“Can I give you a tip?”

Calvin had been fumbling behind the cash register, banging the stack of quarters against the thin metal door, and he had not even realized that the elderly man was still there. The question of whether he had forgotten to give the man back his change flitted through his mind for the briefest moment. No, I definitely gave him his change. The panic subsided.

He looked up at the man, who had to be at least seventy years old. He had veins that showed on his bald head, and the smallest amount of scraggly white hairs still clinging to his skull. His hands were tucked tightly into his faded blue jacket, which aligned perfectly with the faded “Turner Sport Fishing” shirt that poked through from underneath. He didn’t look like a sport’s fisherman, thought Calvin. But then again, it looked like sports in general may have passed him by, and as far as sports went, fishing seemed manageable.

“Sure” said Calvin, a little taken aback by the question. He wasn’t working with Michelle, his twenty-two-year-old incredibly attractive co-worker, so his tip jar remained low, even for 6 o’clock at a non-franchised coffee house. He took a quick glance at the chipped cup next to the cash register, the scribbled sign that just read “Tip?” nearly falling off it completely.

“Try to get up before eight o’clock every morning. Even on your days-off! By the time you’re 28 you’ll have such a leg up on the rest of your peers. It’ll gain you so much productive hours.”

Calvin, stared at him, not sure whether to laugh or to be offended. Was he making a joke? He was smiling, but in more of a pleasant way, not an ‘I just made a joke’ way. He chose to give the old man a belated laugh, just in case.

“I think that’s more of advice,” said Calvin, “but thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

The old man smiled, “Perhaps you need to make a separate cup for advice than. Tip cup looks a little full.”

And with this comment, which, if said by anyone under the age of sixty, Calvin was sure he would’ve taken offense to, the old man began to head for the exit. A girl in a green raincoat was about to get in line anyways.

Calvin took her order, and began to prepare her pumpkin spice machiatto, but he still kept thinking about the odd encounter.

Tomorrow was his day off, and he should have been occupied with what trouble his friends would be getting themselves into for the night, but for some reason he couldn’t stop thinking about how early the gym opened.

That’s the thing about being an adult though, everyone is generally so absorbed with picking up their own fractured selves that you rarely get a chance to see everyone around you doing the exact same thing. An entire world of beach-goers with their heads to the sand, searching for sea-glass, not caring to notice the countless others searching in unison. God forbid you carelessly bump into someone and hinder their search momentarily though. The world expected you to move forward, keep with a routine and collect the fragments of your broken mind on your own time.

An elderly man, with a metal detector, large boxy glasses askew on his face, and a bucket hat with purple fishing hooks embroidered on it entered David’s view. David wondered what broken pieces he was searching for. Certainly some World War II era coins or some valuable metallic trinket, but he was probably searching for some peace of mind too. Normally David hated his morning walks to be invaded by other humans. He had a whole day of human interaction to look forward to, he didn’t need to be bogged down unnecessarily by one more. This case seemed different, however, the old man leisurely strolling along ahead of David. David knew he would catch and pass him eventually, but for the time being he was no more intrusive than a seagull plucking waterbugs off the shoreline.

David’s eyes began to fall on something in the distance. A black mass sat unmoving close to the water’s edge up ahead. Having frequented the beach enough, David knew this was not a jetty, or any of the usual ornaments of the beach. This was something new. Perhaps it was a boat or jeep out collecting clam traps. Whatever it was, it was large, and it stood right in the way of the elderly man who seemed to notice it around the same time as David. When the man finally got close to it, he placed his metal detector down on the ground, staring at it from a distance.

David watched the scene, transfixed. With each step, the fog clouded his view a little less until finally it fell into focus.

It was a whale. A humpback whale David was pretty sure, thinking back to a whale watching trip he had been on once with his wife. Ex-wife.

It was several feet from the water, with sand piles high on both sides of its tail, signs that at one point the enormous creature had struggled to pry itself from the beach and back into the ocean. Now, however, it lay motionless, seemingly accepting what appeared to be a grim fate. The only signs of life at all were the understated rise and fall of its sleek, leather skin and its massive eyes. Where David would have expected to see panic he was shocked to see nothing more than a resigned numbness. It was weak and appeared to be half asleep, barely holding on to the world around it.

“Doesn’t matter how many times you see it, it’s still such a painful sight”

The man had an unusually gruff voice. He was certainly a smoker at one point in his life, if he didn’t continue the bad habit to this day.

“Does it happen often?” asked David, “Them beaching themselves like this? I’ve never seen it before.”

“Not often, and usually not alone like this one. Many times either a current or a tide shift catches the whole pod. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen just one like this.”

