Jimmy had gone down the local to say goodbye to another year. They were all enjoying some boozy philosophy when one poet said, "Life's a game of cards mate; did you play a good hand badly, or a bad hand well?"
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The question had started flying around in his head like a black cockatoo, wailing and flapping in wacky curves. It had kept Jimmy awake until he'd finally given up on sleeping at all. He'd been fishing off the ledge since 4am.
Sunrise was not far off and the beach in the distance was quiet now, the last reveller gone home to break resolutions made zealously a few hours before. The pelicans behind him were waiting, hoping either to steal his fish or to watch the next rogue wave wash him over the ledge. You could never be sure with pelicans.
Jimmy pondered the question. It was a bit like trying to untangle a fishing line wound around a net full of little sharks and puffer fish, with the odd bit of flotsam thrown in.
The ancient Egyptians weighed your heart against the feather of truth to determine if your life had been good or bad. He thought he was a pretty good person. Not as good as some, but no worse than most. He wasn't religious but he'd kept to the ten commandments. Well, mostly. There might have been a bit of coveting going on but it wasn't for his neighbour's wife. He also remembered that the ancients had liked to drag your vital organs out through your nose. Maybe every person needed a different feather of truth.
And the truth was that he had wanted more from life.
Long ago, he'd read Jonathon Livingston Seagull and the imagery of spectacular flight, the ideal of an unlimited freedom, had stayed with him. Jimmy liked to think he had chased life experience. Now he wondered what the hell it actually meant. The need for stimulation through constant change? No capacity for contentment? A compulsive search for validation? Was he really on an individual journey of his own or just another gull stuck in the flock; 'a coincidental collection of blood and feathers pointed toward oblivion'?
In the pre-dawn stillness, he was convinced he'd played the hands he was dealt badly; the good ones and the bad ones. The lost opportunities that came in the night to present him with kaleidoscopic what-might-have-beens were not all mirages. Although nothing makes a fish grow bigger than when it is almost caught, Jimmy knew he'd thrown back some beauties.
Jimmy liked to think he had chased life experience. Now he wondered what the hell it actually meant.
Maybe it was fatalistic thinking that had put the spoke in his wheel. That "everything happens for a reason" that he'd liked to use when the reason was that he'd made some bloody silly choices.
Jimmy had never settled on a career; he'd never really settled on anything. He was always looking for what came next. Working offshore jobs, he'd fancied himself as a bit of a drifter, a jack of all trades. He had talent, he worked hard, he had sporadic enthusiasms for a multitude of things, but he'd never once had dedication enough to really succeed at any of them. No discipline, he told himself. No drive. Or was it fear of failure?
With the lightning sky throwing twists of ruby through the clouds, he wondered if it was too late. The years had passed more quickly than he would have thought possible, and he'd just kept moving from one thing to another.
He told himself that he hadn't done anything that was REALLY stupid. Well, except for the night that Mick and himself had climbed on the roof of the pub, got naked and done the dance of the flaming . . . but no one had actually been hurt. He'd never really hurt anyone. An early-rising seagull squawked raucously. Maybe that wasn't strictly true either.
Trying to find a point in his favour, Jimmy told himself that he'd always been loyal to his mates; Jimmy would be there sitting next to you when you woke up in a jail cell. He'd found a few friendships of that rare kind over the years, built solidly on shared experiences, midnight beers and inside jokes. He had been at the lowest point in his life when one of those friendships collapsed. He could admit now that he'd also been acting like a tosser, but it had left a wound. You didn't tell everyone where your secret fishing spots were. For a while he had forgotten how to laugh at himself.
The air was fresh with the promise of a new year, the sun putting down warm, gentle fingers over the sea rim and touching the ledge where he stood. Reflection turned slowly and simply to gratitude; for countless moments of happiness, for the life he had lived, for today. Jimmy was never going to be the seagull that flew two hundred miles an hour in a perfectly spiralling dive. His was an ordinary life. And that was okay. He had lived times when the sheer joy of existence had burned him with its intensity and lived times of loss that had cracked his heart and sent him into a dark corner. He had survived both. And now a new love, for a small child with eyes the exact colour of his own.
He packed up his gear and said goodbye to the pelicans behind his back.
Jimmy decided that he hadn't played his cards as well as he could but he was still in the game and he would go on to do better.
***
Deborah John, the author of this piece, is a finalist in the 2022 Newcastle Herald Short Story Competition. Read the full list of finalists in this year's Herald Short Story Competition by visiting the Newcastle Herald website.
