Blindman Bay

Blindman Bay

a Branford Perry story by Stephen Brooke ©2011

It's not like I fell in love with Ruby.

It felt comfortable, though, and I thought I might want to stay a while. Maybe even the rest of my life.

Oh, no, I’m not talking about a woman. Ruby is a town, a river, a way of life. Ruby is a place where a dark swamp-born stream meets the Gulf of Mexico. I did meet a woman there, on the shores of Blindman Bay. She was a woman of the sunset and of the water.

And did I fall in love with her? That would be the easy thing to say, wouldn't it? As with Ruby, it felt comfortable. Need there be more than that? I don't know.

I had come on the restless southern wind, a vagrant vessel seeking port. There had been a time when the frigate bird had charted my course, when the tropical night had breathed its dreams into my soul.

When the magic of a moon mirrored in the Gulf waters no longer seemed enough, when all its spells were broken, I turned my eyes northward. Could rest be found there, where forgotten fishing villages slept in the sun?

Perhaps, for a time.

But the woman—she had been a beauty once, fading as time stripped away every defense, and 'Honey' everyone called her. The name she had once been given did not matter one way or another.

“Every time I try to love,” she told me, “it turns out bad.” Her lost blue eyes looked me up and down and a hungry voice asked how long I would be staying. Who could say?

Who could say how long I might linger there?

Others had come and gone, leaving her with two young kids. That also did not matter one way or another, nor that both of us knew it wouldn't last. Forever's far too long.

“No point in asking why the river brought you to my door,” said she. “Just take what we are given.”

Wanderers and fools that we were, there would come a day we sat and watched the sun set one last time. Who knows what tides we're drifting on? Who knows in what harbors we might find rest?

And it was on the shores of Blindman Bay that I put my arm around her, promising I would stay as long as I was able. On the shores of Blindman Bay, where river runs to sea.