Millard woke up that day at five AM sharp, the way he did for the past fifty years by now. At first it was a safety measure, waking up this early guaranteed him there’d still be plenty of fish in the sea for him to catch and sell to make a living, as whoever had good enough equipment, or rather the money to buy it, would never be bothered to as much as consider waking up before eight, well beyond the time when natural food for fish was abundant, because with tools like theirs, it really didn’t matter. Later on, when those wealthy enough to own special equipment were also wealthy enough to live in better parts of the city and hence at different parts of the sea, it was a reminder to himself: a reminder to never fall into a habit of making things easy for him, as life had taught him that things were never gonna stay easy for long.
Even when the water got so polluted there were hardly edible fish left, he continued till the social security got good enough for him to stop working and his back hurt so much he had to. And still he found that he still woke up at precisely five AM, regardless of whether his trusty century old alarm stood next to his head or turned off in the closet he seldom opened, next to all the other things his father had left him. Which, admittedly, weren’t plenty. Well, old habits die hard, and Millard never much cared to kill them. Waking up early didn’t harm him, so he didn’t mind. It gave him time, now that he finally had some. Time to sit down for breakfest, enjoy it. Time to look at himself in the mirror, seeing his age. Time to watch the birds, which had previously been a mere nuisance to him. Time to watch the sunset. Really, waking up this early was by no means a bad thing.
He never knew what to do with his life. Even when everything seemed so obvious, even knowing he’d be a fisher till the rest of his days, he never was sure of being in the correct place. Never did he feel like this was what his life’s goal should be. Spending the whole day everyday on his small boat, fixing potential leaks and dragging the fish to the market to sell once he returned, trying to get by on what he could catch, it all never felt like the ideal life to him. Perhaps if he’d set his mind to it, he could have figured out what would make him happy, figured out what he wanted to do. Perhaps he’d have become a barber, getting his hair cut once every two months was something he always looked very dearly toward. He’d have liked to go more often, in part too because of his rapid hair growth, but money didn’t allow. Perhaps he’d have become a gardener, treating to his garden was one of his favourite pastimes now that few were left. Perhaps he’d have become a musician even, he could always sense melodies in the splashing of the waves.
But with a schedule like his, there was never much time to figure any of this out.
He didn’t regret not having done any of those things, not having pursued a different career. While it may have made his life more enjoyable, the way he did it at least guaranteed a suitable wage, and besides, what good did it ever do to think about what could have been?
Yet he found himself doing so more and more each day.
He sighed, stretched his back, and walked onto the cold sand, knowing it wouldn’t last cold for long. His feet, used to all sorts of weather out at the sea, barely noticed anymore, and he never bothered to wear shoes. Who could afford those? They just filled with sand anyway, at least that’s what he figured from seeing people emptying their shoes any time he walked past some. His bare feet, on the other hand, passed through the sand like his fishing hook did through water whenever he threw it in; smoothly, yet slowly. As much as he enjoyed tending to his garden, that wasn’t something he needed to do daily, as much as he enjoyed to read, he didn’t own that many books, and his hands were too shaky for him to do much more. So he spent more and more time simply walking around the beach, properly seeing the place he merely looked at for close to half a century, and he still found new things to this day. Just yesterday, he’d found an old mailbox in the sand. The entire top third was sticking out of the sand, so he wasn´t sure how he’d never found it before, but then again, he never had much reason to venture into those parts of the beach. Today, he walked in the opposite direction of the post box, towards the parts to which the richer people had moved. He passed the moat at which he usually stopped, but today he felt compelled to walk on. After all, why not? What was there to loose? Besides, he could use the workout.
And so, he went on. He walked, looking out at the sea, seeing the place where he’d once dropped one row into the water, foolish as he was, and had to constantly switch the hand he was holding the row with to get to the share. He couldn’t cut his hair for half a year after buying a new row, to the point where his hair covered his eyes and he couldn’t postpone the haircut much longer, and instead just ate less for a month.
He looked at the sea, and saw the place where a seagull had managed to shit precisely on his head, so he had to end the day prematurely. He saw the place where he’d once rescued a drowning man, who promised much for saviour yet ended up giving very little, which was a slight disappointment, but well, a saved life is a saved life anyhow. He looked at sea and saw the place a fish had managed to jump off the boat back into the water once. He saw the place he was at when the great storm began, the place he damaged his boat against some rocks not visible through the water, and had to fix the leakage with some strong duckt tape his father had taught him to always carry with him. “If you can’t fix it with duct tape, you didn’t use enough duct tape,” was a saying his family was famous for, and yet father always changed it to “If you can’t fix it with duct tape, you’re just doing it wrong” when explaining why his son was a disappointment.
Lost in thought, he didn’t even realise the ground became gradually coarser, until he was practically walking on rocks. Only after stepping on an especially sharp one did he notice where he was now, and only then did he stop. He took a rock from the ground, bent his leg slightly, and threw it onto the water. He used to do this all the time with his friends when he was little, but he was out of practice and the rock sank. Another rock splashed directly into the water, only the third one bounced once, before spinning and sinking as well. A fourth rock jumped straight for a bit, before suddenly leaping to the left and vanishing. The fifth rock, however, flew in a straight line, exactly as he’d intended it to. It landed at just the right angle, at just the right speed, jumping once, twice, thrice, four times, until it couldn´t be seen from the shore. Yet even then, it continued perfectly straight.
“Still got it,” Millard tried to say, but choked halfway through, realising he hadn’t spoken in days, perhaps weeks. There was not much need for it, all his shopping could be resolved with just a nod as a response to the cashiers asking whether he wanted the same thing as always, and beyond that, social contact was scarce. “I need to talk some more,” he cleared his throat, and continued walking.
