In the offing Dante’s moon hung like a pearl etched through a pale blue sky above the sea. Mitchell leaned into the eye of his concentration, he beheld the primordial expanse so long the reason for his living and his heart suddenly uncaged raced into the wild. Huge swells rose out of the depths and lowered foamed heads and broad blue shoulders into the bow, vibrating the hull to the ocean’s ageless beat. Mitchell rose without thought into the helm as wind raved through the hard strain of the gear. Prisms of crystal spray. His legs were soaked and freezing, his body ached as it never had before and he knew in that moment why he had come...

To exhaust every muscle and all his sinew, to leave behind, at long, long last, his tacit yearnings for green summer grasses and the casual sidestepping, sidestepping, sidestepping with arms reaching and balancing while a ragged old hard ball arced across a blue afternoon. He popped his fist into the worn leather palm of his outfielder’s glove. He planted his feet...

No more swimming out beyond the surf with head and arms hurling in muscled syncopation, lungs pulling for oxygen, shoulders and hips churning through water boiling over his back and buttocks in the furious exultation of free-styling...

No more sneaking into road houses along the beach for cold beer and dancing to amplified music while a back-beat pounded the crowded streets where bikers and cops flaunted machismo in an uneasy truce, watching traffic and women in summer clothes.

"It’s gone!" Mitchell shouted. "All gone! I am the helmsman of a broad-beamed forty-foot sloop tumbling madly through the earth’s liquid, sails full! Fly sloop! Fly out past the moon, run among the stars! Rush on forever!" His tears blew away. "Go home," he whispered. "Go free."