Michael Reno Harrell. Singer, songwriter, storyteller.

Hey Y’all,
                                               On The Beach

         She parked her old Volvo in the public lot at Huntington Beach State Park and sat there in the late morning sun listening to the Tams on a cassette her nephew had burned her from her vast vinyl collection of 60’s beach music. She finished her Winston, opened the car door and raked the fire off onto the asphalt, then dropped the butt into the ashtray with at least a half dozen packs worth of its deceased kin. Switching off the ignition, she reached for her beach bag on the passenger seat and tugged at the door handle. The hinges creaked and groaned as she pushed the rusted door open with her bare foot and climbed out onto the warm pavement.

         She opened the trunk and rummaged around among plastic fishing tackle boxes, bag chairs and grocery sacks full of empty aluminum cans and grabbed the handle of her paint box. The canvas board that she had bought the week before had an interesting oily looking stain on one corner from a leaking bottle of transmission fluid, but she figured that she could incorporate the blemish into the sunrise scene that she had in mind to work on. The folding easel was finally found hiding behind the tire that odd little man had changed for her last spring. She noticed that the tire still had the roofing nail nestled there in what was left of the tread. She would need to stop off at a station and get that fixed one of these days.

She walked across the dunes and turned north toward the Murrells Inlet jetty. It was late October and hardly a soul was on the beach. She could see the tracks where a couple of fishermen had dragged their carts of gear that way earlier, but save for a few tourists looking for shells down toward Litchfield, she had the whole expanse of sand to herself.

She sat up her easel and clipped the canvas board to it so the morning breeze wouldn’t send it flying. She dug around in her bag and found the cover that she had torn from the Myrtle Beach Vacation Guide and a clothespin and clipped the cover to the edge of the canvas board. On the cover was a photograph of a glorious sunrise over the Atlantic. Knowing that she would never get out of bed in time to experience such a sight first hand, she had snagged the cover shot at the motel where she worked during the season so that she could copy the artwork.

She unscrewed the cap from a tube of indigo blue paint and squeezed an inch of the goo onto her pallet. Selecting a brush, she dabbed at the paint, squinted seaward and began to inscribe the horizon across the board. As she reloaded her brush she noticed the thermos in her beach bag and, taking the handle of the brush in her teeth, poured a cup of the Bloody Mary that she had mixed before leaving her trailer. She had blended in just enough tomato juice to tinge the vodka a weak pink. She had remembered to add healthy dash of Tabasco, but no celery stalk. Hey, you can’t think of everything.

She took a healthy sip of the concoction and decided another Winston was in order. She turned her back to the wind and spun the wheel of her Bic, trying to get the darn thing to fire. No luck. She ducked close behind the canvas board, but still no flame. This was no good. She stood up and looked around the beach and decided to cross over the dunes and see if she could find enough shelter from the breeze to get the lighter to do its thing. She climbed past the “Do Not Walk On Dunes. Sea Oats Are Fragile” sign and, tripping on a piece of wire from an old section of sand fence, she went rolling bum over tea kettle to the bottom of the dune.

Spitting sand and cussing a streak of blue to match the single line on her canvas, she sat up and shook the sand from her hair. A rather large bird was sitting just yards away and flapped its wings but didn’t fly away. It was concentrating on what appeared to be a tangle of rotting fishing net or old canvas.

She slowly got to her feet, Winston still in her lips, Bic still tucked in her fist and, once more spun the lighter’s wheel. Bingo! She sucked in a lungful of tobacco smoke, held it deep inside for a couple of seconds and as she exhaled she noticed that the big bird a few yards away was holding something in its mouth that sparkled like a diamond in the sunlight. She took a tentative step in the bird’s direction in order to get a better look.

The animal stood its ground as she took several more steps toward it. Finally she was but a few feet away. She squatted almost face to face with the creature and peered at the glittering object in its beak. My god, it was a diamond. A diamond ring…and it was on a finger!

Happy Halloween!
Michael Reno Harrell, Burk County, NC

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