Page 84 of Instant Karma

Then I see a middle-aged man taking one of the blue flyers from Jude. But as soon as my brother turns away, the man makes a face, scrunches up the paper, and tosses it over his shoulder. It gets caught in the breeze and bounces along the sand a few times before getting caught against someone’s cooler.

Annoyance roars inside my chest. That paper is advertising for abeach cleanup,you inconsiderate jerk!

Both fists tighten this time.

From nowhere, a toddler appears, waddling toward the man in nothing but a diaper and a pink bow in her wispy hair. The child pauses and looks up at the man, a perplexed look on her face. He tries to step around her, at which point, she bends over at the waist and pukes on his sandaled feet.

He’s wearing flip-flops, so there is a lot of barefoot contact.

He cries out in revulsion. The girl’s mom appears, apologizing profusely… but the damage is done.

I’m laughing and wincing at the same time.

All the while, Jude remains oblivious, making his way through the crowd, his back to me and the litterbug. With a satisfied smirk, I start making my waytoward the piece of crumpled paper that’s been tossed away from the cooler and is bouncing around like a tumbleweed between the rows of beach towels.

There are people gathered all around, but if anyone’s noticed the piece of garbage in their midst, none of them have bothered to pick it up. It’s a little thing, maybe, but I can’t help feeling exasperated at their laziness. It would take all of five seconds to pick it up. There are garbage cans positioned every thirty feet along the boardwalk!

I stomp after the paper, even though the wind keeps kicking it out farther and farther from me. I’m finally starting to close in on it when a long-armed grabber appears out of nowhere and clamps around the crumpled flyer.

I pause and meet the eye of a woman. She looks to be about my grandma’s age—somewhere between seventy and a hundred. It’s impossible to tell. She’s holding a metal detector in her left hand, the grabber in the right. A belt is slung around her hips with implements of beachcombing and garbage collecting. Rubber gloves, a small trowel, a reusable water bottle, a large garbage sack.

She sees me and winks. “I’ve got this one,” she says, depositing the crumpled blue paper into her garbage sack.

Then she turns and starts making her way down the beach, away from the crowd and the festival, her metal detector swinging meticulously from side to side. She stops every now and then to grab another piece of litter and stuff it into the bag.

I lean back on my heels, bewildered to realize how rare and unexpected a sight that was. To witness someone doing a good deed—not for glory, not for a reward—but just because it’s the right thing to do.

And yeah, I know that picking up a bit of garbage is a small thing. Perhaps most people would even think of it as inconsequential.

But that one act leaves me feeling uplifted and encouraged, especially when it seems that lately all I’ve seen are strangers being rude and inconsiderate.

A thought occurs to me.

I look down at my hands, lips twisted in thought.What if.

I mean, Quint did find that twenty-dollar bill when I tried to punish him for being so late. I didn’t know about the sea otter… but the universe did.

So maybe…

I look back up at the woman. She’s picking up a beer can. She flips it over, emptying the last dregs of beer into the sand, before tossing it into the sack.

This time, instead of clenching my hand into an irritated fist, I inhale deeply and snap my fingers.

The second that I do, I hear a beep.

It’s far away, but I know it came from the woman’s metal detector.

She pauses and swings the detector back and forth over the spot. It beeps again and again as she homes in on the exact location of whatever treasure is buried there. My heart is racing, but she hardly even looks curious. I wonder how often a “treasure” turns out to be nothing more than a buried bottle cap, an aluminum can, a penny.

I inch closer, biting my lower lip. Because I know. I know it’s not junk. I know it’s not just a penny.

The woman crouches and unhooks a small hand shovel from her belt. She begins to dig.

It takes longer than I think it will. She’s moving slowly, shuffling a bit of sand at a time, occasionally scanning the detector over the pile to make sure she hasn’t missed whatever is buried there.

Then—she goes still.

Her fingers reach into the sand and pick up something. It’s small and shiny and, for a second, disappointment surges through me. Maybe itisjust a penny.

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