Waking Up Gray

by R. E. Bradshaw

  A few modern conveniences were a blessing though. The old cistern, beside the house, was no longer needed to collect fresh water, but remained as an ode to the days before the island had a municipal water system. Thank goodness the outhouse was no longer necessary. Central heat and air had been added to the cottage in the nineties; until then the only air conditioning was the breeze from outside. The temperature today was in the upper eighties, with not much wind. Houses and trees sheltered shady Howard Street from the light breeze. Lizbeth began to sweat in the heavy humidity. She turned the air-conditioning on after a few trips up to the stuffy second floor. The cottage had been unoccupied for a few days and with the recent temperatures, it needed a good airing out. Lizbeth would open all the windows later, after dark, to freshen the air, but right now, she needed to cool the place down.

  She chose the bedroom upstairs that looked out over Howard Street. She noticed an old woman sitting on the porch of the cottage across from her. The woman was working intently on a large bowl of snap beans, breaking off the ends and snapping the beans in two. She did this while watching the people walking up and down the street, stopping her snapping to wave or smile occasionally at a passerby. The woman was a local and vaguely familiar to Lizbeth. She knew she was a friend of her Aunt and remembered meeting her many years ago, although she could not, at the moment, recall her name.

  At last, she shut all the doors on the car and locked it. Lizbeth hoped not to have to get back in it for a very long time. Now all she needed to do was make the walk down to the Community Store for supplies. It would take several trips over the next few days to get everything she would need, because she could only buy what she could carry. Lizbeth had packed a cooler with some meat, a few dry goods, and fresh vegetables, but she needed bread and milk. She’d have to check the bathroom for toilet paper. This wasn’t the sort of place where she could just pop off to the Seven-Eleven if she ran out in the middle of the night.

  Lizbeth grabbed the canvas shopping bags hanging in the kitchen and headed out the front door. She had just stepped into the street when the lady on the porch called out to her.

  “Howdy, neighbor.”

  Lizbeth smiled, walking across the lane to the picket fence in front of the other woman’s home. She could see the woman clearly now through the screen guarding her porch from the ever-present mosquitoes. She had the worn leathery skin of someone who had spent many years outside. Her long hair was gray and pulled back in a ponytail. She looked to be in her seventies, but her blue eyes sparkled like a child’s.

  Lizbeth answered, “Howdy to you, too.”

  “You must be one of those Jackson girls. Y’all look so much alike.”

  “Yes ma’am. I’m Lizbeth Jackson. My daddy is Aunt Minnie’s sister Olive’s grandson, David.” Lizbeth knew it was important to get the genealogy lined out for older folks. It helped them put things in perspective.

  “Yes, Lizbeth, I ‘member you. You ain’t been to these parts in a while now.”

  “No, ma’am. I haven’t been down to the cottage in fifteen years. My ex-husband’s family has a cottage in Atlantic Beach, so I spent my vacations there. I missed the island though. I can’t believe how much it’s grown.”

  “Yep, they keep building more places to put those dingbatters. They’ll sink this island one day, with all their commercializin’.”

  Dingbatter was a reference to the off-islander, or tourist, and usually not a bright one. A dingbatter might ask, “What time does the two o’clock ferry leave?” This and other unique words and unusual ways of using existing words, found on Ocracoke, had driven Lizbeth to study the locals’ distinctive way of speaking. She was happy to have such a perfect subject for her study right across the street. Lizbeth listened as all the long “i” sounds became “oi” in the older woman’s brogue. Island became oiland, like became loike, tide became toide, and so on. It was music to a Linguistic Anthropologist’s ears.

  “Well, at least Howard Street is the same,” Lizbeth said. “I’m so sorry, but I cannot remember your name.”

  “Darlin’, I’d forget it myself if they didn’t call me by it at least onc’t a day. It’s Fanny O’Neal.”

  “Oh, yes, Miss Fanny, now I remember. It’s so good to see you again.” Lizbeth added the appropriate Miss, in the classic southern show of respect for one’s elders.

  Fanny smiled broadly, her leather skin creasing into deep dimples on both cheeks. Fanny had smiled often in her lifetime. She asked Lizbeth, “How long you here for?”

