Natural Selection

Every once in awhile I look over my shoulder to watch our footsteps fade into the wet sand.  They just fill with water and dissolve back into beach, like we were never there.  Like this night isn’t being recorded in history.  I left my shoes in the car thinking this was the “sexy” way to walk on the beach but am now regretting it.  My feet are so cold they’ve turned a bluish white, accentuating the chipped red polish I, now lamentably, painted on several weeks ago.  A dead prostitute.  My feet look like a dead prostitute’s, I think to myself.  In an attempt to hide this terrible truth, I try to bury my toes in the sand with each step resulting in an awkward, pigeon-toed gait.  He glances down at my feet, concerned, and I attempt to avert his eyes by pointing out an egret hunched over and fishing in the tide pools nearby.

***

            The moon climbs up the midnight sky, full and bright.  As it ascends it grabs the edge of the Pacific Ocean and tugs, sending small tidal waves rippling and then crashing on the seashore in pulses.  The waves increase in volume as thousands of sardine-sized grunion amass just off shore.  They swim in tight, oscillating pools just beneath the surface of the water.  Anticipation swirls and mounts among them, their chemistry in tune with the heaving tidal undercurrents.  It is high tide in April on the California coast, a few days after the full moon, spawning season for the California grunion, Leuresthes tenuis.

***

            Continuing down the beach in silence, I consider the fact that I want to marry this man.  I haven’t seen him in ten years, but I have his face memorized.  He is tall and shy and hunches over a little so his hair falls in his eyes.  I was two years behind him in high school, and in my freshman year, my third period English classroom was right next to his.  Every day at 10:52 am I would excuse myself from class and run to the restroom up the hall.  I’d put on lip balm and shake out my hair and give myself a pep talk before walking past his classroom.  Every time I passed by he would be looking out the door and we’d make eye contact.  I’d feel my spine straighten and my cheeks flush.  I was sure he watched for me everyday but was too shy to say anything, just like I was.

I hadn’t seen or heard from him since then, until earlier tonight.  I went to an old friend’s wedding and there he was.  Dressed in all black, leaning against a wall outside, smoking a cigarette.  I felt my spine straighten in that old way I had not felt since I was fourteen.  I hobbled to a table in my high-heeled shoes, greeted my friends but kept my eyes on him.  We both began talking to a mutual friend and then to each other.  It was easy and nice and like falling onto a cloud.

            Earlier that night my father told me the grunion were running.   Only a few nights out of the year, when the moon is full and the tide is rising, thousands of small, silvery fish beach themselves in order to reproduce.  Once, when we were young, my father woke my sister and me up at midnight, packed us into the station wagon with some wool blankets and drove us down to the beach.  The sand was cold and damp and he told us to walk slow and quiet so as not to disturb the fish.  My sister and I crouched on the blankets captivated as he explained how the females dig holes in the sand with their tales and lay clutches of tiny eggs and the males follow and fertilize them.  We watched them in the moonlight for hours; these little fish wriggling up the shore, performing a crazy dance and then rolling their bodies back into the ocean like nothing ever happened.  It was like a tiny secret that only my family knew about.  Just the fishes and us.

***

            As the largest of the tidal surges swells, thousands of grunion thrust themselves into the wave’s crest and ride shoreward.  Their bodies tumble, slip, slide and fan out high up on the shore and then immediately set into convulsive wriggles working their way up ever higher onto the beach.  A female whips her body around into a tight arc and thrusts her tail into the soupy wet sand, drilling herself in a few inches deep. A male flips and flops his way over to her and then curves his body around hers.  He quivers as he releases seminal fluid onto the side of her body; it dribbles down her and fertilizes the eggs as she produces them.  After her final egg is laid, she unwinds herself out of the nest and together they waggle and writhe toward the sea.  A wave lopes onto shore, sweeps them up and shuttles them back to the safety of the ocean.

***

            After the wedding I asked Ben if he wanted to go see the grunion.  He agreed.  I drove him to the beach, but when we got there, there were no grunion to be seen.  He looked at me and I wondered if he thought I made this all up.  And then I noticed the moonlight and the waves and my bare shoulders and I flushed with embarrassment.  He asked if we could walk up the beach anyway, which relieved me a little.  I agreed.

***

            As the high-tide surge wanes, a single female makes her way up shore.  She whips her tail back and forth and then thrusts it into the sand, propelling her head upright and off of the ground.  Her eyes dart back and forth as she whirls in circles, digging deeper until she is nearly four inches in.  She sits like that, waiting.  Her gills open and close irregularly, shocked by the gaseous surroundings.  Her body is near bursting with eggs ready to be released, but she must wait until a male couples with her before she can lay them. Thousands of grunion flop around just seaward of her, most making their way back to the ocean.  She is high up the beach, much higher than most other females, and the waves are getting smaller and less frequent.  Her eyes dart around.  Chances for fertilization dwindle with every moment; she must choose whether to risk her life and continue to wait for a male, or give up and return to sea.  She waits. 

***

            Ben’s shoe comes untied.  He walks over to a long piece of gnarled driftwood and sits down on it to retie his laces.  I perch next to him on the wood, but a breeze picks up, flipping up my skirt and swirling my hair around my face.  I use one hand to smooth down my skirt and one to pin my hair behind my ear and run a gaze up from his hands to his arms and then face.  He catches me looking at him, but I don’t care anymore.  He looks down at the sand and says, “Kelly, I have a girlfriend.  Back in New York.”  

I reply with a quick, “Oh. Yeah. Okay.”  Like it didn’t matter anyway.  Like I hadn’t intended any romantic connections between us.  I sit for a second and then ask, “Do you remember in high school, when I used to walk past your third period classroom?” 

“What are you talking about?”  My face turns hot and my throat constricts; I stand up and continue up the beach, glad that our footsteps have all been erased.  He follows, jogging to catch up to me. 

***

            The lone female grunion presses a pectoral fin into the sand and twists to watch a male wriggle toward her.  Eyes fixed on his and relieved, she prepares to release her eggs.  But the male slows.  He gives a few final pushes forward, but doesn’t have the energy to make it to her.  She begins releasing her eggs, unable to stop now.  He flops onto his side and rolls back toward the ocean, gets washed back to sea by the next receding wave.  The female uses her last bits of energy to wind her way out of the failed nest but cannot make it any farther.  Her body lies limp and lifeless beside the nest, one eye fixed upward.

***

We continue walking together in silence and notice something flickering up the beach.   Our strides widen until we reach hundreds of silvery fish lying still on the sand.  Probably missed the last wave out to sea.  Probably dead by now.  I pick one up in my hand and inspect the smooth scales.  They’re lined up in scalloped rows, silver and blue and green.  It’s a female; a few eggs still spill from her.  Ben looks down at the fish in my hand and I feel conscious of him looking at the inside of my palm.  I wonder what he thinks of my fingers.  The fish wiggles and her eyes dart back and forth.  I run to the ocean and throw her back in, watch as she gleams and sparkles, and then disappears.  As I jog back up the beach, Ben is piling up grunion by the fistfuls into the crook of his arm.  He runs down to the water’s edge and then flings them out into the ocean, watches as they flicker and then fade.  We run back and forth with armfuls of half-dead fish for nearly an hour.  We are dedicated and focused in our efforts.  Natural selection has temporarily shifted to our selection.  No words are spoken, we only cry out as the waves nip and bite at our heels.  

About the Author

Kelly Herbinson

Kelly Herbinson is a wildlife biologist and nonfiction writer from southern California. She is currently an MFA student of Creative Writing at the University of Wyoming.

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