Walter & Ronk

On a lonely beach in April, a horseshoe crab scuttled against the morning tide. There was a biting chill to the wind and not a single tourist walked along the boardwalk. High above the water, a seagull flew and eyed the horseshoe crab curiously. Seagulls are known to be opportunistic eaters, but this bird had something else in mind.

The crab’s movements were erratic. As the tide rolled in he would jet back and forth amid the tumbling waves. It looked as though he were stomping. It was an odd thing to do, since most animals spend their lives conserving energy, what need was there to stomp? As the overcast day grew slightly brighter with the shrouded sunrise, the seagull’s wonderment got the better of him and he swooped down. He landed with a splash in the waves so as to alert the horseshoe crab to his presence. Usually, since seagulls can prey upon horseshoe crabs in the right circumstances, the crabs take shelter. This was not the case. In fact, the crab turned his horned shell up and glared at the seagull.

“What do you want?”

The seagull cocked a yellow eye. A gust caught the small feathers atop his head and lifted them up at funny angles.

“I wanted to ask you: what is it you are doing?”

To which the horseshoe crab responded, “Can’t hear you, bub! I guess you’ll just have to leave me alone!”

He is rather upset, thought the seagull. And he looked around to the surrounding tide pools. The only notable thing was that there was nobody else around. Not a single creature, crab or otherwise, to cause this fellow such distress.

“Would you like to go somewhere quieter, so we can hear each other?”

“Nope. I got no interest in what you’re selling.”

The seagull put his beak right up to the water.

“My name is Walter.”

The horseshoe crab scuttled and stomped again and something white and fragile shattered beneath his pedipalps- a fancy word the seagull knew for a horseshoe crab’s second set of legs.

“Was that a sand dollar?”

This really flustered the horseshoe crab. He turned and leaped into the next wave, taking a swipe at Walter, who avoided the affront without needing to move.

“I told you to leave me alone! Go bother somebody else! Get lost, gull!”

“No. I do not believe I will. And as I told you, my name is Walter.”

The exertion seemed to take a lot of energy out of the horseshoe crab and if he had shoulders, they would have slumped.

“Fine. You can float wherever you want but just… leave me be.”

“I wont.”

“Why’s that? You’re so desperate for a meal that you’d wait around for me to die? Well, good luck, you chump.”

There was a steely look in the horseshoe crabs eyes and Walter grew very quiet.

“I am not leaving, because we are the only two creatures on this beach as far as my eyes can see. You are clearly upset, and I want to know: how can I help?”

“Your kind can’t help me! I swore I’d never associate with a gull ever again and I meant it.”

“My kind? It is inappropriate to say that now that we are in the 21st century.”

“Sure I can! My kind has been around for 445 million years and never changed! Tell me, why should I start now?”

Walter didn’t respond. Instead, he waited. They bobbed up and down together in the surf.

The horseshoe crab grew visibly uncomfortable. He tried turning back to what he was doing but glanced sidelong at Walter all the while. Then he sighed, deep and long.

“I’m sorry… Walter. It hurts me to talk about the past. I can never find the right words anyway.”

“You can practice with me if you would like. That way when you have to share the right words with the right creatures, you will be prepared.”

The horseshoe crab folded in on himself. Then, with his legs tucked tightly beneath his shell and his nose in the sand, he whispered, “There is nobody.”

Small clouds of sand rolled off the top of the dunes. The long grasses made their presence known by rubbing together in the breeze. Still, nobody walked down the steps of their beach-side homes.

“I am here,” Walter smiled as warmly as any bird could. “Come, let us go to that cove over there where the water is still. perhaps it will help your thoughts settle and become clear.”

The horseshoe crab did not reply, but he did rise. Walter paddled his orange feet slowly along the surface as the horseshoe crab walked along below him. A sand dollar drifted by and the crab watched its meandering path, but he did not reach for it.

They arrived in the cove and sat in silence for a while longer. Walter picked at a clump of seaweed, seeing if there was anything in it for him. This gave the horseshoe crab the space that he needed. The tide swelled an inch or two before the horseshoe crab spoke again.

