Late afternoon on a deserted stretch of highway, perpetual heat haze shimmering in front of the truck until the whole panorama turned to liquid before his blurring eyes. He swigged the last of the water from his plastic bottle and tossed it onto the seat beside him. All he seemed to do down here was drink, sweat, and pee. He needed to go again now, but wasn’t about to make the same mistake as earlier. Out of the truck with no one around, a carload of girls had gone by as soon as he’d begun to urinate, squealing from the windows and honking the horn. Some guys probably would have found it funny, but Gage wasn’t in the frame of mind to deal with women catching sight of his penis and passing vocal judgement upon it, even from a speeding car.

At the next likely-looking exit, he turned off the highway and down a dusty track running perpendicular to it, bumping along for a hundred yards or so until he was certain no one could see him from the road. He got out of the truck and mooched to the edge of the scrubby undergrowth. As he stood there, peeing forcefully, he realised the rushing sound he could hear wasn’t tyres on the highway or wind in the trees. It was too constant and rhythmic, waxing and waning with the predictability of waves breaking on a shore! Over the past few weeks, Gage had discovered he very much liked the beach. He’d spent many of his recent hours just sitting on the sand and staring at the sunlight sparkling on the moving water, hypnotised by it in the same way the scudding clouds in the huge sky of home used to capture his imagination as a small child. He’d wonder where the shapes had been, and where they were going. He thought the same about the waves he watched roll in. Where had they begun, and what submerged secrets had they passed over on their journey to break on the shore before his sandy feet?

Late afternoon on a deserted stretch of highway, perpetual heat haze shimmering in front of the truck until the whole panorama turned to liquid before his blurring eyes. He swigged the last of the water from his plastic bottle and tossed it onto the seat beside him. All he seemed to do down here was drink, sweat, and pee. He needed to go again now, but wasn’t about to make the same mistake as earlier. Out of the truck with no one around, a carload of girls had gone by as soon as he’d begun to urinate, squealing from the windows and honking the horn. Some guys probably would have found it funny, but Gage wasn’t in the frame of mind to deal with women catching sight of his penis and passing vocal judgement upon it, even from a speeding car.

At the next likely-looking exit, he turned off the highway and down a dusty track running perpendicular to it, bumping along for a hundred yards or so until he was certain no one could see him from the road. He got out of the truck and mooched to the edge of the scrubby undergrowth. As he stood there, peeing forcefully, he realised the rushing sound he could hear wasn’t tyres on the highway or wind in the trees. It was too constant and rhythmic, waxing and waning with the predictability of waves breaking on a shore! Over the past few weeks, Gage had discovered he very much liked the beach. He’d spent many of his recent hours just sitting on the sand and staring at the sunlight sparkling on the moving water, hypnotised by it in the same way the scudding clouds in the huge sky of home used to capture his imagination as a small child. He’d wonder where the shapes had been, and where they were going. He thought the same about the waves he watched roll in. Where had they begun, and what submerged secrets had they passed over on their journey to break on the shore before his sandy feet?

Bladder emptied, he stepped back onto the road and only then realised he’d managed to pee onto his own uncovered toes. Gross. And he’d finished all his water so he couldn’t even rinse them. That decided him; he was sitting down too much for someone usually so physically active anyway. He wound up the windows, locked the truck, slid the keys into his pocket, and marched briskly in the direction of the rushing sound, sandals slapping and kicking up puffs of dust.

The track stopped abruptly. He could hear the sea, and catch glimpses of twinkling blue through the bushes, but there was no clear path between this disused road and the ocean. Cheated of the sensory pleasure of cool water on his hot and dirty feet, Gage prowled back and forth along the hedgeline seeking a way through, eventually deciding he’d have to make one. Wriggling as carefully as he was able, trying to avoid scratching his half-naked body on protruding branches, he corkscrewed himself out onto a spit of coral and rock, a light dusting of white sand creating a beach no more than ten feet long, lapped by the lazy ebb-tide.

