A couple of years ago, I wrote a short story called "The Perfect Mile" that I would like you to read. It may give you a little insight into one of the reasons why I wrote "The Mahogany Door." I will be heading back to this stretch of beach, known as "Stump,, to begin filming the book preview video very soon.
I absolutely love the beach and I practically grew up on its golden sands. And its presence is known throughout "The Mahogany Door." The beach I trampled all over as a kid has changed so much over the last 30 years that, in some cases, it's very hard to recognize. It can be a metaphor for our own lives in a way. Sometimes it's hard to come to the realization that we, too, are very different from when we were younger. We just need to accept it.
At any rate, I hope you enjoy the story. I will definitely share some pages from the book in the coming weeks as we get closer and closer to its release and as the soundtrack becomes more polished.
Thanks again for taking the time to visit my blog. It means a lot.
The Perfect Mile : A Short Story
When I was nine years old, my father announced to our family that we were going to build a beach house located in a place called Stump Sound, NC. The name didn’t have the iridescent resonance as a Daytona, Palm, or Myrtle, but when I woke up early on the second Sunday of June for the next eight years, Stump was the place I’d journey to in order to finish my long, exciting, boring, exhausting, and relaxing days of summer.
Sometime around 1978, my father bought two beach lots on the north end of Topsail Island, NC, which incorporates the town limits of Stump Sound. The beach lots started at the ocean’s edge and continued through to the sound’s. It was a very good deal at $15,000. It was also nice because our beach house, when completed on the sound side, would be only one of three bungalows past the New River Inlet Pier. That gave my family practically one mile of undisturbed walking and seashell hunting from the pier to the inlet. From then on, I dropped the “Sound” and lovingly referred to the town and beach as just Stump.
My dad’s vision was to have his family build a beach house so he and my mom would have a place to retire. When I say, “have his family build”, I don’t mean that we hired someone to do the building. I actually mean that our family literally built the house, and it didn’t matter if I was nine years old at the time when it was started. I lifted sheet rock, insulation, wires, pipes, and everything else you can think of that builders do. The problem with my father’s thinking was that we weren’t all that good at any of it. Maybe that’s why I hire professional contractors to do anything I need done around the house today, even if it's to change a light bulb. But I digress.
You see, my dad was very passionate about our beach house. Any waking moment, mostly on weekends when he wasn’t working, there would be nails pounded, pipes soldered, paint splashed, insulation hung, arms sore, and legs cramped in the town of Stump.
As my brother and I were grunting, toting 25-pound buckets of spackling up the flight of stairs to the 1300-square-foot bungalow, my father would always inform us about the days when he was younger, where he spent the summer at Old Man West’s house on Topsail Beach fishing. And it would be his mission to make sure that his family would have the same halcyon experience he had. I think I recollected those days as being hell on Earth, far away from anything that was serene or peaceful. That is until my dad would return home to his regular work on Sunday afternoons, leaving my brother and me free from our labor schedule. Then we would have beach to ourselves to enjoy for five glorious days until the sweating began again the following Friday night.
My mother’s vision was very different. I came to realize that her sole purpose was not only trying to make the transition from the Sunday afternoons my father left to the Friday nights of his return as smooth as possible, but she was also searching for the perfect name for our beach house.
Since I could remember, traveling to the North Carolina coast before we began building was nothing short of spectacular in my mind. It was a great family tradition to remember the names of houses that lined the roads and shore of Topsail Island. We didn’t practice this exercise merely because of the recreation aspect. It was fun, yes, but we did it specifically to locate landmarks as we hiked up and down the beach.
“I’ll meet you up by Oslo’s.”
“Your brother is walking up to The Sailfish.”
“We are going to walk up to The Sand Dollar and back.”
These statements would ring through the air on any given day. I have to believe that remembering the houses’ names made the experience much more personable. If we couldn’t know the tenants who switched like clockwork on every Saturday afternoon during the summer, we could at least know the bungalow they stayed in because it would be there week after week, year after year, just like an old friend. That made it doubly important for my mom to come up with the perfect name. She would have hated for people walking out on the beach to have to say, “I guess I’ll walk up to that ‘tan’ house and back.”
I tell you the last number of paragraphs only because I want you to hear the real story. I remember it like it was yesterday. It begins on a Tuesday in late July when I was 11 and set out on a mission.
