Boots

Ward hooked the diamond jig to the bottom guide of his ten foot paraflex rod and reeled the 30 lb braid taut.  He turned his back on the crashing waves pounding the shore by Old Inlet.  A front was moving through, that seemed certain, but his understanding of how meteorology affected wave dynamics was lacking.  Hell of an east west current on a south facing shore was all he knew.  He had been casting far to his left into the wind and by the time he got his lure to shore the trailer hook was digging a skinny trench across the sand well to his right.  Covering a lot of ground he reasoned at the same time knowing that if there was a sweet spot in this water his lure was actually in it for only the briefest of moments.  He was now barefoot.  As he walked back to where he had left his boots, near that minimally protected area enforced with a string fence and warning signs, behind which the plovers laid their eggs on top of the sand, he was as he blinked walking on a gum and spit dotted sidewalk in New York, with a rabbit named Leander inside a tote bag in his left hand and his tool bucket in the other.  He zig-zagged back and forth, dodging the cell phone worshippers and the overly confident, the women walking three abreast and the parents with strollers.  He felt that he spent a lot of time on the lateral in New York, always moving sideways to move forward.  He picked up snatches of conversation.  At 23rd street and 3rd Avenue a somewhat masculine looking woman with large hands wearing her wig slightly askew said to her companion, that was my second daddy, my first daddy, my real daddy, he got beat to death with a baseball bat, it was over drugs, oh my it was very sad.  It was cold on the beach in June.