The Watcher of Pawleys Shore

We came in late because the bridge was still open and the sky had not decided. The sheriff’s truck rolled past like a slow threat. The rental agent called and said we could still make it if we wanted. She said the evacuation order was voluntary. She said the wind would pick up, then drop, then pick up again. She sounded like someone turning a knob just to feel it move. We went anyway. Off season. Cheaper rate. Empty houses with their blinds down like sick eyes. The long flat ribbon of road. The marsh as far as you could think. The smell of salt that had teeth.

The house sat on short legs above the sand. Old wood. A tin roof that remembered every storm it had ever seen. A small painting of a shrimp boat in the hall. A Bible on the coffee table with the cover softened by thumb oil. Shells on a shelf that had never known a live body. I carried in our duffel and the cooler. She found the breaker box and the AC cough. We walked out to the deck and watched the water lift and fall like a giant chest.

We had come to be quiet. To think about the last hard year and the next one. To be regular. To cook simple food and read and sleep. The news had been a steady leak of dread. The phone was a bright lie you could carry anywhere. The island felt clean in the way of old bones. There were tracks in the sand where the ghost crabs had gone about their small errands. Far out a pelican folded itself and dropped like a stone. When it rose it had a silver thing in its bill that flashed once.

That first night the wind searched the slats of the deck and let itself in. We left the TV off. We ate from paper bowls and gave the night the room. You could hear the ocean even with the doors closed. Not a sound. A pressure in the blood. The moon looked peeled. My sleep had edges and I woke many times and never knew it. Near dawn I went to the window. The beach was the color of a bruise. A shape stood between the water and the wrack line. At first I thought it was a lifeguard post or a post for a sign with the sign removed. Then it moved. It was a man. He wore something that was not modern. The color of it was the color of rain before it falls.

He faced the sea. His head was bare. No hat. No hood. His hair was the same low gray as everything else. When the small waves came in they did not touch him. They spread and bent like cloth around a nail. I recall thinking that he could not be real because he did not seem wet. Then a sheet of cloud tore loose and a dull light came through. He turned and I knew he saw me.

I did not wake her. Some names you do not speak in a house. I stood there and felt both full and empty. The way you do when a doctor enters a room and does not smile. When I looked back he was gone. No footprints. No awkward retreat. The beach unmarked except by the daybirds that draw cuneiform with their delicate feet and the half circles where the ghost crabs had traveled, moon to dune and back again. When she woke I told her I had slept fine. I told her the coffee was good. I told her I thought we should buy bread before the stores got crowded.

Outside the flags stuttered. In the grocery the air felt wrong. Everyone spoke too loudly and then too softly. The water aisle stripped down to the cardboard. A man in a surf shop T-shirt bought all the batteries and smiled at me as if we were both in a joke. A woman wearing a cross and a sunburn asked the cashier about the bridge. The cashier said it depends. It always depends. A young boy pushed a mop with the soft focus of someone who lives in a town where people leave and return and leave again and telling them not to come never worked.

We carried our things back and set them on the kitchen counter like offerings. The shorebirds moved down the beach with their heads bowed as if praying in a language you only hear in a storm. I could not stop looking toward the water. I had a feeling like a song you cannot quite remember but you know it was from a bad time.

The second night the wind found its teeth. The house spoke in its sleep. The rails clicked and the windows hummed and the narrow hallway whistled when the gusts lined up just right. She rolled over and put her hand on my chest and said do you hear that. I said yes but I did not say the rest. I had seen the man again at dusk. Farther up the beach near the pilings of a house that sat too proud. The kind that takes a storm as a dare. He was still and he was not posing. He was not there for me. That was the worst of it. That he was not there for me.

There is a tone you hear only on islands. It is wind in the palms and wind in the pines and the ocean pulling at the shelly throat of the beach. It is ferries and ropes and aluminum signs rattling. It is a last call that never ends. The storm off the coast was getting a name. The name did not fit. The names never fit. They make a monster sound like a child. I thought of all the things we name in order to feel we can speak to them. The way a man will name his sin and then ask it to keep still.

I woke again just before dawn. The window glass wore a skin of salt. The house tasted electric. He stood closer now. I could see the lines of his clothes. The seams too straight for a modern cut. The small collar. The long coat that had the look of Sunday. His boots left no impression though the moisture was up and doing its work on everything else. His face looked like a face you would find in a locket in a box of dead things. Not beautiful. Not bad. Carved by a small tool that feared to press too deep.

