By the Sea

Near midnight the knock didn’t wake me, unfortunately the lonely eyes crowded over each other peering through frosted windowpanes of my front door, were unrelenting, were they friends? They were late but despite that I let them peer in for a while I climbed across this mattress strangled by red velvet sheets seeking to hang me in my dreams. Scratching for the end of a circular golden candleholder and a box of True American matches left on the edge of my bed table from the night before swiped to the floor much like myself as with this dyed pink quilt my back bounced against the floorboards and there I lay bound by sweat to this uneven and frigid floor like a fish out of water on the course of dismemberment. This pale flesh for once in its frail existence deemed holy by the way moonlight shone deeply through curtains drawn at the edge of my bedroom. The French windows adored as they were, brought the freeze to bear. Slick against the butchers' board, the cold paralyzed me and it took a moment to remember the practice my legs and hands endure to push myself for incidents like this. 

Hugging this itchy cotton around the sharp edges of my waist I found ‘a match’ the box was broken at the seams and at least 30 of the little bulbous redheaded Indians made patterns on my shady oak floors. The third switch against the edge of the matchbox made gold and taking hold of the wax candlestick foreign in my grasp I had light at last. Let my eyes burn awhile, now I can see sure as day. Shimmying into the tanned trousers and half crossed between putting my green sweater to wear the knocking continues and I stagger down the stairs taking hold of yesterday's coffee mug and crossing the threshold to consume every other swirling escape this house provided in the dark, still lost if this really was my house set against the contrast of this nauseous swill like this day old coffee once more I indulge choking as it gets caught in my throat. The house convulses like a leaf in a hurricane every time the wind pulls the tide in, and that Boston bound freight train rattles past and makes the roof crack just a little more each time. I let the coffee cold and yesterday's toast grow mold as the butterknife that can’t quite cut balanced on an ashtray. I wondered about those loafers on the rose oak tabletop of my sitting room while I wandered about lighting candles in every corner and occasionally watching the moonlight dance along the walls. It was like a carnival attraction, one of those spiritual freak shows meant to scare children, the way the shine split into constellations I could stargaze in my sitting room. For a little while at least until the knocking continued, “my friends are here” I thought but I couldn’t register to open the door until they were screaming. Wild eyes like goats and rats and even a cat stirred on the front porch steps, I opened the door with a slight unease for whatever monsters I was about to endure. The air was soupy and threatened to drown your lungs in an instant if you weren’t careful, you’d be sweating in an ice bath. Yet it was only Paul, Nancy, and Tom of course carrying a great big bottle of something red like pigs' blood and a miniature picnic basket. I could just make out the curved edges of that verdant green BSA Ten in the sand. 

“What’re you doing fingering two live matches?” Paul spoke as I just stared at him for a moment before gauging the heat in my fingers. I dropped them in the coffee mug along the table, Tom set the bottle and basket next to it before wandering towards the adjoining kitchen. “We don’t need glasses; we’ve never used them” I said sprawled into the couch cushions rubbing my eyes vigorously in the hopes of waking back in bed. Nevertheless, Tom joined myself, Paul and Nancy already sat opposite the fireplace in two lounge chairs with violet padded seats. “See this is a special occasion Pierce Redding.” Tom giggled as he spoke while Paul engaged himself in seizing the red bottle with those monstrous cracked hands twirling the top off it caught the floor before rolling beside the cast iron poker leaned against the fireplace. You can tell a lot about a man’s personality by the way he uses his hands. The simple practices they endure as second nature. Paul’s hands were dusty and broken discolored something less than organic something like the oxe that pulled the plow he had no authority on his mortality. Those hands were a means to an end that the machinery of poor migrants became obsolete was the day he died. That’s why Paul was against the unions you see his hands have been tied since before he was born when shovels marry pickaxes, unions killed the quarry in Rockport Massachusetts and Paul had no understanding of such but something inside him was terrified, the animal instinct that’s been instilled. It’s a horrible curse for a man to know exactly what his purpose is. Those hands poured drink second nature yet the red tainted the palms nonetheless. Who am I to judge though it's better to die passionless than with passion unfulfilled. The glasses were oval shaped painted with dainty blue birds swirling smaller as the shape narrowed. They were from the wedding, the woman who owned this house who’s buried outback beneath the pine along the gentle incline of the beach. 

