Thwarted

When I get within five feet of the squirrel in the middle of the backyard, and he still hasn’t moved, I resort to drastic measures, but even throwing my empty ginger ale can in his direction doesn’t seem to faze him. He starts a little in irritation as it lands in the grass near him, and then proceeds to scamper at a leisurely pace between the trees and under the fence to the neighbor’s yard where he turns back to me as if to ask, “Satisfied, you meanie?”

“Did you come out here just to save that squirrel’s life, Scott?” he says, standing on the back porch with an air rifle in his hands and an exasperated smile on his face.

“What do you think?” I reply with a grin.

Decorative Sasquatch

In an effort to get out of the house, we take a walk on the bike path meandering behind and between the yards of the large suburban homes in Katie’s old neighborhood, with fences and trees guarding immaculate lawns surrounding us on both sides.

Just off the path, we see a tiny, thin vine that seems to be growing out of nothing, attached to nothing, but upon more close examination we notice the almost invisible corkscrew tendrils that anchor it to the dead pine needles littering the ground, and underneath each little leaf, a miniature yellow flower growing.

We continue our walk down the path until we reach a dead end, but as we come around a corner, someone has placed a small statue of a Bigfoot in the traditional pose (walking with a sort of loping gait, hunched a little, looking over his shoulder like he expects somebody to ask him to help him move a couch and he wants to be out of there before it gets awkward). Both of us have been watching Planet of the Apes movies, and so we both jump and yelp a little when we first see it, like we think it might start demanding equal rights.

Pose and Reality

We pose by the water while Katie’s dad takes a photo. I tilt my chin, try to remember to stand up straight, to look into the lens, to smile so it doesn’t look like I’m grimacing. Loud music blares from a speaker where two people sit resting who will, in a moment, be dancing to entertain the throngs of tourists crowding the docks.

We walk back toward the car and pass a child crouching in a fountain as torrents of water firehose onto him, and as we pass, he closes his eyes, moves deeper into the cascade, and seems to disappear almost completely.

Denial

I’m floating in the surf, my head and shoulders just above the surface, my brain waves smoothing out in rhythm with the rollers, when Katie’s brother catches my attention from a few yards away. “They’re coming to get us out,” he says, pointing behind us to the beach.

Katie and her dad are on the shore, the sky behind them piled high with thick, heavy, black clouds, grumbling with thunder.

I turn away, back to the ocean, staring with longing at the tide just starting to come in.

A Disturbance in the Force

“Scott,” says Katie, poking her head around the open sliding glass door, “stop reading the internet and come out here."

I dutifully step out into the darkness of a humid South Carolina night, and am greeted by a cacophony of voices: frogs, hundreds of them from the sound of it, all of them ribbiting and creaking and chirping in a metallic, croaking polyrhythm across the lagoon out behind our beach house.

Suddenly, after we listen to them for a few minutes, all of the voices cut off, and Katie and I look at each other curiously. Then, a hiss rises from the lagoon, and we hear a gentle drumming on the patio roof as it begins to rain.

Riding the Waves

There’s a sensation right before the wave comes: like I’m going to be pulled up the glassy green face of it and shot into the sky with the foam.

I push off the bottom and kick like mad, one arm in front to steer, one arm by my side, and I can feel the wave pick me and amplify my momentum. There’s a sound, too, rushing water, surging blood in my ears, and the feeling of flying, of being carried by a force so much bigger than me, lifted by a hand that could accidentally crush me without even knowing that I’m there.

When I’m done, I look back, forty yards or so back to where I started, to see Katie and her brother laughing in the surf, and I stand up in the shallows and start walking back to do it all over again.

Close Enough

‘Pressure Drop’ plays over the resort sound system as I sneak into the restroom during my afternoon on the beach, and I pee and sing along quietly, continuing to do so afterwards as I wash my hands until a man steps up next to me.

“You know who this is?” he says in a Caribbean accent, pointing up at the overhead speaker.

Of course I blank on the band the moment somebody asks me, but I punt, saying, “I know it’s from ‘The Harder They Come.’”

He considers this, then shrugs and nods, like, sure, that’ll do.