Lowcountry Weekly is pleased to announce the winners of the 12th Annual Sea Island Spirit Writers Short Story Contest. This year, the participants were asked to include the word “silence” somewhere in their story of 750 words or less. As always, there were many great stories, and we thank the Sea Island Spirit Writers for their service as judges. Thanks to everybody who entered the contest, as well, and congratulations to the winners! Please enjoy the prize-winning stories published below.
First Place ($100)
A Good Bet
By Jayne Adams
Second Place ($50)
Low Tide
by Bob Ferguson
Third Place ($25)
The Cement that Binds
by Charles Mitchell
Honorable Mention ($20)
Seasons
by Susan Willson
Lightly Trodden
by Rebecca Cartlidge
My Lady Celeste
by Robert Story
FIRST PLACE
A Good Bet
By Jayne Adams
They sat across from one another in the last window booth at the Rockaway Diner.
She picked at a chipped gel fingernail and stared out at the highway.
He rifled through his smartphone app for the day’s races, bypassing the track records and pedigrees of the horses. He didn’t know why he’d ever bothered with those useless stats. He always reverted to his habit of picking possible winners by their names anyway. If the name spoke to him, he put money on it. He won a little less than half the time––but when he did win, the odds usually paid better than if he’d tried to handicap the race. When he got the “magic” right, it was a good day.
Judi heaved a sigh and shifted her weight. The silence between them grew.
Willie scrolled through screens, emitting an occasional chuckle or groan, scribbling names on a paper napkin. So far he had: Tomorrow’s Promise, Yesterday’s Folly, and Nobody’s Home on his list for the first, second, and third races. He thought the first one sounded like good luck. The second name reminded him of a real blooper he’d made––he liked recalling some of his mistakes. They’d been fun. The last name just made him think of his favorite Paul Newman movie. Wait a minute! No! That was Nobody’s Fool. He scratched the third name.
Judi cleared her throat and wound the paper cover from her straw around one finger.
Willie paid no attention, intent upon finding a replacement horse for the third race. There it was: Chestnut Mane! He added that to his list and smiled as he thought of his first wife and her beautiful, long auburn hair. He still carried a bit of a torch for that one. Turning to the fourth race, he skimmed the horses’ names and stopped at My Old Mustang. “Yup, that’s the one,” he whispered to himself, “like my vintage four-on-the-floor, louvered hatchback. Went like a bat outa hell…bet this horse runs like that too. I’m doublin’ down on this one.” He wrote the name on the napkin and put a star next to it.
Judi raised a finger when the waitress came by, pointing to her empty glass.
Willie continued to scroll down. The fifth race looked uninteresting, so he went on to the sixth, inhaling sharply as his eyes fell on the horse named Heaven For the Asking. “Oh, yeah, baby.” That name went below My Old Mustang. He thought for a minute and added a star next to that name too.
Judi smiled at the waitress who brought the refill and sipped her second Diet Coke.
Willie had a good feeling about the picks he’d made so far, and proceeded to the seventh. He went past Sir William (too pretentious), Pretty Frilly (bad pun), and Prancin’ Feet (when they named’em that, they hardly ever were). And then his eyes lit on Rolling in Clover. “Oh, that’s the one. No ifs, ands, or buts!” He marked it down for Race 7.
Judi rose from the leatherette booth, pulled her jacket around her growing stomach, and headed toward the restroom.
Willie scrolled to the eighth race. It was a short program today, so this would be his final pick. He started to read through the names: Happy Meal (really?), Sarge’s Stripes (eh), Finally Home (had to be a loser), Lord Love-a-Duck (sounds like a Monty Python character), Sloppy Joe (definitely not). At that point, Willie paused to stare at the ceiling (he believed he gained clarity when he did this). When no inspiration came to him, he lowered his gaze and noticed that Judi’s soda sat half-finished on the table. Her paper placemat had been torn in half. A folded piece of it lay next to his plate. He opened it and read: Willie–– Thanks for meeting me. Doc says it’s a boy. I thought this would give us another chance. I think I better just go it alone.
He looked around the diner, saw no sign of her, and returned to the racing program on his phone. “Eureka! There it is!” A gelding named Go it Alone was next on the screen in the eighth.
SECOND PLACE
Low Tide
By Bob Ferguson
Wade Pinckney had been polishing his Key West 203 FS since five that morning. She was twenty foot of pure Carolina, and by the time the Steins came down the dock, the Yamaha F150 on her transom shone like a church piano.