“My name is Ronk.”

“It is very nice to speak with you, Ronk.”

Ronk appraised Walter and was surprised to find no hint of sarcasm.

“It is easier to hear you in this cove,” Ronk noticed. “There’s less water between us.”

“Indeed, I find it is always best to meet in the middle.”

Ronk kicked a pebble and it created a small plume of sand. They both watched it settle. Walter considered asking how Ronk found himself alone on this beach, but it felt like too strong of a question to begin with. He tried a different starting point.

“So, you had a bad experience with a seagull before?”

“Yeah, he was my friend actually. He… I asked him once to do me a favor since he could fly and all.”

“Did he not do the favor that you requested?”

“No, he did. It just didn’t have the outcome I was hoping for.”

“What is it you were hoping for? Is it something, if you were to trust me with it, that I can help with now? Since I, too, can fly?”

“It’s too late for that, Walter. It’s too late for everything. All I can do is avenge her memory and protect this beach from those… those people,” he spat.

“Forgive me for being so blunt, Ronk, but it is just you out here and… well, you do not seem happy.”

“I ain’t happy! I’m miserable!”

“Is that how you would like to stay?”

“I… No…” Ronk was flustered. He was doing his best to sort through his feelings but they were thick and heavy, having never been sifted before.

“In my experience, fighting a one-creature battle will always end in loss,” said Walter.

“But I’m resilient! It’s in the blue blood running through my exoskeleton. Horseshoe crabs have survived 12 extinction events, Walter! I can carry this burden until the day I die.”

“I do not doubt your resilience, but what I am saying is that you do not have to carry any burdens.”

“Nobody else will!”

Walter pondered this.

“Please tell me, if you feel up to sharing: what happened with your friend, the seagull?” Walter would bet all the shiny trinkets in his nest that it was related to the sand dollars.

“Well, what happened was really… with my wife. Leticia. She was a flat sea urchin.” Ronk’s eyes suddenly glistened, warmed by his memories. “We had six amazing years together. She was the light of my life. I met her when I was about ten so… I thought maybe we could go all the way together, but by a cruel twist of fate, she left me behind.”

Ronk was lost in thought, and Walter let him wander there so he could come back when he was ready. Then the story continued.

“We had been traveling the tides together to places where no human eyes have ever seen. We were adventurous and wild and free. But our time together was shorter than we thought it would be. When the day came, my darling Leticia died in my arms on this very beach. She was ready,” Ronk nodded to himself. “We knew it was time. She turned white and as was traditional in her culture, we let the tide take her to shore so she could break apart and become one with the endless sands. I didn’t leave her side. I wanted to be there until the very, very end. It’s what she would have done for me.

She was perfect and floated up to the shore like an angel, avoiding every rock and piece of sea glass. It was early morning in the summertime. The first tide of the day. As I waited with her, something came into the water near us splashing and clumsy. I saw the feet of a human. I tried to cover Leticia’s body but then I was pulled out of the water! I felt completely… Powerless. Being tilted back and forth, upside down, my legs flailing in the air. My friend- the seagull- saw the commotion and came flying down. It disturbed the human enough to put me down but as I was tumbling through the air pockets of the water I saw their dirty human hands wrap around Leticia’s body and take her away.

I followed them, chasing as fast as I could but they were too fast. I cried out to my friend and asked him to follow the human. If I found out where he was taking her, I would get her back. I ran out of the water, across the sand and along the human’s tracks but they were difficult to follow. I found a set of stairs up toward a human dwelling but they were too steep. The cliff was too jagged and the tide didn’t reach here. I… I couldn’t climb it. I couldn’t get Leticia back. And neither could the gull.

My friend returned and he wouldn’t say what happened, he just looked down at me with… this pity. It made me sick to my stomach. I screamed at him to tell me what happened and finally he did. He said: the human took Leticia and put her in a clear glass container on top of their toilet… For display. It was… It was the worst thing I could have ever imagined. I told that gull to fly away and never come back. I told him he had wings and he still couldn’t save her, so what use was he?”

Ronk sobbed then. Long, heaving, shaking cries. He smacked pebbles around in his rage and clouded the calm water. Walter stayed still and quiet with his soft head bowed.

