by D. Brown
“I won’t,” Sam told him. “You’re fine. You’re doing fine. Reel him in. You got him.”
Maggie smiled. Sometimes she worried about her youngest son getting lost in the shuffle. The others were older and could take care of themselves. David was the baby in the family. He was so little and so helpless sometimes, and Maggie often felt the guilt pangs stab at her heart that her youngest child might get left behind to fend for himself.
“Reel him in hard now!” Sam hollered instructions, “Pull David! Pull!”
The little boy gave a yank on the rod and she saw the fish, writhing at the end of the line as he reeled-in the last 15 feet out of the water. It cleared the pier railing and disappeared onto the deck among the gathering crowd of the curious.
A round of applause broke out on the pier.
The fish was indeed a whopper.
Maggie moved forward, smiling; a sudden wave of emotion surged up the back of her throat. She wanted to see, but she didn’t want to intrude. The last thing she wanted to do was to make her son feel like a mama’s boy.
David stood there, laughing uncontrollably, his eyes wild with delight as he watched Sam struggle to catch the flopping fish. Maggie moved forward through the crowd as Sam removed the hook and held the fish up for him to see. More applause rose around her and Maggie had to swallow back a sob.
The fish was nearly as big as David, stretching from his shoulders to below his belt almost to his knees.
“Look at what you have, boy,” Sam said holding up the fish. “Bill Dance could only hope to catch something this big!”
The older men around them patted David on the shoulder and rubbed his head. That’s when he looked up and saw his mother.
“Mom! Did you see what I caught?”
He ran to Maggie and jumped up in her arms, smelling like fish and seaweed, and well, fish.
“Did you see it? Did you see it? It’s a whopper! I caught it all by myself!”
“I saw honey. I saw,” she said and hugged her little boy tight.
Over her son’s shoulder Maggie saw Sam smile, holding up the fish her for to see.
“Your boy’s a natural, Maggie. You see the size of this fish?”
David jumped down from her arms. She saw.
“So, what do you want to do with him?” Sam asked. “You want to keep him?”
David thought for a second. “What would Bill Dance do?”
“Bill Dance? Hmmm,” Sam rubbed his chin. “Bill Dance would throw him back. Catch and release.”
“Then throw him back,” David answered quickly.
McGee almost came out of his lawn chair, “Throw him back? Son that’s a great eatin’ fish you got there. We could have us a damn nice fish fry with that whopper.”
“Bill Dance throws them back, then so do I.”
“Spoken like a true sportsman, David.” Sam said. “But first, come here.”
David did.
“Give me your hand.”
David held out his hand and Sam slipped the fish onto his extended fingers.
“Hold him up under the gills. Tin Can, you got your camera?”
“Right here,” Tin Can said.
“Let’s get a quick picture then.”
David had to use both hands to hold up the fish, whose tail waggled below the boy’s knees.
“Smile, Davey,” Tin Can said.
David smiled then said, “Sam, I want you in the picture too.”
“Sure thing, sport,” Sam circled around behind David and dropped to one knee beside him. They both smiled at the camera.
Tin Can looked through the viewfinder.
“Okay David,” he said. “Say pooper scooper.”
David laughed and Tin Can snapped the picture. Maggie folded her arms across her chest and smiled. David was her quiet child, always so serious. She never saw him laugh or smile often, and when he did, she savored the moment.
She hadn’t seen her son this happy in some time.
And her son was beside himself with glee.
His proud mother beamed.
The thought that his father should be a part of this moment though briefly darkened the moment.
His loss, she decided.
Sam took the fish and dropped it over the railing. They all watched it disappear in a white splash in the rolling surf.
“Bye fish,” David waved, then. “Okay, let’s do it again.”
Maggie moved to the railing next to Sam.
“Robert has been called home.”
“You have to leave?”
The anxious stab in the ribs surprised him.
“No,” she said. “The kids and I are staying, but he has to fly home right away, trouble with work and all.”
The relief on Sam’s face was impossible to hide. It shined like the sun overhead through his widening smile.
“Okay, well good, I’m glad y’all are staying.”
“I do have to take him to the airport though, and David is having so much fishing. Do you mind keeping an eye on him while I’m gone? Robbie and Anna Beth are still here so when you’re done you can leave him with them.”
Sam smiled, “It’d be my pleasure. David and I are doing just fine. He’s no problem at all. Plus, he’s keeping these guys in line.”
“You’re sure it’s not a problem.”
“Not at all,” Sam said. “Are you sure it’s not a problem with you.”
Maggie offered a weak smile and fought down the “this is wrong” mantra ranting inside her head. “I’m fine.”
“Good,” Sam said. “You don’t mind hanging with us guys and fishing a little bit more, do you David?”
David looked up at Sam and said, “Gosh no, we got fish to catch. Mom is it okay if I stay and fish?”
“Sure honey, it’s fine. You mind what Sam says now.”
