By Matthew Walsh
Carefully, they walk. The salt water had eaten away at the cement stairs. The staircase, chalky, brittle like an old woman’s arthritic bones, lead down to the water where few scattered people trace the water’s edge. The stairs are like decaying teeth, opening up to the mouth of the shoreline. What’s left of the stairs is covered by shreds of dried seaweed and discarded sea shells. Embedded in the sand are clam and mussel shells, urgently robbed of their meat by seabirds, capable thieves. Insectile bodies of urchins, dried out and hollow. Oysters, ridged with green algae disguised in stone-coloured suits. In the shallow water, a blue heron on her stilt legs. Feathers coloured like the spiralling smoke from a lit cigarette. She uses what remains of the light to spear the bellies of the white fish that swim around her patient legs. They swim, cutting through the water like silver knives. From the shore he sees the glittering. The air grows colder. The water changes from clear blue to greyish green, like a chameleon. Clouds collect in the sky like fabric snagged in the foot of a sewing machine. White-clawed crabs scuttle away from the seabirds. Some fall as victims, and the meat is pulled from their bodies by the bird beaks, like canned food. Across the way, blackbirds start to gather in the park. Shrill cries seem to be waiting for the moon. He walks along the shore, brown shoes sinking quietly into the soft sand. Horse flies collect on the freshly abandoned crab shells. starfish, their purple bodies the color of fresh bruises, the color of the evening sunset. Black-purple, almost menacing. The star-shapes creep silently across the shallow water. Under his sneakers, clam beds clack and bubble. Jellyfish, the slow-movers, or the dead ones are purged from the sea, torn up on the shore rock. Their bulbous forms resemble cancerous tumors removed from a throat, or lung, reduced to a purplish gelatine, shapeless. Horse flies hoard around the carcasses.
A withered man, crumpled in a blue truckers hat. The color of the hat sings against the dull, changing smoke-coloured sky. He sits along the wall that separates the shore from the park on the other side of the boardwalk. His plaid shirt is missing a few buttons; milk-brown pants have a red stain on the leg. He and his wife are selling paintings in the park, in the shade of the sitka trees. A jar of dirty paint water and brushes sit by his side, dark pink liquid circling around inside it. He’s smoking wine-dipped cigarettes. While he does this, he feeds a small group of metallic coloured pigeons breadcrumbs and corn. Greens, blues, and purples mirroring the colour of the horseflies. Old hands holding the paper bag of food for the birds, covered in liver spots. He doesn’t notice the moisture collecting in the air. It might rain.
There is a woman, further along the shore. A manual camera hangs from her neck. She wears a simple blue sweater. The same colour as the truckers hat. Over her legs is a skirt with tiny yellow butter cup flowers. The flowers have red-brick middles, green vines tracing tangled out of them, snaring themselves around purple diamond shapes. Her eyes look out over the water, and takes interest there. They seem to pause on something he can’t see in the horizon. Rain slowly begins to fall, tiny pellets of water. Now he is sitting barefoot, his toes dug into the cool sand despite the anticipation of rain. The woman is turning over rocks, watching the creatures retreat to another hidden location. She records the findings with her Nikon camera. It hangs on a paisley strap like a crucifix. Maybe lighter. She slides the rock back into place, making a sluggish sound. Her notebook rests on a nearby rock, the pages and being turned by an invisible hand. They flutter. She wipes her hands clean of wetness and small rocks on the back of her skirt. She sees a jellyfish, ripped and torn like rotten, moth eaten cloth. She snaps a picture of it. All the creatures are of great interest to her, the dead and live ones. She strides along the shore past him. Patchouli, ocean, wildflower. Her nail polish is chipped and red. Long hair dark and treacherous like the water, wavy. She stops by the stairs where the old man sits, smoking still. His second cigarette. His wife is calling him about collapsing the table, the rain is coming. She’s dressed in simple khaki’s and a white golf shirt. As the woman with the camera walks up the decayed stairs, she’s securing flowers in her notebook for drying, her heavy boots leaving deep impressions on the wet sand. The sky darkens as night falls around the figures like liquid.