MILE 19 "Rune Stick"

 

LOCATION: OCEAN BEACH SAND DUNES

 

 

BEACHCOMBER BOB

(A man with a metal detector, walks as he talks)

I gave up looking for buried gold in my back yard, when I was five... and I dug up our sprinkler system. Now I'm back at it again. I'm amazed at what washes up here, what people leave behind. Trash. Trinkets. Treasure. I found a cell phone once. Not very hard. It was ringing under the sand. So I picked it up and this guy's on the other end. He's frantic. Said he was at a bonfire the night before and that his phone must have fallen out of his pocket. So I asked this guy if he knew that ancient people used to call them "bone fires." Because they would burn their dead and that's all that'd be left... The bones in the ashes. An old man I met on the beach told me that. Crazy white hair, looked like Einstein, on acid. Just sitting there carving a piece of driftwood, like he had all the time in the world. Said he was making a "rune stick." Like the Vikings did for their dead. A representation of their life's work and a marker for their remains. I couldn't make out the words on the stick. But I think he was carving it for himself. So anyway, this guy on the other end of the cellphone in the sand says he wants to thank me for finding it. But he can't get here 'til after work. So I told him I'd just leave it where I found it... and mark it with a stick. He was still yakking away when I buried it in the sand. Well, I wasn't going to wait around for him. I had a lot of beach to cover.

 

HE WALKS AWAY.