Pelicans—Writing

I am an old man. A simple sap. And I know when it is going to rain.

The clouds are highest-west from the ridge, and a pod of pelicans pass over me. I did not realize how big they are — pelicans. They are big birds, but they fly more like dragons, just low enough that I want to reach up and touch their fire-tipped feet, hanging yellowed and limp. I should follow them, I think. Yes, it would be good for me to follow them around the rocky bend, and onto their fecal cliff. But it would be better of me to catch my breath, for my boots are worn, and they are hardly laced, and I miss my son, I miss him.

This day would be easy with a radio, listening to the national hockey, but my player is long out of battery, and I have chosen to come here at this time before checking when the tides come in. I could have checked the tables — I should have checked them — but it is too quick that I get to being impatient, and the feeling is something grand that comes over me, impatience, and once it has come, I will have no luck in going to bed, no. That is why the boy should be here. He would reason with me, in this moment. And he would tell me that I have already walked too far on my old, creaking knees, and I would agree with him. We would walk back to the trunk of the vehicle that is his, and I would open it slowly in front of him, taking off each boot with a care only the boy would notice. Why do you treat your boots like they are something important, the boy would ask, and then I would laugh with him. Something important. Young boy, I would say, admiring his freckled skin, everything is important. And then the boy would understand.

It is no wonder he enjoys my company, an old man such as myself. Had I found him in the grocer, I would not have taken him for one of the swiping children. No. The boy was staring at a leaf blowing into the ocean when I found him. A friend in a red swimsuit, laughing. “Why are you chasing a leaf?” The boy’s friend asked. But the boy told him he was not chasing it. And the boy did not know what else to say in that moment, as something familiar had come over him, something grand, and it had told him to follow the leaf to the ocean. “This boy will be a wonder,” I said under my breath, laying back on a slat-wood lounger. “He will be a wonder,” I said. And I did not know it, but this boy would come back to this beach and sit between my legs asking questions like, “How is it that the sun always goes away,” and I would tell him, “that is another thing I do not understand.” And the boy would say, “You do not know the answers to many things,” and then I would agree with him, and laugh, and feel something full come over me, something grand, bigger than the pod of pelicans. He would be a wonder, this boy, I knew it. And he is. The boy is content with what is. He does not mind his swimsuit tattered at its edges, and we are the same. That is what warms me to be around him.

I follow the pelicans to their fecal-colored cliff and sit beneath them. They are quiet and earnest in their preening. The boy would want to touch their gullets, I remember thinking, and no sooner did I find my own arm reaching up for a skim at their reptilian skin. The boy would surely have beaten me to it if he were here, and I wish he did. It pleases me to see the boy win.

That skin could just be for me, the boy would say then, sculpting stories around the gullet skin while I portioned the cumin and sliced the mushrooms into cubes for him. And that is when the boy would tell me to feel it, the browned part of the mushroom. It was like this, he would say, but smooth — it was in between the tomato and the mushroom skin, the boy would tell me. And I would tell him that I believed him, and I did. I would hand him the bottle of apple cider vinegar, and he would hold on to it haphazardly like he did for breakfast, with both hands, and I would hesitate and feel a falling in my chest watching his nose fold in while I twisted the cap and poured it in. Their wings are bigger than this room, the boy would say, and he would reach his arms out wide like a pelican, but there was nothing animal about him. The boy was like water, always, and it was contagious to be around him, for I am an old man who does not want to lose the salt inside of him. And in these later days, I do not want this boy to lose the salt inside of his ocean.

So I will nod yes to him. I will ask him how he managed it, touching the dragon’s reptilian skin, even when the young boy does not know what 'reptilian' means outside of a big word that sounds wondrous, and grand, and that that is good enough for him is good enough for me, being at peace with what is just out of reach. Yes. There is safety in his innocence. And I will do anything to keep it within him.

“The rain is coming,” I said. “I can feel it in my skin.”