Tilting at Windmills [Althea/Vasco]

V A S C O

'Cause your whole heart's a village

Everyone you love has built it

And I've been working there myself

And that's where I'll be

Watching the television as a child, I remember a twinge of jealousy at seeing the sandy shores of district four. While we stalked rows of corn or plucked apples from orchards, there were boats floating off the coast in an open sea here, skirting the edge of the world. Part of the thought was terrifying, that anyone could drift away or be swallowed up by the waves. If they pushed far enough, would they disappear across the edge of the map and never return? Or was there another world that’d been kept from us, a secret place with golden shores and a fresh start?

Making up stories when we’re young, you give yourself another place to live. A space where we could disappear when the days were too hot, or the nights too long. Close your eyes and imagine the breeze sweet with a wind off the shore. A gentle rock of a boat to lull a boy to sleep, or better, to dream of a place safe and warm. Imaginary stories that sit in children’s hearts because they dare to dream of what could be, rather than what must’ve been. Yani still dreams, still whispers out imaginary tales of spaceships taking flight to the moon.

I’m not my father, telling her that fantasies are meant to break her heart. I’d rather she found a world unspoiled, of the possible. Hope wasn’t foolish in the heart of a child so long as she learned to love without grief.

Men and women idle along the pier pulling hauls off their boats. They chatter about their catches, the way the seas twisted and turned. A joke about whether or not rain will come (there’s always rain here, one shouts to another) and I watch the dance between work and play, these fisherfolk settling into an afternoon rhythm. Few give me a second glance, too busy to bother with an old man out by the docks, even if he’s less sailor than sore thumb in this crowd.

I walk down along the boardwalk that extends up along a set of dunes out toward an empty beach. Sun high overhead, if I hadn’t been used to the humidity of eleven might’ve fought for a piece of shade. Except here there’s a breeze that cuts across and slips up my shirt to cool the sweat on my back. Waves crash along the shore and echo up through the dunes. I watch the foam slide in over the rocks, and the slow and steady slide of sand forming rivulets across the tide. There’s peace here, a sense of calm that the ocean gives.

Back when I lost Raquel, I used to think of being out in the waves, and how a great storm would make them impossible to swim through. Time would settle the waves, so long as I didn’t let myself slip under. And I kept kicking, still was, even now – though I wonder if I was unfair to the ocean seeing it now, a space that brought more calm than grief.

I slip off my shoes and edge my way out onto the sand, making sure to leave the old boots out at the stairs leading up to the boardwalk.

I stand in the tide, hands in my pockets, jeans cuffed up to let the water splash over my ankles. I flex my toes through the brown sand that collects each time a wave comes rumbling in.

There’s an election this year, so anything done here could be in vain. My name could be bumped off the ticket and someone else could be sitting here in six months. Reasons why venturing to form a compact with a mayor, one that pushed for radical peace, might have been foolish as it sounded.

What was it they said about tide and time?

I’m sitting back on the splintering wood of the boardwalk when I can see Mayor Perch coming from the docks. I lean my hands back behind me and turn to give a smile at her approach. Maybe a tad informal for a man on a mission, but I’m too settled to have the same nerves as I’d had meeting Pierre in eight. Even as much as I’d heard about the formidable Althea, I’d surrendered to the crash of the ocean in the distance. No need to worry about what would transpire today if much bigger waves lurked beyond that.

“Mayor Perch,” I stare out the waves another second before pressing my hands to my knees and pushing myself up. “It’s an honor to get a chance to meet you. Too long in coming, but – ” I wipe a hand along my jeans before pushing it forward. “We have to start somewhere, hmm?”

"I trust you know I'm not just here for the view, nice as it is?"