Axis of Aaron

by Johnny B. Truant

  He fought with the lines for a while, but there was nothing doing. He’d managed to start the boat, but was unable to move it. He’d have to go back in, and probably ask for Aimee’s help.

  “Fuck it.”

  He hopped back aboard, climbed into the cabin, and snagged a large gutting knife he’d noticed in the kitchenette. Then he sawed the lines off, leaving small dangling trailers as the stern began to drift away, followed moments later by the bow. He wouldn’t be able to dock again using these lines (unless he could unwrap them, which seemed unlikely), but that was a problem for later.

  Ebon eased the throttle into slow reverse. Nothing happened. He eased farther. Still nothing. Then he pushed it all the way back, and the transmission suddenly seemed to catch, throwing the boat out of neutral and into full-speed reverse. He tried to correct, but momentum had already sent him into the opposite dock, breaking away several boards with a loud crack. Ebon leaned over the edge and looked down. The dock had pierced the side, but the hole was minor and well above the water line. He’d need to get it fixed. But that too could wait.

  The controls were sticky. He got it free, but the engine stuttered, spurted, and eventually jerked forward. Ebon collided with another dock in forward as he had in reverse. Once somewhat clear, the wheel locked, and he careened around in a perfect skidding circle, spanking a buoy that some asshole had left right in the middle of the marina and snagging his severed dock lines on it. He’d also forgotten to drag the bumpers back aboard, and the nearest one also became snagged on the buoy.

  He used the knife to fix it.

  The wind had begun to pick up. Ebon still steered forward, fighting the stubborn wheel (it felt like something was clutching the rudder) and cresting the small waves. The boat was plenty hearty enough to take it, even with the hole in the side he’d just made on the dock. But then, a hundred feet out, the front anchor deployed, and forward momentum caused the boat to spin almost in a circle on the pivot, the vessel’s ass end now pointed toward the bay.

  He was unable to free the anchor, which had become impossibly wedged below some rocks in the channel. Of course. So with significant effort and after fifteen minutes, Ebon decided to climb in and unbolt the anchor chain as he had with the dock lines. He could return for it in the spring. He watched as the chain slinked into the depths, knowing it couldn’t be very deep so close to shore. But the water swallowed the anchor as surely as if it had vanished, and Ebon found himself wondering if he’d ever find it again after all.

  When he was two hundred feet out, a cold sort of panic gripped Ebon’s heart like a fist. He’d watched Bonnie pilot the boat into Pinky Slip with no more angst than a skipping girl playing double Dutch, but Ebon was slowly growing sure that the transmission controls had rusted in place since then, that there were six tons of buried treasure wrapped around the rudder, and that the wheel was about to snap away. The thing felt a thousand years old, and he was only heading out deeper and deeper. There was a gasoline leak in the engine compartment; he had no anchor and no way to dock; he had a hole in his side. If his ship capsized, would he be able to swim back in the frigid water? If it stalled, were there any oars aboard? He couldn’t let it drift even if he had a way to get away himself, could he? Who knew where it might run ashore? Who knew what damage it might cause?

  He looked toward the shore. Dark clouds had angered the horizon behind him while he’d been fiddling with the lines and anchor. Had he really thought this was a good day to test the ocean? The ocean had already won, and he’d barely left.

  The cold water still against his skin reasserted itself despite the piled-on blanket. A wind blew off the bay toward the shore, giving the boat a warning shove.

  Ebon felt torn. He was standing on a razor-thin rise, equally able to tip in either direction. One option was to go back, and he very much wanted to. He liked being with Aimee, talking with her, using his hands for renovation so his mind would stay empty — or dally only on subjects he approved. So he could head back to shore, walk to the cottage, change out of his wet clothes, and get a cup of tea. Aimee would even make it for him. And if he did turn back, he was quite sure the boat would cooperate. The wheel would turn fluidly and true; the engines wouldn’t stall or hesitate; he’d drift back into the Slip almost without mechanical assistance. Of course he would. Because if the ocean really had been against Ebon, allowing him to return by his own choice was even better than holding him by force. Because after all, the only thing better than tying a dog to a stake was tricking him into staying put on his own.