He raised his hand. Not to me. To the house. A flat hand. A single motion like someone blessing a child who is already asleep. Then he looked beyond us at the big house on tall pilings. The one with the grille and the string lights and the new deck that faced the sea like a brag. He lowered his hand. He turned his head toward the north. In the dim I saw other figures along the shore. Just for a blink. The way a wave will seem to hold a shape and then the shape is gone. A company with no banner. Then only water.

I went outside. The deck boards were slick with mist. It tasted like old pennies. I went down the steps and walked to the edge where the dune grass made its last attempt and gave up. My feet sank and made their dumb proof. The tide gave me the cold quick kiss and left. I stepped over the wrack. Gulls were talking their gnawing talk. When I looked for him he was not there.

People say the Gray Man is a warning but they never talk about how people respond to warnings. I have seen fire alarms tested in office buildings and nobody moves. I have heard the voice on the radio say turn around and the driver looks for a way to go around the sawhorses. We are built to stay. We are starving dogs you can haul by the collar and we still look over our shoulder at the empty bowl. I thought of our boxes stacked at home. The papers with all the numbers. The keys in a bowl by the door. The photos that had faces but no dates. I wanted to pack all of it and set it on a barge and send it out past the breakers and watch the ocean make a judgment we would not make for ourselves.

I walked. The shore curved and there were small scalloped pools where the last tide had laid down its memory and moved on. I found half a blue crab claw and a coin smooth as bone. Ahead the big house sat quiet. The string lights hung there without joy. They had never known joy. Only a switch. The windows were tall and bare and gave back the morning like a lie. I thought about the people who had owned the place. What they did for a living. What they thought would save them. What they told their children.

He stood under the far pier. That was how I saw him next. The pilings were fat with crust and shadow. The pier pounded when a set came in. He was smaller now. Distance is one form of mercy. He did not move. A sheet of spray ran the length of the pylons and when it cleared he was gone. I went to the place. I looked down for prints. Only my own. Great fool circles in the wet sand that filled as I watched.

By noon the sheriff came by and used the loudspeaker on a horn. Voluntary evacuation. Bridge may close if winds exceed. The language was careful. The words had no edge. That is always worse. The sky was the color of the underside of a fish. The birds wheeled and then they were not there. The air felt hot at the same time it felt cold. I saw a man with a smoker drag it up his driveway by the handle as if it were a small child trying to get away. A woman taped her windows with wide X’s. A ritual. It keeps your hands busy which is what people want from religion. The phone rang and it was the rental agent again. She said we could roll our remaining nights to later in the season. She said she had lived there all her life. She said this one felt strange.

We did not leave. This is the part that makes no sense. The human thing. The dumb brave. We had been through our own storms. After a while you stop measuring. You start to believe the worst thing already happened so the next thing cannot be worse. Or if it is worse it will make you clean. There is an arrogance in endurance. It makes you think you are owed. I told myself we would watch and go the minute the sheriff said mandatory. I told myself the bridge would not close without notice. The stories we make to stay are better than the stories we make to leave.

Late that afternoon I sat in a chair that leaned left and watched the water lift. The line of white moved closer. The wind had the high whine of a power tool. The ocean was chopping the beach down, bite after bite. The big house stood on its long legs like a heron that had overplayed its hand. I had the feeling again. The one like a chord that keeps vibrating long after the hand is gone. Then he was there.

Not in the middle of the beach. At the lip of our steps. He looked up. Not with accusation. With detail. He took us in the way a carpenter takes in a room. He put his hand on the rail. The wood did not darken. The salt did not cling. The nails did not notice. He did not climb. He did not need to climb. He looked past me. She came into the doorway and saw him and put her hand to her mouth. We stood silent in our own house like guests. It felt right. He had been here longer.

You could say he spoke but he did not open his mouth. You could say I understood but there was no language. He asked for something and he offered something. That is the trade at the heart of any haunting. Not fear. Terms. You think ghosts want your terror. They want your attention. They want your consent. He raised his hand again. The flat blessing. The muscles of the world flexed. I heard wood pop. Not our wood.

We should go, she said. Now.

We packed with that clean panic that makes you efficient and dumb. Two bags. The cooler. The papers I had brought and should not have, as if I could file the ocean. I locked the door. The door did not care. The wind took my breath and gave it back wrong. Sand blew in strings along the ground and stung my legs. When we got to the car the first band hit. The sky closed. The bridge was a promise on the far side of the rain. The marsh sat there like a witness that had no stake.

Cars moved both ways. People leaving. People who had decided to stay and were running one more errand. Every storm has those men. The ones who buy one last case and salt and limes. The ones who think they can salt and lime the Atlantic. The sheriff car blocked the lane for a minute and then gave up and pulled aside. The radio said the bridge would close at eight. It was five. We had time. Time felt like a small coin moving under a cup. You could follow it or you could blink and lose it and pretend it had never been there.

