Free The Lobster Kings by Alexi Zentner Page B

broken, but that seems something that had happened before, since there is no evidence of sails or rigging, nothing other than the oars. There’s fishing line and some sort of oilcloth tarp, indication that the boy wasn’t out on a pleasure cruise, but had been getting food. Behind the boat, the sky is split between darkness and, if not exactly light, then not exactly dark, either; it’s clear that the storm has come in fast and hard, and the boy has been taken unawares. There’s a look of panic on his face. He’s glancing back over his shoulder, but you can see that no matter how hard he’s struggling to row, he’s not going to clear the rocks where the water is breaking.
    The second painting in the series is more expansive. It shows the coast and the spit of pebbled beach, the water between the beach and the offshore break of rocks. Between the break and the beach, the water isn’t truly calm, but it doesn’t have the manic energy and whitewash of the waves on the ocean side of the break. Out there, on the other side of the break, the ocean side, the wind has whipped up the water into nothing other than spray and foam,and the waves make the boy’s boat look like some sort of a beach toy. And like a toy, the boat is caught up in a wave, turned at a three-quarter angle in the wave’s gutter, the stern smashing into the break of the rocks; it’s clear that if the painting were a filmstrip, the next frames would show the boat hung up on the rocks, tumbled end over end. The boy himself is already sliding from his seat. One hand is raised as if to ward off the rocks, the other still firmly fastened to the handle of an oar. That’s what the eye is drawn to, but it’s the figure on the beach that breaks my heart: at the edge of the picture, small enough that we know he’s too far away to do anything, a man runs across the polished rocks of the beach. He’s wearing a heavy jacket and boots. You can’t make out any other details, but you can see the urgency and you know it’s too late.
    The third painting is from a different location on the island, and it’s a spot that seems to draw all kinds of tourists, not just the Brumfitt tourists: the cemetery. There is a man digging out a grave. You can’t tell for sure if it is the same man from the second painting in the series, but it’s hard for me to believe anything else. The sky has cleared, the storm from the first two paintings blown past, and the sunlight is achingly bright, so that the body lying next to the grave has no shadows to hide it. It’s the boy’s body, wrapped in oilcloth. A flap is turned over by his head so that we can see his face. If you stand too close to the painting, the picture is smeared and blurry. It’s only when you move back from the painting that it comes into focus and it’s clear that Brumfitt wants you to see the face of a boy who was smashed against the rocks.
    The series probably wouldn’t have been considered so important if the dates and the events hadn’t lined up so neatly with Brumfitt’s own life: his oldest son died at the age of ten, in December of 1739, his boat overturned in a storm, his body broken against the rocks. The first Kings boy taken by the sea.

W e floated together as a family for more than three years after Momma drowned herself. Her body spent three days in the water, and when they finally fished her out, she went right into a closed casket. I’d like to think that she looked calm and peaceful resting on the silk liner, a clean dress and styled hair, closed eyes, but I knew too much about what the water could do after three days: bloated and bitten skin, soft features smeared by the fish that fed on the bottom of the ocean.
    By the time I was sixteen, Carly and Rena were completely done with pulling lobster pots. I fished with Daddy on the weekends and after school, hauling lobsters on the
Queen Jane
, while Carly and Rena went off with friends, fucking boys in the back of cars and in dank basements.