The Topsail Accord

by J T Kalnay

  A world so quiet that she can hear each ripple of the water against the kayak.

  A world where even though they are less than a mile from the takeout they are completely lost, having only the sun as a reference. Where she wonders whether they will get so lost that they will end up portaging the kayak across the muddy grasslands back to the Intracoastal, losing their shoes in the sucking mud.

  She dips her paddle to probe the depth of the water. It is less than twelve inches deep back here in the canals. Occasionally her paddle sinks into the mud that sits below the black water and then emerges coated with gelatinous stinking muck that reeks of primordial decay. They pull past a little point at the intersection of two canals and surprise a great blue heron that squawks twice, takes flight, and lifts itself away from the kayak with powerful flapping wings whose whooshes can be heard until it is thirty or forty yards away.

  She looks at her watch, realizes they have been out for two hours, and realizes that they should head back. He agrees.

  They find the bridge and angle towards the passage to the take out on the other side. In the middle of the Intracoastal, with the wind at their back, they boat their paddles and drift for a few minutes, letting the wind work for them. She drinks in the million winks and facets of early morning sunlight flicking off the tiny ripples on the water. She has rarely felt this peace, especially when there has been a man nearby.

  They pull for the takeout and as they open the little reach down to the takeout she notices a trap staked on the bank, hidden in the long grass.

  “Wait,” she says.

  They paddle back to bring the trap closer, so she can get a closer look.

  “For muskrats,” he says. “Or maybe otters.”

  The trap diminishes the perfection of the morning by the tiniest amount. But the difference for her between perfection and near perfection is not one percent, it is an infinity.

  Joe

  It is my 50 birthday. I am waiting in the shadow of the lighthouse because it’s already warm. I am waiting for Shannon and I am waiting for the surf instructor. Shannon pulls up and exits her car.

  She is wearing black board shorts that are two sizes two large and a red Lycra rash guard that is one size too small, even for her. Once again she has taken my breath away. This tiny woman, who must shop in the early teen section of whatever store she shops in, has stopped me dead in my tracks with her beauty, with her fitness, with her figure, and with the sensuality that unknowingly drips from her. Will Thursday ever arrive?

  “Ready for this?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I manage. I am very close to saying something naughty, a flirtatious comment about her outfit, about how she looks, but am interrupted by the arrival of our surf instructor.

  He called each of us an hour ago and told us where to meet him, apparently after picking which beach and which break would be the best for us this morning. He has chosen well, even to my untrained surfer eye. Low waves roll directly at the shore and break gently with a lovely shape and curl from right to left. Boogie boarders are riding these waves for twenty seconds, washing all the way up to the beach.

  Further out, over the sand bar, on the “outside” as surfers would say, the same small waves rise up and break in gentle rolls before flattening out, regrouping, and breaking again near the shore where the boogie boarders wait.

  “Shannon? Joe?” the rail thin, deeply tanned man says in heavily Spanish accented English.

  “Si,” Shannon replies.

  The man immediately switches to Spanish. Costa Rican Spanish. Shannon carries on with him for a minute or two. When they are done the man turns to me.

  “No habla,” I manage.

  Dennis reverts to his heavily accented English. While thin, his back and shoulders and core are well muscled with the long flat lean muscles of a surfer who apparently only eats raw meat.

  We start our lesson lying in the sand. He draws the outline of a surf board and we practice popping up. My Marine father would recognize these as burpees. Football players would see them as up-downs, but only the up part.

  Shannon is very agile, easily popping up and landing on the sand in a crouch on both feet. I am not quite as agile so Dennis shows me a different way, a slower pop. Already my knees are sending out their advance warning of tomorrow’s protests and pains and recalling the too long run from earlier in the week.

  Dennis leads us out to the shore break, the ‘whitewater’ he calls it. We will practice here first before paddling out to the more distant row of rollers and breakers. Dennis wades out with us and asks me to lie down on the board. He will push the board at the right time and yell paddle paddle paddle UP!

  The board moves with the wave and becomes stable as it accelerates. I start to rise and am momentarily nearly on my feet before wobbling left and splashing into the sea. Though it was only for a moment, I was nearly almost surfing, and it was fun. I felt the connection with the ocean in a way that all my runs and all my swims have not provided. The ocean was working for me, accelerating me, making my board stable, allowing me a moment on the wave and in the wave. I am hooked.

  I collect my surfboard and wade out to where Dennis and Shannon are waiting for just the right wave.

  She is short, maybe five feet tall, and she weighs next to nothing. Except for those running muscles and those digging muscles. So she has a small surfboard that catches the small wave with Dennis barely providing any push. She paddles and is up balancing in a crouch, radiating something that I cannot describe just before she steps off into the shallow surf.

  “She is a natural,” Dennis says.

  “Si,” I answer.

  “Y mas bonita,” he adds.

  “Si,” I answer again, understanding the tone and meaning attached to his look more than the actual spoken words.

  After a few more times in the white water, Dennis decides we are ready to paddle out. Paddling out is very hard. Mas dificile. Dennis has to push us through the small surf and breakers to get to the outside, to get us through the blender. I understand the long flat leanness of surfers after just one trip through the blender.

