by Scott Blade
“Nothing more to it, huh?”
“Nothing more to it,” I said.
“How come you didn’t have your leg string attached?” Danny asked.
“Leg rope.”
“What?”
“It’s not a leg string. It’s called a leg rope.”
The driver asked, “Why didn’t you have yours attached?”
“I just didn’t.”
“That’s a law here too.”
I asked, “Is it?”
“Like a seatbelt law. You gotta have your leg rope attached or you’re surfing recklessly.”
“I don’t think so.”
They both paused a beat and the driver said, “It could be.”
“It’s not.”
“Probably not. But it could be.”
Can’t be both, I thought. Then I said, “Sorry for troubling you officers. But I’m safe and you both helped me find my board. So, I better get it and get out of this weather.”
“Hold up,” Danny said. “What about your clothes?”
“There probably around here somewhere. They’re probably buried in some sand or something. No big deal. I’ll find them.”
The driver asked, “What about your cellphone?”
“I don’t have one.”
They said nothing to that.
Danny said, “Hop in the truck with us. We’ll drive you to pick up the board.”
“I’m okay to walk. That’s not far.”
“What he means is get into the truck and we’ll drive you to get your board. And then we’ll take you back to your car.”
“Don’t have a car.”
They looked at each other. Then back at me.
The driver asked, “You got a hotel room here?”
I shook my head.
“Where are you living?”
I said, “I’m living right here.”
“You living on the beach?”
“No. I’m living here. In my body. Same as you.”
They looked at me and then it switched to a deep stare that I believed doubled their previous suspicion.
I said, “I don’t have a hotel room. I’m not sleeping anywhere that I have planned ahead for.”
“We aren’t leaving you on the beach.”
“Why not?”
“It’s closed.”
I stayed quiet.
“We done told you. The beach is closed. Now get in and we’ll pick up your board.”
I shrugged.
There was no point in arguing with them. They weren’t going to let me out of their sight until I was away from the beach.
So, I nodded and walked to the truck and looked in. It was a single bench. Which made me kind of glad and kind of annoyed.
Glad because no backseat or rear prisoner compartment meant that they weren’t meant to take prisoners which meant they probably didn’t have handcuffs. Not that I should have been worrying about handcuffs. I had done nothing wrong. At least nothing that was worthy of handcuffs.
It annoyed me because that meant I was sitting in the middle and this was a stick shift.
I frowned as I climbed into the truck and scooted over to the middle. It was as uncomfortable as I had thought.
I am six-four and lean, but I have long legs. My knees were in the dash. I could’ve turned the radio knobs with my knees. If the radio had knobs.
Danny and the other beach cop climbed in and shut their doors.
We backed up and drove over to the surfboard. I leaned over Danny and then back over the driver to see if I could locate my stuff.
It was a very uncomfortable, short ride.
CHAPTER 3
THE BEACH COPS hopped out of the truck and I got out after Danny.
I walked over to the surfboard while they watched. I picked it up and raked off some seaweed that was tangled over the fins. Then I brushed the wet sand off of it.
I looked back at the beach cops and I said, “Looks brand new.”
They nodded, not at the same time.
The driver said, “Come on we’ll drive you.”
I paused a beat and asked, “Drive me where?”
“Where you going?”
“I’m not sure.”
The driver looked at Danny. Then he stepped away from the driver’s side door and said, “You ain’t got no clothes. No stuff. No cellphone. No hotel. Where the hell were you going to go when you left here?”
“I’ll go wherever I want.”
“Are you homeless?”
I paused a beat because I didn’t want to answer that. So, I didn’t.
One of them repeated, “Are you homeless?”
“I heard you.”
“Answer me then.”
“Look, fellas. I’m just a guy trying to enjoy some surfing at the beach. I don’t want any trouble. Okay?”
They didn’t answer.
I said, “I’m going to take my board and be on my way.”
“Sir, now we have tried to be polite to you.”
I nodded, but didn’t agree. Polite was a strong word. More like they were overstepping their bounds with me.
“Look at yourself, sir.”
“What’s wrong with the way I look?”
Danny said, “You’re wearing speedos.”
I looked down. I wasn’t wearing speedos. Speedos is actually a name brand. But in America the brand is almost always associated with the small, brief-shaped men’s swimming shorts.
“So?”
“So, we’re all opened-minded here, but we don’t want a homeless man walking around looking like you do in speedos. On the beach, it’s okay, but not around town.”
“What’s wrong with the way I look?”
“Sir, please just get the board and we’ll take you to a shopping mall. You can buy some clothes.”
I said, “My money is in my clothes.”
“Sir, please don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
I ignored them and inspected the board like I was trying to think of something else to say.
It looked all in one piece. A little water-spotted, but normal for the rough waves I put it through.
I folded it back under my arm and said, “You can’t make me go and you know it.”
