We perched like birds of prey, there at the edge of the water. We were together yet remote. Our shoulders hunched against the cold air, folded like dark wings down the centers of our backs. Our fingers gripped the earth. We felt the dirt gather beneath our nails.

The weather was too cold for bathing. We sat silent on the dike, crouched in our dungarees and tennis shoes and flannel shirts, chewing on grass, pretending to smoke the long brown blades. Puffing smoke that was really just our breath turned thick and steaming in the dusk-damp air. We watched the men dredge the bay, scrape its belly clean of silt and oyster shells. Dump the whole mess of wet, brackish earth onto the mudflats where it would slowly cake and dry and separate into a million little islands beneath our feet.

If you squinted your eyes just so, the mudflats stretched out like infinity—dun-colored shapes fitted together like a vast mosaic or coffee table puzzle. In a few months, we’d strip down to our underwear and swim in rain-fed pools, shrieking like gulls as cold water touched our twelve-year-old skins. We’d catch tadpoles in the water that gathered in the cracks, myriad and no bigger than our fingernails.

~

The day I first laid eyes on you, rain beat down like fists outside our schoolroom window. I bent over my desk and dried my hair with paper towel, looked up at the sound of the opening door, and there you were—a vision in a synthetic pink polka dot pantsuit that hugged your every curve. I was all lines and angles, elbows and knees. But you were pear and plum, delicious to behold.

You tucked yourself into the desk beside mine. Your flesh was soft, but your eyes were sharp as knives, black and shiny as the mud dredged from the bottom of the bay. I felt your eyes cut through me. Keen but not unkind. I looked down at my wet shoes. My hair dripped onto the floor and made a plashing sound near my feet. Those eyes. Those sturdy breasts and limbs. Beside the bulwark of your body, I was nothing but a blade of marsh grass bent by rain.

~

You were what they called a child of the earth. Your voice was gravel, smoke and thorns. You were pretty in a country sort of way—round-faced, freckled as an egg. Before your dad lost his foot at the pulp mill, before his mind drifted away like wisps of cloud, he taught you to shake hands, call adults sir and ma’am, sit silent as a lamb until spoken to. He also showed you how to shoot a bee-bee gun at squirrels and crows. Thieves, he called them. Always taking what isn’t theirs.

You ran fast as the wind that swept in from the bay, nosed its way inland, forced all the trees to bow down in obeisance. You beat the boys at arm wrestling. Whipped their asses when they got fresh. Pushed a boy into the slough when he tried to grab a handful of crotch. The other boys laughed, but after that, they kept their distance.

~

Your family was constantly on the move—migrating from house to house, cul-de-sac to cul-de-sac. Your mother, Sicily, lying down with timbermen, sailors, mill-hands. She does it for the money, some folks whispered, for rhinestones in crushed velvet cases. Others told it differently: She does it for bread, meat, and milk—to feed that strapping girl of hers.

Drifters, they called the lot of you. Passing through life like sand on wind. You couldn’t wait for the wind to sweep you right out of Coos Bay—over the dunes, across the mudflats, out to sea. All the way to Tokyo, you’d say, Moscow. Maybe even Istanbul.

Sicily would shake her head at this. No one ever leaves this place, she’d say, blowing smoke out the side of her mouth. The only way out of here is over the edge of the bridge and into the water below. We’d sit silent as the night settled over your house, weighing the truth of Sicily’s words, till all we could see was the bright glow of embers arcing back and forth from her mouth to the ashtray.

~

On nights when I can’t sleep, I sometimes count them: All the people who ended up in the cold embrace of salt slough. There was Don’s father, who drove the Lay’s Potato Chip truck as far east as Boise and as far south as Chico. It was an accident, they said. He must have been bone tired after twenty-four hours at the wheel. Tina’s stepmom swerved to miss a deer, its eyes shining bright and sudden before her—two stars in the darkness. Tonya’s sister and her boyfriend disappeared after a Friday night dance. Sure, they’d been drinking. Maybe he even had his hand up under her blouse as they rounded the bend. And Angie. Nobody saw her jump, but I bet she just closed her eyes and flew. Later, when they did the autopsy, they found a baby inside her, no bigger than a thumb.

~

You and I would trudge home along the lip of the shore. You pushed your bicycle in front of me and a haze of mosquitoes buzzed round your bent head. Your skin gleamed in the half light and the insects created a shimmering, black-flecked mandorla that surrounded you from head to toe. You were like the painting of Jesus’ mother in the basement of St. Paul’s where they held Sunday potlucks. You both had the same soft shoulders, the same sad, deep-water eyes.

~

Once, a pack of teenaged boys caught us lingering by the water’s edge, lifted their rifles, pointed them at our chests.

Look at the little seagulls.

Yeah, a big one and a little one.

Let’s kill them and eat them for dinner.

No, let’s just kill the big one. The other one’s got no meat on her bones.

You and I ran as fast as we could, hearts beating like wings, away from the boys and their guns.

~

I think of how we stood in line outside the school building, looking out across the vast expanse of brown bay, sun low in the sky. We were breathless with beauty. A snowy egret stood alone against a crust of black muck. The cattails quivered in the breeze. A scavenging of gulls raked its way across the sea. One plunged into the dusky water and disappeared from sight. The surface rippled silver, bronze and mauve. The sky was bruised, and the edge of the horizon unraveled like a skein of dark yarn. Do you remember? How it felt like church was supposed to feel?

We took the shortcut home. Crossed the old railroad bridge, counting each step, arms spread wide as two cormorants in flight.  Our purple reflections—fat, thin—shone bright in the oily water beneath the bridge. A freight train roared up behind us, and we lunged for cover, felt the spike of marsh grass, covered our ears as the whistle screamed. We collapsed onto our backs, hiccupping with laughter as we lay, invisible in our nest amongst the rushes, until the sky blackened with rain clouds, and the sun fell into the bay.

Eve Müller writes stories that walk a fine line between memoir on steroids and fiction. She has recently published in Writing Disorder, Sequestrum, and the Thieving Magpie. She is a single mom, autism researcher, avid thrifter, and cake baker.