The Gulf by T. F. Rhoden
Having that view of the gulf was important to the retired high school instructor. New apartments had been built, a modern shopping boulevard had been developed, and, even, a row of storage units had been constructed over the decades, but that view—his own private vantage point onto the salt water that seeps into Galveston, Texas every day—that view had been maintained.
Old Man Rockwall sat on his favorite stiff-backed chair, his one arm dangling over the rainswept balcony railing, the other in his lap, and absorbed the open emptiness and friendly loneliness of having lived too long, a feeling somehow calmed by the vastness of his view onto the Gulf of Mexico. No breeze comforted him off the waters this morning, only the warm reflection of a listless sun.
A sound of crick-crackling gravel and then the purring down of an engine robbed his attention from the sea. This was followed by the sound of footsteps on a hollow wooden stair ramp, and then an opening and closing of a door. The weighty footsteps casually made their way through the two-story house and then out onto the balcony.
Rockwall looked up. He winced at the appearance of his son. The org, Rockwall mouthed to himself. If his wife were still alive, he would have quipped something about the bumptious gigantism of her side of the family. His son’s stature always startled him.
Father did not rise to embrace son, nor did son bother to greet father.
The young adult instead glanced down at his paterfamilias and wondered how something so frail and thinly could have seeded something as barreling as himself. The only child, not born until Rockwall was already in his later forties, the twenty-year-old understood that his existence probably amounted to a faulty prophylactic more than anything.
The son raised his eyes from the pensioner, settling his gaze on the oceanic view that his father had just been pondering. Rockwall approved. The expansive turn of the silver-wet horizon should never be slighted—a worn-down teacher, yes, that can be ignored—but the view he had clung to his whole adult life, no, that deserved reverence.
Rockwall noticed the twelve-pack of Mexican-branded beer in his kin’s hand.
The father sighed and said:
—I haven’t had my coffee yet.
Rockwall’s son turned his back on the gulf and leant against the railing. Removing the bottle opener attached to his car keys from his front pocket, he opened two bottles without responding. The retiree took his beer submissively.
The young man drank half the auburn bottle’s contents in a gulp. A relaxed grin spread across his countenance.
—I wanted to celebrate, the son spoke suddenly.
Rockwall’s gaze was back on the water.
—I wanted to celebrate because Joanne is pregnant.
The son laughed:
—And I think I’m going to name the kid Rockwall. Even though it’s a terrible first name for a boy, if it is a boy I mean, I’m going to name him Rockwall.
The soon-to-be-father downed his beer and opened a second.
In the distance, silhouetted birds hovered about silently. Rockwall stopped counting them. The expansive waters were still sacred, that was no was no question. But now he breathed freedom and release and eternity all at once as only an apostate can.
The retired school teacher smiled and asked his son for another bottle.
