The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch Page B

haphazard fashion that well-intentioned beachcombers often bag them as litter.
    While boring her with that, I suddenly saw what looked like a live, creeping, multitentacled rendition of the sun.
    It was almost the size of a manhole cover and crawling back toward the water as fast as any sea star could possibly move, inching over the sand, a reddish-brown shimmering mass with all twenty-two legs engaged. The TV lady gasped. The cameraman swore.
    “What’s it doing here?” she asked, as Phelps came over and blurted a couple fucks .
    “Feasting on clams,” I speculated. “Divers are the only ones who usually see sunflower stars, especially big ones like this, but apparently this guy was too busy eating and lost track of time or didn’t think the water would go this far out.”
    I reached down with both hands and gingerly flipped it over, its thousands of tiny, suction-cup feet glimmering. I set it back upright and pointed out the light-sensitive eyes on the tips of each of its legs. “Sunflowers are the world’s biggest sea stars. So it’s quite possible we’re looking at one of the largest stars on the planet.” I explained that sunflowers are the grizzlies of the tidal flats. “Other sea life freaks when they smell them coming. Sea cucumbers inchworm out of their way, cockles start hopping and sand dollars bury themselves way faster than usual.” I measured the star, studied its colors, ran a finger across its spiny back.
    “Why do you think you found it, Miles?” she asked.
    I started to answer, then caught myself.
    “Why is it that you always seem to find amazing things in these bays?” she persisted. I noticed the silver microphone in her hand and looked past her into the camera.
    “Because I’m always looking,” I said, “and there are so many things to see.”
    “But you keep seeing things that people shouldn’t normally be able to see, right?”
    “The unusual becomes routine if you spend enough time out here.” I couldn’t stop myself. “Like those new crabs with the hairy pinchers at Whiskey Point: I never saw them until about five weeks ago. Now they’re everywhere out there. There’s also this new seaweed that’s taken over Flapjack Bay to the point that it’s hard to find almost anything else out there anymore.”
    I told her more about all that as a large eagle dove behind her toward the water before aborting its attack and gliding across the beach. Eagles have a way of making all other birds look underdressed.
    “So, maybe,” she said tentatively, “like you said the other day when you found that squid, maybe the earth is trying to tell us something. And if so, what do you think it’s saying?”
    I hesitated. “It’s probably saying, ‘Pay attention.’”
    “Is that a problem, Miles, that people don’t pay attention?”
    I stopped myself, and heard Phelps mutter, “Here you go again.”
    “I didn’t say there was a problem. Rachel Carson said the more people learn about the ocean the less likely they are to harm it.”
    “Who’s Rachel Carson?”
    Phelps giggled behind me. “She’s a genius,” I said.
    “A dead one,” Phelps added.
    She tried to keep me talking, but I was done. I said I was tired, which was true, but it was more than that. I wanted all this to stop.
    “What do you think needs to be done, Miles?”
    I took a long breath, then said, “I think I need to get this big star into my aquarium already. Could you maybe give us a lift?”
    Of course she could. She put her arm around me the way Angie had, but there wasn’t anything about it worth storing. Her perfume suddenly smelled like it was trying too hard, its odor so out of place on the mud it frightened me.

CHAPTER 12
    L UCKILY THERE WAS nobody waiting for me at home, so I slept. It was more like a coma.
    Griping gulls and squawking herons couldn’t stir me, neither could the sporadic Heron bridge traffic or the distant kazoo of Highway 101. Even the buzz and rumble of saws, hammers and trucks in