Free Gargoyles by Bill Gaston Page A

it himself in the roar of the surf that was so close now.
    At first they’d dug out Uncle Phil’s arms and tried pulling, but it was immediately obvious that they weren’t moving him at all. They’d dug some more, and got him clear to the waist, but still he wouldn’t budge, and now Tommy had to kneel behind and plant himself and struggle to keep Uncle Phil’s head propped out of the flats of wave that rushed in and submersed Tommy to his chest. Sasha fell prone to plug a breached wall, like two years ago, but this time there were no screams of delight, just hardly heard coughs of “Quick, quick.” Tommy, big-eyed and grim, knew his uncle wasn’t playing and that all this panic had something to do with time. A bigger, quicker wave came in and Tommy lost his grip on his uncle’s head and shoulders and Uncle Phil stayed under for a while because Philip was off feeling for the shovel. When the wavereceded and his head reappeared and not being able to breathe didn’t seem to have troubled him, that’s when Sasha and Tommy saw it for real and started crying, and that’s when Philip told them to run to the parking lot for help.
    Philip knelt holding his uncle’s head up as waves came in and went out. It was loud, and exhausting, and hard to know the true passing of time — maybe fifteen minutes went by before Tommy and Sasha reached the parking lot. By now the surges were up to Philip’s chin, and his uncle’s head was under half the time anyway, so finally Philip mumbled several words he couldn’t hear himself mumble, let his uncle’s head fall, and walked backwards, watching, to higher ground.
    Philip knew he had miscalculated in some way. He had failed at something huge, something beyond him, and he wondered what his mother would say. He wondered how loud Aunt Sally would be, and when she would leave them and return to England. Would she stay with them tonight, or go to a motel? Tomorrow there would be no crispy bacon. His father no longer had a brother.
    He stood ankle-deep and blank-faced as each wave hit, his uncle mounding the clear rushing water, like a boulder under the surface of a fast, broad river, a river that slowed to a stop and reversed before running over the boulder in the other direction. Each time the water receded and his uncle appeared, Philip looked for signs of revival, but nothing changed, except for the strand of seaweed rearranged at his uncle’s neck and shoulders, and his thin hair which itself seemed like a pathetic variety of seaweed. Then a new wave hit, and then another, and Philip had to backstep to higher and higher beach until, deep carni
val,
all he could see of this relative was, just to the right, his kite trick.

FORMS IN WINTER
    He should have worn a scarf. It’s only late November but it’s too cold, early cold that feels unwarranted, like punishment. It has hardened the soles of his shoes and the sidewalk jars his feet to the bone. It would feel warmer if there were snow. There’s no one else out walking and his crisp footsteps echo almost comically — or is it a sinister sound, he can’t tell which.
    He is on his way to talk to the McGonnigals because he believes that, whatever one’s own failings, and despite the possibility that one might make a bigger mess of things, it remains one’s human duty to try to ease another’s agony.
    He picks his spots. The McGonnigals. Knowing so little about them he’s aware that he might make that mess. He might get his nose broken again. But he’s on his way to the McGonnigals, and he persists in this and in all needful things because of Andrew — Andy — fifteen years ago.
    Of course there were those times, before Andy, when he didn’t act and should have. One was on the south shore of the Island of Crete, when he was in his early twenties, in that small village — Aghia Ghalini. For a month he’d slept on a nearby