Smile

It’s nuts, isn’t it?

How you can just know about someone?

Never seen them before. Don’t know their name. Yet in a glance, you know the whole of them. Like everything about them was already written, and you read the book in a summer’s breath.

I think it’s why I come to the pier—the warm, prickling heat of the sun, the misty salt in the air, the ocean waters and its spoken word. It’s a library of lives. And it changes its shelves every day.

Sure.

A lot aren’t worth reading—most people are just different kinds of the same. But every now and then, you come across a good find. One that’s worth more than a glance. The kind worth taking home, snuggling up with on the couch, and getting to know word by word.

That’s what everyone’s fishing for, I think.

Sometimes it’s hard. There’s a lot of people on the pier, and it’s busy work getting to know them all in a few seconds. Wading through them is like wading through the shallows. Most are just the kinds of stories that make you feel like one of them. Those, you just have to put back on the shelf.

The karaoke singer can’t get five dollars in a hat. A man in a Jesus Saves t-shirt speaks into a mic for no one to hear. Ice cream falls from a cone, and a four-year-old learns what the end of the world feels like. There’s an old wrinkled couple sitting silently on a bench, watching seagulls. They don’t touch. They don’t talk. Just watch.

A crowd busies and goes, but they just sit.

I read how the years hollowed them out until there were no words left between them.

And I wonder—

Is there happiness in the silence?

Their book doesn’t give you an answer.

The hot part of the day is done, and the sun is doing its best work. It never paints so well as when it’s over the waters. Pinks and purples and peaches, with a kind of visual harmony that makes you hold your breath. Makes you feel beautiful things.

I like to feel beautiful things.

For a long while, I lean on the rail. Watch the sun do its magic on its canvas.

The air cools.

The ocean whispers.

A breeze skips along the pier with a bundle of laughing children.

The fishermen are out, baiting hooks and throwing lines.

And I see him.

Tall and slender. An unbuttoned shirt billows around him like it wants to join the clouds. His dark, curly hair needs fingers to run through it.

I don’t know him. I’ve never seen his ruddy face before. Not on this pier.

He’s got a good fishing rod in his hand, and the white bucket at his feet is full of fish.

For five seconds, my eyes cradle him.

He caught me peeping.

A purple evening blushes.

It’s a warm, handsome smile with sunset eyes. Part of me wants to wrestle it off his face under the covers. Another part wants to hide under my bed.

It’s just a smile, goddammit.

A kind stranger.

But somehow…

I just know it’s an invitation to hell.

When I was a kid, it was:

— Don’t take candy from strangers.

— Don’t get in the car with people you don’t know.

They never talked about smiles.

There’s a thousand miles of bad decisions in a smile. Lonely country. No breaks—just a lotta wishin’ you were someplace different with nowhere else to be.

His eyes twinkle.

It’s a good smile.

Uncle Jésus had a good smile—just like Daddy’s. But Daddy isn’t getting out—not this side of heaven—and my uncle isn’t getting up.

Our eyes kiss. Mine prance away like a doe.

I wonder what his breath tastes like. Wonder if I would like it. If he would like mine…

Suddenly, everything tastes like a coffin. Flat and chalky, like dusty ash.

He doesn’t stop looking.

I don’t stop wanting him to.

But my insides knot and slither.

I wonder if he could love me without touching.

The fishing rod bobs.

His eyes dart away. His hands wind and his arms pull. He’s got strong arms.

He’s smiling another kind of smile now.

I want a smile to mean sunshine—

Like all the good, happy things you feel on the first day of summer.

Picnics. Seashores. Scrunching toes in sand so hot it hurts. A top-down car ride. Music and popsicles. Or the way your kids run to you after daycare.

Or, holding hands in a meadow, fingers intertwined. A soft breeze and kind eyes. When angel wings stir and the summer air tickles with their feathers.

I want it to be Daddy’s arms on the couch.

The fisherman’s smile isn’t that kind of smile. None of them are.

But maybe.

He wheels his haul over the siding. It’s a big fish.

It tries to fight the fisherman’s fingers away.Gasping for breath. But the hook’s in it. It can’t get away.

He clubs its brains out on the wood.

I wonder if he’d hit me that hard.

The fish stops moving. Stops fighting.

Our eyes touch again.

I want them like I want warm banana bread fresh from the oven.

But his hands are bloody.

Handsome smile and, “My name’s Jésus.”

He dumps the fish in the bucket.

His lips bend deliciously—

But I see the hook.

It’s an open grave yawning, fishing for another soul.

I have to leave. His eyes can’t understand, even though they twinkle. His fingers catch my elbow. A wounded gaze.

His fingers are light as a spider. My skin crawls.

It’s a long run back to the beach. I don’t stop. I can’t. I won’t get back in that car. I won’t be taking any story home today.

I cross the road and run the walk. A nun holds a door open and I’m inside.

Panting.

Breathing.

A line draws me forward beside wood benches.

The air smells smoky—

But not like ash.

For the first time, I look behind me.

He isn’t there.

But why would he be?

Daddy made sure Jésus would never get up.

I breathe free air again.

Then I’m standing before a coffin. A dead man I don’t know. He kinda looks like him.

Above him: Jesus Christ. But He isn’t dead yet.

He looks at me from under all those bleeding thorns, stretched up on that cross, and I wonder. His fingers nailed away so they can’t touch me. His eyes don’t move.

They just cradle me.

He doesn’t smile. He’s just sad.

Silence and no words.

But in the stillness: peace.

And that’s how I knew.