Charleston Rowena Mudd

Ghosts. This place is crawling with them. And I’m not talking about your run-of-the-mill goblins à la Stephen King or Steven Spielberg or even Edgar Allan Poe.

I’m talking about energy and memory. About the simple act of rounding a street corner and suddenly being twelve years old again, watching an ambulance blaze past, ignorant of the fact that it is ferrying your father to Flagler Memorial Hospital, where upon arrival he will be pronounced dead. About a pink spray of crepe myrtle plunging you back to a sun-dappled afternoon in your childhood when you and your mother lay on a chenille spread in the backyard, watching the sky, naming the clouds, the blossoms and afternoon light casting lacy shadows across your mother’s pretty face. About how Murmur’s clothes in the laundry hamper, her stubbed cigarettes in the clamshell ashtray, the scraps of handwoven cloth in the wicker basket, and the pair of sneakers crusted in sand by the front door all evoke her essence, her living warmth, her refusal to truly die. About how every time the phone rings—her phone—I jump and then have to fight the threat of tears because my brain hurls me back to the early-morning call from Dr. Z, who informed me in sonorous tones that my best friend had died in an accidental drowning. Yes, energy and memory—the knowledge that the past isn’t through with me—are driving my highbrow, Harvard-educated self half-mad.

The land and seascapes are gorgeous here, but they, too, glow with ghostly auras. I find myself traveling to and fro around St. Augustine with blinders on, trying not to notice what has been torn down and what has been built in its place. Gee, there used to be a charming little beach cottage on that dune. Now a five-thousand-square-foot monstrosity looms over flora, fauna, water. And there, across from Fort Matanzas, my parents and I picnicked on the beach against a backdrop of undisturbed coastal plain, land that offered habitat to all manner of wildlife: bobcat, dune rattler, rabbit, meerkat, skink. The dunes and scrub are gone now, replaced by condos and tennis courts and swimming pools. Nowadays, the predominate wildlife chumming these shores are weekend drunks.

I feel as if I’m being batted about in a world of strange gravity, a universe where flowers bloom underground and blood lies motionless in the vein. I left these windy shores to escape the South and the ghosts of my upbringing. But when physical reminders—tattered remnants or spanking new monoliths—tap at memory’s door, I am, by turns, grateful and distressed that I have returned home.

But whose home is it? Whose space am I inhabiting? Whose life am I living? I occupy Murmur’s house. I sleep in her bed. I listen to her CDs. I pour through her photo albums. I drink her beer. I tend to the many details of her will. I watch the sunrise from her front porch and the sunset from her back. I use her towels and her sheets and her soaps. I haven’t even bought my own toilet paper yet. I exist in the shadows and frames Murmur left behind. Remember what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The heat and impact of the A-bombs were so intense, people evaporated. But their shadows—the outlines of their corporeal souls—remained behind, testaments to the tenuous thread that tethers us to life, on sidewalks and city streets and park pathways.

Without any real sense of who I am—the labels by which I defined myself are all extinct; I’m not a scholar, or a student, or a theologian, or a southerner, or a northerner, or a bride—I find myself swallowed up in Murmur’s wake, in the ripples she left behind. Everywhere I look, I see the outline of her soul.

         

Yes, Murmur may have left this earthly plain, but her influence lives on as a haunting of epic proportions. She floats and furls amid my scattered heart, enjoying—I think—a hearty laugh at my expense. She must have had quite a time writing that will of hers, leaving her junk heap of a workhorse truck to her lazy, no-good, child-abandoning ex-husband, her guidebooks to Father Diaz, and that dump of a bar to me.

