Hugh Howey - The Shell Collector

My father’s allowance is the only power he has over me. To reject this is to reject him and to stand on my convictions. But my father’s allowance is the only power I have over the world he harms. To cast myself adrift is to leave the world to drown. In this way, my convictions become the ultimate not in sacrifice but in selfishness.

Better to stomach all of this, to tear out and swallow these pages, these ruminations, and live as a dutiful son, conspiring in my own way, and amassing a war chest. Not to counter misdeeds with mere angry words to the hungry press, but to apply some salve to all the wounds my family has scratched upon this Earth.

I have to read it a second time. So Ness’s grandfather rejected the legacy his own father made, but he did it in secret. To what effect?

There is more. Much more. There are more poems of nature worship and agony, and I find myself blinking tears away, however rough the prose. Here is a soul aging in reverse. Anger giving way to charity. Surety moving to curiosity. Judgment sliding into doubt. The last pages read like the youthful rebellion of the naive, the college spirit, the hopefulness that the world might change for the better. Early pages, meanwhile, read like the hardened cynicism of old age, like the generations of Wildes in my series of planned exposés. If this transformation was real, it transpired without anyone knowing.

I sip my wine. There is a small white light on the horizon following another light: the flash of a longline tug heading south. My father taught me to read these nautical constellations on shelling expeditions that lasted into the night. I think of this journal in my lap as a tug of sorts, pulling me through dark waters. The compulsion to run a story based on what I’m reading is neutered by the document I’ve signed. But maybe it would be worth the worst that lawsuits might bring. A story of quiet redemption and private protest.

But what was the point of this protest? What was the outcome? His own son—Ness’s father—picked up the mantle and carried on pumping oil, warming the air and the sea, ruining whatever plans this journal hints at. Even when Ness’s father turned to green energy, it was a temporary stunt, and the pumping continued. He simply saw room for even greater profits by appealing to the masses. In my research, I found several quotes where Ness’s father practically admits this. It’s the crux of the third part of my story.

“Ness?” I call out. I have so many questions.

He appears moments later, and I am shocked back into awareness of where I am. The wine and the passing of these hours have made being here feel less surreal.

“Explain this,” I say, indicating the journal. “What the hell is this?”

“That’s a good man,” Ness says. “Everything you wrote about my great-grandfather is true. Everything you’ll say about my father and me will be true. But not him. You couldn’t possibly write a true word about him.”

“So the land he bought—what was the point?”

“To protect it. Practically every acre is now under federal protection—“

“But for tax reasons, right?”

Ness shrugs. “People don’t see what they want to see. They see what they expect to see.”

“I need to… I need to think about this.” I hold up the journal. “Can I take this with me?”

Ness laughs. “No way. But you can take as long as you like with it. You can come back tomorrow if you want. Anything to convince you to skip over him.”

I check the time. It’s not yet nine o’clock. The inn where I’m staying is only half an hour away, and fifteen minutes of that is just getting off Ness’s property. I have so many questions. Even if the story can’t be written, I need to know what Ness has pieced together about his grandfather. I need to spend some time going through the notebook more carefully. There’s more here than anyone could decipher in a week. And I still haven’t grilled him about himself or his father. I haven’t asked him about the shells.

“Can I… do you mind if I get some air?”

“Of course. It’s a short walk down to the beach.” Ness takes my wine glass, opens one of the sliding glass doors, and shows me which boardwalk to take. It’s a maze of steps that seems to float above the dunes and between the tall reeds and grasses. I leave my shoes on the deck. Ness offers me a flashlight, but the stairs are dimly lit on either side, and I don’t want to shell. Impossibly, I don’t want to shell.

As I head down, the sea calls from the black distance. I cannot see it and it cannot see me, but we seem to be aware of one another. I think of a poem from the notebook, the dying sighs and whispers, the last breaths, and just how long the final days of that great body of water have stretched out. Dying slowly, like my mother. When everyone thought the end would be swift, like it was for my dad.

Thinking of my father, I remember how we used to walk the shoreline near our house after Mom passed away. We carried bags, but not because we thought we’d find more than a stray shell here or there. The shells were rare enough that we only needed our pockets. The bags were for the trash. He and I watched the plastic index creep and climb from summer to summer, the measure of how much had dissolved into the sea. When I was nine, he and my mom took me on an eco-cruise to see the great raft of detritus caught in the swirling gyre of the Pacific. Each cruise scoops up as much as it can and brings home tons of trash to be recycled. Passengers buy tickets to pay for the fuel and the efforts. It’s also a lottery of sorts, with winners catching glimpses of a lone whale, maybe just a spout or the tail fin before a deep dive. From fellow passengers, we heard stories of such sightings. At my age, this was like being near enough to unicorns, just touching the arm of an old couple who’d had such an encounter.

Then I saw the raft of trash for myself. You could walk across it in places, it was so thick and buoyant. The giant scoops from the deck crane barely made a dent. My mother explained where it all came from until I wept. After she passed away, my father and I kept her spirit alive by picking up trash on the beach. We tried to make the world a prettier place. At least until the next tide rolled in.

The sea has this effect on me, this helpless reminiscing. On Ness Wilde’s private beach, I weep. I weep while the ocean whispers a death rattle of sublime beauty, of such grace. Such dying grace. Where I am standing would’ve been hillside generations ago. The old beach is out there somewhere, buried. Gone.

Straining, I can see the white foam of crashing waves lit by the half-moon. The lighthouse sends another ray around, providing me with glimpses of the shimmering sea. But this beach was bought with oil money. With plastic. Some other beach lies out there in the inky depths, drowned and forgotten. Flooded. And suddenly the cool sand is hot beneath the soles of my feet. And I turn my back on the graceful, dying waters and run toward the boardwalk, toward the stairs up and away, before the sea reaches out and takes me as well, before it keeps coming, absorbing all, washing me away.

“You weren’t gone long,” Ness says as I slam the door behind me. My shoes are in my hand. I am shaking. I tell him I need to go, maybe come back tomorrow, and Ness asks if I’m okay to drive. I’m not. I tell him I need a minute. I hear myself say that I have too many questions. That it’s too late in the day.

“Have a seat,” Ness tells me. “I’ll put on coffee.”

I sit down and slip my shoes back on, the sand rough between my toes. I find my purse and dig out my key fob. It feels good to hold it, this means of escape. I feel drugged on more than just wine and sad remembrances. It’s the blow of new knowledge. I remember feeling this at times in college, needing days to recover after seeing the world in a different light. If what I’ve glimpsed about his grandfather is true, then Ness was right, and I can’t run my next piece. It doesn’t stop the rest of my story, but it creates quite the hole. One I can’t fill with the truth—for I have signed that right away.