Powers of Detection

The Boy Who Chased Seagulls by MICHAEL ARMSTRONG

The old man walked along the beach on his lifelong mission to collect trash and other cast-off stuff. In town the children called him the Beachcomber, or Old Man, or (not to his face) Creepazoid, but he had his own name, he thought, a name he would share if anyone asked. Hardly anyone did, and so only the beachcomber knew his true name.

Uncle, he thought of himself. I am Uncle.

Uncle walked the beach with steps firmer and longer than on the often icy streets of the town, an Alaska fishing town, hard on its luck and struggling to keep profit ahead of pride. On the beach he could walk as his true self, ancient and unbowed to time. Not whole, though. The beach had taken pieces of him and only rarely gave them back.

He used an old bamboo staff, crushed smooth at the end and split in parts, for balance and defense. Like almost everything about him, he found it on the beach-given to him by the beach, he liked to think. Uncle wore old tennis shoes with heavy socks, canvas duck pants cut off below the knees, red long johns, a wool shirt, a rumpled old dark green rain slicker, and a big floppy wool hat. His white beard hung to his chest, and his white hair poked out from under the hat.

Uncle carried a battered old canvas back slung around one shoulder, a plastic grocery bag inside for wet or disgusting items he found on the beach. He saw it as his own special mission to collect trash. Secretly, he looked for treasure, but he found that if he had it as his stated purpose to collect trash he would find treasure that much more easily. And he had to collect everything.

Yes, Uncle had his rules. He must pick up all plastic, anything of human manufacture, unless it was so heavy he couldn’t carry it; and then he flung it above the high-tide line so that someday someone else could pick it up. Glass bottles he broke and ground into the rocky sand, to be turned into beach glass.

Of beach glass he had some rules, too. Only worn beach glass could be picked up. No edge should be shiny, no surface unground. Pieces smaller than a fingernail should be left to return to sand. Intact glass floats, of which he had found only a dozen in all his life, he could take. Broken floats must be returned to the beach.

Paper that would rot away he could leave if he had no room to carry it, unless he found the paper offensive, as with most fast-food wrappers. Uncle did not see it as his mission to clean up trash near parking lots or trash left by teenagers at beach parties. He picked up the faraway trash and left other trash for good citizens or bad boys on community service to haul away. He would not pick up gross diapers or tampons, used bandages, or anything similarly disgusting.

Of natural treasures, old bones he could take, except whale bones, and seashells and interesting rocks. Sometimes he made little sculptures, like spirals of gray rock split with quartz. Uncle did not take feathers, not off the beach, except feathers of birds who stayed the winter. Certainly he did not take eagle feathers, not because that was against the law-he did not give a shrew’s ass about the law-but in respect for the eagle. He called the eagle “Uncle,” like him, for that is what his name meant, and the raven “Grandfather.” Even though ravens wintered, he never, ever touched their feathers. Eagle feathers he might move, binding them to the highest branch of a driftwood log, or sticking them point down into the beach.

Of seagull feathers, he never saw them, and so didn’t touch them, even though they were there. Uncle and seagulls did not get along, not since that time long ago.

–

On one of his walks he saw the boy chase seagulls. As an old man, an elder, Uncle saw it as his duty, right, privilege, and honor to correct the behavior of boys. Sometimes he hit them, although he hadn’t done so in a long time, and sometimes he yelled at them. In his old age, though, he had come to berate them through jokes and stories.

The boy ran ahead of Uncle on the low tideflats, out where the seagulls clustered in great flocks. The boy ran carefree in the fading summer, that month before the huge storm tides that would wipe the beach clean. Already big swells had rolled in, bringing in trash from far out to sea: soap bottles, plastic lids, broken buoys, and tangled nests of fishing line. Uncle had a bagful of trash and headed home to his driftwood beach shack up a ways on the Spit. The boy, no more than ten, ran on the flat sand, jumping over puddles and great rafts of kelp. He saw the seagulls and ran toward them. The seagulls held their ground until the last minute, then roared up in a great flight of cackling and rustling, settling down a hundred yards away. The boy did this again and again, each time making Uncle madder and madder. What had the seagulls done to the boy? Didn’t they deserve their rest?

Soon the boy’s path intercepted Uncle’s. Usually kids turned away from Uncle, but this boy who chased seagulls also dared to challenge the old man. He came up to Uncle with that nasty gleam in his eye, that puny little chest thrust forward and his chin high in the air. Oh, Uncle had seen hundreds of punks like him, and they did not scare him at all. He could sweep out with his bamboo staff and knock them off their feet so fast they wouldn’t think it happened.

Uncle thought of doing so right then. A boy who chased seagulls like that deserved a good beating. In his meaner days, he would have done just that, only there were laws against old men beating up boys, and while Uncle didn’t care for the laws, he did care for the inconvenience. So instead he told the boy a story.

