Beach Music

The send-off for Eddie James was neither private nor an exclusive affair.

Every Saturday night during the summer, the town of Folly Beach scheduled a Shaggin’ on the Shore dance shindig at the end of the reconstructed pier that extended a thousand feet into the surf. Jordan James had piggy-backed his son’s going-away party onto the festivities, which was the proper thing to do since almost everyone in town knew Eddie’s story. And because… well, why not?

Several local bands rotated performances throughout the summer, and this night it was a quartet that billed themselves as The Bonefish Boogie Band. Connor had heard them a couple times at various clubs back when he had played congas in the Bob Marley tribute band, and their set list was mostly the classic beach music that was part of South Carolina’s cultural DNA. Connor had tried it once with Danielle, who had explained that songs with a four/four “blues shuffle” rhythm and moderate-to-fast tempo were most suitable, although at the time he had no idea what she was talking about.

Nor had it mattered.

He and Julie opened The Sandbar as usual at five o’clock, and then Buddy filled in for him a little after eight. Because it was a farewell to Eddie James, neither had a problem with him being gone for the rest of the evening, although Julie did add it to the rapidly expanding IOU list. Connor arrived at the party a few minutes late, and by the time he reached the end of the pier, the celebration was in full swing.

Jordan James was standing near the rail with his current and fourth wife Lynette, a can of soda in his hand. A good sign. Eddie was seated in a motorized chair next to him, and on the other side was Shirley, who was James’ first ex and Eddie’s mother. The last time Connor had seen Eddie was at an event at Shirley’s home on Isle of Palms last March, and he’d been zipping around the massive back patio in his new wheels as if he was doing laps at Darlington Motor Speedway.

He seemed more subdued tonight, although his wrist was cranking the joystick back and forth, causing the chair to pitch forward and then roll backwards. As if waiting for a flag to be dropped so a race could start.

The band was playing a cover of Alabama’s “Dancin’, Shaggin’ on the Boulevard,” and Connor watched as a dozen couples slow-danced in what seemed to be one fluid motion. The distant lights of Charleston lit up the sky, casting just a faint glow along the bellies of a few clouds to the west.

And there, in the middle of the dance floor, Danielle Simmons was dancing with a man Connor did not know. Following his lead, holding his hand, shuffling through a few simple steps, swinging into an over-the-shoulder twirl. He felt the blood drain from his head as he floated back to the first time he’d set eyes on her six, maybe seven years ago. She’d knocked on his front door unannounced and, when he’d casually opened it, she had hit him square in the face with a heavy shot of pepper spray.

Seriously: Danielle Simmons? Shagging with a stranger on the old pier here in Folly Beach? What were the odds?

At that same moment Jordan James touched him on the shoulder and said, “Isn’t that your girl out there?”

“Huh?” Connor replied, the old high school heartache known as jealousy causing the synapses in his brain to misfire as she seemed to move about comfortably with some douche bag he didn’t know. Wearing a crisply ironed aloha shirt and creased white shorts, Tevas with socks.

“Danielle. Right over there.”

“Yeah…looks like.”

“Wonder what she’s doing here,” James continued.

The song was coming to an end, and Connor knew one of several things would happen next. Danielle and the guy would stay out there and go for another dance. They’d drift to the edge of the dance floor and he’d offer to buy her a drink. Or they’d walk arm in arm off into the night, and he’d never see her again.

Then James dug his elbow into Connor’s ribs and said, “Go out there and cut in.”

“What? I can’t do that—”

“You have to. It’s kismet.”

“What?”

“Fate. Your destiny. Don’t let it slip away.”

“But she’s with a someone,” Connor protested.

“Hell with that, Jack. Just do it.”

Connor knew the song, knew there were only a few bars left, and his moment was either now or never. An entire lifetime sometimes hinged on a mere fraction of a moment, and he was on the verge of losing this one. Maybe forever.

He glanced back at Mr. James, who had a knowing glint in his eyes, then felt a surge of courage he hadn’t experienced since Iraq. Probably not even since junior high, when he had marched up to Marcia Finch in the school cafeteria and asked her to the eighth-grade dance.

He slipped out of the crowd and edged up to Danielle just as the band played its final note. Without knowing what the next song was going to be, he leaned in and said to her, “May I have the next dance?”

If she was surprised to see him, she didn’t show it. In fact, a twinkle flashed in her eye and he sensed the faintest hint of a grin on her lips. Then she took his hand and said, “Why yes, Connor, that would be lovely.”

Connor. Just as she’d always called him. Never Jack.

Then she gave her partner a nod and he slipped away, and Connor was left with the distinct feeling he’d just been hosed.

The next song turned out to be a cover of the Zac Brown Band’s “Toes,” a little more up-tempo than he’d anticipated, but Danielle swung him right into it. It took him a moment to get the metre right, and he made a great show of pretending he was leading her, rather than the other way around. But then they fell into the old rhythm that had been a part of their lives, before events had turned deadly and ripped them apart.

At some point Connor murmured the words “I’m sorry” into her ear, which caused her to touch a finger to his lips.

“Just dance,” she said.

They danced.

The song ended, and they danced again. Connor neither knew nor cared what the song was, the only important thing being that they were there together, enveloped in each other’s arms at the end of the pier, a quarter of a mile out in the middle of the ocean. The glow of Charleston in the distance, the universe winking its approval at them overhead. Everything in that moment seemed as perfect as perfect could get, their tempo precise as they both seemed as young and innocent as they’d ever been.

Danielle spent the night at Connor’s place above the bar. They sat up talking for hours, Connor once more apologizing for almost getting her killed and promising never to put her life in danger ever again. She said she accepted his apology and believed she could trust him to keep his word, but Connor knew the proof would be in his future actions. And he would not get another chance.

