"They picked up the gear from the boat. The old man carried the mast on his shoulder and the boy carried the wooden boat with the coiled, hard-braided brown lines, the gaff and the harpoon with its shaft. The box with the baits was under the stern of the skiff along with the club that was used to subdue the big fish when they were brought alongside."                                     –Old Man and the Sea

                                               




The time had come to tidy up the fire pit by piling sand over the small flames but making sure to recover the warm periwinkle shells.  The Grandfather had handed the granddaughter a mesh bag to bundle her

shells and she had ducked off upshore in search of "a pair of Angel Wings," or she hoped, the "Baby's Ear."  She had flung the bag over her shoulder and half of her body tipped as she ran as a shadow, the 

coarse clinking of shells following her.  The grandfather shook his head and muttered to himself, "so hard to get them here, so hard to leave."  He could envision faded images of his own children, as if in square photographs, little monographs written perhaps in the corner, of the same thing, the same story over and over.  'It will come to them soon enough.  Every day is the adventure, of course.  Every day.  Not then, not tomorrow, but here and now.' The day would come when the granddaughter herself, a grown woman, would break the monotony of a day at the beach in Captiva and suggest a solo passage across the bluestream strait and glide over dolphins.  He smiled and lifted the noses of the two kayaks that had laid dormant on the hot dunes for half a day now.  The Willets had long gone; the last fin had submerged a hundred yards off beach; a spinnaker still stood 

a jagged silhouette like a toy in the distance.  He called her name several times, but not too loudly, the kayaks now bobbing as if they weighed nothing.  She arrived with the bag full and her other arm, cupped up against her sternum, glistening with dark shells.  "What about these?" she asked, "they don't fit in the bag, but I will never see these again.  What if there is another Junonia?" she asked, the innocent pout of the face saying everything. "Bring them if you can," he said, "I have an idea."  He lifted her from under her arms into the pit of her seat.  "You can tie your bag to the stern rope and drag it through the water, so you can paddle, how about that?"  The pout had turned to a smile. She carefully placed the other shells onto the floor of the kayak in a perfect order.  He pushed her off and the nose cut through the soft pastel

water toward the next landmass where palm trees, wide and black, stood immoveable against the coming night wind.