“She’s still in there! Her body, on top of a human toilet mixed in with thirty more of her kind! The sacrilege! I can’t… I just can’t take it, Walter. Every day it kills me. I almost dried up on that beach. I waited four days until I was so dry my shell nearly cracked.”

Walter slowly extended a wing and put it beneath the water, placing it tenderly atop that very shell. Ronk cried and curled in on himself again.

“I’m sorry that happened to you, Ronk. It is a tragedy.”

“Yeah, yeah it is.”

“I understand now. You’ve been breaking up the bodies of flat urchins before they can reach the shore, so that this never happens again?”

Ronk nodded.

“And I have to do it where it’s deep enough that humans can’t grab me. I know how valuable my blood is and they’re not getting a single drop. They’ve… they’ve taken enough.”

“They surely have.”

Walter patted Ronk until his breathing grew steady.

“Ronk, thank you for sharing your story with me.”

“Well… Thank you for being a stubborn ass about listening.”

Walter chuckled and Ronk went on.

“There’s nothing that can change now. I don’t know what else to do with myself, so I’ll just protect this beach until I finally die.”

“That is one option,” Walter stared off to the horizon. “But if you would allow me to offer my thoughts, I do see something that can change.”

Ronk sniffed, “What’s that?”

“You told me of your love with Leticia and I have to believe that she wanted you to be happy. I do not know what it is like to lose the love of your life, but I do ascribe to the belief that relationships such as this have such a strong connection that it does not simply end in this lifetime. I believe you will see her again and this is but an interlude.”

“I don’t know if I believe that too, Walter.”

“It is entirely up to you what you believe, of course. But the thought gives me comfort and what I want for you is comfort, too.”

Ronk mulled this over. They had been talking so long that the tide had begun to recede without either of them noticing.

“I can’t just leave her there.”

“You have not. That may be her body, but she is with you always. She lives in memory and in how she has changed the way you see the world; not now in this spiteful way, but when she was alive you had fearless adventures together. Surely she has changed you like this, yes?”

“Oh, yeah. She changed me. She made me a better crab.”

“And that is what you must carry with you in the time you have left. I have seen many beaches and there are many humans… Many horseshoe crabs… Many flat urchins…. Many seagulls. This burden you have taken on is too much and it is not your job to fix what has happened. I am not saying that you are not capable. Your love is stronger than I can imagine! What I am saying is that this is a very wide world, we only get a small window of time to be alive and I do not want you to waste away in this unrelenting cycle of anger and despair.”

“I… I hadn’t thought of it that way. That ain’t what Leticia would have wanted either.”

They began wading back toward the ocean. As Ronk metabolized these feelings, he felt the need to be moving again.

“What do I do instead, Walter?”

“The answer is whatever makes you happy and fulfilled, my friend. That is how you honor her memory. You can stay here but if I were you, I would leave this beach behind and see what that looks like on further shores. Tell your story to young lovers who will listen, so that they can aspire to reach your strength and wisdom. Leave here knowing that love does not inevitably lead to vengeance, but instead, leaves behind fertile ground in which to create more love.”

Ronk stared off into the incoming waves.

“I do have a friendship that I’d like to mend.”

“Perhaps you will.”

The horseshoe crab and the seagull left the shore that day, never to return to this particular beach. Walter stretched his wings to soar away but before he did, Ronk asked:

“Why did you talk to me today?”

“Because you were upset.”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t your problem.”

“No, not a problem at all, Ronk. The way I see it, we are all in this ocean together. You were a stranger this morning, but I could see you were in pain and I wanted to help- if I could.”

“I was an ass-”

Walter held up a wing to stop Ronk from continuing.

“You were stuck, that is all.”

“Well, thank you for talking. You’re one smart bird, I tell you.”

“Conversing with an interesting stranger is the only way I know to make new friends. Today has been a gift for me too, Ronk.”

Ronk nodded. The morning haze had lifted. The lonely beach was left behind. And the horseshoe crab was still smiling as the seagull’s wings became silhouetted against the golden sun.