The Skua Nest

The gulls overhead squawked; placid waves caressed the shoreline. As Zacarías’s eyes opened, he attempted to glean where he was. The slate-colored tide mirrored the sky. He lay upon a bed of rounded rocks. It was a struggle to move. He felt nothing. Eventually, craning his neck slowly, stiffly, he observed his wet, tattered clothes. Now, nothingness turned to numbness. It was clear he was injured.

How’d I get here? he asked himself as he drifted off. Sleep enrobed him, and he sank into darkness.

“Do you gotta go, Daddy?” Beto, his little boy, asked him. Beto looked like his mother and had Zacarías’s whole heart.

Zacarías never wanted to leave Beto and his wife behind. No matter how many times he shipped off, his wife, Belinda gave him the same longing looks, missing him in advance. But the sea was all Zacarías knew, and Zacarías was the only man Belinda loved, so she made her peace with this life—albeit an uneasy one.

The gulls above screeched, and flaccid waves lapped ashore as Zacarías floated back to wakefulness. Half-remembered occurrences returned to him in a soundscape, his mind’s eye temporarily blind. 

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THUMP!

I fell.

CRUNCH! GLUG!

The boat hit something; split, then sank.

WHOOSH!

The tide must’ve risen and spit me out again—here.

He opened his eyes.

Here. Where is that?

The effects of a probable concussion and a likely broken bone (or six) hadn’t fully penetrated through the shock of it all, only partially, like knives plunged part way in.

“This is too long a voyage, Miguel,” Belinda had protested. The uneasy peace had grown more tenuous as this latest assignment had approached.

“That’s Captain Zacarías to you,” he said, not wanting to fight but averse as ever to what he had come to consider his land name.

She laughed despite herself. She was serious and knew he was too.

He zipped up his bag.

“You know I don’t exactly have the option to turn down jobs.”

She sighed, resigned.

He kissed her, hating to go, but needing to.

Encroaching gulls cawed as agitated waves slid atop the pebbly plateau. He’d not fallen asleep anew, rather his consciousness had entered a fugue; to him, time turned elastic and permeable. Pain percolated through his disorientation. He felt cold, yet it came to him as a relief.

When he had felt nothing, before even numbness, he feared that he’d been paralyzed. The wreckage and currents had bludgeoned him tender, but if he tried, he could just wiggle his fingers and toes. There was a dull throb in his head and an ache between his shoulder blades and in his lower back.

Whiplash, maybe, but I think my spinal cord is fine.

He wiggled the fingers on his right hand then tried his wrist. Nothing.

Why can’t I move more than that?

He inhaled deeply.

A fresh pain surged on both sides of his thorax. His ribs were fractured, at least. He figured he must be lying on the break, keeping the bones where they should be, and that his deep breath had shifted things. Suddenly, he was at peace with not being able to curl his wrist. He no longer felt like moving.

The gulls’ cries multiplied as the rambunctious tide broke on the rock bed, snapping him to attention.

When he was young, he’d fractured a rib playing football. He’d caught a pass and had his left side slammed to the ground. That break was under his arm. This one—now that he’d felt it, he couldn’t un-feel it—was closer to his spine.

What bothered him more than the constant pain was the smell. It was fetid. As he focused on it, he knew it had to be something bad because it’s not as if there weren’t other strong odors around. He hadn’t soiled himself. There were accumulating piles of guano; the Katabatic winds whipping across the Antarctic made the sea air more pungent and pronounced; his body was soaked in saltwater and sweat: yet still that smell overrode it. Finally, he managed to look down. His pants were in tatters, one of his boating boots was gone. On his calf was an open wound that was inflamed and chartreuse in color. Obviously infected.

Then he looked at his foot, swollen, discolored. The source of the foul stench. The smell he so desperately wanted to get away from, he could only try to escape into his memories.

The smell of collard greens permeated their last supper together. He was selling the trip again. He’d been entrusted with this new enterprise; it’d be good for the family. The truth he didn’t share was that he wanted to go.

So, he’d gone and now…

Gangrene, Zacarías realized. And how much longer can I lie here without getting frostbite?

When Zacarías had left the house, he heard Beto crying. He knew Beto probably always cried some when he went away, though he hadn’t heard it before this trip.

Innumerable gulls cackled cacophonously, soaring in concentric circles as tumultuous waves whipped at his feet, washing salt in his wound. He lay prostrate, awaiting infection to take over.

Zacarías knew high tide was nigh. He gazed about, avoiding the sight of the encroaching waters. He looked left. There they were—birds . So terrified had he been that, only now upon seeing them closer, did he realize they weren’t seagulls at all. No white nor gray graced their feathers but instead brown and white. They were skuas, and these carrion birds were running out of patience. No longer would they wait at a distance for him to die.

The tide rushed all along the length of his body, entering his wound, slowly, painfully excoriating waterlogged skin from his ankle. His inhuman groans didn’t scare away the skuas, they came at him. As they did, all he could think of was his son’s tearful gaze and his wife’s pleas. He spoke to them, told his son that he really did have to go now, and to his wife he lamented the lengthening of his journey. Again and again, he groaned in remorse, but he could not drown out the sound of the feasting skuas.