  “I’ll be here until mid December. I hope we can become great friends.”

  “Well, Lizbeth, I don’t see that as bein’ no hard task.” Fanny flicked a bean tip off her lap, and added, “Where you off to?”

  Lizbeth could have stood there listening to Fanny talk for hours and had forgotten about the canvas bags in her hand. Suddenly reminded, she answered, “I have to go to the Community Store for a few things.”

  “First thing I’ll tell ya’ is buy your groceries off island. They charge a right lot for their wares down here,” Fanny offered.

  “I brought most of what I need for this coming week. Later I’ll have to make a trip to Avon for bulk shopping, but for now it’s the Community Store for me,” Lizbeth said, smiling, holding up the bags.

  Fanny seemed to be enjoying having someone with whom to talk. She continued, “My granddaughter, Gray, takes me up the beach ‘bout onc’t a month to get supplies. You’ll meet her. She lives here with me. You might remember her. Y’all are ‘bout the same age.”

  “Maybe, I don’t remember much, just flashes. I was so young all those years ago. In any case, I look forward to meeting her,” Lizbeth said, then looked up at the sky. “It’s getting late. I better get moving. It was so nice to see you again, Miss Fanny.”

  “If you’re out later, come on over and sit on the pizer and we’ll visit some more,” Fanny said, with a wave and a smile.

  Pizer, pronounced with a long “i,” was the Ocracoke word for porch. Lizbeth suspected it was a bastardization of the word piazza. She smiled, saying, “Thank you for the invitation. I’ll take you up on it, if not tonight, sometime very soon,” before walking away.

  As she walked toward the store, Lizbeth reveled in the feeling that she had done the right thing in coming here. Her work would be rewarding and her life was finally on a positive track. She was so happy she couldn’t hold it in. She felt wonderful and even skipped a few steps, before she thought about what she must look like, a grown woman skipping down the road with a grin on her face. Then, changing her mind, she smiled even more broadly and began to skip once again.

  #

  Lizbeth didn’t make it to Fanny’s pizer for that chat. After hauling her groceries back to the cottage, she made a salad from the fresh vegetables she bought that morning at a roadside stand outside of Plymouth. She sat down at the breakfast nook table, bringing along the bottle of wine and a glass. While she ate, she read over the very rough draft of her thesis paper for the hundredth time. Finished with her meal, Lizbeth went into the parlor, where she began to go through files and boxes of paper, organizing for the task at hand. Namely, making years of research make sense.

  After several hours and a few glasses of wine, the activities of the day caught up with her. She yawned and looked up at the clock. It was after ten and she was exhausted. Lizbeth had turned the air-conditioning off earlier and opened all the windows when the temperature outside dropped to just below seventy. She didn’t bother with closing the ones downstairs before going up to bed. This was Ocracoke; she could leave her doors and windows unlocked, if she wanted to, and still rest peacefully.

  Lizbeth could hear the bugs and frogs outside in full voice this evening, as she ascended the stairs. She undressed quickly and threw on an old nightgown. When she climbed into the cool crisp sheets, her body relaxed. She was asleep almost before she turned off the lamp on the bedside table. Shortly, Lizbeth was aroused from her slumber by the sound of a motorized moped pulling up to t
he house across the street. She glanced at the clock. It was eleven fifty.

  Now awake, she got up. Her housecoat was draped over the wing-backed chair near the window. Lizbeth reached for the coat and looked out at the street. In front of Fanny’s house, a woman sat on a moped, the engine now silenced. The female moped driver was talking to a tall woman with short blond hair standing beside the gate to Fanny’s yard. The voices carried in the still night air.

  The driver was saying, “Come on, Gray. Just one more.”

  Lizbeth realized this must be Fanny’s granddaughter, Gray. She heard Gray answer, with a chuckle, “No, now you go on back to the campground, before your husband comes looking for you.”

  “Oh hell, he’s passed out by now. Please, just one more.”