On that glorious second day of the week, a month into summer, my mother brought to the “under construction” beach house a little book about seashells. Realizing I didn’t have to hold screen up anywhere so my father could staple it, I decided to flip through the pages of the small black book. It was when I turned to the section on state seashells that my interest really caught hold. I quickly turned to the North Carolina page where I discovered that North Carolina's state seashell is the Scotch Bonnet. I don’t really remember much about the stubby, speckled, brown, cone-shaped shell other than that I think it was named after Scottish peasant hats because, as soon as I saw its picture, I etched it on my brain, threw the book to the floor, and went out to find one.
I wish I could put into words the feelings I get when I'm walking on the North Carolina beaches. I guess if I were a good writer, I could, but I have to believe in my heart that only God could explain it, especially in those days.
Painstakingly, I combed the yellow sands of Stump, forgoing the chance to bag perfectly shaped Conchs, Shark’s Eyes, Shark’s Teeth, Lion’s Paws, Razors, and Angel’s Wings. I was going to purloin nothing less than that which I started my mission: a Scotch Bonnet. It was during this time that I truly began to understand what drew my father and mother to the beach. The blue waters bounced on the shore. The smell of sweat and saw dust from the house exploded into a sweet, mellow saltiness. The Sandpipers chirped and poked at Sand Fiddlers for a day’s meal as Sand Crabs scurried away from my investigative eyes. The wind danced delicately through the dune grasses as thick as a young man’s head of hair, and the sun’s beams warmed my heart. It was heaven on Earth.
Down the beach I went, away from the pier and on around to the inlet. There, the ocean meets the sound and its water became rougher as the sand on the shore becomes smoother. Big beds of shells lay in front of me and I filed through all of them, searching for the one shell that would make me happy.
The day drew by and my attempt at finding a Scotch Bonnet failed. But the one thing that I looked forward to was that I knew the tide would rise and ebb over night and I would have fresh seashell beds along my Perfect Mile to find my perfect Scotch Bonnet.
The days turned into weeks, the weeks into months, and the months into years. Hardworking weekends spent building on our beach house became solaced in the fact that Sunday would come, my dad would leave, and I had another Monday through Friday to continue the search for my state’s shell.
But the mission I set out on that Tuesday in July faded away and would disappear entirely when word came, from a single phone call, that my mother had suffered a devastating stroke. I believe that was a Tuesday, too. I was 17, and that would be the day that everything changed.
As I've mentioned, my father intended the beach house to be a place where he and my mother would retire. But instead of becoming an ideal retirement haven, the house in Stump became a burdensome expense as medical bills piled up and only one spouse could not work. Eventually the little bungalow by the sound went into foreclosure. My family would never complete the house nor return to my Perfect Mile. In fact, my family was shattered.
My heart jaded, I swore I would never go back there. Stump and my Perfect Mile became “that beach.” The anger I felt toward things that I could not control, and the pain that pierced my soul because of my family’s loss, were just too much for me to deal with. It would be years before I returned to the North Carolina beaches for vacationing. And when I did return, somehow the experience would never be the same.
I was much older by then, almost 34 and married. I traveled south from Topsail Island and became acquainted with beaches called Kure, Carolina, Wrightsville, Caswell, and Ocean Isle. Childhood days of currying around the beach, combing seashell beds, or hanging windows in an “under construction” house gave way to leisurely rounds of golf on what seemed like the exponential growth of courses up and down the coast of North Carolina. I played a beautiful course in Calabash, NC, and the starter there told me, “Grand Strand courses tend to play longer than others.” (If you're not from North Carolina, Grand Strand courses are golf courses associated with Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, which is known as the “Mecca” of golf on the Eastern seaboard of the United States.) I didn't say anything, but from that moment on, I knew the North Carolina coast I remembered and loved as a child had changed.
I cordially experienced the North Carolina beaches as an adult. I woke up in the morning, took a nice walk to a designated pier or blue house, and made my way back to bed. I then strolled out to a golf course, thought about how much North Carolina had changed, returned to the house I stayed in, ate lunch, maybe took a nap, trudged down to the beach to another indiscriminate house or water tower, sat for about 20 minutes, returned to the house, and then started the routine all over the following day.
I would be lying, though, if I didn’t say that on those randomly scheduled walks up and down the beach, my eyes would wonder to the sandy shore trying to locate a bed of shells I might scour in hopes that maybe, just maybe, I might find my perfect Scotch Bonnet. Of course I never did. But in the back of my mind, I thought that if I ever found one, the feeling of clutching that little brown spotted shell on some other beach just wouldn’t have been as joyous as it would have been if I'd found it on my Perfect Mile.
