Of Sea and Cloud Read Online Free Page B

smart like Osmond, you know as well as I do.

That night the wind swung around to the east and the sea piled into corkscrews that surged against the outside islands. The spruce and birch trees that surrounded Virgil and Celeste’s house creaked and tossed their heads and lifted their root wads and each throw of air carried the smell of salt spray and rockweed and rainwater.
    Jonah stood on the porch and smoked a cigarette and passed a bottle of whiskey with the other fishermen. He watched the trees lean and fight and he wondered which would fall first. He felt like an intruder in this house that was nearly his home and in the wake of this death that was his father’s. He stood by his brother’s side but found no comfort there.
    The wind pushed the rain sideways and the eddy of porch air was a swirl laden with moisture and tobacco. A single light hung from the door trim. The food Jonah had eaten churned in his gut. He wondered where Charlotte had gone. He paid little attention to the other fishermen as they argued about lobster prices and diesel engines and reduction gears and after another hour he left without saying goodbye to anyone.
    He stuffed his hands in his sweatshirt pocket and pulled his hood down to his eyes as he walked the long driveway toward the harbor. Rain drilled against him and soaked into his sweatshirt and dripped down his neckline. When he came to the road he stopped and looked around the dark village. There were only two dozen farmhouses and twenty of those farmhouses stood empty for the cold months of the year so the only lights Jonah could now see were the lights of his father’s final celebration flickering and faltering through the rain and through the trees.
    At home he sat at his kitchen table. His trailer rocked and the big spruce in his front yard rocked, too. He spun a scallop shell ashtray in circles across the tabletop. Rain beat the window and rattled the glass in its aluminum framework and he felt the bursts of wet air like screams. This line of storms each one had been followed by a humid stillness that swallowed the horizon and made the sea and sky merge into a single oblivion that did not belong on this bold cold-water coast. It had been eight days since his father disappeared. Eight days filled with boats searching the seas for a body and eight nights filled with Jonah bolt upright in his bed with sweat stapling his forehead like buoy patterns. On each of those nights the arcane dream-image of his father’s lobster pound existing as some massive heart had surfaced in his mind and he didn’t know what to make of the image and he could not shake the image from his daytime thoughts. In actuality the pound was nothing more than a cove converted into a tidal lobster storage facility but since Nicolas’s death it had become synonymous with the man himself.
    Another streak of rain and the water pounded like footsteps on his roof. Jonah didn’t hear the truck but saw the sweep of headlights. His brother kicked his rubber boots off and came into the small trailer kitchen.
    You got coffee hot?
    I can, Jonah said.
    Get it hot then. I guess I might need a cup.
    I imagine that’s so. She’s blowing a gale.
    Bill grunted. Guess ain’t none of us fishing in this. Price don’t matter if she’s blowing too hard to fish anyhow. Hell, Jonah, the tide’s right up overtop the wharf, higher’n I ever saw. She’s lapping the bait house doors and liable to flood the whole operation. Fuel pumps and all are going under.
    Jonah put water in a kettle and turned the burner on. Bill sat down and turned his hands together to dry them. He lit a cigarette. Jonah slid the scallop shell ashtray across the table then opened a beer for himself and he wondered when Bill would mention Erma Lee. He sipped the beer as the water heated.
    Neither spoke.
    When the coffee was finished Jonah poured a cup and handed it to Bill and said, Hell, Bill, Virgil done knew about