Shadows on the Sand

by Gayle Roper

Bobby, Mom’s latest, leaned on the jamb of Mom’s room, fat belly hanging over his boxers, a nasty smile on his fat face. Well, he had to explain the cut on his arm somehow, and he wasn’t about to say he’d asked for it.

  I felt then ten-year-old Lindsay slide under the covers until she was invisible. She was shaking, and I hated Bobby for making her afraid.

  “He came into our room last night,” I said.

  Mom shrugged. “So? He just wanted to say good night.”

  I stared at her. “Mom, that’s not what he wanted!”

  She laughed. “Don’t be stupid, Carrie. What could he want with you or your sister? He has me.”

  I might not be beautiful and Lindsay might be scrawny, but we looked alive, which was more than I could say for her. The dead street lady I’d seen last winter on my way to school looked better than she did. She’d had me when she was my age and was now thirty-two, but she looked at least fifty. Old. Old, old, old.

  “I want you to give me your knife.” She held out her hand, and it trembled. She needed a drink already, and it was—I checked my alarm clock that I’d stolen from the mom-and-pop store down the street—7:10 a.m.

  I shook my head. “Just tell Bobby to stay out of our room, and there won’t be any trouble.”

  “This is Bobby’s house too,” she said, “and he can go anywhere he wants. Maybe next time he’ll turn the knife on you.”

  Bobby stared at me, his porky eyes hungry, his intent clear.

  “Just let him try.”

  In a huff she spun to leave. The quick movement made her dizzy and she grabbed for the wall to steady herself. Now that she faced him, Bobby turned injured victim, clutching his bandaged arm, his face a study in pain.

  “Come on, my beauty.” He held out his good arm. “I’ve got just what you need.”

  Disgusted with both of them, I flopped back on my pillow. Lindsay squeaked as I squished her.

  I moved aside. “Come on up for air, Linds. We’ve got to talk. It’s time.”

  I had watched enough TV to know what happened to girls who ran away to the big city, so we ran away to Seaside. We’d heard stories about the place all our lives. When Mom got soggy drunk and no man was around to occupy her, she’d get melancholy, remembering all the halcyon summer days before her father took off and her mother jumped in front of a bus.

  “Back when my daddy was working, before we moved to Atlanta, we lived in Camden, New Jersey, and we’d go to Seaside for two weeks every summer.” She’d smile and look pretty for a moment. “We’d stay at the Brookburn, this boardinghouse that had one-room apartments with little refrigerators and two-burner stoves, and I had a cot tucked in a corner. We’d sit on towels on the beach and go in the ocean, which was green, not blue like you see in pictures. Daddy would hold my hands, and I’d jump the waves. At night we’d go on the boardwalk and I’d ride the merry-go-round. Once Daddy took me on the Ferris wheel, and you could see out over the ocean all the way to Europe. At least that’s what he told me.”

  Then she’d start to cry and drink until she passed out.

  Her stories made me want to live in Seaside, and Lindsay shared that dream.

  “Someday, Linds,” I’d tell her as we sat in the library, using the free computer and staring at the sites on the Web full of pictures of pretty beaches and glorious sunsets. Whether we looked at the brilliant transparent blue of the Caribbean or the hypothermic opaque green of the North Atlantic, the sea tugged at us like the cycles of the moon pulled at it.

  “Someday,” she’d whisper back, her chair pulled close to mine.

  Thanks to Bobby, the day came. It was late spring, a good time to run away.

  “I’ll get a job easy,” I told Lindsay as we stuffed what few things we had in our backpacks. “It’s a resort. Resorts need summer help. I can be a waitress or a chambermaid or a cashier. It doesn’t matter.”

  “But you’re only sixteen,” Lindsay said, scared.

  “I’ll say I’m eighteen and just graduated from high school. I’ll say our mom is in the Army on an overseas tour and our dad’s dead.”

  Lindsay looked impressed with the lie. “But where will we sleep?”

  “We’ll get a room.” I tried to sound confident. I’d already decided we would sleep under the boardwalk if we had to. Anything was better than here with Bobby or the men who would come after him.

