Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Welcome to Our World
Chapter One - It’s a Nice Place, Aaron
Chapter Two - A Moment of Vertigo
Chapter Three - A Girl He Knew From ...
Chapter Four - Lost
Chapter Five - The Meaning in it All
Chapter Six - Apples and Lemons
Chapter Seven - Wait and See
Chapter Eight - Renovations
Chapter Nine - As if Pulling the Colors Themselves
Chapter Ten - Double Exposure
Chapter Eleven - Exit to Your Left
Chapter Twelve - A Boat in December
Chapter Thirteen - Buttercups or Something
Chapter Fourteen - A Port in a Storm
Chapter Fifteen - Keep Moving. Keep Going.
Chapter Sixteen - Worth Waiting For
Chapter Seventeen - Underdressed
Chapter Eighteen - Who Am I?
Chapter Nineteen - Baby
Chapter Twenty - Three Beads on a Braid
Chapter Twenty-One - Weathered Boards
Chapter Twenty-Two - A Cobbled Picture
Chapter Twenty-Three - Closed Windows
Chapter Twenty-Four - It's a Nice Place, Aaron
Chapter Twenty-Five - Emotional Work
Chapter Twenty-Six - Death Forgives Everything
Chapter Twenty-Seven - Anywhen. Anywhat.
Chapter Twenty-Eight - Who I Am
Chapter Twenty-Nine - Axis of Aaron
Chapter Thirty - Something Tangible
Chapter Thirty-One - Just a Projection
Chapter Thirty-Two - Choices in Time
Author's Note
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About the Authors
Axis of Aaron
Sean Platt &
Johnny B. Truant
Axis of Aaron
by Sean Platt &
Johnny B. Truant
Copyright © 2014 by Sean Platt & Johnny B. Truant. All rights reserved.
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CHAPTER ONE
It’s a Nice Place, Aaron
THE WAVES WERE LOW AND KIND, not so much breaking under the small fishing boat’s bow as sloughing out of the way to make room for its passage. The sky was overcast behind — not quite stormy, but certainly gloomy — yet seemed to be clearing ahead. As he stood at the wires strung through posts around the boat’s sides, clinging to the top one as if it were a proper railing, Ebon Shale stared out at the relatively sunnier coastline with the distinct impression that the small town of Aaron was beckoning him forward, and that the world behind was pushing him out.
“You okay there, buddy?”
Ebon didn’t wonder whom the man was speaking to, as they were the only two aboard. He didn’t turn around when he replied.
“Fine.”
“Because you looked a little green back there. When it was rough, a bit ago.”
Ebon looked down. His hands were large, and the thin, plastic-coated wire biting into his palms made them look larger. He wanted to fiddle with his wedding ring, but it was packed in his suitcase. Part of him didn’t want to think about that ring at all right now, even though another part felt he was duty bound to think of nothing else.
“If you’re sick,” said the faceless voice of the captain behind Ebon, “you shouldn’t look down. Watch the horizon. Watch the shoreline, up yonder.”
“I’m fine.”
“Why would you hire a charter if you’re prone to get sick?”
Ebon looked up, toward the horizon the captain swore would make him feel safe and maybe settle his stomach, and took in the small cottages dotting the shore, the brown beach beginning to turn gold as the sun peeked between the clouds in the narrowing distance. Nothing seemed to have changed, so far as Ebon could see from a mile or two out. Nothing at all.
He turned. The captain was standing in front of a wheel mounted on a freestanding console in the fishing boat’s center, one hand on the big chrome circle and another wrapped around a beer, meeting Ebon’s eyes with an amiable expression. Ebon didn’t know any of the nautical rules. Were you allowed to drink and steer a boat? If you weren’t, whom could tell you otherwise?
“I’m really not seasick,” he said. Then, to assuage the captain’s concern, he sat in one of the revolving fisherman’s seats upholstered in white plastic fabric, mounted atop chrome posts like a barber’s chairs. The driver’s name was Jack, and he’d introduced himself as Captain Jack. Like in the Billy Joel song, he’d said with a commercial-worthy smile. At least the captain hadn’t offered to “get him high tonight” like Billy’s inspiration — although given the turbulent emotions Captain Jack had taken for seasickness, maybe Ebon would seek him out later and ask.
“No shame on it, buddy.” Ebon watched the man tug on his white captain’s cap. He had a scraggly white beard and a yellow rain slicker that looked exactly like the one on the Gorton’s fish sticks boxes. No wonder Ebon couldn’t think of him simply as “Jack.”
“Really,” said Ebon. “I don’t get seasick.”
“I was just wondering why you’d hire a charter if you knew it happened. Or didn’t you know?”