Salty’s. Let us just say that nothing like it exists in Cambridge. With the dissolution of my engagement, with no living relative to rely on, with no true friends, when I fell from the lofty snobbery of well-educated Boston, I landed with a splat. What am I going to do with a bar? Especially this bar. Salty’s is a tacky testimonial to Old Florida, pre-Disney Florida, the Florida of coffee-stained, nicotine-sticky, dashboard-faded, uncluttered road maps that led visitors to the underwater big-fish wonders of Marineland, the amazing gators at the Alligator Farm—which climbed slides and zoomed down them, to the delight of Yankees and schoolchildren alike (that has since been deemed cruel, and all they do these days is lie around in fetid water, waiting for a possum carcass to be tossed their way as they grow fatter and fatter—and farther south, into the Central Florida citrus hills, whose geometry and color needled even the most urban visitor to contemplate the beauty agriculture surprisingly inspired, and maybe the adventuresome traveler would gas up at the full-service station and press on even farther, venturing to the bottom of our world—a watery land many a Florida native had never seen—a place where mosquitoes and good fishing and Miccosukee Indians held at bay the now-ubiquitous pesticide-soaked golf courses.

Structurally, Salty’s is a garage—a wide garage, to be sure—and on cold winter days, the sliding doors are kept closed in a futile attempt to beat back the nor’easter gales. Otherwise, the place is wide open, sandy, shady, and horribly hot if the wind has died.

Situated on A1A, at the base of the Crescent Beach ramp, its clientele is an eclectic mixture of folks who rub shoulders only within the confines of this dilapidated but remarkably functional icehouse. On weekends, the place jostles with locals, old salts, surfers, families on vacation, and marine biologists from the Whitney Marine Laboratories just south of Iris Haven.

Junk covers the walls and all of it is for sale. Rubber flip-flops, beach towels, beach balls, suntan lotion, sunscreen, aloe vera cream, Frisbees, batteries, postcards, cold drinks, chips, beef jerky, Styrofoam coolers, sun visors, baseball caps, University of Florida crap (UF Gator this, UF Gator that), big dill pickles. If you are going to the beach and can’t find what you’re looking for at Salty’s, you don’t need it.

Furthermore, it is widely known that Salty’s serves the coldest domestic beer (not a single bottle of imported beer has ever crossed this bar’s threshold) within a twenty-mile radius. There is no wine on the menu, although the license allows for it. Rumor has it that Murmur feared wine would class up the joint. But being a good businesswoman and not wanting to ignore the tastes of some of her female customers, she stocked wine coolers.

The finest thing about Salty’s in my humble, worldly opinion is the food. The kitchen serves up the greasiest hamburgers this side of Eden, grilled hot dogs with sweet relish, and on special days—traditionally, only Murmur could call a day special—grouper sandwiches. On weekends, breakfast is served: bountiful omelettes with cheese grits and biscuits and strong chicory coffee. Every Sunday morning, the hungover scientists from the Whitney descend, chasing their coffee with Budweisers and Bloody Marys they prepare themselves.

Let me, this very moment, drive home a point that should already be startlingly obvious: I had no earthly idea how to run a bar, nor any real interest in learning the ropes. Even though I had reentered the belly of the beast (I hadn’t seen a Rebel flag displayed on a pickup in five years, and, I can tell you, when that open Jeep zipped past, the Stars and Bars whipping in the breeze, I choked back both shame and anger), my intention was to remain intellectually stimulated, socially and politically aware, and sophisticated, with an earthy flair. How I would manage this feat of intelligent grace as a barkeep was beyond me. But I was fairly certain it would involve being rarely present.

My plan was to throw the entire ordeal into the capable hands of Hazel Bing, Salty’s veteran bartender, a woman I knew through reputation only. Murmur raved night and day about her. Indeed, on several occasions she said that without Hazel, Salty’s would have most likely run to ruin years ago. Murmur described her as kind, gracious, generous, beautiful, funny, and smarter than a hungry rattlesnake. What could go wrong? With Hazel on my side, I’d be able to steer clear of the bar’s day-to-day drudgery. This would allow me the time I needed to wind my way through the stomped-on, broken-in-two organ I once called my heart—a necessary task if I were to recover some semblance of self-confidence and self-control. Once the task of rebuilding my heart and soul was accomplished, I would—if my conscience allowed it—sell Salty’s and begin anew. Perhaps I’d chuck theology and pursue brain surgery.

