The house stood facing the ocean, just as I remembered it. Wind-sculpted pines and leathery clumps of salal and Oregon grape hugged close between it and the sand.  Through the trees and the bushes, flecks of blue-green ocean. And always that watery roar and powerful salt air.

When I was young we stayed in the little cabin next door on most visits while the grandparents, who knew the owners of the property, stayed with their friends in the main house. Both had stone fireplaces and an assortment of beach finds from Japanese glass floats to artfully twisted driftwood.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the spring and summer weekends (and sometimes, oh glory, a week!) would be precious times replayed in my memory like a favorite movie.  We did the quintessential beach things there. We constructed sand castles bravely but vainly standing against the surf. We collected shells and rocks by the truckload, each a small wonder.

We also collected a variety of sea creatures from the beach and tide pools nearby in the days before much environmental consciousness had dawned. Once we set up a temporary aquarium in a small glass tank left in the cabin to watch the hermit crabs, snails and little frenzied translucent sea creatures we had captured in buckets. All were returned a little worse for wear, but back to the sea.

One year, while my sister, brother and I were still in grade school, we walked the beach to where a coastal river meets the ocean. Drawing up to the river’s edge, we heard splashing. At first we thought it was was someone swimming or falling clumps of sand where the river cut through the beach. Then, in a flash of silver and slap of tail, we realized we were witnessing salmon returning to their birthplace to spawn. My brother, apparently not awed for long, jumped in the river after one. After a brief chase and much splashing, he emerged from the shallows soaked but triumphant with a flapping salmon clutched to his chest. We ran back to the cabin with our prize, which became that evening’s main course. Few of our friends back in the city believed this story, even when we produced a photo.

As a child I was convinced that somewhere in the long, wind-swept grass, the tumble of silvery driftwood or expanse of sand, a pirate treasure lay. Old cannons from sailing ships had been recovered nearby. That and the legend of treasure left by mysterious sailors several miles south fueled my quest. Although the only treasures found were of the rock or shell variety, I was undeterred and took to carving my own treasure runes in the tumble of sandstone rocks.

Over the years we gathered, mom and siblings, the cousins, the grandparents, aunt and uncle, everyone still living from my mother’s family. We played together, argued, walked the beaches hand in hand as the surf roared and the healing wind washed over us.

My grandmother so loved the beach that she requested that her ashes be spread there when she died. We all felt a great fondness for the cabin and the beach it fronted. We would stop there on our many day trips to the coast. I took my own family and friends there. When my grandparent’s friends died, we quit going to the cabin, although we still visited the beach from time to time. Several years passed and with them my grandparents and my uncle. Gramma’s ashes were spread over the beach and the rocks she loved. The kids who made sand castles grew up and began families of their own.

Then my aunt, all red hair and energy, mustered the clan for a visit. The little companion cabin was still there, now the home of a caretaker. In the main cabin virtually everything was the same, as if only a few minutes had gone by, instead of years. The beach, although ever-changing, was the same comfortable stretch, the familiar rocks on the point and at sea in their places.

The difference was us. We had lost a few members, but added a few new ones. They built castles on the sand, collected precious shells and walked hand-in-hand on the beach, all the while keeping an eye out for pirate gold.

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The Beach House

Copyright ©2012 by Steve Dodge

ISBN 9781476419428

Cover watercolor by Lynn Buettner. Used by permission.

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Note to the Reader

Thanks very much for reading this story! To download a free mobile and e-reader version of this story, go to Smashwords.com

A version of this story first appeared in Visions magazine, the magazine of the Oregon Graduate Institute, Vol. 9, No. 2, Spring 1993. The story also appeared in another form in Oregon Coast magazine.

I drove by the old park one day and spotted the wading pool. It was empty now, a few leaves kicking around it in the bright autumn sun. I marveled at how small it looked, years later: only a couple of feet deep.

Suddenly I am there again and my brother and I conduct splashy inner tube wars with neighborhood friends. As one kid sits in the inner tube, another pushes in the shallow water toward other kids similarly equipped. “Ramming speed!” someone yells, and three inner tubes converge in an explosion of water and giggles. The game goes on until all rival riders have been dumped off of their tubes into the pool.

Nearby, a little girl of maybe three watches and dangles her feet from the side as mom holds on. In the pool, kids continue to yell and splash, and run in and out of the concrete circle. From the pool, I push aside my wet hair and glance up. I see a middle-aged guy driving slowly by, a big smile on his face as if he’s remembering something pleasant, some summer day gone by.

