“Yes and no. Smaller than the one in my dreams. Bigger than the one in my trailer.”
She threw the towel over the back of a chair and climbed into bed with the girl. The sheets felt like flannel, which was so luxurious Bea found it almost hard to process. On top of them lay a heavy duvet that pressed down on Bea and made her feel secure and warm. It was a sensation almost unbearably like childhood.
“Were you terribly upset about the animals?” Bea whispered.
“You mean the dead bear and his friends? Not so much as you probably think.”
“But you’re so against killing animals.”
“I wouldn’t do it. And I wouldn’t want to see it. But animals kill animals. You know. To eat. And I don’t think that’s so terrible. It’s just the way nature planned it. So that elk, he lived free in the wild until the exact moment Casper shot him. Not so different from being brought down by a lion. What I can’t stand is the way we raise animals for meat. The factory farms. We keep them in the most horrible conditions, and mistreat them so badly, and then, after all that, slaughter them in front of each other. That’s the system I can’t be any part of. A hunter . . . I don’t know. I guess it’s not the best sign in the world about the guy. But I’d be more upset about the fact that he doesn’t like cats.”
“Interesting,” Bea said. She almost added, “You’ve thought this through more logically than I realized,” but she withheld the words, realizing they hinted at an insult. “Still . . .” Then Bea performed an imitation of the stuffed bear. She raised her hands into claws and bared her teeth in a threatening grimace.
They both fell into fits of laughter.
“Nice to hear you so happy in there,” Casper’s voice said, floating into the room. “Goodnight. See you bright and early for our special trip.”
“Goodnight, Casper,” they both said, more or less in unison.
“Where are we going in the morning?” Allie asked.
“I don’t know,” Bea said. “It’s a surprise.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Beaches Made of Glass, and Other Fragile Things
They walked together, the three of them, across a bluff, heading for the ocean. Bea found herself wishing there were no walking involved, but she didn’t care to admit it out loud. To confide in the girl was one thing, but not to an actual man.
“I hope I haven’t oversold this,” Casper said.
“You haven’t told us anything about it at all,” Bea replied, already slightly out of breath.
“But getting us up so early and taking you down here so you can see this thing I want you to see. Some people think it’s just wonderful. They can’t get enough of it. Others, I guess they miss what’s so special.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Allie said, sounding irritatingly fresh. “We like to see new things and find out for ourselves what we think.”
“That’s the right way to look at it,” Casper said.
A moment later they ran out of bluff. They stood at the edge of the world, looking down at a cove. Bea had hoped for something she could view with enthusiasm, but it looked no different from any other beach. The sun was just ready to break in the east, and that was lovely, but nothing else struck her as extraordinary.
“I doubt I can get down there,” Bea said, eyeing the steep dirt paths that twisted their way down the edge of the bluff.
“Oh, sure you can,” Casper said. “I’ll help you.”
“No, I really don’t think so, Casper. It looks dangerous to try. Whatever it is, I’ll have to see it from here.”
Meanwhile the girl had begun to scramble downhill.
“But you can’t. You won’t see it from up here. It’s something that has to be viewed close up, or you’ll never see it at all.”
I suppose I won’t see it then, Bea thought.
Bea heard a shriek that startled her, though it was clearly a cry of delight. Allie was down on the beach now, holding a double handful of what Bea assumed to be sand, peering at it closely.
“You have to come down here!” Allie called. “You have to see this!”
“I can’t get down this steep bluff,” Bea called back. “Tell me what’s so wonderful about it.”
“No. I won’t. You have to see it with your own eyes.”
Bea sighed.
“I think I’m about to break my neck,” she said to Casper.
“I won’t let you. Come on.”
He took her arm. Over the next minute or two—though it felt like an hour—he helped her navigate the least steep of the steep paths. He did not let her fall.
Allie whooped joyfully as Bea’s feet touched horizontal beach. She ran to Bea and poured a double handful of beach sand into her outstretched hands.
“Now what’s so special about this sand?” Bea asked, thinking she should have brought her reading glasses. But when it touched her palms it didn’t feel like sand. It felt like small stones.
“It’s not sand. There’s no sand down here that I can see. It’s all beach glass.”
“How can it all be beach glass?”
“Look.”
Bea stared closely at her hands. She was holding a pile of beach glass. Nothing but. It was worn smooth from the waves, every pebble. Some pebbles were clear, some brown, some green. There was even one bright spot of cobalt blue.
“How is that possible?” she asked no one. Bea lowered herself carefully to her knees in the sea of smooth glass pebbles. She put her palms down and looked at the beach surface from only inches away. It was all beach glass. Every pebble of it. “Herbert and I used to hunt for beach glass on our trips to the coast. If we found even two pieces, that was a banner day.”
She looked up to see if anybody was listening, and saw both Casper and the girl standing close.
“Glad you’re one of the ones who know enough to think it’s wonderful,” Casper said.
She sat on a driftwood log with Casper, watching the light of the beach change with the rising sun, watching the girl lie on her belly in the glass, sorting through its wonders. Even the sound was different, Bea noted. As each wave washed up onto the shore, the glass made a noise that sand cannot make, a light tinkling that had begun to sound like music to Bea.
“So, there has to be a story about how this is possible,” Bea said.
“There is. You might like it or you might not. Years ago this used to be an official dump site. Locals brought their garbage here and dumped it into the ocean. Lots of glass bottles and jars and pottery in there. Some of the bulkier trash was burned off first. The more unsightly stuff was cleaned up later. But the glass stayed. The waves did their thing, and . . . here you have it. Most people hate that story because it’s nasty to think of throwing trash into the ocean. I like it because I like the idea that something as terrible as that led to something as wonderful as this.”