By the time I had gathered the spine and nerve to think about my responsibilities vis-à-vis Salty’s, I had been home for three weeks. My biggest accomplishment was fulfilling Murmur’s wish that she be cremated and that her ashes be kept in a small stoneware crock her grandfather had thrown himself. The ashes were to remain there until the weather improved—when spring had sprung—at which time we were to conduct an ash-spreading memorial service in front of her house on the beach. In a letter dated one month and two days before her death, which she put on file with her attorney, Ms. Cate McGowan, she expressed these wishes and added the admonition that she didn’t want any variety of priest present. My, how far we both had journeyed from our Catholic roots. Still, I am, by turns, grateful for her guidance and needled by her prescience.

My return home was an astonishingly low-profile affair. The first person I phoned was Edith. I informed her that I needed some time alone before I’d be ready to see anyone. She didn’t like it, but I think she understood. I hoped that she would put the word out to leave me alone, but evidently she skipped Dr. Z, who stopped by unexpectedly, offering his help with the cremation arrangements and cautioning me that most people who worked in funeral homes were necrophiliacs and that I would really have to put my foot down. Other than for the phone call informing me of Murmur’s death, I hadn’t spoken to Zach in any appreciable way in years. I had forgotten how weird he was. So when he told me to put my foot down with the necrophiliac morticians, I began to laugh insanely, but inside my gut was ripping apart. And, lastly, I steered clear of Salty’s for as long as I could possibly manage, because of who all and what all I might find there. Ghosts come in all shapes and sizes, including that of old boyfriends and the women who stole them from me. Besides, I hate to fail. But I couldn’t shake the post-traumatic stress–induced certainty that failure was the only card on my table.

Unbeknownst to me, while I hid out in Murmur’s house and dutifully tried to meet the letter and intent of her will, Salty’s had remained open, not even closing for a day or two in the immediate aftermath of her death. I would learn later that since no one knew what would become of the place—the existence of Murmur’s will was a surprise to everyone—Hazel Bing and the regulars held a wake of sorts and voted to keep the place running until the law, the bank, the IRS, the ex, or whoever shut them down. They decided that was what Murmur would have wanted. They surely didn’t expect a stranger—namely, me—to walk in some sunny Monday and announce that she owned the joint.

But a Monday morning it was, sunny, with a definite bite in the late-January air. Even though I had endured four Boston winters, the North Florida cold—so wet and breezy—still shocked me. I sat on Murmur’s plush couch, with its menagerie of pillows that gleamed like topaz squares against the agate cloth, nursing my second cup of coffee, telling myself that I must ditch the half-full Coca-Cola bottle she’d left sitting on the kitchen counter (mold) and the ashtray festering with stubbed-out Virginia Slims (stink). I had left them there—just the way Murmur had, just the way I’d found them when I first walked through her front door—in a desire to stop time, to memorialize, to honor. I looked at her mermaid mobile slowly spinning in a mist of cobwebs and then her kitchen sill with its collection of cobalt glass bottles that pinched and released rays of early light, and I said to the house, “Shit.”

I walked over to the kitchen counter, poured the Coke down the sink, and tossed the bottle, the ashtray, and its contents into the trash. The illogical constellations of guilt and grief engulfed me.

“Sorry, Murmur,” I whispered, realizing that those of us left to struggle and flounder in death’s wake really must make a conscious decision to move on or drown. And I wondered, Is that what Murmur did? Is that why she made a will and penned a letter to her attorney detailing her wishes? Did she know her time was up? Had she made a decision—watery and vague, but a decision nonetheless—that she’d best set her affairs in order? How does a healthy thirty-five-year-old woman come by that sort of precognition? Does the soul recognize that the light is about to be snuffed out? Does God, that Grand Jokester, ruffle through your dreams, seeding innuendos of death?

I scanned her one-room wonder of a house, aching for her to walk through that door and say everyone had gotten it wrong. I wanted time to reverse itself, for it to shuffle to a stop and then step backward, backward, backward until it stumbled into New Year’s Eve and Murmur in her boat in the Iris Haven River.

