Noreen

Whelk

After ten years, the somber procession of vehicles leading to Hamlin's Point has dwindled down to one rusty jeep with bald tires and a constantly flashing 'check engine' light. My jeep.  I'm the only one who makes the five hour drive to southern Maine anymore.  I'm the only one who walks across the deserted beach to the spot where the wreckage came ashore.

I come armed only with a trowel, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and a yellow daisy. The trowel digs the hole, the daisy's stem fills the hole. Then, like every year since, I sit on the hard November sands, flinging sticky crust at seagulls, staring out across the ocean until the tide rolls in and washes the daisy out to sea, out, I hope, to my brother.

That summer ten years ago when his trawler signaled the coast guard for help for the last time, there'd been an entire beach of flowers, sandy petals of prayers and love and hope.

Now there's just mine.

People have jobs and busy lives. People find too much pain to ever return. People leave, people fade away. People move on. They keep the memories. They always will.

But me, I don't just want memories. I want my brother back.

Sometimes I think Chris is still out there, living another life on a foreign shore with no memory of who he was or where he came from. I like to picture him that way, working at his own surf shop, making boards for the biggest names in the sport.

It's easier for me. Mom thinks I should stop worrying about his dreams and focus on getting into college, preferably one so far inland the seas harden into grass and endless corn fields, but she hasn't come out here in three years. She doesn't understand the connection Chris and I had to each other and the sea.

The horizon blends into the ocean with dusky blues as the sun and all its colors get sucked beneath the dark rocks and trees to my right. The daisy bends in the breeze, straining to fly away before the salt water can lap its petals.

And that's when I see it: a splash, a frenzied sparkle of orange sunsets in darkening waters. I leap to my feet, hustle through the first inches of high tide, feeling sand rush out beneath my sneakers, feeling my socks swell in ice water.

Blood rolls in on a pink foam. Something spotted and gray—a seal?—thrashes mere feet from a telltale fin.

Over the years New England's marine mammal protection act has helped species repopulate along our jagged coastline. Fisherman weren't exactly thrilled when the fish-eating predators began to flourish, too, but the sharks sure seemed content.

That's what I think as I stand in the pink foam: a shark is eating well tonight.

And then a panicked voice screams, "Help!"