Vickie

Many people visit the beach for a variety of reasons.  Some to spend their vacation days out of doors.  Tourist take pictures and splash in the waves.  Children build sand castles and collect sea shells.  A baby digs his fingers into the wet sand and grins as he plasters it into his hair, while the mother cringes looking on.

Women come to the sea shore to work on their tan.  They lie on towels, sunglasses hiding their eyes, soaking up the sun.

Others are born ocean lovers, come to test their skill against the waves.  They master their boards and teach the water where to bring them.

Yet, the beach also attracts another sort of people.  Those that need to breath the salty air, just to taste and know that they are alive.  I would fall into this last category.  I am what some might call the scholarly type.  I love thinking about things--wondering why they work the way they do.  I look up into the sky and wonder how a sea gull soars, or into the ocean and ponder on how the moon, so far away, can affect the water rushing over my feet.

I sat there upon an empty stretch of the beach, a book unopened in my lap.  Yet my mind was not on the bird or the sea or philosophy.  No, it was on a person.  I might also consider myself a bit of a character studier.  Wondering not only about the nature around me, but also the singular persons which make up the world about me.

The person who caught my attention was a young woman of great beauty.  Her blond hair cascaded down her back, and when it fell across her face, she brushed it back with an impatient hand.  She was occupied with an easel which sat in front of her.  The look on her face was intent on the task before her.  Every so often she would look up and gaze across the ocean, and a beautiful expression would come over her features, but with it a look of sadness, perhaps a wistful longing.

She would work furiously after that, as if whatever image she saw on her mind's eye would vanish like the evening fog before a morning sun.  Sometimes she could look so calm, peaceful, but underneath was a sorrow like she was waiting for something, or wishing it would never come.

I sat watching her from my position on the beach; I did not think she saw me, or noticed my presence on this secluded portion of the sea side.  Yet, I wanted her to notice me.  I wanted to know more about her, and about this doom that she was content in letting come, but held her in dread at the same moment.

My book abandoned on the sand, I strolled over to her. 

“Hello,” I said pleasantly.  If she was surprised that a stranger was addressing her she did not show it.  She laid her brush down and turned fully toward me.  It was then that I noticed the rings under her eyes and noticed the paleness of her features.  Yet her beauty was not shadowed by the illness which she most definitely suffered from.

“I’m Vickie Mae.”  She wiped her hand on her painter’s apron and offered it to me.

“Thomas Hunter, most folks just call me Tom.” 

“Do you come here often?” she asked, seeming to want the conversation of another person.  As if she had gone too long without hearing another human’s voice.

“Yes I do, mostly during the off season, when there’s not as many people.  I like the quiet.”

“I like the quiet, too,” she responded.  “It lets me concentrate on my work.”

I still had not seen the painting on the canvas, but I knew that some painters did not like others to see their art until it was finished.  “May I take a look?”

“Certainly.”  She turned the easel toward me. 

It was a picture of the view of the sea before me.  The sand stretched out, the sky meeting with the water in a beautiful array of colors.  But there was a difference between what was on the canvas and what my eye could see.  The wind had kicked up the waves and I could hear them crash upon the shore.  But in the painting the sea was calm and still.  She had added boats, dark against the background of the ocean and sky.  I voiced my curiosity and the answer was singular for a woman of her young age.

“What I see is tumultuous sea, but what I paint is a tranquil sea.  Just as the life I live is a turbulent life, but what I give to life is of a calm nature.”

We did not say much after that.  The wind was picking up and she needed to move her things before they blew away or were damaged.

I thought of her often in the days following our conversation.  But I never saw her again on the beach.  One morning about a week later, I received a package delivered to me.  It was a large, slim parcel, with no return address.  Upon opening it, I found the painting of the ocean.  Enclosed was a note, which said as follows:

To the mysterious stranger, Tom,
You may not know that I am dying.  I am in the final stages of cancer.  My last wish is to give something to the world for them to remember me by.  My life was one of hardship, never a calm sea before me.  When you get this I shall have left this world for the next.  I leave you this painting to remind the world that I am never more sailing on a rough sea, but in peace evermore,
Vickie Mae