The Captain

We called him the Captain. Despite having neither ship nor crew, he held himself like a lantern on the far horizon and I could so easily imagine his hands balancing a compass to guide his vessel through the night. His step was cautious and slow, like at any moment he expected the ground beneath his feet to pitch and roll on some invisible wave, and there was a smell about him, so different than the soap and old aftershave of the elderly. Instead, when he passed by he would create in his wake a sea breeze that tickled salt into your eyes, leaving you looking back in wonder at his white cotton shirt weaving out of traffic while blinking grains of sand off your eyelashes. We got into the habit of greeting him with a casual salute that fell from our right eyebrow like a seagull and glided down to the wave of our hips, and he in turn would tip his cap, embroidered with a faded anchor, which always seemed unhappy stuck on his head after a lifetime of being whipped away by the wind. The first time I heard him speak it was to the angry sea and waves that broke furious on the shore and dragged sand out into the depths screaming: “Some day,” he whispered, “I’ll meet you again.”