“Sir, don’t make us slap handcuffs on you.”
“Do beach cops even carry handcuffs?”
They both took a look at each other.
The driver said, “We got zipties.”
He paused a beat and locked stares with me, like he was waiting for me to comment. Then he said, “Danny, get the zipties.”
“Come on. You don’t mean that.”
“The hell I don’t. You’re refusing an officer of the law. We’re within our rights to detain you.”
For the first time, I checked out his nametag, which was a cheap-looking black rectangle thing with white font on it. His name was Ghody. Which wasn’t a name I remember seeing before.
I guessed that it pronounced like “Cody” but with a “G.”
I said, “Ghody. You know that you can’t detain me for doing nothing wrong.”
“Ignoring ‘beach closed’ signs.”
Danny said, “Plus, indecent exposure. Sort of.”
I looked at the other one and said, “This is a public beach. I’m wearing the proper attire. Besides, unless you’ve got crazy laws here, a man has every right to walk around in his underwear outside. That doesn’t qualify as nudity.”
They said nothing to that.
I knew the ziptie thing was a bluff anyway. If it had been a real threat, Ghody would’ve brandished his gun.
I said, “Fellas, you can’t detain me for being on the beach when it’s closed. Especially not on the sand. Not if I’m willing to leave on my own accord. You know that.”
They said nothing.
“How about letting me look for my clothes? Then I’ll be on my way.”
Ghody said, “How’d you get that surfboard here?”
“I rented it.”
“That one
of Jay’s?”
“I have no idea.”
“The name of the shop is Jay’s Surf and Stuff.”
I shrugged.
Danny asked, “What’s that mean?”
Ghody said, “If he’s rented it from Jay’s then he paid with a bankcard. Jay don’t take cash for a rental.”
Ghody looked at Danny who looked dumbfounded. Can’t say that I didn’t get what Ghody was driving at either.
Ghody said, “It means that he’s not a hobo. Hoboes don’t have debit cards, Danny.”
Danny nodded.
“Means he’s telling the truth. I’m sorry for the confusion, mister.”
Ghody seemed to relax. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how to take it. I started to think that they were trying to rile me up for kicks. Or they really were just over dramatic. At that point neither would’ve surprised me.
Just then, we heard the crackle of a police radio from the interior of the truck.
Ghody turned and nodded at Danny. I couldn’t read minds, but two cops who have been partners for a while could come about as close as possible as anyone could to reading each other’s minds.
My guess was that with a look Ghody had told Danny to stay with me.
Ghody dipped his head back into the truck and responded to the dispatcher.
I couldn’t hear the entire conversation. But there was an exchange of code numbers and back-and-forth radio talk.
The only thing that I could make out was a reported sighting of a man with a gun, somewhere farther on.
Finally, Ghody came back out and said, “Mister, good luck finding your clothes. If you don’t locate them, tell Jay to call us when you return that board.”
I nodded and thanked them.
They hopped back into the truck and backed up and trailed off. They were careful not to kick up sand until they got farther away and then they sped off.
I watched them, without budging, until they turned a corner on the main drive and were lost to sight.
CHAPTER 4
I FOUND MY PANTS and my flip-flops about where I had left them. The reason that I hadn’t seen them before was that they hadn’t been there before.
I carried the surfboard back about fifty yards. Just in time to see my pants wash in to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
I frowned.
I bent down and bundled them up, one-handed. I held them out by the waistband and let the legs ripple down and untangle themselves.
They were soaked.
I dropped the surfboard a yard away in the damp sand and then I sieved through the pockets until I found my belongings. Everything was still there, but soaked. The bankcard would still work and I could wash off the toothbrush but I wondered if there would be any problems with the passport getting wet.
The toothbrush wouldn’t fold, like it was meant to. It was jammed sticking out straight. I left it.
I wrung the pants out as best I could and then I whipped them a couple of times to try and dry them.
I slipped them back on. They weren’t much drier than I had been anyway, since my towel was also missing.
I stood up tall and looked left and looked right. I scanned the shore and then the incoming surf.
I saw nothing. No sign of my t-shirt or my towel. I guess none of that was a big deal, since I had just bought it all this morning in the surf shop.
I would’ve rented the towel, but the owner, Jay I presumed, had outsmarted me and only had towels for sale.
I paid full sticker price. I was almost more upset that my towel had gotten washed out to sea over the rest of my missing clothes. I didn’t get much use out of it and I paid full price for it.
I walked along the shoreline, going south, because it was the direction away from Jay’s Surf Shop. I figured that I would walk for a bit and see what I found.
If I found nothing, then I would turn back after several minutes and double back. Giving myself two chances to search the beach.
I only made it five minutes because I stepped on something metal.
It jabbed my big toe on my right foot. It didn’t stab me because it wasn’t sharp-edged.
