A DARK SUNNY DAY

He was sitting in an aluminum webbed beach chair, seemingly entranced, watching the rough Atlantic Ocean pound the sand. It was 7 A.M., my usual time to start setting up my sunbrella rental stand. No idea how early the lone beach goer arrived and didn’t care. The trucks had already combed the beach, leaving a tooth trail as far as I could see. Evidently, the sitter had refused to move so the tracks went around him. It was easier for the driver than arguing.

A few mothers, holding onto their kids, were beginning to arrive. Once they decided where on the vast empty beach they wanted to be, pails, shovels, towels, coolers, hit the sand. Two bikini clad mothers were my first customers. Nice start, I thought. I carried their red and white sunbrella choice about 25 feet away, wiggled the pole deep into the cool sand and unfurled the brella. They thanked me and I returned to the stand to sit and wait for another customer.

In the meantime, I watched the ladies take their children’s hands and walk quickly toward the freezing water’s edge. They walked past the lone man still sitting quietly in the webbed chair, shrugged their shoulders, walked a few steps closer to the waves that swirled around their ankles, turned around and walked back to the not moving man. As one, they screamed, grabbed their children and ran towards me.

‘Help! Police, call the police. A naked dead man is sitting in that chair near the water!’ Asking no questions, I used my cell for 911. I also took hold of one lady’s arm and gave an order, ‘Don’t leave. The police will want to talk to you. They are on the way.’ The Beach Patrol were already in sight. Their vehicles could travel on the sand. Sirens wailed from the street. Not knowing what they would find, reporters, t.v. cameras were right on their tail.

Being the one who called in the 911 report, I was the first to be questioned. There was almost no helpful information I could give other than the man was sitting there when I arrived at 7 when I came to work. There had been no apparent reason I should check on him. The two ladies were questioned next. They couldn’t help but see the man was naked, so quickly looked away. Mrs. Cole then realized the man hadn’t raised his head, smiled and that his eyes were wide open, staring at the ocean. She had seen enough and ran towards me. Mrs. Sanders, her friend, gathered the toys spread around and prodded the children to run ahead to Mrs. Cole.

The police and beach patrol had no one else to question. There was nothing to inspect except the dead body. The ME walked from the street and complained to me he had sand in his shoes. What did he expect on the beach, feathers? With a fast examination he told the police there was no possible way to set a time of death. The constant cool, to cold, ocean wind, erased all chances. He called his wagon driver to send 2 men with a stretcher and tarpaulin cover down to pick up the body. Unlike t.v. police dramas, no yellow tape marked the area.

Already there had to be 50 curious sun bathers trying to see what was happening. They asked each other questions, got no sensible answers, I was sure, and left when the wagon headed for the morgue.

I was not a stranger to death on the beach and had witnessed several fools being brought in, blue and dead, having not followed the lifeguards’ orders to stay out of the ocean. Rip tides were strong. But this was a different thing altogether.This seemingly mild old man, for no reason I could imagine, was naked and very, very dead in a wide open public place. With no wallet, no fingerprints recorded with the FBI, a photo of him appeared in The Atlantic News the next day. I remembered clearly the police had closed the man’s staring eyes but the photo had them open. How come? I asked myself.

He had to be somebody’s father, brother, but so far nobody I.D.’d him. I wanted to get the whole morbid thing out of my mind, but it had a mind of its own, and hung on and on.

Two weeks later, on page 22 of the Atlantic News, there were a few lines about the man who died being a 62 year old retired pharmacist named James McCourt. He had no known living relatives and the pharmacy where he worked for years closed 5 years before. The last sentence threw me hard. ‘Evidently, Dr. McCourt died of self-ingested strychnine poisoning.’ I looked it up and confirmed what I knew. It is highly poisonous, colorless and a painful death.

I felt sad, couldn’t believe such a short obituary ended that man’s world. I continue to ponder so many questions about the tragic story, but these remain top priority on my list:

Was Dr. McCourt naked when he walked to the ocean’s edge? Was he carrying the webbed aluminum beach chair? Some place he had to have left his clothes. Where?