WHERE THE SEA CAN FIND US

He owned a costly but quaint hilltop abode that he would tramp down from to a sun-darkened town to shop and drink and socialize. People in Seabrook generally saw Elliot Flynn as a writer of little merit, the struggling sort who wasn’t really a writer except in his own eyes. Since everyone knew he had only sold a few stories to an online magazine, with a modest handful of subscribers—Elliot had blabbed about this, drunkenly, on multiple occasions—he couldn’t argue with their assessment.

With Elliot’s sizable family inheritance at his disposal, he toiled in obscurity, studying the human condition, pissing the money away, writing shitty stories, and sleeping too much. But when the emerald trees swayed, and it was summertime, and the air was nice, he could see from his home the people of the gritty, old-fashioned town heading for Payton’s Cove in their shiny, modern vehicles. Elliot would go, too, on occasion—take strolls on the far end of the beach by the tall volcanic rocks, where no one else ever went. They towered like black tombstones for giant monsters.

Elliot stood there barefoot on the wet sand one afternoon in the warm sun, tasting the salty air on his lips.

The silkiness of the soaked sand around his feet. The cool breeze on his bare legs. He observed a dozen seagulls soaring in serpentine patterns over the shallows.

The gulls were a blinding white in the bright sun, like hang-gliding ghosts, and many had gathered on the tall rocks, which extended thirty yards out to sea. Waves crashed against them, an invasion force, mused Elliot, held at bay by the land.

He lit a joint and sat on a rock and gazed out at the ocean.

A few minutes passed and then he saw a familiar face approaching from down the shoreline.

Elliot waved at the rotund, dark-bearded man, and Harlan Mansfield—owner-operator of the Pin It to Win It Bakery in Seabrook; this man was a professional drinker—waved back.

He strode toward Elliot wearing pink sandals, gray shorts, and a brick-red T-shirt. He arrived with a toothy smile hidden under his thick, dark beard.

They exchanged the normal pleasantries and sat together and shared the joint.

Harlan was saying, ‘I didn’t even know you were over here—I was just taking a stroll.’

He went on to explain that his wife and kids were visiting her great-aunt in Kentucky. With the bakery being renovated, Harlan hadn’t known what else to do today. He said he came out here to ‘think about the big stuff—not the damn bakery again.’

He puffed on the joint and handed it back to Elliot while gulls squawked from the air and landed on the rocks to rest.

Elliot could hear swarms of beachgoers in the distance, but he couldn’t see them down the curvature of the shoreline. So many potential readers, and he with nothing of any value to say to them.

He confessed to Harlan that he hadn’t written so much as a haiku in several months. ‘Nothing feels true anymore,’ he muttered, then hit the joint.

Harlan didn’t say anything at first. The sound of the blowing wind filled the silence between them for a moment.

When Elliot passed Harlan the joint . . .

‘What’s true is what’s dangerous, right?’ Harlan said, taking it. He drew from the joint and held the smoke in his lungs for as long as possible before finally exhaling it.

Harlan coughed.

Elliot waited for him to finish and thought about the idea and shrugged. ‘That’s a good line. I’m not sure I know what it means.’

Harlan was almost done coughing when he responded, ‘Me neither.’ He cleared his throat and spat off to the side of the rock on which they sat.

The men both chuckled and passed the joint back and forth, and listened to the waves and the gulls. Harlan took out a flask of whiskey, and they each took shots. The birds had quieted down some in the stiff breeze as a plane roared high overhead.

Then Elliot rose from the rock and ambled, tipsy, toward the ocean, high as a kite.

His thoughts were on the universe and its origins. The nature of life. The meaning of it all to the individuals who experience it, consciously.

Consciousness.

What did it mean? Was it a thing that was real? Did it just evaporate when we died like nothing at all? Or was it substantial in the bigger picture in some way; did it float up to some higher plane of existence; did our souls, for lack of a better word, live on?

The warm water washed over Elliot’s feet, which sank into the sand that flooded in between his toes, tickling a little.

‘You know,’ he heard Harlan saying behind him as the waves crashed against the shoreline, ‘somewhere out there is the shark that would fucking eat me if I was ever dumb enough to go in there.’

Elliot grinned, then sighed and said, ‘Yeah, well, you would last longer than me. I can’t swim.’

‘Really?’

Elliot shook his head no.

