Of Sea and Cloud by Jon Keller Page A

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    Now darkness. Osmond back on the water but alone this time. To the north he could see the lights of the harbor and in their homes slept Virgil and Jonah and Bill and one of them had cut his traps. Or all of them. He didn’t know which and he didn’t much care which. He steamed south over black water and rolling swell and as he steamed he felt Jonah Graves step into his mind as if into an empty room. He allowed himself a slight grin.
    He’d known Jonah as a child when he and Nicolas had first partnered together but that was long ago. Jonah’s mother had only recently died and Nicolas had been unable to deal with life after her death. He’d stopped fathering and stopped fishing and would have lost the pound but Osmond had stepped in with money and faith and counsel. Nicolas had not listened but their partnership had worked. The only explanation was that Osmond had lost a wife only months before Nicolas and so mutual but unspoken grief had brought and held the two men together.
    Osmond flicked his overhead lights on and lit a fifty-yard stretch of water before him. Swell silver in the light slashed through his field of vision. He watched the numbers on his GPS and soon enough he saw the first of Jonah’s strings. He throttled down and circled one of Jonah’s buoys then gaffed it and dropped it on his washrail as the traps rose. He pulled the two traps in. The tailer trap was empty but the head trap held a female the size of his forearm with a cluster of black eggs tucked beneath her tail. She was green and black and her shell chipped and worn by too many fights and too many storms. Barnacles grew from her claws and bits of seaweed hung from her shell. She backed into a corner of the trap and lifted her claws over her head to fight and she curled her tail tight around her eggs.
    Osmond paid her no attention.
    Both traps were small and old and basically junk. Osmond took his knife from the bulkhead but paused before he cut the ropes. His body felt numb. He looked at the knife in his hand as if some unknown force had placed it there. His boat turned and rolled with its beam to the swell and the head trap tumbled from the washrail to the deck. Osmond thought of his cut-off gear. A shock ran through him. He lifted his leg and slammed his foot into the bridge that spanned the center of the trap and his foot broke easily through the old wire. He slammed his foot through again then again and pounded the wire and the lobster both until he’d stamped the entire cage flat. He stepped back and saw the egged female mixed within the breakage with her useless claws and useless armor and all of her now only a pile of eggs and meat and shell.
    Without cutting any ropes he threw both traps overboard and shoved the throttle down full. The rope hissed as the boat and traps separated. The buoy and float shot from the washrail into the night. Osmond took the deck hose and washed the lobster remains out through the scuppers but the eggs stuck to the deck like gnats that he had to scrub away with his deck brush. He headed
Sanctity
south at full throttle. The engine surged and only a single time did he make a fist and raise it into the air and bring it down slow and silent onto the bulkhead as the name Jonah escaped his lips.
    It was after one in the morning by the time he slowed and turned north toward home. He cruised at three-quarters throttle and let his eyes close for minutes at a time but each time he snapped them open when Nicolas or Jonah or Virgil or Bill appeared. He told himself this was not guilt but weakness but he could not explain where the weakness had come from.
    At home he made coffee. He sat at a wooden table in the dark. He watched the working of the sea through the sliding glass door. He wondered what they knew. He imagined crows circling the near distance. He waited.

Celeste woke when Virgil pulled into the driveway. She rolled over and looked at the clock. She heard the front door