The Topsail Accord (45 page)
Cara’s heart breaks a little more each time she hears Shannon say that she can feel him.
“
I think he’s nearby. Maybe he can see me or hear me. I know he can feel me.”
I think he’s nearby. Maybe he can see me or hear me. I know he can feel me.”
Cara leans in closer with her sister.
“
I can feel him out here. And I can see him in the sunrise in January when the sun comes out of the ocean past the end of the pier. He is faint, barely there, but he is there waiting for me.”
I can feel him out here. And I can see him in the sunrise in January when the sun comes out of the ocean past the end of the pier. He is faint, barely there, but he is there waiting for me.”
Cara remains quiet.
“
We’ll be together one day, out there, and here,” Shannon says.
We’ll be together one day, out there, and here,” Shannon says.
Cara wraps her arm around her sister’s shoulder and they support each other on the slightly sloping sand just beyond the reach of the incoming tide.
Shannon
I am nearly seventy and tonight I die. I don’t know how I know, but I know. If not tonight, then tomorrow. This will be the last time I sit on these steps behind my beach house. This will be my last time on the beach. And I am fine with this. So I will remember every detail so that it will be with me in forever.
I will remember that low tide was best for running. That there is firmer sand where the tide has gone out. That there is more beach when the tide is out, so the few people on the beach can spread out more. And hardly anyone ever puts their chairs down at the low tide line. If they do, they are in their chairs. The unattended chairs stay up high, on the loose sand, above the high tide line, where they won’t get washed out to sea while unattended. Up by the highest drift line, the wrack line. Up where the ocean leaves everything, animal, vegetable, and even artificial things. Everything that the ocean has decided to put on the shore. Given a hundred years a little piece of saragussum up here on the drift line could become a new dune, if no storm tide or windstorm blew it away. When left alone the dunes are built and destroyed in geologic time.
I will remember the sweat in my eyes when I ran. The high humidity, sweat everywhere, sand sticking to every sweaty surface. I will remember sometimes rolling around in the loose sand when I was sweaty and looking like some alien and then laughing and laughing with the children when they saw their oh so proper aunt looking like something from a movie.
I will remember the salt breeze off the ocean. Yes, the salt breeze. Moist and heavy in the summer, acid, sometimes cutting on the rawest winter day. I will remember the salt breeze. My ashes will be scattered in a salt breeze so I will become part of the breeze that I will remember.
I will remember all the different types of sand. The firm sand, shifting sand, flat sand, angled sand. Sand in my shoes, sand on my skin, sand in my hair.
I will remember shells. Shells of all sizes and colors, single shells, big dense piles of shells. Old women walking the beach alone with shopping bags filled with shells they have selected carefully, taking one for every hundred they bend down to pick. Smiling broadly when they find the perfect shell to add to their collection, or to show to a favorite grandchild.
I will remember men with metal detectors never finding anything. Searching and searching, sweeping their heavy detectors back and forth waiting for a pip in their earphones. Stopping to scoop up sand only to dump the sand. Always hearing about the valuable ring or coin they’ve found, but never seeing them find anything. Like the men surf casting. I will remember these men surf casting and never catching anything. Even while small children hold dip nets in the retreating waves and catch hundreds of minnows. I will remember all these things.
I will remember the sun so very low in the east, up the shore, up the beach, beyond the pier. Measuring the days and months and season by where on the pier the sun rises. Or those rare days when it rises out beyond the pier, like it only does from December 18-25, or the even more rare days when it rises over the island, only happening on June 21
st
. The pier is my own sundial. I would know the day and the season even without a watch or calendar. Simply by the pier. I will be scattered within sight of the pier so that I will always know where and when I am, even if these measurements have no meaning in the next dimension.
st
. The pier is my own sundial. I would know the day and the season even without a watch or calendar. Simply by the pier. I will be scattered within sight of the pier so that I will always know where and when I am, even if these measurements have no meaning in the next dimension.
I will remember shrimp trawlers rocking back and forth, rolling terribly in the big waves just before they trip when their bottoms reach the sandbar and slow while their tops continue unabated to the shore. I will remember these fifty foot shrimpers, rolling parallel to the shore, with birds behind them, swooping near the water, near the deck. The shrimpers with their booms spread out to the side to spread the nets, the booms touching the water on the biggest rolls. Birds dive bombing to catch fish. Seagulls, pelicans, all the birds that ride on the sea breeze near the pier. I will remember feeling the low steady drum and drone of the diesel engines that push out puffs of black smoke that rise and are blown away in the sea breeze that is blowing from southwest to northeast. Sometimes from bow to stern, like you would expect, and sometimes from stern to bow, like an optical illusion.
