I never liked boats. Or water. Not in real life, anyway. In movies, of course. Water was where cool things got revealed. Pirates, baptisms, sharks, river gods. But in real life, water was a thief that swallowed sons and left fathers with grief. But I couldn’t tell Junior all this when he asked to go to the beach. If I died today, I’d have nothing to leave him, and God forbid I let him inherit my fears.

So, on the weekend of his eleventh birthday, we left Ofada before sunrise. Junior had been up before me, packing his old school bag with shorts, a fresh notebook he said he might write stories in, and our copy of Lord of the Flies. I’d given him my old copies of Achebe, Golding, Emecheta, Gogol. The books I read only to pass WAEC and then forget. But out of all of them, Lord of the Flies stuck. He’d read it three times in two months and brought it again, just in case. It was the beaches that got him, the idea of sand meeting sea, of places cut off from the world, where boys ruled themselves and everything felt possible. As we waited for the bus to move at Berger, he asked if Tarkwa Bay would look like the island in the book.

“Maybe not the same,” I said. “But it’s still a kind of island.”

He nodded, forehead pressed to the window, naming everything like it was his to rename. I smiled, but my chest was tight. I was thinking about my own father, the way he used to let me sleep on his shoulder on long trips, the way he got smaller in my eyes every year after I turned twelve, until I stopped wanting to be like him. These roads, this commute, were memoirs of his shrinking: Maruwa Gardens by the express where he begged his friend for money and then fell to his knees in tears when the man pretended not to know him; Yaba market, where we sold our Sunday clothes to afford malaria drugs for me; CMS where he promised we’d one day shop for Christmas gifts. We never did. I wondered if I had already begun to shrink in Junior’s eyes.

At the NAPEX jetty, the boat bobbed like it was waiting to be convinced. Junior leapt in. I hesitated. The captain saw my fear as I climbed in and extended a hand of support. I had checked my blood pressure before we left. High again. But I didn’t bring my meds because I didn’t want Junior worrying at all during this trip.

“This is going to be the best day ever,” Junior said, leaning over the side, watching foam scatter like soap in a basin. “Thanks for this, Daddy.”

I smiled but said nothing.

“Oga,” the captain whispered to me. “I’ve carried this boat to Tarkwa every day for eight years. It is the hope of floating that keeps me. The only thing that kills on water is fear.”

—–

We stepped off the boat and Junior ran ahead, his feet sinking into the sand, barefoot already, already laughing. The beach was nothing like the movies. There was no clear blue, no white foam like whipped cream, just brown tide with seaweed and plastic bottles stuck on the shore. But he didn’t care. What matters is not how beauty arrives, but that it comes.

He tossed sand into the air just to watch it fall. Chased the tide like it was running from him, then screamed when it lunged back. Then he darted toward a group of children building something with plastic cups and bottle caps, crouched beside them like he’d known them all his life. Within minutes, he was in the middle of a game, laughing with his whole body.

I found a spot near a cluster of cabanas and spread out a mat. From there, I watched him play. One of the children had Shortbread and Capri-Sonne in his hands and another had a speaker playing Davido. E ma dami duro, E mi omo babalowo. They sang along with voices that sounded like their tongues had never tasted disappointment. Their father showed up a few minutes later and I saw that they meant every word they sang. He wore a Polo shirt with linen trousers and had a DSLR camera hanging like a pendant. He looked like the kind of man who listened to classic jazz not afrobeats, but sang Tuface’s African Queen at karaoke to blend in with people like us. He tapped all of the children’s heads except Junior’s, nodded at some women nearby, then walked to a fold-out chair someone had already set up for him. I sat there in my faded tee and old trainers, my shirt already sticky with sweat, my armpits wet. My mouth was dry, but I told myself it was just the sea breeze. It wasn’t. I plugged in my Oraimo airpods, pressed play and started singing – Sometimes food no dey give man strength, but Canadian loud, the feeling is different.

I can lie to myself, but I can’t lie to God, I used to think there’d be more to this. That there’d be a wife more beautiful than I deserved, maybe a foreign used Toyota and an apartment in Yaba with a fan that didn’t squeal. But what I got was a Sports and Health Education job with a flat on the school ground that pays just enough to survive while I clapped for other people’s children.

