Sound of the Shells

The coquina was soft when they cut it from the ground, so wet and spongy you could carve your name into it with a butter knife. Felix worked the long saw with his father, their boots sinking into the grey slush of Anastasia Island where the Spanish had dug three centuries ago. The stone was made of millions of tiny donax shells, each one no larger than a baby’s fingernail, pressed together by the weight of the sea and the years. It smelled of ancient mud and dead crabs, a heavy, wet scent that clung to Felix’s hair long after he had washed.

Once the stone reached the air, it began to dry and harden, the salt crystallizing between the shells like ice in a pond. Felix watched the flatbed truck carry the blocks toward the fort, where the old walls had survived three British bombardments because the soft stone absorbed the cannonballs instead of shattering. A tourist in a striped shirt was watching them from the road, her binoculars hanging from her neck like a heavy, black leather fruit. She looked surprised that the stone was so dirty, expecting perhaps the clean white marble of her northern churches.

Felix struck his chisel against a fresh block, the sound a dull, wooden thud rather than the sharp ring of granite or slate. In his hands, the stone felt alive, a solid mass of tiny lives that had once crawled through the surf, their spirits still trapped in the yellow lime. He knew that if he built his own house of this rock, it would always smell of the sea when the easterly winds blew, its walls weeping salt during the hurricane season, as if the ancient shells were still trying to open their doors to the tide.