Gage grinned with satisfaction at having achieved his objective, flicked off his sandals, and paddled back and forth in the shallows, appreciating the childlike diversion of playing in the sea by himself. Squelching from the water and enjoying the wet sand squidging between his toes, he pottered unhurriedly back up the beach to retrieve his shoes, absorbed in picking up and examining shells, and skimming the occasional stone. Back at the jutting spit of rock, he jammed his flip-flops into the pockets of his shorts, and climbed the few feet to stand atop it and look around. To the other side of the rock was a much smoother half-moon of sand, at the opposite end of which was a large and fine-looking villa on an open area of lawn, ringed by stands of swaying palm trees. Gage regarded the house with a twinge of jealousy. What must it cost to purchase a home of that size and grandeur in such a secluded location, with its own extensive stretch of beautiful beach? Probably more money than he’d see in a lifetime. As with all the high-quality houses he’d passed on the southern-Florida leg of his extended sojourn, it was all closed up for the boiling off-season – storm shutters down, no vehicles on the drive, no furniture on the terrace, a cover across the pool.

As Gage stood and stared with unconcealed envy at the empty mansion and, what he really coveted, a gorgeous beach of his very own, he realised there were tracks across the otherwise-pristine sand. They came out of the undergrowth five hundred yards down the beach from the house, curved around in a snake of trodden sand for only ten yards or so, and reentered the undergrowth a mere twenty feet from where he was standing. His first thought was that it might be a sea-crocodile, finding a place to hole up and wait for some unsuspecting food to scuttle by…but closer examination from his vantage point suggested regular indentations very much like the footprints he’d just left across the secret beach behind him. If the house was all closed up for the impending tropical summer, then who’d been in the woods that were supposed to be private? It might be hobos looking for a quiet, shady place off the highway to get wasted and sleep the day away, or maybe an amorous couple wanting somewhere safe from prying eyes? The footprints were above the line of deposited seaweed denoting high-water mark, so it was impossible to know how long they’d been there, but it was their location that troubled Gage. The highway was bordered on both sides by thick vegetation, meaning that whoever left the footprints had willingly fought their way through perhaps a quarter mile of dense growth from roadside to beach, only to walk the shortest distance along it, and dive straight back into the woods again. What was the point of that? If you were looking for a place to hunker down out of sight and swig your liquor unmolested, you’d only need to get a few feet into the hedge to be completely obscured from passing cars. If you were wild with passion for your latest girl, you’d hardly take the risk of her ardour waning by dragging her on a jungle trek, when a quick squeeze under the dense bushes right by the roadside would give you all the privacy you needed.

The incongruity of those unexplained footprints bothered Gage sufficiently for him to decide on a little uncharacteristic trespassing of his own. A landowner himself, he usually greatly-respected the sanctity of other people’s property. He therefore made no negative judgement as he slid down the other side of the rock onto the private beach and found regimented lines of upright stakes marching at intervals from trees to waterline, swags of barbed wire strung between them: a physical barrier denoting the boundary.

From down here on the sand, the dents in the beach were obviously two sets of footprints. Gage supposed he should just let it go. He’d sneaked through where there wasn’t a proper path, and had no business being here. Whoever’d unrolled these swirls of vicious wire and staked them in place in the sand clearly wanted to keep people out…so he should probably take the hint and get going…?

Feeling guilty at what he was doing, Gage put on his sandals and hugged tight to the treeline, gingerly lifting his long legs over the fencing. Old links of partially broken stakes and severely rusted wire were scattered haphazardly among the trees, dislodged during the last storm season and obviously not included in a clean-up along this barely visited stretch of shoreline. He picked his way cautiously between them, anxious not to get caught on the razor-sharp barbs. Where the footsteps penetrated the undergrowth, the land dropped to a steep gulley, then climbed up a shallower bank back towards the highway. As he’d suspected, he certainly couldn’t see the road from where he now stood; the cover was too dense. He also couldn’t see his truck, which he knew was a very short distance away to his right. Why come here? For what? A hard, hot, uncomfortable trudge from the roadside, through the jungle of foliage, down the shallow opposite bank, across the gulley, up this much-steeper hill, and onto a beach they left metres later? Gage wiped his wrist across his sweating forehead, and sighed. Was he simply thankful to have something else to occupy his mind apart from fire, loss, disfigurement, and indefinable worries about the future?

His roaming gaze absently followed one particular tangle of the old, storm-torn fence. It curled strikingly like a backcombed quiff, affixed stakes hanging artistically in the air at intervals as if they were roman numerals on a giant clock-face. Abruptly, the sweeping swirl suddenly disappeared down the forested slope, the wooden pickets stabbing at an extreme angle into the bank, suggesting they braced a weight lower down, out of sight. Curious, he padded over to the trail of wire, squatted to prevent himself tumbling headfirst, gripped one of the firmly embedded posts in his fist, and craned over the edge.

Directly beneath, so close he could almost touch them, the soles of two little shoes pointed up the bank towards him.

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