Writing: Nanowrimo 2022
Beach Follies
American Kingdom: Day 6
Previous chapter:
Folly Beach is glorious. Twenty minutes across the bridge and down the highway past suburbs and strip malls in what they call the Low Country, and here’s the Atlantic Ocean, surf rolling in on endless miles of wide sandy beach.
Million-dollar houses lined up in the beach dunes amongst the grass, a long pier, and a welcome coffee shop.
Saltwater brownies, washed down with fresh espresso in steaming mugs. How good is that?
Brian demolished his brownie in three bites and took a gulp of coffee. Marion watched her husband with amusement in her eyes, more demure and dainty in her own approach.
He’d talked, during the drive out, of his days flying choppers off the old Yorktown. Their first full day in Charleston had been spent at Patriot Point aboard her and the other vessels and displays.
“It was like he was a teenager again,” Marion observed, a laugh in her voice as she regarded her silver-haired husband, well into his seventies, slipping through the morning traffic as if he were dodging bursts of enemy shellfire in a clattering Huey.
“Chow’s better nowadays,” grunted the focussed driver. “You’re still as beautiful, Marion.”
Now sipping a cappuccino and nibbling half a brownie — the other half slid surreptitiously across the table to her husband, who made short work of it — she did look beautiful, I had to admit.
Regal, even. Trim, taut, terrific. More than one pair of male eyes had been aimed at her butt as she pedalled her way along Charleston’s streets yesterday.
I should look that good in thirty years time. Have to keep up the bike-riding and lay off the brownies. God, that was good!
The colonel’s wife looked at me, gobbling down my brownie.
“Exercise to balance the calories, Molly. That’s the secret to a long marriage. Lord knows it’s not the jokes. There’s only so much polite laughter a woman can muster up.”
Brian snorted. He had told the clerk that he had travelled there from the year 1948 to order three coffees and saltwater brownies. Marion had rolled her eyes, I had chuckled — presumably, it was technically correct — and the clerk looked dubious.
“Long walk was it, Sir?”
Now, I looked at the waves. A bubble bath was one thing, and oh my living God it had been fabulous, but a long swim in the salty water would help the healing. Sorry I hadn’t brought my swimsuit now.
I said as much.
“Hah, find you a nice empty spot of beach and who needs a swimsuit?” Brian said. “We’d find some empty island and chopper the boys out for a barbecue. Nobody cared about clothes.”
“Brian!” Marion rebuked. “This is not the Seventies, and we are not going skinny-dipping. You’ve seen more than enough of this poor woman without her clothes on, anyway.”
“At gunpoint, no less,” I reminded him. “We used to do the same thing, at least in training. A hot day in the boondocks and if there was a cool river it was boys in one swimming hole, girls in another, officers in between.”
And, Rangers being Rangers, sometimes there would be a few lurking their stealthy way through the forest to observe the forbidden zones. I must say that seeing some of these buff guys in the buff had fueled my fantasies for weeks after.
Still did, now I cast my mind back a little.
“Ahem,” Marion called the courtroom to order. “Molly, you’ve got your partner trying to get back with you. What’s your take on that?”
“Ex-partner,” I said it out loud this time. “He’s done this before. Like a good Christian I forgave him and believed him. Not going to be burned again. Not going to waste more of my time.”
“He wants you back under his thumb,” Marion said. “He’s telling fancy stories to your pastor and he’ll be lying to your friends about you. I’ve seen it before.”
“This time I’ve got photographic evidence. He can’t gaslight me. I know what I saw.”
“You won’t be showing that photo around to your church friends, he’ll be thinking. That’s setting you up for emotional blackmail; you stay with him, and you keep your church social group. You leave, things get awkward when they have to pick sides.”
“I’m not going back to him. He got a fair chance and he blew it.”
“What about the business partnership then? Are you walking out on that?”
I didn’t have an answer there. If I ran out, I probably wouldn’t get a dime. If I stayed we might as well name the business Awkward Bike Tours and watch the reviews slide down to the one-star level.
“Yes,” she said. “Thought so. You don’t want to give up on your half of the capital plus make him a present of it. Look, I’ve got a contact here, another lawyer, and I can sweet talk him into taking you on pro bono. You’ve got a copy of your partnership agreement?”
“In one of those boxes with all my papers. Birth certificate, high school diploma, honorable discharge, partnership contract. My life in a cardboard folder.”
“How about I invite him to lunch? Might turn out to be the best return on a few dollars you ever saw.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Marion looked at her husband, hunting down brownie crumbs, his coffee long drained.
“Hey honey, you feel like a walk on the beach? Shame to come all this way and not get our toes wet.”
Folly Beach, once you get away from the town center (such as it is) is one long strip of mansions up above high tide mark with an allowance for hurricane surge.
Big three-story jobs, all heavily based around picture windows and verandahs and porches to take in the view.
The beach is public. We walked a mile up and back, burn off the brownies and make a start on an appetite for lunch.
Brian and Marion held hands and looked like kids. I stuck my hands in my pocket until they noticed and then Marion reached out and grabbed mine.
We pulled our shoes and socks off, paddled in the ocean, kicked at foam, chased after seagulls, and basically shed a whole bunch of years for a while.
Brian spoke up. “We used to take our kids, and then our grandkids, down to the Gulf every year. Stay a week, do all the beach things, come back with a tan and salt and sand in everything. Night before it was time to come home we’d go through all the children’s rooms, pull out all the bits of seaweed, crab shells and so on, make sure we left them in the trash and not in the back seat.”
“A sweet joy walking along with a chubby little hand in yours,” Marion said. “Then they get too old and dignified, about ten years old, and they stop skipping along.”
And, my friends, that’s why we spent five minutes skipping along like children, giggling and shouting and thoroughly enjoying life.
Before we got back in the Lincoln and returned to sanity.
The whole story so far:
Daily notes: Back in the groove. A couple of short days while I looked for the path ahead but I got stuck in today.
Sidetracked by a NaNobuddy who writes in the nude — and posted a picture — which set my thoughts running down tracks I’ve not been down for a while.
Believe it or not, I did use to go skinny dipping at Folly Beach. Up toward the lighthouse where the houses run out and safely after dark. People sometimes told tales of mermaids; perhaps they had glimpsed my teenage tits bouncing in the moonlit waves with a friend or two. Happy days!
Next chapter and we’re getting into the heavy story beats. Pray for me!
