pointed at the can of Tab sugar-free soft drink that the jock had just tossed on the sand. ‘I asked you to pick it up. We’re trying to keep this beach clean.’
‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself?’ The young man’s tone was mild.
I don’t even merit truculence, Massey thought; but he understood the lazy contempt; when you were eighteen, weighing around 200 lbs with an iron-pumper’s muscles, you didn’t get upset by an old man of forty-five, wearing patched jeans and a tattered black sweater, with two days’ stubble on his jaw and whisky on his breath.
Sizing up the bare-chested jock wearing cut-offs Massey said: ‘Pick it up, boy,’ and thought: ‘You’re looking for a fight again, Massey, and you’ll get beat up but you’ll hurt him a little, the old training will see to that.’
The jock kicked the can towards Massey and, winking at the girls, said: ‘Pick it up yourself, grandpa.’
Apart from the old training Massey also had another hidden weapon. Surprise. Moving quickly despite the whisky inside him, Massey hacked the jock’s legs from under him with one foot and, as he fell, hit him on the jaw with his fist.
The jock sat up spitting out sand. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘what kind of nut are you?’
Massey understood his dilemma; if the two of them had been alone he would have torn him apart and thrown the pieces to the sharks. But in front of three girls who might appreciate chivalry as well as muscle you didn’t beat the bejaysus out of an ageing freak.
Massey solved his problem by kicking him on the side of the face.
‘All right, asshole,’ the jock said, ‘you asked for it.’
Scrambling to his feet, he came at Massey two-fisted, but his muscles got in the way. Massey side-stepped and tripped him again. As he fell the girls giggled. Enraged, the jock got up, the desire to kill plain on his face. Massey didn’t have any surprises left. But he was still trading blows when one of the girls shouted: ‘Come on, Mr Massey, you give it him.’ He was so astonished that she knew his name and was rooting for him that he dropped his guard, enabling the jock to hit him on the neck. Even then, if it hadn’t been for the whisky, he might have recovered his balance; as it was he staggered and fell and the jock kicked him in the face and belly. He managed to get up, felt one fist flatten his nose, another land below the ribs; as he doubled up a knee caught him in the crotch.
He lay submissively in agony as the bare-footed kicks came in. He was dimly aware of female voices shrieking, of scuffling, of a phrase from the voice that had known his name: ‘Get away from him, you animal.’
When he opened his eyes he heard the waves washing the sand, smelled tanning oil, became aware that his head was being cradled against firm young breasts. He looked up into worried blue eyes.
The girl said: ‘He would have killed you, Mr Massey.’
‘You hauled him off?’ incredulously.
‘I helped. But it was Sharon mostly. She’s an El Al stewardess and, you know, they’re into karate, judo, all that stuff.’
‘Where’s Sharon now?’ He touched his split nose and winced; he didn’t move because he liked the feel of her breasts; he tried to smile but that hurt too.
‘Gone to get someone to patch you up. Jeannie went off with the animal. You know, she was kidding him along just to get rid of him.’
‘I don’t need anyone to patch me up,’ Massey told her. This time he did move a little and pain stabbed him in the groin.
‘You just stay right where you are,’ her voice maternal. And then: ‘A lot of us are worried about you, Mr Massey.’
‘How did you know my name?’
‘I knew it when I was a kid. You were one of my heroes. I even had your picture pinned up in my room.’
‘You mean you still recognise me?’
‘Well no,’ she admitted. ‘But I recognised your name when you came to live here and I did a little checking. I – we, that is – are grateful for the way you help to look after the island. The trouble is, you don’t look after yourself.’
A wind was ruffling the sea and combing the long grass in the dunes, and gulls were crying in the sky.
‘I manage,’ Massey told her.
Hesitantly, she said: ‘They say you drink a little too much.’
‘You sound like Rosa.’
‘Is that the woman you live with?’
He nodded and that hurt too. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Jane,’ she told him. ‘Plain Jane.’
‘Not plain,’ he said, ‘beautiful,’ and began to struggle to his feet because she might think he was making a pass and it must be embarrassing enough for her as it was cradling the head of a crock who, in addition to the stubble and the whisky, sported a rapidly-closing eye and a busted nose.
‘Hey,’ she said, ‘where are you going?’
‘Home.’
‘But –’
‘And thank you,’ he said. ‘And Sharon and Jeannie.’
‘Are you sure you’ll be okay?’
He wasn’t but he said: ‘Quite sure.’
‘Is there anything I can do? Do you want me to come with you?’
He shook his head and it still hurt but not so much because his attention was diverted by the pain in his groin. It was on fire.
As he turned away she called: ‘You had him beat, Mr Massey, until I called out to you.’
One of his feet struck an object in the sand. He bent down, picked up the Tab can and handed it to her. ‘There is something you can do for me,’ he said. ‘Get rid of this.’
He smiled at her and limped off down the beach.
Robert Massey chose Padre Island because it reminded him of space. The skies were wide and deep, the beaches went on forever, the quiet enfolded you.
Padre Island is, in fact, two main islands, South and North, that form a scimitar 140 miles long off the Texas coast in the Gulf of Mexico. It consists mostly of grass and sand although the smaller South Island, only twenty-five miles long, has been developed and boasts a Hilton in Port Isabel. What is said to be the world’s largest shrimping fleet anchors here and a little further down the mainland at Brownsville.
Hearing the machine-gun fire of the constructors’ drills, Massey headed for the North Island which has its own port, Aransas, (actually on a fragment of island known as Mustang linked to the North Island by Route 53), and long, lonely stretches of land inhabited by gophers and ground squirrels below skies where herons and falcons join the gulls.
At the turn of the seventies Padre Island’s tourist
