The Shell Collector Read online

  “If you don’t know much about your grandfather, why do you object to me writing about him?” I ask.

  “I said I don’t remember much about him, not that I don’t know much about him.”

  “Fine. Tell me what you know. Make me believe he was a good man and not someone who got rich while this world went to shit.”

  Wilde turns away from this accusation, almost like I’ve slapped him. It feels like I’ve slapped him. Like I’ve said in a sentence what my series of pieces is all about. He stares for some time at the horizon, that gray line where the sea kisses the sky.

  “After my grandmother died, my grandfather lived alone in a shack on a spit of beach. He wasn’t anything like his father or my father. Or me, for that matter. I know what you’re going to write, because it’s the history everyone has written. With his vast wealth, my grandfather bought up near-coastal land, what he knew would become prime beachfront property once the sea levels crept up, and then he kept that land for himself. He blocked it off from the world—”

  “And none of that is true?”

  Wilde shakes his head. “It’s … more complicated than that. My grandfather, he … wasn’t a huge fan of people. Well, it’s not that he didn’t like people, I think he just enjoyed the quiet. Which is why I don’t want to see your story, don’t want people talking about him. He wouldn’t approve. And you can do your series without involving him. I’ll tell you whatever you want about me and you can run that instead.”

  I make a note here to dig even deeper into Ness’s grandfather. Telling me not to look into something is the wrong play if that’s what he really wants. Unless Ness knows this and is sending me down a blind alley.

  “What about your father, then? He didn’t seem to mind the limelight.”

  Wilde laughs, and I glance up from my notebook in time to see him with his head tilted back, white teeth flashing, wrinkles around his eyes. It’s a dangerous laugh. I tell myself it’s another prop, not to believe it.

  “My father was the exact opposite,” Ness says. “He hated people, but he loved taking their money. And he was good at it. I think it skips a generation, that drive. My old man took after his grandfather. As a kid, he climbed over oil rigs like they were his private jungle gyms. Didn’t spend much time with his own father. The oil company was his life, his true family. And he took the company to another level, daring other industry leaders to catch up, taunting them, showing them where to drill, correcting their mistakes in public—”

  “He wasn’t scared of the competition?”

  “No. My father knew he was the smartest man in any room.”

  “What about women?”

  Wilde shrugs, seems confused. “My dad only had eyes for my mother.”

  “No, I mean … you said smartest man in any room. What about women?”

  “I misspoke,” Wilde says. “Sorry. It sounded sexist, didn’t it?”

  I don’t answer, just let the accusation hang. “It sounds like resentment of absent fathers runs in the family. Boys raised by their grandfathers. Is that why you’re protecting your grandfather? You say you don’t remember much, but maybe he was there for you in those first years in a way your father wasn’t. Showered you with gifts, or let you—”

  “That’s not it,” Wilde says.

  “So what is it, then?”

  Wilde takes a deep breath. “My great-grandfather gave us the world,” he says. “This was his gift to us. He made sure I would never have to work a day in my life, made sure my dad and his dad would have everything. He gave us the world.”

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing. Like it makes you sad.” I switch the pen to my other hand and wipe my palm on my skirt. There’s an intensity in Wilde’s eyes that I can’t put my finger on, a glare at some distant past. That’s what I want: whatever he’s thinking right then. I wonder if I should push him for more; I wonder if I should show him the shells; but I worry even more that I might frighten some wary truth away.

  Wilde sets his wine down and stands up. He is frozen in place for a moment, like he’s locked in a fight-or-flight decision. He walks to a side table, opens a drawer, and pulls out a book. It looks like a Bible, and I wait for him to open it and quote scripture. I wonder if Ness has found God these past years, if that’s why he has withdrawn from the world. Perhaps he is seeking forgiveness for what he and his family have done to the earth.

