After dinner that night at the hotel, Willie Palumbo left immediately to go upstairs. He had been noticeably quiet and aloof throughout the meal and his wife Louise had not come down at all. As the only remaining guest, I felt obligated to help clear the table and clean up, although Lila at first protested. When the dining room was clear she finally convinced me to go out on the porch and have a smoke and another glass of the wine we had all shared during dinner. I listened again with pleasure as Melanee played the piano, another classical piece that was familiar, but that I could not specifically identify. The clear notes of the music drifted off through the night and mingled with the sounds of the wind rattling the palm fronds beside the hotel and the distant rumble of waves ending their long journey across the Gulf of Mexico as they rolled up onto the beach.
I was thinking about the earlier conversation with my mother and sister, Maggie. At least they knew now I was safe and there was some comfort in knowing I was no longer causing them distress. Then I heard loud muffled voices above and soon it was evident the Palumbo’s were having a heated conversation about something. Over the music and other ambient sounds of the night it was impossible to hear what they were saying, but the tone was harsh and condemning, interspersed with the occasional muted crashes of objects flying into walls or bouncing off floors. Then the confrontation subsided as quickly as it had begun.
Lila Dalton walked through the door and joined me, sitting down in another chair on the porch. She had a towel in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. She let out a deep breath and took a drink from her glass. There was one more short eruption above from the Palumbo’s and when it was quiet again she looked up and shook her head.
“I’m afraid my guests are having a bad time of it tonight,” she said.
I asked her if she had talked to Louise about the incident on the dance floor the previous night. She told me the woman had not come out of her room all day. She had taken some food up to her, but Louise had opened the door only wide enough to accept the plate and had whispered a pained thank you without showing her face. Quietly I told her about my trip with Palumbo over to the Howard’s place and his unsuccessful attempt to make peace with them.
“They’re a tough lot, Mathew,” she replied. “It’s such a shame Rebecca is getting caught up in that family. She really deserves so much more. At first, I believe her family thought it was the right thing for her future. The Howards have means to support her, but I think her father in particular is coming to see how difficult it’s going to be for her with that joyless bunch.”
She took another drink of the wine and we sat for a while looking out into the night. I was thinking about Rebecca Bidwell and how quickly the bright light in her heart would fade when she moved in with the Howards.
As if sensing my thoughts, Lila said, “There are just so few options for a young girl out here. I’m tempted to help her get away. I have friends up in Montgomery I know would take her in and help her to get started up there.”
I didn’t answer, but it occurred to me maybe she was trying to save another young girl when she was having so much trouble with her own daughter. As if trying to shake the troubling thoughts from her mind, she went on to tell me of her time in Grayton Beach.
“It’s hard to believe we’ve been down here nearly five years now,” she began. “We left Nashville when my marriage ran out of steam. After a few weeks staying with my daughter, Sara, and Melanee in a hotel down the beach in Destin, we took a day trip to explore the area and happened on to this little town. During lunch here at the hotel, the owner at that time had complained he was trying to sell the place to get back home to Kentucky to get on with his life in a real town. Two days later I came back and impulsively offered to buy the place.” She paused for a moment and took a sip from her wine. “Sara eventually went back to Nashville with Melanee and it was two years later before they returned. Sara had been singing with a band that was going on the road. She didn’t think Melanee should be exposed to that kind of life. The father was the drummer in the band, although they had never wed, much to my disappointment. His name was Bobby Sanborn. I agreed to take Melanee for the summer while the band toured across the South. Three months had turned into several years and Sara eventually left Sanborn. She’s living now in New Orleans, singing in a club.”
The sorrow in the woman’s voice as she told the story of her daughter was overwhelming, but I could also tell there was some relief for her in being able to share the more recent and troubling events in her life.
I had to ask about her daughter Sara. “Has she not been back to see Melanee in all this time?”