“Hullo, Beachcomber,” the boy said.

“Hullo, Boy Who Chases Seagulls,” Uncle said.

“Ha!” The boy loved that, glad someone had noticed his mischief.

“Why do you chase seagulls?”

“Because it’s fun.”

“You wouldn’t think it fun if you knew what happens to boys who chase seagulls.”

“Oh, crap,” the boy said.

“What is your name?” Uncle asked him.

“Travis,” he said.

“Well, Travis, I knew a boy who chased seagulls once, and you know what happened to him? The seagulls ate him.”

“Crap,” the boy said again.

“No, no, this is true,” Uncle said, smiling. “I bet you.”

“What?”

“If you don’t believe my story, I will give you this,” and he opened up his hand and showed him a rare blue piece of beach glass.

Travis grinned. “OK, tell me your damn story.”

Uncle saw that grin and knew he had him hooked.

–

“This was long ago,” Uncle said, “back when the sea ran thick with fish, and even though people fished with sailboats and oars, they caught ten times as many fish as today. A fisherman could work eight runs of salmon a summer, two weeks straight each run, and make enough to live on the whole year-and live in style, even though everything cost more then.

“On one of those fishing boats, a beautiful strip-built boat named Mystery, a boy about your age fished with his father, older brothers, and uncles. A boy grew up fast then and could became a man in one summer, his thin shoulders and puny muscles turning broad and strong in one month. The boy had another name, one his parents had given him to honor a grandfather back in the days when men had silly names, so out of embarrassment the boy insisted everyone call him ‘Buster.’

“When on land and walking upon beaches, Buster loved to chase seagulls. He thought them scummy birds, trash birds, because they ate fish scraps and chased each other. They shat on roofs and rocks and trucks and sometimes people, and they smelled. Buster hated seagulls and did not understand their importance to the sea, to fish, to how his family made their living. He did not understand their power.

“So, when walking on the beach and letting himself be a boy and not a soon-to-be man, he chased seagulls. Oh, he loved the sport. He would creep up on huge flocks, for there were thousands more seagulls back then, as there were more fish (but not as many eagles), and he would scatter them. He would do this for hours, stalking them, never letting them rest, until the seagulls, disgusted, flew elsewhere, or the tide came in.

“One day when the Mystery was out fishing, casting its nets close to a nearby island on a low tide, the boy went up to the bow to pee over the edge. No one saw him leave the men at the stern, hauling in nets, and because the boy had a reputation for being lazy, no one missed him when he didn’t come back, for what happened was this. While on the bow peeing, his cock hanging out of his underpants and his green rain bibs undone and flopping down, the boy lost his balance and fell into the sea. He would say later that he didn’t lose his balance, a seagull flew by and pushed him in, but what seagull could be so strong?

“The men at the back didn’t hear him splash in, didn’t notice his disappearance, so busy were they hauling in nets and pulling out fish. If you’ve ever picked nets-you have, haven’t you, Travis?-then you’d know how only the fish matter, and how it’s easy to forget everything else.

“Buster fell in headfirst, which saved him, for the cold so stunned him that it made him lose his breath, and he didn’t suck in water. The cold northern ocean engulfed him, like a bear squeezing him, and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. His rain pants caught a bubble of air that kept him afloat. He kicked off his rubber boots when they filled up with water. When he came up to the surface, he screamed and yelled and gasped for air.

“No one heard him, of course, what with the seagulls screeching around the boat. Soon Buster lost his strength for yelling, but gained it for breathing. He sucked air, warmer than the water, and though he couldn’t feel his legs or feet, his chest felt warm. If he’d known anything about human physiology, he would have known that what happened was all his blood had been shunted from his limbs and to his body core, and that’s what kept him alive.

“Buster drifted away from the Mystery, toward that island. When he saw the island, he saw that he would have to make it there and out of the water. He didn’t have to swim far or fast, for the tide as much as his own strength pushed him in. He fetched up on a sandy beach.

“He gasped and coughed on that sand, out of the water and warming up quickly in the midsummer sun. Buster might have been cruel, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew he would have to get to a higher beach, because the tide would eventually come in-yes, you know that, don’t you, Travis? See, the tide on this beach is already coming in, but I’m not moving, and I’m sure you’re hoping this old man will finish the story before your feet get wet.

“So, Buster crawled up that beach. It was all he could do, crawl, and it seemed to take him hours to make the journey, although it was but a few minutes. He kept passing out from the chill, but every time he felt like drifting to sleep, a seagull would swoop down and nip at him.

“At first he thought they were saving him, as indeed they were, only they also nipped at his flesh and took little bites, once they had torn away his rain bibs and his sweatshirt. The seagulls harassed him and drove him higher up onto the beach, to his own safety, and their justice.