  But as he brings me the book, I can see that it’s a leather journal, worn soft. He hands it to me. The leather strap around the journal doesn’t match the cover; the original probably wore through and fell apart. I slip the strap off and open the notebook. Pages of neat writing. It’s almost calligraphic in its beauty, its timelessness. The pages feel on the verge of growing brittle.

  “Part of the reason I asked you here was so you could read this,” Ness says. “It was my grandfather’s journal. His private thoughts. I don’t think he ever meant for anyone else to read it.”

  My palms are sweating. Source material on the Wilde family is impossibly hard to find. It all comes secondhand or through interviews. As I flip the pages, a poem stands out for its short stanzas and the way it’s centered on the page. I scan the first few lines:

  The sea whispers and sighs

  her last breaths upon the beach.

  She is dying, and all I want

  is to end her suffering.

  “I need you to sign this before you read any more,” Ness says.

  I glance up. Ness has placed a thick stapled document and a pen on the coffee table.

  “What is this?” I ask.

  “A non-disclosure agreement. If you ever run a word of what’s in that book, my lawyers assure me that I’ll own not only you, but the Times as well.”

  “Is that so?”

  He nods. “That’s so. Of course, you can choose not to read it if you don’t want to know the truth.”

  “If I can’t write about what’s in here, then why show it to me?”

  Ness frowns. It’s the most serious I’ve ever seen him, in person or otherwise. “Because if you read what my grandfather wrote,” he says, “you won’t write anything about him. Ever.”

  7

  I have to admit that I’m intrigued. Intrigued enough to sign the document. This is not quite why I came here, but as a reporter I know not to turn down opportunities that arise unexpectedly. Besides, I like letting him know that my mind is open, that I’m only interested in the truth, before I grill him about the shells. And the journal is simply too good to pass up.

  As I leaf through it, I begin to suspect that Ness didn’t ask me here to interview him; he brought me here to commune with a dead man. He leaves me alone with the journal and the amazing view, as if this has been his plan all along. He tidies up in the kitchen, disappears for long stretches, passes through now and then like an intermittent wind. My wine seems to fill itself once or twice. The sky reddens then darkens. Occasional ships float by in the distance like stars on the move, while the actual stars hang like diamonds in the sky. And to the south, the horizon glows every ten seconds or so as a nearby lighthouse throws its beam in great orbits of the sky.

  But all of this is backdrop to the notebook; they are the things I see when I glance up to digest what I’ve just read. I scan entries spaced months and even years apart. Angry screeds at the beginning—dating back eighty years—give way to confessions and measured doses of guilt later in life. One note in particular catches my eye. Halfway into the day’s entry, written over sixty years ago:

  How many children reject their parents’ dreams, and how many are diametrically opposed? And of the latter, how many of those children forewent riches from questionable sources? How many cast off to live adrift, when the answer to reparations lay in their inheritances?

  My father’s allowance is the only power he has over me. To reject this is to reject him and to stand on my convictions. But my father’s allowance is the only power I have over the world he harms. To cast myself adrift is to leave the world to dro
wn. In this way, my convictions become the ultimate not in sacrifice but in selfishness.

  Better to stomach all of this, to tear out and swallow these pages, these ruminations, and live as a dutiful son, conspiring in my own way, and amassing a war chest. Not to counter misdeeds with mere angry words to the hungry press, but to apply some salve to all the wounds my family has scratched upon this Earth.

  I have to read it a second time. So Ness’s grandfather rejected the legacy his own father made, but he did it in secret. To what effect?

  There is more. Much more. There are more poems of nature worship and agony, and I find myself blinking tears away, however rough the prose. Here is a soul aging in reverse. Anger giving way to charity. Surety moving to curiosity. Judgment sliding into doubt. The last pages read like the youthful rebellion of the naive, the college spirit, the hopefulness that the world might change for the better. Early pages, meanwhile, read like the hardened cynicism of old age, like the generations of Wildes in my series of planned exposés. If this transformation was real, it transpired without anyone knowing.

