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…