Page 30 of The Beachgoers
twelve
— Then —
10 Years Ago, Early September
The Search
THE OLD GABLED COTTAGE IS in shadow at this early hour. It sits on a large yard leading to a rocky bluff. Across the water, the sun just crests the horizon. The low sky there is cast in shades of red as the day begins.
That view of the sun rising over the sea is visible through the beach house’s east-facing windows. There’s early noise, too. Hungry seagulls cry as they swoop over the rocky ledge. A gentle sea breeze carries their morning calls into the quiet rooms.
The man sleeping begins to stir, as though he hears them. He’s lying on an adjustable hospital bed in the living room. The bed is where a sofa should be—the sofa apparently moved into the dining room to make space. On the mantel above the stone fireplace, get-well cards stand one after the other. None of the cards are humorous, or lite. Many have caring messages penned inside. Those cards leave little room for everything else on the mantel—for the hurricane lanterns there, the pewter hourglass, the carved seagull mounted on mini-roped pilings, the tin stars propped in the center.
But most notable in the dim living room are the critical items within arm’s reach of that hospital bed. Beside it, a small table is covered with a glass of water, a box of tissues, loose printed papers and a dusty lamp. Crutches lean against that table. A bathrobe is strewn across the foot of the bed. A wheelchair is nearby, beside an upholstered club chair.
New noises suddenly fill that cluttered room. Louder noises that drown out the cries of the feeding gulls. These noises come from a room upstairs. It seems like someone is opening and closing drawers, again and again. Pacing. Shoving aside hangers in a closet. More drawers. Something thudding on the floor. The sounds are enough to get the man in that hospital bed to sit up. And when he tosses aside the sheet, you understand the wheelchair and crutches. The lower half of his left leg is freshly amputated. Bandages still cover the stump.
The man sits on that hospital bed and runs his hands through his sleep-messed hair before reaching for those crutches. Carefully, he positions them beneath his arms and slowly stands. Once he does, he first looks around, as though gauging which path to take. To him, the living room must look like an obstacle course with its end tables and club chairs and electrical cords and bookcase. So he stands still, wearing a loose top over pajama shorts—with half the left pajama leg cut off. A few bandages show beneath that sleep shirt, too. They’re taped across his back, up onto his shoulder. Between the dressings on both his back and his amputated limb, it looks like those piecemeal bandages are just about holding all of him together.
His face, though, is different. Instead of bandages, there are faint scratches on his skin. A fading bruise. And along his jaw, a raised red railroad-track scar left behind when extensive stitches must’ve been recently removed.
Standing there, the man glances up toward the room above. The muffled sounds still come. After a long breath, he moves the crutches ahead of him and makes his way through the living room. Once in the kitchen, he sort of leans against the counter with the support of one crutch. With his other hand, he fills a glass with tap water, then opens a prescription bottle and shakes two pills onto the counter. All the while, those muffled thuds fill the room. So after tossing the pills in his mouth and washing them down with the water, the man turns and somehow does it. It’s not easy; anyone can tell by the sight of him. His fatigue shows. Some pain does, too. But he ends up at the staircase further down the paneled hallway. Stopping at the bottom step, he leans on his crutches and looks up to the second floor.
Watching him, you might think he just can’t do it—can’t make that climb. From the looks of his exhausted, shadowed face and his bandaged body, it seems likesomethinghurts, but he’s not sure what.
Seems like when he woke up, some nightmare began again, on repeat.
Like the day holds no promise.
Which might be true, because instead of going up those stairs, he just leans on his crutches. “Dad?” he yells, his voice raspy with sleep. He waits, then says more. “What the hell are you doing up there?”
“Be down in a minute, Jason,” a man’s voice calls back from some room off the upstairs hallway.
This Jason waits right there. He drops his head and listens. In a minute, he finagles his crutches, leaning carefully on one and reaching up to touch a bandage on his shoulder. The bandage is damp, obvious by the stain where something seeps beneath it. The bandage needs changing.
Instead, pressing down on the crutches’ handgrips, Jason lifts his right foot to the first step, and brings up the crutches then, too, as he hoists himself. And stops. And continues in this way—one leg, one step at a time—to the top of the stairs. There, he stops again, slows his breath, then continues on his crutches down the hallway to a bedroom—where the noise is coming from. He stops in the doorway and looks around. The bedroom windows are open, and damp early-morning sea air drifts in. His eyes stop on his father then, bent low in front of a dark dresser. A wooden lantern filled with seashells is atop that dresser, along with some personal things: a belt, coiled up; spare change; a bandana.
But his father is actually on his knees. His hands are sliding beneath shirts, in between them, patting them as he rummages through the dresser’s bottom drawer.
“Dad,” Jason says from the doorway where he’s simply leaning on his crutches.
His father stops moving. But he doesn’t turn. Doesn’t speak.
“What are you doing?” Jason asks.
Now the man turns. “You shouldn’t be up here,” he harshly says. “Your leg, Jason.”
“Eh, screw it. And I heard you banging around. Tell me what you’re doing.”
His father turns back to the open drawer. “I can’t find them.”
“Find what?”
“My dog tags. From the war. I looked everywhere.”
“Dad.” Jason doesn’t say more until his father looks back at him again, then gets up and sits on Neil’s bed. “You probablyburiedNeil with them,” Jason goes on. “He always had them on. Or else you just misplaced them.”
His father shakes his head. “No. I didn’t,” he says, his deep voice unwavering. “Igavethem to Neil about a week before the accident. He called me one day and asked me to meet him at the Vietnam monument.”
