it really means is that none of us goes without losing somebody we love. You can’t tell when you’re going to go or when somebody you care about will. What you can do is hope it’s later rather than sooner.”

Despite Merle’s fondness for skewed logic, he had distilled the enormity of grief into a simple, objective truth. The objectivity was what Abigail grappled with.

Dictionaries were intended to be impartial and exact, yet the act of defining a word reflected the passions and prejudices of the definer. Dictionaries required the faith of the user, faith dependent on the belief that the dictionary was beyond subjectivity, but the best dictionaries had come from those with the strongest personalities, the zealots and idealists who sought to teach and to preach, to politicize and to moralize. Abigail could try to be objective about her grief and acknowledge it for what it was, or she could define it by her own biases and feel it as it came. Either way, the definition didn’t make the hurt subside any faster.

“How do you do it, Merle? All I can think about is before and all I’ve got is after. What do I do after after?”

“Want me to tell you the secret?” he asked as he rehitched the lines to the poles.

“There’s a secret? What secret?”

“You positive you want to hear?”

“Yes, of course. What is it?”

“It’s shoes.”

“Come again?”

“Shoes.”

“Your secret to getting over your ex-wife is shoes?”

“Scout’s honor.”

He sat down to explain, and the small boat rocked at the change in weight. “Every morning I would wake up and I’d hate knowing I was awake. I would stay in bed for hours trying to go back to sleep. Took weeks for me to get out of bed. Took even longer for me to be able to put my clothes on. For a while, I couldn’t do much else. I puttered around the house in my slippers. Couldn’t leave. ’Cept I knew if I could eventually put on my shoes, I’d make it. Didn’t happen right off the bat. I left them in the closet and wouldn’t open the door. Then one day I took out a pair of loafers and put them on and walked outside. Went to the end of my dock. That was it. That was the farthest I could go for a while. Over time, it got easier. Just kept putting on my shoes.”

“Merle, I have my shoes on. I don’t feel better.”

“Point is, Abby, you got ’em on.”

No more noise came from the cooler. It sat motionless. So, it seemed, did Abigail’s heart.

 

  Xenod?ochy?, n. [Gr. ?.] Reception of strangers; hospitality. [R.]

Merle walked Abigail to her car. She wanted to tell him what Ruth had confided about Hank Scokes, but she wasn’t supposed to have told Ruth about Nat Rhone in the first place. Merle and Hank had been friends, though they’d chosen different paths. Merle was still walking along his, his shoes laced tight.

“You moving away?” he asked, regarding the giant duffel bag in the backseat of the station wagon.

“Did I pack too much?”

“These storms usually blow over in a day or so. And they don’t have a dress code at the shelter. Won’t be serving high tea or nothin’.”

“I wasn’t certain how long I’d be gone.”

“Not long,” he assured her. “Better try to catch the next ferry. If you thought traffic here was congested, wait ’til you get to the mainland.”

“Thanks.”

“For advice about the ferry?”

“No, for taking me fishing.”

“My pleasure, Abby.”

At the main road, she merged in with what had become an exceedingly lengthy line of cars. Traffic crept across the island. Abigail’s speedometer topped out at ten miles per hour. Forty minutes later, the dock finally came into sight. A man in uniform was presiding over the procession, a patrol car parked nearby. It wasn’t Sheriff Larner, so it had to be his deputy.