Junior called out to me, waving his hands, and I heard him with my eyes, so I waved back. He held up an invisible conch and blew into it like he was calling a meeting, and I pretended to rise with great ceremony, stumbling over the mat like someone summoned back from exile. He laughed so hard and, for a moment, we were just two boys playing—one still becoming, the other remembering how.

—–

Junior had taken off his shirt and was running into the water with his new friends. I had shouted to him to stay close to shore, and he had nodded, eyes already somewhere else. The tide was calm then. Low, even. The sea stretched out like a woman sunbathing in the prime of her youth, perfect and shiny. I felt the wind shift as I sat on my mat, watching the boys dart in and out, falling and rising with the little waves. Then the water shifted too. No roar, no thunder. Just something off in the rhythm. One of the boys stood still, staring at something behind them. Then another turned. After that, the world moved at the speed of light

A wall of water rose behind them, tall enough to eat the sky. It curled inward, folding light and air into itself. Junior was still in the water, the other children too. Eyes wide. Mouths wider. But no sound reached me, the blood in my ears had become a drum. I stood up and took a few steps forward but stopped. My legs heavy, terror rattling within my heart’s cage, leaving no room for courage to remain, no room for all the love I still had to give my son. Only terror was left because I couldn’t swim. I couldn’t save him.

Somewhere in that chaos of flailing arms and desperate splashes, I saw my son—the one good thing I’ve done with my life—fight against becoming one with the sea. I saw him lose, his eyesight, his breath, then his will. My throat burned with the cry I couldn’t release. Help him. Help him. Some of the boatmen who were around ran past me, fearless and fluid, trusting their legs till they were one with the tide and then trusting their lungs. I stood back, knees trembling, with salt on my lips that wasn’t from the sea as they pulled the children out one by one. I counted heads till I saw Junior in the arms of the captain, who had brought us in his boat. Junior was coughing, soaked, eyes frightened like the first time he saw the world, till he saw me. He broke free from the captain even before his feet touched the ground and ran with shaky legs and wide open arms and crashed into my chest. I held him tighter than I ever had. His body trembled. Mine too. We stayed like that for a while, heart to heart, trying to make space again for the love that fear had pursued to the margins.

—–

The wind retreated and the water folded back into itself like nothing had happened. Junior sat wrapped in my shirt, arms tight around his knees. His new friends were gone, collected by parents. The boy with the speaker left his music behind, still playing something soft about joy. His father, the polo man, came over with a dry towel and a bottle of Lucozade. He crouched beside Junior and covered him with it.

“You his father?” Polo man said, rising, brushing sand from his knees.

I nodded.

“Your boy is brave,” the Polo man continued. “Held on to his friend the whole time. My boy wouldn’t be here if not for him”.

I smiled. “Thank you.”

“What do you do?” he asked, not unkindly.

I hesitated, wiped my hand on my shorts before shaking his.

“I teach… P.E. and Health. At a secondary school. In Ofada.”

“Ofada,” he repeated, like he was searching his mind for a map. “You live around there?”

I nodded again. That was all I could offer. That was the whole truth.

He didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked back at Junior. “He’s a bright kid. Curious. Has a calmness to him. My boy took to him right away.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I just smiled again.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, reaching for his phone, “maybe they can keep in touch, maybe your son can visit us in Ikoyi sometime. Of course, I’d sort out the logistics.”

I forced my hand steady as I typed my number in.

“Thank you,” I said and I meant it. Even though my insides were hollow and the shame in my belly could not sit still.

“We’re staying at the guesthouse just up the hill. You and Junior are welcome to join us for dinner later. We could even get a room for you folks, I’m sure there’s some vacancies still.”

I knew JayBee Guesthouse. I had seen the pictures of the neat rooms, red tiled roof and swimming pool on Google photos when I searched for accommodation options for the trip and I remembered that a room for a night cost half my monthly salary.  I could not bring myself to respond, to accept a gift I could not afford or to reject a comfort my son deserved. Only a few things can hold silence the way shame does, sewn heavy with the thread of every regret that led to that place.

Polo man didn’t press on; he was the one that nodded this time before slowly walking away. For the first time all day, I thought of my father not as a man who failed, but as someone who once stood just like I did in that moment, with love in his hands but no means to turn it into anything tangible that a child could see and touch.

—–

Our tent sagged slightly to the left, the zip stuck halfway. Junior ate indomie and egg under the orange light of the tent bulb, his head bowed like he was praying. I sat across from him, peeling the skin off a sachet of water, pretending it was enough. When he was done eating, Junior lay down, back turned, towel still wrapped around him, one foot sticking out like he’d meant to stay awake just a little longer. I didn’t try to move him. Just watched his back rise and fall until the rhythm slowed enough to trust.

