It started with an argument about pockets. I sat on a bench overlooking the estuary, a place where dense black mud would adhere to your shoe for days, that is, if you made the mistake of stepping in it. My friend and I were on the look-out for clapper rails, endangered shorebirds that that were supposedly celebrating a revival along this restoration area that was filled with discarded plastic water bottles and ripped out car seats, all vomiting a dangerous shade of mustard yellow. Chunks of white Styrofoam floated in the estuary like icebergs.
“It’s a work of art,” said Paul, a designer who supported himself by sketching pen and ink drawing of people’s homes for real estate companies, not for MLS listings, but as gifts to new homeowners. Paul liked to say that since people hung his sketches on their refrigerators, he wasn’t doing commercial art. He guzzled a can of soda and continued to marvel at the plastic bags of different colors that were caught on stalks of dried anise. I told him what I thought, but he couldn’t hear a word. A car alarm drowned out my response. “Beautiful stuff,” he crooned. “I’d call it modern detritus. You couldn’t make it look any more real.”
“It is real,” I said, putting down my binoculars on the bench. “I don’t understand why, people throw away this stuff, instead of carting it home.”
“That’s obvious. You couldn’t fit the stuff into your pocket.” A seagull shrieked overhead.
“Backpacks?” I couldn’t understand why Paul was singing the praises of garbage, particularly when we were here for the clapper rail. I was annoyed at him, and when I’m annoyed, I do annoying things. He thought that throwing filth away was about convenience. I grabbed the can of soda from his hand and emptied it over his head. Startled, he wrestled me to the ground. I grabbed whatever was near, which was an empty carton and bopped him over his head. There was no lack of garbage for us to fight with, and we eventually ended up in the black mud.
A clapper rail landed on a nearby rock. It stared at us for a moment and flew away.