“Shit,” I repeated. Nearly a decade had passed since Blossom’s death and yet reminders of her life were still everywhere—photos on every wall, table, and bookcase, even a lock of blond hair tied with a blue ribbon hung from the archway leading to the kitchen. How in the world did Murmur stand it? I wondered as I swept through the room, placing each image of my goddaughter facedown.

I passed Desdemona—that figurehead from a long-ago shipwreck that Murmur kept poised by her rocker, positioned in such a way that her wooden gaze forever looked out to sea—and paused. Using my shirttail, I wiped off a sprinkling of dust that had settled on the bridge of her nose. And with that, a thought: a good cleaning. That’s what Murmur’s house needed. Maybe it would be an exorcism of sorts. I’d scrub away the residue of the past, forcing both immovable and movable objects to shine. The floors would smell like lemon and the linens the sea. Everything—no matter its size or import—would get buffed, polished, washed, or otherwise affirmed. My instincts were like mushrooms casting spritely spores of renewal all about. It would be some kind of start. Of what variety, I was unsure, but that was one of the things my mother had taught me: “When in doubt, no matter what you’re wavering about, if you can’t kneel, then clean.” I would drink good bourbon and play John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters and Memphis Minnie really loudly in Murmur’s honor. And I would clean and drink and maybe get drunk and cry.

But first—without question—I would cast one more demon behind me. I would drive down to Salty’s and introduce myself and inquire as to Hazel Bing’s whereabouts, and I would start to set Murmur’s business in order.

         

As I changed clothes four times, unsure of how I should present myself upon laying claim to Salty’s, my mind tumbled through all the people I might run into. There was my old beau, blue-eyed Ulysses Finster, a commercial fisherman and one fine lover, who had dumped me for Beulah Masters. Beulah was from an old Minorcan family that took no prisoners. Once she set her sights on Ulysses, I knew it was over. And while losing him hurt my pride, I didn’t remain wounded for long, since I had plans that didn’t include anybody from around here. Then there was Rusty Smith, an old school chum who claimed to be an environmentalist but who had made millions selling North Florida coastal scrub to developers. Oh, and let’s not forget Helen McAlister, a queenly member of the St. John’s County Chamber of Commerce, a good old gal who called black people “niggers,” Italians “wops,” Cubans “spicks,” Jews “kikes,” gays “fags.” If there was a racial slur anywhere within a ten-mile radius, she’d be sure to use it. And all of these people were going to laugh behind my back, telling one another they’d all known I’d be back, that there was no way no how I’d be able to hack it up north. I decided upon the first pair of jeans I tried on—they were brand-new and still smelled like the store. I checked my teeth for any residue of the toast I’d eaten for breakfast. I told myself it didn’t matter what anybody said. I had come home for Murmur. Only Murmur. My return had nothing to do with not hacking it.

As I drove the fifteen minutes from Iris Haven to Salty’s I amazed myself. Why, on God’s green earth, was I this nervous? I was nearly a Ph.D. I’d nearly completed my dissertation. I’d nearly graduated from one of the finest schools in the country. I’d nearly married a very smart man. My eventual matriculation was a distinct possibility. And Salty’s was just a bar. A silly little bar given to me by my best friend, either as a joke or a ploy to bring me home. As I rounded the bend at Devil’s Elbow, I squarely settled into my dilemma. Murmur’s ghost could haunt me until doomsday and I’d be all right. She could cloud my peripheral vision with the memory of her laughter and infect my blood cells with incurable grief. Still, I’d forge on. I wasn’t scared of Murmur; I just wanted her back. But those other skeletons—they inspired fear, dread, self-loathing. I could feel them like a hot breeze on the back of my neck, rattling around, rising up from my past, demanding my attention, my time, my guilt. What did they want? Absolution? Forgiveness? Loyalty? I hit the tattered outskirts of Crescent Beach, fearing I could never appease them.

