The Return

by Mark L. Butler

He knelt down beside the ocean and washed his hand in the small pool in the top of a rock. He did not love the ocean. He did not love the salt air, the sandy bottom, the seaweed drying and bleached on the rocks. He wiped his hand between his legs and pulled the glove on with his teeth. His eyes were gray as the mud on his boots, as the envelope of clouds that was covering the Earth. In another summer there might have been a girl, but there would still have been the grayness. And now there was no girl. He checked his holster.

He stumbled to his feet and crossed to the tractor and the gray body. He gazed once more at the twisted face; the happy childhood and empty maturity that looked like mud in the eyes of the lifeless body. He muttered something between his teeth that might have been a prayer or a curse, and pulled his knife from the sand.

Above and behind him, in the mountains to the east, a party of four, lightly packed and heavily armed, made its way through the rain forest, challenged the trees. He secured his rifle and started up the coast.



II

There was no twilight. The night came like a cool bedsheet, folded over gently, and tucked-in at the sides.

He sat in a small, tub-like hole at the foot of a large stump, smoking a stale cigarette. There was plenty of driftwood but he made no fire; there had been tractor tracks about two miles south. He wondered if he might be warmer with the sand piled about him, but he made no attempt to see. In the morning he would look for fresh water. His canteen was low and he wanted to wash. Even the thought of the icy water made him cold and he struggled to put it out of his mind. He thought he might like to sing, but he knew no songs. There were stars up there, behind those clouds. He was sure.



III

The beautiful girl came then, and he stood to see her, the waves swirling at her ankles. The ocean was softer, it seemed. She smiled at him, and he stepped forward; but time and the wind pushed him back.

She was a woman alone with the world, and his hands ached for her love.

In time, nine children, dressed in blue, joined hands around her, danced in a circle. The children of night danced around a beautiful girl, singing a song with no words, while his tongue became dry in his throat. He wanted to touch her.

Then, before him, two of the children dropped their hands, breaking the chain, and beckoned to his two aching hands. He joined the circle of night but the children disappeared in all directions, and the girl lay naked and dead on the sand. He wanted her now, more than ever. And again his hands ached.

And he knelt down to touch her; and the winds ceased to ram; and all was still beside the sanctified ocean. A soft rain began to fall.

But when he touched her it was not her face he saw nor her breast that he touched. It was the twisted face and hideous breast of the body by the tractor. It was the dead man. He glanced up and saw her again, waist-deep in the water. There were voices behind him.



IV

He ran to her.



V

The wind laughed at him for awhile, then sighed, defeated. His arms no longer trembled, and the sick feeling was gone from his body. He again felt the biting of rain on his naked back and heard the crashing that was the world around him. He was alive. But the ocean, the miserable ocean, was all around him, ready to swallow. And then it was only to his left. And then to his right. The surf was his pulse and his heart choked on the salt water. The words, which moments ago had risen to his crusty throat, seemed to fade on dry lips. He reached down and felt the fresh metal in his skin.