Beach Music

by Pat Conroy

  “We could go to jail for one hundred twenty-two years, Daddy,” Leah said, running to my side and encircling my waist with her arms. “Just for helping Grandma.”

  “I knew being exposed to that woman would come to no good,” I said. “Relax, Leah. We’re not going to jail.”

  “Lucy might this time,” Jane said. “Looks like I caught you red-handed.”

  Lucy reached out and took the bucket out of my hand, then said, “I’ve tried to be reasonable with you people. I really have. You don’t live with the problem every day, Jane. It’s not fair and it’s not right and it’s sure as hell not good for the survival of these turtles.”

  “If man keeps interfering with the nests, then these turtles have no chance of surviving,” Jane countered.

  “It’s a theory, Jane. Something you write down on a piece of paper. Something that looks good and sounds good and reads pretty. But it doesn’t work.”

  “It’s worked for millions of years, Lucy. It’s proven effective since the age of dinosaurs.”

  “Listen, Jack and Leah. Listen to what happened. We did what Jane here said. Down to the letter, we followed her directions. Because they had statistics and charts and their damn degrees. Because they had badges and guns and the weight of law behind them. Tell Leah what happened, Jane. Tell the child how well your theories worked.”

  “Our theories worked perfectly,” the woman said, tightening her gun belt. “Nature allowed a certain number of nests to yield a certain number of loggerheads. Some nests were destroyed by predators. That has to be expected.”

  “Sounds reasonable, Mother,” I said.

  “Son, I acknowledge your expertise when it comes to ziti or pepperoni pizza. But you’re in your rookie year with the turtle ladies,” Lucy said, staring hard at Jane Hartley and being stared at in return.

  “Lucy considers herself above the laws of nature,” Jane said.

  “The laws of nature are now killing me, Jane,” Lucy shot back. “I’m painfully aware how subject I am to those laws. You won’t be having this argument with me next year, but I pray to God one of the other turtle ladies’ll take my place.”

  “Give me those eggs, Lucy.”

  “No,” Lucy said, “I most certainly will not. What would you do with the eggs?”

  “Take them back to my office,” Jane answered. “Photograph them for evidence. Examine them for damage. Then bring them back to the island and rebury them as close to the original nesting site as possible.”

  “We need to get these eggs in the ground right this minute,” said Lucy, walking over and picking up a shovel that she had leaned against the supports of her deck. “I’m moving all turtle nests on this island to the dry sand right in front of my house, Jane. That way, I can protect them myself because they won’t be but twenty yards away from the pillow where I’m sleeping.”

  “And that way, you get to break the law every time a turtle comes up on this beach.”

  “What happened to the nests last year?” I asked.

  “Nothing happened to them,” Jane said.

  “Only twenty percent of them produced any hatchling turtles at all!” Lucy said, starting to dig her hole.

  “The laws of nature prevailed,” said Jane, addressing herself to me now. “Lucy’s made the mistake of personalizing her relationship to all those eggs and loggerheads.”

  “Last year there were a hundred-twenty nests,” Lucy countered. “But the erosion on the south side of the beach was terrible. A lot of beachfront was lost due to a bad nor’easter in February. Everybody on the beach started putting loads of granite in front of their houses. Bulldozers moved tons of sand over the rocks. The place crawled with dump trucks. When the turtles came in that May, it was like someone had built the great wall of China over their nesting grounds. Two of them laid their eggs in a sandbar twenty yards out into the ocean. That’s how desperate they were. We moved those nests.”

  “With our permission,” Jane said.

  “Yes, but you refused permission to move any of the nests laid at the foot of the rocks for two miles along the south beach,” Lucy said, attacking the sand with her shovel. “The spring tides were extraordinary last year. The whole ocean seemed to rise up and try to reach out toward dry land. Some tides covered the tops of the marsh grass. Fifty-six nests were wiped out by those tides. That’s a possible six thousand turtles who didn’t make it to the water because Jane and her colleagues are stupid.”

  “We made a mistake, Lucy. We admitted it.”

