We’re Stripped Bare, Always by Hew Davis
He told me that after his wife died - she was only 37 - he used to walk out each morning with her picture and sit on the sea wall. Hours they’d spend together, looking out to the sea, he a living man, she an 8x10 glossy photograph in an artificial cherry wood frame.
It was sad, really, but some people found it touching.
The newspaper took his picture.
Love Never Dies read the tacky headline.
He’d sit there with her, talk to her, try to feel her presence. He’d sit there on the sea wall with her for an hour each day, then pack up, and lope down the beach with nothing to do but feed the gulls. They’d swarm in around him as he pitched little ripped bits of bread up at them, watching them dive and zip. Squawk.
He still wore his wedding band. It had always fit him loosely. On cold mornings, it seemed the ring would almost spin around his finger at will. It had occurred to him to have it resized, tightened up. When she died he lost the step-kids, even though he had raised them. He had no legal right to see them, with her gone. All that remained was the ring and the photo, and fading memories. Some days he couldn’t even recall the sound of her voice. And she used to sing like an angel.
He couldn’t get the ring tightened because he wouldn’t abide the cutting. It wouldn’t be the same ring or represent the same love. The guilt of betrayal and his path back would be obscured with leaves.
Besides, when the humidity was up, it snugged his finger.
So there he was, he told me, and it wasn’t cold at all. Sweltering summer morning really. He’s out there tossing breadcrumbs to the seagulls. He threw the bread like one might toss a frisbee, in a sweeping backhand fashion. The gulls dipped and swooped and never missed.
The ring freed itself from his old hairy finger and flew up and out, arcing. It glinted in the sun against the white-blue of the noontide sky, a marvelous vision if it weren’t for his breaking heart.
The bird took it whole.
There wasn’t a goddamned thing he could do about it either.
He dropped his bread in the sand and wandered away for good.
Two years later, after the old man died, a boy spent the day with his grandmother at the beach. He stopped dead in his tracks, cautioned by a flurry of buzzing. His instincts said bees, hornets - something that could sting his arm and leave a mark. He stepped closer quietly, carefully, and found the buzzing sounding from a swarm of black flies. He realized there had been a death; the flies were jubilant.
Stooping in the stickly grass of beach fringe, he discovered the skeletal remains of a sea gull, a few feathers left here and there, and, miraculously, the sunshine glimmer of gold.
“I originally wrote this story after witnessing an elderly gentleman in Gaeta, Italy walking out to the sea wall each day with his deceased wife’s photo in hand. It was heartbreaking when I first heard the man’s story, yet steadying after watching him for weeks and weeks one summer when I was very young. I rejected this work of mine for a couple reasons. One, I always thought I’d write more on it, make it much longer. And two, for a long time, I didn’t like how it ended. I thought it would be more pleasing and rounded if the ring were to return to the old heartbroken man. At this point in my life, I think it’s important to remember that good fortune is not just some guarantee that you can wait on, that you can expect. Luck, the good kind and the bad, enters without knocking.”
My name is Hew Davis and I live in Irvington, Indiana, USA. I am happily married with several children. I am not a billionaire, though I’ll admit I have yet to rule this particular fate completely out as it looks like it could be lots of fun. https://celestialpanther.wordpress.com/ Twitter: @celestialpanthe