  Due to the darkness and shadows, Lizbeth could not make out any of the women’s features. The only reason she was sure the tall one was a blonde was because her hair caught the light from the nearly full moon when a breeze blew the leaves out of the way for a moment. Lizbeth had not turned the light on by the bed, so she was sure they could not see her, either. She watched as the tall blonde took a step toward the driver.

  Lizbeth heard Gray say, “Okay, one more, but then you have to go. I have to get up in the morning. Got a full load, first thing.”

  What happened next made Lizbeth take another step back, further into the shadows. Gray leaned down, tenderly taking the other woman’s face into her hands, and then she kissed her. Lizbeth couldn’t take her eyes away. The kiss was not a long one, but it had been long enough for Lizbeth to know it wasn’t an innocent kiss, to say the least. The driver reached for Gray as she backed away toward her house, but she was out of reach.

  “Now, go on back up the beach and thanks for the ride.”

  The driver came back quickly with, “No, honey, thank you. I enjoyed the ride very much.” The woman cranked the moped, while at the same time laying her head back in a laugh. She said, “I hope to take you for another spin the next time I come down.” Then she put-putted away.

  Lizbeth watched as Gray waved goodbye and then disappeared into her house. It wasn’t until Gray vanished that Lizbeth realized she had been holding her breath since the kiss. She questioned the feeling in the pit of her stomach and why she had not turned away. There was something very exciting about what she had just seen. She examined the information she had, surmised that Gray must be a lesbian, and she had just had her way with some tourist’s wife. From the sounds of things, Gray must have rocked that woman’s world. She certainly didn’t want to let Gray go into the house.

  Lizbeth went downstairs, got a bottle of water out of the refrigerator, and went out to sit on the porch. She sat in one of the old rockers, drinking her water, listening to the sound of no traffic, no sirens, no noise at all except the sounds of nature all around. The house across the street had the same architectural design. When the light came on in the room that mirrored her own upstairs, she figured that was Gray’s bedroom. The light was only on for a few minutes and then the room fell dark again. Gray must have gone to bed.

  Lizbeth thought again about the kiss she had witnessed. It had excited her sexually. She knew her body was going through some kind of awakening, because she was thinking more and more about sex these days. Lizbeth had only been with one man, her husband, until after the divorce. Since then she had slept with a couple of old acquaintances out of boredom and horniness, but these feelings she was having now portended something unusual was happening to her body. Lizbeth had never kissed a woman and certainly not had sex with one, but in her current state of newfound heightened sexuality, even that kiss had excited her libido. Maybe she should take a page out of Gray’s book and have a hot affair with a tourist. No complications, just sex.

  Lizbeth finished her water and headed back to bed. She laughed at herself for thinking of bedding complete strangers. She might think about it, but Lizbeth knew she wouldn’t. Casual sex just didn’t hold that much appeal for her. It was probably because she had been the victim of the cheating husband, who said in his defense, “It was just sex.”

  She crawled back into bed. The kiss played over in her mind just before she drifted back to sleep.

  Chapter Two

  The next morning, while in the kitchen making breakfast, Lizbeth turned on the little portable radio on the counter. A young woman with a heavy southern accent read the weather report.

  “Earl, Earl, Earl. That is a lot of what we will continue to hear through this week. There hasn’t been a huge change in the track, but the storm remains a dangerous category four. The storm is still expected to come within a couple hundred miles of the coast. This means we could see a few showers, a heavy bout or two not out of the question, winds breezy and lots of wave action for the next few days.”

  Earl was huge. It had formed as a low-pressure cell off the west coast of Africa and moved into the Atlantic on August twenty-second. It now had six days to build in strength. On August twenty-fifth, the storm had been designated the fifth tropical storm of the season, and given the name Earl. Earl had continued to intensify as it made its way across the ocean, feeding off the warm sea temperatures. The forecast was for at least heavy winds and rain for Ocracoke if the storm continued on its current path, and brushed past the Outer Banks of North Carolina. All eyes were on this track and what affect the warmer Caribbean waters would have on the building monster. Ocracoke and most of the eastern United States seaboard was now on hurricane watch.