There’s a silence of mind that settles after fear leaves. I know it’s not peace, but I also cannot put it into words. I just know to run from it. So, I turned toward the flap of the tent and let air in, along with the smell of suya and something else that smelled sweet. I looked out as if my eyes could trace the scent and saw the moon, low and half full like a child, playfully spying from behind a curtain of clouds.

“I don’t have much,” I said looking up to the sky. Not loud. Not soft either. “But I have him. And he still looks at me like I’m worth looking up to.”

The moon didn’t blink, so I continued.

“If having mind is all I can give him, no wahala. Let it be enough.”

I turned around and touched Junior’s back lightly, just to feel him breathing. Still here. Still mine. He stirred but didn’t wake. Then I looked back to the moon.

“If there’s a God,” I said, “let Him be softer with this boy than He ever was with me. And if there’s a Devil—and I’m not saying there is, but if there is—let him look at Junior and decide he’s not worth the trouble.”

I shifted because the mat was too thin and I felt an ache behind my knees.

“Let him have enough to take care of himself and whoever he ends up loving,” I said. “Enough to eat, enough to sleep well. Not so much that he forgets what it feels like to need.”

The nylon roof rustled in the wind and so I held it still.

“And let him never be so hungry that he eats what’s meant for his own son… Let the light he’s chasing not burn him… Let the road he chooses carry him far, sure. But let it always bring him home, too. To somewhere safe. To someone waiting…Let him…”

Junior turned slightly. His eyes cracked open.

“Daddy, are you sleep-talking again?”

I didn’t answer. I just smiled into the dark.

He yawned, pulled the towel tighter, and said, barely awake, “Today was the best day ever.”

Then he was gone again.

My chest finally felt loose and suddenly I could hear music and laughter from teenagers somewhere down the beach, as if I had finally regained permission to feel joy.

—–

The sky peeled open without any fanfare, without any birdsong, just a quiet kind of light that slipped into the tent like it knew not to wake a child too fast. But Junior was already awake, crouched at the mouth of the tent, staring out at the water. I sat up slowly, my neck stiff because the mat hadn’t softened overnight.

“What do you want to do this morning before we leave?” I asked.

He didn’t even turn, so I tried again. “Do you want to go into the water?”

This time, he looked at me with firm eyes that said—You saw what happened. You know what the sea tried to do to me—accusing me of betrayal. I didn’t try to defend myself. Instead, I reached for my slippers, stood, and stretched.

“Come,” I said after a while. “Follow me.”

He hesitated but got up. We walked down to the water in silence. The shore was empty except for two boatmen loading up for the day and a few crabs dragging themselves sideways into their holes. The sea was calmer now, whispering things it had shouted the day before. When we got to the shoreline, Junior stopped. There’s always a line where dreams end and despair begins, where fear mounts a wall and faith is required to surmount it. He wasn’t ready to cross this line. His toes curled into the sand.

“We won’t go far,” I said. “Just a few steps.”

He looked at me, unsure. I nodded with eyes that said—You know I will carry you if I have to.

He followed. We stepped a few paces in until the water reached our ankles. Then we sat, right there where the water could touch us, where it could come and go as it pleased.

“It’s alright to be scared,” I said.

Junior didn’t speak. He just watched the sea.

“But we have to rise above and stay afloat,” I continued. “Even when the waves knock us over. Especially then.”

The water rose again, kissing our shins. We stayed there a while, till the sun climbed slowly, casting everything in gold—the sand, the sea, even our silence. Beside me, Junior’s shoulders softened, just a little. I didn’t know if he had forgiven the water, or me, or if he ever would. But in that moment, we let the waves wash what yesterday left behind. Not to forget. Just to begin again. The hope of floating had carried us thus far. And maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to take us the rest of the way.

About the Author:

Nnamdi Ehirim is a Nigerian writer whose work has appeared in Afreada, The Republic Journal, and Electric Literature. His debut novel, Prince of Monkeys, was published by CounterPoint Press in 2019, and his second novel, The Brevity of Beautiful Things, was published by Ouida Books in 2025. His writing often explores the intimate tensions between personal histories and public landscapes.

Feature image by Danielle Suijkerbuijk on Unsplash