Pawleys Island-lowcountry 5 by Dorothea Benton Frank

forth until I was so drowsy that I knew if I didn’t get up then, I would wake up with rope marks all over my body. I stood up from the hammock as it came to its resting position and looked out over the dunes. It was low tide and the beach was illuminated by the stars overhead. There in silhouette I saw the form of a man in a coat. He was all gray. My heart lurched as my first thought was, who in the world was on the beach alone at that hour in an overcoat in late July? When I looked back again, he had vanished. The Gray Man? Ridiculous.
    In the morning I thought about the Gray Man again. He was our local insurance adjuster of sorts, except that he had been dead for over a hundred years. No matter. The story goes that he was returning on horseback from the big war (he was wearing gray, after all!) to his fiancée’s home on Pawleys. It was raining to beat the band. The horse fell in a muddy hole, the Gray Man went flying and he died as a result of his injuries. I don’t know what happened to the horse, but apparently he got up dead and went to her house and rapped on her windows. She saw him waving frantically to leave the island. She did leave with her father, and the house was spared from the storm. So if there’s a storm coming and you see him, your house will survive intact.
    I saw him right there that night. It wasn’t my imagination. I was sure of that. But there was no hurricane in the forecast other than some piddling tropical depression off Florida’s coast. The only real hurricane was the one we were about to cook up for Rebecca.
    On the drive to Mount Pleasant, I thought about calling Huey and then decided against it. I would call him after I met with Everett. I listened to the weather reports and they were predicting afternoon thunderstorms. So what else was new? Every morning the temperature climbed with the humidity, and when Mother Nature couldn’t stand it anymore the skies grew dark, lightning crackled and it rained like the end of the world. Around eight, the sun would appear for a few minutes until it began to slip away. I loved that hour, and nowhere was it more lovely than at Huey’s. I would call him to see if he wanted to have dinner. I would tell him my alleged Gray Man story, and he could update me on the ghost of Alice Flagg. We would talk about the supernatural world that Huey believed in so strongly, and I would argue that it was all nonsense. But I really didn’t want to believe that it was. If there was nothing to the Gray Man or Alice Flagg, then where were Ashley and John? No. I couldn’t vouch for Alice, but I had seen the Gray Man with my own eyes.

S EVEN
GIVE ME A RING
    W HEN I walked into Jackson Hole, it took my eyes a few moments to adjust. The sun, catching the edges of the thousands of beer cans lining the ledge around the ceiling of the area, was throwing beams of corneal abrasion around like a Las Vegas light show. I had forgotten how delightfully tacky the place was, and I took a deep breath, anticipating a relaxed lunch.
    Someone named Linda, wearing a diamond as big as a judge’s gavel, greeted me and showed me to the table. Things must be good in the cheap seafood restaurant world, I thought.
    “Here we are,” she said. “I hope you enjoy your lunch.”
    I could never figure out why these people who worked in all these restaurants that littered the shores of Shem Creek seemed so happy. If I had been forced to spend my days in a dump like Jackson Hole, I would have been the Zoloft queen. But what did I know? Maybe all the tourists were serious tippers, but I doubted that.
    “Thanks,” I said, and before sitting down I gave Everett a huge hug. “How are you, Everett?”
    There was Everett in khaki shorts and a knit shirt, and I had overdressed in a black linen dress. Was it my fault the dress codes of the world had fallen to something a notch above pajamas? But I realized I was something of an old fart so I brightened up to match his enthusiasm.
    Everett was just