The Sea and the Boy

by TOM NUTTING

After Hemingway

The sea holds the boy. The sea holds the boat he is holding onto, and the limpets and barnacles that scratch at his wrists. They also hold the slimy green rim of algae he inspects closely, and the plankton in the water around the boat. They hold, in fact, all the streams and blooms of plankton everywhere: matrices of algae, protozoa, bacteria, archaea, tiny jellyfish and krill, and everything in between.       

They are aware of larger beings too: so many things with scales, chitinous slow things, and faster ones, the quivering translucent ones, the long forests of kelp and swirling chlorophyllic pods, those sharply delicate calcinous shapes which cut, and the great things with skin which stir and swallow and echo, which felt pleasant inside.

And then this one with skin, more unusual: a boy. He, like all the others, is water, carbon, salts, and gases. He is weight and buoyancy—they hold these things, too, which make up the cool and the blue, not just in and around the boy and the boat, not just in the gulf, either, but far out in streaming currents, into that wider space where they can reach down and across further still, through eddies and deep undertows, until they are here, again.

Their expanse is reassuring, mostly.

Sometimes they almost flow onto the land, at estuaries and deltas, holding the rivers as they rush to meet them, hoping to merge, like lovers embracing.

This is how the sea knows the boy.

They are surprised to feel his sudden plop into them, his rare shape—so unsuited to their body—but delightfully strange. Also his salts and warmth; both quickly lapped up by the sea, for they relish salinity and the excitement of warmth—like the sun on their surface, which the dolphins love so much they splash and tickle in it. Really, the main way the sea knew surface creatures like the boy was through their sudden warmth.

Occasionally, his kind ventured deeper, but they soon became cold and stopped, so they joined them, in a way. The sea wonders if this might happen to this boy as they had enjoyed most of his little warmth as soon as they felt it from behind the shield of the boat.

Thankfully, this is one of those very quiet boats, which exerts very little pressure and barely disturbs their consciousness. Not like those monsters that burrow—so big and so many—from which the sea anticipates bitter oils, or else that expanding wide and incising web down into them, which hurt because how could it not? When not just the sea but so much of what they carried within themselves was taken, gouged out. The sea did not fully understand these, but they know this boat is not like those boats.

This is the type of boat that carries a boy.

And beneath the boat, another body, larger than the boat and the boy, rises.

The sea feels its displacement as it slows and turns; they can tell it is watching the boat and the boy from its angling and the turn of its fins.

The boy could stay here forever, he thinks.

The sea today is so calm and clear he has to get in. He sits on the side of the boat, flaking white paint from worn wood, and just lets himself fall sideways with barely a splash into the cool. Now he lets his lower body float free, carried by the sea, as he holds onto the boat with his head resting sideways on his folded arms. This way, the sea is on his left, the sky on the right, and the sun within both. He thinks this is how it should be: equal.

His breathing slows as he recovers from the shock of the cold, and he listens to the gentle lap of the water as the boat breaks the surface of the great depth holding him. Tired from rowing, he could sleep. No sooner had this possibility crossed his mind, the boy feels the slightest shift below, an almost imperceptible swirl of cool upwards.

A word swims: mako.

And as though one had rammed into him, the boy’s arms jolt with a strength he had not known he had as he pulls himself splashing into the boat, drops glittering like the splintered scales of caught fish. Puffing, he grasps the side of the boat once more and peeks over into the white—the reflection of the sun at this hour sometimes blinded the blue. But there is no fin and, now that he can see deeper, no grey, no black eye, no teeth.

He could hear padre’s words in his head: never swim between the sandbars. But the water is warmer here and he is more likely to see fish, turtles, and, yes, maybe sharks too. He takes a deep breath and says to himself: the sea will protect me, he is like padre. No, she is like mamá. No, the sea is like padre and mamá because they are stronger together.

He knows this. The sea is both, or in between.

The old men talked of the sea as her, for she was beautiful but fickle, moved by the moon, which moves women too, apparently.

“Why does the moon move you?” he had once asked mamá.

“You are too young to understand,” she had replied simply.

He had thought perhaps it was to do with how she would cry listening to lovesongs—which often sang of the moon—on the radio. Padre would watch her, rolling his eyes.

“You are such a woman,” he would accuse.

But then the boy would cry too.

And when this happened, padre would say, “You are so wet.”

So, the boy knew, then, that women were wet. But he was also wet, and he was a boy. But then it was no secret that padre cried too; indeed, it was the moon! He remembers the time he watched them both at the door, late, watching the moon, and he heard them both weeping as they shuddered into each other in the moonlight. And there had been that other time, at the cinema, when they watched the film about the fisherman, and the boy saw the light of the projector catching on padre’s cheeks, streams of light—the light of the sea in the projector, like moonlight in tears. He was sure padre had cried then.

Anyway, padre pissed, sweated, and spat more than he and mamá did combined. So, they were actually a wet family, all three.

For this reason, the boy knew the sea could not be only her.

The young men spoke of the sea as him. They said he was fierce and rough; he coarsened your face until it was like sand and, through battling with him for his prizes, he strengthened you, like a good fighting partner. He was part friend, part enemy. They said this is why you do not see women riding the sea, because women do not fight with men.

