Envious Moon(17)

I laid my bedroll out under the shadow of the large rock and climbed onto it and pulled the open sleeping bag on top of me. I looked up at the stars, clusters ancient and endless. I traced Cassiopeia and Andromeda and Pegasus, constellations that for as long as men took to the sea, they have used to find their way home. Home for me had always been Galilee but now it was this camp, this beach, this water rolling in toward my feet. And when I thought this, I also suddenly felt displaced, like I didn’t belong anywhere. The truth was, I was not fully of this beach, and I was not fully of Galilee and I was not part of the Lorrie Anne. I had left all that behind. Somewhere out on the Grand Banks my old boat was scouring the fishing grounds for swordfish. And I wondered if the men missed me but then I decided that they did not. Someone had taken my place and fishermen only dealt with the living. Berta missed me, I’m sure, and Victor probably did, too, though he would never admit it.

Once, when I was just a small boy, I was out on the skiff with my father. It was a warm summer night and a clear sky. We were fishing, as we often did, and during a break while my father leaned against the gunwale and rolled one of his cigarettes, he looked up at the full moon, and he said, “The moon is jealous of the sun.”

He talked like this to me a lot and he usually had a sly twinkle in his eye and I did not think anything of it. “Why?” I asked.

“Because the sun is always full,” he said. “Always fat. The moon only gets to be full once a month. The rest of the time it’s hungry. And as soon as it gets full, it has to start all over again.” He chuckled. “Kind of like the life of a fisherman.”

I remember that I looked up at the moon then, pale and yellow against the black. “It doesn’t look jealous,” I said.

“Trust me, Anthony,” he said. “It is. It’s envious. It’s an envious moon.”

And years later, lying on the beach on Cross Island, looking up at the same moon, I thought that my father probably had it wrong. The moon had the stars. The sun had nothing. The sun was all alone. And no one, I decided, should be all alone.





When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed again about the girl. She was on the stairs and then she was in the window. She told me she was afraid and I said that everyone was afraid. I told her that if she gave me a chance, I could help. Then she lay down next to me and she slung her arms lazily over my chest. I felt the beat of her heart against mine.

I woke once during the night. It was not quite dawn and the sky had turned a robin’s-egg blue. I relieved myself against the cliff and for a moment I listened to the shrill cries of the morning gulls diving at the water. I returned to my bedroll and this time I slept without dreams. When I opened my eyes the sun had risen and it was warm. I sat up and shook my head and there, some ten feet from me, was the girl. She sat on a driftwood log with long rubbery pieces of brown kelp at her feet.

I looked over at her. Was I still dreaming? Was she real? She certainly looked real. She wore a white T-shirt and faded jeans and had leather sandals on her feet. Her hair was reddish brown. And, as I had hoped, it was her eyes that brought together the promise of her face. They were green, as green as the phosphorescence that floated under the ocean at night. She was slender and lovely and I had never been happier to see someone in my whole life.

She said, “This is private land, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” I said.

“Are you homeless?”

“No,” I said. She picked up a stick and twirled it in her hand. I watched it spin. She wasn’t looking at me.

“How old are you?” she said.

“Seventeen.”

“Why are you sleeping on the beach?”

“I missed my boat,” I said.

“Your boat?”

“The Lorrie Anne. It’s a longliner.”

“A longliner?”

“A fishing boat,” I said. “Swordfish.”

She looked out toward the ocean, as if maybe she could see the boat I was talking about. “How do you miss a boat?”

I shrugged. “They thought I was crewing with someone else. They left me on the island.”

“How could they just leave you? I mean, wouldn’t they notice you were missing?”

“I work for a couple of different captains,” I said. “If I don’t show up, they figure I’m with the other one. It happens more than you might think.”

She kept twirling on the stick with her narrow fingers and I saw that she was digesting my story. “You really a fisherman?” she asked.

“My whole life,” I said.

She stood then. “I don’t care if you stay here. But others will. There’s been breakins. You could get in trouble.”

I nodded and she turned to leave. She started to walk away from me, down the beach. “Wait,” I called, and she stopped. The sun was behind her now and in its morning light she was perfect. “What’s your name?” I said, though of course I already knew.

“Hannah.”

“Hannah,” I repeated, finally getting to say it out loud. “I’m Anthony.”

She smiled at me and gave me a small wave. I watched her walk until she followed the curve of the coastline out of sight.





About a year after I came here, I got a letter. It is written on yellow legal paper. It’s five pages long. A woman’s handwriting, a beautifully flowing script. The kind they don’t bother to teach anymore. Over the years the paper has gotten beat up a little bit from being folded and unfolded so many times. It is creased and the edges on a few of the pages are frayed. When I first got it, I read it all the time. I carried it in my pocket wherever I went. Now I read it less frequently, and never all at once. I like to read it in small pieces. I’m not sure why that it is. Maybe it’s just part of getting older. That I prefer to see her in fragments so that I can put her together in my own mind and on my own time. An unadulterated view. In this way, the letter becomes almost an aid. A tool. Something that jump-starts my memory.