The beach was long and straight, stretching north somewhat until the land curved west and over Fort Story and the Chesapeake Bay. Alexander Ross sat on the beach that was flat and straight and stretched for miles and miles north and south in a precarious section of the Eastern Seaboard, precarious in a sense that it was warm enough that it didn't snow much, but cold enough that Canada still froze the beach's marrow with its frigid winds at certain times. He sat on the brown sand under the gray sky, the sand yellow on certain days and gray on others, and black at night. The clouds overhead were rolling fast, and no blue broke through. It was a warm, pleasant day regardless, the wind blowing gray like the sky, gray like the restless ocean, gray like the souls of men.

Ross sat alone, a hundred years before the beach would be choked and killed by the swarms of fat, pink-bodied tourists that would wash up from Route 13 as it passed over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, or on 64 through the Monitor Merrimac Tunnel, or from the South, where most things were crude and unrefined, pleasant as they tend to be. The tourists would bring with them the need for hotels, all of them white and monotone, yet surely different heights, since they had to outdo each other for the Almighty Dollar. The Powers That Be would of course rip up the sand dunes to build their wonderful boardwalk, and of course they would hack into the coast and create the Rudee Inlet, so that the rich can safely store their pleasure boats away from the open ocean. These two acts would destroy the natural process of erosion and replenishment that all true beaches go through year round, and the beach would just go through erosion. To counter this, the Powers That Be would have to employ fleets of dredging ships that would lift up the sand from the ocean bottom and put it back on the beach. This cost money, but rather than realize it was their stupidity that created this problem and count their losses, the Powers would instead raise prices on everything and create a commercial empire known as the City of Virginia Beach, which is separate from the oceanfront strip, but still serves to finance its hotels, its dredging, its "cultural" events. Virginia Beach as a city did not develop naturally from a central point, but rather was built in clumps by developers and connected with vast stretches of fast food shitholes and department stores and malls and gas stations and plazas and restaurants. Because of this, the city does not have a downtown area but rather is vainly attempting to build one, as if downtowns are actually built.

Ross was lucky enough to be there many years before all of that, and he sat alone and dignified, exiled to his own loneliness, watching the sea rumble forward, build itself up and then throw itself to its death on the sand. He sat with his knees pulled up, his arms hooked around his kneecaps, and he was in such a state that he thought of absolutely nothing but the movement of the ocean. North of him, a derelict ship had wrecked on the sand, and it sat with its wood rotting, and birds perched on it enjoying the breeze or doing whatever they do. Ross perhaps had been something of a rebel in society, deciding not to become a merchant like everyone else in his family. Maybe he had sacrificed financial security to poverty, but was he really poor? He had gotten used to ignoring the hunger in his stomach. He had found a fresh water source nearby, but soon he figured he would eat, for what reason he didn't know. It took too much time to bring an animal down and skin it and cook it and then eat it, when he could sit here and watch the ocean come closer to him, reach for him, never touch him, yet forever try. Alexander Ross would never be written into history books like Carnegie and the Commodore Vanderbilt and James Pierpont Morgan, who was a billionaire in a time when immigrants made so little they could count their wages in nickels. Alexander Ross was selfish like these men, but his selfishness didn't earn him money, just loneliness and an inner peace that would always be unsatisfactory, since he couldn't share it with anyone. Maybe his heart had been broken too many times by various women who had an eye on his merchant's fortune rather than him. Maybe he had been sick of his father's prodding to "get going with his life."

Whatever the reason, he was alone now, with the ocean before him, and the derelict wreck groaning in the breeze, and the surf reaching for him, wishing to touch him, throwing itself vainly at the sand as Ross threw himself vainly against the world.