The Salt Path

by Raynor Winn

‘It’s not quite like that.’ ‘Oh, it is, man, if you haven’t got to go back, you’re free, living the life. Good on ya, guys.’

Living with a death sentence, having no idea when it will be enacted, is to straddle a void. Every word or gesture, every breath of wind or drop of rain matters to a painful degree.

While we had space to think clearly, when death wasn’t hanging around the tent like a malevolent stalker, a thing to fear, Moth felt he had to say it.

‘Because I want you to keep me in a box somewhere, then when you die the kids can put you in, give us a shake and send us on our way. Together. It’s bothered me more than anything else, the thought of us being apart. They can let us go on the coast, in the wind, and we’ll find the horizon together.’

It had been said; death had been acknowledged. He would fight, but eventually he’d lose. Moth had been strong enough to see this from the start; now I was calm enough to know it was true and let it be.

‘No, well, yeah, had it all, wife, kids, house. Then it all just fell apart. Embarrassment to them now.’ We sat in silence. What was there to say? He didn’t have to explain to us how easy it is for a life to fall apart.

How can there be so few individuals who understand the need for people to have a space of their own?

Skin on longed-for skin, life could wait, time could wait, death could wait. This second in the millions of seconds was the only one, the only one that we could live in. I was home, there was nothing left to search for, he was my home.

Days passed. Heavy driving rain came from the west in banks of purple angry cloud; forked lightning danced across the sea; light rain drifted from the south in gentle cloaks of dampness falling from impenetrable grey skies. Dark black nights were lit by endless pinpoints of light, sparking with shooting stars in profusion, the late summer Perseids, meteor showers from another world.

‘That’s amazing. I want to do something big and life-changing like that, but it’s scary, it puts me off.’ ‘Scary? You’ve come to a foreign country to work – how can going for a walk be scary compared with that?’ ‘A group of us came together, just a gap-year sort of thing. No, what you’re doing is an expedition, an adventure, a trial. It’s what I want; I want to know what I can do. Gap-year work hasn’t given me what I need. I need something, something inside.’

The shock of something going right is almost as powerful as when it goes wrong. We stared at each other not knowing what to say, as if by speaking we might wake from a dream and it wouldn’t be real.

The young Costa Rican café owner came out to join us and we danced in a circle like children. ‘Why are we dancing?’ ‘Because we have a roof.’ ‘Is this a great thing?’ ‘The greatest.’ ‘Then we should dance more.’

At last I understood what homelessness had done for me. It had taken every material thing that I had and left me stripped bare, a blank page at the end of a partly written book. It had also given me a choice, either to leave that page blank or to keep writing the story with hope. I chose hope.