Ebon looked up again. Apparently the captain had determined that he was seasick and wasn’t about to change his mind. Ebon decided to lean into it. New town, new life, new friends … might as well start deciding on the other aspects of his new personality while he was at it. He had a cornerstone now: He got seasick. Not much to build a new life around, but at least it was different.
“Have you ever taken the ferry to Aaron from the mainland, Jack?”
“Ayuh. Of course.”
“Well, you talk about seasickness? When that thing hits rough water, it’s like … ”
“Ayuh,” Captain Jack repeated, now nodding enthusiastically. “You’re right. Someone like you, you’ll barf harder when a tub that big gets to swaying. I forget. Not
that I go to the island often. But you’re gonna go broke hiring me to run over and get you whenever you want to make a run to Costco or something.”
“I can afford it.” Ebon watched as the captain leaned the wheel a few degrees to the left (to port, he amended; he was nautical now) and watched the shoreline swing around to the ship’s starboard side.
“You been to Aaron before?”
Ebon nodded slowly. He looked out across the water, seeing the way Aaron wrapped the large semicircle of land at the boat’s side like stitching on a saddle’s horn.
“I used to stay with my grandparents here when I was younger.”
“So you ain’t as sea-green as I thought. Just a queasy stomach is all.” The captain seemed to brush the topic away, declaring himself okay with the embarrassment if Ebon was. “I got relations on the island myself. Where was their place?”
“East Shore. Dead opposite West Dock.”
“I know it.” He paused, then added, “Why’d you want to pull in at Pinky Slip? West Dock is easier, y’know. Closer too.” He pointed, and Ebon could see a long concrete-and-wood pier jutting far out into the water behind them. The ferry was docked in place, reminding him of what Jack had said earlier. But as with everywhere on Aaron, Ebon had memories of the ferry too. There was a lot to the island — a lot to reacquaint himself with — but he had to start small, like dipping a toe into cold water before leaping in. One semiprivate dock, one familiar house, and one person other than the salty sea dog guiding him to shore. No one from the mainland knew he was here. Ebon could grow a brand-new life from those meager seeds, given time.
“Yes, Pinky Slip.”
Captain Jack shrugged as if to let Ebon know it was his time and money to waste. “When were you here last?”
A sigh rose in Ebon’s chest. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about this trip. Part of him was excited for the unknown, but another part (this one regrettably much larger) felt crushed by his recent past. He felt both in love with the nostalgic idea of Aaron and bittersweet about its place in his memories. The expression said, “You can’t go home again,” but while Aaron had never truly been “home” for Ebon, his childhood perceptions of the place were delicate, colored by whimsy as much as reality. Maybe you couldn’t go home again, but could you return to your cherished place of innocence? Maybe not. Maybe all he was about to do, by landing on the island’s shore, would be to pop the idealized bubble Aaron had always held in his heart.
“Sixteen years. I was fifteen.”
Ebon exhaled with the weight of time. How different had he been back then? How much had happened since? It was sobering to consider the number of chapters that had opened and closed between his last view of Aaron’s shores and now. If his life were spliced between those two spots (if God the filmmaker were to place his last departure beside his new arrival and cut out all that had happened between), Holly Moone wouldn’t ever have existed for Ebon Shale. Sixteen years would drop to the cutting room floor, soon to be swept up as if they’d never been. And to think they’d thought themselves old souls, destined for an eternity together.
“It’s a nice place, Aaron,” said Captain Jack, oblivious to Ebon’s conflicted emotions. “People complain about the long boat ride, but that’s what keeps the island small. Ain’t no reason for developers to come over. Plenty of dirt roads left, but so what? That’s a small price to pay for quiet.”
Ebon felt divided down the middle, both eager to arrive at Pinky Slip and guilty for the desire behind it. He’d pined for a return that summer at age fifteen with his old friend, Aimee (and his two other island summers at thirteen and twelve), more times than he could recall, but wanting them back, especially now, felt wrong. The dueling sensations warred in his gut, his finger trailing like a magnet to the bare spot where his wedding ring belonged. He was supposed to pay respect to the present, but the past felt so much warmer. And besides, there was so little left in the present to pay respect to. Penance solved nothing, but something deep told Ebon it was his duty to flog himself anyway.
“I’m definitely looking forward to the quiet,” he said.
Captain Jack nodded, apparently satisfied, then turned back to the wheel.