Copyright 2011 Steve Dodge   All Rights Reserved

To download a free copy of this story in e-reader format, go to: Smashwords.com

Rain pounded the roof as the wind ravaged the trees and blew sheets of water against the siding, whistling and rattling at the window near my bed. Tired as I was, the noise made it impossible to make a connection with the Sandman.

Finally, the wind died down and the rain ceased. I began to slip away on cottony paths of unconsciousness. At precisely that moment the noise began. In the attic above my head, something bumped: THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! The sound seemed so deliberate, paced the way it was, that it had to be human. Groggy from the half sleep, I weighed the possibilities. “Could someone be up there?” my mind raged. At about the same time, the memory of peeking in the attic door a few days earlier came to me. I had been curious so had gotten a chair and pushed the door open to reveal darkness and cobwebs and a space too small for a human except to crawl through. Still, I wondered, had some weirdo gotten up there while I was gone? Had I disturbed some sleeping thing that was now going to eat me monster-movie style?

Just as I was dismissing these unwanted thoughts, three more thumps came as before. Once again my mind raced with possible explanations. What could it be? What should I do? I had never encountered anything like this before. Then the sound again: THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! followed this time by something rolling. The noise was like a small ball, hard but with a hollow, wooden tone. More things began to roll up there as I clung to my sheets, growing increasingly scared.

I took a deep breath, calmed my nerves and again assessed the situation. The clues began to mount up. That wooden sound was vaguely familiar. Also, I now heard a scratching, skittery noise. Ah ha! There were no phantoms or burglars up there. No refugee from a Poe story had taken up residence. There were rodents in my attic. And the little bastards were playing walnut soccer above my head in the middle of the night!

As my mind eased, so too did the noise, and I drifted off to sleep. But on subsequent nights when some mousey call came through the darkness to let the games begin, I would lie awake in bed, not in terror this time, but scheming their demise. I considered releasing my two cats up there, but thought better of it when I looked upon serene golden eyes which did not beg for adventure. Besides, I reasoned, one of the cats was liable to get stuck up there or catch one of the furry athletes and leave a carcass spoiling somewhere unreachable. Then I’d have a real problem, because there was no way I was going up there, and such outings generally are not in the landlord’s book of dreams. Same with traps. I did not yet know the size or type of rodent involved. Too big a trap and you’re likely to miss. Too little a trap could be dragged off by the wounded. Anyway, although my mind toyed joyously with thoughts of little pelts nailed to the wall, I mostly wanted to scare them away permanently. What they did in other people’s attics was their business.

Several days went by with no really good ideas. Meanwhile, the rolling and scratching went on, usually late at night. Something had to be done. I was increasingly determined to rid my attic of the pests once and for all. Fire and dynamite was briefly considered, but reluctantly discarded.

One day upon returning home from work, I at last made a positive ID on my housemates. Coming up the path to the house, I spied squirrels jumping from overhanging trees onto the roof. One carried a walnut. I flashed then on magazine ads I had seen recently touting various electronic devices designed to send mice and bugs stampeding from your house. I didn’t much trust the ads—they had a kind of snake oil feel to them. And I couldn’t really afford either the money or the wait for the miracle device. So I decided that if rodents were sensitive to sonic assault, my stereo would work just as well.

I considered my Beatles collection, but with the possible exception of some White Album cuts, the Fab Four was too mellow for the job. Had I had some evidence that the squirrels knew English, I might have tried some of my darker Doors cuts and just plain bummed them out. No, it had to be loud and in my house it had to be vintage. I quickly turned to the late, great electric guitarist Jimi Hendrix. I chose a cut that consists of about four intense, clanging minutes of feedback and wailing guitar called “Peace in Mississippi.” Truly classic stuff, but I had a strong suspicion that my attic inhabitants would not feel the same.

That night I moved my stereo gear into the bedroom and made sure I had enough speaker wire to reach to the ceiling. Jimi came out of the album cover and onto the turntable. Upstairs, the boys, probably fresh from some squirrelly lodge meeting, began to skitter and roll walnuts. I listened for awhile and couldn’t quite decide whether they had a little stadium with artificial turf and lights set up or maybe a nice shiny hardwood floor with baskets at both ends. In the end I decided I didn’t much care.

