Americans, a period of calm nothingness, and clams
don't mean anything, unless nothing can be represented
by the shell of a clam, its foot dangling in the air
when lifted from the sand
The hole is covered, sand marked by a dimple
the clam two to three feet deep, waiting to be unearthed
Behind, an overcast sky
foregrounded by boardwalk.
The man looks across the beach for his son;
Adjusting the empty mesh sack under his arm
returns his gaze to the sand, talks to himself,
digs into the sand like an animal
Woman:
she looks down at her husband, digging.
she told her mother this man was going to be her husband
the man's toes curled behind him ungracefully
as he puts the weight of his doggish position on the knuckles of his toes
then she watches her son bend down onto his knees to reach into the hole
they watch as the boy struggles to get the clam
it doesn't work, not even with his fingertips
sand is pressed into his nostril and ear and mouth
the boy gets down against the sand and flattens himself
arm twists into the hole, face reddens against the pressure of the sand
contorting his body in such a way
the whites of his teeth showing
Man:
His father
burned alive in a car in Vietnam two months
before coming home. They'd sent back three
fingers and a crust of ear
—At the end of the summer I got so despondent
I had to learn to enjoy reading because I
couldn't do much else. I wanted to go outside
so bad and I could hear the wind banging
against my window and I had a friend
who hit my window with rocks,
eventually he stopped coming.
you wouldn't know the kind of loneliness
the shortness of breath, the size of my stomach
expanding—
The Beach:
The boy's head has gone into the sand
Meanwhile the man is transfixed by the sight of the boardwalk.
a bicycle hanging off the edge under the handrail
other children playing down below, his old friends
swimming without him,
left him on the boardwalk, post sadness,
allowed him to grow fat and slump shouldered
Man:
—There are things I never learned from books—
The boy has sunk and only his legs show.
Man:
—I had a bicycle but could never work up the nerve to
go anywhere on it—
the boy has sunk so deep into the
sand he can no longer breathe.
Man:
—I'm happy you don't have to know any of that—
Garrett Ashley's work has appeared recently in The Normal School, Moon City Review, Reed Magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction, and DIAGRAM, among other places. He lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
