Button's Map

The ocean came toward him and lapped at his legs, soaking his cheap shoes and socks. Six inches of worn and weary corduroy were a deep, wet blue. The icy kiss shook his nerves and his heart skipped a beat, as if double-checking reality. Am I really here, doing this? The crabs were hidden under cover. The mackerel-coloured sky taunted the hungry gulls, as the cold, wet, wind tossed them about. The firmament and strand harmonised in their bleakness.

Button was a suicide veteran. A greybeard of despair. Whatever random forces held this planet together had conspired to keep him here. And so he'd continued to exist in spite of the esophageal ulcers, the bloody coughing fits and countless hours spent doubled over in misery. "Lord won't take me and the devil don't want me," he'd tell the few townies that took note of him enough to enquire to his health. "Sure, we want you, old-timer," the better ones would reply.

Button extracted the crumpled paper from his coat pocket and held it between grimy fingers. It was yellowed with age, forty-years worth, but it had stuck out the years about as well as Button. As he unfolded it, his old heart skipped again and the wind snatched his breath away. Unfettered grains of sands bounced around, some settling between the deep creases of his face, others collected in his beard. Figures from the past danced through his mind, all dead, yet still alive for brief snatches of seconds and in skipped heartbeats. He remembered standing alone at the edge of the dancehall, watching her and him, the dapper, dark haired lothario, and her in her elegance. The atmosphere was joyful and the air was full of hope. Arms rounded waists, the laughter scattered all around and elsewhere drinks were consumed amid the smoke and the sweat. He remembered it because that was the first time his heart was crushed.

The wind bullied and blustered, sending detritus running for cover, and it stung Button back to reality. His eyes watered, but not with sorrow. He felt the tide at his feet, and another, less tangible tide beginning to bear down upon his old bones. In his hands was an unfinished drawing - the sketch lines were still visible and only the first few dabs of colour were apparent. Button held it before his eyes, then gazed up and down the beach, out at the rocking waves and the tumultuous sky. It hadn't changed much. The tide tossed some driftwood ashore like a pet presenting a gift to its master.

Button remembered the hard wood of those church pews. He remembered the chance meeting, her face, the realisation that the same thing that could tear apart could also heal and unite. Maybe you could only gain hold of that thing you so desired when you'd abandoned all hope of attaining it? He remembered the vows, her heavy, hooded eyes, the sense of fate, and later the jazz - Duke Ellington in particular - and the dancing. He could recall every one of her finished watercolours. Screeching sax and trumpets somehow formed a insanely melodious rhythm. And then... then she was just dead. And Button remembered the final time his heart was crushed.

Taken sick, he was told, as though these things just happen. There wasn't a pirate on the high seas capable of such a cruel trick. So he put her in the ground and didn't know what to do with himself and eventually just abandoned life and death abandoned him.

Button frowned at the charcoal lines. He located the hilly, green dune close to the rocky area to the east. Those rocks were lightly sketched. The queer shape, the tidepool, and the imposing mountains in the distance were all outlined. Then there was that figure - was it a figure? Was it a stray mark of charcoal? Was it nothing at all? Button walked towards it over the soft sand and suckling sea. He found the point - x marks the spot in his own search for treasure.

The ocean came toward him and lapped at his legs, knee high now, and he squinted his old eyes in a mad sort of hope. He was struck with a fit of coughing which continued for some time, until eventually he coughed no more. A peace settled on his lungs, and no longer did the caustic seepage scald his old gullet. She appeared on the horizon, looking away to the west, scanning the horizon. The she saw him, and he saw her - at the altar, at the kitchen table, at the easel, at the swing dances and at the foot of the bed, smiling. He remembered the one unfinished painting, and how he held it in his hands. He was wet and old, a bag of miserable old bones, but by God he knew what he saw. He stuffed the paper in his shirt pocket and waded toward her. Duke Ellington and his band started to play Royal Garden Blues. The sun began to fight its way through the mourning sky and the crabs and critters scuttled along the beachfront. Seagulls stabbed at the water, cried out, blew ashore, and Button slid quietly underneath.