Sandpiper

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"You know how you know when something's really up?" 

Roth looked up at Cal. His right eye squinted from the angled light of the evening sun, his skin was dry, dark, and leathered.

“Like when you get a feeling about something, and then it kinda sits on you, and then eventually it turns and you know that it's true? It’s true Cal. I’m dying. Dying right here. God damnit.”

Roth turned away from the sun and leaned his head back against the tree he’d been laying against for the past few minutes, panting slightly. This was the third time today he had sat down after not being able to walk further. Each time before he would lumber up and walk more after Cal begged him to. He and Cal had walked for days and everything looked the same.

“Like Ross. I just had this feeling for so long, and it just sat on me and sat on me for months. I don’t even know what it was, but one day, I just knew. Something can only sit on you so long before it shows itself. I just knew. Three days after I find her with Matthew. Found her square on top of Matthew just like I’d known it. Makes you wonder about psychics, like if they got something that we only got a little bit of. Like if we’d just had more of that we wouldn’t need to be here”

Cal turned away and looked toward the horizon. He didn’t know where ‘here’ was. He felt sick towards the sun, turning and turning so silent and immutable, pushing a gelled light that cut through the growth and sent orange threads of twilight to charge the air like beasts hunting for sad lost men. 

“C’mon. This ain’t no Ross.” Cal turned back to Roth, “We ain’t no Matthew, get up” Cal bent over ready to take Roths hand, which did not come. 

Roth had turned his body limply. The light, raw on his skin, pushed him away like a fierce act of uninvitation. He faced the ground with his eyes closed and Cal could just see the sides of his eyes wrinkle and his ear drip with sweat.

“Like no matter what you do, you lose. Preacher said all sorts of good things about loss, but it don’t matter, you’re still losing.” Roth stared at ground as he sunk lower to the earth.

“Don’t it feel that way? That at the center of everything you do is just you losing? That no matter what you do you just lose it sometime later? My whole life I’ve lost. Every-time I felt like I won it was short and it really wasn’t a win at all. Preacher said all sorts of good things about losing, I don’t think he knows it like I do.”

Cal looked away from Roth again and stared west. The winged hellfire turned weightlessly and Cal felt sick.

“I’ve prolly never had a win in my life Cal,” Cal looked down and could see Roth crying. “I’ve never f*****g won in my f*****g life and I don’t know if anybody else has ever won. Like winning ain’t a thing, like it’s something they tell you to keep you on, or maybe thinkin’ we’ll all believe it if we say it enough.” Roth’s head pointed back towards the ground, his rounded shoulders fell forward as his back pressed against the tree.

Cal looked at Roth’s bandages, completely soaked through and fluffy red, lazily holding on to the back of his neck like it knew he would be dead soon and didn’t want to bother trying. Dark purple blood trickled away from the bandage and down his back. Cal couldn't find the words, he curled beside Roth against the tree and as the sun turned and night began to buzz around them.

“‘Scuse me, sir?” An inquisitive jab hit Cal in his chest

“Sir?” You’re from the 49, right?” Cal looked up and squinted. It was barely morning, a cool blue dawn. He turned to his side and saw Roth flat on his face, cold, stiff looking.

“You from 49?” said a stout Lieutenant who ambled up besides the jabber, looking down at a small piece of yellow paper.

“We heard y'all ran into some trouble. How’s your friend?” Cal looked again at Roth and looked back up at the Lieutenant.

“He done.” said the jabbing Private, giving Roth a quick poke in the ribs.

The lieutenant sighed. “Ok, grab this one, he doesn’t look good...bury the dead fella.” he said, flipping his hand towards Roth.

The jabber and one other pulled Cal upp by his arm, and once upright he could see a dozen other men in uniform standing lazily around a big 8 wheeled truck. The truck was dark green with a monstrous cab and a long bed covered with a tan canvas. 

The two men walked Cal towards the back as the men parted to the left and right, beholding him with mixtures of curiosity and guarded sympathy. They pushed him into the back, setting him on one of the flanked benches. They handed him 3 packs of food, a biscuit and some water. Cal ate graciously while trying not to listen to the squishing and scratching of Roth’s grave being dug.

Almost an hour passed and everyone loaded into the truck, which shortly began rattling through the growth, headed towards the road they had come from. A young soldier next to him with bright green eyes and olive skin began to speak after many minutes of rattling silence.

“You know, when I was in 36 we were at a beach for a few months. Small beach way far out past the swamps. We didn’t see no action or anything like that, just quiet always. Was kind of nice if I had to tell the truth. We’d play volleyball and goof off and it damn near felt like a vacation some days. Only thing was it’d get damn lonesome sometimes. Something about that water, so goddamn big. In the day you could just see for miles out in the ocean, and not a single ship passed for the 5 months we were there.”

