Once the Shore by Paul Yoon Read Free Book Online Page B

into the paint canister. The paint leaked out onto the grass, and it engulfed his forearm just below the elbow. Slowly, he rotated his arm. Soon, dark lines began to spiral within the milk white and the lines grew thicker and the white faded, folding, until the paint turned blue, dark, the color of winter. He then lifted his arm and the paint dripped down his skin and his knuckles like dozens of rivers falling into the sea.
    The project took several days. Throughout it all Karo
painted with a blue arm. Sometimes he pressed his hand against the hull and from a distance Bey was unable to distinguish between the limb and the steel and his son said, “Father, I have lost a hand, I have lost an arm, I am slowly turning into this boat,” and he laughed but Bey did not, although he smiled and let him know that he had heard. He watched daylight bend behind the trees and the current retreat and Karo fade. The following morning he was returning to the sea, to earn his living.
    They did not see him again for six weeks. When he returned, he taught Bey the functions of the trawler and pointed to certain areas of the boat and named them as though they were countries. They could have stayed there all day and evening. It was what Bey wanted. But Karo grew restless. “Next time,” he always said, patting his father’s shoulder. “Next time.” And Bey watched from the boat as his son headed to the village, where his mother was expecting him.
    They were not often seen together, the three of them. He was either with his father by the river or with his mother in the village. During meals, Bey and Soni spoke to him and not to each other. Bey did not know what they spoke of when she was alone with him. Marriage, perhaps. His unwillingness. Whatever words they exchanged with Karo they each took and kept private.
    For every visit he promised to take them out to sea, on the trawler, but he never did. He kept promising. His work in the fishing crews lasted longer, sometimes for entire seasons.

    One evening, when Bey and Soni were alone, he wondered out loud when their son would return and she responded, “It is nice to hear your voice again.”
    He almost hit her for that. The thought occurred to him, of swinging his hand across her face, of his flesh against hers. He was unable to look at her, shocked and afraid. He heard her undo the braid of her hair.
    He left her and sat on the steps of his house, facing the trees. In the mountains behind the village, the engine of a truck groaned. The pigs shifted in the pen. Moonlight settled over the barley fields. The sky was clear and vast and the stars were pulsing like beacons. He had lived here for all his years. It was a life. There was love he was capable of and love that was desired. His wife he had stopped knowing. His son, it seemed, was gone before he could know him. He wondered then where all the lost things in this world lay. And who, if anyone, ever found them.
     
    They had been at sea for three hours when the first of the debris began to float by them. They were small pieces of wood, some of them trailed by shreds of fabric. Over the starboard rails Bey and Soni watched them bob and hit the hull before they were swallowed by a wave only to resurface and approach once more.
    Bey had waited until the patrol boat was no longer visible in all directions before entering the cabin. He found Soni,
however, already standing in the room. They faced each other, in silence, as the trawler swayed, brushing water.
    “You told me to wait,” she said. “Until I heard nothing. That’s what I did. And then I opened the door.”
    “Like we had planned,” he said.
    She reached to touch his arm and they stayed that way for some time. She said, “It is good to hear your voice.” She gripped his hand and he led her to the deck where she returned to sitting close to the bow, watching the albatross hover over them.
    Before long the birds faded up beyond the clouds and the island appeared along the