I bent down and saw a thin-sided metal object poking out of the sand. It looked like it was buried a little deep, but the heavy waves and outgoing tide had unearthed it.
I reached down and pinched two fingers around it and pulled it up, slowly.
I knew it was a necklace because it had a long chain of small, metal beads. I picked it up, quickly and a second later I knew it was more than a necklace.
I held it out in front of my face.
It dangled and twisted and spun in the wind.
I was looking at a pair of dog tags.
I brushed off the wet sand so that I could read the information. Something was very, very wrong about these dog tags.
All of the normal information was there, plain as day. There was a social security number. There was a religious preference. And there was a blood type.
But there was no name.
Where a last and first name were supposed to be, there was nothing but scratch marks and holes dug through the metal.
CHAPTER 5
SOMEONE HAD GONE TO a lot of trouble and time and elbow grease just to erase the name off the dog tags.
My guess was that someone had filed the name off with half a jagged edge and half a sharp edge. And they had done it with a lot of care. The scratch patterns traced the same trail left by the previous action, one after the next. It was like looking and judging the difference between a lawn cut by a professional lawn man and a lawn cut by a four-year-old who couldn’t reach the pedals of a tractor.
The patterns were straight and side by side and flawless. Which made me think that this guy had done this before.
My best bet was it was someone who had a lot of practice filing metal.
Generally speaking, filing off things usually incorporated filing off numbers such as serial numbers. And filing off serial numbers was usually something that went against the intent of the manufacturer. And it was usually illegal.
Such as the serial numbers on a gun.
Whoever the guy was, he took his time to scratch off his name.
Yet, there was something violent about the way he did it. Something final. Something absolute.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Not specifically. But I knew the energy and the planning that was put into it. I understood that part.
It was done with respect and with great effort and care. But there appeared to be something angry behind it.
Maybe the owner wanted to erase his own name from the registry of the military. Maybe he didn’t want anything else to do with it. Like he had rejected that part of his life. But he couldn’t just scratch through the name haphazardly out of a sense of respect.
Then again, he also threw his dog tags into the ocean. Which, was a gesture of contempt for the military.
US military-issued dog tags were all the same. And yet were all different. In small ways.
Each branch of the US forces had its own diminutive peccadilloes about where information was placed and what information was required and what information was allowed.
The Air Force followed the social security number with an “AF” to indicate the branch of service.
The Marines had their social security number in a three/two/four format. They separated the groupings of numbers with a space. No comma. No dash. No period. Just the space.
On a separate line, following the social security number, they also indicated the branch of the user’s station with a “USMC.” Which stood for United States Marine Corps.
But they also went a step further. They indicated the wearer’s gasmask size. Which was stamped in an “S” for small, an “M” for medium, and an “L” for large.
I wondered who the hell wore large? Unless the large was the American large which was mainly a popular size in clothing because it meant more room. And like most Americans, I liked more room in my clothes.
Thinking about th
is made me smile because I was wearing speedos. Which were not famous for room-giving priorities.
I guess I prefer snug underwear. Everything else, I prefer plenty of legroom.
Then there were the Army and the Coast Guard and the Navy.
Of course, I knew the Navy and I knew the Navy’s dog tags. These weren’t Navy.
I was sure that the dog tags were Army. They used last name, first and middle initial. Then they posted social security number and blood type and religion.
I wasn’t Army. I had never been Army. The last time I heard about Army dog tags, they were considering moving away from using a soldier’s social security number. I guess because it gave out private information. That was a grave concern to a lot of people. With everything being internet based nowadays, identity theft was a real issue.
Of course, getting a look at a soldier’s dog tags without him or her knowing was very difficult. But possible. I imagine a scorned lover might memorize them when the user was in the shower. Easy enough.
What was really surprising to me was that the green machine was the first to make this change losing the social security number. I would’ve thought that it would’ve been the Air Force, for sure.
The Air Force was the most liberal out of the uniformed services, in my opinion. Nothing wrong with that. We had a joke in the Navy. We called them the Chair Force. Which was a jab out of love, naturally.
It seemed that Chair Forcers did the best with change. Certainly, not the Army. The Army hated change.
After a second look at the social security number, I realized that it was not the social security number.
A social security number has nine digits, the last time I checked.
This number had ten.
It was the Department of Defense Identification Number, assigned to members of the armed forces.
The Army must’ve made the switch after all.
The only thing that I was unsure of was whether that mean that they reissued everyone new dog tags after they made the switch. Or did they only start to give out the updated dog tags to new recruits after this policy was initiated?
I had no idea.
But if the answer was the latter, that meant that the wearer’s tags were recent.
I stood up and tucked the dog tags into my front pocket.
It was something that I would have to think about later because the rain started. It was nothing, but it would turn into something soon.
I heard a thunderclap—loud and booming in the distance.
