Coming Upon--Situations

Happy hour had arrived. Friends and I decided to walk to our neighborhood sound beach, a place where we enjoy the close of the day while pondering current events, family matters, and other topics of interest. We are accustomed to taking drinks and our chairs with us. However, that day, because the wind was strong, we decided to postpone happy hour until after our walk, leaving our libations and comforts at home. I make note of this so that you know strong drink, critical speculation, malicious gossip nor soft seating influenced us.

The winter storms had driven pillows of now drying sea grass on the beach, in some places several feet high. Its spongy thickness softened our footfalls as we walked slowly to the shoreline. At our backs, the wind gusted from due east. We pondered if the wind’s direction had driven the seagulls to find shelter on the sound rather than their usual ocean beach habitat. Their presence would have interfered in our enjoyment of happy hour had we not decided to postpone. Sea birds have a nasty habit of opening their canned food by grasping tasty bivalve scallops in their beaks, flying to great heights, and then dropping them like bombs on the beach. Gravity makes can opening efficient, but also creates hazards for unsuspecting humans.

I stepped judiciously through the broken scallop shells enjoying the sound view, but glanced inland to the marsh and was startled to see a flat-bottomed boat buried under the sea grass mounds on the beach. As we had walked down the declining beach, its presence had been completely obscured. From the shoreline, we could see that the boat, a type normally used in the sound’s shallow waters, was approximately eighteen feet long and its Japanese outboard motor was still attached. A small boat, its total depth was around four feet. Startled by its presence and our curiosity whetted, we all approached. Inside, the bench seats were still intact. Although sea grass filled the interior, we saw the steering wheel sticking up and a flotation devise’s blue color visible in the sea grass layers.

We stared at the boat pondering its presence. I tried to imagine, as I’m sure my friends did as well, the circumstances of how it had beached, filled with sea grass and had become buried on the beach. Who would leave a boat, motor attached, to the elements when even a small boat such as this cost about ten thousand dollars? And then, a metal object lying on the port railing glimmered in the last rays of the day’s sun. In mass, we moved closer and saw—handcuffs, only one half remaining with two links of chain intact.

Adjourning to the house for libations, we speculated on the half pair of handcuffs, what their presence might mean, and if the boat and the handcuffs were connected in story. We did not go back with shovels to find a body on the floor of the boat covered with sea grass. Our fiction will suffice and if there is a body, someone else will find it. We will scan the headlines to see if reality matches our imaginations, knowing that even if our reticence left a mystery, we left the scene untouched.