         

I arrived at 9:58 A.M. The place was locked up tight. I peered through the front window. A woman—let us say in her fifties, a peroxide blonde with a bosom to match—stood behind the bar, smoking, watching TV. I tried to push open the side door. She glanced at me, stone-faced, and then back at the tube. Well, that wasn’t very polite. I knocked on the glass and flashed a quick smile. She shook her head. We’re not open: She mouthed the words, exaggerating each shape, as if she were sure I was a moron.

Pointing at myself the way a person would if they were trying to communicate with an orangutan, I said slowly, taking care with each fragile syllable, “I’m Charlee.”

She rolled her eyes, shook her head the way people do when they’re faced with a hopeless situation, picked up her cigarettes and coffee cup, and disappeared into a back room.

Somebody in an old ruby Buick sped by, honking. A minivan family with Ohio plates pulled into the public parking lot and began unloading beach chairs, coolers, a boom box, and sundry other items. It looked as if they were moving in. A small boy kept screaming, “Mama, I have to pee! Now!”

The father, with his stork white legs, wrinkle-free khaki shorts, and penny loafers complete with brown socks, looked totally unprepared for his Florida vacation. The mother, on the other hand, was ready for nuclear attack: beach cover-up, chemical tan (which actually should be called a chemical orange, since the people who use that stuff appear jaundiced), floppy hat, shades, enormous striped bag, and jewel-encrusted flip-flops. The four children squealed and squabbled. The little boy who needed to pee was jumping up and down, holding himself. Mom looked in the side-view mirror and ran her tongue over her upper lip.

Dad shouted, “Shut up or we’re leaving.” Then he rummaged in a cooler, retrieved a Bud, flipped the pop top, took a good long fortifying swig, wiped his mouth, and said, “Let’s go.”

By now, it was 10:08 and the place still wasn’t open. The sign on the door indicated that Salty’s opened at ten o’clock. Eight minutes late. I’d have to make a note of that. I banged on the door and shouted, “Hey, it’s Charlee Mudd. Let me in!”—to no avail. So I said, To hell with you, too, then followed the family down to the beach. The wind was brisk and I was cold. Toll takers were set up at the ramp, and I wondered why the folks from Ohio hadn’t simply driven onto the beach, rather than lug all their stuff from the parking lot. I asked the tollbooth operator, an elderly woman with Pepto pink lipstick and leathery skin what time Salty’s usually opened. “Well, their sign says ten. But they mean eleven. Eleven Crescent Beach time.”

“That’s no way to run a business,” I said, to which she responded by shrugging her shoulders.

With my arms wrapped tight for warmth, I walked toward the Atlantic. The rollers were breaking evenly, in rhythm with the wind, and I knew that even though the water was cool for my tastes, the surfers would be unable to resist the even, slow swells. I turned around and surveyed the beachfront. So much had changed. Where once there had been dunes and sea oats and pin oaks shaped by the easterly breeze, condos rose, piercing the eggshell sky, their empty-eyed windows mocking those of us who equated progress with destruction. As I stood with my back to the wind, looking first north, then south, I decided every single condominium on every single shoreline in America should be named Tree Hugger, You Can’t Win.

A late-model brown Chevy Caprice with Virginia tags barreled onto the beach and lurched to a stop. Before the driver, a seventy-something man with thin gray hair, had turned off the motor, an equally old passenger in the back flung open the door, toddled a few steps, bent over, and picked up fistfuls of sand, a look of wonderment lighting his gnarly face. He watched as the wind whipped the white crystals from his fingers. He patted the sand, laughed, and tossed more handfuls through the sky. I thought, Oh my gosh, this beach, this ocean, this place, has transformed him into a child. I fell prey to my sentimental streak, batting back tears as the visitors from Virginia—one woman, two men, all of them in the twilight of their lives, linked arms and stumbled in a ragged circle, laughing and reconnecting with—I decided—a youthful joy they thought they’d long ago lost.