  I sip my wine. There is a small white light on the horizon following another light: the flash of a longline tug heading south. My father taught me to read these nautical constellations on shelling expeditions that lasted into the night. I think of this journal in my lap as a tug of sorts, pulling me through dark waters. The compulsion to run a story based on what I’m reading is neutered by the document I’ve signed. But maybe it would be worth the worst that lawsuits might bring. A story of quiet redemption and private protest.

  But what was the point of this protest? What was the outcome? His own son—Ness’s father—picked up the mantle and carried on pumping oil, warming the air and the sea, ruining whatever plans this journal hints at. Even when Ness’s father turned to green energy, it was a temporary stunt, and the pumping continued. He simply saw room for even greater profits by appealing to the masses. In my research, I found several quotes where Ness’s father practically admits this. It’s the crux of the third part of my story.

  “Ness?” I call out. I have so many questions.

  He appears moments later, and I am shocked back into awareness of where I am. The wine and the passing of these hours have made being here feel less surreal.

  “Explain this,” I say, indicating the journal. “What the hell is this?”

  “That’s a good man,” Ness says. “Everything you wrote about my great-grandfather is true. Everything you’ll say about my father and me will be true. But not him. You couldn’t possibly write a true word about him.”

  “So the land he bought—what was the point?”

  “To protect it. Practically every acre is now under federal protection—“

  “But for tax reasons, right?”

  Ness shrugs. “People don’t see what they want to see. They see what they expect to see.”

  “I need to … I need to think about this.” I hold up the journal. “Can I take this with me?”

  Ness laughs. “No way. But you can take as long as you like with it. You can come back tomorrow if you want. Anything to convince you to skip over him.”

  I check the time. It’s not yet nine o’clock. The inn where I’m staying is only half an hour away, and fifteen minutes of that is just getting off Ness’s property. I have so many questions. Even if the story can’t be written, I need to know what Ness has pieced together about his grandfather. I need to spend some time going through the notebook more carefully. There’s more here than anyone could decipher in a week. And I still haven’t grilled him about himself or his father. I haven’t asked him about the shells.

  “Can I … do you mind if I get some air?”

  “Of course. It’s a short walk down to the beach.” Ness takes my wine glass, opens one of the sliding glass doors, and shows me which boardwalk to take. It’s a maze of steps that seems to float above the dunes and between the tall reeds and grasses. I leave my shoes on the deck. Ness offers me a flashlight, but the stairs are dimly lit on either side, and I don’t want to shell. Impossibly, I don’t want to shell.

  As I head down, the sea calls from the black distance. I cannot see it and it cannot see me, but we seem to be aware of one another. I think of a poem from the notebook, the dying sighs and whispers, the last breaths, and just how long the final days of that great body of water have stretched out. Dying slowly, like my mother. When everyone thought the end would be swift, like it was for my dad.

  Thinking of my father, I remember how we used to walk the shoreline near our house after Mom passed away. We carried bags, but not because we thought we’d find more than a stray shell here or there. The shells were rare enough that we only needed our pockets. The bags were for the trash. He and I watched the plastic index creep and climb from summer to summer, the measure of how much had dissolved into the sea. When I was nine, he and my mom took me on an eco-cruise to see the great raft of detritus caught in the swirling gyre of the Pacific. Each cruise scoops up as much as it can and brings home tons of trash to be recycled. Passengers buy tickets to pay for the fuel and the efforts. It’s also a lottery of sorts, with winners catching glimpses of a lone whale, maybe just a spout or the tail fin before a deep dive. From fellow passengers, we heard stories of such sightings. At my age, this was like being near enough to unicorns, just touching the arm of an old couple who’d had such an encounter.

  Then I saw the raft of trash for myself. You could walk across it in places, it was so thick and buoyant. The giant scoops from the deck crane barely made a dent. My mother explained where it all came from until I wept. After she passed away, my father and I kept her spirit alive by picking up trash on the beach. We tried to make the world a prettier place. At least until the next tide rolled in.