To Sam, she asked, “Are you sure you’re okay with this? I don’t want to impose.”
“I’m okay if you’re okay,” Sam replied.
He gave her directions to the Savannah airport and said it would probably take her ninety minutes out and back to make the trip. David would be fine with him during that time.
“Thank you Sam,” Maggie said and touched his arm. His heart melted.
Finch noticed the lost look in Sam’s eyes as he watched Maggie turn and walk back down the pier, “Careful Sam. Don’t go shopping around in another man’s grocery cart.”
Sam brushed it off, “I know Finch. Come on, that’s not my thing anyway. You know that.”
“I know that look in your eyes, big guy. She’d be an easy woman to fall for.
“I’m not falling for anybody,” he said and cut a nod at David. “Now hush with it okay?”
Sam handed David his newly baited pole. “Catch another one David. Show these clowns how it’s done okay?”
But Sam’s eyes strayed to Maggie retreating down the pier to the pavilion until he lost her in the July Fourth crowd.
My God, she’s beautiful.
His heart did one of those little flutters. A hidden part of him buried deep inside told Sam he was already too late.
13
The ride to the airport was strained.
Conversation kept to a minimum, and Robert’s replies limited to the occasional grunt and snort.
Robert was angry to be going home alone.
He felt it was Maggie’s responsibility, and his family’s to be with their husband and father. He wasn’t happy being called home and knew an opened can of worms awaited him there.
He liked the thought of leaving his wife and children behind even less and made sure Maggie knew it.
His attitude made her angry, and she reacted appropriately, not sure her short fuse was because of his temper or because she felt guilty.
Her husband was so damned self-centered he never gave her the chance to be anything but angry, and Maggie let him know it.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you this week, but everything has to be about you Robert.”
“What’s about me?” Robert asked, turning to face her.
“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”
“Sure I did,” he said. “David caught a fish.”
“His first fish, Robert, and a big fish; he was so excited, and you just blew it off.”
“I’m sorry,” Robert threw up his hands, “but I’m a little preoccupied right now.”
“You’re always preoccupied, Robert. You have three children, remember, not two.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, when your son looks at the photograph of when he caught his first fish, his father won’t be in it.”
“Oh yes,” Robert snorted sarcastically, “Your new boyfriend Sam. I don’t like him Maggie, not at all, and I can’t believe you left David with a complete stranger, especially him.”
Boyfriend?
Maggie wanted to scream.
Again, Robert is hammering like a carpenter, hitting every nail on the head.
Still, “Yes, a complete stranger who took more interest in him than his own father.”
Maggie turned off the Island Expressway and made her way along Bay Street into downtown Savannah to pick up I-16 and take her out to I-95 and the airport.
“David was having a wonderful time,” Maggie said as she cleared the Bay Street congestion and followed the blue signs leading to the interstate. “If you would have taken the time to go with him, you’d have seen that for yourself. David misses out on so much. I wasn’t about to ruin his good time fishing.”
“I still don’t like you talking to that man, Maggie.”
“I’m not a child, Robert, and I am certainly not a prisoner in my own home. I’ll talk to whomever I please.”
Maggie looked forward, ignoring her husband. They drove the rest of the way to the airport in silence.
When Maggie dropped Robert off in front of baggage and ticketing, he gave her a cursory peck on the cheek and mumbled a curt, “I’ll call you when I land.” After retrieving his bag, he slammed the van door shut and Maggie drove off a backward glance.
Two can play this game.
She was furious and didn’t calm down until she passed the squat brick facade of Fort Pulaski hugging a bend in the Savannah River along the island causeway carrying her back to Tybee Island.
Maggie was surprised at her relief.
Robert was gone, and she didn’t feel guilty when “now I can enjoy myself” flashed through her head.
It wasn’t lost on her that she thought of Sam as well.
Robert doesn’t approve of him, but her husband doesn’t approve of anything, especially if it involves another man.
Sam showed her some attention.
She liked that.
They talked.
That’s all.
What have I done wrong?
Nothing, Maggie answered back, but her answer lacked conviction.
“What are you doing, Maggie?” she asked Anna Beth’s stuffed teddy bear pillow sitting in the back seat.
“Have a good time on my vacation,” the teddy bear silently replied.
Maggie she watched David building sand castles down at the water’s edge.
The beach filled up with the early arriving Fourth of July crowd hoping to get a head start on the weekend. Multi-colored umbrellas sprouted like dandelions. Strains of music of every variety, wafted up the beach. The heat was intense, and the humidity stifling, but Maggie relished it all reclining in a chaise lounge, and reading a paperback novel.
Sam sat in his rocker and watched the remainder of the afternoon slowly pass him by, letting his gaze wander down the beach slope to the red and blue umbrella sticking out of the sand.
He couldn’t see her, but Sam knew she was there. He found his thoughts drifting to her more and more often.
Her smile haunted him.
A porch fan stirred the hot, humid air.