         

The sun had traveled to God’s belly button—that’s what my mother always said about high noon—before I ventured back to Salty’s. The wind had turned my carefully tossed strawberry curls into Medusa ringlets. I smelled like a dead fish that had been dipped in perfume. Thanks to an errant wave and my lack of attention, my jeans were wet from the knee down and I squished when I walked. But I no longer cared about making a good impression or what the skeletons might say (my confidence was fleeting, I knew, but at least I’d found some). I’d had a lovely stroll along the beach, and my irritation at having been ignored upon my arrival at Salty’s had not abated. Indeed, it had mushroomed. So while I am an extremely pliant person when unperturbed, once annoyed, I can get very, very grumpy. The cold, the wet, the lack of dignity—all of it took on greater significance in light of the snubbing. Oh yes, I had a thing or two to say to the peroxide blonde.

Two pickups were parked out front. The garage doors were open. A black man and a bearded white man sat opposite one another. The peroxide blonde held court between them. Thank God, I thought, I don’t know any of you. Both men drank beer out of icy mugs. The bar was U-shaped. I pulled up a stool on the short end.

The peroxide blonde tossed a Budweiser coaster in front of me. Rhinestone studs—pink, white, and baby blue—sparkled along the outer curve of her left ear. She was, I suppose, the kind of woman that some men call “handsome,” meaning it as a compliment. Here’s the snapshot: big bosom, good legs, well preserved, bones like a bull, the air of a good-natured middle-aged whore.

“What can I get you?” she asked, looking not at me but at the TV. I had expected a southern accent, but what I heard was South Philly.

“Budweiser. Draft.” Why blow my cover right away? It might be fun to sit here incognito. I might learn a thing or two. The two men shifted on their stools. The bartender set the mug down, wiped her hand on the towel tucked into her waistband, and eyed me as she backed up to her position between the men. The white guy sneezed, wiped his nose with his giant hand, and rubbed it across his T-shirt. My, how couth. I sipped my beer, miserable, wondering how best to confront the peroxide babe. Rude behavior is inexcusable. I set my jaw hard and looked at her straight on. She turned away. The black man studied his nails. The white guy huffed as if it were the end of the world and he didn’t care. No one looked at anyone. I became increasingly self-conscious. My crazy hair, my wet jeans, my body odor. No one would take me seriously as the boss of this joint. No one would respect me. Murmur, what have you gotten me into? The four of us remained locked in an unnatural silence—I was obviously ruining the party. The only sounds were A1A traffic and the country twang from the CMT channel the bartender was glued to.

After about five minutes, which ticked by with the speed of a boulder on flat ground, the white guy erupted. “Well, fuck, man”—he punched the air—“whaddya gonna do?”

I had no idea whom he was talking to. And I was afraid. I glanced over at the black man, whose skin was much lighter than that of my former fiancé’s. He rubbed a small scarred hand over his knobby cheekbones—the tip of his middle finger was missing—drained his beer, stared into the empty mug, and said flatly but with iron resignation, “Sell the boat. Head south.”

“Now, Paul Hiers, you are going to do no such thing.” The bartender pulled a cold mug out of a cooler and poured him another draft. “You’ll hate it down there,” she said, exchanging the empty mug for the full one.

“Yeah, asshole, what do they have down there that we don’t?”

Paul Hiers took a healthy drink, let it settle, looked out at the road, and squinted his Byzantine eyes. “Jobs.”

“Huh!” The white guy slapped the bar, as if Paul Hiers’s answer was the most fascinating news he’d heard all day. He swung around—his beard was kinky and not as clean as I would have liked—and planted his elbow on the bar. I believe I saw him teeter. “What do you think?” he demanded, pointing a half-cocked finger in my direction.

Despite my syncopated heartbeat, I was determined to play it cool. Seemed the peroxide blonde was the least of my worries. I slowly lifted the mug to my lips and took a deliberate sip. I knew I was being tested, and I didn’t much like it. In fact, the part of me that wasn’t scared found it boring. Academia is ripe with such schoolyard behavior. I tried to bluff my own damn self by silently wagering that this guy—mean eyes, bushy beard, and all—was no match for me.

“Silas,” the bartender said in a tone that was both scolding and amused.

“What? I’m just trying to get the lady involved in the conversation.” His face opened in mock innocence.

I rubbed the tip of my ear, acting as if I were lost in thought. Then I shot a sideways glance. “Well, before I tell you what I think, I need to know the problem.”