“Mornin’, folks. Welcome to the Lowcountry.”
“Nine hundred dollars,” Richard Stein said, instead of hello. “For this money, we should be hauling fish out of the water in droves. I want a bull red. I hear they fight like hell and eat even better.”
“Yes, sir,” Wade said. “We’ll surely try.”
“He read one article,” Ellen said.
“Two articles.”
They were still arguing about the articles when Wade cleared the no-wake zone.
It did not stop. On the run to the first creek, they argued about the weather forecast. At the first spot, they argued about their son’s grades. At the second, about their son’s lack of physical fitness.
Wade baited hooks. Wade untangled lines. Richard cast like a man hailing a cab. Every third throw landed in the rock reef, which rose higher and blacker from the water as the tide fell.
“It’s snagged,” Richard announced, as though filing a complaint.
“Yes, sir.” Wade idled over, reached down past the barnacles, and worked it free. Again.
Nothing bit.
“Our neighbors bought a Tesla,” Ellen said to no one. “They won’t shut up about it.”
“It’s a sensible car.”
“It’s a smug car, Richard.”
Wade moved the boat to his favorite oyster bar. Nothing. He moved to the deep bend at Coosaw where the reds stacked up on the falling tide. Nothing. The fish were there. Wade could feel them there, the way you can feel someone watching you from a porch. They simply had no interest in the Steins.
Neither, it seemed, did anything else. A heron lifted off the mud flat and flew away without looking back. Dolphins surfaced, listened, and sank.
“Eleven hundred a square foot,” Richard was saying. “For a nondescript box near us. Eleven hundred.”
“It was nine hundred last spring.”
“It was never nine hundred.”
“You weren’t even there, Richard, you were in traffic.”
“Everyone is always in traffic!”
Wade stared at the horizon and wondered what the Lord had intended when He made people this loud. They talked too loud. They said too much. They irritated every one of God’s creatures within a mile of the boat, Wade included.
Then the rod in the stern holder, the one nobody was watching, bowed nearly to the water. The reel began to scream.
“Mine!” Richard lunged.
“It’s my turn!”
“I paid for this!”
“We paid for this!”
Wade stepped between them, lifted the rod from its holder, and said one word, firmly and with conviction, the way his daddy used to say grace.
“Silence.”
They stared at him. He placed the rod in Richard’s hands.
“Tip up, sir. Let him run.”
Richard fought the fish for several minutes. Ellen fought Richard.
“You’re reeling too fast. Now too slow. Your back, Richard. Think of your back.”
The fish made three long runs toward the rocks. Three times Wade quietly guided the line clear. At last a great bronze shape rolled beside the boat, broad as a fence plank, a single black spot on its tail. Wade slid the net under it and grunted as he lifted.
It was over thirty-six inches. A true bull red, a breeding female, maybe fifteen years old.
“We’re keeping it,” Richard said.
“It’s too big to keep, anyone can see that.”
“How would you know what anyone can see?”
“With what gas costs now, we’re eating this fish.”
“Don’t you start on gas prices and that fool in Washington…”
“Which fool?”
“All of them!”
Wade knelt on his clean deck, one hand under the fish’s belly and the other at her tail, and held her in the water beside the boat. South Carolina’s limit stopped at twenty-three inches. Fish like this one belonged to the river.
“Folks,” he said, and for the first time all day, there was no courtesy left in his voice. “Please. Silence.”
This time, they heard him.
The bull red breathed against his hands. The marsh ticked. Ellen’s mouth opened, and closed. Richard lowered himself onto the cooler.
With one strong push of her tail, the fish was gone.
On the way in, Wade turned on the stereo: Alison Krauss, “When You Say Nothing at All.” He kept his eyes on the channel markers. Nobody said a word the whole way to the dock.
THIRD PLACE
The Cement That Binds
By Charles Mitchell
Sixty feet from the marsh grass at the river’s edge, the seven-foot section of chest-high, old wall stood proudly, its weather-worn, colonial tabby cement surface revealing glistening oyster shells.
The red-faced man growled.
“What do I lose?”
The seasoned foreman checked his paperwork.
“Thirty-two square feet. About.”
“My second grill? Unacceptable! Fix it!”
The foreman replied bluntly.
“It’s protected, as discussed.”
“Nonsense. Tonight’s storm could easily hasten its demise. Fix it, or I’ll find another who will.”