“We had these huge light towers set up around the camp in a circle like, big steel towers with huge lights that they’d face outward so we could see out at night. Most of em’ pointed out towards the growth or across the beach, but we had this one light that just pointed out into the water. It was real close to tide, they built in into the sand and it got all rusty from the mist. Eventually they took it down, ‘cuz the rust, and they said they’d replace it but never did. On windy nights you could hear it, the rust creakin’ and screechin’ and hollerin’ all night. Goddamn irritating. I’d joke that maybe it was because it was seeing somethin’ awful out there. Cuz, you see, it’d be real bright on the tide, and you could see little fish and stuff in the waves, but just past that and it’d turn quick to black. Just so goddamn big and dark, that light did nothin’. I’d sit there and stare at the tide, all bright and lit up, and the little green fishes in it, and it felt cool, like you was seeing something maybe you weren’t supposed to see... like the whole ocean was so black and dark but this little area was lit up. I don’t know, it felt like you were in on a secret or something cool like that. But just over the tide you could kinda see the water a bit, and then it’d be just this black.. like you’d just sticked a flash light down a hole that don’t end. For all you’d know it wasn’t even water out there. And these lights is damn bright, where we’d shine it on ground you’cud see a quarter mile or more dependin’. But this one just got black so damn quick, like that water was so damn big that the light just raced across it and could never come back. And you could see that this bright, you know, like, lit up tide was just coming from this big black space that you couldn’t think too much about out there alone. It used to scare me, I mean it, looking out at it. Just so big and dark and you wonder what all them fish even do when it gets like that. Just dark and deep and cold and so goddamn big.” 

“We had these little sandpiper birds that would run around the beach with us. They were the funniest little things, you’d get such a kick out of them, they’d run up re-e-e-a-ll close to the water as the tide went back and then when it’d come forward they’d run and run and run back towards the beach with it nippin’ at their heels the whole time. They’d just follow the tide like that, right on it’s a*s, their little legs movin’ so fast and they’d be so damn close to the water every single time, you’d swear a million of ‘em would be swept out to sea everyday. But I never saw one get hit by a single wave. That got me good, funniest little things you've ever seen.

One day I was up late and I’d walked out to the beach and was watching the tide and the fishes, and I stared out after that light thinkin’ maybe this time my eyes could catch up with it and I’d see it, that I’d just see the same ocean I see when the sun’s out and its all bright. I don’t know, I looked out after that light a lot thinkin’ that. Out of the corner of my eye, I see one of them sandpipers, and he just standing there. Just right on the beach beside me, he ain't running into the tide, digging his beak in the sand and lookin’ for food, nothin’. Just standing there, like me, looking out at the water, like he had somthin’ on his mind too, or like he wasn’t feeling alright either. I got a real kick out of that. Like this little guy might be on my side of things, like he might be feeling the way I do about that big black space, even though you’d sorta guess he didn't - I mean this is their natural habitat y’know? They live here and they see it everyday in the sunshine and they run around in it and spend all their time so close to it, runnin’ from it. You’d never think they knew what they were up against, unless you were me and you’d seent one out there looking at it in the night, alone, like he knew exactly what that big darkness was.”

The convoy settled back down to silence, and soon they turned westward, finding the road. The sun shone bright, running down the dirt path and hitting the convoy through the opening of the bed. Sweat trickled down their backs as they itched at their collars and watched the grass spin away behind them.

Author's Note

Just looking for any impressions you have.

Reviews

[ReedWrite]

I like this. Good start. I see a few grammar and editing issues, but those are very fixable. You've captured several things that a lot of writers don't or can't. One, you have a nice feel for the mechanics of writing. That's a plus. Two, this is a great story line...it captivates the attention and makes me want to read more. That's a big plus. Three, you have a nice flair...that's something innate. You can't really learn it. You either have it or you don't. That flair shows up in metaphors and similes, in voice and style, in word choice and character development. Nice job. Keep at it!

[sandpiper]

Thanks! Yeah I am defnitely mostly concerned with the efficacy of the voice and tone. Thank you so so so much for taking the time to read and share your thoughts, it really means a lot :)

[DB Heinemann]

Hello! I'm new too, how's it going?

This is a really dumb complaint but that font is killing my eyes. So tiny. It's also little tricky to figure out who's talking at first but that's not a huge deal either. I really like the describing phrases here like "sent orange threads of twilight to charge the air like beasts hunting for sad lost men." Very mystic. Really some beautiful words in here. I think the beginning starts off a little slow but once I got into it I was like, "ooh, what's happening. This is kinda cool." The explanation for how black the water was is kind of rambling and dragged on. I'd recommend grabbing two or three sentences describing it then moving on.

I feel like there's two separate stories here, one with Roth and Cal and the other with the soldier with the olive skin. Neither with an especially satisfying ending. There's a lot of really pretty prose and sections of it that are like, wow, that's really neat. But there doesn't seem to be a solid plot. Just a lot of dialogue and description and you're never really sure what exactly is going on. It seems to be more of a section ripped out of a book rather than a story.

Might I suggest that some enemy finally comes into view at the end of the Olive skinned guy's story? Or maybe when they go to cross the ocean because they're getting transferred, once they're in the black water area, they discover a battlefield ocean style like some fellow comrades were on the way to the beach but they got ambushed by then enemy leaving many dead bodies in the ocean just out of sight of the light house that creaked warnings, as you say. And maybe there's a little more reflection on Roth's death on Cal's part. Maybe The scene has a little more of Cal trying to keep Roth alive or some kind of goal trying to get reached. The story might also be a little more clear if you put Cal and Roth's story separate from Olive's.

Like I said, there's a lot of good chunks in here but I think you could do a lot more to sew it together into a coherent, singular story, mostly with a conflict and clear conflict resolution/conclusion.