-What to Say

---"Come on, let's go," I call to Pete.
---"Where?" he asks, running to me from his castles in the sand. He stands before me, hands on hips, looking up with the question on his face.
---"I don't know, that way," I answer, pointing away from the clusters of families, umbrellas and blankets.
---"What's there?" he asks.
---"Sand and water, same as here" I tell him, "Not so many people, that's all. Let's go." I walk to the waterline, to move with my feet in the shallow runoff of waves. Pete follows, stepping quick to match the pace of longer legs. I hear our youngest brother Danny yell to us. We stop and turn as he runs up.
---"Why didn't you wait for me?" Danny asks, puffing with the effort of catching us, "Can I come?"
---"Sorry I didn't see you, Dan. You can come," I tell him. He's younger than Pete, and it's easy for him to feel left out.
---"I thought we were going, Tom. I don't want him!" Pete tells me, thumbing at Danny. He's not the youngest. It's easy for him to feel jealous.
---"You think he can't walk on a beach, just because you say-that's not right, Pete. Let's just go. I don't want to talk about that anymore. Come on."
I turn and continue, kicking up wet clumps with my big toes, knowing they will follow now, that I don't have to ask again. They arrange themselves on either side.
---Danny grabs and pulls on the hem of my shorts sometimes to slow me down. His legs are shortest. Late day sun warms my back, bursts of wind push the hair from my forehead.
---"Let's race," Danny suggests.
---"Yeah," agrees Pete, skipping his legs a little.
They crouch, dig fingers and toes into sand, sraightening their legs into runners' starting stances.
---"Come on, Tom"
---"All right," I say "we'll race to the dingy wrecked up there." I bend down between them with forearms on thighs and yell "Go!" Both boys sprint off and Pete pulls ahead right away. I jog to stay even with Dan and let him in front as we near the boat. Pete slaps a piece of bow breaking from the sand to win.
---"I beat you guys. I always beat Dan," Pete crows. He walks around the chunks of fiberglass and foam that floated once.
---"He does," admits Danny quietly, "but he's seven."
---"It doesn't matter," I tell him, "let's keep going." Pete pulls at an orange bouy on a blackened and frayed line.
---"Can I keep it, Tom?" he asks.
---"I guess it's as much yours as anybody's," I answer, "but leave it, we'll get it on the way back."
Past the boat, Danny crouches in the sand, looking back at us through his legs, ready. As we reach him we stop and drop into stance. From either side, they look at me, awaiting the moment.
---"To the dunes," I decide.
---"Let's go!"
---"Reeeaaady," I whisper, and after a pause, yell, "SETGO!" Both boys jump into a run at my shout. I settle into a slow jog and watch Pete lead again. He will win, and we know it. It's okay and I look out to sea. The late ferry full of day trippers crosses the horizon right to left, its running lights glowing and bobbing.
---Because I'm distracted, looking away from my going, I find myself on my knees and hands, brought down by a thin, white cord looped from the sand. I pull at the cord where it grows from the ground, it sticks fast. I see them kneeling where the line snakes to its end some yards away.
---"Tom," Dan yells, "come here, quick!" I stand and run to them, following the line with my gaze as I step to the end of it. A crumpled seagull dries in the sand at our feet, cord still noosed around the bits of bone and feather that were a neck once.
---Dan snaps to vertical. The force of it steps him back, once, twice in the hot sand of afternoon.
--"What happened?" Danny asks me, his eyes fixed on the corpse. Silence boils from Pete's point of the triangle around this dead thing.
---"Why'd they do this?" Dan asks, looking to me at last. There is nothing to say, so I don't. He is looking, still.
---"Let's go." I tell them, "I didn't tell Mom we were going and we should get back." They follow, and we turn and walk, all in a line, heads down against the sun of dusk, wind at our backs.
---"Don't forget the buoy, Pete," I say, "grab it when we go by."
---"I don't want it anymore," he tells us.
---We walk.