A boy of six stopped skimming flat stones out into the water. He walked up the beach to where his mother lay dozing, and he flopped down next to her towel. “Hey, Mom,” he said, limning aimless doodles with his finger in the sand.

His mother turned to look at him, shielding her eyes from the sun. “What?”

“I’m bored.”

“How can you be bored? It isn’t even July.”

“I don’t care. I’m bored. I don’t have anything to do.”

“You’ve got a whole beach to play on.”

“I know. But there’s nothing to do on it. Boy, am I bored.”

“Why don’t you go throw a ball?”

“With who? There’s nobody here.”

“I see a lot of people. Have you looked for the Harrises? What about Tommy Converse?”

“They’re not here. Nobody’s here. I sure am bored.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Alex.”

“Can I go swimming?”

“No. It’s too cold.”

“How do you know?”

“I know, that’s all. Besides, you know you can’t go alone.”

“Will you come with me?”

“Into the water? Certainly not.”

“No, I mean just to watch me.”

“Alex, Mom is pooped, absolutely exhausted. Can’t you find anything else to do?”

“Can I go out on my raft?”

“Out where?”

“Just out there a little ways. I won’t go swimming. I’ll just lie on my raft.”

His mother sat up and put on her sunglasses. She looked up and down the beach. A few dozen yards away, a man stood in waist-deep water with a child on his shoulders. The woman looked at him, indulging herself in a quick moment of regret and self-pity that she could no longer shift to her husband the responsibility of amusing their child.

Before she could turn her head, the boy guessed what she was feeling. “I bet Dad would let me,” he said.

“Alex, you should know by now that that’s the wrong way to get me to do anything.” She looked down the beach in the other direction. Except for a few couples in the dim distance, it was empty. “Oh, all right,” she said. “Go ahead. But don’t go too far out. And don’t go swimming.” She looked at the boy and, to show she was serious, lowered her glasses so he could see her eyes.

“Okay,” he said. He stood up, grabbed his rubber raft, and dragged it down to the water. He picked up the raft, held it in front of him, and walked seaward. When the water reached his waist, he leaned forward. A swell caught the raft and lifted it, with the boy aboard. He centered himself so the raft lay flat. He paddled with both arms, stroking smoothly. His feet and ankles hung over the rear of the raft. He moved out a few yards, then turned and began to paddle up and down the beach. Though he didn’t notice it, a gentle current carried him slowly offshore.

Fifty yards farther out, the ocean floor dropped precipitously—not with the sheerness of a canyon wall, but from a slope of perhaps ten degrees to more than forty-five degrees. The water was fifteen feet deep where the slope began to change. Soon it was twenty-five, then forty, then fifty feet deep. It leveled off at a hundred feet for about half a mile, then rose in a shoal that neared the surface a mile from shore. Seaward of the shoal, the floor dropped quickly to two hundred feet and then, still farther out, the true ocean depths began.