Around this time, the rock finally landed in the water. It was actually the most successful water skipping attempt in history, it took a whole century for it to be beaten. Nobody saw it, though; no one else was watching, and Millard was too lost in thought and too short-sighted to realise. But that water skipping attempt had another very interesting property. The rock went perfectly straight, from the shore exactly in the direction in which scarcely three miles further, a small boat not unlike that of Millard was gliding softly along the water. In it, two young men were staring at the ship they till recently called home, which was currently on its path to the bottom of the ocean, along with all their possessions, all the people they knew, and most importantly, their only way out.
The one sitting on the edge of the boat, feet in the water, let out a sigh. James was the younger of the two by a few months, but he looked quite a bit older, being a lot taller and having more developed features. He had dark hair which he usually combed back but was currently unable to due to the circumstances, so it fell over his face and made him all the better looking for it. He was also dressed more appropriately for the weather, wearing a warm jacket and long trousers. He did forget his shoes, or rather forget to tie them well enough for them to not fall off when jumping to the small ship from the larger one. But then, he was quite known for never having cold feet, and it at least allowed him to put his feet in the water, which he loved to do.
“I told you we should notify someone about the leakage.”
His piercing blue eyes, now removed from the sinking ship, looked not quite at his friend, but just past him, as if something was there. There wasn´t anything there, save a few loose pieces of wood, but who’d look at those.
His friend Adam was slouched on the other side of the boat. He was usually the one who had more to say, though James was usually the one who talked more. Now everything about him signalled defeat, from his empty look to the posture his doctors would be particularly disgusted by; even the already blue bruise on his right biceps from hitting the boat wrong seemed to scream designation. Even beyond that, there was something very average about him, but averagely sad, almost. His hair was brown and styled in a very common way, yet the colour seemed just slightly off, enough to stick out like a sore thumb, and the style never survived more than a few hours before some strands decided to stop cooperating. His eyes were also brown, but again slightly different from his hair, and they always seemed to be just slightly off centre, as if each eye was looking at a different place, but only a few centimetres apart. Adam didn’t bring a jacket on the boat, he wore short trousers and sandals, and even without his feet shoved into water like James, he was getting increasingly cold.
“You’re right,” he murmured finally. “We should have.”
Both were silent for a while, James finally looking directly at Adam, who was however still staring at his poor choice of footwear. The ship kept sinking in the background, but neither payed attention to it anymore. In their mind, it was as if it were deep at the bottom of the ocean already.
“Why didn’t we?” Adam asked suddenly. “Why? We, we could have… We could have done so much good we… Why? Why did I think they already knew? We could have…”
“Shh, it’s fine, it’s fine, look, I thought the same thing, I really did. Yeah,” he added after seeing the surprised look at his friends face, “I did! I mean come on, why wouldn’t they? That´s like, ha, that’s the type of shit Mr. Lira would pull, sure, remember how he always just ingored, ig-, fuck, ignored the last two rows? Or three sometimes? And how they once built that tower out of chairs, and it fell on them? Two people had to go to the hospital, and the fucker didn’t even notice it cause he was too busy calmly explaining to you how your s looked like an h and how because of that your “whole existence was irrelevant”. Remember that guy? Man, I wonder what happened to him after we left school? But anyway, point is, that’s the type of shit he would pull, but fucking ship captains? Come on. And how long it took them to do anything? No wonder the ship sank! No, the only reason I said to tell them was cause I like polemi- pole- disagreeing with you. Seriously!”
Adam chuckled. Then he chuckled a bit more. Then he went into a full on laughing attack, with James looking at him contently. “Fucking Mr. Lira man,” Adam said finally, holding his head with his hand. “The shit he would pull… God, I miss him. We should go visit him again after… whatever this is.”
“Think he still teaches there?”
“For sure. Guy didn’t age a fucking day in all those years we had him. He’ll probably still be neglecting whatever happens more than like five meters from his desk in the next century.”
James laughed. “Lira ass boat captain.”
“Lira ass boat. Who the fuck would need for the ship to start tilting hard enough for their rum bottle to roll, or not roll, fall off their fucking shelf before noticing a leak?”
“Ignoring that kid that ran to them, not even listening?”
“Yeah, how the fuck should we have known that? I mean, who in their right mind would assume that they’d just ignore the poor little guy.”
“Think he made it?”
“Try not to think about it at all.”
That was it for that conversation, still, the grim outlook having left his face, Adam stood up, stretched his back, and looked at what all they were able to salvage. “It’s a good thing you took all those cans, at least,” he, attempting to put the subpar situation in a positive light. “Had more survived or landed in the actual boat, we might actually be off well.”
“We can fish? You could probably make a rod out of some of the loose wood floating around everywhere.”
“Yes! And we can use some cloth, like our clothes, to turn sea water into something we can drink. Well, we’d need two bowls of different sizes, but”
“We can simply use the broken cans for that! You know, arrange them well.”
“We could definitely use some of the wood for that too. Why did they build so much of the ship out of wood, anyway? Man, it was bound to crash eventually! Sorry, we could also use some way to make fire, do you have a lighter?”
“I do!”
“Well let´s get fucking started!”
All in all, all these projects kept them busy till sundown, when Adam finished cutting a bendable stick out of a piece of wood that had somehow not been destroyed too much by getting wet, and attached a piece of rope he always carried in his pocket after having read that all proper boys always carried a piece of rope with them when he was seven or so, and never decided to stop. Finally, it paid off, as he and James, who had done noticeably little of both the thinking part and the actual work, soon caught their first fish.
“Yes, yes, yes! Look at us!” James shouted upon seeing his friend awkwardly pulled the rope up by hand, as they didn´t have the recourses to build a mechanism for doing so. “We’re such a fucking amazing team! Come on! I mean, look at what we’ve done already!”
“We really could survive like this,” Adam responded, a bright smile now decorating his face. “Fuck James, we really could survive like this!”
They high fived each other, and then Adam got to starting a small fire in one of the broken tin cans. They roasted the fish for a time that was way too short, as they soon after realized when eating it, but they didn’t much care, as they hadn’t eaten in a while. Still, they both felt very accomplished, and rightly so, in a mere day they’d finished all their goals and opened up the possibility for actual survival.
