Sixteen - The Last Swim

Nostalgia coloured sepia clouds of sand dust-devilled their way hither and thither across the dunes as the fierce north-westerly winds exhaled angrily across the beach. The sound of gritted particles cascading like a see-sawing hourglass were only softened by the contrast of deliquescent waves dancing an oceanic opera offshore. Overhead the pregnant clouds nursed their burgeoning wombs angrily, threatening to burst into motherhood at any moment. Father sun was little more than a distant observer, pacing nervously at such a remove that his light was barely an ambient suggestion, filtering like the forgotten promise of spring across a winter world. Into this they came, perambulating slowly along the otherwise empty expanse of the blasted beach.

The man leaned into the wind, one hand holding down the rounded woollen flat cap that threatened at any moment to fly from his head and sail frisbee-like off toward the distant horizon. His gnarled fingers betrayed his age, as did his steady but slow walk across the sand, one step at a time… one step at a time… The numerous layers of clothing swaddling him did little to keep the frosted bite from his bones. His light blue eyes were narrowed to slits in a vain attempt to reduce the amount of sand blowing into them. Rheumy windows to the soul, they mirrored perfectly the world he walked through, with salt crusted edges and saline shoals welling close by, just as the deeper mysteries of the further ocean depths lay tantalisingly within sight, yet forever out of reach. The long line of his footprints lay imprinted in the wet sand behind him like some morse code, spelling out a forgotten message that no-one would ever read.

His companion seemed to be as old as the man himself, albeit in corresponding canine years. What had once been an effulgent piebald coat had become threadbare with age, patches of skin showing through on the dog’s back and side. His tail was still a fountain of white, the barometer of emotion waving happily back and forth as four padded feet added their own peppered tempo deviation to the man’s legato sheet music stride markings upon the sand. While the old man’s eyes were dimmed pale, his canine companion’s gaze had gone completely, leaving only opaque frosted marbles staring blindly out at the surrounding world. Where the eyes lacked though, the quivering nose more than made up the difference, savouring scents upon the wind as a wine connoisseur’s palette sampled tannins in a vineyard. For him the beach was alive with stories, inhaled fragrantly from directly in front of him to kilometres away. There was the sad story of fish stranded in pools as the tide retreated, now gasping in evaporating shallows as they prayed silently for the deeper waters to return in time, their quicksilver scales glistening in the amber light. Then there was the lonely gull, hopping a few steps across the dunes, spreading its wings momentarily, before changing its mind and folding them in again. It was just as possible to drown in the fierce undercurrents of the air as it was in the ocean, and the raging sky torrents of this day were not to be underestimated. Then there were the crabs, marching soldier like in time to a beat no other living thing could hear, skittering back and forth on the tidal flats, hungry claws shaking an accompanying castanet beat to their decapoda dance.

As he scented all of this, there was still a tinge of sadness for the dog as he remembered how it used to be. When he was younger he had raced across the sand like a furry bullet, leaping up and over the tallest dunes, running out into the waves, barking with joy as he let them then chase him back to shore again. In those days, if there had been a fisherman casting off from the beach who had unwarily left a bucket of bait unattended, he’d have put his head into the raw saturated mess and gobbled down as much as he could before anyone could reach him. Then he’d be off and running again, angry fisherman shouts receding quickly behind him, sushi on his breath and victory in his pulsing heart. He had never gotten tired, not back then, only ever gratefully falling asleep in his basket back home at the end of the day, where he’d dream again of the sound of waves and the sensation of sand beneath his flying paws. He couldn’t understand why it wasn’t like that now. Now his little legs creaked as he strutted along and his hot breath came out in ragged pants, tongue lolling from his open mouth. He and the old man walked apace now, neither running, both dreaming of past days and younger times as they traced out this familiar daily walk once again.

Nearby the dog could hear the waves crashing against the shore, splashing their familiar taunts into his floppy ears. “You can’t catch us,” they gurgled teasingly, “you’re too slow now, while we are ageless still. We saw Tiktaalik crawl out from our depths. We saw the giant lizards of prehistory swim within us and fly over us and fight each other upon our shores. We are the endless ocean and you are just a little dog. We are too vast for you, too fast for you – you will never catch our dancing waves again!” His tail stopped wagging and he paused in his walk, blind eyes turning towards the waters as his nose sniffed haughtily at the arrogant salt spray. “I’ll show them,” he thought, a low growl rumbling at the back of his throat. “I’m not such an old dog yet that I can’t catch a wave or two.” Determinedly he strutted forward in the direction of the mocking waters.

The old man didn’t notice as the little dog left his side, he was too preoccupied with his own thoughts, which were not at all dissimilar from those of his companion. “Wasn’t it just yesterday,” he mused, “when I first met my wife. Wasn’t it just yesterday my son was born. Wasn’t it just yesterday my first grandchild came into the world…” He ran his gnarled hand across his face, feeling the deep wrinkles of years etched there, wondering for the life of him how he had gotten to be so old. He remembered canoeing down river with his friends on holiday, riding his bicycle across kilometres of bush track, shaping and building and making things in the little workshop he had in the back of his garage. He couldn’t do any of those things now, but inside the corridors of his mind he was still the same man. What did it mean to be the same yet not the same, when your own body started to let you down. When what you were formed a barrier to who you were. “I’m not so old as that yet,” he told himself, “I’ve still got some strength left in these bones…” It was as this thought flitted across his mind that he heard a panicked yelp from behind him. It took him a moment, looking around worriedly, to spy where the cry had come from. His dog had wandered out into the waves but, blind and turned around by the water, he had misjudged his way back to shore. Now he was paddling frantically in the wrong direction, pointed snout turned upward gasping at the air as the waves grew larger and larger around him.

