(no subject)
I slept under the stars that night, the slap of water sending tremors from the bottom of the raft all the way up through my belly and head, the whole structure tugged by the weight of chains drifting down below into the unseen.
The worker dragged a chain up that day, cutting loose every shell, sometimes with a stout black knife, other times with savage twists of his wrists as his great hands held the mussel. The smaller ones were more difficult, but the ones as big as my head popped off easily, though prying them open was, for me, nearly as hard as opening a stone.
I adjusted the stove and he watched me curiously, asking questions in his slow, nasal voice, and I answering in his limited tongue which I had mastered on the shore. I focused each saucer of glass, courting the vanishing light of the dull red sun. We boiled water, though he preferred to return to raw mussels once he had tried one steamed.
Any day that he emptied a line, a skiff would settle at our raft and we would load up the mussels, and then the craft would take off, moving slightly more slowly, its turns just a little wider, but it was soon gone all the same.
Some days the workers would get together and have fights to knock each other in the waters. They could entertain themselves in this way for hours. Late at night, after such violent sport, they would often cradle each other in their exhaustion, looking up at the sky like youths, sharing hoarse whispers and pointing their thick fingers at the wild green moon. I smiled and talked when I could understand the concept behind anything they said. The language was easily mastered, but their way of thinking was not yet apparent to me. I tried to be cheerful, but I was left to remember how alone I felt, and I wondered if anyone stared down from the stars above, if anyone remembered me in the many places I had been--or waited for me in places yet unreached. I passed many weeks in this manner, floating atop the ocean, swept along in an endless present.
The worker dragged a chain up that day, cutting loose every shell, sometimes with a stout black knife, other times with savage twists of his wrists as his great hands held the mussel. The smaller ones were more difficult, but the ones as big as my head popped off easily, though prying them open was, for me, nearly as hard as opening a stone.
I adjusted the stove and he watched me curiously, asking questions in his slow, nasal voice, and I answering in his limited tongue which I had mastered on the shore. I focused each saucer of glass, courting the vanishing light of the dull red sun. We boiled water, though he preferred to return to raw mussels once he had tried one steamed.
Any day that he emptied a line, a skiff would settle at our raft and we would load up the mussels, and then the craft would take off, moving slightly more slowly, its turns just a little wider, but it was soon gone all the same.
Some days the workers would get together and have fights to knock each other in the waters. They could entertain themselves in this way for hours. Late at night, after such violent sport, they would often cradle each other in their exhaustion, looking up at the sky like youths, sharing hoarse whispers and pointing their thick fingers at the wild green moon. I smiled and talked when I could understand the concept behind anything they said. The language was easily mastered, but their way of thinking was not yet apparent to me. I tried to be cheerful, but I was left to remember how alone I felt, and I wondered if anyone stared down from the stars above, if anyone remembered me in the many places I had been--or waited for me in places yet unreached. I passed many weeks in this manner, floating atop the ocean, swept along in an endless present.