Of Sea and Cloud Read Online Free

was still within Osmond’s.
    Osmond licked his lips. His face was pocked and clean-shaven save for a black mustache. Your father will be missed here on earth, he said. He released Bill’s hand and took the two girls with him to the center of the small circle which had formed around the grave hole and the casket.
    Celeste and Charlotte moved in beside Jonah and Bill. Erma Lee made her way to Bill’s side. Osmond lifted his hands into the rain and the group silenced but as the silence fell a pickup truck slowed on the road and pulled into the field. The truck was glasspack loud and drove fast over the ruts and parked. Osmond pointed a finger like a sword at his grandson Julius and motioned him into the cemetery. Julius slid out of the truck and moved past Virgil without a glance and entered the cemetery. He left the gate open behind him.
    Osmond’s arms were still in the air and his long fingers were outstretched like feathers and his robe and hair blew in the wind and the rain. Jonah felt his brother shift. Charlotte gripped with two hands the umbrella that she and her mother stood beneath. The rain slashed through the gravestones and rapped on the empty casket with thuds like a distant knocking.
    Osmond lowered his arms and bowed his head.
    We stand here in the rain, the sons and daughters of this earth, and try to understand what has happened and why it is that our friend and father and partner, Nicolas Alexander Graves, was called from us. We look to the heavens for answer and we look to the earth for reason. We seek redemption, and we find redemption, but we find it within our own private persecution. We blame ourselves—we think this is atonement. But it is not. What could
you
have done? What could
I
have done? We must each understand,
we
do not choose salvation, salvation chooses us, and those choices were made long before this world began.
    Jonah turned toward Virgil and saw the glow of Virgil’s cigarette and the swipe of the windshield wipers and the small dog on Virgil’s lap. Osmond began again but Jonah looked down the hill at the snaking brown river where the falling tide emptied the mud shoals. The south wind hurled against the water and lifted the river into standing breaking waves. He heard Osmond’s voice but paid no attention until Osmond silenced.
    Wind filled the void. Jonah felt the cold rain pelt his face. He saw Osmond’s eyes shift as if the man had forgotten what he’d intended to say. Then as Jonah watched Osmond exhaled long and lifted his arms high and tucked his voice low as if to utter a secret meant for Jonah alone.
    I hold no scripture in my hands. I bear no cross about my neck, for I have come here as a man. I have come because Nicolas Graves was called. Nicolas was not a man of the church, and if asked he would have said he worshipped no god. Nicolas Graves was a man of the sea and what he believed in was blood. And I ask you, what is faith but each man’s belief in his own blood? Man is of sea and cloud, and like sea and cloud we are not long separated from the Lord. Each death falls like a raindrop into His great palm. Nicolas Graves worked the sea and he loved the sea and at sea he shall remain. So be it. He has rejoined the only eternity he ever believed in, the only eternity he ever sought, for he was blood and blood alone.
    â€¢ • •
    When people lined up at the casket to whisper their goodbyes Jonah slipped through the gate and the wet grass and sat in the truck with Virgil. Virgil handed him the bottle and Jonah drank. As he lowered the bottle he saw Osmond standing beside the casket with one hand where Nicolas’s head would have been. Osmond watched Jonah.
    The sonofawhore, Virgil said.
    Osmond?
    Who do you think?
    Guess I don’t see why the old man was friends with him and you ain’t.
    I don’t trust the sonofawhore is why, Jonah. Same as ever.
    Yeah, Jonah said and lit a cigarette. It was humid in the truck and