On Folly Beach

by Karen White

The ocean is the same ocean as it has been of old; the events of today are its waves and its rivers. —Sayyid Haydar Amuli FOURTEENTH CENTURY

FOLLY BEACH HAD LONG SINCE been considered the wilder sister of her barrier-island siblings. The cottages with their trademark weathered paint and rickety steps, the dirt roads and general air of don’t-give-a-damn made the tiny slip of island outside Charleston Harbor a haven to those who loved her, and an object of derision for those who didn’t know her well enough to love her.

“It’s a bottle tree. Jim told me about them. He said that African slaves used to put bottles on the trees outside their houses to scare away evil spirits.”

she’d heard about the people of Folly Beach, whose physical exertions and attitudes were directly related to the intensity of the heat from the Southern sun.

She’d seen oceans in movies, and in her mother’s photographs, but now, standing in front of the great Atlantic, she felt the pulsing of the waves, felt the power and breadth of the water as it bled out into the horizon, endless and liquid like the earth’s lifeblood. It made her feel alive, unlike anything she’d felt under the broad, flat skies of home. As she stared out at the dark blue vastness, her veins seemed to pump with the ancient rhythm of the waves, giving her kinship to every person who’d ever lived by the water, yet at the same time making her feel very, very insignificant.

“There’re always surprises to find here in the sand. When I was a boy, my mother told me that what you found on the beach was just reminders that we’re not alone in the world. That you’ll always find what you need if you look hard enough.”

the erosion and the currents were simply reminders to those who would listen that man was temporary, the ocean eternal.

You fill a space in my heart, and there’s no room in there for anybody else.

Heath has never been the kind of person who can live with the broken pieces. Even if it’s all glued back together, he’d still see the cracks.