One Life
Here's my response to another challenge by Dallas. This topic is runners.
One Life
The waves pounded up over the railing. He held to his hat with a vengeance and shook the cold water right out of his soul. The water was coming for him now but he would hold his own until it was too much. He felt with each pound of the boat against the body of the water his knuckles grow tense, those same knuckles which had grappled with the wooden boards of he and his wife’s home as he had pounded them into each other. He could sense the feeling of foreboding setting over everyone else on board but he could sense the storm only gaining strength and he looked forward to the challenge. He could feel with every bounce and sway of the stern the locket underneath his undershirt clang against his bare chest and with every resounding tap he remembered his wife and his daughter back home. He remembered her laugh when she began to walk for the first time and how she hadn’t been scared at all, how she had danced on the tops of his feet as a young girl, and how now at the age of ten had begun to learn some basic things in school which he couldn’t help her with because he couldn’t understand the words in the strange language. The boat shook with the lightning strike and trembled to its bones out of fear but the man only moved farther forward to secure the rope. The dark figures of the clouds and the rain beating down upon the open water only brought back the earliest of memories for him; those of running through the yard with his older brother when they were young children and his father walking over being a big enough force to block out the sun. The clouds moved like his father. His hair stuck to the front of his face and the scars which it bore. He rose and sank with the boat that he was on while one by one his shipmates were thrown overboard until finally he was the only one left. It was three a.m. He was alone except for the sea. They communed for an hour face to face and soul to soul. He bore his own tenacity while she showed her strength and they both moved forward and back. A wave began from deep within the depths. It rose and rose and rose until it towered above the small boat and the man leaned into it. He smiled. This was the life of Karl C. Meinner; husband, father, brother, son. This was the life of the rumrunner.
One Life
The waves pounded up over the railing. He held to his hat with a vengeance and shook the cold water right out of his soul. The water was coming for him now but he would hold his own until it was too much. He felt with each pound of the boat against the body of the water his knuckles grow tense, those same knuckles which had grappled with the wooden boards of he and his wife’s home as he had pounded them into each other. He could sense the feeling of foreboding setting over everyone else on board but he could sense the storm only gaining strength and he looked forward to the challenge. He could feel with every bounce and sway of the stern the locket underneath his undershirt clang against his bare chest and with every resounding tap he remembered his wife and his daughter back home. He remembered her laugh when she began to walk for the first time and how she hadn’t been scared at all, how she had danced on the tops of his feet as a young girl, and how now at the age of ten had begun to learn some basic things in school which he couldn’t help her with because he couldn’t understand the words in the strange language. The boat shook with the lightning strike and trembled to its bones out of fear but the man only moved farther forward to secure the rope. The dark figures of the clouds and the rain beating down upon the open water only brought back the earliest of memories for him; those of running through the yard with his older brother when they were young children and his father walking over being a big enough force to block out the sun. The clouds moved like his father. His hair stuck to the front of his face and the scars which it bore. He rose and sank with the boat that he was on while one by one his shipmates were thrown overboard until finally he was the only one left. It was three a.m. He was alone except for the sea. They communed for an hour face to face and soul to soul. He bore his own tenacity while she showed her strength and they both moved forward and back. A wave began from deep within the depths. It rose and rose and rose until it towered above the small boat and the man leaned into it. He smiled. This was the life of Karl C. Meinner; husband, father, brother, son. This was the life of the rumrunner.