The Seaman

I don’t belong here, thought the man. I belong at sea. I want to smell of rust! I want hard, olive skin. I want my hair to be salty and coarse. I want to bathe: I want to smear myself with the sea.

            He walked through the crowded street. Lanes of people slipshod like a highway system gone haywire, jostling and jostled, walking like ghosts beneath the oppressive orb above. Look at my shirt, he thought. Just look at it: it’s yeller – the armpits are like ochre, it’s filthy, the waistline’s dirty... it’s glorious!

            And he could picture himself lonely and proud in a 6-foot tin can, rolling out to the deep blue to catch some sea trout – maybe even a marlin. He smiled and smacked his lips.

            The sea was eight miles away. He had no money. Besides, where would it take him? Where would it get him? It only opened up into a crowded and forsaken channel, overrun with trawlers and supertankers. No man could live in peace. He’d have a little cabin somewhere on a golden stretch of sand, small enough for an unappointed king, peaceful enough for a vagrant god.

            But no, he’d never stop. Once he was in that tin can, he’d let it roll on and on, he’d brave the storm, ride the waves, sleep under the stars, die majestically. And he’d never be cold. Never, he muttered, and his eyes trembled. And he sat on a bench in a small square of park under the shade of a beech tree and dreamed, trying to hold onto the gold of the sand and the endless blue of his dreams; the endless faraway blue that shimmered like a guiding star, the endless blue which he could never finally allow himself to hold.