Читать книгу A Ford in the River - Charles Rose - Страница 11

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 woman must be a weirdo,” I said. “She must be taking it out on men.”

“Is that what you think?”

“That’s what I think.”

I could feel the sun heating up. It was time for us to set up the umbrella. Linda yanked out the telescoped rod, and began to work it into the sand.

“I know that’s not what you really think.” Linda said. “What do you think? You tell me.”

“I’ll show you instead,” I said.

I pulled the kitchen knife out of the sand thing and threw it into the water. Then I pulverized the sand thing.

We ate lunch out, at a beachside oyster bar. We played goofy golf, did some other things. When we came back there were these people.

There were six of them, three couples. They were standing around a catamaran. It was beached and the sail was furled—not twenty feet from the chairs. Two of the women were wearing one-piece bathing suits. You could tell they were trying to watch their weight, but being middle-aged, they showed fat. These women were with two middle-aged men, big men without much fat on them. The girl in the red French-cut was the first to sit down in one of the chairs. Her boy friend didn’t adjust the back. Not this time, not like yesterday. The others took a walk down the beach, disappearing from view for the day.

We spent the day sitting by the pool, which wasn’t much, not a whole lot more than postage stamp size. The girl in the red French-cut and her boy friend sat out by themselves in the chairs. Not twenty feet from the chairs the catamaran had its hull and mast in our faces, the mast straight up, the sail furled.

That night we went back to the country and western place, but the singer wasn’t there. We didn’t dance. We listened. We nursed our drinks for an hour or so; then we drove back to the motel.

The catamaran was on its side, its mast away from the water. I could push it into the water and tow it on down the beach. But I would have had to do that by myself. Linda wouldn’t be helping me. We were standing out in front of our room, looking down and out at the catamaran. The catamaran was still twenty feet or so from the chairs, but I wanted to move it still farther.

Linda said nothing doing. “Supposing you got away with it. They’d find their boat. They’d bring it back.”

We sat in the chairs in front of our room, in the glare from the overhead light. I talked to Linda about what else I could do. Talk to them maybe, about the chairs. Tell them the chairs were for everybody. The beach, it didn’t belong to them.

“I don’t want you doing that. Don’t lower yourself,” Linda said.

The next morning they were all out there. It didn’t come as any surprise. The sail was unfurled. The catamaran was ready to launch, on its runners, pointed away from the chairs. The sail, it was pretty to look at, from the window of our motel room. The upper section was sky blue. There were bands of red and yellow and green, then the dark blue bottom section. Already their towels were draped on the chairs. There were lawn chairs stacked nearby. Soon the women were setting the lawn chairs up.

“That’s it,” I said. “We go down there.”

I had already put on my swim trunks. Linda was still in her nightgown.

“We take our umbrella and go,” I said. “Or we check out. We go somewhere else.”

Linda came up to me in her nightgown. “You’re making too big a deal out of this. But if you want to go, we’ll go home.”

“I’m not going home. I’m going out there,” I said. “You coming?” I waited until Linda said yes. I waited for her to put on her suit before I went outside to get the sun umbrella. Linda followed me down to the beach.

But we didn’t get to the spot I’d picked without seeing the next thing they did, them starting it, starting to put up the tent. The women laid out this plastic sheet, sky blue like the top of the sail. It was going to be a tent without flaps, what was going up around the chairs. The women bulging in the wrong places stuck tent pegs in the sand. That’s what the older women were doing while the girl in the red French-cut looked out at the Gulf. All three men were knocking the tent pegs in, with a hammer, chucking and chunking. Finally, the girl in the red French-cut picked up a tent peg. I watched her push it into the sand. I heard the sea oats rustling, the chucking and chunking. In front of us, the tent was almost up. The women were moving their lawn chairs in.

We wanted to let these people know that we could do what we liked, so we went in the water, right in front of their tent. Coming out, I saw a tent pole go down. It was windy, the plastic was tearing loose. All three women, they got the poles back in place, and the men, they hammered in the pegs. They were doing that when we left.

Linda picked up the beach towels. I followed her with the umbrella. At the door to our room, Linda laid the beach towels out on the railing to dry. I laid the sun umbrella on the concrete.

From our room we could see what was going on. The women in one-piece bathing suits were sitting in their lawn chairs. Their towels were draped over the beach chairs The men pushed off in the catamaran. The girl in the red French-cut, she sat down in a lawn chair and set her foot on the arm of one of the beach chairs. She bent from the waist like she was touching her toes.

“She’s painting her toenails,” Linda said.

“So she’s painting her toenails on the arm of my chair. If you ask me that’s rubbing your nose in it.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Linda came back. “And if you think that’s your chair you’re mistaken. I’m the one who sat in it last.”

“I know you’re the one who sat in it last. And I know we didn’t each have our own chair, but if I remember correctly, I sat in that chair most of the time, the one that girl’s got her foot on.”

Linda didn’t say anything else to me about the chairs. “I’m ready to leave when you are,” she said.

“Anytime,” I said, “we’ll pack up and leave.”

Linda left me sitting at the window. I heard her plop her suitcase on the bed, yank open dresser drawers. We’d go home and pick up where we left off. In a minute or two I’d start packing.

The girl moved her foot on the arm of the chair, just another chair on the beach.