Neither spoke much the next day. With all the real goals out of the way, there was not much to do but think, and think was something neither was especially happy to do. And since the only thing that’s worse than grim thoughts is shared grim thoughts, they both stayed silent for longer than was bearable for either, merely staring out at the open sea, trying not too successfully to catch fish and to start a fire to roast them over. From time to time, something floated past, some relic from the life on the ship which now seemed so distant, some piece of paper stuck to a wet plank, or some part of the equipment, which temporarily managed to keep their minds off the crushing reality the were now finding themselves in. It never lasted long. And the thoughts kept coming.
“CAN ANYBODE HEAR US?” James imploded first, shouting at the top of his lungs. The sound echoed everywhere, hurting Adams ears and scaring off the fish who was very close to biting the odd looking white thing floating right in front of him. James didn’t really think anyone could hear them. He sure wished someone could, but the odds were small. Nothing could be seen in any direction, and while he didn’t pay much attention in physics class and couldn’t even tell you whether the distance from which sound can realistically be heard was even taught in that class, he was still intelligent enough to figure it probably couldn’t.
He was right, of course. The sound wave travelled far and wide, or as far as sound can reasonably travel and still be heard, which was about 1300 km. Impressive number, but seeing as the nearest shore was three miles far, not even close to sufficient. And even on that nearest shore, few ventured out to the beach to look at the sea, even the seagulls scarcely flew there ever since the pollution had killed most fish. The only person that really ventured out there anymore was one old fisherman, whose eyes at times strafed the location of the small boat just beyond the horizon. But even if the boat passed the horizons line and even if the sound was able to reach the shore, his eyes and ears weren’t what they used to be, and he would still miss it.
And even so, today Millard went shopping.
His shopping days began the way other days did too: Waking up at the same time he always woke up, enjoying a slow breakfest, watching the birds. Walking on the beach for a bit, refusing to wear shoes even to the market, which was a ten minute walk from his hut, though he used to be able to clear it in nine minutes not too long ago. Where he changed, though, the market stayed almost the exact same. The same people were standing behind the same pults with the same ware as thirty years ago, the only thing that changed was the prices they were shouting at each other, and for some of the older fellows, the volume at which they shouted them. The quality of the road had noticeably decreased too, as during the time the government didn’t care to improve the road nobody took care of it, and during the time the government was willing to help, nobody on the market was willing to leave for more than the few hours of night during which no customers would appear, so no work was ever done and the street kept getting worse. Millard didn’t mind. He generally minded few things, but here the slowly worsening road was what allowed his feet to adapt to anything so easily.
“Fish! Fresh fish! Come on, lad, you look like you could use some fish, eh? Some nutrients. Or you? Come, cheap fish! Buy one, get one for the same price again! Ha! Oh Millard, how’s life been treating ya?” Betty, the woman to whom he used to sell almost everything he caught for a price that was always fair and never higher, looked at him with something almost resembling closeness. Usually, he just nodded as a response and moved to the further pults which carried foods he wasn’t yet tired of, but today, due to his recent realization of not talking enough, he decided to stop.
“Same old, same old. I found an old postbox on the beach yesterday,” he attempted to start the conversation somehow, before realising how uniquely boring that information must have been. “Well, what about you? Sales getting better?”
“Same old, same old,” she lamented. “Getting worse I think. New folks don’t eat as much fish. Hey you there! Blue scarf! Buy some fish, laddie! Do your bones some good.”
The person Betty shouted at turned around in confusion as to why someone would be shouting at him, the turned back and tried not so successfully to disappear into the crowd. She didn’t seem very eager to continue the conversation, and Millard stayed silent too for a bit, before trying to revive their dialogue.
“Are they really?”
“Sorry?” Betty, who was visually picking out people in the crowd who looked willing to buy some fish from her, turned to look at him. “What are you talking about?”
“The fish,” Millard responded and cleared his throat. “Are they really good for your bones?”
“Fuck do I know? Those darn scientists be changing their minds on that by the day. But it helps me sell ‘em. You there! Old man with the blue jacket? Come buy some fish!”
Two old men with blue jackets turned around at that notion, yet only one came to the pult. “How much are they?” he asked after waddling over and sneezing into his palm.
Betty leaned forward and looked straight at the man. “How much would you be willing to pay?”
Millard had never before seen her sell a fish. His interactions with her used to be limited to him showing her how much he caught, her measuring him and paying him a price he could live of off, and him leaving, and nowadays their interactions were even more limited, being simplified to a simple greeting. There was never a need for him to be there when she was selling a fish, paying attention, and so he never did. As such, he had no expectations going in, for what transpired in the next few minutes. So he merely stood there in awe, watching the man go from buying one fish for a price just below what Betty used to pay him to half a dozen fish, each for near four times that. Better yet, the customer still left with content clearly visible on his face, as if he’d just made the deal of a lifetime. Millard could barely keep his amazement hidden, yet Betty just licked her lips and continued as if nothing had just happened, though she did take a breath before continuing to bully passer-by’s into buying fish.
“Say Millard, wouldn’t you want some fish? You know, return to your roots?” she asked when those efforts proved futile. “Could do you some good, thin as you are. What do you say?”
Millard shook his head. “No, thank you Betty. It’s been a great talk.”
“Whatever you wish. But if you ever change your mind, you know where to find me. Hey you there! Yellow umbrella! Put away that thing, it’s not even raining! Are ya made of sugar? Come buy some fish, you look like you could use it!”
While the young woman quickly crept away, Millard nodded his head goodbye to Betty and continued towards the pults where the groceries he needed were, but didn’t participate in a conversation with any of them. The conversation with Betty had been more than enough for a day, and besides, her words kept ringing in his mind. Some fish to return to his roots. Return to his roots. It was such an unusual thought for him, his father was a drunk who’d lost most his possessions gambling and then drowned when going for a swim during one of his drunken banders at three in the morning. His mother had died during childbirth, and he never had any connection to any people further related to him, not knowing as much as his grandfathers name.
