“Whooooaaaaaa.” Coleman hung on to the top of a picket with one hand, swinging off-balance and bouncing against the fence a few times like a screen door in the wind. “Getting a little funky here.”
Serge was lost in the focus of the moment. “But I view the whole tourist-cemetery interface from an optimistic viewpoint that history is the future. A lovely family from Elk Rapids comes down here, and they’re like: ‘This is paradise. We’ve got a beautiful sun and sky, our blankets spread out, sodas and baloney sandwiches in the cooler, our kids laughing and splashing in the surf. How can it possibly get any better? . . . Wait, are people buried here?’”
“Where else can they get that?” asked Coleman.
“This is what I keep trying to tell people, but it’s always the same closed-mindedness: ‘Don’t hurt me.’”
“I kind of dig that angel statue in the center.”
“Remember the big hurricane monument by the highway? True story: When that storm blew through, it picked up that angel—I’m guessing by the wings—and sent it flying all the way back to the road. I mean, that’s a pretty heavy chunk of rock. And it barely got scratched. The local history heroes returned it to its rightful place.”
“Must have been a big storm to blow it that far.”
“One of the biggest.” Serge placed paper to headstone. “And Islamorada was particularly hard hit, with scores of victims. But of course all the people in this cemetery were already dead.”
“So they survived?”
Serge stared at Coleman a moment and returned to his rubbing.
Soon they were strolling along the beach, Serge in a straight line, Coleman on a much looser course. His veering became more and more generous until he was offshore.
Serge sternly folded his arms and yelled at the ocean. “Can you please not do that?”
“Sorry.” Coleman splashed back toward land. “Having a little trouble coloring inside the lines.”
They continued on. Then they stopped and stared down.
“A dead seagull?” said Coleman.
Serge raised his eyes up the shore. “There’s another one, and another . . .”
After walking twenty more yards, Serge paused again. “That’s weird. Six dead birds, but no clues. No fishing lines or oil or trauma.”
“Maybe it was the hurricane,” said Coleman.
Serge shook his head. “The bodies are too fresh. Oh, well . . .”
They resumed strolling again and heard a chorus of rambunctious yelling. Three young boys charging down the beach to the water’s edge.
“Now that’s what I like to see,” said Serge. “A footloose childhood like mine spent in the Florida outdoors instead of moving pieces of candy around on cell phones.”
“What are they doing?”
“Looks like a bread sack. They’re throwing pieces.”
“Here come the seagulls.” Coleman ducked as they swooped in. “How do they do that? Not a bird around, and then a million.”
“Seagulls are the FBI surveillance teams of the animal world. You never know the FBI is there until the shit goes down, and then they’re everywhere,” said Serge. “Likewise, seagulls often don’t make their presence known until someone tosses aside the last bite of a hot dog, turning the beach into a Hitchcock movie.”
“What are those kids throwing now?” asked Coleman. “It doesn’t look like bread anymore.”
“What are they throwing?” asked Serge, heading off in a trot.
The trio of young boys giggled as they tossed stuff to the frenzy of birds.
“Excuse me,” said Serge. “May I see what you’re feeding them?”
One of the boys quickly hid something behind his back, and they all stopped laughing.
“Come onnnnnn,” said Serge. “I just want in on the fun.”
“Then okay,” said one of kids. He produced a box of generic Alka-Seltzer.
Serge gasped and grabbed his heart.
From behind: “What the hell are you doing? Get away from those kids!”
It was a voice from someone Serge hadn’t noticed on the beach before. He turned and saw a man running down from the palm trees around a resort swimming pool.
He arrived and got between Serge and the boys. “What are you, some kind of pervert?”
“No, but why do you have a video camera in your hand?”
“None of your business! And you’re wrecking my shot!”
“I know what you were doing,” said Serge. “You told these kids to feed Alka-Seltzer to the birds. And because birds can’t burp, they would explode.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You’re lying,” said Serge. “And then you were going to film the whole shameful episode with your camera. That level of cruelty is a sickness.”
“So what if I was?” He shoved Serge hard in the chest. “What are you going to do about it?” Another shove.
Serge stumbled backward a couple of steps. “Don’t you know the whole tale about birds exploding is an urban myth?”
“What are you talking about?”
“They don’t explode,” said Serge. “They can burp, or whatever the avian equivalent is of dealing with the social awkwardness of unpleasant gas that gets looks from the rest of the flock.”
“Then what’s your problem?”
Serge pointed back up the beach at the half-dozen fallen seagulls that they’d just passed. “While the birds may not explode, you’ve given them an overdose of aspirin and anhydrous citric acid, the active ingredient in those tablets. A gull that weighs a pound or two can’t handle what’s meant for an adult human.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Believe this: The overdose symptoms include high fever, double vision, respiratory distress, cardiac distress, abdominal agony, brain-swelling, seizures. It’s such a horrible way to go that those birds probably wished they had exploded.”
“You—!” The man with the video camera noticed something out in the water and paused. “What’s he doing?”
Coleman was up to his belly button in the surf with a strained look on his face.
Serge cupped hands around his mouth. “Coleman! No taking dumps in the ocean! We’ve talked about this.” He turned back around to the man. “Sorry, where were we?”
“You were just about to leave!” Another shove.
“Jesus, there are kids here,” said Serge. “What kind of example are you setting as a parent?”
“Ha! I’m not their father. I’m their uncle.”
“Well then, by all means, ruin them, Uncle Jack Wagon.”
“I’ve had enough of you!” A final shove, sending Serge down to the sand. “Fuck off!”
“Okay, now you’re really being a bad example,” said Serge. “Using profanity and ending a sentence with a preposition.”
Coleman trudged his way back to shore. “What did I miss?” He received his own shove to the chest and toppled over. “Hey, what was that for?”
Serge got up and dusted himself off. “I’ve really tried to be nice, but now you’re being mean to Coleman, which is a broad form of animal cruelty.”