  The sea has this effect on me, this helpless reminiscing. On Ness Wilde’s private beach, I weep. I weep while the ocean whispers a death rattle of sublime beauty, of such grace. Such dying grace. Where I am standing would’ve been hillside generations ago. The old beach is out there somewhere, buried. Gone.

  Straining, I can see the white foam of crashing waves lit by the half-moon. The lighthouse sends another ray around, providing me with glimpses of the shimmering sea. But this beach was bought with oil money. With plastic. Some other beach lies out there in the inky depths, drowned and forgotten. Flooded. And suddenly the cool sand is hot beneath the soles of my feet. And I turn my back on the graceful, dying waters and run toward the boardwalk, toward the stairs up and away, before the sea reaches out and takes me as well, before it keeps coming, absorbing all, washing me away.

  8

  “You weren’t gone long,” Ness says as I slam the door behind me. My shoes are in my hand. I am shaking. I tell him I need to go, maybe come back tomorrow, and Ness asks if I’m okay to drive. I’m not. I tell him I need a minute. I hear myself say that I have too many questions. That it’s too late in the day.

  “Have a seat,” Ness tells me. “I’ll put on coffee.”

  I sit down and slip my shoes back on, the sand rough between my toes. I find my purse and dig out my key fob. It feels good to hold it, this means of escape. I feel drugged on more than just wine and sad remembrances. It’s the blow of new knowledge. I remember feeling this at times in college, needing days to recover after seeing the world in a different light. If what I’ve glimpsed about his grandfather is true, then Ness was right, and I can’t run my next piece. It doesn’t stop the rest of my story, but it creates quite the hole. One I can’t fill with the truth—for I have signed that right away.

  “You understand this doesn’t change what I write about your father. Or you.”

  “Of course. Do you take cream or sugar?”

  “Black is fine,” I say. Strands of my hair have come loose from my running, from the wind. I tuck these behind my ear and accept a cup of coffee. Ness sits. We are back where we started, except the stars are out and the view of the beach is gone. The lighthouse whirs in the distance.

  “Four generations of oil
men,” I say. Ness nods. “Help me understand how … how you aren’t all the same.”

  He laughs. “Because it’s a better story and much easier to write if we’re the same. But let me start from the beginning.” He glances at the dive watch on his left wrist, possibly wondering how much time he has, what things to leave out.

  “Please,” I tell him. I’m sure I won’t hear anything new, but I look forward to what things he chooses to leave out, where he decides to embellish. And I’m in no shape to drive. No shape to confront him with the shells. It might have to wait until tomorrow. I’m going to have to take him up on the offer to come back.

  “My great-grandfather William built Ocean Oil from scratch,” Ness says. “He worked on deep sea rigs while he was in his teens. Dropped out of high school after ninth grade, ran away from home, and became a roughneck on a Shell Oil platform. By the time he was twenty, he was a shift foreman. At twenty-two, he had his own rig. This was ten years younger than anyone in company history.”

  “Because of your great-grandmother, right?”

  “No. Because he produced barrels like no other, and that was all anyone cared about. He met Shelly, my great-grandmother, after his promotion. I know … that name, right? It was the most common name for both boys and girls at the time. A curse. She was eighteen, and accompanied her father on a rig inspection.”

  “And her father was CEO of Shell Oil at the time—”

  “Shelly’s father wasn’t CEO yet, just VP of Engineering. One of my dad’s biographers got that wrong, and he got the timing wrong as well. Everyone keeps repeating the same wrong source until it’s gospel.”

  I make a note of this.

  “By the time William—I only ever knew him as Paps—and Shelly started dating, Paps had his own rig. It wasn’t some kind of favor to him. He earned everything he ever got. If anything, the rig got him that first date, not the other way around. The story is that Shelly fell in love with him at first sight. Saw this young man ordering around people twice his age. He was covered in grime, refused to wear a hardhat but cussed out anyone who neglected theirs, used to say God made his head plenty hard enough.”