Where the River Ends - Charles Martin [62]
It’s been fourteen years. My slave market ring is scratched, dull and worn thin around the edges. I don’t know who wrote those vows, but they must have been married a long time because we have shared our joys and sorrows and we have known some health and much sickness.
And every time I look back on that day, I find myself wanting to change it.
20
JUNE 3, EVENING
Stokes Bridge is an almost attractive single-lane concrete structure that rises above the rotting stub remnants of old pilings now broken in two and poking up through the water’s surface below. Rolling, bleached-white beaches span either side dotted with poplar, sprawling live oaks, dogwood and longleaf pine. Vacant during most of the week, that changes come Friday night. We rounded a bend, the bridge came into view and we could smell the campfires and hear the laughter. The beach was lit with a half-dozen campfires, the flash of aluminum cans and brown glass bottles and the sporadic red glow of cigarettes. Two dozen trucks with tires larger than the hood of a Buick lined the beach, their beds stacked with coolers brimming with beer. Evidently, everyone was tuned to the same XM satellite station. We passed underneath the bridge as a Kenny Chesney tune followed an old Hank Jr. song. Fifty or so shirtless good ol’ boys and their scantily-clad girlfriends dotted the beach in circles around the fires. A few were swimming and off in the shadows a couple others were skinny-dipping. Three long-haired hippy types stood on the railing of the bridge, some ten feet above the water. They were howling at the moon and at the count of three, launched a Mountain Dew commercial plunge into the pool below. On the far bank, a guy and a girl were trying to hang on to a rope swing, while beneath the bridge a dejected-looking loner was halfway through a gallon-sized bottle of Jack Daniel’s. We paddled through in the shadows, opposite the beach. One rotund fellow wearing a Georgia Bulldogs cap stood next to a grill, flipping burgers, dogs and what looked like sausage. Swinging her legs off the tailgate next to him sat a rather large bikini-clad biker chick who was nursing a coolie-wrapped longneck.
I waved but tried not to make eye contact. The guy at the grill hollered across the water, “Hey, ya’ll hungry?” I shook my head, waved him off and hugged the far bank. He stepped back from his grill, out of the smoke, and tipped his hat. “You been paddling long?”
I nodded and kept dipping my paddle in the water. Another two hundred yards and we could disappear into the shadows. “A while.”
He smiled and waved his beer at me. “Well, pull up and set awhile. What’s your hurry?”
I shook my head with more finality. “Thanks, we’re just passing.” The moon was full and climbing high. “Thought we’d take advantage of the light while we had it.”
The smoke from his grill wafted across the river, tugged on my nose and my brain started pumping out signals to my stomach. At that moment, a truck with more lights than an airport runway stopped in the middle of the bridge and turned up the volume on “Sweet Home Alabama” to a decibel I’d never heard rise out of an automobile. It sounded like a rock concert.
Without exception, every man on the beach or in the water stood, took off his hat, crossed his heart and hollered at the top of his lungs while many of the girls reached into their pockets, thumbed their lighters and swayed the single flames silently above their heads. I forgot to mention that, around here, this is known as the Redneck Riviera, that song is the redneck anthem and they were showing respect.
Some work the grocery store checkout counter, stock shelves at the auto parts store, sling feed bags at the local hardware, work for the forestry department or a master welder, shoe horses, deliver rural mail or sell cattle, real estate or, more than likely, pine trees. They talk slower, often stretching two syllables into five, use phrases that make little sense on the surface, dip Cophenhagen and drink beer simultaneously, and have no desire to understand a New York minute.