But now that he was thinking about it, perhaps those weren’t his roots, and rather the roots of his family. His roots were the sea, fishing, the small hut he’d lived his entire life in, the market he visited, the beach he walked on. And perhaps those things were worth revisiting. Perhaps there was some beauty to be found on the paths he’d walked, on the things he’d left behind. Even thought he wished to never as much as see another fish when retiring, he already once had to change this plan due to the prevailing necessity of visiting the market and walking past Betty’s pult, so why not change it again? The taste of fish, having gotten stale after the first ten years of a diet almost solely based on them, was something he’d grown to hate, but perhaps enough time had passed for him to give it another try. The idea was too deeply engrained in him not to.
Betty was a really great saleswoman, after all.
Instead of tending to his garden upon returning, as he’d originally planned, he put his grocery bags onto the small table in the centre of his hut and went behind it. Even though he hadn’t touched it in a long time, his ship still stood there, in the same position he left it in, looking only barely older. The coat of paint which was applied well before Millard had inherited the boat was still as distinct as ever, a bright red only scarcely interrupted by scratches which revealed the wood underneath, and by the duct-tape-covered hole. Looking inside, he could see his fishing rod and oars, equally as untouched by the passage of time, as well as the life vest its seller had demanded he require. He’d never once used it, but, as the seller explained, he wasn’t paying for usage, but for safety.
When he picked the oars up, he was surprised at how good they felt in his hands, as if they’d always belonged there. Same with the fishing rod, which was then placed alongside the oars leaned against the hut, as Millard got to thinking about how he’d transport the boat. In his younger years he’d just have pushed it, but that was out of the question for some time now. To bring it behind the hut, he borrowed a small cart from Betty, but he forgot to ask her when he was at the market and likely wouldn’t have done so even had he remembered, since she would just argue he buy a fish from her instead. There was nobody else he knew of to ask, never having made many friends, so he was stuck with what he had; two oars, some kitchen utensils, his knowledge and a boat which needed to be transported. Two oars, though. Those could be used.
Upon digging an opening under the front of the boat, he put one of the oars in. It wasn’t perfectly round, having a flat tip, but round enough for him to then be able to roll the boat onto the oar and then far enough for him to put the second oar in front. Then roll till the first oar rolled out, put the oar in front, rinse and repeat. He had to turn the boat eventually, but even that proved easier to the extent of manageable when the front part was lifted into the air. And then again push, relocate oar, push, relocate oar, push, till the boat finally sunk deep enough into the water to fully float. All in all, it may have taken an hour since leaving the market, yet Millard felt more accomplished than he’d ever felt before. Quickly going back to the hut and returning with his fishing rod, but without the life vest he deemed useless, he picked the two oars off the floor and climbed into his boat, like so many times before. He pushed into the ground with one oar, twice, thrice, and soon he was out on the sea again.
Surprisingly, even with his increased age and decreased physical activity he still had no trouble moving to boat, finding some inherent sense of beauty in it. And so he continued, he oared on and on, till he was perhaps further from the shore than he ever was before. Only then did he stop, attach a lure to his fishing hook and throw it into the water. And there, for the first time in many years, Millard caught a fish again.
Interestingly, he’d gone far enough from the shore that if he looked in the right direction, in the distance, on the horizon, he would see a small boat not unlike his floating aimlessly, with two scared young men struggling to understand what to do. But he didn’t glance in their direction. And even if he did, Millard was old, his eyes weren’t what they were, and he wouldn’t have recognised the ship.
The ship, on which just as a fish bit Millard’s hook, an odd sentence was pronounced. The sentence itself wasn’t that weird, but the way it was meant was. You see, usually when people say “can we talk,” it doesn’t merely carry the literal meaning of urging a conversation to start, but also implies some more fundamental depth to the conversation, often one regarding the relationship of the conversations participants. And yet, when Adam asked “Can we talk,” he did only intend the literal meaning. He merely wanted to talk.
“Yes! Oh my god, I’m going crazy from this!” James responded practically immediately, which made Adam happy, as it was practically the perfect response. “What will we do? What can we do? Is there anything we can-, no, sorry, you speak.”
Adam took a deep breath. “How did we get here?”
“Leakage.”
“No, like more general. This, situation. This place in life. I mean, look at us.” He chuckled, but there wasn’t a bit of happiness in his voice. “Do you know what you will do once we get to the shore? If we even get to the shore?”
James shook his head. “Still no. You’d think a near death thingy like this would make us realize more, huh? I mean, I can’t even imagine where I will be in a few months, and people be having plans for decat- de- fuck! like ten years. Ten years! That is insane! Like ‘oh, I wanna be married to a, uhm, sales accountant, and I wanna work law… stuff for the big bank of, uhh, unicorns. And I will have two, no, three children, and they’ll all be called Bob, and one will be playing american football, one regular football, and the last will be a girl, she’ll still be called Bob, of course, and her only hobby will be to cook.’ I mean, seriously, who can look at their life and see this?” He licked his lips. “Am I just weird? In not knowing what I want? What I can? I mean, what if, what if I suck, suck at everything I try, and I don’t manage? What then?”
“Right? There’s so much you can you do, yet so little that’s actually feasible, actually in reach, it’s… kinda Kafkaesque?”
“The fuck is Kafkaesque?”
“Like Kafka. Franz Kafka. The author. We talked about him in English, don’t you remember?”
“Yeah, English class with Mr. Lira, I remember all of that.” James shook his head in disbelief, but his smile betrayed him. “Still, Kafka might be some author, but Kafka-esque?”
“Yeah he had like a special style. You know, this like depressive, oppressing, shit like that.”
James chuckled. “Is being stuck on a boat Kafkaesque?”
