Seaweed marks the high tide line along the beach.  It is mostly Bladderwrack, a deep brown kelp (Fucus vesiculosus).  It has bladders to keep it afloat.  Afloat.

This is the same seaweed that the Pilgrims knew in 1641, when they used it as fertilizer for their corn crops.  They would dry long strands of it across hand-hewn beams and turn it under the sandy soil which was so poor in nutrients.

All ships’ hulls, when afloat, were foul with weed and barnacles.  The Mayflower was beached at low tide and her hull was scraped clean before her return to England.  All the detritus from her hull was eventually turned into corn.

Charles Van Ebhorn has caroused enough for one night.  He put a log on the fire and vanished.  The day was dimming, and the ration of shadow had increased to the point where everything was black or white.

The man of which I write is not known to you.  He was a good man.  He explained things to children.  He avoided the uncomfortable.  The brass ship’s clock kept stopping, and he kept forgetting to wind it.  And so, the clock ran down.  Nowhere is there a hapless circle which impedes time as much as his. Except.

 

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