Treasure

The rain had cleared the beach. Falling water pitted the shifting terrain, scattered litter and abandoned flip-flops slowly plastered with sandy spatter. There was one lone fisherman headed for the pier, too stoic or stoned to notice the weather.

A seagull, what is technically a herring gull, was dragging a wing through the miry sand. After dueling over a boardwalk fry, the unlucky loser was abandoned by its fowl fellows when the clouds rolled in. The injured limb grew heavier and heavier as the gull staggered through the saturated grit, shaking droplets from its beak beneath the oppressive, watery veil, the steady patter stifling its senses.

Joshua plunged the handle of his umbrella into the ground, staking it into the sand to make a waterproof shelter for the bedraggled animal.

Pressing forward over the suctioning sand, Joshua squinted through the steady shower. All the landmarks that defined the sun-kissed geography had been packed up and rushed inside, every beach chair, every sun shade, every widespread towel was gone. The strip of sand stretched out forever, the slow slide into sepia-grey infinity bruised by rocky breakwaters stretching out to sea. Hesitant steps pressing over sharp shell shards, Joshua spotted his target, and surged onward.

The castle had once been a glorious thing. Sandy spires were carefully drizzled with sculptural silt, a packed wall studded with shells and pebbles enclosed sprawling, bucket-based architecture. Employing his young nieces and nephews, Joshua had spent most of the day on the crumbling monument, encouraging his girlfriend to go swimming without him. He had to be dragged away when the rain came. And, he was on limited time before somebody noticed he’d gone back.

Dropping to his knees, Joshua dug through the sand, the ruined towers, the dilapidated wall. Dismissing stones, bottle caps, a watch battery, Joshua finally seized on a shape he recognized. Scooping it out of the wet sand, the hole quickly flooding with saline murk, Joshua fished out a silt-stained ring box.

An empty one.

Cursing, Joshua bit a gritty fingernail, then spit and cursed again. Pushing rain-drenched hair out of his face, Joshua tried to guess where to dig down next, when a sparkle caught his eye. Its pale belly and dove-grey shell blending in with the muted landscape, the sideways sidle of a large blue crab was distinguished by the addition of a glittering diamond ring.

Staying low, Joshua stalked the skittering pins, the rain dampening the sound of his steps, the predatory shadow small crustaceans learned to fear. Without his umbrella, or even a pair of shoes, Joshua pulled his soaked-through T-shirt over his head, wringing the sopping cotton into a makeshift net. Poised for gladiatorial combat, Joshua kept pace, chose his moment, and leapt!

The crab was faster. Joshua hit the ground hard, teeth champing as his chin smacked into the packed sand. Flinging out a desperate arm, he whipped the drenched cloth over the scuttling runner, the wet tent twitching as the crab assessed this unexpected development. Stumbling upright, Joshua scooped up the unkempt bundle, clutching the cloth to his chest, and started peeling back the petals to get at his prey.

Joshua shrieked and flung the bundle away from him, curling inward around his pinched and bleeding nipple. The crab, the ring still clutched in its claw, tried a sideways retreat into the rolling ocean, dragging the T-shirt on its little back legs.

Seizing the T-shirt, Joshua yanked the crab back from the rising tide. Landing on its back, with its little legs flailing, the crab still pinched and snipped as Joshua gingerly sought to extract the diamond, the rain constantly washing out his grip. At last, Joshua pried the ring off the greedy blue claw, only to have the other bite down hard on his middle finger, and squeeze. The steady rain swallowed up Joshua’s holler as he swung and shook and finally flung the crab like a claw-clacking frisbee up the beach.

Clutching his bleeding hand, Joshua winced and wrapped it in the sand-spackled T-shirt. In the frenzy, the ring had been hucked astray, and landed, with amazing luck, on top of a beached jellyfish.

It glittered innocently amidst the translucent tentacles, right on the Lion’s Mane. Joshua knew it was going to hurt. He’d bumped against one while boogie boarding as a kid and cried the whole car ride home. Still, he judged, it couldn’t hurt more than the eight-hundred-dollar down payment he stood to lose. Forming the wet and bloody T-shirt into a sort of mitt, he crept closer to the fleshy thing, and reached into the tentacles.

More curses floated over the lead-grey waves. Joshua held tight to his wrist, angling the red welt on the blade of his hand toward the cooling kiss of rain.

Although an angry impulse compelled him to kick sand over the beached creature, Joshua lost all spite looking over its pitiful, deflated state. He used his feet, at a cautious distance, to nudge up a little mound in the sand, hoping it might catch a wave that could wash the Lion’s Mane back out into deep water.

The rain was lifting, the steady drumming now reduced to a spitting drizzle. Joshua breathed through the pain in his stinging hand, his sliced finger, his freely bleeding chest, and yes, a punted ego, as the overcast sky paled silver with veiled light. Carefully unwinding the cotton from his hand, Joshua’s stinging squint could see that there was no ring within it.

Wild eyes flying up and down the beach, Joshua saw the telltale shimmer just as a dark wave claimed it for the sea.

Running headlong into the water, sharp rocks and rubbery kelp underfoot, Joshua fell forward into the briny tide. Gallons of black corrosion clouded his vision, heaving him back toward the shore. Breaking waves slapped at his face and surging currents dragged at his ankles as Joshua spluttered and gagged on the bitter salt spray. The blunt, hungry bodies of commuting fish bludgeoned past him, and a hypodermic needle speared through a used condom floated nonchalantly past his open wounds. Nothing glittered. No tiny, shiny thing could ever survive.

Trudging back on numb legs, feeling nothing but empty, Joshua made his way sluggishly up the beach. He did not see the vacant space where the jellyfish had been. He did not see the happy crab tracks up to a soggy pile of boardwalk fries. He did not even collect the umbrella, stuck in the sand, with no unlucky seagull preening beneath it.

The fisherman at the end of the pier had finally got a bite. He reeled in the line, excited at first, then disgusted when a tangle of kelp pulled free of the water. He’d have to reel it all the way in to pull the mess of weeds off his hook. But then…something glittered in the green. Sifting through the slimy knots, the fisherman was astonished to find a diamond ring.

With a ragged scream, a bent-winged seagull swooped down and snatched up the trinket before the fisherman could finish a drug-addled blink. He watched the pale gull with the glittering beak soar through the lifting mist, back up the wide span of the dun grey beach. It almost looked like the bird brain was circling straight for a lone, downcast man, walking away from a castle in the sand.