A Story

My grandfather told me he shouldn’t have walked on the night beach. He told me this when he was dying and he was talking about when he had been a young man. He admitted he had been drunk that night. It was so dark. He said there was no moon at all, but the waves were a kind of moonlight where they broke on the shore. He came upon a man throwing a boy into the dark waves. The boy was squealing with laughter. He would come thrashing back to shore, loving the game. My grandfather said the boy was special. You could see it in his face, his eyes. I knew what he meant. He said the tall man gave him a dirty look and said something sharp to him. Told him to mind his own business and move on. My grandfather said he gestured at the night sea, at the waves, which were wild and growing wilder by the minute. But each time the stern man threw him, the boy just came thrashing back to shore, sometimes crawling on his arms, legs floating behind him. My grandfather passed on down the beach. When he returned a half hour later, he said, the boy was gone and the man was staring at the sea. Standing there. The man was wearing a suit, quite inappropriate for the beach. His fine shoes and clothing were soaked. A man in a three piece suit throwing a boy into the ocean. I see it. Those well-shined shoes sinking into the sand below the waves. My grandfather asked about the boy. The man said his mother had come and taken him back to their hotel. My grandfather passed on and said nothing to anyone except that one time, sixty years later, to me. And now I am on that dark moonless beach scouting the waves in my mind. Even years later. My grandfather left me an ocean.