Waves, by Andrew Malo

My earliest memory is seeing the anteater on a dock at sea. I thought he was a lamppost because his arms were hidden underneath a trench coat. His nose extended at least twelve inches. He had a badly styled bullcut of dark brown hair that reached his glassy domed eyes. Before I met him again, I wondered if he was wearing a mask and the moment moved from reality to movies in memory. It certainly played like a movie. One that you can’t put your finger on, but you know you saw it somewhere, somehow. 

The day was ending, a day of clouds that were pulling to the side. The anteater stood rigid until I nearly leaned on him. The sun poked through to make a dramatic last stand before retiring for the night. He extended his curtain rod hand, pointed directly at the sun, and said, “Don’t lets them take you away. Don’t let them. Don’t lets them take you away,” over and over. His voice was cartoonish, it bubbled up and down like boiling water. I was too young to say anything, too young to even get a good look at him. His voice rose and fell, rose and fell, faster and louder as the sun approached its resting place. By the time it disappeared, he was screaming, the words jumbled and bubbled as if he was drowning deep in the water.  

Our lives are spent doing mundane things.
Would we take another chance to do something extraordinary?

The sun returned. It pushed back against the earth’s rotation or maybe the earth started to turn the other way. It escaped the ocean until it was a round red ball again. It climbed higher until it became orange than yellow and was about 20 degrees above the horizon. It hung there before starting to descend again. “We all need justs a bit more time,” the anteater said.  

He wrapped his fingers around my arms. His bulging eyes showed no solera, no iris, only black. His mouth extended nearly to the edge of his snout. He opened it and revealed rows and rows of sharp, nearly translucent teeth.“ Just a bits more time,” he said again, grinned, and angled his face to take a bite. I do not remember how I escaped; I only remember my mother’s disbelieving face as she consoled me by pointing towards the sun over a dock with only a lamp post and a bench on it. 

We wonder what we would do if we had more time, if we could do something again. I had a couple of extra hours and the only thing I did was cry to my mother. Our lives are spent doing mundane things. Would we take another chance to do something extraordinary?
~

I forgot about the anteater. It was there—somewhere—but tossed towards the back, covered with choices and regrets. At twenty, I went to the same beach with a few friends. The sun beelined gold from the horizon to the shore. The waves thumped hard on the sand, muffled by how far back we sat. A girl sat next to me. Her fingers untangled wet hair as we laughed about how ridiculous we looked trying to conquer waves and being shoved down by their strength. I watched her while we were out there. Her focus was on the wave coming in with knees and arms bent to stand against the power. The wave swallowed her and pulled her into the deep, but she escaped. Later she watched me do the same thing. The sand clung to our bodies, and her knees pushed on mine. 

“I can’t help but return to being a kid when I’m in the ocean,” she said. Lillian, Lily for short. She went on. “The mixture of comfort and fear in losing control. Being washed out and pulled into the nothingness. It’s like…This is weird, but…I bet it is what death is like. Or, at least, being in love.” 

I agreed but couldn’t think of anything to add. I pushed away towards the dock. A lamp post was next to a bench, and a tall slender figure faced away towards the big white ocean. Familiarity low-boiled inside me. 

Lily pulled me back. She leaned in and took my hand in hers. “Let’s read palms,” she said.  

“What does that even mean?”  

“It means I hold your hand.” 

She traced the lines in my palm with her middle finger and bit her lip between explanations of marriage, death, divorce, children, and fate. It was not looking good.  

She then put her hand on top of mine. Her palm revealed her true skin tone, a soft smooth brown, the rest of her body roasted by the sun.  

“I see six M’s in these wrinkly, old lady palms. Must mean six marriages. The lifeline is so short they’ll all be Vegas weddings. Ten children. Fate looks good, though,” I said. 

We said words to each other that didn’t matter
—that didn’t make any sense…

She came so close. I thought she intended to kiss me, but instead she pushed me down and laid on my chest. Everything fell into place, my arm a gentle wave around her. I took time to embrace the moment, knowing, like all sweet moments, it wouldn’t last long. We said words to each other that didn’t matter—that didn’t make any sense—until I felt the pull. The sun fell onto the other side of the world. What was once warm and exciting had digressed into discomfort, nearly inappropriateness. Sunsets can betray our experiences. It has nothing to do with the sun. I pulled away from Lily again. My consciousness slipped into the deep, cold water. The only light present was the dark blue hue of ocean water somewhere high above me. I acquiesced into nothingness and it felt good—the pressure from the ocean deep offset the loneliness of the place. Perhaps I could have remained there forever, but Lily pulled me back. She tapped on my chest before she pushed herself up.  

“Let’s get back to the others,” she said. She faced the dark. 

“I’ll stay put for now.” 

She didn’t respond and walked away. I sank into the sand and tried to return to those last moments, losing them and then her without a way to get any of it back.  

A silhouette towered above me with a large snout angled down like the claw of a hammer. 

“Just a bits more time,” it said.  

The world pushed and pulled and I was alone on the beach except for the anteater. The sun returned. His bony fingers were in the flesh of my arms, he lifted me easily.  

It is difficult to compare this experience to the one when I was a child because of the unreliability of memory. It did seem, though, that the anteater had grown significantly older. His snout had scars and slashes that led to his bulging black eyes surrounded by wrinkled pasty periorbital skin and shaggy grayed hair. His translucent teeth had opaqued yellow. His towering size shrank to only slightly taller than me. He tried to bite me again, but the movement was slow and easy to escape. I no longer felt fear, faced with the monster. I felt sorry for him. Life never stands up too long to death, even with those that can change directions for a while.  

The anteater dropped his hands into his trench coat, dejected, and dissolved into the sand. I turned to the newly-lit sea. Lily ignored everything as she braced herself for a wave that would give her the thrill of being swept away. I planned to get it right this time. I ran straight towards her, a wave from the other side.

~~~