Wet Cathedral

That night, they were down at the beach. The two couples had taken a long, slow walk, curving their footprints along the shore in a crescent until they reached the pier and turned back. Minnie and Katy were collecting shells for their children back home. Owen scanned the sand for bodies of sand crabs after each wave receded, and Efren walked silently, once in a while joining Owen to ogle over a group of crabs gathered around a shell for feeding. Midway back to the base of the cliff where they began, Katy scratched an image of a bear into the gravelly sand, took out her cell phone, and snapped a photo.

When they reached the top of the cliff, wooden picnic tables were strewn with their camping supplies. Owen took out long metal rods, marshmallows, bars of chocolates, and graham crackers. Katy stoked the dying fire and added some kindling until it was burning with life again. They roasted marshmallows, Minnie allowing hers to burn into a black crisp on the outside. She pressed it, ash and all, between the crackers and melted the chocolate around it.

Efren had retreated to the stone wall overlooking the beach to watch the sunset. He and Minnie lived in Colorado, and he couldn’t remove his eyes from this Pacific Ocean, which, to him, looked like an expanse of blankets being waved by strong-armed giants. As he gazed at the sun positioning itself on the horizon like orange lace, he spotted the seal.

“Come and see the seal, Minnie. Watch the sunset. It’s beautiful out there.”

Minnie, Katy, and Owen joined him to watch the seal bobbing in and out of the waves as if it was about to ask a question. Below them on the beach, a group of people was huddled around a fire, which lit the center of their circle like a gas burner. Two surfers in black wet suits frolicked in the waves far from the seal, their sleek bodies reflecting in the glowering light. As the sun settled lower, its dusky brightness deepened the lows and lightened the highs of the ocean swells.

Efren spied the cocked head of another seal, and, as the couples turned to see it, two shiny, long, black backs broke the surface of the waves. Whales.

The whales frisked and frolicked about twenty yards away from the surfers who seemed unaware as they acrobatted their boards toward shore again and again. The black backs arched above the surface and sprays of water gushed through the froth.

Then, two more backs glistened closer to the surfers now, cavorting and ignoring the humans on the beach who had lined up, fixated on them. The surfers saw them stare, looked behind at the waves a few times, then swam to shore, pulling their boards by the cords behind them. They shook their sleek bodies, then stood with the others on the rim of the watery stage.

As the sunlight deepened, hundreds and hundreds of black backs broke the darkening and undulating sea. Glossy bodies arched, bent, sprayed, thrust, thrashed, and crested the swells. The ocean was a playground of swimming children, unaware of how their antics amused the audience or how their magnificence inspired the human souls watching them from the sand.

Katy, Minnie, Efren, and Owen exchanged looks, their mouths paused in chewing and their eyes wide. The surfers and campfire friends smiled at each other until every human being watching the whales became part of a congregation, knit together by their admiration of the wet nature. The ocean waves sang like a choir, the voices echoing from the choir loft and reverberating from nooks and crannies on stone walls before descending into the nave and ears of the people. The beach, the ocean, the bobbing seals, the cavorting whales, and the silent humans shared a single energetic symphony as the sun dimmed its spotlight on the Pacific ‘s stage.

The tide moved in to accompany the oncoming darkness. In two’s, three’s, and four’s, the spectators on the beach snuffed their campfire and climbed the gravel path to stand with the two couples at the wall framing the cliff. Finally, the sky deepened into a mass of navy sheets and the dark backs of the whales and bobbing heads of the seals were no longer distinguishable from the folds of the water.

The waves crept steadily up the shoreline and, wave by crashing wave, erased the footprints which had earlier curved all the way to the pier.