  “They wouldn’t let me lay wire fencing to protect the nests from raccoons and dogs. Lost twenty-seven more nests that way. The goddamn coons are common as roaches on this island because they love to tip over garbage cans of fat tourists from Ohio. I found seventeen coons fighting and squalling over a nest of turtle eggs that they’d spread up and down the beach.”

  “We’re on the same side in this battle,” Jane said. “You’ve never understood that, Lucy.”

  “Then help me teach my granddaughter how to dig a turtle hole that’ll make these eggs feel like Mama dug it.”

  “I want you to know, Mr. McCall, that your mother was like this before she got sick,” Jane said, throwing up her hands in exasperation.

  “I know,” I said. “She raised me.”

  Lucy handled the shovel with economy and expertise and as she lifted the sand out in small spadefuls, a rounded hole that reproduced the hourglass-shaped nest excavated by the back flippers of the loggerhead began to emerge. It was a lovely, strange sort of mimicry and it made me realize the long patient hours of observation that she had spent studying the habits of those ungainly turtles.

  “Come here, child,” Lucy said to Leah. “Round it out on both sides now. Pretend you’re the mother and you want to dig the loveliest and safest nest in the world for your babies. The shovel is your back flipper and you want your eggs to drop in a beautiful round room where the only sound they’ll hear is the surf.”

  “Like this,” Leah said, concentrating hard, as she slid the blade of the shovel along the side of the hole and brought up barely more than a half pound of sand.

  “Perfect. Round that other side off. You think it’s deep enough, Jane?”

  Jane came over and inspected the hole. She went down on her knees and put her arm into the hole almost up to the shoulder.

  “I’d go another six inches,” she said, and Lucy nodded in agreement.

  Leah dug out another six inches of sand and placed it on the small dune that rose up on one side of the nest. “What if it’s not just right, Grandma? What’ll happen?”

  “Probably nothing. But since we’re flying blind here, we might as well be as careful as we can. We’ve got a hundred twenty-two baby turtles counting on us to get it right.”

  “See what I mean about being too personal?” Jane said.

  “Now comes the fun part,” Lucy said, instructing Leah with unusual patience. “I think this is the greatest Easter egg hunt in the world. We find the eggs, dig them up, walk them to a safe place, and now we get to bury them again.”

  “You do it, Grandma,” Leah asked. “I’ll watch the first time.”

  “No. I want this whole nest to be yours. You’ll help me watch over this one and all the rest. But I want you to put each one of these eggs down in the hole. So when they hatch, I’ll have you dig them up and they’ll know your smell.”

  “It doesn’t happen that way, Lucy,” Jane said archly.

  “How the hell do you know?” Lucy shot back.

  Leah took out the first egg and studied it as it gleamed in the May sunshine. She handled it with great delicacy and made sure the egg was facing in the same direction as it was when she removed it from its original nest. Her head almost disappeared from sight as she set the egg in its place as seriously as a priest laying a consecrated host on an altar cloth. When the first egg was put in, Leah looked to the adults for approval and received it from all three of us.

  It took Leah almost a half-hour to fill up that hole
with turtle eggs and the job went more quickly as she gained confidence in her handling and placement of them. When she began each egg was precious and by the time she finished the eggs felt familiar and comfortable in her hand.

  Then Lucy taught her how to cover the eggs with the same sand they had taken from the hole and pack it down with the same firmness a three-hundred-pound mother would exert in her desire to camouflage the nest from the eyes of predators. They were smoothing out the sand above the nest and Jane was moving the wire cage over toward the nest when the sound of a male voice on the deck startled them all.

  “Is that bitch bothering you again, Mama?” the voice said and I looked up to see my brother John Hardin staring out over the scene, shirtless behind a gate.

  “I forgot to tell you, Jack. Your brother got in from Columbia late last night.”

  “Hey, John Hardin,” Jane said, putting the wire fencing in place above the nest. “The bitch is only bothering your mama a little bit. Nothing to write home about.”

  “Should I beat her up, Mama?” John Hardin asked.

  “Hush up. They’ll be hauling you back up to Bull Street if you can’t put a brake on your tongue,” Lucy said.