“Is that right?” An eager smirk cracked the darkness of all that crazy facial hair. He sat up straight, stared at the ceiling while his barrel chest expanded with the intake of a deep breath. Then he took turns with his unfriendly gaze, aiming first at Paul Hiers, then the bartender, and finally me. “Paul Hiers here is a fourth-generation shrimper. It’s all the motherfucker knows how to do. And just because we’ve fucked up the fishing around here and there ain’t no damn shrimp, he wants to throw in the towel and get himself a job carrying luggage for rich white folks visiting Miami. But what he don’t know is that nobody is gonna give his black ass a job because he don’t speak S-span-nole. Ain’t that right, Paul Hiers? Ain’t that the problem?”

Paul Hiers nodded as if his head were a vertical metronome. “I reckon that’s about it.”

The bartender watched me through the swirl of her cigarette smoke. Silas leveled a deadly glare. Paul Hiers thoughtfully nursed his beer.

“Well, sir,” I said to Paul Hiers, trying to muster my old southern moxie, “if this gentleman’s assessment of your dilemma is accurate, then I have to say with all due respect, you’re fucked.”

Even the bartender cracked up. Silas, his glower suddenly transformed into a puckish glow, howled as he again slapped the bar. Paul Hiers finally looked at me straight on and grinned.

“Honey, what’s your name?” the bartender asked.

“Charlee Mudd. I grew up around here and, well, I’m looking for Hazel Bing.”

The bartender’s eyes betrayed a sudden tear. She rushed over, grabbed my hands, and said, “Oh my God, you’re Charlee?”

I’m sure that for a moment or two my face betrayed me as it dropped into that elongated, slack-jawed repose of the dumbfounded. “Don’t tell me. Hazel?”

“Yeah!” she said, smiling wide, her teeth perfect and white except for the glint of gold crowning a molar. “Jesus H. Christ, it’s good to meet you.”

“You, too,” I said. And we both meant it. We meant it for Murmur. Because she had loved both of us.

         

We ate greasy hamburgers that afternoon and laughed a lot as we recounted our favorite Murmur memories. Customers came and went. I was thrilled, because I didn’t know a soul. The afternoon took on a rosy glow. Croley, an eighteen-year-old sun-bleached surfer showed up for work at four o’clock. His duties were many: bar back, cook, janitor.

When Hazel introduced us, he shook my hand and said, “It’s wonderful to meet you, ma’am. I’m so sorry for your loss. We all miss Murmur terribly.” Other than for the “ma’am” reference, I was immediately charmed.

Silas remained bombastic, with an edge that glinted mean, defensive, and overly friendly, having the scintillating speed of light spinning off a disco ball.

Paul Hiers struck me as shy, kind, with lots to hide. And I wondered, but did not ask, why he traveled to Crescent Beach to drink, when he lived thirty minutes north up in Lincolnville.

Hazel seemed eager to share with me all she knew about the operational end of Salty’s, and I promised her that I wouldn’t change a thing. “Why fix something that’s not broken?” I asked.

“Exactly,” she said. And then she leaned against the bar, sighed, and whispered, “At least she went out the way she wanted. I mean, she loved that river, that place. It would have killed her to die, say, on the highway or in a hospital.”

“Shit,” Silas said, and his face clouded.

“Shit what?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“No, what?” I leaned over to him. He scared me, but there was an intensity playing right below the surface that pulled me in.

“It’s just that there ain’t no fucking way she died by drowning. Not Murmur. I don’t believe it for one flat second.”

“Oh, don’t start this again, Silas. Please don’t,” Hazel said, shutting her eyes as if to force away his words.

I reached over and patted her arm. “No, no, I want to hear why he thinks that. Silas, what do you mean?” I couldn’t tell him that I knew it, too, that my friend, who grew up loving that water, swimming in it as if she were half fish, could never have drowned. But I couldn’t give voice to this because I could not deal with the alternatives. Maybe Silas could do it for me.