Sam caught the aroma of coal-roasting barbecue and his stomach growled.
He saw Anna Beth walking up the beach, a nice looking girl. Looked just like her mother.
A beach towel wrapped around her waist, she walked with the same gliding ease. Her hair was piled up in a wet knot on top her head.
Sam smiled at everything about Anna Beth, her beauty, her energy; that zest for life, everything that goes with being a young lady.
She reminded him of his own daughter.
Sam thought about heading inside to scrounge around for something to throw together for dinner, when he heard a voice.
Tiny.
Distant.
It was nearly lost among the white cacophony of beach noise.
There was urgency in it, too, and a sudden spike of raw fear.
“Mommy!”
14
“Mommy!”
Maggie wasn’t sure what she’d heard at first; an odd seagull’s cry disguised as the familiar calling out of her child.
She started to dismiss as a figment of her imagination, a straying morsel of a dream as she dozed.
That is, until she heard the scream again.
“Mommy!”
That’s David, she thought, sitting up.
“Anna Beth?” Momentarily disoriented, Maggie shielded her eyes from the sun’s harsh glare. “Where’s David?”
No answer.
Maggie saw Anna Beth’s empty towel.
She stood, hands on hips, and scanned up and down the beach.
She saw Robbie kicking the soccer ball around with some other boys down the beach in front of the hotel. Maggie turned and saw Anna Beth walking toward the house. She looked down at that spot along the water line where David had been building sand castles, and that’s where her heart seized.
A quiet horror constricted her throat.
Her child was not there.
“David?”
Maggie looked down at her feet and saw David’s swim floats lying among the scattering of beach toys.
“Mommy!”
That was David’s voice.
“David?” this time she called a little louder, a little more urgently.
She looked around, frantically now, as panic set in.
Maggie looked in the first place any concerned mother would when it came to a missing child . . .
The water.
The endless procession of waves rolled nonchalantly toward shore. She almost missed him, and had it not been for the bright yellow Sponge Bob Square Pants float, she would have missed seeing him bobbing between the rolling swells farther out from shore.
Too far from shore, she thought.
David, how did you get way out there?
“The waves took him out,” her inner voice said, “They took him out.”
And that’s when Maggie saw David clearly this time, disappearing behind the pitch of a white-capped wave, and heading outward, away from the beach.
Her heart crawled up the back of her throat.
He’s too far out.
He sat in his bright yellow inner tube.
A Sponge Bob Square Pants beach toy she bought for him on their first day here. He pitched lazily to and fro, disappearing momentarily behind the crest of each passing wave, dismissed as just another child having fun on the Fourth of July weekend at the beach.
There was just one problem though. Rather than carry David toward shore, the surf pulled him out to sea, out into deeper water.
Terror stuffed the gasp back down her throat.
Maggie turned to cry out for help, looking to the nearby lifeguard’s tower when Sam bolted past, running at a full sprint, as he peeled off his shirt.
“Get the lifeguard!” he shouted, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder, “Now!”
He ran down the slope onto the hard wet sand at the water line took three more big steps and dove headlong into the wall of crashing waves.
Sam disappeared.
A horrid realization settled as a cold stone in the pit of Maggie’s stomach.
My God.
My son’s going to drown.
15
Fear encased Maggie’s feet in quicksand.
She couldn’t move.
She couldn’t even scream.
She saw Sam attack each wave, crashing through the swells with an unrelenting determination, dismissed as someone out for a vigorous swim.
He plowed through each wave that tried to block his path.
A child’s cry can do a lot of things to a parent.
One of them is to throw the blanket of calm about your shoulders during a time of crisis.
This very blanket settled about her shoulders now.
It cleared her head.
You are the parent, Maggie.
You are the one your child looks to for comfort, for support, for reinforcement.
And for rescue.
But Maggie couldn’t move.
“Mommy!”
The sound of her son’s voice broke the spell rooting Maggie’s feet in the sand.
She took off in a dash for the nearest lifeguard tower.
While panic’s pull fueled her step, determination calmed her resolve. This was a nightmare’s run, the sand pulling at her feet, clawing at her, reluctant to let go of each step.
“My son! My son!” she gestured frantically to the lifeguard. “Help him please!”
Sam saw David dip behind a high rolling wave, and knew the boy was in trouble. He’d seen this once before. He knew what would happen if he didn’t do something.
He’d drown.
Just like Diane.
“Over my dead-god-damn-body.”
That can be arranged, a voice in his head replied, sounding very much like Diane.
Maggie looked on in horror as the team of lifeguards dove into the surf.
College kids, I’m entrusting my child’s life to a bunch of college kids.
I should have listened to Robert.
He was right.
I have no business here.
I should have gone home.
Sam topped the next crest, spitting salt water as he gulped his next breath.
He saw David bobbing over the waves, maybe 40-feet away, not in any danger yet, just being pulled farther out to sea by the undertow, and faster than he could swim to get to him.