The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch Page A

laugh.
    “I shouldn’t have said that,” I mumbled.
    “Why not? We all thought it was so provocative at the time, in a smart way. And now, in light of the ratfish you found, well—”
    “ Rag fish. I don’t have any proof of that.”
    “Of what?”
    “Of the earth trying to tell us anything.” I resumed my effort to not appear to be listening to the beach, the water, the sky or anything but her.
    “Well, how do you explain it then, Miles?”
    “I don’t. I just see what I see.”
    “Great. Great! Could we follow you around out here, seeing what you see?”
    I looked around self-consciously, then down at her brand-new rubber boots. “We’re just digging clams and looking for things.”
    “Excellent!” She finally introduced the camera guy. He grunted hello, the camera braced on his shoulder, flexing his knees as if preparing to fart or throw a shot put.
    I hadn’t noticed that I’d agreed to anything, that I’d said anything at all, but she and the cameraman followed us out toward the tideline where Phelps spontaneously transformed into the most inspired and informed clammer I’d ever seen.
    “See the keyhole shape?” He pointed to a tiny hole in the mud. “A butter clam will be about eight inches down right here.” He zeroed in with his shovel, digging near the clam in a few dramatic strokes, then scraping gently with the shovel’s edge until he spotted the fat gray mollusk. He popped the clam onto the shovel and dropped it triumphantly into the bucket without ever touching it with his hands. The TV people gawked at the clam, its pale meat bulging between its shells, then at Phelps. He winked the only eye they could see.
    I wandered along the receding tidal line, hearing Phelps blabber on, hoping they would get sick of listening to him and leave. When I found a geoduck siphon, though, I reluctantly called him over. He was really the hero this time. He shoveled valiantly, sweat bubbling across his forehead, as the hole backfilled with water. When he sprawled chest down in the mud and long-armed that geoduck out, the lady laughed in odd throaty bursts. I knew Phelps would do it, but I didn’t want to see it so I turned and stomped off. A few seconds later I heard him whinny like a stallion.
    They lost track of me then, which I liked, because I saw more when nobody else was around. But soon she was at my side again, asking what I was looking for. “Sea stars mostly,” I said, “but anything unusual.”
    I wished she’d leave, but I couldn’t resist pointing out the barnacles waving nets in the shallows like Southern women fanning themselves. “They’re catching tiny plants and animals, then pulling them inside their shells to eat. See?”
    She mumbled something about them being hard “to shoot,” then walked so close to me her perfume made it hard to concentrate. Some perfume pushes you away or makes you sneeze. This stuff made me feel flattered to be near it.
    “Even barnacles interest you?” she asked.
    “If it wasn’t for them, we probably wouldn’t exist,” I told her.
    Her mouth popped open, but no words fell out. I kept walking, drawing her into ankle-deep water. I pointed out the differences between the black-clawed mud crab, the flat porcelain crab and the green shore crab. She asked me to pick one up, but the cameraman was shadowing us, and I didn’t want another phony image of me holding something I didn’t collect.
    “You hear that crunching sound?” I asked.
    “Yeah.”
    “You’re killing sand dollars.”
    She winced.
    “Walk over here,” I said.
    Mildly embarrassed, she followed gingerly. The cameraman grunted, then yawned.
    “What do you think that is?” I asked.
    She followed my pointing finger. “Part of a rubber tire?”
    “Nope.”
    “An old toilet plunger?”
    “Nope. A few thousand moon snail eggs.” I explained how moon snails mix eggs with sand and mucus and spin the casings off their large round bodies and discard them along the beach in such