The Highest Tide: A Novel by Lynch Jim

Author:Lynch, Jim [Lynch, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2010-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

The next day the bay swarmed with boaters, rubberneckers and three television crews, as if a Loch Ness monster or a Sasquatch might appear, or a prophet might speak, if they just hung around and didn’t blink.

Several minutes after my parents sputtered off to work the same odd duo that visited the night before moseyed to the door. I noticed another eleven cult members beyond them, including one with a drooling baby in her backpack, shuffling in our driveway. The tall lady introduced herself as Carolyn and asked if she could talk to me for a minute.

We did that while the others sheepishly loitered, their hands folded in front of their privates, as if waiting on a principal or a priest. They all looked normal enough, other than that they seemed too friendly. Whenever I glanced in their direction they smiled the way Aunt Janet did if she hadn’t seen me for months.

After hearing Carolyn’s boring talk about their school and her exhausting apologies about their “intrusion” the night before, I asked whether their leader had a personality disorder. That answer got so long and boring, with all sorts of filler about religious mysteries and some “goddess of life,” that I interrupted to ask if she wanted me to show them the flats, seeing how it was an hour before low tide and I couldn’t bear listening to her any longer.

Her face bloomed as if I’d flattered her.

Once we shuffled to the beach, I treated them like third-graders. I told them to stick their heads between boulders to listen to the barnacles slamming their doors shut. Like most people, they couldn’t believe the crusty little bumps actually housed live animals, much less critters who sealed seawater inside their shells whenever the tide rolled out. I also explained how tube worms recoil and trap water with filaments that work like corks, and how snails contract and slide doors shut too, and how crabs and sand fleas burrow beneath rocks to stay as moist as possible until the tide returns.

Then I strolled onto the flats, showing them exactly where to walk and how to avoid sinking in the mud. I pointed out how tidal life descends into everything, every crack, every shell and even between grains of sand, how if they slowed down and relaxed their eyes, they could see that much of what looked stationary was moving, like the thirteen tiny hermit crabs I pointed out in identical brown and white checkered periwinkle shells. I showed them life on top of life, barnacles and limpets stuck to oyster shells, clinging to each other, piggybacking on larger shells and barnacles on top of everything, as if there’d been a Superglue party the night before.

Most kids just want to know about the biggest and grossest stuff. This group was interested in everything. They jockeyed for position to actually see me explain things to the point I wondered if some of them were lip-readers. Carolyn was the only one who asked questions. The others smiled whenever I poured on the details.

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