by Rhett DeVane
When I arrived at the Hill the next afternoon, Betty was parked on the front lawn, full of fuel, washed, and loaded for a road trip. Holston allowed me to eat a sandwich, change clothes, and use the bathroom, before he packed Sarah, Spackle, and me into the SUV. Shammie, in the height of her kitty golden years, had been elected to remain at home to guard the farmhouse. She watched us leave from her perch in the front plate glass window, a mixture of cloaked interest and feline disdain on her fluffy face. She’d miss Sarah, but would relish the peace of the empty house. Jake and Margie had been drafted to fill the food and water bowls, clean the litter box, and croon and fuss over her. Dogs have masters. Cats have slaves.
Our destination soon became clear. Dense hardwood forests gave way to the scrub oak and palmetto thickets marking the beginning of the Florida coastal plane. In two hours, we reached the entrance to the dual bridges spanning Apalachicola Bay to St. George Island. The quarter-mile strip of land separating the bridges was peppered with small signs warning motorists to reduce speed. From June to September, hundreds of migratory seabirds annually used the slip of land as a rookery.
As Betty crept along the narrow two-lane motorway, seabirds zigzagged across her path. A two-foot-high mesh fence separated the roadbed from the grass nesting grounds, but an occasional juvenile hatchling wandered precariously close to the asphalt. The pavement was littered with the feathered carcasses of the chicks unfortunate enough to tangle with the swarms of beach-bound tourists traversing the causeway.
“I feel like I’m crossing a battleground when I come down here this time of year. Amazing how many dead birds there are,” I said.
“Reminds me of an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Hope they never decide to seek revenge.” Holston braked and steered to miss a chick that was being herded into the grass by a protective adult.
By nature, I’m more of a mountain glen/coldwater creek kind of girl. Like a lot of native Floridians, I preferred to vacation in the Blueridge Mountains of the Carolinas. More than likely, we Floridians passed the Carolinians heading south to our beaches as we ripped a path to their hills.
Several years had passed since I’d planted my feet in the sugary white sands of St. George Island. Like many of the coastal paradises in the state, the island was undergoing development. A state-owned park preserved a large portion of one end of the island. The remainder of the high-priced real estate was being hacked into vacation home sites. Rows of tinker toy stilted homes loomed over the dunes, aching for a category three hurricane.
One particular tier of narrow, three-story, pastel-hued rental units had earned the title, the Domino Houses. If God possessed a sense of humor, He smiled down on the frenzied building folly, awaiting the perfect opportunity to shove the end unit with a big celestial thumb. His peals of laughter would echo like summer thunder as the spindly houses clanged into each other until the entire row lay at a thirty-degree angle to the ground.
At Jake’s suggestion, Holston had eschewed the perfectly preened beach rental units for one of the few remaining oceanside bungalows, the historic Hadler House on the gulf beach side of the island. Constructed before hurricane-wizened builders had the notion to plop houses atop pilings far above the dunes, the gray tone-on-tone block and wood frame cottage was familiar and welcoming. Any poor slob who’s scaled three flights of stairs carrying a heavy cooler could appreciate the ground level accommodations.
Inside the window-unit cooled cottage, the artful and whimsical (the rental brochure touted) décor was decidedly early fifties. Sun-bleached shells clustered like museum displays on every available horizontal surface. The tiny bathroom continued the theme with mirrors encrusted with pieces of broken shells in orange and blue-gray hues. The plastic-framed print of Jesus walking on the water seemed to fit in, somehow.
The Hadler House wasn’t the Hilton, but it felt home, reminiscent of the old Florida of mom-and-pop roadside attractions and garish red-lipped painted coconut shells; the state I recalled from childhood vacations.
The best feature of the small house was the 20x20-foot screened porch facing the ocean. Wind chimes fashioned from small shells and lengths of hollow reed tinkled in the constant salty seabreeze. Four white painted wooden rocking chairs invited visitors to sit for hours, pitching gently back and forth in time with the crash of waves against the shore. The window ledges provided exhibit space for the scores of shells and sea flotsam, the legacy from previous renters.