  “Thanks a lot for visiting me in the hospital, Jack,” John Hardin said, spotting me for the first time. “Every visiting hour I kept waiting for you to come and bring me some boiled peanuts and Heath Bars the way you used to. But no, you’ve gotten too big for John Hardin. You’re much too busy shitting on French restaurants and writing whoopey-doo pieces on sun-dried tomatoes and balsamic vinegar to ever come visit your little brother on the crazy ward.”

  “Shut up, John Hardin. Your brother’s still recuperating from getting himself shot up in Rome.”

  “I forgot about that, Jack,” John Hardin said. “I’m so sorry. I read all about your being hurt and I wanted to fly straight to Rome to take care of you. Isn’t that right, Mama?”

  “That’s certainly right, honey,” she said, checking Jane’s handiwork in placing the wire screen over the nest. Then in a lower voice she whispered to me. “In the condition he was in, he could’ve flown all the way there and not even bothered to call Delta.”

  “Who is that pretty thing?” John Hardin said, spotting Leah. “Is that the lovely Miss Leah McCall?”

  “Hello, Uncle John Hardin.”

  “Run up here and give your uncle a big kiss,” John Hardin said as Leah looked pleadingly at me. Then John Hardin opened the gate and I saw for the first time that he was wearing no clothes at all.

  I shook my head and said, “Why don’t you put on some clothes, John Hardin? Leah’s never hugged a totally naked man before.”

  “Thanks, Daddy,” Leah whispered.

  Both Jane and Lucy turned away from the fencing and looked at John Hardin who stood proudly unclad and unapologetic above them.

  “I became a nudist while at the state hospital, Mother,” John Hardin said. “It’s a matter of principle with me and I know you’ll support my decision. It’s an act of faith, not of folly. Of that, I assure you.”

  “Get your goddamn clothes on, boy,” Lucy said, murderously. “Or I’m going to knock your unmentionables into the Atlantic with this shovel. Cover yourself up before this innocent young woman. I never heard of such carrying on in broad daylight.”

  She took off Jane Hartley’s hat and shielded the young woman’s eyes from the sight of her son’s pale genitalia.

  “I’m a scientist, Lucy. This doesn’t shock me.”

  “I’m a mother, Jane, and this shocks the living hell out of me,” Lucy said. “Call the crazy house, Jack, and tell them they didn’t come close to fixin’ what ails the nudist here.”

  “This is the way God made me, Leah,” John Hardin said. “Do you see anything revolting or disgusting in God’s work? I admit my dick’s kind of ugly, but who are we to criticize the Lord’s handiwork. Don’t you agree?”

  “What’s ‘a dick,’ Daddy?” Leah asked me.

  “American slang for penis,” I said.

  “Thank you, Daddy.”

  “You’re very welcome, sweetheart.”

  “I think your dick is very pretty, John Hardin,” Leah said kindly.

  “See, Mama, you uptight puritan asshole,” John Hardin screamed. “Beauty’s in the eye of the pretender.”

  “You mean beholder,” Lucy corrected.

  “I mean exactly what I say I mean and nothing more,” insisted John Hardin.

  “Good, say anything you want. Just go put something over your elementals.”

  “Elementals,” John Hardin said. “This ain’t Plymouth Rock, Mother dear. It won’t hurt you to say the word dick or hairy banana or cock or pecker …”

  “Those are the words I was talking about the other day, Daddy,” Leah said. “Those are the ones I hear on the playground.”

  “Once you know them all, then you’re well on your way to being an American girl.”

  “I came into the world buck naked …” John Hardin said.

  “I seem to remember that,” Lucy said to Jane. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “Love one,” Jane said.

  “And naked shall I return to my true mother, the earth, not that woman that claims to have brought me forth in vileness and unholy jeopardy.

  “That dog there walking on the beach is naked. That seagull, that pelican, that porpoise offshore—all, all naked and natural as they were on the day when they first saw their mothers and sunlight. I saw sunlight, then I saw this unfeeling bitch who raised me, Jane, and turned me into a lunatic to walk the earth unloved and uninvited into any home.”

  “Put your pants on and join us for coffee, son,” Lucy said, washing her feet and hands of sand.