A sad expression appeared on Adams face. “Dying on one might be.”
James also grew sad, which he expressed by talking more quietly. “Do you think we’ll die here?”
“I don’t really know. What if we do?”
“I don’t know. What if we do? Does it matter? I mean, we’ll be dead. We won’t care.”
“Well sure, but, I mean, dying? Like this? We haven’t accomplished shit in this life. We’ve left nothing. Nothing to be remembered by, nobody to remember us.”
“I remember you.”
Adam chuckled. “And I remember you. But if we both die, that’s not much use, is it.”
“I mean yeah, I get your point. In the grand scale of the earth, we are- well, we’re nobody’s. But in the face of eternity, aren’t we all nobody’s? Perhaps being a nobody isn’t so bad.”
Adam went silent for a bit after hearing this. “You don’t think we’ll survive, do you?”
“No, I do. I really think that soon, you’ll be back in the city, living your best life. You’ll visit Mr. Lira, have him ignore the rocks students will throw at you, like, remember that one time in class, when- no, going off track. Look, just don’t, you know, bring yourself…, no, just don’t be so depressed about it. Either way, no matter what happens to us, it’s… it’s fine.”
“You always know just what to say,” Adam laughed, tears in his eyes. “You’re right. What can we change now?”
“There we are! That’s the you I wanna see.”
They sat quietly for a bit, before Adam initiated the conversation again.
“Okay, but say we do survive - what will you want to change? Clearly we can’t go on as we are.”
“Yeah we can’t. I dunno though. I think I wanna branch out, you know. Meet more people, learn more things. Try that sales job you’ve been telling me about. Maybe meet a girl, settle down. Who knows, a family might be nice. Children to remember me. For other people to remember me by. That would be nice, I think. And that sales job, instead of all the random money income I had so far, that doesn’t sound bad. I, I think I could be good at it, you know? Selling things to people? As you said, I always know what to say, or something like that.”
“Something of that kind, yeah. I really think you would, too. Really, why haven’t you before?”
“Man, why haven’t I before? It seemed empty, I think? Mostly I was just lazy.” James chuckled. “It’s not even empty. Less empty than the life I lived instead. And you?”
“I don’t really know. I don’t know what I’d be good at. What would I be good at? I don’t have your persuasive skills, I never excelled in school, I…”
“What do you mean you never excelled in school? Your grades were amazing!”
“I guess. Still, I…”
“You what? Everybody would wanna hire you!”
“You’re right. It’s stupid. It’s really, really stupid.” Adam shook his head. “You were talking about wife and children?”
James laughed again. “Wife and children, man. That’s the dream, isn’t it?”
Throughout the years they knew each other, James had uttered that phrase often. “That’s the dream.” It was usually some stupid, meaningless thing they saw in an ad or in the window of a shop they walked past, it was the type of stuff Adam could imagine James attempting to sell. He said it about almost anything, ranging from a Newtons Cradle to a penis-shaped candle all the way to a slave, though the last one wasn’t all that serious. Here, for the first time, Adam could see where James was coming from. It made sense for the first time. So for the first time upon hearing that statement, Adam nodded.
“That’s the dream,” he said, quietly, his voice almost breaking. “I’m not a great dreamer, though.”
“Eh, I don’t think you need to dream here. Isn’t that the type of thing that just kinda happens? Finding the right person, all that? That you just kinda… do?”
“Does anything ever just kinda happen?”
They both went quiet for a while after that point, an unbearable quiet appearing between them, which was ultimately broken by James again.
“Adam, what the fuck were we doing with our lives so far?”
“We were surviving. But we sure weren’t fucking living.”
These thoughts never vanished from either of them till the respective days of their death. They stayed in their minds, hidden deep inside, and nothing could ever suppress them. Both died with the fear that their life wasn’t lived to its fullest. And, to be frank, both were right. Yet, after this conversation, neither of them ever spoke of it again. Neither ever pronounced their fears about how their life would go, about how they’d never manage all the things they wished to, never get a job they liked, never find a wife, never start a family, never live the dream. They were too afraid of what these thoughts were capable of once released, and so they kept them hidden, locked up in their minds. Perhaps they were safer there.
By the time the conversation ended, Millard had caught a fish and left out of sight again, though he returned into sight again early the next day. He had no intention of catching further fish, he’d eaten the one he caught the day before and the taste was as unpleasant as he recalled, but he found he really loved being back on the open sea again. Being cast away by the waves, struggling to find a good position, having to row like crazy at times, all those things he assumed he’d hate he found himself oddly attached to when reliving them. When he rowed to the shore, he left his boat at the coast instead of bringing it back behind the hut, and he found it exactly there the next day, when he woke up as early as always, and left the house perhaps even earlier than he did during his work days. Withing a quarter of an hour, he fought past the strong waves by the coast and found himself at the open sea again.
There was something bewitching about being on the open sea in and of itself, and there was something doubly magical about it when he didn’t go there with a specific purpose. Even on all his long walks, when getting his hair cut, when working on his garden, Millard’s mind was always focused on something. Some task, ranging from “cut this plant this specific way” to something simple and mundane like “look around and enjoy the scenery,” but there was always something for him to do, something else to keep his mind preoccupied. Whenever he went fishing, even the day prior, he was focused on fishing. Even on the way to the open sea, he was thinking about battling the waves. Only now, for the first time in over half a century, Millard didn’t have anything to think about, he didn’t have a task. He put the oars beside him, carefully, to prevent them rolling around, he lay his legs on the rear of the boat and rested his head against the back, and he lay, staring up at the sky.
The sky was a very deep blue, almost identical to the colour of the water, such that they perfectly transitioned into another at the horizon. There seemed to be no texture to the sky, it looked a deep dark void, to the extent that looking at it as intensely almost hurt Millard’s head. He didn’t mind, however. His mind was clean, empty for the first time in over half a century, so he enjoyed the peace and the quiet of lying there on the boat.
