Tommy ran across shell-chocked sand toward the small cottage. The pale-green little hovel squatted beside a more modern pier that jutted out into the waves of the ocean. Although dreary and ugly, the building stood as a sanctuary to the boy for great stories of the world. His mind had been filled with the most colorful adventures he ever experienced; they put TV and movies to shame.
This day, he ran with tears in his eyes. The pain of the shells on his bare feet never registered against the reality of the loss he would experience in the near future. The loss of his best friend who provided the greatest adventures.
He scurried up the five rotten boards for steps to the delapidated porch and pounded on on the front door. As he waited, he heard the rhythmic crash of waves behind, which he cherished, and the voices of the many on the pier, which he abhored. Soon the door cracked open, then swung a second later to its widest point.
A very old and shriveled body stood before Tommy, smiling down a gum-filled smile beneath twinkling eyes. "Thomas! Please, come in, boy!"
Tommy entered into the dark, small, smelly cove he so dearly treasured, walked past the stove, two-foot counter, and small table that served as a kitchen, and into the small living room. He turned toward the old man entering after him. "Jake, I can't believe it." Tears swam down his cheek with each blink of the eyes. They welled in rhythm not unlike the steady beat of the ocean water reaching up the sand.
Jake smiled gently and put a gentle hand on the boy's head, then sat in a chair and beckoned the boy to sit on the couch. This gesture Tommy knew from many times before, never changed, yet this time, seemingly different. "Boy, do you want to hear another story?"
"I didn't come here for that, Jake. My mom told me you're dying."
Jake smiled without any further acknowlegement. "My boy, I will tell you a story. One different than the others. One more from the heart."
"Are you dying?"
"What did your mother say?"
"She says so."
Jake glanced at the closed curtain, then back. "Son, when I was about your age, I caught a glimpse of something."
"Huh?"
"It's the same thing you've caught a glimpse of today."
"What?"
"When I was a boy, I sat on a dock that is no longer around a few miles south of here. I stared out at sea. I held a small sea shell I found, wondering where it had come from, and I sat on that dock day after day, staring out at the place where the sky and the sea met, watching ships sail toward me and away. I watched young sailors going to town with sparkles in their eyes, wondering what they have seen, where they've been, and where they're going. I glimpsed something in them. I knew there was something then, something I couldn't touch, but wanted to so badly. I lived in a small shack, almost like this one, with my parents. I needed to see the world. I knew there was something out there, beyond the meeting point of sea and sky. I needed to experience it."
Tommy sat listening without a word.
"There were more people, people I never met, things to see, adventures to experience, new relationships, places to conquer. So I ran from home and joined a whaling vessel."
"Wow."
"When I got out there, the land where my little dock stood slowly vanished. But I was still with myself, only amid a bunch of older, drunk sailors and a creaky old wooden boat. Every day I looked over the edge into the small waves below, telling myself I was here, where I looked from the dock so far away now. We had those fights with the big fish I told you about before. But every time it ended, I still stood with myself; I was the same boy from the dock.
"One time the captain said we were dockin in Portugal. That was only a fairy-tale land to me, one I could never touch, taught from the books in a small classroom. I became ecstatic.
"We docked, and I walked through the narrow streets of the little country, taking in the little taverns, the whores who pulled at my clothes, and the drunks all amid the salt air from the ocean. Yet still, I stood as myself from the old little dock.
"I left that ship and traveled through Europe, eventually boarding a small trading ship destined to the mythic lands of the gods---Greece! Remember the stories I told you about the bandits in Spain? That was during this time. Well, I landed in Greece and walked the whole place. Little huts of villagers dotted the dirt roads amid the smell of cooking fires. I saw the ruins of temples and places people only read about, but I still saw the deep, unkown horizon. Are you understanding boy?"
Tommy gave a puzzled look.
"I traveled the world over, boy. I saw it all. I've been there and here. It's all no different, boy. Everything in this world is all the same, but the horizon is still out there, still untouchable. I know now I can't reach it by travel. No one can. That horizon that I saw is what you see in me now. Boy, the true horizon to reach, the one I glimpsed as a small boy, is death. Yes, I'm going there, and now, for the first time since I've been born, I'll see what's beyond the place where the sky and sea meet." Jake gave him an old, worn sea shell, not unlike the ones he ran over to get to the cottage. "This is the one I held when I was your age. Take it and remember all the adventures I told you of, and what the final one is all about."
Tommy slowly walked out onto the beach and looked out over the horizon. The sun sat brilliant and red on the water just where the horizon and water met, and rolled out its red hue over the jumping surface toward his feet.
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