Some five years later, in 2008, I received a phone call from my brother. Being the over-achiever and lawyer that he is these days, he informed me that he had bought a beach house and wondered if I and my beautiful bride would like to spend a weekend there. My wife, who overheard our conversation and has never backed down from the chance to go to the beach, said "yes!" before I could pull the phone from my mouth to discuss the possibility. Enthusiastically but cautiously, I asked, “Where exactly is this beach house?”
To some people it really wouldn’t have mattered exactly where this beach house was located. Just that it was at any beach would be good enough as long as there were sand, an ocean, a place to lay their heads, and it was free. However, if you have been listening closely to my story, there was one stretch of beach that would have made me think twice before going back there. Of course, my brother’s words would be cheerfully clear:
“It’s at Topsail.”
I didn't want to be rude to my brother, who didn’t have to ask if I would like to visit his new house. I said, “OK.”
If you know a little about Topsail Island, then you know that there are three distinct sections of it. On the south side of the island, where my brother’s house is located, is Topsail Beach. Surf City is located in its center. And Stump -- now North Topsail Beach -- is to the north and at its tip is the New River Inlet. There are also two bridges that access the island. The one to the south is a draw bridge. The one to the north is an enormous arching bridge that once gave me chills as I crossed it because, in the distance to my left from the top of the structure, I could make out the New River Inlet Pier -- the beginning of my Perfect Mile.
With apprehensions abounding and our car packed, my wife and I made the journey.
I flashed back to the times my family made the same trek some 30 years before in our humongous, burgundy-colored station wagon. From our house in the Piedmont region of the state, it would take about four hours as we traveled down I-40 to Raleigh then exited on to Highway 70 East. On that stretch of highway, we passed through towns like Goldsboro and Kinston, where we always stopped at a Hardee’s fast food restaurant for lunch without actually “stopping." We had to get our food from the drive-thru window because any second wasted on the drive was one less second my father could splice wires. I even remembered those rare occasions we by-passed the Hardee’s and pulled nice, slimy, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches along with a bag of wet potato chips from the big red cooler that sat in the back of the car. Later, I affectionately nicknamed that cooler "The Animal." Down the road we continued. And I always knew when we got closer to my Perfect Mile because, as we passed through Richlands, NC, the dark, thick soil gave way to golden sand.
The trip my wife and I made on a Friday around noon 30 years later would be a little different. I-40 now stretched all the way down to Wilmington. It was then just a hop, skip, and a jump to the island from the port city, shaving at least 45 minutes from the trip. The small towns we would have passed through 30 years before had now become random exit numbers with national food chains and convenient shops every few miles or so. Though I recognized those exits while traveling to the southern beaches of North Carolina, I didn’t recall a single one on the excursion to Topsail.
We crossed over to Topsail Beach by means of the draw bridge. Despite my heart fluttering and the nervousness flooding my body like a sponge bloating with water, after three decades, I was back on Topsail Island. Nothing seemed familiar. Large houses sprouted up like red wood trees. Big-name grocery stores were strategically located just before the bridge for easy access to vacationers, and para-sailing chutes could be seen hovering 100 feet from the ocean’s surface like odd, unidentified flying objects. I was confused to say the least. I realized the beach that both my father and I visited when we were kids was not insulated from the housing boom of the late '90s and early 2000s.
We unpacked our things at my brother’s beautiful house and in no time flat my wife was in her bathing suit, book and chair in hand, heading over the dunes to the beach. I, however, hung back. I don’t know what it was. Maybe I was being childish for not letting go of a past I had no control over in the first place, but for some reason I found it hard to step out onto that beach. An hour passed and I realized that if I wanted to spend any time with my wife on that particular trip, I needed to do it on the beach. So I put on my swim trunks, grabbed a chair, and went out to the sand.
Immediately memories filled my mind and my heart wrenched. The smell was just how I remembered it, and the sand was as soft as down feathers. I swam some and sat some. I got up and walked a little, then sat some more. I became comfortable on this new beach. I then recognized something I hadn’t before: There were no piers. Well, not as many as I remembered. I wondered about it a bit but went back to enjoying my wife’s company. And then I couldn't help: Something forced my eyes toward the north. Was my Perfect Mile still there?
The next day my wife, being the observant person she is, pulled me to the side before she trekked out on the beach for a day of sun.
“Just go," she said. "You know you want to.”
I was taken aback, but I'd had told her the stories of my family’s bungalow on Topsail Island. And from where I stood at that moment, I believed she had a point. I concluded I was being childish, and that if I wanted any semblance of closure, I must return to Stump. “OK”, I said. I hopped in the car and turned it north.
