The Van Knows My Name

The boatman’s shout bothered me more than the van did. Men like that remember the useful parts of you: your face, your hands, the job you thought everyone had forgotten. He looked at the scar on my wrist as though it were a receipt, and I nearly laughed because he was only half wrong. Half wrong is enough to keep a man awake.

I keep wondering who sent the van and what they expected me to recognise. There was no need to leave its side door unlatched. That is either laziness or an invitation, and I distrust invitations from strangers. The locked door would have felt honest. The open one makes me imagine a hand waiting inside.

The old sealed place has been sitting behind my teeth all day. I did not hand over what I took from it. I told myself the circumstances were confused, that certainty had not arrived, that keeping it was the only honest choice available. That excuse has aged badly. If the van came because of the old diving work, then somebody knows more than I thought. If it came because of what I kept, then somebody else has been keeping score too.

I wanted to fear the dark cave approach, but the thing tightening in my chest was not the cold. It was the possibility that I might have been wrong to stay away all these years. I would rather risk a bad tide than hear the truth in somebody else’s voice.