Blood-drenched Beard

In the water there is no indication of the ferocity he had glimpsed on the surface. His body is already decelerating when he arrives at the slippery-smooth rocks on the seafloor, and he becomes aware that he is suspended in the muffled murmur of the cold sea, softly rocked by the current. He had learned from his older brother how to duck under the big waves to get past the wave break. No matter how big the wave, Dante had taught him, dive down close to the ocean floor, and swim toward it as fast as possible. The wave will suck you under it, and you’ll come out the other side when it breaks. If you try to swim back, it’ll come crashing down on your head. If you try to dive into it too near the surface, it’ll pick you up and toss you into the blender. You’ll break your back or get sliced up by the corals. His brother was already a good surfer as a kid, but he didn’t like surfboards himself. He preferred swimming. The first thing he does now, instinctively, before trying to return to the surface, is study the forces of the water until he can say with some certainty in what direction the waves are breaking. He swims a few strokes in the opposite direction to the waves, comes up for air, and returns to the bottom, trying to avoid being dashed against the rocky headland.

The bottom is silence. The water is protective and slows time.

But the surface is hell. Trails of foam appear on all sides, covering his head, and salt water runs down his throat. He grows breathless, freeing himself of the running shoes and jacket that are restricting his movements. He can’t see the moon or stars or anything else that might help him get his bearings. His body is lifted up to the crest of waves and then sucked down to the bottom of troughs, and he can’t make much out beyond this rise and fall. The clash around him involves familiar natural forces, but there is no easily perceived arena for it. He is an insignificant piece of meat, adrift.

The first flash of lightning after the fall doesn’t illuminate anything besides a large uniform cloud that covers the entire dome of the sky and contrasts with the black horizon. He needs to choose a direction and swim parallel to the coast until he comes to a beach. The salt stings his eyes. The strength of his arms seems useless against the violence of the waves, but he knows it isn’t true and that if he takes the right current and swims in the right direction, he’ll be able to get away from the headland and make it to the sand, even though it may take hours. For the first time he is calm enough to detect the cold that is working its way deeper and deeper into his body. He needs to establish the right pace, which will keep his body warm and allow him to continue swimming for however long is necessary.

Terror rises in him when he imagines reefs and sea creatures or entertains the idea that he might be swimming in the wrong direction, moving away from the beach, with firm, regular strokes, into an overwhelming vastness from which there will be no return.