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------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- Morris was surprised. There were no other cars in the small parking lot. It was nearly noon on a beautiful day, clear and bright. After he closed the car door it was suddenly very quiet except for the distant sound of surf. Morris hung the binoculars around his neck. -------“Sally said the path starts on the other side of the road.” Terry carried their lunch in a small backpack. She looked terrific in her new hiking boots and denim shorts. ------- They crossed the road and started up the path. It wound steeply through the pitch pines and out into an open field covered with bearberry. The path led over the top of a big sand dune, and suddenly the Atlantic Ocean was in front of them. -------“Wow!” Terry said. -------There was a weather beaten house still boarded up for the winter below them, and beyond it a short stretch of deserted beach. Except for the house and the tip of a water tower miles to the north, there was no sign of civilization. Morris looked at the tower through his binoculars. It looked the same, only closer. ------- “It’s like Scotland,” Terry said. Morris agreed that it looked like pictures of the Highlands. Terry took off her backpack and got out sandwiches and the thermos of coffee. They talked very little. Terry could talk or be quiet. ------- “We could try that road,” Terry said, pointing to a dim track below them. Morris looked at it through the binoculars. -------“It must be a fire road,” he said. “I wonder where it goes.” Morris was careful about things and places he didn’t fully understand. But he couldn’t see the harm, and Terry was having a nice time. ------- “Sure,” he said. ------- A little way along the fire road they passed a young couple. -------“It’s another world!” the boy said. Morris smiled and nodded. -------The road led over a rise to a cleft in the low dune overlooking the ocean. The sand sloped to the water. -------After they’d made their way down to the beach they could see miles in either direction. -------“There’s nobody here but us!” Terry said. -------“It’s Tuesday,” Morris said. -------“What...?” -------“I’m kidding,” he said. “Looks like somebody had a bonfire.” He pointed to the charred driftwood. -------“A beach party,” Terry said. -------“Pretty far to go for party.” -------“Maybe it’s a nudie beach,” Terry said. -------Morris laughed. “They’d need the fire to keep warm.” -------“I’ll bet it’s the witches!” -------“Sand witches?” -------“Nooo, Morrie! Real witches. They sit around the fire and play drums.” -------“They sound like fruitcakes,” Morris said. -------“They don’t hurt anybody.” -------She put her arms around him, and they stood in the shadow of the high dunes, while the big waves crumpled and hissed at their feet, and the empty beach stretched to the distant headlands. ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- |