It didn’t last very long. It’s difficult to not think about anything, especially if you’ve never had the time to do so before, so once his mind wasn’t preoccupied with things he had to do, abstract thoughts entered instead. Abstract thoughts he couldn’t describe if he tried to, which he didn’t, but which left a very deep impression on him. Perhaps if he were a painter, he’d express those thoughts and feelings on a canvas, sharing them with the world and inventing a new type of art which wouldn’t be invented till another half century after Millard’s death. But, alas, he was no painter. Nor a musician. Nor any other form of artist. He was a fisher. And feelings like those could hardly be expressed through fishing, so he merely let them work upon him, till they too were ultimately replaced, this time by concrete thoughts.
Millard never wondered about how he came to be. It was somehow very clear, his father and mother had him and his mother died at childbirth, he was here now, she was not, and that was all the information that was really important, all the information that had a real impact. Now that he had time to think about not only what was important but what was interesting, the issue seemed much less clear now; the hows reaching deeper than before.
Millard had never found time for a wife and child; in part due to never really trying to, but in part due to his schedule being so tightly packed that he was glad to fall asleep as soon as he was logistically able to. Finding someone to share a life with seemed undoable all on its own, finding time for a child was leagues beyond what he was capable of conceiving. Perhaps with a different job, it could have been doable. With one that didn’t require him to dedicate every second to mere survival. Perhaps with more pre-existing wealth, which would require his father to leave him money. The thought of either was laughable, however. He was a fisher, that’s what his father taught him from young. It was all he ever knew, all he ever did. And his father leaving him money? That was leagues beyond feasible. Really, Millard could be glad his father didn’t leave him in debt, seeing as he worked so little and drank so much.
And yet he found time for a wife and child. And he never seemed in any direct existential threat, while one week of sickness meant one week of starvation for Millard, his savings totalling a large 0 most of the time.
It was a curious thought. He didn’t recall his father much, but what he did recall seemed contradictory at best and impossible at worst. On one hand, his father clearly was a fisher. It was him who taught Millard to fish, constantly hammering in the idea that Millard was a fisher. Whenever asked, his father always said his work was “a fisher, now fuck right off,” so there seemed little room for doubt. On the other hand, the only times Millard could recall his father working was whenever he took his son along to teach him fishing. Much more often, Millard could recall his father coming home late in the night, waking him by opening the door very loudly, smelling heavily of smoke and cheap whiskey.
Could that sad drunk really have been a fisher? Was that feasible? It did seem impossible.
Perhaps the answer could be found someplace else, and Millard was just very poor at his job, or rather, very poor at managing it. Who knows, perhaps had he tried, Millard too could manage a life like that. Money to be spent, free time - after all, was waking at five in the morning all that necessary? Ultimately, it was merely advice his drunk father had once uttered whilst already half asleep, why did that sentence dominate his life so much? That “If you wanna fish, son, you gotta be quick. Quicker than the sun, that the, the, the fish! Or else, else someone is gonna beat ya to it. In our family, nobody be outperforming us! Nobody, you, you get that, son? No- nobo…” He could still vividly see his father half lying, half sitting on his bed, fully dressed in the torn shirt and run down trousers which were dirty with what seemed to be a mixture of wine, mud and piss, aggressively pointing his finger into the air, eyes closed, falling asleep mid sentence. It wasn’t a memory that painted his father positively, yet whenever he thought of his father, this was the picture that was stuck in Millard’s mind. He had no reason to remember his father fondly, after all.
The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like he may just have been doing it wrong. Did he really need to fish the whole day through? It was another of his fathers drunken life lessons Millard religiously stuck to, though results never seemed to justify it; almost all the fish he caught he did so during the morning, about an hour after setting to sea, or during the late afternoon. The entire midday was vastly a complete waste of time, adding very little fish to the pile. That’s the time he could have been using, he should have been using, to live his life, to do the things he needed to anyhow. If that’s the time he spent going to the market, instead of going there each day to sell the fish and then being too tired to do more, or getting his hair cut, or taking care of the hut, or any of the other things that made his schedule so ridiculous, he’d have entire days free.
Entire days he could have spent doing things he wanted to do, instead of being forced to by circumstances. Is that how his father found time for a wife? For a child?
That seemed impossible, still. Even with his ludicrously limited knowledge of children, Millard could recall what he was like as a child, and what his peers were like, and taking care of someone like that was impossible even with some free days. No, a child required full time attention, Millard was frankly shocked to think he never died during the insane stuff he and his friends would do when his father was too busy drinking and loathing himself.
Where were his friends? He’d fallen out of touch with them once they all moved out upon turning old enough to work, he never had the time to contact them once his life turned into a struggle to stay alive after his father’s death. All social contacts really ended with that, he had no time for anyone. Beyond Betty, he couldn’t recall any proper conversations he had in the past decades; his life was a boiling pot of nothingness. Did it have to be that way? Couldn’t he have made it different? Lived differently? There must have been some way, why was he unable to find it? Could he find a different way now?
It became night when he decided not to think about it much. What good could a different approach to life use him now, at the end of it, when naught could be changed? Retroactively, it was no use, it was a mere waste of time, a distraction. These terrible thoughts, these terrible questions, neither could change his situation. Neither could change the fact that he was alone on his boat, middle of the sea, still staring at the sky, still pondering the life he didn’t live, the friends he didn’t make. So he gave up.
Upon sitting upright and rubbing his eyes that still hurt from the emptiness of the sky, he looked around and realized how far from the shore he’d gotten. He could still comfortably see it on the horizon, but he was further than he’d ever been or ever seen anyone else be. He’d been on the sea too long. It had become night, and it seemed a bad night. The rain, till now so light he didn’t even notice it, suddenly strengthened. A bad wind was blowing, a cold one, and the waves were hitting the boat hard. Millard was cold. He wanted to go home. So he grabbed his oars, determined to make it to the shore, but took one last look around before beginning to row. And there, at the horizon, where the sea met the sky, noticeably closer than the shore yet still far, he saw something. It was difficult to make out in the dark, but he knew immediately what it was, what it really only could be: It was another boat.