Holston ordered Sarah, Spackle, and me to take our first stroll on the beach while he unpacked. The salt-laced breeze licked my face and body as I dipped Sarah’s feet into the cool sand near the surf’s edge. She squealed with delight when the seafoam tickled the tips of her toes. Spackle ran into the water, barking and biting at the waves churning to shore. After a few mouthfuls of salt water, he retreated to land to hack up the brine he’d swallowed, before launching another series of attacks. For the first time in weeks, I found myself laughing.
In the gray early morning light, the footprints in my wake filled with the gentle pulsations of the small waves nudging the sand. I left Holston and Sarah happily chirping to each other over cereal and bananas and sipped strong Colombian coffee from an oversized thermal mug as I plodded down the beach toward the end of St. George Island dubbed The Plantation. Compared to the multimillion dollar stucco monstrosities on the far tip of the island, the section around the Hadler House looked like a ghetto. Amazing, even on an island less than fifteen miles in length, segregation spurred by money reared its ugly, carefully coiffured head, shaded by a custom-built beach gazebo, of course.
Staring out across the expanse of blue-green ocean water and then down at the infinite grains of sugar-white sand caused memories to float to the surface like flotsam. Void of the distraction of the daily make-a-living, fight traffic, routine grind, the underlying muck oozed to the top like clabber in spoiled milk.
I plodded onward, my feet sucking in the wet sand, tears trickling in a steady stream over my checks and the tip of my nose. Wet salt leaked from my eyes, reminding me of my body’s close kinship to the sea. If science can be trusted, some fish-like slug named Irving, my first relative, had climbed unceremoniously from the ocean, looked around, and decided to stay a while. It was a long time ago, and the details have gotten sketchy. The pull of the sea, the desire to be near it, in it, bubbled up from an ancient gene lodged deep in the pool.
By the time I returned to the beach in front of the Hadler House, Holston and Sarah were busy setting up a homestead in the sand. Holston had erected two beach umbrellas and was positioning coolers, chairs, and toys on a beach mat. Our daughter watched and periodically stuck fistfuls of sand into her mouth. Luckily, she hated the taste, or she would’ve weighed ten more pounds before the morning was over.
Holston smiled up at me. “Nice walk?”
“Yeah. Sorry I left you with breakfast duties. I just needed to…”
He squinted into the early morning sun. “No need to explain. Besides, Sarah’s a much more cheerful cereal companion than you, love. No offense intended.”
“None taken. Looks like you packed everything. Wow! Who would’ve pegged you for a beach bum?”
“Jake provided a list, down to the food. You owe him on this one, not me. He even picked out the bungalow. Said you wouldn’t go for a fancy condo.”
I nodded. “He knows me pretty well. We’ll have to make sure Sarah has tons of sunscreen on. The rays aren’t quite as intense this time of year, but she can still get a nasty burn.”
Holston dumped the contents of the beach bag onto the mat. “I have SPF 15, 30, 50 plus, and 24 for faces. Also, a special baby sunblock for her.”
There were enough sun protection factors concentrated on our beach mat; not only would we not burn, we’d probably draw in clouds for fifty miles. Being a child of the late fifties, before the sun became arch cancer enemy number one, I had caused enough damage to my skin to feed and clothe two dermatologists and their staffs for the next half of my life. As a teenager, baby o
il laced with iodine (for stain?) was the favorite potion to prompt the golden brown luster that signaled summer health and well-being. By the time all of my girlfriends of that era and I pushed into our eighties, we’d be lucky to have one whole nose between us.
The late August morning held the promise of intense heat. One important difference between a Florida native and an out-of-state tourist: we know to go inside between the hours of 11:00 AM and 4:00 PM. The early mornings and evenings provide the most pleasant and least damaging hours to enjoy the ocean.