“For up on the beach, by a long line of sea wrack from the last tide, a line of fresh kelp and dead crabs, a thousand seagulls waited for Buster. He crawled up to the high-tide line, hoping it would be high enough, and collapsed.

“And the seagulls took him. They ripped at his flesh, at his back and legs, tearing out a thousand chunks of skin and muscle. They bit off the ends of his fingertips, ate his ears, ate the calluses on his feet and one of his eyes. They ate the tip of his nose and part of his lips. It was as if the seagulls knew how much to eat of him without actually killing him, so that he would suffer to the end of his days, half-blind, half-crippled, face ruined.

“Only, the seagulls’ feast saved him. By then the tide had begun to come in, his father and brothers and uncles had hauled in their nets, and it happened that his father looked toward the shore of the island and saw this great cloud of seagulls. He thought they might have found a whale. Back in those days, fishermen also took whales, and even a beached whale could be worth something. Buster’s father took out his big mariner binoculars, looked to shore, and saw Buster’s flailed back, dripping red, and finally realized Buster had fallen overboard and washed up on the beach.

“His father and uncles took a little dinghy up to the beach and rescued Buster. They wrapped him in a blanket, soon soaked with blood, and bathed him in fresh ocean water. The salt stung him so hard he couldn’t cry, and it healed his wounds. Later, the town doctor stitched up the worst of the wounds as best he could. Without good fingers, though, Buster couldn’t fish, and with so ugly a face and lips that could not even kiss, he never married. The only thing he could do was pick up trash and sell junk, and that’s what he did until the end of his days.

“Which is why, Travis, you shouldn’t chase seagulls.”

The boy looked at him, stunned, and for a moment Uncle thought he might have reached him. Then the boy laughed, and Uncle knew his story hadn’t worked. He shook his head.

“So what happened to Buster?” Travis asked. He might not have understood, but at least he appreciated a good story.

“Buster decided he had to redeem himself to the seagulls. So mean had he treated them, though, it became a difficult task. He scrounged fish scraps and saved them for the seagulls, then saved them for the eagles to eat so they wouldn’t eat the seagulls. Buster began walking the beaches for trash and junk, junk to sell or use or salvage. Sometimes when people lost things on the beach or in the sea, they would pay Buster to find them for him, and often he did.

“One day after Buster had become a young man, he found a bit of pink flesh on the beach, flesh that looked like no flesh he had ever seen. He put it up to what was left of his nose to smell it, and amazingly, it became his nose. The flesh just sort of oozed onto his face, and where he had not had a nose, he now did, although it stayed pink for a long time, and even when it tanned, always remained slightly lighter then the rest of his face.

“Many months later, he found another bit of flesh, one of his fingertips. Over time, over many, many years, bit by bit he regained the parts of his body the seagulls had eaten. He realized that what happened was that the seagulls had shat him out. The seagull crap took time to gather together and become that which the seagulls had eaten. And then, of course, it took time for the flesh to wash up on the beach, and for Buster-he long ago quit using that name, though-to find those small parts of his body. It took many bags of trash, junk, and some treasure for him to haul off, but there you go.”

Travis glared at him now, become again a surly boy. “Ah, that’s just a story,” he said. “It’s not true.” He held out his hand for the bit of blue beach glass.

“Oh? You think not?” Uncle pulled off his gloves, finger by finger, and showed Travis his wrinkled hands. “See these fingers? See how the tips look a different color? And see my lips, how what you think is scar is just that part of my lips the sea gave back? And see my nose?” Uncle lifted up the corner of his hat, then, showing the boy his empty eye socket. “And see my lost eye, the eye I have searched for ever since that day long, long, ago when the boy who chased seagulls learned his lesson.”

“Creepazoid!” the boy yelled, and ran away before Uncle could whack him with his bamboo staff.

Uncle watched the boy run back up the beach, toward town. Along the way, Travis deliberately veered from his path to run through a flock of seagulls, only one or two of whom grudgingly flew up. They had grown tired of the boy’s game.

Uncle turned and continued on his way, back to his tiny driftwood shack heated by coal, back to his single bed, his single room, and the junk and treasure he scavenged and sometimes sold. As the sun moved down below the bluff above town, one last flicker of light caught a shiny something on the beach. Uncle reached down and picked it up. At first he thought it might have been a child’s marble, ground cloudy by the beach, but when he held it up to inspect, the marble rolled into his empty socket and became his eye.

Uncle looked at the world in stereo again, the world no longer flat but wider, although a bit fuzzier with the cataract in his old and weathered eye. Well, he thought, that’s the last of it, the last bit of flesh returned from the sea. His cabin and his bed awaited him, and he wondered if he’d bother to make a fire for the night, or if he even needed to.

Must have made my peace with the sea, he thought, with the seagulls.

And Buster, born as Percy, now known as Uncle, went home, perhaps to die, perhaps to live another day, but never, ever, ever to chase seagulls.