<< Go Back

Joshua's Mission (Plain and Simple Miracles)

By Vannetta Chapman

Order Now!

CHAPTER 1
Port Aransas, Texas October 5
Charlie Everman walked along the beach, his heart heavy with the memory of the things he’d lost. Waves crashed against the sand, causing his black Labrador to jump back and then dart for- ward. Seagulls cried overhead. The last of the day’s light lingered on the horizon as the night nudged the final rays from the beach. The beaches of Mustang Island stretched eighteen miles, from Port Aran- sas at the northeastern tip to Padre Island via a roadway at the south- west. That end of the island also connected to Corpus Christi via the John F. Kennedy Memorial Causeway Bridge. Charlie preferred the solitude and quiet of Mustang Island. He always had.
“Fetch, girl.” Charlie threw the stick, and Quitz plunged into the water. For a moment she looked like the pup she had been when Charlie had found her eleven years ago—found her under an aban- doned shack on the bay side. Quitz was back at Charlie’s side in sec- onds. Over the years, he’d bought the dog all manner of toys, but Quitz preferred a simple piece of driftwood. Go figure.
“Good, girl.”
He patted the lab on her head, which was all the reward that
Quitz needed. They continued down the beach, side by side, nei- ther feeling the need to break the evening’s quiet. The dog would slow occasionally to sniff some fish or shell or garbage washed ashore. Charlie would pause now and again to study a ship in the distance.

The waves continued their march inland as they had since the beginning of time, but Charlie could only testify to the last forty-five years. He’d moved to the town of Port Aransas when he was twenty- two and newly married to his high school sweetheart, Madelyn. His younger self had been impossibly naive, still expecting each day to bring a miracle. And many of them had, but then there had also been days black with pain.

Saltwater splashed across his foot, drawing him back to the present. The smell of ocean spray filled the air. A breeze tickled the hair at his neck. Moonlight bounced off water. Somewhere close by, a crane cried out before plunging into the
water, searching for fish. It was easy enough to love Port Aransas—Port A, as the locals called it. Charlie was now considered among that group. And love it he did when he looked toward the gulf, but his feelings were harder to define when he turned inland. Behind him buildings rose daily, or so it seemed. Monstrosities. Condos that cost upward of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and homes that easily sold for more than a million. Structures that looked to him like great shipwrecks. The development along the beachfront bothered him, but Charlie under- stood that the condominiums provided much-needed jobs for many of the people in Port Aransas, and the additional tax base helped the local economy.
The truth was that the world had moved on, as his wife Madelyn had often reminded him. At sixty-five, Charlie was feeling the differ- ence—the gulf between himself and others. This area, the very town where he had become a man, now felt like a foreign land. And most of his neighbors were strangers. Maybe that was true everywhere.

Did people even know one another anymore? He watched them at the diner—eyes glued to their cell phones, not bothering to speak to the person sitting across from them. Often not bothering to raise their eyes to the gulf waters outside the window. Folks said the new generation of teens was disconnected from one another, but to Char- lie it seemed they were merely following the example of their parents. The whole world had come apart, and each person was a little island
floating in a sea of technology.

These things bothered Charlie. They pricked at his soul like a splinter that was too deep to be removed. Suddenly he thought of Alice, a waitress who worked at the Shack. She was old enough to be his daughter, or nearly so. There was a span of seventeen years between them. Though he and Madelyn had no children, he often found himself thinking of Alice that way and viewed her grandkids as his own. He liked to think that if he and Madelyn had raised a daughter she would have turned out like Alice—hardworking and honest.

Charlie ate at the Shack regularly. Usually Alice patted him on the shoulder as she scooped up the money he’d left on the table, including a generous tip because—well, because he knew how hard she worked and that the tips in a small way helped with the raising of her grand- children. She’d provided those grandkids a home for the last several years. Some families managed to squeeze three generations into the period usually occupied by two. Alice’s family had done just that.

When her daughter visited the island and announced she was taking a job overseas, one where she could “find herself,” Alice stepped into the role of parent without hesitation.

Charlie wished he could help more, but he couldn’t—retired teachers made very little. So he left the tips and made sure to eat at the diner at least three times a week. That’s what friends did. They watched out for one another.