The red-faced man retreated to his idling car, visibly relieved when the air-conditioning hit his steaming face.
Biting his tongue, the foreman turned to the bustle of activity at the oversized mansion being built near the end of Beaufort’s historic Bay Street.
The wall waited.
Movement then caught the foreman’s eye. He looked back. A small girl of seven or eight, blonde, in a pale but pretty dress, was standing near the old tabby wall. His voice showed surprise.
“Miss? How did you get past the fences?”
Silence.
“By those rocks? Along the river? They aren’t safe.”
Silence.
Before he could direct someone to escort her out, the girl answered in the most angelic voice the foreman had ever heard.
“Mama says to respect our elders, sir, but he’s wrong. Shouldn’t hurt the church wall, sir.”
The foreman was immediately struck by the child’s solemn reverence, surprising for one so young.
“Not to worry, miss. I’m running the build. Nothing will happen.”
Resting her right hand on the wall, the child then pointed her left hand at the departing car. She spoke, her deep, hazel-blue eyes boring into the foreman.
“The bad man will use acid. Seen others do it, sir. Powerful. Bubbles and breaks up our walls. Many gone, sir, these long years.”
The foreman was incredulous, first that the child would suspect the owner of crimes, and second that she understood the damage industrial acid would do to even the sturdiest, centuries-old tabby cement.
“Miss, he’s not that foolish.”
The girl’s eyes flashed, and, suddenly grabbing the foreman’s right hand, she held it against the wall.
Like a blow to his chest, the foreman saw, or thought he saw, the owner directing several men, with thick gloves and heavy buckets, swarming the wall in darkness. His head reeled. The girl dropped his hand.
Shocked, the foreman studied the strange girl, her hand stroking the wall. He then shook his head, glanced at the receding car, and pulled out his phone.
“Jim? Right, it’s me. Need a favor. Tonight. Two officers. A few days. Don’t worry. I’m paying overtime. Yes, Bay Street. Keep an eye on the old tabby wall, the one from that church fire. Way back. Thanks. Yes. I’ll meet them. Give Marie a hug.”
The foreman put his phone away as the child spoke.
“You are a good man, sir. My family thanks you and the sheriff. His great-grandpa was a fine man.”
The girl sighed quietly, then turned away from the wall and walked slowly toward the river.
“Miss. There’s no path. Please use the road.”
The girl only smiled, weaving her way into the tall marsh reeds, which were swaying like a choir in the morning breeze.
The foreman blinked several times, the hair on his neck pricking up. The girl was gone.
Silence.
The foreman slowly crossed himself, something he had not done in years. Then a distant voice reached out and pulled his mind from the river’s edge.
“Boss?”
“Yes?”
“Priest is here.”
“Priest?”
“Didn’t you see the morning report?”
“Sorry. Not yet. Owner was here.”
“A grave. They missed one, boss.”
“Grave?”
“Yes, sir. Young girl, the stone says. Sad. Whole family lost in that church fire. No one knows why her grave wasn’t moved with the others back in the fifties when this stretch was redeveloped. River side of that thick stand of palmettos.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Spotting the priest near the trees, far to the left of where the girl had vanished, the foreman, after giving the old tabby wall a gentle pat, made his way over.
“Father, my apologies. Just heard you arrived. Thanks for coming.”
The priest nodded.
The foreman looked from the gravestone back to the wall.
“Father, I know it’s been a while, but I’d like you to hear my confession later.”
The priest smiled.
The two men then stood together in peaceful silence, their eyes seeing far beyond the weathered stone to a young, ageless girl who loved her church and her old tabby wall.
HONORABLE MENTION
Seasons
By Susan Willson
The road ran on toward a white house and a clump of trees. I could have closed my eyes and made every turn, so familiar was it to me. I arrived at the house and stared at its emptiness, felt its silence; the peeling paint, the porch swing listing off its track, and before my eyes, it came to life again.
I saw Caleb swing down from a branch in the sycamore closest to the house, Catty close on his heels. The shriek that was his war cry filled the afternoon. He had a plastic tomahawk thrust through his belt, and mud spread across his cheeks and chest like war paint. Skinny legs like matchsticksprotruded from his shorts. Catty, adoring him, followed his lead. She was faster than he was, even at eight, and her cotton sundress streamed behind her as she opened her stride and ran flat out toward the pond, ducks scattering to either side as she passed.
“Last one there is a rotten egg,” she shouted with glee, sure of her success.
