Through the Night and Wind Excerpt (Chapter 10)

The following is an excerpt from the tenth and final chapter of my forthcoming novel, Through the Night and Wind (available this fall).

We breakfasted on bagels with cream cheese, apple slices
and mango jam. I then crammed my belongings into my great green backpack, caring little for my usual fold-and-roll routine; instead I stuffed and squeezed my dirty clothes in haphazardly with the worry-about-it-later mentality that often accompanies the end of a vacation. As I forced my gear into the bag, I realized that I’d seriously overpacked—in the week I’d been living on my dad’s boat, I’d worn a bathing suit almost all day every day (I brought two and alternated between them), and with the exception of the few times we’d gotten moderately dressed up to go ashore, I’d either gone shirtless or cycled through the few clean ones that floated near the top of my bag. I set out a fresh pair of underwear, cargo shorts and a Hanes pocket t-shirt, then figured I’d better bathe properly before I spent the next day crammed into the closest of quarters on three flights.

After packing, I ascended the stairs to the cockpit as the sun began its long, slow trudge over the verdant chains of islands and into the cloudless blue sky, before it scorched darkened locals and Coppertone-drenched tourists alike with its golden rays, before the light southeasterly breeze breathed life into starched white canvas sails, carrying long, slender boats across the glistening royal ocean and me, aloft in a shiny metal tube, into the nebulous heavens and north before sprinting across the amber waves of grain and purple mountains’ majesties, bound for another ocean, another body of salt water in which I could dip my toes and feel infinite.

Note: Through the Night and Wind will be available via Infinity Publishing's website as well as my own in October; it will show up at Barnes & Noble and Borders by the end of 2009.