Brogue 2007 - Belhaven College

t h e b r o g u e
were soaked by the mist and the sea, slick with seaweed and a creeping brown
film. Bob saw several fat starfish that morning, orange and purple and hard,
not soft like you’d expect. He scrambled down from the last few rocks, fingers
dipping into anemone pools, and the cove stretched out before him. The
tide was out entirely, and the same white-capped ocean that pounded the seastacks
offshore was absolutely flat; still quicksilver pooled around a thousand
orphan rocks. Two downed trees lay between him and the beach—a fish and
a whale bone, he thought—a thin pine with its twigs still intact, and a cedar
trunk bleached white from exposure.
He had seen her shoe first; it was red in contrast to the branches that
held it. She lay in a heap, limbs sprawled wildly from a long fall, and the
greedy tide trying to tug her free. Bob had carried her deep into the forest
and put her in a grave without a marker.
He wondered how she had gotten so far out in the wilderness. It was a
miracle she had lived in the forest, had made it to the ocean. She must have
listened to his lectures well. It was a miracle that the tide had not sucked Carin
away, and a miracle that he had found her. Not that Bob Abies put much
stock in miracles. He had learned through hard experience not to care for
wounded animals, that you could never save them, that they would always
die and that this too was a part of nature. So when he found Carin, he didn’t
cry. He just buried her well, and hoped she was at rest.
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