I sat in a canvas lounger, under the oak, listening to the hum of insects as their war cry split the air. The magazine I was reading had slipped from my handand lay on the grass. I sighed, watching my children come alive in this country place. Our trips to my childhood home each summer were something we lived for, all of us.
My widowed mother would take us in hand and create a warm world of comfort and peace. Large stacks of pancakes, dripping with butter and syrup, would appear on the table in the mornings; a jug of lemonade and cookies, fresh out of the oven, would be sitting on the porch at mid-afternoon. The kids could safely roam the small woods near the house and fish, swim or catch frogs at the pond. They would dig earthworms and put them in jars, skip stones, wrestle with Kimosabe, the shaggy brown mutt that had adopted the family just before I left home.
These days for me, were the only time I could really let down. Raising the kids alone on a waitress salary in the city took everything I had. I had watched myself age in the three years since their father left us, and was, at 30, already finding gray hairs when I looked in the mirror.
“You look plumb worn out honey,” my mother observed, when we arrived the night before. She had been at the bus stop in Cairo to pick us up. And, as I always did, I poured my heart out into her waiting hands and she held it and me tenderly, while reminding me of the good things in life, what I did have and that time always passed; things always moved forward. I needed to have faith. That was what got her through, I knew, her faith. But mine was gone. Used up.
Today, standing on the porch, my heart ached again. Time had moved forward for all of us. I was a nurse with a busy job, the kids were launched and mom was newly settled into a senior facility in the city, that could care for her. I was the one to listen now and hold her when she shared what memories slipped through the obstacle course that seemed to exist in her mind.
The house needed to be sold to pay for her care, or I needed to quit my life in the city and come back here with her, to build something new in the home of my childhood. It might even help my mother, to be back in familiar surroundings. Could I leave everything to do that, though? Should I? Even in the six months since she had moved, the house had fallen further into disrepair. Vines crawled up the porch rails, paint was beginning to peel, and the last storm had knocked a few shingles from the roof.
I thought about memories, where they lived and what contained them. The afternoon that had sprung to mind was as alive in me now, as then. I told myself I didn’t need the house to hold them, but this hurt. I wandered through the house one last time, scenes unfolding in each room–of my own childhood and those of my children. I knew this house would never see my grandchildrenand mourned that. I closed the door behind me with a soft click.
Lightly Trodden
By Rebecca Cartlidge
He’d never expected the end to be so noisy. Hal had assumed that popping your clogs, kicking the bucket, the great silence, would be, well, silent.
He had supposed that this would be the moment a picture reel of his life would be broadcastbefore his eyes yet all he could hear was the urgent steady beep of the machines and the fussing of people around him. He’d never been one to like a fuss and they’d kept him going too long now – it was his time. Since Dee had fallen off her perch seven years before, his was an unanchored life – a lone pebble rattling along in a life made for two. He had not longed for the end, forcing wasn’t in his nature, but now she was here he was ready.
No, there was no picture reel or dramatic life regrets and lost opportunities flashing before his eyes. His had been a steady life of simple pleasures and enjoyment of the earth. He’d troddenlightly, taking only what he needed and in return life had been kind to him, acquiring along the way that precious something many men search a lifetime for in vain – enough.
Fifteen seconds of his ninety years were his final souvenir from this life and were all he needed to assure him he’d realised just that.
The sounds in the room had shifted. Hal knew where he was in an instance. The sea lapping the pebble beach, the gulls squawking mid-flight – Brighton seafront, just by the West Pier, July 1953. That summer.
His body was free of the aches and pains, his rheumy eyes clear, shoulders strong and broad, oh to be young. Dee was stretched beside him on the beach; they were partially hidden from view by the steps leading down to the front. She was propped up on her elbows, her face stretched upwards towards the sun, auburn freckles peppered her nose, her brow, her upper lip. God, she was beautiful.
‘I’ve got a secret’ she said, eyes still closed. Hal did not fill the pause which followed. ‘I like someone’. His stomach dropped, remembering her laughing and joking with his older brother Pete at The Great Omani show earlier that day on the pier. All the girls liked Pete.
‘Oh?’ he said, trying to sound as indifferent as possible, ‘and who’s that?’
She sat up and faced him now, tucked a lock of her wavy strawberry blonde hair behind her ear and looked directly into his eyes, shading the sun with her hand. It was a look she’d never given him before, intent and collected – no longer a girl, not quite a woman.
