Beach House Memories

by Mary Alice Monroe

  Cheered, she started to hum as she made her way down the boulevard. A young man was jogging along the creek, and farther on she passed an elderly couple on bicycles. She reached the beach to see that Russell had already arrived.

  “Olivia!” he called out, raising his hand.

  She smiled at his usual greeting and waved back. She never tired of him calling her name—Olivia. He was the only one who called her by her full name, and she loved the sound of it on his lips.

  It was a textbook case. The tracks led high up to the dune where Lovie quickly found the broken vegetation, the thrown sand, and the push-off ridge the turtle made with her flippers. Russell was making her find the eggs more often now, and she was getting good at it.

  “This brings the total nests for the island to sixty-six,” Russell said, wiping his hands on the small towel he carried in his backpack.

  Lovie entered the information in the record book, brushing away the ubiquitous sand from the page. “Do you think we’ll make it to eighty?” It was thrilling to think they could really get that many nests this summer. “When I was just doing my end of the island, I think the highest number of nests we ever hit was forty-four.”

  “We’ll make it to seventy-five, maybe more. But I hate to burst your bubble,” Russell said with a wry grin. “I won’t even tell you how many turtle nests we get along the Atlantic coast of Florida.”

  She closed the journal and put it into her backpack. “Well, I know Florida is the mecca for nesting turtles,” Lovie replied defensively. Then curious, she had to ask, “But how many would you say? Three hundred? Five hundred? A thousand?”

  “Thousands,” he replied.

  “That many . . .” she said, rising with a sigh. It was almost enough to make her want to move to Florida. Almost.

  “But every nest counts,” he reminded her.

  She smiled, thinking how typical it was for him to bolster her confidence.

  Two days later, tracks were reported at the Point. Lovie parked at Russell’s and they drove together in the rugged Jeep across the rough terrain to the far northern tip of the island. The beach was deserted and the ocean was as smooth as glass.

  “It’s anyone’s guess where it is. The volunteer just said it was high up in the north. Let’s walk that way,” he said, pointing. “See what we find.”

  Lovie wiped her forehead and regretted that she’d forgotten her thermos in the car. The bucket banged her thigh as she walked alongside him. It was a beastly hot day and it felt like the sun was trying to ignite her brown cotton shirt. Even the sand seemed to burn her toes.

  “I call this dedication,” she said.

  “Or obsessive-compulsive,” he chided.

  “You’re the one who’s making the rules,” she said with a teasing bump of her shoulder against his. Then she felt a sudden worry that the gesture was too forward.

  “I know, I know,” he replied, seeming not to notice. “Just remember this is a short-term study. Once I’m gone, you can sigh in relief and not keep doing the northern end. You can go back to covering just your end of the island.”

  There it was again, she thought, almost wincing. Talk of his leaving. She knew the day was coming, understood that he was here for the duration of the study only, and then he would go back to his job, his life, far from here. Far from her. She smiled, determined not to be maudlin.

  “You don’t think I’ll stop doing the whole island, do you? After this?” she said in a blustery manner, forcing the cheer in her voice. “Not likely.” She walked a few more steps. “By the way, I can continue what you taught me? Moving nests? Inventories?”

  “Oh, God,” he mock groaned, “I’ve opened Pandora’s box.”

  “Russell!”

  “Believe me, Olivia, if ever I trusted anyone to do the job right, it’d be you. I’ll see what I can do to get you a permit. You’ll need some kind of authority.”

  “Authority.” She rolled the word on her tongue, liking the sound of it. “At last. Even if I’ll never get paid.”

  “Don’t feel too bad. I get paid very little.”

  “I wondered about that,” she replied. “How do you afford planes and your family trips to Europe, houses in Maine, Bermuda?”

  He smirked. “The old-fashioned way. I inherited it.”

  “Ah, yes,” she said. “I thought I caught the whiff of a patrician about you.”

