At first, people just wanted the comfort of numbers, how long their Gulf would be fouled, how many fish or birds or turtles would die, how many shrimpers, oystermen, fishermen, hotel maids, short-order cooks, and all the rest would be wiped out, run off, how many families who made their living here for generations would be ruined, or just leave. Then, as attempt after attempt failed, they began to imagine the unimaginable, that the whole damn thing would become a dead zone, a kind of poisoned lake, leaching into the Atlantic and beyond.

The skeptics and the old salts said such people were just a bunch of Chicken Littles, said there was just too much water out there to worry about doomsday, that the Gulf would cleanse itself, even as the oil rolled into balls of tar in the waves. It was just thin oil, they said, not thick crude, and chemical dispersants would break it up so that the microorganisms in the Gulf could just gobble it up. When it did not immediately foul all the beaches, bays, and estuaries of states east of Louisiana, indignant, desperate sea captains and chamber of commerce officials said it was just a scare, that it was environmental types who were really putting them out of business, with rumors and lies.

And then came the pitiful proof. Oil-slimed pelicans struggled to lift off the glistening water and just hung there in the mess, confused, beaten. Tar balls rolled in the dingy surf, gummed up the beaches. The fish and the shrimp and the turtles and the crabs ingested the toxins, and began to die.

People strung booms, built berms, prayed.

In June, the oil rolled just offshore in Baldwin County. We went, my family and I, to wade, and bob in the water, and just look at it, before the oil crept in. But it was no good. Every cool wave just reminded me of what would be lost. I thought of that line from Tennyson, about casting a shade, a shadow, on such a delightful thing as this, and I wanted to beat the water with my fists.