The boat was buzzing along at what was probably top speed, but they were far enough out that the shoreline passed slowly. As they moved farther north, clusters of cottages appeared looking like small dock-connected cities. Ebon wondered how they’d survived. In especially cold winters, ice sometimes crept up as high as the rocks past the beach. He seemed to remember his grandfather calling the dock cottages “touristy bullshit” and railing against the local taxes that went into their maintenance, essentially giving the people who owned them free repair. But although Ebon had heard all of the railing and ranting, he’d been a kid back then. And Pappy no longer had to worry; he and Grams had moved back across the bay to a spot on the mainland that was easier for their aging hands to maintain.
“Is that Fortford Circle right there?” Ebon pointed to where he thought he could make out some familiar buildings, but he barely remembered the home that he’d gone to once with Aimee’s friends. He hadn’t held onto that particular memory very tightly. He’d always liked it best when it was just him and Aimee, no hangers-on in tow.
“Ayuh, I think so.”
“And that’s Dick’s Marina.”
“Used to be,” the captain said. “I guess you do go back.”
“‘Go back?’”
“Dick’s hasn’t been open since maybe ’98 or ’99.”
Ebon nodded, thinking. Yes, he seemed to remember that. Dick’s Marina held no real significance to Ebon other than being an island feature, not unlike Redding Dock or Hobart Bridge. It had gone out of business before his final summer, but Ebon kept forgetting that, as if it had actually mattered.
He continued to scan, now feeling that something was, contrary to first impressions, different. He couldn’t put his finger on it. And then he did.
“Shouldn’t Aaron’s Party be around here?”
“The Party?” Captain Jack laughed. “Fella, they tore that place apart years ago. Guess it really has been a while for you.”
Ebon looked toward the out-jut of land ahead, now feeling strangely empty. If he remembered his geography correctly, Pinky Slip was nestled in the dish-shaped section of shoreline beyond, around a rocky outcropping. They’d dock before reaching the second out-jut that once housed the shoreline carnival and its giant Ferris wheel, but seeing even the first outcropping now, knowing the absence that was ahead, made his heart ache. Of all the island’s many mental anchor points, Aaron’s Party was heaviest for Ebon. He’d left Aaron for the final time still a virgin, but in a very real way he’d become a man on that spot — at the top of the big red wheel bedazzled in lights. The idea of its being gone hurt, as if someone had reached into his past and cut something out with a blade.
“When did they take it apart?” But that wasn’t the real question in his head, so he quickly added, “And why?”
“Not sure on exactly when, but as to why? Wasn’t no percentage in it, I imagine. Downside of being where it was — on Aaron, I mean. Hotels don’t want to build without the traffic, and that’s good for the people who like it small and intimate. But no traffic means not so many tourists either.”
“But it was always packed!” As the boat steered around the point and began to enter the bay, Ebon found himself wanting to argue with the captain. It was as if he’d been at fault for the absence of Aaron’s Party — and could, given adequate persuasion, fix what had clearly been a colossal mistake.
“When were you here as a kid?” Captain Jack asked. “Seasonwise, I mean.”
“Summers.”
“Ayuh, same as everyone.” Ebon thought he detected a sour note, as if the captain were blaming Ebon and others just like him for being fair-weather friends. “Memorial Day to Labor Day, the Party was hopping. But they still had to maintain it for the other nine months too, I suppose, plus pay rent, and probably insurance, I du
nno. Tough to run an island outside of the tropics. Summers, everywhere’s packed. But look around now. And hell, it’s not even mid-September yet.”
Ebon looked at the shore with new eyes. He’d always arrived on the ferry, coming in to West Dock near the island’s south end. Only once before had he seen the shore from the bay, so nothing had seemed strange. But now that he really looked he could see how the beaches were mostly empty, many of the cottages under the just-now-coloring trees boarded and closed for the winter. Bright-orange snow fence had been strung across some of the beaches. On the island’s ocean side, where beach gave way to jagged cliffs, there would be less snow fence, but almost every house would be boarded. Ebon had never spent a winter, spring, or fall anywhere near Aaron, but thinking of it now, he imagined winter wind could be brutal. Would be brutal, he amended, considering he planned to stay.
“Aaron loses something like 90 percent of its summertime population once the ferry hits the weekends-only schedule,” said Captain Jack. He was steering them toward a small set of docks at the foot of a long, rickety staircase winding down from a beachless rise. “I imagine it must lose more once the boat stops running entirely, what for the ice near shore. The island couldn’t support a proper grocery store, you know. There was one for a while, but same as the Party, it did its business in summer and couldn’t survive September to May. The co-op is all that manages, but that’s mainly because it has government crutches. Everything’s more expensive on an island. You ever ponied up the price of an ice cream at Coney’s?” The captain laughed. “Ayuh, you gotta pay a premium for ice cream that needs to survive a long ferry ride without melting. You know what survives just fine, though, through all four seasons with a tidy profit?”
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