  “You spoke nicely to me, Mama,” John Hardin said. “I will join you. You catch more snakes with honey than Caesar did in Gaul.”

  “What did John Hardin mean about the honey, Daddy?” asked Leah.

  “He wants me to speak nicely to him,” Lucy answered. “He’s got an odd relationship with the English language.”

  “Did you know that nudists commit fewer murders than any other group, Jane?” John Hardin asked.

  “I never knew that,” Jane said. “But it doesn’t surprise me.”

  “I scare you, don’t I?” John Hardin said to Jane Hartley. “You’ve never met a full-fledged, bona-fide schizophrenic in your life and I can see the fear in your eyes.”

  “Shut up, son,” Lucy said, handing him a beach towel that he wrapped around himself as she crossed the deck and walked through the sliding glass door into her living room. “You don’t have to present your credentials. Being stark naked’s all the clue anyone needs.”

  “My sister’s schizophrenic, John Hardin,” Jane said, following Lucy into the house. “Your act’s old to me.”

  John Hardin watched the young woman as she crossed the deck and disappeared inside the house.

  “She’s very pretty, isn’t she, Jack?”

  “Very pretty.”

  “Do you think she liked me, Leah?” John Hardin asked, and his voice was tender.

  “She’d like you better with clothes,” Leah said.

  “That’s prejudice,” he said, his voice darkening an octave.

  “She’s used to boys wearing clothes, that’s all,” Leah said.

  “Oh.” John Hardin seemed mollified. “I’ve never known how to talk to pretty girls. Maybe you could help me, Leah. You’re pretty. In fact, I bet you’ll be elected Miss Italy some day. Unless you come back here where you’ll be Miss America.”

  “Talk to her like that, John Hardin,” Leah said. “Maybe she’d like that.”

  “I know you’re supposed to say ‘hi’ to girls. I always do that. Then I know you’re supposed to say something like ‘Isn’t this a beautiful day?’ I say that when the day’s nice. But what do you say when it’s rainy or cold and what do you say after that? I mean, there’s a million things you could say. But what does a pretty girl want to hear after a weather report? It�
��s a mystery to me, Leah. Does she want to know that there was an earthquake in Pakistan last night? That’s pretty important. Or would she rather know how a Jerry Lewis movie ended that I saw the other night in the hospital? Or makeup? Maybe she’d like to talk about makeup, but see, I don’t use it. I’d be glad to talk about anything, but too many things come to my mind and I end up saying nothing. Pretty girls hate me, Leah.”

  “No they don’t,” Leah said. “They know just how you feel. Tell them what you just told us. Tell Miss Hartley. She’ll understand.”

  “Now? Go in right now?”

  “No, let everything come up naturally. Wait till it feels right,” Leah said.

  “Ah, I can’t,” John Hardin said. “Nothing ever feels right to me.”

  The next day, I drove Leah to the southwest tangent of the Isle of Orion to visit John Hardin in the tree house he had built for himself so he had a place to go whenever he felt the need to withdraw from society. The tree house was much discussed on both the island and Waterford, but seldom seen. John Hardin had built his pied-à-terre in a two-hundred-year-old live oak that hung over the tidal creek that cut a necklace of deep water through the great salt marsh. Since he was good with his hands and had enormous amounts of free time, the tree house had expanded over the years, gone through several renovations, and had five separate rooms plus a screened-in porch when I drove up beneath it and blew the horn to alert my brother. At the extreme end of the road, I pointed out to Leah the unpainted wooden building that my brothers and I had built and used as a fish camp all throughout our childhood days. It surprised me that the floating deck was in such good shape until I remembered that John Hardin lived here almost full-time when he was not locked up in the state hospital. The tree house was made from heart of pine and stained a natural color. There was both charm and eccentricity in its architecture and the rooms grew smaller and more turretlike as they spiraled up the tree, accommodating themselves to the higher and frailer branches. Everywhere the eye looked there were bird feeders and bird baths and wind chimes. The air could not move without music moving through every leaf and acorn on the tree. Most of the wind chimes were handmade and their music was slightly off-key and eccentric. But the house seemed spacious and congruent and Leah screamed with delight.