Point of Direction. Rachel Weaver

pockets, I give the cookstove and the woodstove and the table and the rocking chair a quick once over. Kyle has stopped rummaging, is now crouched down, examining a row of paint cans that have Extra White / Summer 1973 written across the top in permanent marker in neat, tight lettering.

      “That’s probably not good anymore,” I say, kidding. He doesn’t move. “Kyle? What’s wrong?”

      After a slow moment, he stands and throws me over his shoulder. “C’mon, millionaire.”

      I laugh, kick once or twice trying to free myself.

      “I’m going to show you the bedroom.” His feet creak on the wooden stairs under our combined weight.

      The metal frame bed squeaks loudly as he presses his body on top of mine. I pull at his shirt, my need matching the urgency of his. When the skin of his chest touches mine, there is nothing but this, right now, Kyle and me.

      Later, we fall asleep, piled in the deep depression at the center of the mattress, a government issue scratchy wool blanket pulled over us. I awake to the sound of the wind against the house. I run my hand lightly across his back as he sleeps against my shoulder.

      The bed is the only furniture in the room. There is a large window on each of the eight walls, the same as downstairs. A propane lantern hangs from a nail in one wall. Three square wooden posts break up the bare space of the room.

      Kyle stirs, rolls over onto his back. “What’s that noise?” he asks.

      “The wind.”

      “Ahh,” he says with a heavy exhale, waking up slowly.

      I press my cheek against his shoulder. “Did you notice the cookstove downstairs?”

      “Not really.”

      “It’s a woodstove.” I stifle a laugh.

      “What?” He pushes up onto an elbow and catches my eye. “Seriously?”

      “Yeah.”

      “Oh damn,” he says, laughing with me. “What have we gotten into?”

      “We’ll have to spend the whole summer hauling wood if we want to eat.”

      “Ahhhhhhh,” he groans, rolling back onto his back. “Hold me,” he says meekly, making me laugh harder.

      “C’mon, get up,” I say, getting out of bed, finding my clothes on the floor. I walk to the nearest window to see how bad the wind is as I pull my sweater over my head. The smooth channel has become an angry procession of three and four foot waves pressing south.

      I scan the stretch of water where the skiff should be. “Kyle!” My mind rejects what I’m seeing. I search the beach for the haulout line, make sure I’m remembering correctly where the skiff should be. The haulout line is there, leading to empty ocean. “The skiff!”

      Kyle is suddenly behind me, pulling on boots, rushing downstairs. I slip my boots on and race down the stairs after him. The wind pushes hard against my side as I run the path. Kyle is standing, arms loose at his sides on the beach when I get there.

      There’s nothing to do. The skiff is still tied to the haulout, but is now sunk and hanging from the buoy, pulling it most of the way under. The bow of the skiff pokes through the surface between waves. It was overloaded, too low in the water to withstand what the wind had become in only a few hours.

      One wave after another over the caprail had filled it and sunk it. I review what we now do not have. Food, a way off the island, clothes, a way to cook. I think about the steaks I was going to cook tonight, the bottle of wine to go with it to celebrate, my wallet, my favorite sweater, all of it falling to the floor of the ocean, swept over the ledge of the island by the tide, into the depths of the channel.

      I pick up the haulout line, lean the weight of my body away from the water.

      “I already tried,” Kyle yells over the wind. “It’s too heavy.”

      I dig in my feet and pull with every muscle in my body.

      “Anna!”

      I spin around. “Help me pull!”

      He shakes his head, but picks up the rope behind me and together we try to inch the skiff back toward the beach. It doesn’t move. Breathing hard, I drop to my knees on the rocks of the beach. “How could we be so stupid?”

      Kyle runs his hand over his face, looks back out toward the buoy. “There’s nothing to do now, we’ll have to wait for the tide. Even then, I don’t know…”

      I get to my feet and watch the surface of the water boil. Kyle stands next to me for awhile, the wind ripping up the space around us. He takes a deep breath, then lets it out slow. “Shit,” he says, shaking his head and turning back toward the house.

      “Kyle!” I yell over the wind. He turns. “We can’t just leave it.”

      “It’s high tide. There’s nothing we can do until there is less water between us and the skiff.” I know he’s right. Down the shore, something catches my eye. A can of black beans, washed up and bouncing between two rocks. My stomach rumbles with hunger. I remember the jugs of water that were also in the skiff and suddenly I am thirsty as well. Kyle turns toward the house again. I scoop the can of beans off the beach and follow him.

      Inside, he sits in the rocking chair, runs his hands over the well worn curve of the arm rest. I pace. “Now what?” I ask. “That was everything we own.”

      Kyle takes a deep breath. “We’ll wait for low tide. If I can get the engine off, we’ll be able to pull the skiff in.”

      “How are we going to get to the engine?”

      “I’ll swim out to it.”

      “Bad idea. You have seven minutes in water that temperature before hypothermia sets in so bad you can’t swim back.”

      “If it’s at the right angle, I can get the engine off in seven minutes.”

      “Bullshit. You’re not going in the water.”

      “You got any better ideas?”

      “The engine’s ruined anyway.”

      “Right, but we can save the skiff. It’s too heavy to pull in with the outboard on it. There’s another engine in the shed. An old shitty Evenrude, but it will work. It’s our only choice now.”

      I stop pacing and turn to face him. “You know the contents of the shed? You’ve been out here more times than you admitted to the Coast Guard guy haven’t you?”

      “I’ve always been interested in this place.”

      “Why?”

      He shrugs, glances toward the window with a look I cannot read. “Do you remember when the high tide was this morning?” He asks. The tide book sunk along with everything else.

      “11am, I think.”

      He checks his watch. “That means another two hours before the low.”

      I sit down in one of the kitchen table chairs and rub my eyes. “We have one can of black beans for dinner.”

      “Great,” Kyle says. “I like black beans.”

      “Me too.”

      He crosses the room, I lean into him as he wraps his arms around me.

      “We have to be more careful,” I say into his shoulder. “We are allowed fewer mistakes out here.”

5.

      MY PARENTS folded me into myself. The first time I felt light seep in was in high school when my class went to a rock climbing gym. My friends cackled and laughed, went up five or six feet and begged to come down. I started out the same, but somewhere around ten feet off the ground, a feeling more pure than any I’d had up to that point shot through my whole body.