Margaret Redding, my aunt married Herbert Pinkton the soft minded shrimp boat man as he was known locally and who went to hell a month after his forty-fifth birthday, fell off the bow of his boat one night and got caught in his own net, Herbert couldn’t swim. He didn’t die though scared the spine out of Mr. Mcgleery who ran the tourist favorite night fishing ferry, or what used to be, when he came upon the poor bastard, bloated like a beached whale wrapped up with the fish, eyes nearly popped out and smiling that he was. Doctor’s said it was cruel to keep the man alive his brain was half rotten and all he talked about was the tide and the way he’d scream to be let go every time someone touched him, I was in Cambridge at the time but father who came all the way down from Amherst told me at the wake he figured Herb imagined himself still wrestling with the shrimp net, and that he’d stay that way the memory repeating. Father was a Doctor of Philosophy with an affliction for the macabre and an obsession with this obscure New England author named Lovecraft who adored writing on everything dead and pale. What did he know, I’m sure he took boundless joy in the fictionalization of man’s suffering. There was a wake and funeral proceedings though Mrs. Redding couldn’t bear to snuff the light out, so they locked him in a nice old, padded cell with a view of the coastline. I’m not sure what they actually buried in Beech Grove however there was certainly no expense spared for a coffin full of flowers most like. Mrs. Redding passed daydreaming at least that’s what I was told, and it was a week after the postman complained of foul smells and an attraction of varmints around the property that the township deputy spied her reclined on the sofa by the fire resembling a wax statue. Mrs. Redding had cats instead of children, I was told around five, though by the time I moved in only one remained. With scraggly white fur contrasted by the black boots she wore on all four paws. She refused to come inside even weeks after the death, my grandmother always told me certain animals like cats have a gift of premonition, perhaps little whiskers perceived this old pine as forsaken ground. She was certainly smarter than me, surviving off stray birds and the occasional snake, I never fed her. Neither bore children though for some reason I’m yet to consider the cabin by the sea was left to me. Sure, once the sheets were replaced it's not a bad deal for a college dropout. Harvard was still in the midst of thoroughly culling their “undesirable” populations, far past the reign of Dean Chester, dropping out by choice seemed like the more noble choice compared to hanging myself. 

Most of the smart ones get away maybe if the past were erased people would stop confusing it with the future. Of course, it was only a matter of time before the sea reclaimed this land. The drink wasn’t bad in the sense that it wasn’t actual pigs' blood, looks can be deceiving. Rockport's a dry town always has been it seems I never questioned where Tom found these assortments of potions. Tom was my only friend not from Rockport and we shared a special bond that way. He was from Provincetown, that’s about the extent of what I knew of him though. Tom was the youngest of us we just had his 19th birthday, built a great big bonfire a couple miles down from the house and burnt what I can only assume were photographs of his dearest mother and father, then we just sat and cried for a while. There was no cake as Tom said he had to find a husband before he got fat. I frankly have no idea why Paul and I broke down the way we did. The way the moon crisscrossed the waves seems to be the allowance of memory while everything else faded away. But something between the way Tom curled into the sand watching the ashes twirl and whatever was in the air that night hollowed out any second thoughts of independence between us. Maybe it was a realization of sorts or jealousy directed at Tom’s indifference to family. Though I didn’t hate my family and Paul loved his. What were we searching for? You see in the few months I’ve been in Rockport the friends I've kept don’t talk about their past and I never questioned whether it was out of a blissful ignorance or something more, but I didn’t care to understand. It was actually a relief of mind to not have to fawn interest over memories you played no part in. Nancy was somewhat of an outsider among us outcasts, homosexuals and migrants that is. Rockport was something of a guesthouse for her and we were the equivalent of temporal entertainment, a rather bad theater show you’d attend out of boredom on a dull winter night.