The beaches were open to horse riding, bicycling, and even street vehicles. A car filled with college-aged kids passed him, driving slowly down the hard-packed sand. Music and laughter spilled out into the night. They didn’t honk or acknowledge him in any way. For all Char- lie knew, he’d become invisible.
“Don’t sulk,” Madelyn would have said. She’d peer over her glasses and point whatever was in her hand his way—usually a crochet hook or a pen or maybe a bookmark. “The world doesn’t stand still, Char- lie. And you wouldn’t want it to.”
A cloud drifted in front of the moon. When it had passed, Char- lie stopped to study the sky. Hurricane Orion was out there, churn- ing, gathering strength from the warm waters of the gulf. There was only a forty-percent chance it would head their way—or so the com- puter models said. Charlie looked for signs in the surf and the sand, but he wasn’t a weatherman. He couldn’t tell what would happen in the next six hours or six days.

Quitz pressed against his side, no doubt wondering why they had stopped.
Most of the time Madelyn was right, but not always. Would he wish for time to stand still?

He might. Given a choice, he could easily opt for the world to stop turning, for life to simply freeze on a moment, for nothing at all to ever change.

He wouldn’t pick this day, but they’d had a fair supply of good ones. He wouldn’t have any trouble choosing one—perhaps ten years earlier before they had ever heard the diagnosis of breast can- cer. When Quitz was still a young pup and less of the coastline was covered in condos. Arthritis wouldn’t cause his knee to ache, Quitz wouldn’t have trouble standing in the morning, and Madelyn—well, Madelyn would still be by his side.
A child’s wish.

He understood too well that the world would keep moving, keep trudging forward. God had His reasons, and who was Charlie to question the Almighty? As to the fate of Port Aransas, the hurricane either would come or it wouldn’t. He supposed there wasn’t much he could do either way. The little community had blossomed into a vacationer’s paradise. It wasn’t his idea of a perfect place, not anymore, but then no one had asked him.

His mind drifted back over his memories of 1970, Hurricane Celia, and the aftermath of that beastly storm. They had suffered through it together—as a town, as a community. Each family’s loss had affected others, and they had done their best to help one another rebuild. Out of that terrible storm had come some of the worst mem- ories and best friendships of Charlie’s life.

And though many of those fine people had remained his friends, most had moved away now—to golf course homes and senior com- munities. They had sold out, and Charlie didn’t blame them one bit. Perhaps he should consider doing the same. There wasn’t a month that went by when someone didn’t offer him an enormous amount of money for the three acres of ocean frontage he’d bought all those years ago.

Quitz whined as they turned toward home. The old dog would continue down the beach until she could no longer walk if Charlie let her.
“Maybe I’m the one who’s tired,” Charlie said, and then he reached down and scratched behind the dog’s black floppy ears.

Glancing at the sky once more, he peered into the darkness but could see little. The steady roll of waves crashing provided a back- ground to his world, his life, that he couldn’t imagine living without. Move? Not likely. He would stay as long as God saw fit to allow him a home there.

His thoughts turned back to Hurricane Orion as he trudged through the sand. Where did the meteorologists get these names? Orion, indeed. He’d looked it up. The name meant fiery hunter. How could a hurricane be that? He’d been an English teacher for forty years, but if that was some weatherman’s idea of symbolism, it made no sense.

Madelyn had enjoyed astronomy. She’d loved quoting verses out of the Book of Job from the Old Testament. She especially liked the parts that mentioned the stars and nature and God’s omnipotence.

Orion. Charlie supposed a hurricane could look beautiful when seen from a satellite—those great white swirls that covered miles upon miles of sea and sometimes land. Perhaps a hurricane could be a hunter, though it seemed to him more like a beast.
He thought of Beowulf, a text his high school seniors had sometimes struggled with, but ultimately they had enjoyed the tale of the hero, the monster, and the tragic aftermath. It had appealed to their teenage sensibilities. Charlie hadn’t been in a classroom in three years, but he still missed it.

Hurricane Orion sounded ominous. If tragedy were to strike, Charlie didn’t think the community would withstand it. Oh, maybe the insurance companies would pay and the people would rebuild, but it wouldn’t be Port A anymore. The people wouldn’t grow closer because of it. Those days were gone now. The world had, indeed, moved on.

As he walked back toward home, the clouds parted and the moon again cast its spotlight on the water.

Order Now!

<< Go Back