SUNSET ZOMBIES....Dedicated to Dave Robertson, wherever he may be

(Note: This is a story from a larger story I wrote a few years ago.  Dave Robertson  hailed from Massachusetts and I met him in Periwinkle Park.  He was camping out of a small sedan at that time.  He had never spent time in Florida and fell in love with the state.  I saw him several times the following summer when I returned to Maine because Dave would come up to visit me.  Eventually he bought an old green van, stuck his old motorcycle into it and moved down to Florida.  I saw him the next winter.  He rented an apartment in Fort Myers.  The last time I saw him he had rented part of a house along a beautiful stretch of the Caloosahatchee River.  The photo at the end of this story that I now use on some business cards was taken at Blind Pass on the evening Dave invented the Sunset Zombies.  ENJOY!)

     One evening my friend Dave convinced me to hop on the back of his motorcyle and ride with him to watch the sunset at Blind Pass.  Dave always kept a small pair of binoculars with him in a little case he attached to his belt. Dave enjoyed looking at things through his binoculars.  He often offered them to me but I don't need to look at things up close the way he does.
     At Blind Pass Dave stood on the beach and looked through his little binoculars at the setting sun. I couldn't figure out why Dave needed to see the sun up close.  I have a difficult time looking at the setting sun.  I constantly fret about burning out my retinas.  Not Dave.  He stared directly at the setting sun for the longest time.
     "Yes," he said suddenly without taking his binoculars away from his eyes.  "You see them come out every evening at this time. The Sunset Zombies.  They don't come out all at once.  They are usually about forty feet apart but they always come.  The Sunset Zombies."
     I looked around.  I understood what Dave meant.  He had invented the perfect label for the people assembling on the beach near us to watch the sun melt into the sea. They were staggering.  Some had been drinking too much, others couldn't keep their footing in the sand and sometimes it was a combination of both. They looked like the zombies in old movies.
     Dave is a very tall man.  I feel vertically challenged whenever I am standing next to him.
      "Hey," I asked, peering up at him. He is so very tall.  "Tell me do you  think there are Sunrise Zombies?"
     "Yes," Dave answered immediately.
     "Really?" I asked.
     He lowered his binoculars, then looked down at me, staring seriously and directly into my eyes. For a long time he didn't say anything.  Eventually Dave spoke.
     "Yes," he said.  "Really.  They are over on the East Coast."
     Then Dave raised his  binoculars back up to his eyes and returned to staring at the setting sun.  He tried to keep a straight face but broke out into laughter when I did. 
     A few moments later the sun disappeared.  Now Dave looked at the horizon lit up with afterglow.
     "Watch," he said.  "Go ahead.  Look around.  The Sunset Zombies will disappear from the beach.  They go back to wherever it was that they came from.  They don't stay out very long.  See?  They are all leaving but they'll be back tomorrow night for sure."
     I looked around at the people staggering off the beach.  I asked Dave if he thought the Calusa watched sunsets.  He said they probably did.  We stayed a little longer and watched four young guys fooling around with surfboards braving the small waves in the afterglow.  They reminded me of a poster from an old surfing movie called The Endless Summer.  I pointed this out to Dave and he noticed the similarity immediately.  I wondered if the Calusa ever surfed or if it was strictly a Polynesian invention.
     So much destruction has occurrerd here in Florida during the past one hundred years.  The Calusa were here for 10,000 years.  I wondered how many Calusa lived here.  A census was taken of the Calusa by the first Spanish to discover them.  By using it I have determined there might haver been about 1,500,000 Calusa during their entire 10,000 years of occupation.
     Dave called about a year ago to tell me he had been  diagnosed with leukemia.  He said he was up in Tampa, going to a hospital there.  I tried calling him but never got through to him.  I haven't heard anything from him.  I watched a sunset at Blind Pass the other  night.  I thought about Dave.  It was a chilly evening.  Shivering I pulled on my sweatshirt and plodded along on the sand, my feet sinking into it.  I found a good spot to stand near some Sunset Zombies who held glasses of wine and were laughing.
     My foot kicked something.  I am always on the lookout for good shells.  I leaned over and looked for whatever it was that I had just kicked.  I saw something in the sand.  It was bright red.  I stooped over to pick it up.
     It was a child's tiny toy, a figurine made of red plastic.  I turned it over in my hand,  an Indian brave, posed dramatically, frozen in a positon with his feet spread apart and his knees bent.  In one hand he held a bow with two feathers.  His other arm is flexed and it looks as if he has just released an arrow.  He wears a loin cloth and fringed mocassins that go up to his knees.  His hair is very long and there are two feathers in it.  He has six pack abs.  On his back the word CHINA is stamped.
     I found a tiny spotted feather earlier that day.  It was on the ground near a picnic table where I had eaten some crappy fried fish sandwich.  I collect feathers and this one was unusual so I put it into the pocket of my jeans.  I decided to keep this red plastic Indian.  I stufffed him into my pocket right next to  the feather.  I didn't stay to watch the afterglow but staggered off the beach with the rest of the Sunset Zombies.