From Aransas Evening
Rosie had just set up her stool and easel and was arranging her painter’s box when she looked out to scan the horizon and was startled to see seagulls swooping down and poking at the legs of a body stretched face-up on the dry sand. “Oh my,” she said, and then quickly decided that what she saw was none of her business, but the shrieks of the gulls kept drawing her attention and when she looked again she began to think the worst— that perhaps this was a water-logged cadaver that had washed onto the shore after a tumble off a cruise ship or a drilling platform. She looked up and down the beach to see if someone else might also see the body and make the appropriate call, but seeing that she was alone, she knew she had to do something. So anchoring her easel against the breeze, she began to take a slow, circuitous walk toward the body, moving around so as to approach it from the feet. As she came closer, the gulls scattered but continued their cat-like shrieking from overhead. Stepping forward and seeing that it was a man, she nudged the sole of his bare foot with her own sandaled foot and stepped back when she heard a moan and saw his fingers move. She jumped back another step when his head lifted and his eyes fluttered open. And then she saw his face.
“Sam?!”
Sam sat up and rubbed his neck. He looked around at where he was and then he looked up at the silhouette of Rosie’s head, which had blocked the sun like an eclipse.
“Oh . . .” he said, and then he instinctively reached for his shoes, which had fallen out of his hands and were laying at his sides.
“What are you doing here?” Rosie asked.
Sam drew his legs up and looked around some more, still clearing his head. “I must have dozed off.”
“Well I was about ready to call 911. I thought you were a corpse washed up from Mexico. Here . . .” She held out her hand to Sam, who took it, and she leaned back against his weight to pull him onto his feet. Still disoriented, he dusted himself off and then looked at his wrist as if he wore a watch, which he never did. “Any idea what time it is?”
“I left the shop at about eleven, so it’s probably twenty after or thereabouts.”
Sam sighed. “Well, that’s one way to lose an hour.”
“Or worse. You better check your pockets. The gulls were getting ready to pick you clean, and I don’t know who was here before I arrived.”
“I don’t have anything anyone would want.” Sam looked across the sand and saw Rosie’s easel. “How’s it going today?”
“I was just getting started,” she said, and began walking back to her easel with Sam following. “I’d offer you a chair but I only have the one.”
“That’s okay. I probably should go home. That’s where I was headed anyway.”
“Well now that you’re here, why don’t you stay awhile.” She laughed. “And since you don’t mind sleeping in the sand, I think you’ll be okay just sitting.”
Rosie gave Sam a teasing look that drew a smirk across his face. “Well, when you put it that way . . .” he said, and he sat back down in the sand.
Rosie sat down on her stool and began arranging things and then she looked out toward the water and saw nothing that caught her interest. Sitting on the sand beside her, Sam sniffed a little at the gusty wind, and that gave her an idea.
“Actually . . . it might be nice to have a human in a painting for a change,” she said. “Would you mind posing for me so I can at least sketch in some rough details?”
Sam swallowed down a grumble and inhaled a deep sigh. “Be nice,” he thought, and then he said, “So . . . where do you want me?”
“How about just sitting the way you’re sitting now, but maybe five yards out in front of me.”
Sam moved out to where she pointed, and then when he had sat down for the second time, she slowly turned him with her voice until she got the profile she wanted. “And . . . hold still. That’s perfect right there.”
Sam sat with his knees drawn up under his cupped hands and his head tilted back a little. The wind coming from the south swept back his sandy-gray locks. Sitting in that position, he closed his eyes to drink up the warmth and his head bobbed slightly.
“You’re not going to sleep again, are you?” Rosie asked as she worked on the outline of Sam’s head and shoulders.
“No, just soaking up the sunshine.”
Rosie looked and painted, looked and painted, roughing in the details of Sam’s face: the bushy eyebrows, the stubbly chin, the crow’s feet pointing toward his silvery blue eyes. Without Sam knowing it, she took the opportunity to study and learn his grizzled looks. And that led to questions that she wanted answered.
“So, Mr. Sam, looking at you sitting there, I’d say that you were probably born and raised on this very beach. I’d say that, except that when we first met you said something about how so many people in Port Aransas, yourself included, have come over on the ferry and never gone back. So . . . you care to elaborate on that?”
Sam dropped his chin, let go of his pose, and slumped into himself. Wasn’t this the reason he had avoided all the shops and most certainly hers this morning, he thought. Wasn’t he trying to steer clear of conversations and interrogations? But, again, he told himself to be nice. He took a deep breath and offered a small serving of his story.
“You’re right, I’m not from here. I came over on the ferry just like you. I came from Dallas looking for something new or at least different. This is home now, and I doubt seriously I’ll ever take the ferry back across other than just for a visit.”
Rosie continued to paint as she talked. “Dallas, huh? That makes us birds of a feather doesn’t it?”
“Only if you’re talking about us not being from here. I don’t think your life in Houston and mine were much the same . . .”
“That’s all I meant,” she interrupted, the irritation rising in her voice. “Everyone in Texas knows that Houston and Dallas are big cities but they’re worlds apart. And . . .” Rosie’s voice trailed off as she went to work painting the corner of Sam’s eye.
“And . . . what?” Sam probed, and then caught himself as he realized he’d extended a conversation that he didn’t want to have.
“Oh . . . I was just going to say that everyone has different reasons for running from those different worlds.”
“Running?” Now it was Sam who was irritated.