He clenched his teeth and his fists opened and closed, opened and closed, as if he was struggling not to punch something.

“Silas?” I said, bearing down.

“There’s just no fucking way, okay? The gal knew how to swim. She knew the river. Shit, I wouldn’t be surprised if she could have walked on water.”

I felt myself—my fears and intuitions—slip toward something dark, something so awful, I refused to acknowledge its existence. “But Dr. Z said it was an accidental death. When he called me, that’s what he said.”

“Look, Silas,” Hazel put both hands on the bar and tilted her head the way birds do when they are trying to listen to a faraway cry. “She went out there on that river on New Year’s Eve, got drunk, fell overboard, and that’s that. You’ve got to let this go.”

“She’s right, Silas,” Paul Hiers said from his side of the bar. “Even if it isn’t what happened, she’s right.”

Silas’s eyes lit with an old anger, an ancient anger, one that I suspected would never be extinguished until he felt the truth was served. I looked at the three of them, not understanding the undercurrents of this conversation. “But what about Dr. Z?”

“Oh, fuck Dr. Z. He don’t give a flying flip.”

Croley, who’d been lingering toward the back of the bar, piped up then. “You know, a lot of people say it was suicide. That something caught up with her and she just couldn’t keep going.”

As if I were having an out-of-body experience, I heard myself say, “That’s not true, Croley. Murmur could never do anything like that. She wouldn’t. It had to be an accident. Somehow, it was an accident.”

Hazel breathed out hard and whispered, “Great.”

I heard a commotion behind me. Before I could check it out, the commotion sat down two stools over. He jingled a large ring of keys, mumbled under his breath, and took out a pen. He reached for a bev nap and scrawled something on it. His unkempt gray-streaked sandy hair smelled of Ivory soap. With more than his share of a five o’clock shadow, he appeared to be a portrait in studied sloppiness and noise. Yes, his hair was a mess and so was his face, but his smooth hands and neatly trimmed nails betrayed him. This guy was no blue-collar bloke.

“What’ll it be?” Hazel asked, reverting back to her stone face.

Paul Hiers whipped around on his stool, suddenly fascinated with the country-music video on the now-muted TV.

Silas stood up. He was a big guy. I didn’t know what he did for a living, but his arms and chest brought to mind those beefcake boys of professional wrestling. And he was tall enough that he eclipsed the Florida Gator banner hanging on the wall behind him. He threw down money on the bar, then stared at the smooth-handed man with all the disgust one might convey when being forced to gaze upon an open sore.

The man steadied his focus on the far wall.

“I didn’t think so,” Silas said, hurling the words as if they were fists. Then he walked out, patting my shoulder as he passed.

“How much do I owe you?” Paul Hiers asked, not turning around.

“Don’t worry, I’ll put it on your tab,” Hazel said. “Billy, I asked you before: What will you have?”

“A Coors, I guess.”

I caught Hazel’s eye. I mouthed Billy Speare? She gave one quick nod. Paul Hiers stood and said, “Later, ladies.”

“Bye, sweetheart.” Hazel winked as he walked out.

I don’t know if it was Silas’s insistence that Murmur’s death was not an accident, or his violent reaction to Billy Speare, or Croley claiming it was a suicide, or my inability to cope with the fact that Murmur’s last boyfriend had just stridden into the bar, but what is surely true is that the earth was rumbling beneath my feet. I had to get out of there. The day had gone on too long and the sunset was being crowded out by ugly questions that I could not, would not, contend with.

“We’ll talk later, Hazel,” I said.

“Sure, honey, anytime.” She set Billy’s beer in front of him and took his money.

I walked out into the chill air of the dying day. Why hadn’t I introduced myself? Why didn’t I simply walk back into the bar and say, “Hello, I’m Charlee, Murmur’s best friend. She told me all about you”? I looked over my shoulder. Hazel was reaching for the remote. Croley was mopping the floor. And Billy . . . well, I had the strangest sensation that he was one of those ghosts—a reminder of a less-than-gentle past—who would extract from my flesh something excruciating, something damning, something that would propel me into an abyss both hollow and dark.