  We lay on our boards while Dennis casually straddles his. Dennis explains how he will push the board and how we should paddle paddle paddle then pop up but stay low.

  “Stay low,” he reminds me. “If you stand up too high you will crash,” he says.

  ‘Crash.’ Not fall in or fall off or wipe out. He says I will ‘crash’. It is an interesting choice of words.

  Shannon is ready and Dennis picks out a wave for her. She paddles, he pushes, she paddles and she is up and then instantly down in the large wave. The surfboard flips high in the air. The wave holds her down for one second, and then another. Just as Dennis tenses to rush into the blender she pops up, grabs her board, gives a thumbs up and starts paddling towards us.

  “Stay low,” he shouts to Shannon.

  “Stay low,” he tells me.

  “Get ready. Paddle paddle paddle UP!”

  I feel the wave catch the board. It becomes stable as it accelerates. I place my palms on the board, rise up to cobra, and pop. I am up and in a crouch, staying low, I am surfing. On my fiftieth birthday, on an Atlantic morning filled with diffuse sunlight and clean salty air and warm water and with my new friend Shannon in a too tight lycra top. The ride goes on and on, I stay in my crouch and ride.

  The wave flattens out, the board becomes less stable then wobbles and then I am off, in the Atlantic, smiling the first and biggest smile of my fiftieth year. I collect my board and paddle back out. I return to Dennis and Shannon winded from paddling through the blender. Both Dennis and Shannon are beaming at me. They saw the ride, my ride, and are happy for me.

  This is one of the ways, perhaps the most important way, that I gauge or measure people. Are they happy, truly happy, when someone else succeeds or is happy? Or do they compare, find some fault in themselves, or some reason not to simply enjoy someone else’s happiness?

  She is happy because I am happy. And
I am thrilled that she is happy for me. Her smile. Again that smile. Unfettered by pretense, uninhibited, freely and completely shared just outside the breakers on a transcendent Atlantic morning.

  The rest of the lesson passes in a blur, filtered through that first ride. I am hooked. After a few more rides and paddles through the blender I am whipped. My heart and lungs are willing but my arms and shoulders are done. I ride in to the shore to watch Shannon on her last few rides.

  She tries and tries but cannot match her first wave in the white water. She rides all the way in lying down on the surfboard.

  “Thank you,” I tell Dennis.

  “Gracias,” Shannon says. She carries on a longer conversation with him in Spanish. Once or twice they look my way while they rapid fire Spanish and gesture with their hands. Finally they are done.

  “What were you talking about?” I ask as we stand between our cars in the shadow of the lighthouse.

  “His home. In Costa Rica. He says you should go there for a couple of weeks to learn to surf.”

  “And you? Does he want you to come too? He thinks you’re very beautiful. Mas bonita.”

  “He thinks I should go with you.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I say.

  She pauses. Looks like she is considering it. Weighing it, sifting it, deciding how it would fit into her life. She decides but does not share the decision with me.

  “Thanks for the lesson,” I say. “It’s the most unique birthday present I’ve ever received.”

  “You’re welcome. Run tomorrow at seven?” she asks.

  “Not tomorrow. I have to leave in two hours for Wilmington. I have business there tonight and tomorrow morning,” I say. “But I will be back tomorrow by supper time.”

  She nods her head, signaling an acceptance of a fact that I have not asserted.

  “But you still have time for the lighthouse right now right? For a little while? It’s open today, and we can go all the way to the top. We can look at the waves, where you made your amazing ride.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ll be back later tomorrow right? Because you know today is Tuesday and tomorrow is Wednesday and then the next day is Thursday right?” she asks.

  “Trust me. I think of almost nothing else. And if I could reschedule this trip I would.”

  She smiles. Happy that I have remembered and happy in my admission.

  She smiles and once again I accept that smile and I accept everything that it promises and all about which it warns. I accept it all as I accept her long kiss and her hands around my neck.

  “Seven on Thursday morning,” she says. And she is off towards the lighthouse, pulling me in her wake.

  From the top we can see for miles in every direction. We can see ships all the way out in the shipping lanes, we can see Cape Fear. We can see the sound and the Intracoastal Waterway. We can see all the way into town, and up to Camp Lejeune. We see the patterns in the waves and the surfers and the boogie boarders. We see one large ominous shape that must be either a shark or a whale.

  “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” she says.

  “Me neither,” I answer, looking into her eyes.

  She kisses me one more time. A kiss filled with longing and heartache and passion begging to be released.

  “Till Thursday then,” she says. And she is gone. To where I do not know. But I suspect it is to her cottage.

  I fight the overwhelming urge to follow her to her secret place. To follow her inside. To kiss her and hold her on a Tuesday even though she has promised me Thursday. I fight the urge, fight it, defeat it.

  “Si. Mas bonita.”

  Shannon

  He cannot come for dinner and he cannot come at all tomorrow. He has ‘business’ in Wilmington. On his birthday. I can only imagine what kind of ‘business’ must take him to Wilmington. Probably blonde business. The kind of business for which he has to stay the night. And yet still I have promised him Thursday. Have thrown Thursday at him as I have thrown myself at him. As I have never done, and as I was unaware I could or would ever do.