  I packed my knife with care, wrapping it in my other pair of jeans. The thought of meeting dangerous men eager to prey on naive girls didn’t frighten me. I’d been keeping my mother’s various “friends” at arm’s length for years, sometimes with words or tears, more often with my large kitchen knife with which I slept. During the day I hid it under a floorboard so no one could steal it from me. I kept Lindsay close every night too, putting her between me and the wall so no letch could get to her except through me and my knife.

  Usually waving my weapon around and threatening to cut off parts of a man’s anatomy were enough. Bobby was the first one I ever had to cut, and I’d only succeeded in driving him off because of surprise. When he came back, and I knew he would, he’d be prepared.

  I would not give him that chance.

  It took us two days to get to Seaside by bus, tickets paid for with money I filched from Bobby’s wallet, which he’d conveniently left on the kitchen table when he went to the hospital to get his arm stitched up. No wallet, no money, boom! You pick your hospital right and you get a free ride.

  The first thing we did when we hit Seaside was go to the beach.

  “The ocean!” Lindsay cried and ran to the water. We couldn’t stop laughing as we took off our shoes, rolled up our jeans, and went wading. The water was so cold our ankles hurt, but we didn’t care. We hooted and splashed and chased each other like a pair of little kids. Then we collapsed happily in the sand to catch our breaths.

  Later that day when we decided to explore Seaside, we walked past a little restaurant called the Surfside, where I spotted a Help Wanted sign in the window.

  Heart pounding because, certainly, it couldn’t be this easy, I ducked around the side of the building and pulled a clean T-shirt from my backpack. It was Barbie pink with a purple flower on its front, and it read Seaside in shimmery purple letters under the flower. I’d snitched it from one of the few open stores on the boardwalk, and I thought it was one of the prettiest things I’d ever owned.

  I pulled out my brush and dragged it through my hair. I was a natural blonde in a world that wondered if blondes had more fun. I could have answered that question if anyone had bothered to ask me. No. No way. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

  “Do I look okay?” I asked Lindsay. My nerves were jumping so badly it was a wonder I could stand still.

  She nodded. “You look beautiful.”

  I snorted at that overstatement. “You have to wait here for me.”

  She looked at me with large, teary brown eyes.

  I gave her a quick hug. “Don’t worry, Linds. I’m not going to pick up a guy or go to the bar.” That’s what our mother did when she put on a clean shirt—if she had one—and brushed her hair. “I’m going to answer that Help Wanted sign back there.”

  Lindsay’s shoulders relaxed, her trust in me total and weighty. What if I failed her? What if we had to go back home? I stiffened my spine. I couldn’t afford to fail.

  “What kind of a job do they have?” Lindsay asked.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care.” I swatted at the sand clinging to my jeans. The denim was damp from the knees down, but at least it was no longer dripping. I hoped the person inside that restaurant would think the holes in the knees were the kind you bought, not the kind that came because you didn’t have enough money to buy new when the old got raggedy. At least I’d stopped growing about four years ago, and though the jeans were threadbare, they were the right length.

  Saying a prayer to a God I wasn’t sure existed but I was still careful not to offend because you just never knew, I went inside.

  And Mary Prud
ence Hastings entered our lives.

  Smiling at the memories, I crossed the last street before the boardwalk and found myself beside the Sand and Sea. The building was an older one that had gotten a facelift of gray, weathered-looking siding covering its original stuccoed cinder block. All eight units faced the ocean—if you didn’t take into account the shops that lined the boardwalk, impeding your view. Still the advertising could legitimately say, “ocean view,” a real find if you liked your view to be slices of sea glimpsed between buildings. I could see Greg’s pickup in the far corner of the parking area.

  As I smiled at the thought of him, the back door of the building slammed open, and an irate Chaz Rudolph stormed out. I recognized him from the café. He was a skinny little guy, and his arms flew as he screamed obscenities. Greg followed him out, all purpose and intense scowl. A man with a badge followed. The constable, no doubt.

  Greg stopped on the narrow strip of sandy gravel between the apartment building and the parking lot, arms crossed, legs spread, watching Chaz.