  “Oh, really?” he replied. “And what about you, Mrs. Rutledge. I assume of the Rutledge family, signers of the Declaration of Independence?”

  “My husband’s family . . .”

  A brief smile of concession flickered across his face. “I’m fortunate to have my trust fund, I admit it. It allows me to do the work I love and still be able to fund my research.”

  “You can be proud of that.”

  “A fate of birth.”

  “True, but you could be gallivanting, sailing around the world, gambling. A wastrel.”

  “Ah, you’ve met my brother?”

  She laughed and bumped his shoulder again, enjoying the banter and the sound of his laughter beside her.

  They walked at a leisurely pace under the scorching sun. Lovie looked longingly at the ocean. Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink, she thought. The inlet between Dewees Island and Isle of Palms reflected the blue sky and sparkled in the sunlight, luring her. Along the shoreline, shells littered the beach. She spotted several unbroken angel’s wings, pristine whelks, and skate’s purses. Cara would love it here, Lovie thought idly.

  “It’s so isolated here,” Russell said, as though reading her mind. “So idyllic. We could be on a deserted island far, far from Isle of Palms.”

  Lovie spotted in the distance a particularly attractive cedar. It was ancient and had spent countless years yielding to the relentless storms and wind. Something triggered in her memory. The tree was unique. Its trunk was bent far landward by the wind, like a bonsai. The twisted boughs and greenery were shaped by the hand of God to create an arc of shade over the sand.

  “I know that tree,” she said with wonder. “Of course, it has to be!” Despite the blistering heat, Lovie took off at a clip toward the tree. Russell was close at her heels. When they reached the tree she stopped, her face glowing with joy and perspiration.

  “I can’t believe it. This is it, the umbrella tree. I remember it from my childhood. Why, Russell, we’ve walked all the way to the Point.”

  “The Point?”

  “Yes!” she exclaimed, delighted. “I told you, don’t you remember? This is the Point of the challenge. Nicodemus. Ring a bell?”

  “Oh, right,” he said, keeping up. “Ghosts and voodoo. The ultimate test.”

  “Yes, that’s right. And this,” she said, coming at last to the bent cypress, “this is the spot.” At the base of the tree was a roughly hewn wooden cross. “Look!” Her voice was ringing with the excitement she felt racing in her veins. “My brother made this cross! We all searched for just the right driftwood on the beach. What a day that was. I painted it,” she said, surprised that, though chipped, bits of the blue color remained on the wood. “It’s haint blue.”

  “What’s haint blue?”

  “Remember how I was telling you about all the spiritualism and voodoo stories that grow as thick as kudzu around these parts? Well, haint blue is a vivid, dark blue color that the Gullah paint on the trim of doors and windows to keep out evil spirits and demons. I’ve heard it’s also good to ward off spiders. The Gullah also believe that souls may be trapped in the world between here and there. So they paint their ceilings a lighter blue to signify to the lost souls where to go to get to their final resting place.”

  Lovie dropped to her knees. She let her backpack fall to the sand beside her and searched for her cockleshell, then began to dig in the sand under the arch.

  “I can’t believe I’ve found it again, after all these years.”

  “Found what?” Russell asked, going to his knees beside her, curious now.

  Lovie’s shell s
truck metal. “Just wait,” she said excitedly, and dug more quickly. A short while later, she pulled up a dented metal box and set it down on the beach between them.

  “Good God, Lovie,” Russell said in mock surprise. “You’ve found Blackbeard’s treasure!”

  “I’ve found something worth far more,” she said, her eyes kindling with delight. Opening the box, she sucked in her breath. “It’s still there,” she said, exhaling with wonder.

  Inside the box were a brown Moleskine notebook, a classic #2 pencil, and a brown spider that scurried out of the box to disappear. Lovie wiped her sandy hands on her shirt, then reverentially lifted the book out of the box. The leather was warm and bits of sand encrusted the edges. She wiped away the top layer of dirt and sand, and could read the letters, written in capital letters in a child’s script. A smile filled with tender memories flitted across her face as she traced her finger across the letters.