Inside the artificially cooled bungalow, I crammed half of a sweet roll in my mouth and washed it down with the remaining dregs of lukewarm coffee. Rummaging in the suitcase, I located a bathing suit and cover-up. Through some loving touch of the fashion Gods, the suit fit perfectly. It didn’t pull, ride up, or bind anywhere, and actually looked halfway decent, and perhaps, attractive. Jake, fashion police ambassador, had accompanied me on the dreaded bathing suit buying expedition. Bikinis and two-piece creations were a distant memory. Even before the colon cancer surgery had decorated my stomach with a ten-inch vertical zipper, I had opted for the coverage of a tasteful one-piece tank.
The invention of the tankini, a two-piece creation with the coverage and illusion of a one piece, had come at the exact moment we forty-something’s needed it. The tankini had to have been a woman’s idea, or at least, a sensitive male designer who’d listened to women bitch, rant, and rave about having to peel off a wet tank suit in order to use the bathroom, only to have to smash and mold her extra flesh back into the damp sausage-like casing.
I dearly loved the new tankini. The lower portion was a kicky little skirted number that artfully concealed the lumps at the top of my thighs and the part of my derrière hell-bent on following the pull of gravity down the back of my legs. The upper section sported delicate spaghetti straps and a long waist-hugging midsection that covered my vertical scar and more-than-a-six-pack abdomen. I wasn’t model material, but at least I wouldn’t show up in the front of a woman’s magazine under the title fashion don’ts with a black slash covering my face.
As I watched Sarah and Spackle experience the beach, the essential reason the world is blessed with children and animals came to light: to help adults remember the pleasure of simple things. Somewhere along the line, I’d lost the ability to have fun; not the expensive, diamond-and-pearls-dress-up, buy-a-ticket-in-advance type of adult amusement.
The play I watched was pure joy at its most elemental. Sarah giggled at each crash of the waves, wiggled stubby pink baby toes in the sand, tried to eat fistfuls on several occasions, and patted wet clods onto Spackle’s back until he stood and shook to unload. Spackle chased the retreating surf, seagulls, crabs, and my straw hat as it escaped the blanket in a gust of wind.
Looking down the expanse of pristine sand, I spotted the yellow warning flags marking a few remaining buried sea turtle nests. One nest rested a few feet in front of our porch, its boundaries denoted by four small caution signs outlining the fines imposed for disturbing the nest. Upon erupting from the sand, the baby hatchlings would travel toward the brightest source of reflected luminescence — the ocean’s surface. The realtor had informed us of the importance of extinguishing outside lights at night. Without artificial illumination to disorient them, the baby turtles could follow their instinct-driven path directly to the sea. At this point in late August, many of the nests were vacant, but ours still held the promise of emerging new life.
Never has so little spandex strained to cover so much surface area. Strange suits with mesh-lined holes in cleverly-placed locations, blinding neon creations that could double as highway hazard warnings in the event of a roadside emergency, and thong bikinis squeezed between white cheeks peppered with butt rash; the display spread along the narrow strip of island beach.
I watched a herd of hormonal adolescent males jog by. “Jake would fall out if he saw some of these beach ensembles.”
Holston peered over his dark glasses. “That well-endowed woman, the one in the dark and light green striped bikini… umm …the suit makes her look like she’s sprouting two ripe watermelons.”
I poked him playfully in the arm. “I hadn’t noticed her. Suppose our focus is different.”
“I didn’t mean…”
“Oh, Holston. You’re married, not dead, hon. Piddie used to say, it’s okay to look at the menu as long as you go home to eat supper.”
His smile was the only feature I could see from beneath the brim of his tilted straw hat.
By Saturday evening, sand was wedged in every body crevice, and it took considerable scrubbing to get the two kids ready for sleep. With Sarah and Spackle bathed and finally tucked into their beds, Holston and I slathered ourselves in bug repellent and settled into squatty beach chairs to witness the transformation of the peach and orange sky to the blue and purple of evening. A picture-perfect full moon popped from beneath a scattering of high clouds, the kind of too damned romantic balmy evening that could cause a single woman to sleep with the wrong man. The reflection of the full moon painted a wide streak in the smooth water, sparkling like ice crystals on the sea foam of the gently rolling waves.
