Out of the Water, All of You, Now

I grew up on this coast. I have read this bay my whole life the way farmers read sky, and that afternoon it was a postcard: small clean swell, kids everywhere in the shallows, my own two among them.

The feeling hit me like cold water down the spine — out. Everyone out. There was nothing to see; I want that understood. No dark line on the horizon, no change in the wind, no gull behaviour, none of the folk signs my grandfather taught me. The sea was lying, and something under my sternum knew it and began shouting.

I am not an assertive man. Ask anyone. But I was in the water fully clothed hauling my two out by the arms, and then — this still astonishes me — turning to strangers' children and barking at them in a voice I did not recognise: out, now, all of you, out. Parents stared at me. One mother pulled her toddler close and away from me, which was fair. A teenager laughed. But it was a loud, certain voice, and voices like that move people before their opinions catch up: the shallows emptied, grumbling.