Down at the marina beach, wrecked rusty remains of long-dead boats, ships, drug to shore and left to rot; leftovers of a past I'll never know. Smashed bits of giant bathtubs, hardly recognizable as sea-faring vessels that, at one time, carried human life. Crumpled metal cans, exposed ribs, torn outer flesh; each edge a jagged lip, all paint chipped and loose; dangling wires, old tires, wooden boxes, broken glass, greasy joints, and a fire extinguisher submerged below deck.
Long clumps of grass sprout up between rocks in the mud of the beach, billowed and left forever slanted by blowing wind. Leafy plants poke up from beneath crushes of metal. Seagulls dance in fog, swoop low then up again, cruise close then out again, calling each other over the roar of fishing boats' engines in the bay. No smell comes to my nose -- just air, perhaps a little dusty or perhaps tinged with fuel exhaust.
The old is kept alive by what is young; a day of salmon allowed upstream to spawn, decades-old ships maintained and operated by bipedal organisms, carcassed and beached boats explored and inhabited by American youth looking to get high.The town is as close to the distant past I'll ever be; free rides in pickup truck beds, a population of working-class selfless persons, smoking allowed indoors, man left at the behest of nature. I climb and jump across names give to machines: Mud Hen, Drag-On, Charity... and another whose name is unapparent but sprayed upon its side in white are the words "I Love You Mom."
Upon returning with Benny a few hours later, I find a fellow writer sheltered in the spot I'd once occupied.
"There's no roof," she says, "but it's out of the wind."
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