The Topsail Accord (14 page)

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Authors: J T Kalnay

BOOK: The Topsail Accord
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“
What were you talking about?” I ask as we stand between our cars in the shadow of the lighthouse.
“
His home. In Costa Rica. He says you should go there for a couple of weeks to learn to surf.”
“
And you? Does he want you to come too? He thinks you’re very beautiful. Mas bonita.”
“
He thinks I should go with you.”
“
Sounds like a plan,” I say.
She pauses. Looks like she is considering it. Weighing it, sifting it, deciding how it would fit into her life. She decides but does not share the decision with me.
“
Thanks for the lesson,” I say. “It’s the most unique birthday present I’ve ever received.”
“
You’re welcome. Run tomorrow at seven?” she asks.
“
Not tomorrow. I have to leave in two hours for Wilmington. I have business there tonight and tomorrow morning,” I say. “But I will be back tomorrow by supper time.”
She nods her head, signaling an acceptance of a fact that I have not asserted.
“
But you still have time for the lighthouse right now right? For a little while? It’s open today, and we can go all the way to the top. We can look at the waves, where you made your amazing ride.”
“
Yes.”
“
And you’ll be back later tomorrow right? Because you know today is Tuesday and tomorrow is Wednesday and then the next day is Thursday right?” she asks.
“
Trust me. I think of almost nothing else. And if I could reschedule this trip I would.”
She smiles. Happy that I have remembered and happy in my admission.
She smiles and once again I accept that smile and I accept everything that it promises and all about which it warns. I accept it all as I accept her long kiss and her hands around my neck.
“
Seven on Thursday morning,” she says. And she is off towards the lighthouse, pulling me in her wake.

 

From the top we can see for miles in every direction. We can see ships all the way out in the shipping lanes, we can see Cape Fear. We can see the sound and the Intracoastal Waterway. We can see all the way into town, and up to Camp Lejeune. We see the patterns in the waves and the surfers and the boogie boarders. We see one large ominous shape that must be either a shark or a whale.
“
I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” she says.
“
Me neither,” I answer, looking into her eyes.
She kisses me one more time. A kiss filled with longing and heartache and passion begging to be released.
“
Till Thursday then,” she says. And she is gone. To where I do not know. But I suspect it is to her cottage.
I fight the overwhelming urge to follow her to her secret place. To follow her inside. To kiss her and hold her on a Tuesday even though she has promised me Thursday. I fight the urge, fight it, defeat it.
“
Si. Mas bonita.”
Shannon

 

He cannot come for dinner and he cannot come at all tomorrow. He has ‘business’ in Wilmington. On his birthday. I can only imagine what kind of ‘business’ must take him to Wilmington. Probably blonde business. The kind of business for which he has to stay the night. And yet still I have promised him Thursday. Have thrown Thursday at him as I have thrown myself at him. As I have never done, and as I was unaware I could or would ever do.
But he will be back for a beach run on Thursday morning. I have brazenly promised him Thursday. Promised with my words, with my touch, with my eyes, and with my kisses. Yet still he has ‘business’ in Wilmington. Monkey business. I am such a fool. But I don’t care for once.
I could feel how much he wanted me. And I want him as much or more, even knowing about his ‘business’ in Wilmington. Who is this lust filled woman? Who have I become? Or who has this fifty year old man revealed?
I carry a folding chair down to the edge of the water. The tide is going out and I will chase the water south and east with my chair. Sitting at the very edge of the water and waves is one of my most favorite things to do. I never feel smaller, or more connected to the immensity of it all.
At the edge of the ocean, where sea meets lands and both meet the sky. I remember a poem like that, something that a doctor or a writer wrote for a ballerina he met in Sardinia. I will find it and read it later. The edge of the sea. Where clams burrow quickly and where shore birds dart to catch them before they can burrow too deeply. I sit and think as the endless and timeless procession of waves roll shells and sea glass and tiny black fossilized shark’s teeth onto the beach. Here I sit and watch as pelicans dip in formation just inches above the long rolling surf. I see the waves just a little differently than I did before the surf lesson, and before the lighthouse. See them more individually, as I did when on the board in the water, and also more collectively, as I saw them from atop the lighthouse as a group of living things. I see them as things that are both separate and distinct, each with a single purpose, and each part of the greater whole that is constantly shifting with the tide.
I see Joe after his perfect ride. He was happy all on his own. He did not need my approval or my praise or even my presence. This is one way that I think about people, a thing I try to observe. Whether they can be happy for themselves and by themselves. Or whether they need someone else to be happy or sad before they can be happy or sad. Can they feel the wonder of the Atlantic sunrise and the glamour of a Lake Erie sunset and raise their own silent prayer of thanks and be content within themselves? Or will they always be looking for someone to share it? Someone to tell that they are happy and why they are happy instead of just being happy.
I am happier with the people who can be happy by and for themselves. Who don’t need to tell me about their happiness. Like Joe was after his ride. He did not need me to be happy. He was complete in his own moment. Even so, my being there added something because what was a spectacular moment all by itself was shared and the sharing made it something more.
It made it his and it made it mine and it made it ours. Was that ‘our’ first moment? Was his ride on his birthday ‘our’ first moment?
No. Our first moment was when we agreed to do the surf lesson together. We both decided. We agreed, made a deal, made a bargain, with offer and acceptance and consideration and all the indicia of a valid contract, a meeting of the minds, even though there was no writing. His ride was three things. His joy in his own ride, my joy in his joy, and the shared connection between us. The connection when he touched my hand before the next ride and thanked me for the lesson. The connection to his toothy smile on his salty face in the morning Atlantic sunshine.
The tide has gone out a little more. I move my chair further down the slope, closer to the ocean, following the tide.
Joe