  But he will be back for a beach run on Thursday morning. I have brazenly promised him Thursday. Promised with my words, with my touch, with my eyes, and with my kisses. Yet still he has ‘business’ in Wilmington. Monkey business. I am such a fool. But I don’t care for once.

  I could feel how much he wanted me. And I want him as much or more, even knowing about his ‘business’ in Wilmington. Who is this lust filled woman? Who have I become? Or who has this fifty year old man revealed?

  I carry a folding chair down to the edge of the water. The tide is going out and I will chase the water south and east with my chair. Sitting at the very edge of the water and waves is one of my most favorite things to do. I never feel smaller, or more connected to the immensity of it all.

  At the edge of the ocean, where sea meets lands and both meet the sky. I remember a poem like that, something that a doctor or a writer wrote for a ballerina he met in Sardinia. I will find it and read it later. The edge of the sea. Where clams burrow quickly and where shore birds dart to catch them before they can burrow too deeply. I sit and think as the endless and timeless procession of waves roll shells and sea glass and tiny black fossilized shark’s teeth onto the beach. Here I sit and watch as pelicans dip in formation just inches above the long rolling surf. I see the waves just a little differently than I did before the surf lesson, and before the lighthouse. See them more individually, as I did when on the board in the water, and also more collectively, as I saw them from atop the lighthouse as a group of living things. I see them as things that are both separate and distinct, each with a single purpose, and each part of the greater whole that is constantly shifting with the tide.

  I see Joe after his perfect ride. He was happy all on his own. He did not need my approval or my praise or even my presence. This is one way that I think about people, a thing I try to observe. Whether they can be happy for themselves and by themselves. Or whether they need someone else to be happy or sad before they can be happy or sad. Can they feel the wonder of the Atlantic sunrise and the glamour of a Lake Erie sunset and raise their own silent prayer of thanks and be content within themselves? Or will they always be looking for someone to share it? Someone to tell that they are happy and why they are happy instead of just being happy.

  I am happier with the people who can be happy by and for themselves. Who don’t need to tell me about their happiness. Like Joe was after his ride. He did not need me to be happy. He was complete in his own moment. Even so, my being there added something because what was a spectacular moment all by itself was shared and the sharing made it something more.

  It made it his and it made it mine and it made it ours. Was that ‘our’ first moment? Was his ride on his birthday ‘our’ first moment?

  No. Our first moment was when we agreed to do the surf lesson together. We both decided. We agreed, made a deal, made a bargain, with offer and acceptance and consideration and all the indicia of a valid contract, a meeting of the minds, even though there was no writing. His ride was three things. His joy in his own ride, my joy in his joy, and the shared connection between us. The connection when he touched my hand before the next ride and thanked me for the lesson. The connection to his toothy smile on his salty face in the morning Atlantic sunshine.

  The tide has gone out a little more. I move my chair further down the slope, closer to the ocean, following the tide.

  Joe

  There are different ways to drive to Wilmington from my home near North Topsail. I can drive down the island and across the lower bridge, or I can take 210 out to 17 and drive the wider, faster highway.

  I choose the slower island road today. So I can pass by the lighthouse again and relive our hour there. Am I really already reliving a date from this morning?

  Really?

  Has my life been so empty or so unvaried that one red Lycra splash guard and a few kisses have me reliving a date just hours later? She is beautiful, sex
y, educated, intelligent, alluring, and so many other things. But aren’t there other people and other things that have and do capture my attention? Apparently not today.

  As I drive down the slow beach road to Wilmington I look at each small cottage and wonder if it is hers. I look at the cars in the driveways and carports and try to see if I see hers.

  I have heard the word obsession. Some people have even applied it to me and my running and my coffee business. But those are nothing like this. Yes they are intense and consuming, but it is like comparing a mosquito bite and a shark bite. Obsession. Who was the man that was asking about Shannon? Was he a danger to her? Was it her ex? I have started looking at the people behind the wheel when I see cars with Ohio plates. She told me I was a good running partner. But on at least half of our runs she accelerates and leaves me and goes off on her own then picks me up on the way back. Is that the proper usage of the word ‘partner?’

  The houses roll past with the ocean to my left and the sound to my right and Shannon receding farther and farther in the distance.

  Shannon

  I have lingered long over my coffee this morning. There is no rush to get out the door and run today. I am waiting for the tide to go out, and can wait because it is cooler this morning and because I have the entire day to myself. No family, no Joe.

  I plan to run, then clean, then to work on my latest paper about what I have learned from my digs and cores and fracking in the shales in Ohio. What I have learned is somewhat incompatible with generally accepted theories about oil and natural gas formation timelines and this paper may, therefore, be somewhat controversial. I suppose that it is okay to be controversial at this point in my career as I have already been proven correct about where the oil and natural gas are located in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. I have found 500 million barrels of oil, the largest find in American history. And I have found natural gas. Also the largest find in American history. So I suppose I have some credibility.