We reached the rise before the bridge. You could see the whole mouth of the inlet and the ocean beyond, moving like a living thing. Houses gleamed dull. The big one on the tall legs stood like a dare. I saw movement below. The water had come up under it and was taking the old stairs. The spindles popped and spun. Then the deck tried to get away, whole, like a raft with no belief. It went sideways and for a moment it looked like it would make it. A green wall came in and hit it square. The deck rose up and then slammed the posts of the house. I heard it across that distance and through the screaming wind. Not the sound of wood breaking. The sound of a decision.

I pulled to the shoulder. I do not know why. To watch a thing be judged. To see if it changed me. The windows of the big house broke in a set. Top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left. The string lights came on as if someone was home. The tide lifted the pool furniture and set it loose. A hot tub cover lifted like a book and turned a page and kept turning. The pilings groaned. A wave ran far under the house and did not return.

He stood on the beach between that house and ours. Not large. Not small. I thought again of the locket with the face in it. The way that face lived by the power of the person who wore it. He lifted his hand once to us. A hush in the wind. The house sighed. Then he lowered his hand and faced the big house. Another set rolled in. There was nothing theatrical. The legs went. The body leaned. The windows howled with what was left in them. A last judgment is never loud. It is only final. The house folded and settled and the ocean took what it needed to make its point.

I drove. The car shuddered. The bridge spat spray. A trooper waved us through. I did not look in the rearview. There is a time to look back and there is a time to disrespect the past. We came off the island and onto the mainland and the trees looked grateful to be rooted and I envied them. We found a motel inland that had a roof and a vacancy and a clerk who did not care if we lived or died. I liked him. The room was green and smelled like old smoke. The TV tried to scare us with drone shots. The storm made its red pinwheel and promised to punch God.

We slept with our clothes near the door. The wind traveled over us all night like a train that did not stop. In the morning the sun was an insult. We found coffee weak as broth and drank it because it was a thing to do. I told her I wanted to go back. She said it was too soon. I said I only wanted to see what was left. She said we would only find what we had brought with us. She was not wrong. She is almost never wrong.

By noon the bridges were open. The island wore its wounds like old news. The sand was where it should not be and the sea oats were laid over like hair. Houses sat strange on their blocks as if someone had nudged them a foot to the side while they slept. The big house was gone. Not reduced. Gone. The pilings stood like old teeth. Our house stood. The windows had held. The roof had kept its tin. The steps were wet and gritty. The door stuck and then gave way. Inside the painting of the shrimp boat hung crooked but still hanging. The Bible had fallen to the floor and lay open to a page where someone had underlined a verse that made no sense out of context and only a little with it.

On the deck the salt had dried in patterns like frost. I tasted it and it was the same. There were palm fronds in places where palms had never been. A plastic Adirondack chair from somewhere else sat in our outdoor shower like a visitor who did not know where to sit. We walked down to the beach. The wrack line held the day’s confession. Boards with nails. A gutter. A cooler lid. A single flip-flop that could have been anyone’s. Not much else.

He stood far down by the inlet. A dull figure in a new light. The air felt clean in that church way you only get after a reckoning. I thought of walking to him. To thank him. To curse him. To test him. I did not move. I had the strange sense that walking to him would make him walk away. Maybe that is faith. Or manners. Or fear dressed as both.

A man from the sheriff’s office came by on an ATV. He asked if we were okay. I said yes. He said this one had been generous. He said we were lucky. He said the house up-cove was a total. He said the folks who owned it were new to the island and they had a plan for events like this. He said their insurance would not love them.

I asked him how long he had worked the island. He said twenty years and some. He said he had seen the man once when he was a boy. He did not say the name. You do not say the name. He said he left the island that day with his grandfather and when they came back the porch was gone and the boat was sitting where the porch had been like it had been planned. He said his grandfather winked at the air and said you old sinner. Then he drove on.

We stayed the last night because the power held and we were tired of moving. We ate what we had cooked. We lit a candle because the lamps felt wrong. The ocean purred like a big thing that had fed. You can love a place that does not care if you live. That kind of love is clean because it is not returned. It is like loving a clear sky. You feel small and you want to feel small. To remember your size is to remember your place among other breathing things.

I dreamed of the big house falling again but this time the rooms were full of people and they did not scream. They arranged the chairs while the walls leaned. They gathered their bowls and phones and dogs and they all turned to the windows to see what the ocean would do with them. They did not move because the life they had fit them and they could not picture a second life that would hold the same shape. In the dream the Gray Man walked through their rooms and touched their shoulders and said it is time and they said not yet. Then I woke and the candle had gone to a nub and the tide was talking to the pilings in a soft way.

