I know as well as anyone that when the tide goes out, the estuary pukes up the town’s secrets. Each cautious step, laced with the dreary squelch of gritty foam, releases the briny stink of decay and putrid w**d; tiny bones and scraps of shell crunch underfoot and, coy beneath an inch of water, the algae-covered skulls of mooring buoys peep up through the mud as I scour the estuary for flotsam.
My eyes are sharp enough to catch the gleam of objects caught up in rippled sand or webbed beneath a curly head of bladderwrack. Here, the desiccated corpse of a herring gull, tangled and splintered at the tide line; there, the ice pick glimmer of a fisherman’s lure. Beer cans, bottle caps, a pair of sunglasses, a set of keys—all of these can be found lodged in the gullet of Shallow Creek where they