And I will remember Joe.
I will remember Joe drawing a line in the sand and timing himself. Of how proud he was of his 19:56 record to pier and back. I will remember being unwilling to tell him that when he wasn’t looking I did the distance in less than half that time, in 9:20, without even having to sprint.
I will remember my water bottle waiting for me on the stairs, and the days when Joe would bring coffee and I would drink from the water bottle and drink the coffee.
I will remember using the hose on the deck to cool off, going into the ocean to cool off, going into the pool to cool off. Always needing to cool off after the big efforts.
I will remember Joe. Everything about Joe.
I will remember realizing that kids never run half speed on the beach. They start out sprinting and then when they can sprint no more they come to a complete stop, pant and gasp until they recover, and then start sprinting again. I remember realizing that this is the relationship I had with Joe for all those years. That my part of our relationship was like a child who sprints until she can sprint no more, who stops, and then sprints again when she can.
I will remember realizing that only later do they learn, or are they taught, to “take it easy” or to go half speed. Our natural condition is to go all out for brief periods and then to recover. Like sex, it is a sprint, with a certain intensity required before the goal can be achieved. While it can be paced, and while it can be built into, in the end there is the need for the sudden rush, the burst of speed that leaves you breathless and empty and full all at the same time.
I will remember watching kids running down to a wave and then sprinting away from it, no matter how clear and warm the water is, and no matter whether they have just been in the pool or in the ocean. I will remember also realizing that this too was the relationship I had with Joe. That no matter how deeply I immersed myself in him, no matter how long I had spent in the ocean of him, that when I was on the beach, on the shore, out of the ocean, that I would run down to him and then sprint away.
I will remember seagulls on the ocean breeze, seagulls on the beach, and sand pipers approaching and retreating from the ocean. I will remember seagulls that were white and grey, that were mottled, that had white wings with black tips and black beaks. The gulls mixed in with the sand pipers, oyster catchers, sand pipers, willets, and plovers. Their darting and digging for the clams that almost always burrow faster than the plovers can dig.
Digging. I will remember digging. The sea turtle project people digging and moving a nest from the television house because they film at night with the bright lights and hundreds of people and how that can’t be good for the nest. I will remember them digging and lining their bucket with a cool blanket doubled back on itself. Watching them carefully place eggs from top of the nest in the bottom of the bucket and eggs from the bottom of the nest in the top of the bucket so that they can reverse the process and make sure the bottom eggs are returned to the bottom in the new nest. The renters digging sand for sand castles and digging moats to protect them from the tide. Always a pointless endeavor, but one seen week after week during the rental season. I will remember some homeowners digging to try to prevent the beach erosion. Everything that they try will fail. The ocean will move the island as it sees fit and the houses will either stay or go regardless of what the people do. The ocean will have its way and the island will go on.
I will remember the pier as the pier, not just as the unfailing sundial. Its weathered wood and barnacles. How the fresh ocean was somehow always dark and oily near its pillars.
I will remember Joe.
I will remember the mist coming off the tops of the waves in the first morning light, when the sun and ocean and beach and air wrestle to decide who will dominate the moment, and the mist always coming off the tops while they decide.
I will remember Joe.
I will remember the sand stinging my legs in the stiffest breezes when the sea oats are bent over and the palm trees seem to bend beyond what can be believed. I will remember the first time I noticed that the dunes are crowned with sea oats here south of Hatteras. They had been topped with beach grass at Nags Head. But here where it is warmer, where the warm current controls, there are sea oats.
I will remember all this, from this walk on the beach, and from all my other walks and runs on this Topsail Beach. I must remember all this, because tonight I die. Tonight I go to Joe. Tonight I take all these memories to him, just in case he has forgotten any of it.
I will remember Joe.
I will remember everything about Joe.
How he held me, how he loved me, how he rescued me in the frozen lighthouse, how he cried the first time he came into my house in Costa Rica.
I will remember Joe, and the deal we made, and how it made us.
I will remember walking on the beach after Joe was gone and hearing from somewhere out on the ocean, out past where the dolphins patrol the sand bar, out near where sun appears on the solstice and where we had spread his ashes. I will remember hearing Joe tell me that he loves me. Hearing it in each gentle wave that laps ashore in the brilliant Topsail dawn.
I love you Joe.
I have always loved you.
As I die, my coffee cup slips from my hand spilling the last drops onto the beach between my feet.
I will always love you.
The End
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