Beach Patrol
It was a low day and I went down to look for stuff. It’s supposed to be illegal. Before, you couldn’t afford to live within fifty miles of here. Not long after, we moved right in. The others were all fighting over the huge houses so I had my pick of safer places. They probably all washed out in their sleep last week.
A new beach is soft, you want to test the ground with a stick. The stick helps you find stuff, too. It hasn’t been this low in weeks. You could even see the top of the old fence.
On my way back up I saw a beach patrol for the first time. Looking up at him I saw there was a new fence, way above my house, even. He was staying within about twenty feet of it, looking mostly uphill, not down.
But he looked right at me. I was scared at first, but he sort of sized me up and kept moving.
A beach is a place for washing things away, grinding things up. Of course. You patrol it to protect things from the beach, things you care about, not to protect the beach or anything on it. So the beach isn’t where the sand meets water but the edge of the real land, wherever they decide that is.
It was a weird thing to understand. I sat right down and sank in a few inches. I lay all the way back.
Out by the horizon a huge roof came into view. It was so far away, but I could feel the slurry sand sucking out under me. The wave rose up, miles out, like a wall in front of the horizon. Time to get off the beach. Probably the last low day in a while.