  My heart did its usual foolish happy dance, and I sighed. How could I be so idiotic, suffering from a ridiculous case of unrequited love at my age? Such heart palpitations were for sixteen-year-olds like Andi, swooning over unworthy swains like Bill. Or even guys like Ricky, enamored with an older woman like my sister. I was supposed to be mature, to have my act together. All those years of counseling had to be good for something, like discerning the realistic from the unrealistic.

  I tore my gaze from Greg and watched Chaz climb into a yellow Hummer. I blinked. Chaz could afford a Hummer, even a used one, but not his rent? His view of reality was more skewed than mine.

  Chaz shot Greg a final dirty look, then backed the Hummer out of his slot with a heavy foot and a complete disregard for the neighboring cars, which he sprayed with gravel. The constable went back into the Sand and Sea, but Greg stayed to watch his ex-tenant off the lot. Chaz paused to shift gears, then roared forward.

  Right at Greg.

  7

  I screamed as Greg tried to jump out of the way.

  The Hummer bounced over the little concrete barrier that was supposed to keep residents from parking too close to the building and roared across the narrow strip of dirt edging the parking lot. With a great crashing noise, it rammed the Sand and Sea, a yellow behemoth bent on destruction.

  I stared in shocked disbelief, unable to process what I was seeing. Still, I managed to scream long and loud. At least I assumed it was me yelling like a banshee. No one else was around to break the sound barrier.

  I lost sight of Greg as he dived for cover. Oh, Lord! Oh, God! Please don’t let him be hurt!

  The ice paralyzing my limbs melted in the hush following the crash. I started running. “Greg! Greg!”

  Not that there was no noise. I could hear falling building parts, the rumble of the Hummer’s engine, and the slap of my feet, but by contrast to the fearful roar of the crash it seemed deathly quiet.

  As I ran, I could see Chaz in his Hummer, still embedded in the building, pushing the now-deflated air bag out of the way. He looked at what he had done, looked at the guy with the badge rushing from the building with a gun in his hand, and threw the Hummer into reverse. At the movement, his face crumpled as if he were in pain, which he would be after being hit in the face and chest with the air bag. He stepped on the gas, and with a great roar the car tore itself loose from the building and flew back across the lot.

  “Halt!” the man with the gun yelled as he pointed his weapon.

  For the briefest of moments, Chaz and I stared at each other as he fought with the gearshift. I had a vision of him going for me as he had for Greg, eyewitness that I was, but he jerked the wheel and squealed out onto the street, disappearing toward the bridge that would take him off the island.

  “Shoot him!” I yelled at the constable as he raced after the Hummer into the street. “Shoot him!” I had never known I could be so bloodthirsty.

  “Can’t.” The constable gave a frustrated snarl. “Too populated.” He slipped his gun into his trouser pocket and jogged back to the apartment.

  Of course he couldn’t. What was wrong with me? I hadn’t even noticed the older couple walking down the street or the young mother and her two little children who rounded the corner of the building.

  The constable knelt by Greg. “You okay, Barnes?”

  Greg didn’t respond, just lay there in the strip of dirt by the complex, eyes wide. In pain, in disbelief, or in death? My heart climbed to my throat where it threatened to choke me.

  I fell to my knees beside him. “Greg, can you hear me?” Oh, God, let him be okay!

  I flinched at the bleeding gash on his cheek, and a lump was rising on his forehead. Blood seeped from the many abrasions on his arms and cheek, all angry and painful looking. None appeared to my inexpert eye to be life threatening, but what if the Hummer had hit him? Were there internal injuries I couldn’t see? Broken ribs? Pierced lungs? What if there was a life-threatening hematoma forming under that bump on his forehead?

  I looked at the constable, who was just standing there, and found him hanging up his cell.

  “Nine-one-one,” he said. “They’ll be here pronto.”

  Greg frowned. “They were coming for Chaz anyway.”

  “Yeah,” the constable nodded, “but now they’ll hurry.”

  I took a deep calming breath. Greg was conscious. Conscious was good. And he could talk. Talking was excellent. Slowly my heart returned to my chest and began beating in regular rhythm again.

