Bill Weisler

He did not often go down on the beach. It was too big, too wide and flat, and the water worried him. Why did the breakers always come in, even against the wind? It seemed like they might go out when the tide went out and come in when it came in, but even with an east wind and the tide on the ebb the waves came straight against the land and bashed and broke themselves against it. The sound of them underlying all other sounds in his life was peaceful to him, but not the sight of them senselessly breaking. And sometimes the great breadth of the beach and the sea discomforted him. It was not the terror, the feeling he dreaded so much that his mind would touch it only with the two fingers of the two words he had for it, “falling black,” but only an uneasy sense of dwindling, weighing nothing, in the great desolation of the wind. As a kid down on the beach he had enjoyed that feeling of being nothing, free, but that was a long time ago. Back then, too, sometimes there had been nobody else on the beach all day. These days there was always somebody else. Town was full of them, even on weekdays. The only way to keep away from them was to stay in and work.

He had put too much sand in the bucket. It didn’t look like a lot, but as soon as he started to lift it he knew the metal handle would pull right out of the plastic. He tipped the faded orange bucket and let sand well out onto sand. When it was half empty he lifted it cautiously and lugged it over the dune onto Searoad. He put the bucket on the floor of his pickup and climbed in, reaching into his right front jeans pocket for the key. The pocket was empty.