Gary noticed a change in the sound of the rain hitting the tent. Softer now. The first snow, a kind of prayer answered. No roof yet on their cabin, but the snows had arrived. He wouldn't have thought of it this way before. He would have railed and raged at the early season, felt cheated by time. But now he understood he wanted this. He wanted the snow.
He sat up in his sleeping bag, unzipped quietly.
I'm awake, Irene said. You don't have to be quiet. I'm always awake.
It's snowing, he said.
I know. It's been snowing for hours now.
I'm just going to take a look. He pulled on his pants and shirt, stood in the entranceway of the tent to pull on boots and raingear. The tent still blown by wind, whipping and lurching, but no longer the heavy sound of the rain.
He stepped outside into a deeper cold than he had expected. Not quite October yet, but it felt like October. Not wearing enough beneath his raingear, but he'd only be out here a short time anyway. He bent into the wind and snow and walked toward the water's edge, wanted to see the waves. Dark out, black, but the waves would be breaking, showing white.
The undergrowth thick, deadwood everywhere. Alder branches lashing at him. The snow cold on his cheeks, melting when it hit. Big flakes, delicate. He wished he could see them.
Through alder to the tufted growth near the shore, thick grasses, and he could see the white of the waves now, fainter than he had imagined, and feel the windblown spray on his cheeks.
Nap nihtscua, darkened night-shadow, northan sniwde, snow from north. This is what Gary loved. Hrim hrusan bond, frostbound world, haegl feol on eorthan, hail fell on the earth, corna caldast, coldest of grains. His favourite part of the poem, because it was the unexpected shift, a surprise. After all his suffering at sea in storms, the seafarer wants only to go back out again. Nor is his thought for the harp nor for ring-receiving nor the pleasure in woman nor in hope of the world, nor for anything else, except for the surging of the waves.
A desire from a thousand years ago, a longing for atol ytha gewealc, the terrible surging of the waves, and Gary understood this, finally. He hadn't understood it in grad school, because he'd been too young, too conventional, believed the poem was only about religion. He hadn't yet seen his life wasted, hadn't yet understood the pure longing for what was really a kind of annihilation. A desire to see what the world can do, to see what you can endure, to see, finally, what you're made of as you're torn apart. A kind of bliss to annihilation, to being wiped away. But ever he has longing, he who sets out on the sea, and this longing is to face the very worst, a delicate hope for a larger wave.
Gary shivered with cold but wanted to face the elements more purely. He pushed back his hood, unzipped his rain jacket, laid it in the grass at his feet. Full shock of wind, all his warmth taken. Pulled off his sweater and then his shirt. Bare-chested now, and he raised his arms into the storm, yelled at the wind and snow, a madman. A man alive, he thought, and wondered whether he was expecting some kind of rebirth, redemption. But he hated that he had any thoughts at all. He wanted to be swept clean of thoughts, wanted his mind to stop. So he stepped forward into the spray, onto the beach, slippery stones covered in slime, kept his arms raised and walked slowly, ceremonially, his body shaking out of control, wracked. He slipped and had to put a hand down, recovered. Legs pounded now by waves, blasting into him, the first shock of a wave hitting his stomach, and he leaned sideways into the oncoming water, arms lowered now, bracing, hit again by a wave, knocking him back and he fell, went under, one arm jarred all the way to the shoulder from impact with rock, and then he was clear again, then drenched by another wave. He yelled, whooped and hollered, felt better than he'd felt in years, stopped trying to stand, just sprawled in the rocks, held his breath each time he was covered, shook free in the trough, yelled again. He didn't even feel that cold anymore.
Continues in issue 19. Order now.
