DRECK

KAI BROACH

         I NEVER TOLD YOU WHERE I WENT THAT DAY

                I started down the beach, leaving you alone.
                The landscape refused to change as I walked, opting instead to cycle through a few slight variations of itself, just enough to reassure me it was still there. I followed these changes as they settled into a rhythm. I’d watch my toes churn the cold sand as it moistened and softened and hardened and dried, my footprints collaging with the tracks of sandals, tires, paws, hooves, other bare feet. Some length of time would pass. I’d look out at the waves and the feeble sun trickling off them. Then I’d look to my left, towards the rolling wall of dunes and the people I was passing by—all drably flannelled couples, busy corralling small children and large dogs, or sometimes large children and small dogs. Finally, I’d look straight ahead at the two or three hills jostling for position at the next promontory. I’d question if they looked any closer now than the last time I checked. Then, I’d look down at my feet and start over. The process would’ve been meditative, if I’d been in the mood for that sort of thing.
                The air smelled of mud, brine, and musty-minty sand, with no breeze to vary their proportions. Cider clung to my dry lips, and my head felt coated in a thick, sticky layer that kept thoughts from passing in or out. I savored this shiny sealant, this respite from the day.
                I came across a set of footprints. They were about the same size and shape as mine, except that the indent of their big toes swung much wider and deeper than seemed reasonable, scratching towards the instep with a great flourish on every footfall. I began to scrunch and turn my own big toes as I walked, trying to mimic the effect. The awkward motion soothed me. As soon as I had mastered it, I passed into a section of hard-packed sand that made footprints impossible. After several seconds I turned around and walked back, trying to trace where the stranger had gone. But I could only find one set of toe flourishes back in the softer sand, and I couldn’t be sure that they weren’t my own, that I hadn’t imagined or exaggerated the original.
                I continued on in my original direction, past the hard sand. My steps reverted to their usual flat motions. The beach grew more and more deserted as I walked. Sky, sea, and sand grew harder to distinguish, melting together into the same shade of gray.
                I was distracted by a long tan shape spilling from the dunes—a deer, trotting down the slope. He moved with surprising grace, hind legs bent, front legs kneading their way through the sliding sand. Once down onto the flatter surface of the beach, he began to take long, slow strides towards the ocean. Towards me.
                I stopped to watch. The deer stopped too, about a dozen feet away. Antlers like stubby felted hammers protruded from his head, and his fur danced with sandflies. He licked his black lips, which were peeled back in apparent distaste—whether for me or the salty air I couldn’t tell—once, twice, and then kept stepping forward.
                He didn’t stop when he reached the waves, simply lifted his hooves high over the unfurling water as if stepping over a fallen log. I watched as he kept trotting into the surf. A wave swallowed his whole length, and then all I could see, squinting, were the fuzzy tips of his antlers. And then those too were gone.
                I looked around. Well behind me, a family rummaged in a bright pink cooler. In front of me, the distant dark shapes of fellow beachwalkers inched through the haze, undisturbed. Nothing else stirred in the dunes. I was the only one who had seen.
                Only then did it occur to me that I should have cried out or stepped in front of the animal, tried to scare him off his path in some way. It had all happened so quickly. He’d seemed so serene, so confident in his trajectory. Like he was simply returning home after a long day grazing the nearby woods.
                I watched the waves, each break bearing its weight into the shore. I felt a similar weight accumulating in my body, as if each new curl of water pooled into the hollow of my shoulders. I found it perversely comforting, this burden all my own, to carry as I pleased.
                Running! The mysterious footprints earlier, they had been running! I shook my head at myself, at my need to make everything some grand little mystery. I think I laughed a little bit too, but I’m not sure because I wasn’t surveilling myself the way I do around other people, even around you.
                I threw a leg forward and danced a little swing-step up the beach. After a few feet, out of breath, I settled for a buoyant stroll.
                I soon reached a sign perched atop a faded wooden pole in the dunes and half-swallowed by beachgrass. The orange reflectors above and below it caught the sun like dim embers. It read “State Park Boundary No Vehicles Beyond this Point.” In that moment, I felt like a vehicle—made of what, carrying what, I did not yet know—and so I turned back.

Kai Broach writes fiction, poetry, and criticism. His work has appeared in Bright Wall/Dark Room, Deep Overstock, and X-R-A-Y Lit. He reads for Bicoastal Review and lives in Portland, Oregon in the Hollywood Theater's secret vaudeville dressing room.