Breaking News

Our car ticks over the seams in the bridge that extends to the island.  My husband drives.  My nine-year-old daughter and I stretch our necks to peer down at the waves making the buoys sway.  Our foreheads press to glass.  Wondering if it smells like sea salt, my daughter rolls down her window.  A sulfurous gust knocks her hair from her shoulders before she rolls it back up. 

“Gross,” she says with her nose scrunched. 

Oil refineries spit white plumes just behind us. 

The breaking news informs us that fifty-four days into the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a tar ball has been plucked from the sand stippled with cigarette butts and pull-tabs a few miles down the beach from where we're staying.   

“Authorities say this will be tested,” the reporter explains, “to see if it came from the Deepwater incident or if it's one of the usual tar clumps.” 

It's smaller than the usual, though, he notes.  “Maybe its small size is a good indication,” the reporter adds, “that if it is from the oil spill this will be the extent of it.”

Drilling platforms in the distance seem to join the sea and sky like black stitches on the horizon. 

“So pretty at night when their lights twinkle, though,” I exhale as we tromp down sand-dusted wooden steps angling out of the dunes and down to the beach. 

We shuffle through tire ruts and squint at the knee-high wall of dead seaweed we find at the high tide mark.  This happens annually but to a lesser degree than this.  Volunteer groups usually assist in scraping it off the beaches.  This year, it's been too much to manage.  Rising temperatures in the gulf have caused more seaweed to die off than normal.  Much more and much earlier.

I look for a gap, a way to the water.  There is no gap.  It's a good foot-and-a-half thick.  I take a breath in and step.  One foot sinks into the seaweed reeking of dead fish.  In front of me, waves carrying a glistening patina flatten out over the sand.  

When I was my daughter's age, I used to paddle out on a raft to the bigger waves in this same spot.  One knocked me over once, sucked me under.  A backward flowing drift of sand passed through my sprawled fingers as I struggled to find the rippled sea floor and push off.  I never swam out as far after that.  The water I swallowed left a chemical tang in my mouth I could taste the rest of the day.  More pepper than salt.              

I look back at my daughter who won't follow me over.  Lukewarm water washes around my feet.  Strands of seaweed wrap my ankles. 

“I think we should just go back,” she says. 

So I maneuver across again, pull my foot free, and step into the sludge of damp sand beside her.

I remember.  An afternoon of swimming in the Texas gulf as a kid always equaled one evening of peeling a smattering of tar from the baby fine hair down my legs.  My mom would have a bag of M & Ms waiting as consolation.  Now, my daughter and I make our way over the boardwalk, up the stairs, and to the condo door where there's still a sign that reads “remove tar from shoes before entering.”  My daughter turns her feet against the painted concrete landing and checks her soles.