As the daylight waned, the evening sea breeze increased, sending the ever-present biting gnats wheeling farther inland. No-see-ums, as the locals called them, were the nemesis of North Florida beaches; the pit bulls of the annoying insect clan. If they had a purpose, other than to increase bug repellent sales, I’d not heard of it.
“Yiii!” I kicked one foot into the air.
“Crab?”
“Maybe.” I studied the sand beneath my feet. “Holston, look!”
A few turtle hatchlings were making their way toward the moonlit sea.
I started to stand. “The nest. The turtles are hatching!”
“No,” Holston grabbed my arm. “They’re all around us. Better not walk. You could crush them.”
In a few moments, we were stranded in a solid wave of scrambling baby turtles intent on following the moon’s illumination. As the human intruders blessed to witness the marathon, we honored the silence. After a few minutes, the show was over as the final stragglers found their way to the ocean.
Holston’s voice was a whisper. “That was—”
“Incredible,” I finished.
We sat, frozen, not wanting the night to end. The moonlight softened the hard edges of the world. I relished every detail: Holston’s chiseled luminescent silhouette, the etchings left by the baby turtles in the shifting sand, my toes deep and cool in the dampness, and the fine tickle-dance of hair at the nape of my neck.
Checkout time for the bungalow was 11:00 AM Sunday morning. The last day of our mini-vacation dawned with the promise of heat and humidity. August was taking its last stab at creating human misery before reluctantly bowing to the balmy temperatures of fall. After scribbling a note for Holston, I slipped from the house, careful not to slam the screened door. The first few fingers of sunlight crept into the sky as I headed down the beach, portable tape player in hand. The beach was deserted this early hour. Perfect.
I walked along the edge of the surf as I’d done hundreds of times in my over-forty years. The internal psychologist patted her couch and invited me to recline for another rendering. The raw bitterness of the past month had dulled, exorcised by the emotions expanding and popping as they reached the surface.
In an undeveloped stretch of dunes between beach houses, I spread a beach towel on the sand and plopped down to enjoy the view. Because of the island’s relation to the land, the sun slipped from the horizon directly behind me on the bay side of St. George, but the sunrises appeared over the beach. Orange and yellow pushed aside the purples of the night sky. The call of birds awakened by the dawn filled the air.
“Okay, Piddie,” I said as I loaded the first cassette into the player, “I guess I’m ready to hear what you have to say.”
After a few moments of silence, my aunt’s clear Southern voice came to life.
“Well, ga
l…I saved makin’ your tapes for last. I reckon I got more to say to you. Lord knows, Evelyn’s heard a’plenty from me over the years.
“First of all, I wanna thank you. If you’re hearin’ this after my final hoo-hah, I know you had a tough row to hoe with Evelyn over the cremation. She can be downright peevish when she digs her heals in over somethin’. That’s why I picked you to handle my affairs, over anybody else in the family.”
Piddie chuckled, remembering. “You was always a headstrong gal, even when you was a young’un. If your mama wanted somethin’ done, she’d set you on it, and you’d boss all the rest of your cousins into line, quick as a whip! And, you did it in such a fashion that none of ’em knew they’s bein’ bossed!
“I’m mighty proud of the way you’ve settled into yourself here lately. I reckon some of us take a few detours a’fore we reach the station.
“Your mama always worried herself ’bout you and Bobby not gettin’ on. I’m happy he’s found him a good partner in Leigh…and his fun side’s comin’ out again. He was a cut-up as a young’un…always pullin’ practical jokes on ever’body. That first marriage soured him on the world for a while.
“I want you to watch over Jake, honey. He’s a sensitive, carin’ man that has had more’n his share of grief. They’s a lot of folks who waste their time passin’ judgment on other folks instead of lookin’ in their own lives for fault. I hope this town might have learned a lesson ’bout that, but you never can tell ’bout the evil that lurks in a person’s heart. He leans on you a lot, gal…but, I’m sure pleased he’s gettin’ stronger by and by, and I just love that Jon Presley so much I could pinch his head clean off huggin’ him.”