“A year-ago Christmas, she came to see us and we had a wonderful visit. Melanee was so happy,” she replied with sadness in her voice. “Sara wanted to take Melanee with her back to New Orleans and at first I was concerned about what kind of place that would be for her, but it was only right she should be with her mother. I tried so hard to get Sara to stay here with us, but there was no listening to notions of that sort. There was another man back in Louisiana she had fallen in love with and she wanted to get back to him. They had talked of marriage and Sara thought he would be a good father for Melanee. He owned the club she was working in.”
“But she didn’t take Melanee?” I asked.
“No, in the end she decided to wait until they were married and then she would come back for her,” Sara said. “Melanee was so heartbroken when her mother left again without her. She’s still with the man in New Orleans, but I can tell from her letters and the occasional phone call we get that things are strained and she’s looking to get out of there.”
I glanced over at the woman and saw tears running down her cheeks. She took the towel in her hand and blotted at her face.
“They’ve never married?” I asked.
She let out a low strained laugh and then said, “No, there will be no wedding and that’s a blessed thing from what I gather about this man. There seems to be a lot of drinking and other women from what I pick up from Sara. I’ve tried and tried to convince her to get away, but there’s some strange attraction there. When she was last here she was in a terrible state. She looked like she had aged ten years. The late nights in the club and the liquor are taking a dreadful toll on her. I almost didn’t recognize her when she showed up at the door.
The music inside stopped and Melanee came out on the porch to join us. With her hands out in front to make her way around me, she found her grandmother and climbed up in her lap.
“You play so beautifully, darling,” Lila said, trying to hide her sadness.
I looked at the two of them, little Melanee trying to snuggle into her grandmother’s arms to get warm. It was quiet inside now with the exception of an occasional plate clattering in the kitchen as the help finished cleaning up. It was dark even in the western sky and the brighter stars were just starting to show. Melanee quickly fell asleep and Lila took her in to put her to bed, silently nodding good night as she went in. As I walked back to the house, I listened to the sounds of the wind and the waves and tried not to let my thoughts wander to a loud smoky club in New Orleans where a young woman was slowly letting her life be diminished and stolen away.
Chapter Thirteen
A month went by quickly at the beach. I found my days filled with work on the house during the cool of the mornings and writing through the afternoons. Several boxes had arrived from Atlanta after I had spoken with my sister. I had set my typewriter up on the small table in the kitchen of the Headley’s place. Notes and discarded pages littered the floor, but the stack of finished pages of the manuscript continued to grow. I had abandoned my earlier story that had seen some progress back in Atlanta, when somehow, I had found myself off in a new direction I found quite promising.
I now took a regular weekly trip into Point Washington for food and supplies and Eli Bidwell and I were coming to be good friends. He was always anxious to talk about life up in Atlanta and he would share the trials of their lives on th
e Gulf Coast and the challenges of the lumber business. Occasionally we would talk about his daughter Rebecca, but he was always hesitant to say much about the upcoming wedding to Seth Howard. I could tell it was hard for all of them, but the beauty and tranquility of the place seemed to grab everyone who came and some obviously never left. The thought occurred to me that I may never leave, but then again, what kind of life could I possibly make for myself here, a recluse writer locked away in a remote house by the sea? At times, it seemed a heroic and charmed existence, but it was terribly lonely, in spite of my new friendships with the Bidwell’s and Lila and Melanee Dalton.
There was always Willie Palumbo to keep things interesting. In the past few weeks he had been away much of the time, often leaving in the early morning with Anthony driving him off to some unknown rendezvous. I would have dinner down at the hotel usually one night each week and when Palumbo and his wife were there he would typically steer the conversation to things back in the north; the cities, the fast cars, but usually little about his business. He hadn’t mentioned anything again about our trip to see the Howards or the meeting with Georgie down in Panama City, though I suspected his frequent trips had something to do with the liquor business.