‘I never understand that. How do you not know how to swim? It’s such an easy thing to learn; I could teach you right now.’ Harlan motioned back toward Seabrook. ‘At the rec center pool, I mean. Not in the fucking ocean.’

Elliot shrugged, smiling. ‘I don’t know, man. I don’t really feel like I need to learn. And it scares the shit out of me.’

‘Your parents didn’t make you learn?’

‘They tried to. But no. I was like, not having it at all.’

Harlan chuckled and shook his head in disbelief. ‘I guess that’s fine. Don’t cross any bridges over water, though. Don’t go on a boat. Don’t live somewhere flooding occurs. Don’t . . .’

Elliot was nodding.

But Harlan kept listing things with that look of disbelief on his pudgy face, scratching his beard.

Out on the ocean, a large cargo ship blared its horn. The cool sea breeze caressed Elliot’s face as he looked over at the huge volcanic rocks.

He stared at them, suddenly transfixed by their darkness. He couldn’t take his eyes off them. Something was there, something he hadn’t felt in a while.

It was an urge that went all the way back to his childhood. Elliot had become overwhelmed with the desire to climb the rocks.

As an adult, normally, he would ignore an urge like that. He was almost forty and could get seriously injured if he wasn’t careful.

But he couldn’t take it anymore. The constant self-regulation, monitoring his every move, making rule after rule after rule and still getting nowhere. Elliot wanted to let loose. To write what he wanted to write. Or climb rocks he fucking wanted to.

Harlan was looking out to sea. ‘Hey, have you ever read Jaws? The novel and movie are a little diff—’ he started saying as Elliot strode away toward the rocks.

‘Uh, dude?’ he heard Harlan asking behind him.

Elliot, in a slight trance, said nothing.

He marched toward the rocks while the waves crashed against their jagged edges. He reached the cluster of really big ones—the ones in-shore enough to still be reasonably dry, yet still close enough to the water for there to be danger.

Elliot began scaling one rock up to another. He kept climbing from there. He felt younger in the summer sun on the rocks, being careless, like a kid again. He could feel his heart beating for the first time in . . . he didn’t know how long.

Then he noticed a big wave out to sea, barreling toward Payton’s Cove. Elliot thought about whether or not to hop down from the rocks. But no, he thought, these rocks were his now. He had earned his place on them, goddamnit. So he found more solid footing and hugged the rocks for stability.

The wave was getting closer. It was larger than any Elliot had seen today. He stared in amazement at it while the wind tousled his hair.

Elliot couldn’t help but wonder whether fate had dictated the wave come along at this precise moment or if shit just happened sometimes. He realized, then, that whether he died today or tomorrow, or thirty years from now, he would never really know the answer to that.

‘Look out, dude,’ Harlan was shouting from below on the beach.

The wave broke against the giant rocks farther out. A shockwave of mist hit Elliot Flynn as a wall of foamy water barreled toward him like a bloodthirsty army.

He took a deep breath, held it, and turned away from the wave.

The wall hit him. It slammed his face against the large rock that he was hugging. Elliot’s head throbbed from the impact. He thought there might be blood but couldn’t tell.

He held on, and the wave never seemed to end; his grip was slipping.

Elliot kept his eyes shut, his feet wedged in the rocks for stability. His fingertips gripped the jagged surfaces and hurt, clinging soon by only the nails as the water rushed over him.

The horrifying thought occurred to him that perhaps this had been a stupid idea.

But then, finally, the wave came to an end.

Water dripped down the jagged hills and valleys of the volcanic rock’s surface. It dripped off Elliot’s hair, down the bridge of his nose, off his ears, and he finally let himself breathe again.

The sea’s forces had retreated in defeat.

He blew away the water around his lips. He brushed his hair out of his eyes and then hopped down from the rocks.

He waved at Harlan as they tromped toward each other on the dry sand.

The baker was clapping and laughing. ‘That was awesome, dude.’

Elliot was glowing and felt reborn. He understood now why the truth was danger: we have to really go out there, be where the sea can find us, fight for our lives on the rocks.

Desire. Conflict. Sheer force of will. We had to do it for real or the emotions wouldn’t feel right.

Without danger, thought Elliot, nothing really mattered. Nothing was at stake.

Next time he got to work, he decided, he would throw caution to the wind. He already felt the urge building in him. His fingertips buzzed. His brain gears cranked forward and started turning again.

In his heart, Elliot Flynn knew that his time was now.