Blackwater Sound
by Michael Haynes
The sun was below the horizon and dusk quickly fading as Lee Cortez pulled his truck off the road into the gravel parking strip separating Highway 1 from the quiet depths of Blackwater Sound. He yanked a ratty camp chair from the truck bed then went back to the front. He hesitated over a pile of mementos, reaching out, then pulling back. Finally, he grabbed just his cooler and headed down to the shore.
No one else was on the bit of sandy beach as he approached. Lee dropped the cooler just a few feet from the water and dropped himself into the chair. He lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly, waiting for the moon to rise behind him.
Lee used to come here with Marta, when they were courting, then with Marta and Tommy, once he'd been born. They'd liked it because there were so few people who used the beach; most folks drove on by, heading for somewhere bigger and, if he was being truthful, somewhere nicer. But it was their spot.
The last few years, since that stormy night when Tommy spiked a fever and Marta told Lee, dead on his feet after pulling a double at the plant, that he should sleep, that she could take Tommy to the urgent care, he'd come alone and mostly been alone. A couple times a person or two would be on the beach, sitting, or standing. Waiting.
Today, he waited alone as the moon rose behind him. He smoked steadily as the moon slid into the Earth's shadow. Once or twice he looked over his shoulder to check the progression of the eclipse. Mostly he watched the water.
It was the psychic who had told him to come back to Blackwater Sound. He'd been lonely, desperate, when he went to see her--something he never would have done before everything changed. But when she told him to go back to the dark water--(She hadn't said the words "Blackwater Sound" but he hadn't said anything about water to her. It couldn't be a coincidence.)--when she told him to come here to find his wife, find his son, told him when the moon turned red that things which were lost came back, he took those words and made them gospel and held them close.
Lee pulled a bottle of soda from the cooler and sipped it, taking a break from the cigarettes. A glance over his shoulder and he saw the moon was turning red. He nodded and turned back to the dark, still water.
