The Coffin Maker’s Husband

I knew I was dying when the salt lost its taste.

Everything else was still there—the sway of the ship, the groan of wet ropes, the stench of fish and oil and unwashed bodies—but the salt, that sacred taste of the ocean on my tongue, was gone. It was like my mouth had turned to wood.

I lay in the dark hold of the Pequod, fever boiling in my skull, and watched the light tremble through the cracks above. Ishmael sat near, pretending not to watch me die.

He was whittling something. Badly.

His hands shook too much for carving, but he needed to keep them busy. The little figure in his lap—some shapeless wooden thing, a whale or a god or a man—split clean down the middle with his last slip of the blade. He didn’t curse. Just stared at the broken piece and tucked it in his pocket.

“You should eat,” he said softly, in English too stiff and formal, the kind he used when he was scared.

I turned my head toward him. It felt like trying to move a mountain.

“No hunger,” I rasped.

He didn’t argue. Just poured water into the tin cup and held it to my lips. His hand brushed my beard. Cool fingers. A tremor beneath them.

I drank because he wanted me to.

Because I was afraid if I didn’t, I’d never feel that hand again.