Without another thought he turned around and began rowing towards it.
Nobody on the boat noticed Millard. Nor would they ever. When he began going toward them, they were so deeply lost in their own issues, their own thoughts, that even had they looked at Millard, they wouldn’t have seen him. And when he arrived? It was too late by then.
The conversation began as any other, quite a bit before Millard noticed them. Tired of the heaviness of the silence, Adam struck up the first thought that came to him.
“I don’t know what I’d do were you not here with me.”
“You’d manage,” James responded without a second thought. “I mean, you’re the one who did most of the surviving stuff. I’d be more fucked without you than you with me.”
Thank you for admitting that, Adam thought, but said “No, I meant more like I’d go insane without you here,” instead. “It’s insane here. Nothing to do, nothing to fucking do but talk.”
“I mean, we do fish a lot.”
Adam chuckled. Then laughed, and shook his head. “We do fish a lot.”
James sighed. “I get what you’re getting at though. This,” he waved a hand around them, “this sucks ass. Pardon my- french? Is french the language? But, this is not good. It’s… how the fuck are we to do anything here? Is this like some grand plan? Someone wanted this? Someone actively thought this was a good idea?”
“My ass. That’s not a god I’d wanna believe in. I swear, if we don’t die during this we’ll go insane instead.”
“There’s probably like people who do this for fun.”
“There’s always some sick bastards. Remember that one porn they once put on, with full volume, during Mr. Lira’s class? The one with the- what was it? How was it called?”
“Wasn’t it the two girls one cup thing? Where they, you know, ate their shit?”
Adam burst out laughing. “I think it was. Why the fuck do you remember that shit?”
“As if I could forget. You probably remember too, you sick bastard. Insane people, I tell you.”
“The ones who watch that shit or the ones who are lonely for fun?”
James thought for a second. “Both. But the lonely guys more. No clue why anyone would want that.”
“Yeah. At least there’s two us here, otherwise… What?” he added, upon seeing the look on James’ face. “Did I say something wrong?”
James shook his head. “Forget it. Where were you?”
“Where was I? Oh yeah, if there weren’t two of us here, I’d surely just like, have killed myself already or some shit. Even this is unbearable. Where? Where are other people?”
“WHERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE?” James shouted as well. Millard, though in hearing range and in the direction James was facing, heard nothing.
“Some direction for sure. Probably like, I dunno, there,” Adam pointed in some random direction, which just so happened to be the direction in which the closest shore was the furthest. “If we had some oars we should just go some direction. Just pick a direction and go in it. Better than whatever this shit is.”
“Couldn’t we make oars out of the pieces of wood?”
Adam looked down at his shoes, very sadly. “We probably could. But… It’s a nice thought, you know? But it’s no use.”
“It’s no use,” James repeated. “What can we do? Nothing? Is there really nothing we can do? Are we locked into this state of nothingness? This boiling mess? There’s gotta be something we can do, right Adam? Adam?”
“I don’t know!” Adam cried out. “I don’t fucking know what we can do! We can’t just do nothing and then loose our minds here because we’re doing nothing, can we? Is that what we wanna do?”
“Is it?” James asked, seeming as serious as ever.
“Maybe.” Adam sighed. “How about you tell a story from Mr. Lira’s class instead?”
James looked at his friend with a smile. The smile was fake, of course, but it was there. And that’s all that mattered. “Remember the time someone broke every light in the past few rows?”
“I do. Tell it again, though.”
James chuckled. “It began simple, you know? One guy brought a rock, I don’t remember who, do you? Could be anyone I think. Well, he brought a rock, or was it a she? No, I think he, he brought a rock, to see whether he could throw it at stuff and Mr. Lira wouldn’t notice.”
“And it worked.”
“Oh, it worked, all right. It worked so well they got bored from throwing it at meaningless stuff, so some genius,”
“Probably someone from the last row.”
“Oh, definitely, definitely the last row. So this genius, really a 500000 IQ person, he, this one might have been a she, actually? There were girls in the last row, right? Yeah, so this little Einstein, or Newton, or whoever, decided it’d be just the funniest shit ever to break a light.”
“Cause of course they did.”
James nodded. “Of course they did. Found it funny as fuck apparently, especially when”
“When Mr. Lira didn’t notice shit.”
“Honestly it was pretty funny,” James laughed. “I mean, the whole class was visibly darker. It was dark that day, I forgot to mention that. It was really dark outside, I believe it was raining, and the lights were all on, and they were even doing some high pitched noise, I think?”
“Interesting. I always thought that noise was in my ear.”
James looked at Adam sadly. “Perhaps it was. Important thing is, class was visibly darker than before, all of a sudden. And I mean, the noise that the light made when breaking was also really noticeable. You know what it sounds like when someone falls through glass in a movie? Utterly unrealistic, obviously, but take that noise and make it just all in all louder. Louder, and more deep, you know how in movies it’s all very sudden, just clang, and it’s over?”
“The noise wasn’t like that.”
“Far from it. No, that noise was loud, and shrill, and long, and what the fuck was Mr. Lira on? Seriously? How did he not notice that? I mean, I know he had difficulties focusing on a lot of things at once, but…”
“I always thought the same thing! He definitely had some mental issue there, it’s impossible for him to just to ignore it otherwise. Wow, it’s amazing how we both came to the same conclusion there!”
The sad glance appeared on James’ face again. “Yeah,” he said and pressed his lips tightly together while looking at Adam. “Anyway, he ignored the noise, and”
“and so they threw the rock again. And the rock smashed another light.”
“Again with that terrible noise. Hell, the rock landed on a water bottle, or”
“or on a pencil case, or something like that.”
“It made another large noise, and a mad mess.”