A cold breeze raced along the shoreline, reaching out and tilting the old man’s hat with its ferocity. He in turn reached up with his unsteady hands and pulled it back down upon his wispy hair.

“So what do we do? Do we call the Coast Guard?” asked David.

“Coast Guard won’t come,” said the old man matter-of-factly, “maybe if it was a more endangered whale, but with an older humpback like this one they will consider it a waste of resources. No, I think in this case there is nothing to be done.”

David felt a flash of anger in himself, at the old man, although he knew it was misplaced.

“So we just leave it here to die? I’m sorry but that doesn’t seem right” he said.

“I didn’t say it was right,” said the man, “I would never consider that right. But it is the truth of the situation. You can always call if you’d like. You seem someone who has a cellphone.”

David turned from the whale to look at the man. He’d picked up his metal detector again, somewhere in the midst of their conversation, and he stood there watching the whale with an indistinguishable look.

“Nothing” David repeated; less a question this time and more a statement.

“Nature” replied the man; less an answer and more a rumination.

They stood in silence, watching the beast for several more minutes. It remained still for the most part, only sliding its tail meekly once, something that could hardly even be considered an escape attempt.

Finally the old man seemed to have seen enough. He pulled the hat firmly onto his head, and began to walk around the dying mammal.

“You have a blessed day, young man. I’m sorry your morning had to start with such a sadness.”

David nodded and mumbled something half-heartedly in response. He was still stewing about the whole situation.

It didn’t sit right to him, the whole scene. That such an animal, such a large and magnificent being could be ended by the smallest shift in the tide. The multitude of tiny pebbles held it trapped on the beach until it withered away. Nobody to help it, even with a benevolent soul right beside it. It was enough to make him queasy.

“No” David said, more so for himself, although the utterance slipped out into the air.

David walked slowly to the whale’s tail, went to a solid enough area of flesh, placed both hands against its slimy exterior and began to push with all his might. The sand allowed for very little traction, and soon he had to take a second to breathe.

He refused to just accept this whale’s death without trying to get it back into the water, just as he refused to believe there was any fight too big to be solved by lobbing harmless pillows at his girl until she laughed. He refused to let a faulty shift in the tides reek such devastation. He refused to let this die, even with the whale’s own eyes looking on at him with indifference. He dug in again, shoving with all his might, hoping somehow he might get the earth to bend to his will.

The crashing beat of the waves upon the malleable beach was faster than David’s but his heart fell in line just the same. The uptick in tempo was electric, running counter to his normal experience of walking along the beach. This did, however, fall in line with the general climate of the day, the rainy mist pressing gently against his face but with each lick warning of something a bit more sinister to come.

It was this early morning routine that drew him to this place of familiarity and jarring newness. He walked one of three paths each morning; each staggeringly different from the next but each possessing the same calming ability he craved so dearly to start his day. He was a wanderer of the sidewalk paths within the richly, quaint neighborhood where he imagined a grainy alternate reality amid the lovely hanging tree swings and weathered wood benches. He frequented the cobblestone paths along Main Street, which was altogether unbearable anytime past 7:30 but did harbor his favorite coffee shop. And of course, he had the walk along the beach that he found himself on now.

These walks had drawn him out earlier and earlier ever since the divorce.

Divorce.

Even thinking the word was terribly difficult for David, and as such he found himself saying it in his head over and over again in some desperate attempt to normalize it. It was like a cavity. He continually ran his tongue over the decaying word, hoping to himself that the more he played with it, the more it would dull the pain, and maybe even one day it wouldn’t be there at all. But this morning was not to be that morning. His tongue prodded the idea in his mind gently and it resonated with pain just as it had the very first time.

David had never even considered himself one to be a product of divorce. Maybe that’s what had him so destroyed by it he thought as he removed his shoes. As he stowed his worn Nike shoes under his armpit he knew exactly what he was doing. He was hoping that the cold, rocky sand might distract him from this cyclical thought process he found himself on every morning. Until the uneven beach ground could work it’s magic, he decided he would ponder on. And ponder he did, mulling over his parent’s marriage, and their parent’s marriage, and their parent’s parent’s marriage. Had any of them ever even considered letting their love die? The worst thing was that he hadn’t wanted to. She had left a letter on the table one morning as she left for a business trip in Vancouver.

It’s not that we didn’t have something, Dave. We had love. But to continue to pretend like we still have it doesn’t seem fair to either of us.

She had never been much of a writer, he thought selfishly. That didn’t matter though when the simplicity breaks into your core. And this one had been shattering.