Howling through the harbor beneath a feathered dark sky, morning gales carry marine mist and the cutting cold of Alaskan waters.
The old captain, drawn as if by siren songs of seabirds skimming above the Spit, enticed by the perfumes of diesel and brine, descends the familiar steel grated gangway. His metallic footfall is punctuated by the sloshing of harbor sea around moored vessels, a steeper descent than yesterday morn, floating docks brought low by the tide.
There on the corner of dock two she waits. Emma rocks and lilts in the wake of other ships passing by, setting out on their courses. Her silvered patina is an aging skin, dignity brought by so many days of sailing intrepid atop the temperamental waters, gliding over behemoth halibut and prowling sea lions, sailing among the careless play of the otters and beneath the flight of winged callers.
With a calloused, dry, cracked palm he claps the port side railing, stiff fingers sliding along steel. He limps along the deck pushing opening the stubborn door with his good hand, and steps into the helm. More his home than any rented room would ever be.
Her captain and keeper for long as he cares to remember. The years before long drowned by the taste of salted air thick with the musk of fresh hewn fish flesh, and replaced by tales the mountains tell new each day, their portraits drawn afresh, patterned like ever changing mosaics of frost, snow and the shale below them. All what his patron passengers pay to see on their passage through the daughter of the Bering, Kachemak Bay.
But there would be no customers this morning. No one to ferry. Not for lack of demand even in the half languishing end of winter and tipping point of early springtime, but because today was a decent day to end.
He'd decided some weeks ago. So today, his charter would be a lonesome one.
He shoves off, setting out for open waters made wild by the winds, churning between the growling froth of sea foam reflecting the darkened sheen of gray and black billows above, the clouds brought low like gallows around Sadie's peak. The rage of the waters today sets a pace for his wearied heart, and looking through the dirtied glass behind the wheel he clears the harbor and opens the throttle, the engine's wail declaring the last of days.
A southwestern heading leads on toward the darkening sky, where St. Augustine looms invisible, the seething mountain beast lulled into an uneasy slumber by the whims and undulations of earth far below. Though nothing may stay silent forever.
Oh how he knows it.
And how he wonders whether today will be different. Will it return to him? What was numbed all these years by the majestic, melancholic nature of this land and sea? Will he remember the hidden pain, that he sent there so that he might not know it's cutting razor embrace?
Letting his gaze wander amongst the snow crested crags of mountain peaks then back to the shimmering dark blue that Emma shears, he pulls back her throttle. Then he shuts off her engine. Here in the open water as good a place as any. Not bothering to anchor. She could float free where she wanted to afterward. Emma deserved that much.
A forceful wave batters her starboard side and he stumbles and falls as he walks to the port bow, landing face forward. Standing back to his feet he tastes cold salt and the iron tang of blood.
He stares down into the waters wondering if the buried treasure he longed for yet dared not dredge up still made it's home somewhere in the depths, and wonders whether he could descend far enough to get it back. Before the pressure built to bursting and the sea filling his chest, would he find it then?
Just one time. To see her. Remember her.
The anchor is just there. It wouldn't take much to tie the rope around his ankle, and plunge into the abyss.
Then comes a strange kind of foresight, the image of it all flashing before him like the thunderous cracking of earth in a quake. In mind's eye he sees what it would be to look above after the cold shock descending frigid fathoms, to gaze upon her vessel floating there, left alone but still ever faithful. A reminder that though she whom he loved may be gone, his life had not yet run dry. For as waters make their way from mountain to sea to fill and give life he had not yet reached his own ocean.
Because his precious Emma--worth more than all gold that lie hidden beneath deepest ocean--she is there still somewhere in the steel of the ship that is her namesake, entwined in the braid of every rope aboard and reflected in the speckled panes of every window. The vessel living far beyond those too short years of her life coursed long ago into crystalline vastness.
Should she be anchored here and now he would stay with her, surrounded by the bay and the rock laden shores and aspens ascending the frost capped summits surrounding. So long as she be moored in harbor and he, tethered to her like a buoy, floating off but never lost.
The only sound just then as the captain closes his eyes is a cold harsh wind, roaring and fit to burst an old man's ears. He remembers her slowing warm breath upon his cheek as he held her on her dying day and sang the lullaby she loved all her seven short years of life, holding her as she fell asleep in that sterile white room.
So then, he breathes again. Falling in rhythm with the memory. Out and in, shaking as he fills his lungs not with the salt waters below, but the frigid healing air. The remembrance of searing loss and pain unbound and interlacing with knots of joy and the fathomless love one ought never forget.
He traces the railing once more on his way back to the helm, to sail on another day, a graveled thank you escaping his chapped lips, tasting now the tepid warm of his own tears. Gratitude as much to the steel frame as to the waters she abounds in. The roiling wilds that keep him alive to keep her churning and precious memory burning.
The rocky shore just off the port side catches the old captain's gaze, waters soon to rise and cover the broken, sheared, eroded edges of hardened ancient stone, that same rising tide to bring with it all men and all ships.
The bay of Kachemak, daughter of the Bering. Patient in waiting, both kind and cruel, tells a truth that day.
Never to be drowned is the love of life lost.
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