The Wool of the Sea

The copper helmet smelled of vinegar and old sweat, a private kitchen where Nikos had spent thirty years of his life. He sat on the bench of the St. Nicholas, his legs spread wide to support the forty-pound lead boots that his nephew was buckling to his ankles. The water in the Anclote River was yellow-green and smelled of rotten cabbage, but out on the reef, three miles from the mouth, it would be as clear as Greek gin. He could feel the engine’s vibration through his thighs, the old diesel cylinder firing with the heavy, uneven beat of an old horse’s heart.

His nephew, Costa, handed him the heavy brass breastplate, his fingers greasy with tallow from the air-pump gaskets. Costa was nineteen and wanted to buy a fiberglass boat with an outboard, a vessel that didn't require seven tons of gear and a crew of three to lift a basket of sheep’s wool sponges from the rocks. Nikos let his head sink into the canvas neck-seal, his eyes fixed on the small, square glass ports that would be his only window onto the world for the next two hours, where the light would change from yellow to pale, cold blue.

He took a deep breath of the pump-air, which came down the rubber hose with the faint taste of machine oil and hot rubber. He stepped onto the iron ladder, his weight doubling with every step, and let the grey water rise over his visor until the sun became a shifting, yellow coin in a pool of ink. Below him, the sea-floor was a forest of yellow sponge and red sea-whips, their fingers swaying in the current like the hair of women who had died in the long wars of his childhood, their spirits still waiting for the sponge-boats to bring them home.