A Ford in the River. Charles Rose

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.