They were seated on the couch in his cramped living room, Clooney draped across their feet. Danielle gently rubbed his ears, and he responded by letting his tongue hang out, dribbling long strings of drool to the floor. Clooney, not Connor.

“I’m so glad this old guy is still here with you,” she said.

“I’m glad you’re here with me,” he replied. His teeth were still sore from where he’d tasted gravel the night before, and he tried not to wince when he spoke. “I can get used to this.”

“One step at a time.”

“I’m good with that.” They both fell silent for a bit, and then a bit more. Then Connor said, “Everything about tonight was a set-up, wasn’t it? You being there, and all.”

“I’ve never stopped thinking about you,” was her response. “About us.”

Could have fooled me, he felt like saying but didn’t. “How did you pull it off?” he asked instead. “I mean, how did you know about tonight?”

She flashed him a smile, then gave him a gentle kiss on his right eye. “After I saw you that night with the horses…well, I realized I was jealous, you being with that woman, and all.”

“That woman really was the widow of a man who was shot while I was transporting him back to jail,” Connor insisted.

“I know. Mr. James explained all that to me, later. But at the time…well, I know I’d told you that I never wanted to see you again, after I almost died—”

“Because of me,” he interrupted.

“Yes, because of you. I did my best trying to forget you, hoped that I’d never run into you. Because I knew that would expose the lie I’d been living all this time.”

“What lie was that?” he wanted to know.

“I’d convinced myself that I didn’t love you anymore,” Danielle confessed. “Then I saw on the news that a bunch of paramilitary shitkickers had almost killed you.”

“Proving once again that my word is worth shit,” Connor said. “I broke a lot of promises to a lot of people.”

“Something you really need to work on. But it was then that I realized you could have died without me telling you how much I loved you, and needed you in my life.”

“Even though I’d been stupid and almost got myself killed.”

“Even more so, oddly enough. Anyway, I did a little checking, found you were still working for Jordan James, so I gave him a call.”

“When was this?” Connor asked.

“Just in the nick of time,” she said. “By the way, why is his Bentley parked downstairs?”

Connor still couldn’t accept that the luxury motorcar was his, nor did he know what he was going to do with it. He didn’t even know how much gas was in the tank. He’d walked the six blocks to the dance party, and Danielle had driven them back after they’d said their goodbyes.

“It’s a gift,” he replied.

“What? He gave that thing to you?”

“Dropped it off yesterday while I was out,” he said. “Paid a full year’s taxes and insurance on it, too.”

“But what are you going to do with a Bentley? Don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s so…not you.”

“You’re right, and I really haven’t had time to figure that out. In fact, I’ve already been offered a job at a place that works with disabled veterans outside Athens.”

“Athens, Georgia, or Athens, Greece?”

“Georgia,” Connor said. “Until tonight, when I saw you out there dancing with that schmo in that goofy shirt.”

Danielle giggled nervously as she squeezed his hand, then said, “That was Mr. James’ idea. Mason’s a carpet installer who works at a flooring company he owns, asked him if he could come to the thing tonight.”

“Part of the whole set-up?”

“His idea,” she admitted. “But I have a much better one.”

“And what’s that?”

“Come work with me.”

“Do what?”

“Work with me,” Danielle repeated. “I’m setting up my own mobile vet service, working with farms down in the Edisto area. I need someone who isn’t afraid of large animals, and you did great with my ponies that night.”

“What about the rescue ranch?” Connor asked.

“I’ll continue to do that,” she replied. “But there’s a real need for a vet who can work with cows and goats and pigs.”

“And horses.”

“Exactly. Anyway, that’s my idea. Just think about it, will you?”

“Say please—”

“Don’t push it, Connor.”

“You know something, Connor?” she said much later as they lay there in the darkness of the room. The sun was about an hour away from slipping through the slats in the window blinds, but neither of them cared. Right now, day was night and night was day.

“What’s that?”

“I think this is the first time we’ve ever slept together that we didn’t, well, actually sleep together.”

Not necessarily his idea, but he’d honored her wish to take things slowly. To be sure things were right. “Does that make us old?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “It makes us…us.”

“What does that mean?” he asked, propping his head up on his elbow. It was a rhetorical question and he suspected he knew what she meant, but he wanted to hear her explanation. Reassurance from her that what he was feeling was us, too.

“More than just steam and sex between the sheets,” she said with a giggle.

“I like steam and sex between the sheets.”

“Me too,” she replied. “But sometimes inaction speaks louder than action.”

“Well, if you say so, who am I to argue?”

She giggled at that and pecked his cheek, then said, “You really are the last true gentleman in Charleston.” An old reference to an earlier time, before the twists and snags of life made things complicated.

Sometime after that she drifted off to sleep. Connor lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling, for the first time in a long while feeling at ease and safe in his world. No midnight triggers that jolted him from his sleep and caused him to jump at every noise outside in the dark. No blasts of phantom grenades in his ears, no screams of dying men toggling his brain. He thought back to that English class he’d taken in community college so many years ago, recalled the words of a poet whose name he couldn’t recall: “The past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, nor just for tomorrow, but in the here and now.” He was pretty sure the same poet also had said, “Come clean with a child heart. Laugh as peaches in the summer wind, let rain on a house roof be a song. Let the writing on your face be a smell of apple orchards in late June.”

As he lay there, Danielle snuggled warm and hard against his side, he breathed in all those things, inhaled all those senses. Content, at ease, in the cradle of peace for the first time in a very long time. Grateful for all those who had come into his life, determined to keep them there. Safe and secure.

As long as forever lasted, coming at him one day at a time.

—End—