“And everyone laughed. Really, it’s”
“It’s bizarre Mr. Lira noticed nothing still.”
“Especially cause even we laughed. And he”
“Was standing right in front of us. And still”
“nothing. No reaction. It’s”
“crazy, to say the least.”
“And two lights were”
“not enough, of course.”
“Because of course”
“they weren’t. So the rock”
“flew again, and another light shattered.”
“It hit you that time.”
“Or did it hit you?”
“Who’s talking right now?”
“And so then, when the rock hit you, Adam, only then did Mr. Lira notice something,” James continued, tears rolling down his face. “Remember his voice when he asked ‘has someone been throwing rocks’? Remember? It sounded so sad, so profound, so, so tired. Yet the class just laughed. They laughed, because he only noticed now, they laughed, because it’s all they knew.” By that point, James’ words were barely able to be heard through his crying, yet Adam understood everything, as if already knowing what James was saying.
“Sometimes, when people only know one thing, that’s all they can do. Doing anything else would be too difficult. Not bearable enough. Not something they’d wanna go through. For the class, that something was making fun of Mr. Lira. Mr. Lira, who never did anything to wrong them, never did anything wrong, beyond having trouble paying attention to everything.” James slammed his hand onto the side of the boat, creating a dull noise. “What did Mr. Lira ever do to deserve it? Why him? Why did he have to indulge the class, the class that broke the lights, one after the other, and it got darker, and darker, and darker, and he didn’t realize it, because how could he?”
James covered his face with his hands, the tears flowing everywhere. “How could he realize? Adam?”
Adam.
The word was distinctly James’ voice, yet it didn’t seem to come out of James’ mouth, instead as if appearing in Adam’s brain immediately, skipping the part where it had to go through his ears.
“What are we doing here, James?” Adam asked, sweating heavily. Afraid. “What are we doing here? What- what are we?”
We?
Adam began crying too.
Adam. It’s time to talk about what happened on the ship, on the large ship, isn’t it?
“I don’t want to. James, please, I…”
What happened, Adam?
“We- we found the leakage.”
That’s right, we did. Then?
“Then we- we saw the kid behind us.”
What did the kid do?
“It… It rain to the captains. And we… we followed it. We saw it tell them. We hard it tell them!”
What happened then, Adam?
We- we went to our cabin. We- we thought they knew, the kid told them, we heard it tell them, surely, surely they would do something, surely they, they would…
What would they?
Address it. Fix it. Do something!
What happened then?
Then… was it minutes, was it hours, we, Adam’s breath was getting faster, after some time, we, we went up again. Why did we go up again? Why did we? We wanted something, what did we want, we, Adam was hyperventilating at that point, we wanted to check the leakage, I think, we, we wanted to check it, and, the room was full of water, and the captains, they, they did nothing, they played cards, I think, were they playing cards, Adam was shivering, I forget, what were they doing, they were doing nothing, they were wasting their time, they…
It’s fine, Adam. They wasted their time. What did we do?
We… We found the extra boat. We… we should have told more people. We could have saved more people… We, we could have, we
What happened when we got to the extra boat Adam?
Adam gulped nervously, his hands started shaking, the boat, ship, it, deep breath in, deep breath out, the ship tilted to the side, we had to clutch the railing, the other boat, it, it fell into the water, we didn’t have time, we had to jump for it, we had to, there was no time, we could have died, we
What happened when we jumped?
I jumped first. I landed on my right arm. It hurt. I landed poorly. I should have aimed differently. I jumped first. The boat, Adam clutched his face with his hands and let out a barely audible scream
What happened then, Adam?
The boat skewed. I landed poorly. The boat skewed to the side, it moved, and then you jumped, and you
What did I do Adam?
“You didn’t make it.”
Adam looked at James, whose face was decorated with perhaps the saddest smile Adam had ever seen.
I didn’t make it.
Tears were rolling down Adams face like rain, his shirt soaked by them. “I tried pulling you up. I- I tried to.”
You did. James smiled, and the memory of him began dissolving. You did your best.
By the time Millard got to the boat, Adam was in a similar state to James, just a few hundred meters further in a direction almost perfectly parallel to the shore. All their equipment was still in the boat, the poorly made fishing rod, their mechanism for collecting water, their empty cans, which confused Millard even more. Why would there be no people in sight, yet a fully equipped boat?
There wasn’t time for thought, however. The storm was getting very bad, to the point where the last few meters to check that the other boat was truly empty were among the most difficult things Millard ever did. Pondering what happened there was something he could always do later, getting to the shore was something he had to do now. He couldn’t bring himself to not at least grab their fishing rod and throw it between his feet, but immediately after the old man began to row, he rowed more intensely than he ever did in his entire life, he rowed as if he was rowing for his life, because he most likely was.
The storm was the worst during Millard’s entire lifetime. And he’d encountered some very bad ones. It was so terrible, that had Millard returned to his hut that night he would have found it ruined by a tree that was blown onto it by a strong gust of wind.
Millard didn’t make it home that night. Nor the night after that. After that faithful day, nobody ever heard of Millard again. Nobody even thought about him, save for Betty, who figured it was weird she stopped seeing Millard walk by, so she decided to stop by his hut, and first assumed he’d been smashed by the tree. Only after the police was called and moved all the rubble away, only after no corpse was found and his boat was noted missing, was Millard marked as having drowned during that terrible storm.
Many years later, long after Betty died and Millard was thought about for the last time, by the time a new rock skipping record was set and the art style Millard could have invented was invented by someone else, two fishing rods were swept up by the waves. At the place where Adam and James had once entered the ship which would eventually be their doom, the water swept up a great fishing rod, clearly made by a professional and heavily used. At the same time, all the way across the ocean, by the place where Millard’s hut used to stand and was now occupied by another factory, a small, poorly hand-carved stick with a rope attached to it, which some wouldn’t even call a fishing rod, appeared, with two words haphazardly carved into the side.
“Im sorry James.”