would my father be watching me through the window he had on the world? What would he say if I trekked past Wyatt’s barbecue pit, the swing set for his two sons, kept on going, the hissing sprinklers behind me now, along with Wyatt, and Stephanie Kirkpatrick, Mama too, Sandy also, Wayne Junior? What would he say if, climbing over Wyatt’s chicken-wire back fence, on my way to the woods, the deep woods, the tall pines that would grow taller as more years ticked off my short life, if I were to do that, and, I told myself, I still might, would I be doing what Denny Maxwell had done, would, in my father’s view, I be doing something stupid? Or would I be doing what would please him most?
I felt the chair slats ribbing my back, a wedge of hot sun on my feet. I got up and moved my beach chair so it would get more shade from the sun umbrella. Settled back in with my diet drink, I watched my wife pat on more suntan lotion. When Linda leaned over to do her ankles, I saw the lines on her back from the slats of the chairs. The suntan lotion was gritty with sand so I decided I wouldn’t put any on.
We were the ones who laid claim to the chairs. There were two of them, close to the water. They were low-backed, legs embedded in sand, a ledge of wood connecting the chairs for our drinks and suntan lotion. The chairs were needing a paint job, and the nail heads in the slats were rusted. You saw chairs like these in front of cheap motels, three pairs, sometimes, instead of one. Here there was only one pair.
We had the sun umbrella from a beach supply store. It had a red stripe and a white stripe, then a dark blue stripe and more white, like one of those paint sample color charts where the colors are clear and bright. We had planted our umbrella in the sand before anyone else caught on to the fact that only two chairs were available here—I mean on the beach, not around the pool or arranged behind the lock link fence, where the chairs were clustered in twos and threes on the sun-soaked concrete apron. We laid claim because we got there first. But that is not to say we monopolized the chairs. We would vacate the chairs when we went out to lunch, when we took a nap late in the afternoon. We let other people use them too for the chairs were for everybody in the motel to share and share alike.
I was watching this man from Birmingham who spent most of his time in the water. His sun umbrella and beach towel—the umbrella had green and yellow stripes—were a few feet away from where we were, in the chairs, drinking our diet drinks. Linda was talking about quitting Lucille’s. She had worked for Lucille for too many years. She wanted a business of her own. She tilted her bright green plastic cup with the straw poking out of a hole in the lid. With my separation pay and my retirement we could move down here, get out of Georgia. I could say goodbye to Fort Benning. Linda might open up a florist shop down here.
“We’ll use the equity from our house,” she said. Linda patted my knee. “We can get a thirty-year mortgage. Don’t worry, it will all work out.”
It will and it won’t, I was thinking. That’s the way it had been in the past. For now, we could sit out here in the chairs. Out here close to the water, our financial situation looked good. I watched Linda open her magazine; then I folded my hands on my belly—still firm, not much fat down there. I watched a gull skim by with a fish in its beak.
We went out for dinner that night, and then we went to this country and western place. It had a combo and a singer that sang requests. She had a body on her and she could sing. We had a good time dancing, and when we were back in our room we made love in a way we hadn’t done for awhile.
The next day we went out for breakfast, and when we came back the first thing I noticed out on the beach was that the chairs were occupied. Another couple had taken over the chairs. They were young. I hadn’t seen them before. The backs had been lowered on the chairs so these people could sun themselves. The girl lay on her stomach, her head turned slightly to the right. She was wearing a red French-cut. From where we were, on the sun deck, those squares of shaded sand out there, those sun umbrellas were signaling me to take Linda back to our room for awhile. But I wasn’t about to do that yet.
“I give them another two hours,” I said. “Maybe more. Who knows?”
Linda looked up from her magazine. “Why don’t we go back to our room,” she said. “We’ll be cool and comfortable in our room.”
“This is no time to hole up in our room. Now is the time for us to get some sun before it gets too hot to sit out in it.”
“Well why not sit here and get some sun?”
“Come on. We’re going out there,” I said. “We’re not going to waste the morning up here.”
So pretty soon we set up the sun umbrella and lay out on our beach towels. After lunch we took a nap. I kept the drapes closed until we came out. It wasn’t us who readjusted the chairs so people could sit on them again. We waited for someone else to. We stayed inside until this was done, watching television after we woke up. Towards evening we went back outside. The chair backs had been readjusted. The chairs were chairs again. This joker and his girl friend must have gotten wind of the attitude here. Hogging the chairs wasn’t right—this certainly would have come through in the way other people would have looked at these two. Other people would have been willing to share the chairs. Other people’s wives wore one-piece bathing suits. Maybe what I was thinking got through to these people because the next day they were gone.
So the next day went all right. We made sure the chairs were available to whoever wanted to sit in them. We set our umbrella up some distance away, lay out on our towels, got gritty. In a corner of concrete, behind the fence, we kept tabs on who was using the chairs. This man from Birmingham and his wife were stretched out with the chair backs down, very comfortable under their sun umbrella. The wife wore a black and white one-piece. Two old ladies were feeding potato chips to the gulls. After the Birmingham people left we let the old ladies have the chairs for as long as they wanted to sit in them. We spent the day on the beach without sitting in the chairs. Around sunset, making quite a ruckus, more gulls followed the ladies on their walk down the beach.
We watched the sunset sitting in the chairs. The sun was a paint sample red, and the sky, it was really worth seeing. Such a sunset you won’t see in Georgia, was how Linda expressed it. We had a nice sea breeze on our faces. The chairs were ours to enjoy for as long as we wanted to sit in them.
The next day it was different, even though we got out on the beach early. What we saw was molded in sand. It was lying on its stomach. It had a head and a gorilla’s back. What sort of person would do this thing? The sun took a sudden lurch up, beaming light on the blade of the kitchen knife thrust into this gorilla’s back.
“You get all kinds on the beach,” I said.
Linda gave me a look. “This guy has a weird sense of humor.”
“You said guy.”
“I mean guy,” Linda said.
“So maybe it wasn’t a guy. Supposing a woman did it.”
“Put a knife in a man made out of sand?”
“He could have been two-timing her. In this woman’s imagination, I mean.”
“A woman wouldn’t do that,” Linda said, sitting up very straight in her chair. “A woman might shoot her lover but she wouldn’t make a thing like this.”
This was true, but I had to have my say—because of the thing itself, just doing this thing behind our backs, not as a threat, as a joke.
“This
