A short story by Pamela Eason
Image – Generated by ChatGTP
Tara Beth is on a shallow sandbar, standing straight, staring, like a dead mackerel, at the horizon. Little blue-green ripples are lapping and lapping over her bare feet, sucking white sand from beneath them, tickling her soles.
The onslaught is coming. One offense then another, rolling towards her, shame surfacing, almost knocking her down, then relenting. Tara Beth repenting and repenting. Then, … finally … finally, she’s breathing deeper, revitalized with … acceptance, … love … so much, fresh, underserved like the salty air in her lungs.
“A spiritual experience.”
She’s leaving the sandbar feeling weightless, breezily moving toward the not-yet setting sun, noticing footprints left by a couple walking side-by-side on the hard-packed sand nearest the water’s edge.
“They’ll be washed clean away in no time at all.”
Ahead, three young men are vigilantly watching the tension in fishing lines held by rods pierced in softer sand. Tara Beth is veering behind them, struggling through that soft sand, thinking their bait is luring bull sharks to shore where children, too close for Tara Beth’s comfort, bob up and down like the pulse in her wrists.
“Someone should warn them.”
Past the fishermen now, Tara Beth’s is heading back to the harder sand, to the lapping waves, picking up her pace, scooting quickly behind a family dressed in monotone colors, arranging and rearranging themselves for their sunset photo.
“They just want to get it over with.”
It’s looking like an obstacle course up ahead. She’s weaving around the fifty-five-plusers leisurely sipping then dropping their cans into beach-chair cupholders. Her heart is beating faster. She’s eyeing four strong college-age boys throwing a football back and forth – hard.
“Better hurry. They might knock me down.” It had happened before and Tara Beth had gone home, her whole body aching from the impact.
She was slowing her pace now, marveling at a hefty woman sleeping, sprawled out on a towel in stretched-tight, hot-pink pajama pants, printed with repetitions of “Sweetie.”
“In case the world’s wondering?”
Twelve paces more, Tara Beth is stopping for a heartbeat, dumbfounded at a woman in an unflattering bikini, one hand plunged into a plastic pet crate, petting the wet fur of a kitten, a man, her boyfriend? dully looking on.
“That poor kitten.”
The sun is almost touching the horizon now.
“What they’ve all been waiting for. Time to make an ‘About Face’!“
From this spot, where the beach curves, Tara Beth is seeing them, all of them, like miniatures in a little girl’s playset, all at once.
“Like God must see.”
She’s walking back. The woman is holding the wet kitten now.
“That poor kitten.“
“What’s happening?“
All of them, pixelating, all at once, like the beachgoers in Georges Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, then … disintegrating, then … collapsing, all at once into the white sand.
“A vision? A revelation? A portent? Was it? Surely not!”
She is reasoning, philosophically, assuredly.
“Whole groups have come and gone, haven’t they?”
Women in vintage swimsuits in the old black and whites, the kind hanging on walls in local restaurants and shops; skinny boys leaning against wooden surfboards, girls with big sunglasses and faded swimsuits looking on – all smiling in colored Kodak snapshots tucked in boxes in thousands of grandmas’ closets.
“Here today. Gone tomorrow.”
But something’s nagging.
“A Biblical-size prophecy – like Jeremiah, or Nahum, or Habakkuk, or Zephaniah? An impeding global judgment? A high-tech bomb made secretly by a foreign adversary?”
Tara Beth! Look at the sky! A blast. A total wipe-out, all at once.
“That poor kitten”
The sky – like the stage of a grand theatre – a wraparound – like The Sphere in Las Vegas, but grander … much grander: clouds gathering from every direction; a glorious rider, eyes blazing, on a splendid white horse; more horses – stampedes of terrifying armies – thousands and thousands with shinning swords.
She’s seeing and hearing it all.
“How?”
Crowds are peering down from the clouds.
“So many. I know her.”
Tara Beth was fourteen then, asking about the woman in the photo – Great-Aunt Loretta in her polka-dot one-piece retro, leaning against a motorcycle parked in front of gray waves, looking so happy in a black and white. She put it back in a box in her grandmother’s closet.
“Something’s happening to them.”
They’re flinging their arms open, like they’re ready to fly.
“It’s a good thing.”
Tara Beth is laughing, realizing they’ve been watching and waiting and waiting for this … this … this transforming?
She’s midair, stronger, brighter, with others from the beach: some of the fifty-fivers; the footballers; the family, all in monotone colors; the fishermen; the bobbing children. The crowds are laughing with her now.
“But, where’s the couple making the footprints? The rest of the fifty-fivers? The woman petting the kitten? The boyfriend? Where’s Sweetie?”
Tara Beth is somewhere else now, like Dorthy in The Wizard of Oz.
“Where?
Everyone’s gathering: the resplendent rider; the armies; the happy … oh so happy crowds; the hovering beachgoers; Tara Beth – all at once, in this strange place, with strange things, and strange beings, and strange happenings, looking, and looking, eyes wide, mouths open.
“Everything is so … regal … so transcendent … so glorious.”
Even though they’d all expected it, they are stunned.
Earth-shattering decisions are being finalized. Renovations, spectacular like a new beginning of everything, happening all at once. Tara Beth is trying to keep up with it all.
Now, she’s standing, straight as a star beam, in the middle of a cool, spring garden, rivers bubbling nearby, flowers blooming around her, the grass tickling her feet, a fluffy kitten softly meowing. She is talking to … to God, trying to take it all in, all at once.
“It’s impossible. Isn’t it?”
