the body in all small letters
The sky is a blue eggshell and its spots move and dive on the horizon. Barges drift by and slowly come to a halt as they wait to be let into the bay, close enough to cast waves large enough to propel you onto a beach from half a mile out. As the water climbs towards the shore the small fish that had been nibbling at your ears scatter.
You’re cool. your body temp being somewhere in the fifties.
The fog moved in sometime in the night, and it smothers and scatters the sun until it breaks from a disc into a ripped-up styrofoam plate.
You’re oddly intact. Had the current pushed you down and not up you’d have settled by now, bloated and pale, but as it happened the currents wouldn’t let you be until they finally just spit you out alongside a menagerie of shells and half a tractor tire. What’s left of your lips is stained blue, blue as your one remaining eye. Clear fishing wire is tangled around your hand; the hook digs into your wrist. You don’t bleed.
Rising above sand dunes opposite the water is a white pickup truck, one of the trucks with a single wide seat and a cardboard box for a cupholder; the box has been in use for so long that its base is softer than the holy leather seat in the cab of the truck.
It’s 11:11 AM.
A fisherman steps out to pull his equipment from the bed as his young daughter tries to unknot the sticky string of a yo-yo she’d found on the beach the other day. There’s not much wind, but it’s January and cool enough that the fisherman wouldn’t allow the girl to come fishing with him without wearing a lint-lined hoodie.
The tide is rising.
“Des,” the fisherman calls. “Get the chairs.”
She puts the yo-yo down and jumps out of the cab, wiping her palms on her jeans and cringing at the residual stickiness. Her father hands her the chairs and waves her off so he can light a cigarette without getting smoke in her face. His fishing poles are sat leaning in the crook of his arm.
Not even halfway through the cigarette he hears a noise.
Noises--a five-second cacophony.
It’s the cracking of plastic hitting plastic and
the gentle thud of plastic hitting the
wet sand close to the water on the other side of the dune. He can see the top of Des’s hood over said dune. When she doesn’t reply to his calls he drops the cigarette and allows the poles to clatter against the truck.
He trips up and over the loose dune, almost landing on his face against the tide-darkened hard-packed sand.
She just stares.
You stare back. Or what’s left of you, tangled in the netting and seaweed. Curious seagulls are already waddling towards you, only to be scared off by a stocky man falling over himself to make sure his daughter is alive.
“Destiny?”
She tries to comprehend what she’s seeing. This isn’t the face of death she knows--that face is a rosy-cheeked old woman dressed in her Sunday best. This isn’t even a face.
It doesn’t take long for the police to arrive. All he has to say is, “East End,” and dispatch knows. It’s the stretch of beach with the old World War II bunker remains that face towards the bay, bordered by a state wetland and a single tower of condos. The first drop off is close to shore, making it a favorite spot for crabbers, fishermen, and pelicans.
An impersonal officer launches into a barrage of questions. It’s more like filling out a form than talking to a human.
Do you know who this is?
“No.” The girl is talking to a friendly EMT. She’s sitting on the tailgate, messing with the antenna on the cell phone.
How long ago did you find the body?
“I didn’t...a half hour?”
Is this exactly where you found the body?
“Why would I have touched it?”
For the time being, your name is the body, in all small letters, of course. You make the paper under this pseudonym, but still you don’t remain anonymous.
Somewhere in the conversation the officer hesitates. The fisherman relaxes, but then the officer’s voice stays impersonal for the remainder of the conversation. He wondered whether the hesitation had been a breakthrough bit of human empathy or a diskette malfunction. The fisherman lights another cigarette and the cop gets annoyed. He feels bad, but not bad enough to waste a whole cigarette.
Blue gloves edge over ashen skin. Bare human touch is no longer for you.
What’s left of you, anyway.