  But on the other hand, if he did go back, what would he have learned? That he’d been right, and was indeed being held prisoner? Or worse: Because the very notion of the ocean hating him was so ridiculous, he might decide that he’d been paranoid and helpless all along. Weren’t you supposed to face your fears? Maybe he’d been stupid to feel the way he did about the island, the water, and whatever was wrong with both. But what was he saying to himself by refusing even to head out into the beast’s belly to test it? If he didn’t do this now, what did it say about him, and what he’d forever fail to do in the future?

  With a feeling of abandon, Ebon rammed the throttle to full. The boat took off, its powerful twin engines too shocked to sabotage him in time. The waves were growing ahead, but Ebon ignored them. He wasn’t going to go into the ocean, he’d decided. Maybe later. For now, baby steps were enough. He’d head toward the mainland, across the bay. He didn’t even have to reach the shore. It would be enough to see the shore, and he should be able to do that quickly. And then, from the middle of the water, he could look at Aaron and the mainland as equals. When he returned, he’d be doing so by choice, not out of fear. He’d be in control. Captain of his own destiny, as it were.

  Once his decision was made, the water seemed to obey. He steered out, watching the compass, knowing it should only take a few minutes at full throttle.

  He saw the mainland on the horizon soon after. Feeling daring and victorious, he kept moving toward it, somehow knowing the clouds and waves would obey now that he’d broken through. And as the shoreline came nearer, he began to see familiar landmarks.

  But not landmarks of the mainland.

  They were landmarks of Aaron.

  He could see the crescent shape of the island’s trough. He could see the bluffs, atop which Vicky’s house stood. He could see Redding Dock’s length to the north, its red planks slithering into the water like a snake. And he could see the carnival on the pier, the Danger Wheel’s bulk prominent at its end.

  Ebon looked down at the compass. It told him he was heading east, not west. Yet he’d been heading dead west just a moment ago. How the hell had he got turned around?

  The black smear over the island ahead had darkened, now moving closer to Aimee’s cottage. The clouds had grown taller, spreading like ink in a pool, becoming thunderheads. Lightning was beginning to fork beneath it like insect legs. It was close, but not there quite yet. He might be able to make it back in time if he hurried. But if he dallied out here in the water? Well, he’d be in for one bastard of a storm, riding out Armageddon in a boat with a hole in its side, unable to moor.

  Instead of revving the engine toward Aaron’s safe harbor, Ebon turned the wheel until the bow was facing away from the island. Toward the mainland and clear skies. They really had grown clear too; he could see white clouds parted to sun ahead, patches of yellow glinting on the water.

  A rumble of thunder from behind. The storm was approaching.

  Ebon gunned the engine, intent on outrunning the storm. How fast was it moving? He looked back, watching a blue streak below the thunderheads as it neared the carnival, the bluffs, Redding Dock, Aimee’s cottage. Fast. And how fast could the boat move? Faster than it was going now, for sure. But Ebon could only throttle up so high because the storm was raising the waves, the boat fighting to crest them without knocking his teeth out. To make things worse, he wasn’t riding the peaks and troughs as they rose from the rear. For some reason he was headed i
nto the growing whitecaps, as if the wind were blowing toward the storm rather than out of it.

  He gritted his teeth. Throttled as high as he dared. And left Aaron behind, the storm close on his tail.

  As the first specks of land began to appear in the sunlight ahead, Ebon decided he might be doing something foolish, bordering on idiotic. It was almost halfway through December, and none of the docks ahead — if he could even find any — would be open for new arrivals. He didn’t have dock lines; he’d need to use those of any marina he managed to find … if he could do it before getting dashed to pieces on the rocks. The waves had at least moved behind him now, but even that had a downside given the way he was being ruthlessly shoved toward the inhospitable mainland coast. He’d be lucky to stay ahead of the storm at all, luckier to slot into a marina given the surge behind him, and downright blessed if he was able to dock properly. Because even if there were docks ahead, none would be staffed. Boating season had ended for the sane.