“Running, leaving, it’s all the same. Could you . . . could you just go back to your pose for a moment. I’ve almost got what I need.”
Sam raised his head again and Rosie noted how the sun had moved in just the few moments they had been talking. She reached for new colors to bring out the brighter highlights on his brow and the darker shadows under his chin. She noticed, too, how the sun lit up the filaments of hair that could be seen at the top of his loosely buttoned shirt. She felt herself blush at the sudden wave of unexpected intimacy. She’d painted feathers on birds, but never before the hair on a man’s chest.
Sam cocked his head a little. “Did you say something?”
“Oh, no, just pondering the change of light and colors.” She ducked behind her canvas to hide the red in her cheeks. “It just keeps changing and it’s hard to keep up, but . . .” and Sam didn’t hear anything else for a few moments until she said with a finality in her voice, “There.”
Sam cocked his head again. “Done?”
“For now,” she said, and started putting things away. “I’ll fill in the rest with my memory and imagination.”
Sam stood up and dusted himself off. “Can I see?”
“Yes, but only when it’s finished. A painter never shows her unfinished work, and especially not to her subject.”
Sam let out a long sigh of false dejection. And then taking a more honest tone, “Help you to your car?”
“That’d be delightful,” she said. “I’m just over there.”
“Oh, you mean that big red Cadillac over there? The only one on the beach, and the only one in town, for that matter?”
Rosie laughed as they walked toward her car that indeed was impossible to miss, especially parked up against the dull face of the dunes. “You’re a sly one, Mr. Sam. And a good sport to sit for me.” She popped open the trunk and loaded everything in, including her canvas that she had covered loosely with the remnant of a bed sheet. “I’d love to repay you in some way. Perhaps buy you a cold drink at your favorite watering hole?”
Sam stood quietly for a moment. “I appreciate the offer, but that’s one of those things I had to leave back in Dallas.”
“Good for you.” Rosie fiddled with her keys. “That’s one of those things that came across with me on the ferry. I’m working on sending it away . . . but it’s hard.”
In those words, Sam heard again the vulnerability and hurt that Rosie carried—and that she tried so hard to hide with her enthusiasm. Sam saw her shiver a little.
“Instead of a drink, how about a cup of hot tea in the trailer?” he asked.
As Sam poured two cups of hot tea, Rosie thumbed through his small stack of records. “Oh, can we listen to this one?”
“Sure.” Sam set the cups on the table and then took the record that she had selected: The Greats of Classical Music.
“So you like the classics?”
“I do,” she said. “My parents started me out early going to the symphony in Houston.”
Sam set the tone arm down on the first track, Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” and then sat down across from Rosie. She had already mentioned her parents, so he asked about her childhood.
“I grew up in River Oaks, and basically I was raised to be just like my mother. That meant taking all the lessons—music, ballet, art. I was a total a flop at ballet— and I do mean flop, as in falling all over the floor. My teacher didn’t know whether to pick me up or just leave me there and use me as a dust mop. And while I love music, I didn’t have the patience for piano. I wanted to be outside, and that’s how I came to love painting. I’d see something and want to copy it, and before I knew it I was making little pictures, giving them as gifts to friends and strangers.”
As she talked, the first plaintive notes of Debussy’s “Clair de Lune” filled the trailer. Rosie set her teacup down and rested her chin on her hands.
“You like that one?” Sam asked.
“Yes, very much.” She looked down at the table, trying to hide the moistness in the corner of her eyes.
“What . . .” he started to ask her, but she touched his arm and whispered, “wait,” to pause his question. She closed her eyes and listened. He watched her for a moment, making note of the natural beauty of her face, brought out by less time spent in front of the makeup mirror and more time in the sun painting. He hadn’t noticed that before and that intrigued him. And then feeling like a voyeur he turned away and looked out the window.
When Debussy was finished, Sam let the next track play, but he turned down the volume.
“That was nice,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Where did you go . . . just now?” he asked.
“Oh . . . just back about thirty years, when I was young and in love. We were on our honeymoon, driving up through the Piney Woods to Hot Springs, and that song came up on the cassette player. With the sunshine lighting up the tops of the pines, it was dreamy. We held hands like we’d never let go, and that became our song.”
Sam nodded.
“Somewhere along the way we quit holding hands and we forgot the song.”
Sam exhaled. “I know how that goes.”
“Care to tell me more?” Rosie’s voice was empathetic and not at all nosy as it might have been when they first met.
“Not especially,” Sam said.
Rosie gave him a come on look, but Sam didn’t budge. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“Can’t . . . or won’t?”
The phonograph needle slid into the center of the record, and Sam stood up to lift it up and turn it off. He sat back down across from Rosie. “Dave knows the whole story. It’s why I’m here. You can ask him, if you wish, but . . . I can’t tell it again. I’m through talking about it.”
“Okay, Sam . . . okay.” Rosie looked at her watch. “I suppose I better go home. Got an artist from Rockport coming early tomorrow. Wants to show some paintings in the gallery.”
Sam perked up. “That’s terrific, but don’t give up all your wall space. Save some room for your own work.”
“Gotta finish’em first,” she said, “but I appreciate the encouragement.”
Sam walked Rosie back to her car. “Bye,” she said as she climbed in.
As Rosie pulled slowly away from the dunes and rolled down the hard-packed sand of the beach road, Sam acknowledged her right to make her own place on the island. She, too, was a refugee.