Swansboro

[DrewV]

Swansboro

May 1st, 2032
Swanboro, North Carolina—near the water

Ricky McCoy’s tattered left sneaker scraped as he pivoted hard right along Spring Street. The Carolina mist still rose beyond the warped wooden boards that marked the edges of Bogue Inlet. It was an ugly town—an uneven stack of red brick and sloping grass—and all along the water was the sense of an ancient fishing village with too much dignity to die. It was a landscape of run-down marinas and boarded up brick; an inability to compromise. It was an ignorant, gnat-ridden, sea-salt ruin with daily catch specials and a confederate graveyard. It was home.

Somewhere beyond that mist at the edge of the neglected pier was the ocean—obscured and infinite—and although it lay beyond a row of brick bungalows, it made Ricky feel uneasy. There was simply too much to the sea.

On he ran, his West Point shirt now heavy with sweat, beyond Spring Street and across Highway 24, down the Old Hammock Road that once conveyed arms and munitions to the many coastal garrisons some 170 years ago. So much had changed since he ran these woods as a child—he reflected, for a moment, that underneath the dark asphalt was the dirt and gravel he once made into plumes of bicycle dust on his way home from the ballpark.

He was panting heavily when he reached the dew-clad grasses of the graveyard, knees aching and heart thrumming. He gave up the sprint, throwing his hands over his head and doubling over, the pungent perfume of grass and Carolina pine pushing intrusively on his senses.

Some minutes later, she came ambling behind, red-faced, hair matted, and panting even more than her father. By then, Ricky’s temperature had evened. He looked back down the road at her approach, smirking, and then turned his attention to the row of headstones in the southeastern corner of the graveyard—near the water—cordoned by a low, iron-wrought fence. A central stone monument of an archangel skewering a trampled snake bore the inscription “McCoy” in faded granite, flanked by a dozen or so smaller headstones. One seemed brighter than the others, with an unsanctimonious rectangle still visible beneath it as a scar in the grass.

“You’re getting slower,” she gasped, clutching at her sides. She leaned her forearm on a tree and dropped her head down, shoulders lilting. Ricky smiled.

“Everybody does,” he answered, shrugging softly.

Beyond the graveyard, visible down the road before it bent westward along the inlet, was a narrow view of the old Union Park, flanked by a blanket of Ponderosas. Already, a handful of children ran along the poorly-tended infield. Every now and then, the clean sound of an old ball popping off a metal bat drew Ricky’s eyes, for a moment.

“They say your great, great grandad built that park,” Ricky told his daughter, pointing westward over the graves, “to challenge a handful of union prisoners to a game of baseball.”

Slowly recovering, she righted herself from the tree and looked down the lane, frowning.

“Was he any better at baseball than he was at wars?”

Ricky shrugged. “It’s called Union Park, isn’t it?”

She cast her father an admonishing glance, shaking her head and re-gathering her bright, yellow hair behind her neck. “The park was built by the labor union after Word War Two, daddy.”

Ricky smiled, not particularly interested in any word she had said until the last. “Sure it was. But isn’t my story better?”

She smiled, forgiving him for dealing her such a devastating cardiovascular defeat, and slid an arm around his back. She placed her head on her shoulder, looking from the park to their family mausoleum. “Happy birthday, grandpa,” she said quietly—almost a whisper—and the two of them stood along the edge of the fence, watching the grave of James McCoy as if the old man might rise out from the earth and renew his admonishment of the infield shift.

Ricky nodded, his arm around his daughter. “Happy birthday, you old bastard.”

It was a strange year.

A week after Ricky was fired from the Warriors and was still packing his downtown Duluth apartment, his dead father’s lawyer called to inform Ricky—rather unceremoniously—that James McCoy had altered his will in his final days and bequeathed the entire estate and fortune to his only child—Ricky McCoy. In the ten long months of litigation that followed, the only central theme in the parlors, the offices, and the courtrooms was that no one at all agreed with the dead man’s decision. It was like fate—like the inevitable pull of the sea—and despite the layers, the media coverage, and the many slighted mistresses, Ricky McCoy found himself irreconcilably rich. Money to James McCoy was baseball to his son, and he played well into his dying days. Ricky supposed that was irony.

Despite the money, Ricky found himself unable to set foot on his childhood haven of Castle Island. He imagined the cool, stone-columned manor to be filled with furniture covered in pale sheets, leaves swept into the parlor, filled with ghosts and regrets. He couldn’t go there. Still, Swansboro was home, and the Inlet called to Ricky like an evening bell over the waters. So he rented a brick home near the water, and his daughter had come home from school only three days ago. A summer on the coast. A rebuild.

Another clank of the baseball bat. Another cry leaping up from the dugout as a child dug for first base with every ounce in his soul.

His phone buzzed in his shorts, and he broke his reverie to lift it from his pocket and observe the message. His brow lilted, and his head turned. He looked at the message with some disbelief, putting the phone down and lifting it up again. He inhaled.

“You don’t get many texts,” his daughter said playfully, looking up from his shoulder. “new girlfriend?”

Ricky stared at the message, frozen, until at last he worked his jaw and looked to the baseball field beyond, slowly sliding the phone back inside his pocket.

“Worse,” he replied quietly. Together, they watched the ballgame beyond the graves.

[Borealis]

Whoo Hooo!! Ricky McCoy, back in the saddle!!

[Arroyos]

There's both a grace and a lyricism to this prose that I much admire. Not to mention a pretty great story too. A pleasure to read.