At dawn I went out alone. The beach was new again in the way that anything can be new when it is only scraped down to itself. He stood near the waterline in that dress of weather. There were no other figures. No company. Only him and the slow truck of a cleanup crew far off. I thought of the story they tell about the fiancée who saw him after he drowned and how the storm came and spared her house and took many others. It is a neat story. It has faith and grief and fate and the sort of moral that does not help anyone. The truth is not neat. The truth is a set of terms.

I said thank you. I said it aloud into the wind. He did not bow. He did not turn. He lifted his hand once toward the marsh. Then he put it down. I understood then what he does. He does not only warn. He trades. The island is a ledger. The water is a hand. Every season the page turns and the hand underlines a different line. Some houses stand because others do not. Some lives go on because others are taken. He holds the book and makes a mark and the mark is final. He does not punish. He balances.

I wanted to ask the price. I wanted to know who had paid for our wood to stand another year. I wanted to know if I had agreed to anything when he raised his hand to our eaves. The wind moved my hair like I was being touched by a grandmother I barely remembered. I stood there and felt the old pull to confess. All the small wrongs you carry to avoid the big ones. I thought of the things I had said. The things I had failed to say. The way I hold myself like a dam and then burst and claim the flood was mercy. The trouble with making it through storms is you start to believe you deserve to live.

He began to fade in the way a shadow does when the light has to go to work. Not a magic trick. A change in attention. The sun came up and showed me the truth of him. He was a place shaped like a man. The island’s will. The grief of the drowned walking upright so that no one had to drown again, at least not today. He was the line between leaving and staying written in a hand that cannot be copied.

I went back to the steps. She had coffee. We sat and drank in silence and watched the workers drive past and shake their heads and lift what could be lifted. The pelicans came back. They flew so low their wings nearly touched the water like they were measuring it. The day warmed. The salt dried to a fine sugar on the rails. We did not speak of him. Some names you do not say in a house. Some blessings you accept and do not count. Counting ruins them.

Before we left I straightened the shrimp boat painting and closed the Bible and set it back where it had been. I picked up the chair from the outdoor shower and carried it down to the beach and left it with the other orphan things. It would find a new house. Or it would go to sea. I thought the sea would use it better.

On the drive out we passed the church with the cinderblock walls and the sign that said God answers knee mail. The letters were out of order and no one had fixed them. It looked right that way. A flock of small birds lifted from the wire and settled back as if to prove that the wire had always held. I felt lighter. I felt worse. I felt right sized.

On the mainland we stopped for gas. The station was full of men talking loud about plywood and insurance and the one neighbor who had stayed and did fine. One man told a story about an old woman who had seen the Gray Man and how her house had been saved even though she was not a believer. Another said that is how it always goes. The clerk counted change with his eyes half closed. He had a small tattoo of a boat on his wrist that looked like it had never seen water.

We drove home. The route away from the coast runs through places where storms are a rumor. Pines and churches and billboards that last from one season to the next. The farther we got the more the island felt like a dream. The way every true place turns to smoke if you take it away from itself. At a light she touched my arm and said are you okay. I said yes. I said we were lucky. It felt wrong to say it and it felt wrong not to.

That night in our own bed the city could not decide what weather to be. We left the window open and the air came in confused. I closed my eyes and saw the man on the beach and then I saw a book and in the book a page with a line drawn under our house and a small note that I could not read. I woke in the dark and did not move. I thought about the trade. I thought about the big house and its long legs and the lights that came on at the moment of ruin like a nervous tick. I thought about the people who would come to build another one and how the island would let them and then decide again.

In the morning I made coffee. I sat and did not look at the news. The world held still like a breath held for a photo. I felt a weight that was not sadness. A balance settling. A hand leaving my shoulder. I do not know if we were spared. Spared is a story people tell to excuse the math. We were chosen to stand this time. That is all. The Gray Man does not love you. He does not hate you. He does not negotiate.

If you go to the island you will smell how old the salt is. You will hear the low argument the ocean keeps with the land. You will feel your life sized down to what you can carry. You might see him if you go at the hour before the light comes. He will be there in the gray with the patience of a long time. He will lift his hand. He will make his mark. You will live with it, either way. You will go inland and tell yourself a story that makes sense. You will forget the taste of the wind on your teeth. You will forget the sound of wood making a decision. You will return. Everyone returns. The island waits. The ledger never closes. The hand never tires.