  THE SECRET OF THE POINT

  Opening it, she found the pages dirty but still in decent condition. She read aloud the oath that, many years before, she’d watched evolve as Mickey and his friends huddled together to create the myth.

  I solemnly swear

  that I hiked through the deep woods,

  I survived the fearful ghost of Nicodemus,

  to reach this sacred spot. If I’m lying,

  may Nicodemus cut off my toes and fingers

  and feed them to the fishes.

  “Nice touch,” Russell said, “that bit about the cutting off toes and fingers.”

  “We thought so.”

  “We?”

  She nodded. “My brother Mickey and his friends. But I tagged along. Mickey and I were great pals when we were young. Like Mutt and Jeff.” She ran her finger down the first page of names, all written in pencil. With age, the writing had faded, but they were still legible. All of them were boys’ names, except for one: Olivia Simmons.

  “Look! There’s my name.”

  “Well, now I know where Cara gets it from,” Russell said.

  “Gets what?”

  “Her bravery, curiosity, independence.”

  “Hardly. Cara is much braver than I am. And far more independent. I love that about her.”

  Lovie flipped through the twenty or more pages filled with children’s names, smiling when she saw Palmer’s name. “Almost all boys. They’ve all shared in this brotherhood,” she said, looking around at the uniquely bent tree in a remote tip of the island. “And now the era is ending. It’s all so sad. What should I do, Russell? Should I keep the journal? I don’t want it destroyed.”

  “No! Absolutely not. It’s not yours to keep. It belongs here.”

  “But it will get dug up when they build the resort. It’ll be destroyed.”

  “You don’t know that. How long has it been since you signed this book?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Over twenty-five years.”

  “So it’s survived here for a quarter of a century. Trust that it will survive here for another. Maybe more. After all, Cara hasn’t signed it yet. Nor have her children. They deserve that chance.”

  Lovie thought of Cara finding her way to this point, unearthing the box, and signing her name with a great sense of triumph. That alone would be worth leaving the book in place. “To think, my grandchild might sign this book.” She chuckled softly, remembering that hot summer’s day, not unlike today, when four boys and two girls put the journal into the metal box and covered it with sand, marking it so that in the years to come, other children would find their way to it.

  “Little did we know on that fateful day that this challenge would endure for decades.”

  “That’s the magic of youth. They have complete and utter faith. They believe. Isn’t that the real challenge of the Point? To keep believing, against all odds? Life is all an act of faith. What are we without that?”

  Lovie looked at his eyes, so bright with that faith he talked about. Sweat beaded on his brow and over his lip, sand clung to his clothes, and his hair was windblown. All at once she saw Russell Bennett in a new light. He was unlike anyone she’d met before, yet in a sense, he reminded her of her father. Not in looks or even personality, but in qualities. Strong and determined, yet also kind and wise. Even noble.

  She closed the book and moved to put it back in the box when he held her elbow, stopping her.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Rutledge, but I believe I’ve earned the right to sign that book.”

  She raised her brows and handed him the book and the pencil. Lovie wondered about the man who signed the book with his tight script, then closed it with a sigh of satisfaction.

  “You’re a Peter Pan, do you know that? All pirate hunts, good deeds, and sailing about.”

  Russell chuckled at that. “We’ve all got a little pixie dust on us,” he replied. “Or I hope we do. Life would be very dull without it.” He handed her the journal. “Time to bury the treasure.”

  “Hmmm, maybe I got that wrong. Perhaps you’re Hook.”

  “Who does that make you? Wendy or Tinker Bell?”

  “Wendy,” she replied, opening the box. “Definitely Wendy.”

  “The mother. It fits,” he replied.

  “The storyteller,” she said.

  Laughing, they closed the metal box and lowered it into the hole. After they covered it back up with sand, Lovie scratched an X on the sand with her finger.

  “Just in case Cara gets here,” she said, patting the sand.

