One served in the navy. Another’s son lived at home,about my age. One used to watch the birds.One was a carpenter and built the fencethat ran the length of the beach, ending where landmet water. They’d share a bottle, stare at the bay,talking tides, the catch, and people they knew.One called me the professor. I never really knewwhy. After working late one night I came home,found him reminiscing. How they’d jump into the bayas boys, off the old bridge. Half-man, half-bird,that three-second flicker in midair before landing.The new bridge: a colossus with a ten-foot suicide fence.(Years later, someone whispered across the fencethat the son my age had died that way.) They knewthe tides like some know train schedules, knew the landwithout a map, and by flood stains on the homescould catalog storms by name. They recognized birdsby their calls, recognized boys who’d drowned in the bayyears earlier. It happens, living near the bayyour whole life, said the carpenter, who’d built the fence.Inevitable, said the one who watched the birds.They’d seen entire towns subsumed on the news,the rubble of oceanfront camelots. Seen homesfray and crumple, seen neighbors head inland,leaving the keys in the door. Their faces creased, handscalloused from years of fishing in the bay.This was their home to claim, not mine. Hometo them was a dead end and a guardrail or fence,then water.                                I’m forgetting others, I know.One had a scar near his eye in the shape of a bird.One, a firefighter, had tattooed the wordmercy, and fed the feral cats. When the land-lord asked, no one would ever say who.It doesn’t matter now. When I drive past the bayI remember, though the scene’s changed: old homestilted on their axes. The harbor, dark. The fence,fallen. The people they knew, gone. Even birdswon’t land here. The uncles have moved to retirement homes,fenced in, built as far as possible from the bay.