The Fisher Boy by Stephen Anable

his clothes roughly, as if they’d misbehaved. “If you want to watch something, I suggest you watch little Edward.”
    “Why? Are you after him too?”
    Hugging the hamper and his beach things, he headed toward the breakwater and his house.
“Vaya con D
í
os,”
he said, over his shoulder.
    I felt very alone, and a bit drunk from the vodka Ian had insisted I share. He’d left me the bottle, now my only companion on this empty beach.
    Why didn’t I leave right then? Why didn’t I pack up and return to the Herring Cove parking lot? I stayed, I suppose, because there was something magical about the beach at that hour, the cooling sand, the ocean like quicksilver, so dense and metallic, and the full moon white as a shaman’s bone amulet in the pale sky.
    I swam, and the water was frigid. Colder currents must have come roiling in from somewhere out toward George’s Bank. When I ran to my towel, I was shivering, so, to warm my gut, I finished the last of Ian’s vodka. I meant to watch the sunset but my insomnia had kicked in since that awful night at the club, since my disgrace. Sleep overwhelmed me.
    When I awoke, it was dark, nine-forty by my watch. I was alone in a black windy landscape. I didn’t want to chance taking the beach route back what with the threats from those Christian Soldiers. Provincetown was in such a mess. I wanted the lights of the shore road in my sight as a beacon, a kind of comfort. So I decided to cross the granite breakwater—the long string of stones across the inlet separating Herring Cove Beach from the mainland.
    The breakwater seemed to stretch forever in the moonlight. The tide was in: you could hear it gurgling and sloshing between the stones. There’s no mortar in the breakwater; it’s just heaped together, like the stone walls marking the pastures of long-dead farmers in rural New England. It’s tricky walking. The stones, quarry scrap, are the size of car hoods, tilted every which way and sometimes loose, so you have to watch every step, plan every move. Even in daylight, you could slip and twist an ankle or break your leg.
    The breakwater is long, a good half-hour walk. Soon, I began tiring, but with hundreds of yards behind me, I’d already gone too far to turn back. I was also realizing the foolishness of my choice; at least the beach route was relatively flat. But here you could see the lights of Provincetown, glittering along the harbor shore in an uneven tide, as if each building had been gently, haphazardly, deposited by a different tide.
    I was relieved, happy, to see a man in the distance. Not a basher, I hoped, not some hostile visitor from the west. He was on the right side of the breakwater, facing the harbor, leaning against an upright slab of rock. At night, at high tide, you see people fishing here, but I couldn’t make out his line or reel.
    Days, people nodded as they crossed paths here, those coming to the beach and those leaving it. Mostly men took this route, a lengthy but direct hike to the gay nude section of Herring Cove. Here the sense of “community” actually rang true: the handsomest men gave you a cheery hello, forced to confront you face to face on this narrow, slightly hazardous structure.
    This man was just the other side of a part in the breakwater where the sea had knocked some stones askew, so that, at high tide, you were compelled to wade through about five or six inches of water where the breakwater is intact but not as high as intended.
    Removing my shoes, I sloshed across this gap, not longer than a yard or so. I was just about to joke about this gesture, but wasn’t sure this was the right thing to do. I’d have ignored a couple who were here at night, figuring they wanted privacy in the moonlight and salt air. And if this man was fishing, I didn’t want to startle him, to make him inadvertently jerk his line, then lose his catch.
    So, I paused, momentarily, to study him. No, there was no fishing line, so it was safe to speak.