  Sea Turtle Journal

  July 24, 1974

  Russell talked about faith today. How believing something is possible against all odds is what gives us the strength to persevere. Isn’t that what we’re doing with every hatchling we release? We have to have faith that this hatchling will escape the jaws of predators, avoid the tangle of dangerous nets, and find its way home. We have to believe the beach will still be here, waiting to welcome her, as it was for her mother, and her mother before her.

  Fourteen

  August’s first week brought a heat wave with no end in sight. It was just after nine and the morning sun was already brutal. Russell and Lovie answered a report of tracks and had been walking toward the northern tip of the Point from their access path for thirty minutes. Russell stopped and whipped off his hat, then wiped his brow with his sleeve and said irritably, “This was a wild-goose chase. There aren’t any tracks up here.”

  Lovie’s lips were dry as she scanned the beach. It stretched out like a desert, and the air was heavy with humidity. “I feel like I’m Lawrence of Arabia. Where’s my camel?”

  Russell dug into his backpack and pulled out a thermos. He put it near his ear and shook it. “I have a sip of water left. Maybe. Here, you take it.”

  He was being gallant, and she let him. She took a careful sip, just enough to moisten her mouth. It felt like drops of rain on an arid desert. She handed it back to him. “There’s enough left for you.”

  Grateful, he tilted his head back and swallowed the last of the water. “We should head back and get out of this sun. It’s a scorcher.”

  They picked up their gear and began walking toward the Jeep at a determined pace.

  “Speaking of heading back,” Lovie said, broaching the subject that had been plaguing her thoughts at night since he’d mentioned leaving the other day. “When do you think you’ll actually be leaving here?”

  “When the turtles do. Sometime late this month.”

  So soon. Lovie knew that he was leaving at the end of summer, but that had always seemed so far away. As August began, the end loomed close. She kept walking, one foot ahead of the other deep in the soft sand, but her heart felt like it was dragging. In contrast, he’d sounded like it was just another date, just another job to finish. Of course her feelings were one-sided.

  “But,” she began, “we’ll be having hatchlings until late in September. I thought you’d be here till then.”

  “I wish I could, but classes start at the university.” He took a few steps and then said with some p
ride, “They’ve made me a full professor.”

  Lovie stopped short. “Congratulations!”

  “Thanks. It’s a pretty big deal for me. I’ll have to fly back and forth a few times starting next week to prepare for the semester,” Russell continued. “But this team is a well-oiled machine now. With you at the head, you’ll all do fine.”

  Lovie felt a sudden regret for her efficiency.

  “I apologize that I’ll have to leave you to finish up the data for the season,” he told her. “I’ll have enough information to render an opinion to the resort in an official report. We both know that there are significant numbers of nests up here at the northern end, and the builders will have to take precautions to protect the nesting beaches. So at the end of the month, officially my job will be done.” He turned to face her, smiling gently. “But if I know you, you’ll want to dot every i and cross every t on this report.”

  Lovie felt a sudden sadness rush over her with the force of a wave, tumbling her emotions. “I didn’t realize you’d be leaving that soon.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She didn’t reply. Of course he was leaving soon. That had been clearly understood from the day she met him. He had a job to do here that lasted for the summer. He’d render his opinion with the report and fly back to his life, one that did not include her. She had to keep that in the forefront of her mind and get past these clearly inappropriate feelings she was developing for Russell Bennett. They were immature, unrealistic, and dangerous.

  “Olivia,” he said gently, bending closer to look at her face, “are you all right?”

  She quickly wiped the sweat from her brow, disguising her emotions. “Yes, I’m just hot. And a little off-kilter. Nixon is resigning from office today. I don’t regret his leaving office, but it’s still oddly upsetting.”

  “Yes, it is,” he agreed. “The whole nation is holding its breath. I have an idea. Let’s go for a swim and cool off. I mean, we’re here at the ocean, right? Isn’t that what people do to cool off?”