With an evil grin on my face, I swiveled the tone arm to the appropriate spot on the vinyl disk and waited. Hendrix doesn’t sing on “Peace in Mississippi,” but his guitar does. The cut gets right into a blood curdling, metallic power ride, complete with his signature feedback. After the first screeching notes I inched the volume up, making sure the feedback squeal part would come through nice and loud. I then held one speaker up right next to the ceiling. Jimi and company pounded away as no one has before or since. As the song ended, I knew my speakers and my ears couldn’t take much more. Upstairs, in the rodent gymnasium, silence. Not a single skitter. No squirrel took a final roll for old time’s sake. There may not have been peace in Mississippi at the time the song was recorded, but there was peace in my attic.

After that sonic stormy night the squirrels never returned. However, not long after, my brother had a mouse problem in a downtown apartment building. He tried the Jimi Hendrix treatment too. Although he didn’t have “Peace in Mississippi” handy, he reports other Hendrix music, properly cranked, works too.

Copyright © 2011 by Steve Dodge  All rights reserved.

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NOTE TO THE READER

She pulled up to the stoplight ever so slowly, making certain to stop behind the crosswalk. The car hummed softly with the contentment of a well-cared-for-vehicle. The radio played a classical tune as the driver waited.

Somewhere in the trees nearby birds frolicked and chattered as a pinkish glow lit the eastern sky. Few people were out, the driver noted, idling at the light. No cars were in sight at the intersection — only a man walking a dog around the corner of a sidewalk.

The driver peered at the red light through eyeglasses that were a bit thicker than usual. A hand reached up absently and straightened silvery hair under a rounded hat.  The stoplight remained red.

The driver began to shift uneasily in her seat. She was in no hurry, but still this light seemed to be taking a long time. As the car continued to idle, her thoughts drifted back to childhood. Her mother’s exceptionally tidy house came to mind and the times she was scolded for leaving dolls out. She recalled the neat lines of children in school, hushed to near silence for fear of punishment.

She looked up at the red light and scanned the four-way intersection. Still no other cars approached. “Rules are rules,” she mused to herself, “and there is a reason for them.”

The driver recalled high school, watching a bunch of kids get into a car and happily speed off. She was not allowed to do such a thing — and as she pushed back her glasses and straightened her books for the walk home, she thought of the dire consequences her mother said awaited her free-wheeling classmates.

Back at the intersection, a cat peeked out of a bush and scurried across the road to the other side. A pair of joggers, attempting clips of conversation as they ran, jogged in place at the light an instant and then crossed, not waiting for it to change.

She looked at the light still glowing red and glanced at her watch. She could not remember how long she had been there, but it seemed a long time. A cyclist appeared in her rear view mirror, churning rapidly towards the intersection. He paused for a moment at the intersection and flailed on through.

The driver fidgeted in her seat and contemplated the light. She checked her mirrors and eyed the roads heading into the intersection — no cars. The pink glow in the east seemed to lessen and the light of morning increase.

The man with the dog came back around the corner and proceeded down the street he’d come from as the driver’s thoughts drifted back again. She thought of her husband, now dead, and how handsome he had looked in his Army uniform. His easy smile so charming, so disarming. But he had been one of those men who demanded a house just so (which also pleased her mother) and dinner on the table at six. Still, her heart raced a bit when she thought of him, mixed by a bit of sadness. She had never really let herself go with him. Never really told him how much she loved him. It hadn’t seemed proper.

She looked at the light, red, taunting, hanging there like some mechanical god. She stifled the thought with the admonition “No, I’ll get caught.” But a look began to come over her face. A look connected to a thought so rarely contemplated, its freshness scared her a bit. She could go through the light. Surely it was broken. If the police pulled her over she would just explain. She raced the engine and looked around to make sure no one was watching. But suddenly, the vision of her mother, apron on, holding a wooden spoon and a stern look, caused her to let off the gas. The light still burned red.

She thought then of the missed opportunities, how she’d followed everybody’s rules all her life. She glanced at the intersection one more time and looked up at the baleful red eye of the light.

Then she stomped on the gas and in a tremendous roar of engine, tires screaming against the pavement in a billow of smoke, she hurtled through the intersection and down the street.

The light swung a bit in the wind created by her passing and glowed red.

Copyright 2011 Steve Dodge   All Rights Reserved

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NOTE TO THE READER

Look for this and other stories by Steve Dodge, available as a free mobile device or e-reader download at: smashwords.com