The old man was wading into the surf before he had even consciously considered what he should do, calling aloud the name of his friend, urging him to swim back towards his voice. It was no good though, the waves were pounding out a rhythm far louder than he could cry and the wind was whipping his words away from him, swiftly carrying them to some distant point far beyond the hearing of the struggling pup. Desperately the old man surged forward but his layered clothes, now sodden, began pulling him down, like tentacles from the deep eager to welcome him into Davy Jones’s Locker. He tore at them as best he could, ripping the heavy shoes off his feet before they became concrete slippers, the waters taking his cap, overcoat, jacket, jumper and shirt one after another, sailing them this way and that upon the water’s surface around him, like ghostly after-images of the man himself, frozen upon the frothy pane. The water was ice against his skin but he didn’t hesitate, surging forward as fast as his old bones would allow, gnarled fingers pounding against the surf as he desperately reached out toward his little friend.

He struggled to understand why it seemed so difficult to reach him, how the little dog had drifted so far so fast. Then he felt it. That magnetic pull sucking at his body, just as it had to his tiny friend ahead of him. A rip. They were both caught in a rip. He tried not to think about it, about what that meant, about what would happen to him now, he only knew he had to pull ahead, just a little further. He couldn’t call out to the diminutive dog now; he needed all his reserves just to press-gang the air in and out of his heaving lungs. Around him the waves were only growing in immensity. He found himself coughing as water reached down into his mouth, grasping toward his lungs, scalding its salty taste upon his throat along the way. Ahead he saw the dog panicking, his little head struggling up as wave after wave pushed him down. He vanished for a moment amidst the spray, then appeared once more. Vanished again and there was a longer pause this time before his snout pushed up anew, dividing the jagged mirror’s surface with his desperate features. Then another larger wave crashed and he disappeared beneath its magnitude, sinking under the impossible waves.

Using all his strength the old man surged forward across the last desperate strokes that he needed. With one arm he desperately pulled his friend up from the thieving waters and cradled him tight against his chest. “It’s alright little one,” he whispered, “it’s alright now, I’ve got you, I’ve got you.” He heard the dog whine with relief and love and pure joy at the contact and the sound of his best friend’s voice, tiny paws scrabbling frantically against the man’s shoulder as the dog tried to climb up and out of the chaos of the maelstrom they both now found themselves in. They bobbed above the water together for a moment, both catching their breath, a happy bundle of relief, before the old man turned landward once more.

As he looked back towards the shore, he gasped to see how far away it now was, just a distant fleck of yellow, like an artist’s brush flick at the edge of a large canvas otherwise completely dominated by angry, surging swirls of acrylic blue. Now he felt the ache in his bones, the weary fatigue of years and years, of a whole life suddenly weighing upon him. He started kicking back towards land, one arm flailing as the other held the dog to him, but the rip still had them in its grip and all his struggles only seemed to make the beach move further and further away. He stopped. Around him the waves heaved as he blinked their foamy spray from his eyes and leant his mouth against the little dog’s wet and floppy ear. “It hasn’t been such a bad life, has it,” he whispered, and he wasn’t sure if the salted drops he blinked from his eyes were from the outer sea or some inner ocean. “We did alright, didn’t we?” he said, and the little dog gave a plaintive bark. He knew what it meant, having learned to speak dog many, many years ago. “I love you,” the bark spoke, simply. “You’re my best friend and I love you.” Around them, the waves grew higher.

Viewed from above the ocean seems like a flat expanse, but from within its jealous embrace it is a landscape all its own. The ever-changing contours show wide valleys and distant mountain ranges one minute, then flat plains the next, followed by low foothills leading to mysterious passes and lost pathways, before driving on to jagged peaks once again. Each moment a new land, a new world, forming and reforming, as though some temperamental god of old were struggling with the fluid plasms of creation, struggling to decide on what to build, what to destroy. Within that vastness the life of a single person vanishes absolutely, a speck of white subsumed by the foam flecked ridgelines of inconsistency. A drop in the ocean, a needle in a haystack, a single life afloat upon the impossible enormity of human history, of the history of the world, of time and the universe itself. Yet still – without each drop to make it up, an ocean could not be. What greater miracle than the uniqueness of a single life shining bright amidst the impossibility of creation. For even the universe may be moved to compassion at the sight of love and courage amidst the roiling chaos of eternity.

The vast waves washed upon the shore, their reach extending too far, stretching them thinner and thinner until they folded away into nothing. Another wave rolled in, then another and another… Then a single bare foot stamped down upon the wet sand. Another foot quickly followed it, striking out one extra stride across the transition between water and land. The old man sank to his knees then, coughing brackish liquid past his lips as he gently set the little pup down on the sand before him. The dog scampered forward a few paces, then shook himself furiously from head to toe, shedding a rain shower in all directions, a shard of amber light from between the clouds painting the droplets with momentary rainbows. With that task done the little dog strutted back to the old man’s side, standing next to him, nervously wagging his tail as the old man rested on hands and knees, breathing deep and grateful lungfuls of air in then out. In then out. Time passed. Finally, the old man stood up on legs shaky but true and patted his best friend gently on the top of his head, rewarded instantly with a fast wag and playful yip.

“Come on,” he said, “let’s go home.” Together they made their way slowly but surely back down the beach. Soon they were lost to sight. The soft caress of water on sand erased the story of their twinned footprints, as if none of it had happened. As if they had never been there at all.