 

There are different ways to drive to Wilmington from my home near North Topsail. I can drive down the island and across the lower bridge, or I can take 210 out to 17 and drive the wider, faster highway.
I choose the slower island road today. So I can pass by the lighthouse again and relive our hour there. Am I really already reliving a date from this morning?
Really?
Has my life been so empty or so unvaried that one red Lycra splash guard and a few kisses have me reliving a date just hours later? She is beautiful, sexy, educated, intelligent, alluring, and so many other things. But aren’t there other people and other things that have and do capture my attention? Apparently not today.
As I drive down the slow beach road to Wilmington I look at each small cottage and wonder if it is hers. I look at the cars in the driveways and carports and try to see if I see hers.
I have heard the word obsession. Some people have even applied it to me and my running and my coffee business. But those are nothing like this. Yes they are intense and consuming, but it is like comparing a mosquito bite and a shark bite. Obsession. Who was the man that was asking about Shannon? Was he a danger to her? Was it her ex? I have started looking at the people behind the wheel when I see cars with Ohio plates. She told me I was a good running partner. But on at least half of our runs she accelerates and leaves me and goes off on her own then picks me up on the way back. Is that the proper usage of the word ‘partner?’
The houses roll past with the ocean to my left and the sound to my right and Shannon receding farther and farther in the distance.
Shannon

 

I have lingered long over my coffee this morning. There is no rush to get out the door and run today. I am waiting for the tide to go out, and can wait because it is cooler this morning and because I have the entire day to myself. No family, no Joe.
I plan to run, then clean, then to work on my latest paper about what I have learned from my digs and cores and fracking in the shales in Ohio. What I have learned is somewhat incompatible with generally accepted theories about oil and natural gas formation timelines and this paper may, therefore, be somewhat controversial. I suppose that it is okay to be controversial at this point in my career as I have already been proven correct about where the oil and natural gas are located in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. I have found 500 million barrels of oil, the largest find in American history. And I have found natural gas. Also the largest find in American history. So I suppose I have some credibility.
I found both where no-one thought there would be any. Yes we have to frack the natural gas, but no we don’t have to frack the oil. We just need to drill the right kind of wells, like the wells that are producing on my father’s farm.
All his neighbors should have been rich as well, should have benefitted from my find. Only one of them wanted to invest to help me drill the exploratory wells and pay for the finishing touches on the new drilling technique. All the others just sold us their mineral rights for cheap. So they are not becoming wealthy, even though they benefit from the projects I am paying for in the area. But these farmers are too stubborn to renegotiate their deals, some still denying that the oil and gas are there, some saying they don’t want the kinds of problems that kind of money brings. They are proud and say they don’t want my ‘charity’ when I offer to increase the royalties from their mineral rights.
But about my paper, the facts are the facts. I have checked and double checked and had blind second and third sources check the data and the dates. The recovery locations have been impeccably preserved and documented. The data speaks for itself, if you are willing to listen to it and not try to force it into some framework.
Things are what they are. People are what they are. No matter what we want them to be, or think they might be or ought to be, and no matter how we try to craft them or spin them, things and people are what they are.
So what am I? What are my facts? And what am I doing with Joe? An experiment? That is threatening to consume me, no matter how calm I appear on the outside?
I work on my paper until my tide clock tells me it is nearly low tide, the perfect time to run on this beach. I save my work and head out the door. It is only a few hundred yards from my little sound side cottage to the ocean beach, and only a few hundred more yards to my house. The island is so narrow here that I am on the firm wet sand in no time.
Every morning I must decide whether to run east and north up the beach or west and south down the beach. Usually the wind decides for me. I always run into the wind first.
Today I let Wilmington decide for me. I turn east and north putting as many steps and miles as I can between me and whatever ‘business’ has taken him to Wilmington.
I don’t like this feeling. This jealousy. This unfounded jealousy. I have no claim on this fifty year old single man. I have kissed him, and made clear that I will bed him on Thursday, but I have no claim, have made nor received no promise, no vow. But still I am jealous of whatever has disrupted my plans. I had planned to run with him today. To run down to the lighthouse and race up the stairs and kiss him again with the infinite blue sky all round and above and the equally infinite blue and green and foam tipped Atlantic below and to make love to him atop the lighthouse.
But he is in Wilmington, and I am jealous.
Joe

 

Caitlin died the day after my birthday twenty years ago. She died twenty years ago today. Colleen died nineteen years ago today. By her own hand. Every year I visit the lawyers and Board members of Caitlin’s Foundation on this day, her anniversary, the day the trust was born, the day after my birthday.
It started small, with just a few thousand dollars that Colleen and I and our parents and a few friends donated on her behalf. We set it up at UNC Wilmington where she had been treated, to help pay for part of the treatment for another child, or maybe two. We never thought it would grow into what it has become. We just thought that we might be able to help a kid, and a family.

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