That morning they’d been to the little history museum. Had his father stolen something? Blue, brown, violet: the pottery looked old, older than his father, than Levine’s of Montville. Exhibition old. It was beautiful, timeworn, a jumble. These things had been broken for generations. David could not make sense of any of it.

“Where’d you get this?” He picked up the headless figure of a cow.

“There.” Louis pointed at the beach. Low tide now, better picking.

“What are you talking about?”

His father gazed upon him with those pale eyes, gone mother-of-pearl with age. He pointed again. “There.”

The two of them went down the concrete steps, greened from the tides. “Careful,” said David. “Careful,” said Louis. He leaned over, discovered a bit of teapot, with a black-and-white pattern that looked like a castle turret. He pointed to the ground, and David picked up a rhomboid piece of plate painted with radiating lashes of blue. A triangle of yellow plate with dark green flowers. A spout.

“Where did it come from?” said David.

“It washes up,” said Louis. “The past. They used the harbor as a dump. Same as when I was a kid. There’s a box of it, in the attic. That will come to you, too.”

It would all come to David. They both knew it and hated it, and yet: saucer, lip, hand-painted flower. The tide went out, revealing things. The ocean would not swallow them today.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” David said.

“I don’t know,” said Louis, but he remembered how little they ever agreed on.

They picked and picked, but they could not pick it all. Mere men could never undo the work of mere men. From the hill the sound of pipers: the games had ended; the pipers were headed squallingly home. The violinist quit; it wasn’t a fair fight. David stood up, looked at the pieces on his palm, turned them all bright side up. A glory, so vivid and so unmendable. His now. The pipers blared louder. When he looked out toward the water he almost thought he could see them, the old people, the auld ones, casting their pottery into the sea just so he, David, David Levine, could find it generations later.

As for Louis, he had turned to the main street to watch the band of pipers round the corner onto Tobermory’s main street. Dozens marching in time. So young, the pipers, high school kids, boys and girls—it was a girl in the front, spinning the red bass drumsticks. You could hear your own name in the music of the pipes, the names of all your ancestors and descendants, wherever they came from, wherever they were headed. What could be sadder than not loving this sound? Everything swung in time. He was alone on a beach as usual, gladdened, slaked, exhausted. The muscles of his legs twitched.

Oh, Arlene: it was always about the kilt.