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Clarall Beach: Trent's Story
He sat there on the bench, the soft seabreeze brushing his
skin. Clouds hung in the sky, but it wasn’t dark. The water
rushed up against and then away from the shore in its own
strange, natural pulse. Cold and dark, through and through,
and eternal. As Trent laughed, cried, lived, and died, as
the city of Verbeten sprung up and faded away, as trees
grew and rotted away, as birds circled in the sky when the
season came and went South when the season went, as minnow
after minnow flitted through the shallow waters, the ocean
water would never stop pushing and pulling at the beach
sand with the same strange, natural pulse that Trent
witnessed then. The soft seabreeze brushed his skin.He was alone on the beach, it being a cold evening in
November, even colder here nearly right in front of the
Atlantic Ocean. Yet, it might as well have been a warm day
in June. Trent would have been alone even then, sitting
amidst a crowd of boredom-loving beachbums, although there
was no one to blame for that except for himself. The only
difference to him between June and November on Clarall
beach was the cold weather, the cold which was actually
rather comforting in a strange sort of way. Trent had never
found it something worth welcoming before. An ominous arrangement of black objects contrasting against
the bright gray sky caught Trent’s periphery. He looked up
at the triangular orchestration of geese flying overhead,
flying away from this cold, hard place to something warmer
and more comforting. For a moment he enjoyed their
passionate squawking as he watched them fly away to the
South, flying away together. So embroiled in the moment, so
involved in the flapping of their wings and in the
aintenance of their formation, so heated and focused, so
nonchalant about the distance yet to be traversed. It was a strange thing, how they all just seemed to know to
congregate and move in harmony to a common destination at
just the right time. Woe to the goose that was unaware of
their instinctual procedure, that was left behind, alone,
in this cold, barren place. As soon as they’d come, the
geese went, and then there was no sound but the soft breeze
and the rhythm of the waves. Trent stood, presently, tired of contemplating the beach
from the bench. The pervasive cold seeped through his
jacket right against his warm body, and he shivered. All
the same, he unzipped his jacket, took off his shirt,
pants, shoes, and undergarments, and relaxed so that he
ceased to shiver and became nearly as cold as the air
around him. He was naked, but there was nobody around to
laugh or call the police. Cold, but anybody would be while
naked on a beach in November. Slowly Trent trod down the gentle slope of beach sand,
sauntering easily, but did not stop when he met the
shoreline. He continued walking, shoving through the
shallow water with as easy a gait as he could muster. The
ice cold water soaked through his body to the very bone.
The water became deeper, but still he pushed on, shivering
like a guitar string under the pick. Eventually, the water
was deep enough to swim in, and so Trent released his feet
from the soft sand beneath him. Slowly leapfrogged through
the water. Minutes passed, and he could’ve gone on forever, if it was
a warm day in June. But it was a cold day in November, and
everybody that wanted to keep warm was at home snuggling up
with their loved ones, until the next morning, when they’d
get up and go to work with their loved ones, and then come
home again, and then go back the next day. So with each
minute that Trent was in the water, naked, another limb
went blue, and he shivered less and less. The cold
penetrated his arms and legs, and crawled into his belly
and froze his heart and stopped his breath. Slowly, as
though he didn’t know it happened, Trent stopped moving,
and he had left as easily a baby falling asleep, but gently
glided still on the icy water’s surface. He floated away,
alone, out of the little inlet that separated Clarall from
the Atlantic, and floated out even more, out into the
emptiness of the vast horizon. Autumn faded into winter, and winter into spring, and
spring into summer. Inevitably, June came, and cold
November was nothing but a mere memory. The geese came up
from the South, where it was now too hot for them, and the
boredom-loving beachbums basked side-by-side joyfully in
the shining glory of the noonday sun. A rummaging city
janitor found Trent’s jacket, shirt, pants, shoes, and
undergarments, shrugged, and threw them into his black
garbage bag. A boy and girl sat there on the bench, smiling in the sun,
while the soft seabreeze benevolently brushed their skin.
Clouds hung in the sky, but it wasn’t dark. The water
rushed up against and then away from the shore in its own
strange, natural pulse. Cool and inviting, through and
through, and eternal. As the beachbums came and went, as
the city of Verbeten sprung up and faded away, as trees
grew and rotted away, as birds circled in the sky when the
season came and went South when the season went, as minnow
after minnow flitted through the shallow waters, the ocean
water would never stop pushing and pulling at the beach
sand with the same strange, natural pulse that the boy and
girl witnessed then. The soft seabreeze brushed their skin.
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