"Daymark"

A woman faces her fear while photographing the Outer Banks.

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Inroads: Stories

Inroads, my second short-story collection (and fifth book), is now available. Thank you to everyone who helped produce and promote this.

Inroads: Stories by William Auten

And now for this month’s story.

“Daymark”

William Auten

Copyright William Auten

williamauten.com

Waves cross the sand, and Barbara trembles away until thickets and beach grass muffle the crashing water. She tightens her camera’s strap and focuses on the footpath she tiptoed down from the highway and glimpses behind her at the moss-covered pines and oaks across the road she photographed before she continued to the shoal’s edge and posted in front of the ocean. The sun continues rising over the Atlantic as she dusts off a rock, sits, and grips the grooves. Her pulse settles. She uncaps her camera and snaps. From a distance, it’s OK, she chants to herself. It’s OK from a distance.

She opens her wish list on her phone and scrolls past Wright Brothers Memorial and a lighthouse but won’t mark off the ocean. Eyeballing the water, she narrows where waves break on the beach. The ocean quiets. She draws her camera close and marches toward the water. Wind kicks in, she pauses, but the waves do not increase. She shuffles closer to foam and bubbles, as though she encroaches on a slumbering monster, slips off her shoes, and drags herself toward the waves. Her teeth chatter; her heart races; her lungs contract. A little more, she tells herself, readying her camera. A little more, she repeats, on the verge of suffocating or crossing a threshold. But the water chills her; sand and seaweed prickle her as a tide surges. The ocean’s roar sends her away. Leaning on her car’s roof, she calms herself. “Before I leave,” she promises. “I will.”

She drives south, passing stretches of whites and tans—untouched by houses or hotels—green inlets, estuaries, rivers squiggling in and out between the bays and spreading deeper west and across the barrier chain. Barbara stops here and there and photographs land chewed up, flattened, or built up by weather and history, and walking here and there, her camera filling up, relaxes her, but the ocean thunders. She drives to a boardwalk glistening over water, photographs the men fishing, and steps onto its first plank—then three more—before halting when boards creak. She retreats for her car. “You’re such a landlubber.” As she departs, cars and people dissipate until she’s alone again.

She turns for a beach pull-off and its footbridge humped over dunes and snaps photos of flowers under the handrails. She clicks and clicks while the sunrise silhouettes a horse and rider on the beach. The horse stutters when waves roll in and sunlight flashes off crests. The rider pats the horse’s neck and speaks into its ear. The rider tugs one way; the horse the other. They start and stop halfway to the dunes. Barbara cringes as waves surge. The horse prances and circles, refusing to go any farther, its head and tail whipping. The rider wiggles the reins and heels the horse’s sides. More sunlight flashes. The horse backtracks until a large wave smashes behind its rump. The horse bolts up, knocks off the rider, and gallops for the grass and slope leading to the highway.

“Oh God!” Barbara yells as the rider thrashes in the water and the horse neighs into the orange-blue sky. She checks the road: she’s the only one. She dials 9-1-1—but no