Bloodfire

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The ocean roared and pushed him close to shore. Carver felt the equilibrium lent by deep water desert him. His toes and palms scraped on the grit and broken shells of sea-tossed sand. Breakers curled and flattened out, then frothed around his suddenly heavy and awkward body, which belonged to land. Dragging his bad leg, he crawled through shallow water toward the beach.

As he emerged from the water, the fierce Florida sun bore down on him. Almost immediately perspiration began to mix with seawater on his shoulders and the back of his neck. Carver wasn’t afraid of sunburn; he was already brown from morning after morning of therapeutic swims in the sea.

He crawled to where his cane jutted from the sand like a spear. Picked up the folded towel next to it, shook sand into the burning morning air, and rubbed his face and bald pate with the rough terry cloth. Then he sat with his permanently stiff left leg extended, his good leg doubled under, and stared out to sea. In the distance a mammoth freighter lay on the hazy blue horizon like an island, its progress almost imperceptible as it made its way north. Closer in were several triangular white sails, banked at precisely the same sharp angle into the breeze. Above them half a dozen gulls, dark specks against a luminous perfect sky, dipped and soared on currents of warm air.

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