  Lizbeth listened as the reporter went on to say the beaches along the outer islands were now under a rip tide alert. Rip tides formed by the meeting of strong currents flowing out from the shoreline and the current rushing in from the sea. The turbulent water beneath the surface drowned many an inexperienced ocean swimmer. Lizbeth decided she would not be getting in the ocean today.

  Instead, after arranging a make do office in the corner of the other upstairs bedroom, she sent emails to some friends and family, letting them know she had arrived safely. When she was finished, she shut down the laptop. The day was already beginning to turn balmy. She closed all the windows in the house and started the air-conditioning again.

  Lizbeth felt like being a tourist today. She went upstairs, undressed and slipped into her black one-piece bathing suit. She threw on a pair of gray cotton shorts over the suit and rolled them down at the waist. Before leaving the bedroom, she coated her fair skin in sunscreen and then deciding she might need it, threw the bottle into a canvas bag that she planned to take with her. She also added an over-shirt, just in case the sun became too intense. She found her straw sunhat, retrieved her sunglasses and wallet from her purse, and stepped into her flip-flops. She stopped to look in the mirror. Not bad for forty, she thought, and smiled at her reflection.

  Lizbeth took the bike off the back porch and checked the tires. Satisfied they were sufficiently full of air, she dropped her bag in the front basket and rode off down Howard Street. At once the happy tourist, Lizbeth stopped along the way at several shops run out of cottages. There were quilts, candles, handcrafted pottery pieces, jewelry, paintings, so much in fact, that Lizbeth had to tell herself she didn’t need to try to see it all in one day. She had months to take it all in.

  She left the shelter of the shady lane and ventured out into bumper-to-bumper traffic around Silver Lake Harbor. She peddled unhurriedly, not bothered by the cars around her. When people came to Ocracoke, they needed to slow down. Even if the driver wanted to go faster, it was impossible because the road was jammed with pedestrians, bikes, scooters, and motor vehicles, all on a narrow strip of asphalt.

  Lizbeth cycled over to Lighthouse Road, following it to the white squatty tower. The Ocracoke lighthouse, the second oldest operating lighthouse in North Carolina, was built in 1822. It replaced an earlier lighthouse built in 1798 in the shape of a wooden pyramid, which lightning burned down in 1818. The present day lighthouse, standing at a height of seventy-five feet, shone a stationary beam visible for fourteen miles. Lizbeth found t
he lighthouse and keepers quarters captivating, as she always had. It fascinated her that the exterior of the lighthouse had originally been coated in a formula of lime, salt, ground rice, whiting, and clear glue, which had been mixed with boiling water and applied to the bricks underneath while still hot. It gave the structure an adobe like appearance.

  The white painted surface of the lighthouse glowed in the mid-morning sun, as Lizbeth reached out to touch it. Objects like this lighthouse held time still for Lizbeth. It represented happy memories of family and friends. Even as everything else had changed, this lighthouse stood timelessly unaffected, holding her memories. She spent a few minutes letting her thoughts wander back through the past. It seemed all of her happy memories were from before she found out about James’ infidelity. After that, she had only gone through the motions of life, never really feeling happy again, until now.

  If a brain injury was severe enough, a doctor placed the patient in a drug-induced coma. Lizbeth put herself in an emotional coma, just so she could function through her injuries. Her wounds may not have been physical, but she was battered nonetheless. She was just emerging from more than a decade-long sleep. Like a butterfly, she was spreading her wings after lying dormant for too long.

  Lizbeth peddled back out onto the highway. She headed north, stopping to buy a sandwich and some water at Jason’s Deli to take to the beach. Her destination was the beach near the airport. She could not ride the bike to the beach through the thick sand of the Point Trail, and it was quite a walk to the water through marshlands on the other trail. She pedaled another half a mile up Highway 12, left the bike at the airport, and walked the remaining quarter mile to the beach. The surf was choppy with waves swelling to six feet at times. The wind gusted occasionally, but overall, it was a beautiful day on this stretch of sand, once named “Best Beach in the U.S.” by Dr. Beach. Lizbeth spent the entire afternoon alternately walking the beach, lounging in the sun, and watching the waves. She ventured in only deep enough to splash water on her body when she grew hot, because the sea did not look welcoming, as predicted.