But the boy knew this was also not true. His family proved this again: the only person padre ever fought was mamá. Or rather, she fought him. Rarely a day went by without at least a little fight, whether it be over the mackerel brought home or the window frames not being painted or even something padre had said to the radio. Indeed, it was by watching mamá that the boy learned to fight, at least with his words, although occasionally mamá and padre fought with more than words. In fact, there had been that biggest of fights after tía came, and the boy had seen mamá actually riding padre! He remembers her legs clasped about padre’s waist and padre, not knowing which way to turn, open to her beating him about the head.

“He deserved it,” mamá answered later when the boy had asked her why she had done this.

So, women fought—and fought hard—and women rode things also: padre, other men (he had seen the torn magazine page in primo’s room), bicycles, or, indeed, the sea!

For this reason, too, the boy knew the sea could not be he.

The boy shuffles along to return to the shade under the sail, and looks down again at the water, his chin resting on his clasped hands.

A flash of red, up and down, like the simultaneous thrill in his heart, jumping. Something so quick and red, a long red stripe looping. A boquinete, he thinks.

This, too, a reason. A boquinete starts her life as female, then chooses, when the time is right, to change; her color deepens to a dark red and a black spot appears, and at this point, he is now male.

The boy knew that the creatures in the sea were male, female, and some were in between. So, this was surely the same for the sea in which they were held. They were also told at school how the male caballo de mar is fertilized by the female and how the male looks after all the little ponis. Teacher said other fish do this too, and some can go back and forth between male and female. Mateo had asked Teacher if people do this too. This made Teacher mad; her smile disappeared, and her eyes became afraid like she had suddenly seen a mako; there all along but hidden.

“Travelo,” someone whispered.

“Maricón!,” another voice shouted.

And everyone giggled before Teacher made us all recite the top ten most valuable stocks in the gulf: spiny lobster, sponge, a reef fish he could not recall, not mackerel . . . he had not particularly listened as he had been watching his classmates’ faces as tides of disquiet receded from the classroom.

So, for this reason, also—the reason of the sea creatures—the boy knew the sea could not be male or female but someone in between or changing.

High above, she sees another. She wonders if it is another like her but sees it is strangely truncated, small, and quiet.

She turns her fins and pushes her tail down, her whole body now flexing; she enjoys her steady strength and purpose. She knows her compassion. She wonders if it is an injured child as she eyes it better from this angle and holds her breath to rise faster. Still, they are alone and there is no hurry.

Suddenly, a new shape alongside—a body dismembering. She slows. But then sounds: after the initial slap, an oscillating squeal, halted, then a lower grunting reverb, then the light ear feel of tiny limbs swiping through the water, before stilling to the quietest of surface jingles. She continues upwards, then, feeling more sure.

A swathe of sargasso drifts past and obscures the scene with its greens and yellows. It feels good sliding over her skin, although she would like to see this strange sight again. There it is. A hard shell right on the surface—she has seen those before, but rarely so small. And next to it also very small, a thing all limbs, floating like the sargasso, occasionally flexing out, very much a fast and living thing: she can hear his heart beating quickly. A child, but not her kind.

The whale ascends further up to the great shimmering mirror until she is close to the boat and the boy. She can taste the boy and he tastes strange. Certainly not food for her, although he could be food for some she knows.

And then, as if he heard this thought, a final shrill call, scrambling, and then the boy-shape is gone. No more limbs, just a deep thunk.

What a shame—she wanted to watch the boy longer, perhaps even greet him, but now there was just the boat, and an occasional scrabbling broadcast downwards. She stays for a little while in case something else happens, but nothing does.

Why is he here? she thinks. She has heard of his kind before, of course, but mostly with their sharp metal, nets, their clamor that makes her people language-sick, and their oil too. He, though, had none of these. Perhaps there were different kinds of them. After all, there were different kinds of her people.

She calls a long and low note for her daughter. After a short while, she calls back: she is with her grandson and a friend. By the sound of it, they are on the other side of the bank, near the drop-off. All is well with them.

She moves further away from the boy and rises to the surface to breathe. She breathes a great breath of warm air and feels she could float up and watch him from the other side. She tries to be quiet, but it is hard to control one’s blowhole, after all, especially when excited. She suspects the boy heard something as she hears splashes coming from his direction.

Submerging once more, she notices with fascination and mild unease how two fin-like appendages protrude from the boat. She did not know that boats had fins and notes to tell this later in stories. Rhythmically, these fins slap and cut the water, and the boat turns around and around. Poor boat. Poor boy. He is like a nervous crab in a shell, she thinks.

She is reluctant to leave this novel thing, but she knows it is the right decision; she would not want to scare the boy with the heartbeat any more than he already is. Her people should protect rare and vulnerable creatures like him, she thinks. Not everyone agrees, she knows, but seeing him today felt special; she is unlikely to see another like him.

So, it is with great will that she turns and swims in the direction of her family. After all, there is plenty else to be getting on with, and the water is so blue and clear today.