The South Seas

"The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of the scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishes desert." – Hemingway, Old Man and the Sea



It was not something that the grandmother would have appreciated, nor the mother.  The beach attendants might have yelled out, wondered, and dove in to help.  The grandfather knew that his granddaughter was of him, though, kindred spirits.  He knew this all the time, since Lily was born, as she looked into his eyes nearly as early as the mother's.  It is what you wish for, he thought then, to truly understand. She would be safe, of course, because she was as capable as any other and perhaps most importantly, she knew it.  They soft-anchored and dove over the side of their kayaks with masks on.  The light was like a chamber, fortunately for them.  The Captiva straight was nothing more that an false island of sand built up and channel running through.  Inside the chamber was an aqua as pure as the original seas, as blue as a paste, but clear, livable.  The old man showed her that he still had his breath held tight under water and smiled at Lily.  She smiled underwater and her hair churned with the minor movements.  She exaggerated, he knew, the size of her breath by puffing out her cheeks, but then dove down, like a loon might from the top surface of a lake, a few feet down to the bottom. This was a safe depth, he thought, and felt good about this afternoon dive of theirs.  The breath has a way of calling attention to itself, it is something like recurring alarm, saying, in essence, this is not your natural habitat, breath.  This happened to both of them because as they wiped their hands across the soft bottom they both saw the same thing and that very alarm that was supposed to force a surfacing was swallowed by the strength of mystery.  The old man saw immediate visions of the privateers through these waters, but for the girl, for Lilly, it was of the color, the beauty, the collection.  The grandfather pointed up to the surface for he knew it was time.  The heart began to beat harder, of course, as it does underwater.  The sun was itself a crystal at the surface of it. The world was silent.  The world, there, for that moment, was a lustrous blue.