2 Jake

Jake sat in his boat, staring from the sea to the humpback cliffs that rose from the water like the body of a great stone serpent. Glints of ocean light reflected in his grey-blue eyes. A breeze scuffed the water, ruffling his back corkscrew curls. Jake turned, roused by the sharp air that stung his face, and winced at the reminder of how, so recently, his chick had stung with tears.

He fingered a nugget of sea glass in his pocket. It had belonged to his father, Charley, who'd keep it in a battered old tobacco tin with this own mother's wedding ring and her gold locket. Charley had shown them all to Jake once, in secret. "If. anything happens to me," he'd said, puffing as he hurried to twist the stubborn lid off the tin before his wife, Lil, came home, "If anything ever happens to me, you sell these, lad. Sell them for Lil."

But Lil had never needed what little money Charley's keepsakes might have fetched. He and Jake had found her one evening, on their return from a fishing trip, sleeping all wrong in her chair with the fire cold. "Taking the long rest," Charley had called it. That was a year ago. And now Charley, who'd be lost as flotsam without her, was taking the long rest too. After Charley's funeral Jake had found the tobacco tin, but it didn't feel right to touch the ring and the locket inside - they were for blood family and Jake wasn't blood family, altho Charley and Lil were the only kin he knew. He'd just take the piece of blue glass. It must have meant something to Charley.

The boat pitched. Jake lurched forward and pulled in the oars. The boat was all he'd had when Charley and Lil took him in and all he was left with since they'd gone. He gazed back at the shore, to the stretch of beach where Charley said he'd found Jake one morning, twelve years ago. It had been a cold, gray day. Sky and sea had dissolved into one another. The lone rowing boat lay on the winter beach. Charley had been taking his usual walk, stumbling along the water's edge, picking through the driftwood, spitting curious at the spray. He stopped to stab at the wet pebbles, picked up a scrap of wine and stuffed it in his pocket, mumbling as he straightened up against the wind. Suddenly the familiar cry of seabirds was pierced by a shriek. Charley narrowed his eyes and listened. At first he taught it was a whistling gull playing tricks on his ears. But the cry was followed by a desperate bleating that chilled his heart. This time Charley recognized the sound. He clambered across the stony beach toward the boat. When he saw what was inside he stepped back and crossed himself.

No one ever knew how long the child had been crying in that boat, or how Charley managed to carry a tiny baby, wrapped inside his coat, up the step cliff steps and along the coast path to the cottage hospital hunched like a white gull on the hillside. Charley had wanted to leave the baby on the doorstep of the hospital and be gone. Superstition was strong in those parts. Everyone knew the saying: "Take a child from a salty crib snd cry a sea of tears."

There were many tales about babies found abandoned at the water's edge: restless, moody child who brought tragedy to the families that took them in - most often death by drowning; sad children with unspoken longings who disappeared when a tied was unusually high; feral creatures who haunted the cliffs and caves; children who grew webbed feet...

Sea foundlings were feared. But Charley couldn't leave the baby on the step because he had nothing to wrap it in. "And I wasn't going to gave up my coat," he told Jake many times later. "There was a child wind up there and you were pale as death. So I took you inside. But those nurses could smell the brine on you. They guessed where you'd come from, I saw it in their eyes. Not one would take you from my arms. I had to bring you home to Lil, and she washed you and wrapped you up with a dry spring of lavender, looked me straight in the eye and said, "That's that, then."'

Lil named the baby Jack after her father and was soon busy fussing over the child. But Charley couldn't get the sound of that baby's crying out of his head. It echoed on the wind and the roar of the waves. And it troubled him. It troubled him that Lil would gave her heart to the boy. A wave slapped the side of the boat. Jake loved the sound of that hollow smack, the hearty way the sea claimed the boat. No one had come from it after Jake was found, so Charley had kept it. When Jake was barely old enough to descend the cliff steps, half jumping, half stumbling, Charley took him down to the beach, bundling him into the old boat and began to teach him how to handle it. Jake loved those hours on the water with Charley. He soon grew confident and was keen to learn anything Charley could teach him. "Sea born..." Charley would say and Jake never questioned this odd remark, but he noticed the silent that always followed, as if there was something left unsaid. Charley lived just long enough to see Jake master his boat. The week before he died he made a bother about the way Jake was painting it. "She'll only have one master," said Jake, pushing the hair from his brow with a paint-smeared hand. "Who's it going to be?"

Charley grinned and Jake grinned back. "When the paint's dry you can climb aboard, old man," said Jake, "and I'll show you how to catch a crab!" He got a clip round the ear from his cheek, but the following day and Charley had their last trip together. Jake had grown strong and wise enough to sail alone. And alone he stood in the chapel when they blessed the coffin of old Charley, who wasn't afraid of the founding.

Now Jake was left to brood on the sense of it all. There on the water, looking back from a distance, he could make sense of most things: of the river that flowed from this hills, cleaving the rock to the sea; of the steep town that clung to both dies of the valley, spilling it's fishermen into their boats; of the harbor arms that kept safe water from their return. He understood the sense of Charley and Lil and their place in the ebb and flow of the town, of their own tides of work and rest. But the sense of himself, that was something Jake had never been able to grasp. Where did he fit in? Why didn't he understand his place, why was nothing about himself clear in his mind's eyes? It was only on the boat that his restlessness ceased, dissolving into the dipping, rising rhythm of the waves. The sea always lulled his questions away.