It was late in the afternoon on a Saturday in mid-May and the heat was building in the house, even with all of the windows open, to a point I needed to get away from the blur of the pages in front of me and down to the beach for a swim. As I walked down through the dunes the hot sand burned at my feet, but the winds off the water from the south were freshening some and offering a little relief.
I saw a small child playing in the surf off ahead and a woman sitting in the sand watching. As I got closer I could see it was Melanee. She was running through the breaks in the waves, splashing and kicking at the water and waving her arms around in wild abandonment. I walked up and started to sit down next to who I thought was Lila Dalton, but was surprised to see a much younger woman sitting there watching Melanee. She looked up and I was taken aback to see the pale and gaunt face that was staring at me. It was a face best described as haunted, almost as if the woman suffered from a nightmare even during her waking hours. Her hair was long and brown, wafting loose in the wind and she kept pulling it away from her face, revealing gray circles under her eyes that glistened wet and distant in the late afternoon sun. With no makeup, she had a plain and withdrawn look, but I could see the recognizable lines of Lila Dalton’s face in this woman. She made no effort to get up and didn’t seem surprised at my arrival. I introduced myself and offered my hand and then sat down next to her facing the water.
“Hello, I'm Sara,” she said. “I understand from my mother you know the rest of our family here.”
“Yes, Lila and little Melanee here have adopted this wayward soul.”
She managed a weak smile as she looked back at me and the expression in her eyes was so intense it was almost uncomfortable and I had to look away. Melanee heard us talking and came running up.
“Mathew, is that you?” she asked as she ran up, kicking sand on the two us and plopping down in front of us on her knees.
“Hello Melanee. It looks like you’re having a wonderful swim. I’ve come down to join you.”
“Have you met my mommy?” she asked with great excitement.
I looked over at the woman again and smiled at her, although her face remained sullen and distant. “Yes, we were just saying hello,” I said.
“She came in this afternoon from New Orleans,” the little girl said and there was a look of such happiness and excitement on her face, wet droplets of seawater dripping down from her hair. And with that she turned and ran back into the water, running as far as she could before she stumbled in the deeper water and fell splashing into the surf. When she stood up she yelled back for us to join her. I waved and yelled to her I would be out shortly. I turned back to her mother who looked on blankly, no visible pleasure noticeable at all in the reunion with her daughter. I couldn’t help feeling irritated at her behavior.
“Do you know how much your daughter has missed you?” I asked with some regret as soon as I finished the question. I half expected her to be quite angry with me. She continued to look at her daughter with no emotion on her face. Then she spoke very softly and I had to lean over to hear her above the sound of the spilling waves.
“My heart breaks every day I’m away, Mr. Coulter.” She paused for a moment and I saw tears welling up in her eyes. “You can’t begin to know the hell I face every waking day I’m not with her.”
Her response so astonished me I couldn’t reply.
“I can’t expect you to understand,” she said, and then she stood up to walk down to the water. She was wearing a long plain white dress that brushed the sand around her pale bare feet. She called for Melanee to come in and took her hand and led her back away from the shore. As they came near again, she reached down and picked up the blanket she had been sitting on and a small canvas bag. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Coulter. We have to get back to help with the dinner.”
I turned and watched as they walked away and Melanee waved, knowing I was looking. They stopped after a while and Sara Dalton reached down and picked her daughter up. Melanee threw her arms around her mother’s neck and laid her face on her shoulder. I could see it was hard for the woman to carry the little girl in the loose sand, but she made her way just the same.
That night I sat out on the porch of the Headley house with a notepad, jotting thoughts about my book and watching the sun set over the dunes across the road. The sky was turning various shades of red behind the line of dark clouds along the horizon. I found myself distracted from my work, not only from the breathtaking view, but also from the recollections of my earlier encounter with Sara Dalton. My feelings ran between anger and disgust for a woman who could abandon a daughter who needed her so desperately, to a sad sense of compassion for whatever issues she must be dealing with.
