style="font-size:15px;"> “I’ve found a way to find it.”
“So have I,” Tal said.
“Well, so long. And thanks.”
“See you again?”
Greg slipped on his sunglasses, “Not likely. But then again, who knows?”
He set off down the road toward the mountains, leaving Tal standing there, watching him go.
Happy Endings
Late in the summer of 1926, Ernest Hemingway stopped for a few days at a hotel on the border of Spain and France. He was on his way back to Paris after the ‘Dangerous Summer’ in Spain and needed a few days alone to finish his first book. But as he worked to bring Jake and Brett’s story to a close, his mind strayed to the turning point he faced in his own life. He confided his choice to two strangers who were facing turning points of their own.
Everett woke up with a start. A girl had said his name, he thought. But there were only the two Basque cleaning women in blue and white uniforms, sweeping the stone steps that led down to the esplanade. The hotel veranda and its row of blue and white striped deck chairs, the blue sky overhead, the sweep of dark blue Atlantic under a cloudless sky was clear and beautiful. Green breakers heavy with sand rolled in with a regular thump and hiss. He had never seen the ocean before this morning.
But he’d been dreaming of the farm, the way the morning sun lay on the hayfield, the cool shade of walnut and oak, the silent flow of the Little Osage River.
Two weeks ago he’d told his brother he had to leave, go see the world, get away from the farm. And so he’d crossed the Atlantic bound for Paris. But he’d gotten on the wrong train in the station at Le Havre, and now here he was at San Sebastian.
He sauntered down to the yellow sand and turned left.
A big guy with a scowl on his face and a rolled towel under his arm was coming up the concrete steps as Everett sauntered down to the beach. Everett nodded pleasantly, but the big guy ignored him.
There was a girl sitting on the yellow sand, a sketchpad on her lap. Her face was hidden behind a sunbonnet tied with a blue ribbon. Everett slowed. Out of the corner of his eye he could see she was sketching the brown Pyrenees in the sun, the sweep of the blue Atlantic, the fringe of surf and sand, and the trees behind the white stucco buildings. A wisp of reddish hair had broken free. Everett sensed she was an American.
“Those waves look a little too big,” he said in what he hoped was a friendly tone.
She put her pencil down, but kept her face toward her work. “Those are buildings, thank you very much.” Her accent was Midwestern. Everett realized now that they were buildings. She put her pencil in its case, closed her sketchpad, and started back toward the hotel.
Face burning, Everett started after her, then turned the other way and walked quickly for a time. “What a fool I am,” he thought.
When he returned to the hotel, the row of glass doors to the dining room stood open, the long sheers fluttering in the ocean breeze. At the end of the row was the small wooden door to the bar, now propped open.
Inside, it was cool and shadowy, empty except for the big guy he’d seen earlier. He sat staring at his drink, a rolled towel on the zinc bar top.
“Another Pernod,” the big man muttered in English, and the barman brought a bottle over and filled his glass. “Pour one for him too,” he said, and then turned to Everett. “I’m going back.”
“To the States?” Everett sipped the dark drink cautiously. It was bitter. The bar was cool, with a good view of the ocean. In the dining room next door Everett could hear the waiters chatting pleasantly as they set the tables for lunch.
“To Paris. Back to my wife.” The big guy downed half his drink and slid off his barstool. “Happy endings all around.”
“Me, I want to see the world,” Everett told him. “I’ve got no wife waiting.”
The stranger picked up his glass, drank it down, then stood studying it. “See the world,” he mused. “I’ve seen part of the world. Been in a war. Been in love…got married.” He scowled. “Best thing I ever did,” he said darkly.
“You don’t sound so sure of that,” Everett said.
“…Jake and Brett live happily ever after,” the guy muttered, ignoring Everett. “That’s what everyone wants, right?” He flexed his elbows like he might let loose with a punch at somebody. But instead he turned and stomped out of the bar, leaving Everett with the bill.
Everett drank as much of his drink as he could stand, then left pesetas on the bar and went up to his room.
In his room, the balcony door was open. Everett kicked off his shoes, lay down on the bed, and tried to think about all the things he could see in the whole wide world. But what he saw was the farm, the house he would build, the wife he would have. The future he wanted stretched out ahead of him straight as a furrow. But then he saw the girl on the beach turn away from him.
He lay there for a time, listening to the rustling of the hibiscus, then dressed and walked briskly up the cobbled street beside the hotel. Shops were closed for siesta, the café chairs stacked on tables. Cats meandered here and there. He slowed down as he remembered the sun and humidity of summer back home, the feel of new-turned earth in April, and the first snow in October.
He stood stock still, his hand on the white and green bark of a tree. “Sycamore,” he said out loud.
“Are you talking to the tree?” It was the girl from the beach, sitting by herself at a table in the dappled shade. Her sketchpad was in front of her on the stained wooden table along with a red velvet pencil case. “At least you’re polite to trees,” she continued, in a tone that was not scolding at all.
“No. Yes, I was just…I was remembering,” Everett said. He jammed his fists into his pockets and looked around the silent street as though seeing it for the first time. “Everything’s closed.”
“Yes. Siesta,” she said.
“Sorry about what I said when I saw you on the beach,” Everett said, glancing at the sketchpad. “You’re an artist, I’m not. I shouldn’t have criticized.”
She laughed. “You were right. The perspective is all wrong.” She had blue eyes, red-brown hair, and a light complexion with fewer freckles than he would have expected. Her smile made her beautiful.
Everett sat down on a wooden chair. “Can I see your work?”
She slid the sketchpad toward him half an inch. “Don’t expect much.”
Everett flipped back a couple of pages to the drawing he’d seen that morning. “When I checked in at the hotel yesterday, the guy at the desk told me there’s a raft out in the bay. So people can swim out to it. Maybe from there you’d be able to see all this better. Then you could draw it better.” He closed the sketchpad. “You can swim can’t you?”
Her smile reappeared. “I bet I can out-swim you. On the farm where I grew up, we swam in the pond every summer afternoon. What’s your name?”
“Everett