  He looked back. The storm was closer and had swelled in size, eclipsing the whole of Aaron’s shoreline sufficiently that Ebon could no longer see the island. It was as if the storm had eaten it. The wind blew hard at his back, ruffling his blankets like capes. He heard the crackle of lightning heating the air like a stove’s element, then the rending boom as it sundered the sky.

  Ebon drove faster. The sun-lit mainland ahead was taunting, as if it were a painting of Eden put there to mock him as he was tossed in the tempest. The engines felt like they were losing their grip on the water, the stern rocking too hard in the waves for the propellers to push against them. The rudder was similarly sloppy, failing to find purchase in what felt like empty air.

  The waves pushed. The sky flashed, darkness coming from behind. Booming volleys of thunder threatened the air, their force pushing against his back like hot blasts from a furnace. Ebon turned. It was close. Too close. The land ahead was growing, but he was no longer sure he could make it at all, let alone find a place to dock.

  He jammed the throttle ahead, knowing it was already at full but urging it forward anyway. Land grew closer, the storm at his back insistent. The sun was so bright, it seemed impossible to believe the storm was so near. He got a mental picture of an idyllic paradise, its hapless inhabitants unprepared for what was coming.

  Faster. Faster.

  At this speed, he was going to plow into the shore instead of kissing it, but it no longer mattered. The storm was now wetting his hair through his hat, whipping its arms around him in an embrace. It was trying to push him down onto the deck, to grab him and throw him into the surf. The waves tossed the ship like a toy, engines now decidedly louder with each pitch, the props for sure leaving the water. He couldn’t imagine how he hadn’t capsized, but then a realization dawned, and he understood.

  The storm wasn’t getting any closer. It was chasing him like a cattle dog chases a stray: with purpose.

  It wasn’t pursuing him. It was leading him.

  Ahead, Ebon saw the sun glint off the Danger Wheel’s fresh paint at the end of the pier, the big machine’s wheels turning in lazy circles as ant-like people milled at its base. He saw the sun wink off the comparatively slight waves in front of the cottage beach, where he and Aimee had played as kids, where even now he could see the blue-gray shake shingles, the roof simple and lightly weathered, the pool there somehow immune to the storm surge. He saw the sun kiss Redding Dock, its boards new, its paint fresh and vibrant.

  Ebon’s hand slipped from the throttle, then from the wheel. A fork of lightning struck to the right as the bow listed starboard, threatening to topple him into the surf.

  Keep moving. Keep going.

  He wasn’t sure if it was the voice of his own self-preservation, the voice of sanity, or the voice of the storm, licking its chops as it got exactly what it had craved from the outset. Ebon might be heeding the ocean’s demands, but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t kill him anyway.

  He watched the shore approach in suspended disbelief, the boat’s throttle at top end well into the no-wake zone. Too late, Ebon throttled back. His momentum, assisted by the waves, couldn’t be arrested. He skidded toward the stone breakwaters. The engine coughed and protested. His slide deepened, and he struck the stones with bone-shattering force. He found himself tossed overboard, now underwater, now into the blackness, a wild part of his attention with its eye peeled for the anchor he’d lost on the outbound trip.

  He surfaced blinking, his eyes unwilling to adjust to the blinding December sunlight that had no right to be here in the storm’s throat. But even so he barely had the strength of mind to register the chill in his bones because what he saw in the sky stole his breath.

  Ebon had seen the phenomenon before, but never so strikingly. Something about the island’s convection, as it sat in the cool ocean, often caused storms to divert around it. If an approaching eastbound system was large, he’d seen clouds seem to split, some of the storm passing to the north while some passed to Aaron’s south.

  But this storm hadn’t just split. It had cracked in half. The pall of deluging rain and forks of lightning weren’t more than a quarter mile out, but Ebon, at the slip’s mouth, found himself bathed in sunlight. Clouds were wrapping the island like smoke curling around an obstruction. To the west, there was storm. To the north and south, there was storm. But on Aaron itself, there were blue skies and an endless wintertime summer.

  Something floated by as the icy water asserted itself against Ebon’s skin, urging him to swim for shore and, finally, to return to Aimee’s for shelter, warmth and companionship.

  It was the severed bow of his new boat, tipping on end before making its way down.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Worth Waiting For

  THE STORM PASSED AS IF IT had never been there.

