Waiting Under Water

• Published in: CM (Winnipeg) Vol. XXVII; no. 10
• Main Author: McMahon, Ruth
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Winnipeg CM: Canadian Review of Materials Association 01.11.2020
• ISSN: 1201-9364

Excerpt: I’m taking the really, really long way back home, walking a giant loop. I go from our beach down to the public beach. It’s busy this afternoon, like always. You can tell who the tourists are. They have a lot of stuff with them — towels and blankets and umbrellas and shade tents and folding chairs. They usually have big red or blue coolers of food and drinks. At the shore they freak out as if the water is made of just-melted ice cubes. Then when they leave they take a few of the egg-shaped rocks with them. The rocks make big bulges in the bottom of their beach bags. I also see two men I don’t recognize as any of the 474 people who live in our village of St. David’s, and who really don’t look like tourists either. First of all, they’re both wearing jeans, which are definitely not beach clothes. Pants are pretty tricky to swim in. Their shirts are matching green golf shirts with white trim on the collars and sleeves. One of them is writing things down on a clipboard. The other has two different fancy cameras hanging across his chest. That guy is pointing, marking out the edges of a certain area of the beach like he’s trying to imagine something there. They talk and nod to each other as I get closer.