I was hauling traps out of Boothbay Harbor when we met. Love at first sight! I thought I was the luckiest guy in the world -- me and one of the ocean's beautiful daughters. Her eyes were black and bright as a seal's. Her hair was long, but as tangled as kelp, and sometimes, when we rocked in my little boat and watched the evening, she would let me help comb it.

The ocean has many daughters, each of them beautiful, each of them different, as different as one wave is from the next. And, as with waves, the difference isn't one that reveals itself quickly to human eyes. So it was that I smiled at one of my beloved's sisters, and another seashell-whispered sweet nothings in my ear. The sea soon turned to jealous tempest all the way from Kennebunk to Presque Isle.

When their father had had enough of this, he sent the ninth sister -- a head taller than the others, brawny, magical, and cursed. She hoisted me on her shoulders and hauled me leagues and leagues inland. ("Abilene 278 mi." reads the sign against which she left my boat leaning.)

But I'm far from alone here. Upon my arrival, the rest of the townsfolk came out of the houses they've built from their own beached craft. They stoked up an enormous fire and helped me to cook the catch I had in my hold. As I sat down with them to the largest lobster bake the county had ever seen, I saw my own heartbreak reflected in the faces of my new neighbors, mellowed by years for some, still achingly fresh for others. I knew right then that I'd found a home among the lovelorn bachelors of Surf and Turf, Texas.