showers, cold drinks, and other kids to play with. I got back in the car and drove slowly along the beach road. By now they would be staking out their spot together, spreading their towels and angling the umbrella just so. When I came to the first park entrance, I turned in.
The park attendant said, “D.C. plates. You’re a long way from home.”
“Not really. I’m BOI.” I handed him a couple of bills.
“I’m IBC.” He meant Islander by choice. “Moved down here awhile back from Omaha.”
“How do you like it?” I asked.
“I like it fine. The weather. I like it hot. The water. It was supposed to be a vacation, but I never went back. I like the life. Put this on your windshield.” He handed me a numbered square.
I nodded and smiled. The Island was often a point of no return.
The roll of the breakers rose to meet me as I walked down toward the shore, the sound of the Gulf giving up tokens from its store of strange things. The sand was not postcard white but buff-colored, fine and soft as face powder. Everywhere there were children, families. Grandmothers with their hair in rollers sitting next to portablecots. Fathers in baggy shorts chasing kids in the shallows and tossing them in the surf.
My family had never spent much time at the beach. My father was a redhead and burned easily, so he only went there when there was a special bird to see. The Island schools were more likely to take kids on field trips to places where there were plenty of bathrooms and a gift shop full of items that were safe in every sense of the word. Along the shore you never knew what you were going to find.
As if on cue, something white and crumpled revealed itself ahead of me on the sand. Was it a skeleton or a plastic bag? A fish head or a cast-off T-shirt? Or something awful, something I had yet to imagine?
I didn’t want to find out. When I stopped and turned back, I saw that the sun was already low in the sky. Near the tide line, a gull was worrying a strand of seaweed, and I wondered if that was what my searching had amounted to. The day that had begun so promisingly was more than half over, and I’d achieved nothing.
I recalled my father then, a notebook in his lap, extending his arm and the palm of his hand, so that his gesture seemed to me less like shielding his face than an attempt to block the light. I could hear him saying, The beach is for idiots, people who have no way to engage their minds .
At the park entrance, the attendant was gone. Traffic on the beach road had picked up, people were going the other way now, into town for a drink, for dinner. I pulled out too quickly, spraying sand and just missing a black truck that was speeding past. The driver swerved and hit the horn, hard, as the two dogs in the back skidded and bounced against the side of the truck bed. I heard their toenails scraping metal.
Chapter 12
AT THE HOUSE, ELEANOR WAS WAITING downstairs. She looked up from the mail she was sorting. “Did you visit the archive?” she asked.
“Not yet.” I tried to sound carefree, like a vacationer. “I drove around. Looked at things. Took some photos.”
“Yes?” She gazed at me inquiringly.
“Out past the seawall.” I hadn’t planned to tell her, but I found I wanted to. I wanted to make her understand that I could go where I pleased. “I drove out to Jamaica Beach. And beyond.”
I’d expected her to protest. Instead she asked, “And what did you find?”
It came to me with renewed force that I’d learned nothing. I shrugged. “I met one of Patrick’s friends.”
She nodded. “Don’t forget,” she said, “we have dinner tonight with your sister and Stephen. You’ll want to change, I imagine.” She set the mail down on the hall table, and I saw that she was wearing a bracelet, a heavy gold cuff that looked as if it might be antique. My father had not approved of expensive jewelry.
I went up to my room and stirred the few clothes I’d tossed into the closet, hoping that
The park attendant said, “D.C. plates. You’re a long way from home.”
“Not really. I’m BOI.” I handed him a couple of bills.
“I’m IBC.” He meant Islander by choice. “Moved down here awhile back from Omaha.”
“How do you like it?” I asked.
“I like it fine. The weather. I like it hot. The water. It was supposed to be a vacation, but I never went back. I like the life. Put this on your windshield.” He handed me a numbered square.
I nodded and smiled. The Island was often a point of no return.
The roll of the breakers rose to meet me as I walked down toward the shore, the sound of the Gulf giving up tokens from its store of strange things. The sand was not postcard white but buff-colored, fine and soft as face powder. Everywhere there were children, families. Grandmothers with their hair in rollers sitting next to portablecots. Fathers in baggy shorts chasing kids in the shallows and tossing them in the surf.
My family had never spent much time at the beach. My father was a redhead and burned easily, so he only went there when there was a special bird to see. The Island schools were more likely to take kids on field trips to places where there were plenty of bathrooms and a gift shop full of items that were safe in every sense of the word. Along the shore you never knew what you were going to find.
As if on cue, something white and crumpled revealed itself ahead of me on the sand. Was it a skeleton or a plastic bag? A fish head or a cast-off T-shirt? Or something awful, something I had yet to imagine?
I didn’t want to find out. When I stopped and turned back, I saw that the sun was already low in the sky. Near the tide line, a gull was worrying a strand of seaweed, and I wondered if that was what my searching had amounted to. The day that had begun so promisingly was more than half over, and I’d achieved nothing.
I recalled my father then, a notebook in his lap, extending his arm and the palm of his hand, so that his gesture seemed to me less like shielding his face than an attempt to block the light. I could hear him saying, The beach is for idiots, people who have no way to engage their minds .
At the park entrance, the attendant was gone. Traffic on the beach road had picked up, people were going the other way now, into town for a drink, for dinner. I pulled out too quickly, spraying sand and just missing a black truck that was speeding past. The driver swerved and hit the horn, hard, as the two dogs in the back skidded and bounced against the side of the truck bed. I heard their toenails scraping metal.
Chapter 12
AT THE HOUSE, ELEANOR WAS WAITING downstairs. She looked up from the mail she was sorting. “Did you visit the archive?” she asked.
“Not yet.” I tried to sound carefree, like a vacationer. “I drove around. Looked at things. Took some photos.”
“Yes?” She gazed at me inquiringly.
“Out past the seawall.” I hadn’t planned to tell her, but I found I wanted to. I wanted to make her understand that I could go where I pleased. “I drove out to Jamaica Beach. And beyond.”
I’d expected her to protest. Instead she asked, “And what did you find?”
It came to me with renewed force that I’d learned nothing. I shrugged. “I met one of Patrick’s friends.”
She nodded. “Don’t forget,” she said, “we have dinner tonight with your sister and Stephen. You’ll want to change, I imagine.” She set the mail down on the hall table, and I saw that she was wearing a bracelet, a heavy gold cuff that looked as if it might be antique. My father had not approved of expensive jewelry.
I went up to my room and stirred the few clothes I’d tossed into the closet, hoping that
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