I passed by strange but familiar streets. New, large houses, easily 2500 square feet each, lined the roads with license plates from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. It was progress on parade. I traveled even further and saw the large, arching bridge that I'd crossed over when I was younger rise over bushy little trees and glow white in the mid-afternoon sun. My heart pounded. I turned right onto the New River Inlet Road that led to Stump and my hands became wet. My vision went fuzzy and my surroundings became surreal. The large, template houses had not stopped in Surf City. They crept up the shores of Stump only to be separated by an assortment of condominium complexes with names like, “St. Regis.” Had I made a wrong turn? Was I really in Stump?
Down the road I ventured, cursing every quarter mile. Stump had changed. I looked feverishly for the New River Inlet Pier and the beginning of my Perfect Mile. I needed to gain some sort of marker as to where I was, especially since I felt as if I were on Mars. I barely noticed the road in front of me as my head was on a swivel searching, scanning, and contemplating. I then ran out of road that was cut short by a gated community, its houses towering over any living thing in eye-shot. I realized I was at the very north end of the island. The pier was nowhere to be seen. I was lost.
I turned around and stopped at a little store in front of a condominium complex and was told by the clerk that I was definitely in Stump Sound, but now the area liked to be referred to as North Topsail Beach. He also mentioned that hurricanes during the late '90s washed the New River Inlet pier away. Was it really true?
I drove to the first few large houses past the condos not behind a gate near the start of the inlet. There was a For Sale sign in the front grass of the first house as well as signs in front of the other two. They looked abandoned, so I pulled into the driveway of the second house. Apparently Topsail Island was also not insulated from the housing bust of 2008.
Interested, I pulled the flyer from the information box off the sign and my eyebrows sprinted up my forehead as every cell in my body seemed to blister with anger: $750,000, the brochure stated, reduced from $1.5 million. What had become of my Perfect Mile?
I kicked off my shoes and vaulted over the dunes. I was shocked. The clear, golden sands seemed dark and littered with seaweed. The beach had lost the sweet smell of salt and I couldn’t explain the odor that now burrowed in my nostrils. The dunes were now shaven bald and with the distinct aura that machinery had lifted them from the already stressed beach.
I marched to the ocean’s edge and turned south. Believing that one of my strides was about a meter in length, and knowing that there are 1600 meters in a mile, I walked and counted. As I set out on my mission, I angrily scanned the beach in front of me, my eyes tearing up as the large beds of seashells I remembered had disappeared. Every 50 meters or so, I would see perfectly shaped shards of glass, plastic wrappers, or aluminum beer cans. Gone was the golden clean sand. In its place was grayish, lumpy sludge.
Closer and closer, my counting climbed to 1600 steps. When I reached 1500, I thought my heart would explode from my chest. My knees became week and my head began to hurt. I knew our beach house would have been just past the now-vanished pier if you were traveling from the south. Exhausted from my ordeal, at 1513 I stopped. I turned west toward the bald dunes that now stretched across Stump, and staring me in the face was a row of monstrous looking houses. If they were in Cary, NC, I would have thought they were striking. But they were on my Perfect Mile and, to me, they were anything but. I walked over the dune and through the first row of immense houses only to face a forest of these same now-familiar-looking giants.
I skimmed over the scene and then noticed something oddly proverbial between the behemoths’ stilts. It had definitely changed, but there, amongst $1 million, 2500-square-foot homes up for sale in this great time of uncertainty, was my father’s little vision. Something bizarre I could not explain began to percolate in my body as I gently shuffled across the street and nearer to the 30-year-old little house flanked by a company of titanic residences. The memories I had as a kid -- shoveling sand, pounding nails, painting walls, hanging insulation, running wires, and rummaging around my Perfect Mile on my free days trying to find my perfect shell -- rushed over me like a tidal wave. And I didn’t mind it too much.
Someone cared enough not only to keep our 1300 square foot bungalow, but they cared enough to finish it.
How my cheeks ached as I smiled! Instantaneously, the years of anger and hate broke like a sledgehammer smashing into porcelain and a sense of peace flowed through me like a gentle, salt filled breeze. The more I felt the North Carolina coast had changed, the more I felt it had stayed the same. Not only were my parents and I drawn to this beach, but others were as well. And that was a good thing. It was time I got used to it.
Tears uncontrollably and happily poured from my eyes as I examined the yellow exterior of the house. A plain, little, wooden placard was attached to the front porch. It simply read, “The Scotch Bonnet.”
It was the perfect name on the Perfect Mile.
If you are ever on the beautiful North Carolina beaches, I challenge you to find our state shell in one piece, and not from a gift shop. I don’t need to look anymore. I’ve already found one.
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