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The black and white sea gull banked, and on slow wing glided in a swooping curl across the bay. In his small, glittering eyes, the bird saw the familiar landmarks of Woodport below, the coastal town that had been his environs since his birth. He cawed as if in greeting, gliding low across the ocean breakers towards the wooden pier of the fishing cannery ahead, its cable-wrapped log supports thrusting up like rotten brown fingers from the offal fish of the catch, the carrion remains upon which he lived. Or so he hoped …
The sea gull saw the panorama of Woodport stretching beyond the cannery, though the town was unimportant to him except when the storms swept in and the high winds turned the water to a white churning foam. There was the gash of the coast highway through its center, like a metal and concrete artery forever pumping the blood of business in both directions. There was the strip of motels at one end of the town, like cancerous neon growths; the pungent haze of smoke from the sawmill at the other end, spreading a blanket between the earth and the pale blue clearness of the autumn afternoon: the ice-plant covered “park” at the ocean’s edge which ran up from the shore to the field of the new junior high … He saw it all, the sea gull did, but did not care.
The new junior high school was across the street from the older high school, having been built as the town increased beyond the ability to handle all the burgeoning families. The sea gull stayed away from the schools, for there were no fish but only boys and girls who threw stones at him. Diagonally to both schools was a small frame building, two-storied and weatherbeaten, one of a series along the flat, square blocks. In that particular building he knew there lived a woman, for he had many times seen her going to and fro, and sometimes walking alone along the beach. She’d seemed lonely to the gull, walking slowly and with her shoulders slumped, idly kicking the sand with the toe of her sneakers. He had attempted to cheer her by darting and flitting and laughing raucously; once he had been rewarded with an upward look and a smile.
Fictional reading for entertainment purposes only.