Then I saw Willie Palumbo walk out onto the porch of the hotel and sit down to light a cigar. After some time he turned and noticed me watching him. He waved and then got up and walked down the steps and started coming over. In the fading light of the day his cigar glowed brightly on the end with each inhale as he grew nearer.
“Evening Mathew,” he said as he walked up and sat beside me.
“Willie, how’ve you been?” I asked. “Haven’t seen you around much.”
He scrunched his face up in a self-righteous look and told me he had been busy working on a couple of new business opportunities, some land he was interested in developing down along the beach and a couple of other things. I was amazed at the determination of the man to find prospect in any new situation.
“And how is Louise?” I asked.
“Oh fine, just fine,” he answered quickly. “She was a bit tired after dinner and she’s turned in.” He puffed from his cigar again and let the smoke out slowly. It drifted lightly away on the soft breeze. “Mathew, thought you might like to join me for a night out. I’m heading into town and hate to drink alone.”
“A night out?” I asked.
“Yes, are you up for a little merriment?”
I thought about his invitation for a moment and at first was reluctant to get caught up again in his strange encounters, but I was admittedly growing bored sitting home each night trying to write and trying to forget about the treachery of young women and older brothers. I resigned myself to saying yes with full knowledge and expectation the coming evening would likely offer more than a few surprises.
Anthony pulled the car up in front of the house a half hour later and we drove off into the night, Palumbo and I in the back of the convertible, the cooler evening air blowing over us. The headlights from the car darted up and about along the way, occasionally catching several small deer feeding by the road. We headed east into Panama City. The little town looked much different at night, dark and foreboding, a soft haze drifting in across the few lights on along the streets.
We pulled u
p in front of a club I could have sworn was the place called Georgie’s we had visited a month earlier, but there was a different sign over the door that read The Panama Club. Anthony pulled away to park the car and as we went up the stairs and through the front door, I was sure then I was in the same place. The big open room was filled with tables lit by candlelight and dim lamps along the walls, most filled with customers dressed in dinner jackets and the women in nice dresses. A man met us at the door in a white tuxedo jacket and tie.
“Good evening, Mr. Palumbo. I’ve kept your table for you,” he said.
I looked at Palumbo with a puzzled expression, but he didn’t respond. Following him to the back of the room, I noticed he nodded and waved to several people and stopped at one table to shake a man’s hand and exchange greetings. We sat down and drinks were immediately served to our table in coffee mugs. One sip revealed it was a very good whiskey. A man was playing piano against the far wall and smoke lay heavy in the air like a low fog in the morning.
Finally, I had a chance to ask, “What in hell is going on here?”
“How do you like my new club?” he asked.
“Your new club…?” I started to ask before he interrupted and continued.
“Yes, it’s becoming quite the spot in town, can’t you see?”
“And where is Georgie?” I had to ask.
Palumbo smiled an evil grin and leaned close to say, “That old shit just couldn’t stand the pace anymore. Decided to move on and take that asshole of a son with him.”
“Move on?” I asked.
“Yeah, suddenly he was quite anxious to sell,” Palumbo said.
I thought to myself about what form of persuasion Willie Palumbo must have utilized to prompt the previous owner to so suddenly look for a new livelihood. I decided it was probably best I didn’t know and I was certainly not going to ask. There was a commotion at the door as Anthony entered, his large frame bumping into the reservation stand at the front of the club. He walked over to stand beside the bar, his hands folded in front of him, looking out over the crowd impassively. Then back at the entrance another person walked in, this time a man in the uniform of the county sheriff’s department. The man in the tuxedo who had welcomed us walked quickly up to him. I was surprised to see smiles and handshakes received. The ritual of the handshake was extended just long enough for a roll of currency to be exchanged in a not so subtle manner. No one else seemed to notice or care about the presence of the law officer and the party continued on. The sheriff accepted a mug that one of the waitresses brought over and then made his exit.
Grayton Winds Page 12