  Ebon watched for a few hideous minutes while he bobbed in the frigid water, then climbed out and shivered on the dock. He found more dry blankets inside a small and blessedly unlocked supply locker at the dock’s end, then wrapped himself and sat on a bench that was little more than three short pieces of treated two-by-eight lumber. For mid-December, he found himself strangely comfortable. The sun was almost too warm and bright as the thunderheads wrapped and then passed Aaron. Once he was mostly dry, it was almost possible to believe it was early autumn, or even late summer. Maybe it was because he’d been so chilled, but the air had warmed into what felt like the mid-seventies, maybe warmer. A place of eternal sun and fun — that’s what Aaron had always been for Ebon, apparently including now.

  After a few more contemplative minutes, Ebon felt warmed enough by the sun enough to remove the blankets. He draped them over a pylon, making a mental promise to return them to the locker after they’d dried. It somehow felt easy to stay where he was, on the dock at Pinky Slip, watching pieces of his short-time boat sink or float. Even if his hat, coat, and gloves had all remained dry, he’d have taken them off. It was like a blast of hot air had propelled the storm east.

  He found he couldn’t stand the thought of returning to Aimee’s cottage. Not now.

  The lapping waves were finally calming. Ebon began to feel anchored — pulled down by a weight he didn’t realize he’d been hefting. The last few days (Was it days?) had been tumultuous, but not for the reasons he would have thought. It wasn’t feelings about Holly or her infidelity (repeated infidelity, according to her journals) that occupied Ebon's mind. Nor was it her death. It was Aaron itself.

  Ebon sighed. Stood. Walked up the staircase rather than taking the lower path in front of the cottage, along the beach. And once at the top, he didn’t turn south. Instead, he turned north, away from Aimee’s. His feet moved without permission, and an unknowable time later he found himself at the base of Redding Dock.

  Ebon put his hands on the dock’s posts, feeling the smooth paint (or varnish, or lacquer; who knew how these things were done?) under his grip. Everything around him, now that he was finally back at his old thinking spot, suddenly felt so new and genuine. That’s the
word that came to mind: genuine. Things at Aimee’s were new too, but things at Redding Dock had the earned authenticity that came from persistent seniority. Redding hadn’t been rebuilt in the years he’d been away; he could tell that just by seeing some of the familiar names carved into its wood. It had survived. It had endured. With all the oddity he’d been feeling lately, it was a comfort to touch something that not only still was, but had always been.

  Ebon looked toward the bay. The island's inhabitants had left the long and meandering dock deserted. Looking down its length from the shore, unable to see where it ended, Ebon felt the recurrence of a childhood thought: that the snaking planks might go on forever. When he’d come here as a boy (when he’d fled here as a boy, to tell the truth), he’d fantasized that he could step onto Redding Dock and walk … and walk … and walk. Maybe the end would brush the mainland … if it didn’t wind all the way out into eternity.

  Despite knowing better as an adult (and knowing better as a kid; fantasy wasn’t the same as dumb belief), Ebon felt the same sense of unreal expectation as he walked the planks above what was now an almost supernaturally calm and inviting ocean. But of course the dock had an end. It had survived winter after winter; it had survived rising ice and storms during particularly cold snaps; it had survived the passage of lost boats and rafts that, due to its length, often became ensnared as if on a net. Whoever had built the dock hadn’t been thinking. The thing was too low to be useful. Too feeble to be practical. Too unreinforced to endure. And yet while everything else on Aaron had shifted around Ebon, Redding alone felt safe and unchanged.

  He reached its end, then sat on a low fishing bench into which hundreds of people had carved initials — many separated by plus signs and surrounded by hearts. He ran his fingers over the letters, remembering them all. Ebon could even see a foggy, inexpert set, still sharp as if cut yesterday, that seemed to read “BS + AP.” The B had once been an E and the P had once been an F, but Ebon had changed both himself a day after carving the true initials, at age fifteen. The odds of those carved initials being discovered and deduced had been small even back then, but he’d been shy and afraid of what it might mean to truly love Aimee. It had felt safer to return the next day and alter the past than it did to admit — to himself and the world — what was really true.