‘Close your eyes and I’ll tell you who’.
Hal closed his eyes. He felt the warmth of her breath as she got close enough to his ear to whisper.
‘It’s you’. A brief and awkward graze of her lips on his, the taste of sea salt.
He kept his eyes closed, savouring the moment. His heart swelled, his head dizzy, floating in a sea of bliss. He blinked open his eyes, and she’d returned to her original position, propped up on the stoney beach, looking out to sea with a smile toying at the corner of her mouth.
She looked up at him and saw his grin, moving her head to be on his lap. The weight of her body on his felt so natural, he tangled his hands in her hair, cupping her cheek in his palm.Years of childhood friendship, changed in a moment. Any self-doubt of being the quiet one, the somehow less-than one washed away in a kiss. This was the start of a new chapter.
It was all he needed, that moment. It was enough. It was… Silence.
My Lady Celeste
By Robert Story
Along the tidal creeks of South Carolina’s coastal Lowcountry, from Georgetown to Darien, you will find worn-out family marinas and dilapidated docks that serve as the final resting places for a sisterhood of tired old shrimp boats, motor yachts, and sailboats—anything that can still float. I live near one of these forgotten old docks, and I am glad I do. You see, I was born with a great love and respect for boats, especially old, abandoned ones. When I see them, I am humbled as I envision their sublime pasts and proudest moments—how they protected their passengers, provided a livelihood, prevailed in hard weather, and put smiles on faces.
As I regularly walk this weathered dock in the quiet of the morning, I can hear this sorority of still-buoyant retirees speaking when the waves and wind roil them, causing their lines to stretch and groan and their twisting hulls to grumble. I seem to understand these sounds of their language, and I believe they speak to each other, and to me in this way. I did not come to this conclusion on my own; it was proven to me by a very old and very special shrimp boat at this dock, the Lady Celeste. And it changed my life.
Let me explain.
Over the years that I walked this deserted dock, I came to know the Lady Celeste tenderly. She was the largest and most regal boat among this tethered kinship of aged, seafaring Southern belles. Her fifty feet of sweeping, faded blue gunwales and forward-leaning pilothouse spoke of the classic form of her era, elevating her as the matriarch of the other noble craft lounging at their berths beside her. She was proud and certainly magnificent in her day. I adored her.
One afternoon, against my better judgment, I decided to walk the dock during a spring gale warning. The waves were breaking through the decking and heaving the boats hard against the pier, which seemed to be disintegrating before my eyes. I could see the Lady Celeste struggling to hold fast in the pounding waves and wind. Her rigging whipped wildly in the gusts, and her stern line had parted. She was about to be lost.
Then, I heard her call me. With each bashing wave, the whine of her strained rigging cried for help. The eerie hum of mast cables stretched to their breaking point told me she feared her final moments were near. And then, she called my name: “Rob-ert!” It was loud, clear, and unmistakable. I was stunned. Each rising, hammering wave that stretched, twisted, and stressed the Lady Celeste’s vocal cords of rigging acted like a bow stroke, enabling her to call my name in rhythmic syllables through the breath of the waves’ inhaling rise and exhaling fall.
The weather was getting worse, and as I rushed to her side on the heaving pier, I spotted an old throw ring with a line and grabbed it. Holding on for dear life beside her, I timed the swell andthrew a loop of line that miraculously caught her stern cleat and I pulled her fast with all my might before the next destructive wave hit. She was saved. I stood there drenched from the rain, exhausted and full of emotion, but fulfilled knowing that the Lady Celeste was thankful and proud of me. As I walked off the dock, I took one last look at her—still bouncing in the waves but secure—and heard her whisper, “Good-bye.”
The morning news reported many boats sunk and lost from the storm. I gathered myself up once again for my morning walk along the dock, feeling satisfied and grateful that the Lady Celestewas not among those lost. Nearing the pier, I could see boats half-sunk, others showing fresh damage, and gear floating among the pilings.
Looking out toward the ocean’s horizon, I saw the Lady Celeste being towed away. My heart sank at the sight, and I tried and tried to hear her calling me. But there was only silence, and I knew instantly why she told me good-bye. Sadly I made my way to her empty berth just as I saw her clear the horizon, never to be seen or heard from again.
Then, looking down at the scarred side of the dock where she rubbed and scraped for years, I saw my name, “Robert,” purposely, perfectly and distinctly worn into the wooden pier where it had never been before.
