Pools

by Ashlinn Smith

     During their drive to the tide pools, Pearl noted that all city skylines looked the same. She joked that a person could be satisfied by that fact or want to end it right there.

     Of course, she would still go to the tide pools. It was the only thing to do. Jim would make it memorable somehow. He was good at wanting to do things like climbing trees and fences. There would be San Diegans in very bright shorts with matching sandals and cameras. Brightly colored animals, soft and sponge-sized with sponge temperaments would wait to be grabbed up or nudged in their tidy homes. Down drove their station wagon and into view came the sea. If they had swam over they wouldn’t have had to pay to park. The couples and families milled on the dirty-blonde sand, bent over here and there to “woooohhh” at a crusty thing in its pool, perhaps not all as bright but still loud. There was summer’s carefree ease gathered into their smiles and summer in the faces glowing deeper skin tones. A family that looked familiar was flicking a picnic blanket against the wind that wouldn‘t let it relax. The boy and girl squealed under the cloth as though they wished and dreaded they too would be whisked around like sails. The father-type grinned and held the cloth’s corners as though they were reigns on an untamable stallion or like a conqueror struggling to claim his land . Under the upward waving flag, to Pearl’s surprise, a dog’s miniature legs could be caught pawing around in the sand. The shag of the little thing was impressively untamed. She always thought of tide pools as having to do with scientists or else seventh grade science class and those whose marine biology knowledge didn’t leave that level. What could be here for you little one, she asked herself?

     But she was here too and Jim with a disposable camera for a microscope. They sat on the safe edge of a minor cliff taking in their own awe of nature. It was pretty-she could write a children’s book about it. The sea was long and the cliffs were high. Pearl remembered her camera half-smile as Jim stood in front of her ready to click. She positioned her arms and back in order to look as sunny as the setting and wondered maybe her knowledge wasn’t the only appeal she had to offer Jim who was adamant about getting the aesthetic all right. The photo would show the girl, with toes dancing in the breeze above the violence of waves thrusting into pointed rocks. There was more to the picture, Pearl could see and hear. The sound of the dog ‘s barking, if a bark can be a plea or negotiation as well as a warning, lead her eyes to spot him far in front of them tampering with a giant stick or a shrunken log nestled in the sand. The wood bore the size of a prosthetic leg and lay just as dead as the dog tried to possess it. If canine teeth can gum, his teeth gummed with tremendous powerlessness. His wiggly passions dug some only to watch sand pour down again, then barked ones that actually sounded like “ruff”s. While switching between these two actions, the lively pillow of dog, however slight, would occasionally drag the log a few slides in the sand. Pearl, looked up to see what kind of laugh was breaking onto Jim’s face at the sight but he wasn’t there. Where could he be? Dropped in the ocean?

     Suddenly, she was cold and scared and she hated California. He had taken the picture and knew better than to sit around and let that snap be the only memory. He had the kick of adventure. Not even the echo of his voice remained. Pearl, feeling that she shouldn’t cry out to Jim, peered over onto the lean and jagged slope of the cliff and found him climbing down. “Are you nuts?,” exploded Pearl. “There’s a cave down there I want to check out,” Jim chimed. Well, what could she do but go. He led Pearl down, one foot after the next, he like a cat and she a warm helpless puppy. When she had magically convinced some sand-stone corners to let her lower herself with Jim’s guidance, Pearl saw she was trapped. She glued her feet to the rock she stood upon because it was the last rock, though the cave was still some stony steps below. They were all too round, too skinny, too slippery, and the whole situation was too dramatic living on the edge. This is how stories always go, everyone’s happy and next thing you know someone ends it sorry they left the house. What soundtrack would be playing at the finale of her film of life? Jim would survive, he was that character. But she was weak, always the bookish type with the bad immune system. Oh could they just kiss passionately, her biting his lips out of nervousness, before she fell to her seaweedy grave?

     The water kept coming and ebbing underneath but she stayed fixed, caught between the sky that was too high and the forever downward sea. In between, she was just an earthy instant. She remembered her thought about the children’s book and wondered how many stories tall was the cliff, and how many stories long was the sea and if she could live with her own story. Her mouth tasted dry and the sounds of the dog barking above on the flat land reminded her how hurt her feet were with too much standing responsibility. Her soles needed something new. She could hear the barking had moved since she first watched the dog. It now sounded very far from the family’s original picnic. She could imagine them, the father thinking of shaking his head at the dog and the girl and boy scampering to bring his energy back toward them. But his arms still dug in large loops, scooping against the continuing grains, looking, from far away, singular with the oversized stick. His shagginess that probably smelled of soggy dirt grew out and mixed in curls the way the oh so glorious ocean did. Pearl took the hand of indented cliff and began to think out her steps, as she would still go. Into the cave, she pictured the small dog’s paws as his trail left in the sand snaked behind him.

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