Before Times Shells & Gifts

Laura McKnight

Dustin picks up the sand dollar and rubs it between his fingers, feels the strange chalkiness of it. He studies the delicate etchings, the five-pointed flower, before putting it in his mouth and closing his eyes. The texture against his tongue. The light salt.

Organics are some of the coolest things left over from the Before Times, and Dustin feels like finding one must be a good omen. He knows some of the marsh people collect them, stash them in the little mud jars they use to store treasures, alongside the metal circles once used for trade.

This particular organic, a sand dollar, is exceedingly rare, especially for this particular stretch of the Nouveau Gulf Coast. Dustin knows this because he is a collector, or a trader rather, owner and operator of Before Times Shells & Gifts, Hand-Harvested Souvenirs from Pre-Armageddon Louisiana. He drives a bulky Before Times van, from BT 1900 and 84 to be exact, filled with artifacts carefully selected from the seaside: scraps of metal from barges and oil rigs, wooden bits of shrimp boats, the occasional tou-lou-lou shell or tide-beaten fiddle string, or maybe a flashy Carnival doubloon.

As he moves down the shore, past the raggedy old pier, his heart picks up pace, knowing the sand dollar is of high value—and not just to the petro-tourists who pay billions of solar-credits to visit the rigs. The sand dollar looks and feels like a world Dustin has never known—except through hand-me-down memories.

Years ago, when Dustin was in his early 20s, his uncle would sit at the table in the mornings and talk about the Before Times, how the sky was various shades of blue most days, and there were so many birds he couldn’t even remember the names of most of them—and how the marsh stretched so far into the horizon. How the swamp fires lasted just a few weeks per year. 

Dustin really did not want to hear about it, was so tired of hearing about it, would shrug his shoulders and sigh to himself before leaving for work. 

Fire-free swamps and flocks of seabirds were old-fogey stuff, and what’s a blue sky got to do with him or his life? The sky is pink now and that’s that. Every once in a while, he sees a pelican float above, and the sight of the magnificent bird, coasting on air in spite of its size, makes his breath catch. Why can’t he just enjoy this pelican without knowing there used to be so many more? Can’t he just have this one thing—without someone nagging him about what all is missing? 

Sometimes, as he was trying to escape his uncle and head to work, the hip neighbor would stop by to chat, wave through the screen door and loudly ask hey, comment ça va? 

This also annoyed the piss out of Dustin, who found this particular guy’s French pretentious and performative, something he used to seem cool. Dustin would offer a tight smile and answer pointedly in English: fine, everything is fine. 

Now, as Dustin studies the waves, he realizes he misses being asked the question: how are you? He even misses the French. 

Given the option now, he might even respond in French. He might say something like ça va bien—not because he is actually well or anything, but because it’s the only answer he remembers. 

In English, things really are pretty terrible. He could use a full range of synonyms for disaster and despair, has a whole lexicon at hand for tragedy, grief, and mourning. But in French, everything is always good and well—because bon and bien are all he knows.

He places the sand dollar in the bag’s special side pocket, zips it tight, and keeps walking. He moves quickly past the driftwood memorial for the marine scientists. Stops at the rotting wooden shell of a trawl boat. Grabs a bright green scrap of net, feels its stringy texture with his fingers, and drops it into the bag. 

The hot pink of the sky grows deeper. Offshore, a manmade constellation appears above the horizon: lights glittering from the old oil platforms. Orion—or Orion’s Belt, he thinks, if Orion was a roustabout.

The surf moves, and Dustin spots a flash of blue and white in the tide. A piece of concrete statue, the Holy Mother. He can tell by the shade of blue, the same blue as the veil on the Virgin Mary his own mother displayed near their front door. 

Dustin doesn’t pray, hasn’t prayed since his favorite priest got kicked out of the church, hasn’t prayed since his aunt was refused Communion for protesting the first fossil fuel war, but he does pause to bow his head. The crashing waves are the prayer. The incoming tide.

He puts the piece of statue in his bag and moves on. 

As he walks, he feels the ocean suck the sand from under his feet, the landscape always shifting beneath him. He lets the tide grab and tug his soles as he sifts through today’s collection: the frayed strings of the net, the coarse concrete of the Holy Mother’s veil. 

He unzips the side pocket and runs his fingers, softly, over his prize find. Tapping his fingers gently against it, Dustin feels a sudden urge to throw the sand dollar back into the sea. He realizes he doesn’t want anyone to own the sand dollar, not even himself, and especially not some tourist. 

But first he does want to lick it again. Maybe he can taste how things used to be. For once, experience that time and place first-hand, through his own senses. The sand dollar tastes like salt and air and bones and sun and the most hidden parts of the sea. It tastes like his uncle’s dark roast coffee and ghost crabs and the way the light hits gold in the marsh in late summer.

Satisfied, he pitches it toward the hot pink horizon, watches it clunk into the sea, and gets back to searching the sand for lesser curiosities. 

Orion’s Belt twinkles, and a half-moon is high in the neon sky. Dustin clutches his bag, walks away from the waves, toward the marsh. The Holy Mother will catch a good price, he thinks. He climbs into his clunky van and heads home, the taste of another world still on his tongue.