  “Ambulance?” the constable asked.

  Greg shook his head and grimaced. “Nah. Just a bump or two. I think I hit one of the parking barriers on my way down.” He pushed himself to a sitting position, grabbing his shoulder as he did. He tried to rotate it and made a face.

  “A bump or two, my eye. You need to be checked out,” I said.

  He put out a hand. “No.”

  I hadn’t realized he could be so stubborn.

  He stared in disgust at the great hole in the side of the Sand and Sea. Siding, cinder block, insulation, drywall, and glass littered the dirt and bled into the parking lot. “Would you look at that!”

  I gave up on him and medical care as a lost cause and looked at the wrecked building. I could see all the way through the apartment to the front window.

  “There’s broken furniture in the living room.” I knew the Hummer hadn’t done that.

  “Yeah.” Greg tried rotating his shoulder again. “Chaz protesting his eviction.”

  A cop car pulled into the lot, lights flashing but no siren. Officers Maureen Trevelyan and Rog Eastman climbed out.

  Rog surveyed the damage and shook his head. “Talk about irate tenants.”

  “He tried to run Greg over!” My indignation must have been a little over the top because they all looked at me with strange expressions. I dialed back my outrage. “Well, he did. I saw it all.”

  “But he missed, I see,” Maureen said as Greg pulled himself to his feet and leaned against the nearest car. I stood too, my arms spread as if I would catch him if he fell. There was a bruise already forming on his forehead bump, and his cheek was turning purple beneath the bloody cut.

  “Was he after you, or were you just in the way when he went for the building?” Maureen asked him.

  Greg shrugged and winced at the movement. “Hard to tell.”

  “Think about it,” Maureen said. “You too, Carrie. There’s a big diff between attempted homicide and willful destruction of property.”

  “So what was he driving?” Rog asked.

  “A yellow Hummer.” Greg, the constable, and I spoke in near unison.

  The constable added, “Heading toward the bridge.”

  “His name’s Chaz Rudolph.” Greg gave them the license number.

  I stared. “You memorized the license number of a car about to run you over?” The man was amazing.

  “When it first showed up on the lot, I automatically committed it to memo
ry.” He looked at Maureen and gave a half smile. “Old habits.”

  She nodded.

  “Its front end is all messed up,” I added.

  Rog glanced at the building again and laughed. “I bet.” He leaned in the squad car and spoke into his radio, ending with, “Cover the bridge exits.”

  Greg lurched a bit as he tried to take a step, and I grabbed his arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.” He forced a smile as he contemplated the building. “What an idiot!”

  “I’ve pulled a couple of people from cars in living rooms when they’ve lost control or couldn’t stop on a slick road,” Rog said, “but on purpose is a new one for me. And just when I thought I’d seen it all.” He grinned at Maureen. “Days like this, I love my job.”

  Maureen grinned agreement as three people ran into the lot and joined the young mother and the older couple who’d stuck around to see if there would be any more excitement. Reality TV was never this interesting.

  Maureen’s smile dimmed as she watched the gawkers. They all had cell phones in hand and were texting madly, even the older couple and the young mom. Her kids were busy scooping cinders and sand into a small mountain.

  Maureen gave a frustrated laugh. “They’re tweeting and facebooking.”

  As if to prove her correct, one guy called, “He couldn’t get across the Ninth Street Causeway. People blocked it. He turned south on Bay toward the Thirty-Fourth Street Bridge.”

  Greg snorted. “Amateurs playing at being cops.”

  “Voyeurs.” Rog shook his head. “Someone’s going to get hurt one of these days. They may think it’s fun and exciting, but the bad guys don’t. If one of the gawkers is in the way, look out, baby.” Irked though he was, he went to his cruiser and relayed the Thirty-Fourth Street Bridge information to the dispatcher.

  “Regular guys blockaded the causeway?” I was stunned. I couldn’t imagine putting my car in the path of Chaz and his Hummer. Of course, the tweeters out there hadn’t seen what the Hummer had done to the Sand and Sea. Still a Hummer is a Hummer, all big and bad. I was surprised Chaz didn’t use it to ram his way past the blockade.