“Home,” she answered. “Shelter Cove is the name of my home.”
“You named it?”
“Heavens, no. Herman Miller named it Shelter Cove when he built it in 1901. It has been in our family for a hundred and ten years. All the homes have names around here.”
“I can’t imagine naming my house in Nebraska. It’s a nice house, but just a house.” I pictured my two story stucco sitting pleasantly on our small, ordinary yard with a plaque that read
Fred
in gilded letters.
“Well, houses here earn it. When something stands up to the sea’s temper for that long it garners a certain respect. Our homes deserve names because they fight the elements with us, beside us.” She pointed to a two story home covered in silvery grey wooden shingles. A clothesline bravely flapped unmentionables for all to see, including men’s long, white underwear I thought ceased to exist fifty years ago.
“Does shelter cove look like those?” I asked pointing to it, “covered in roof shingles? Are they all like that?”
Sarah laughed. “It’s called shake shingle. Surely you’ve seen it?”
“I’ve never seen a house quite like that,” I said. In truth, I found them unsightly. The thick, uneven shingles ran from the roof’s peak to the ground, stopping only to shaggily outline the windows and door.
“No, Shelter Cove is clapboard. White-washed. Beautiful.” She spoke of it tenderly. “Are you ready to see it?” I pictured a clean, white home overlooking the topaz ocean and the hunger in my stomach turned into a longing. I needed to touch the water more than I needed food.
“Let’s go home,” I answered wholeheartedly.
Sarah ignored my claim that I could wait for dinner to eat and stopped at a small… I wanted to say restaurant, but that conjures the wrong image entirely. Shack is the nearest description I can find. It was a long, metal trailer with a tacky plastic sign almost too small to see from the road that read Phish and Chips. We had to park and walk up to a hole in the wall where a woman’s taciturn face appeared to take our order. The establishment was seedy at best and I earnestly doubted the safety and cleanliness of the food, but in all fairness, my hamburger was excellent. Similar ‘establishments’ littered our drive home, their names growing successively more creative until one entrepreneur gave up and simply advertised, “Same old, same old – But I fry it better!” I almost wished we had waited and stopped there, if for no other reason, to reward his honesty.
It is a tribute to the scenery that it could distract my attention away from Sarah. The trees grew recklessly close to the almost shoulder-less road as if they wanted to stroke the car as it careened by. Meandering in an organic path, the small highway followed the lay of the land until it seemed as natural as the thin rivers that snaked in and out of view along the way. I couldn’t refrain from pointing out what must have been second nature to Sarah: the murky marshes ringed with cattails, the plaques on homes bearing impressive dates like 1790, the smooth forest floor covered in orange pine needles.
The hour passed like minutes until the road, twisting ever more drunkenly as we went, stumbled to a halt at a Stop sign. “Almost there,” Sarah announced. “These are the first inland homes in the town, but Main Street is farther down. And Shelter Cove is a mile past that, on the bay.” She paused the car at the empty intersection to let me soak in the sight.
There wasn’t much I wanted to soak, quite truthfully. The tiny, decrepit houses leaned wearily. Several lay in a tattered row, with no garages or sidewalks, and only a few weedy flowers for adornment. The towering trees blocked out the sun, casting the already dismal sight in deeper gloom. “They get prettier,” Sarah promised. “The hired hands without boats of their own used to eke out a living here from pocket change and fish scraps. These were built in the Depression. This is Langston Street, but for the last seventy years no one has called it anything but Shanty Street. Let me show you the real town.”
The car creaked gently as it rolled slowly down the street littered with loose rocks. True to her promise, the homes began growing, both in size and cleanliness as we moved toward the town. A tiny sidewalk appeared, followed by old fashioned street lights. Soon garages and porches and trellises burdened with fat flowers came into sight. And then, with no transition between residential homes and businesses, a hardware store with a large burgundy awning stretched along the street, its goods spilling onto the sidewalk. Several more homes followed, two story with delicate stained glass in their narrow upper windows, each painted at least four different colors.
“It looks like a postcard,” I said, gawking at the detailed, geometric carvings at the top of a porch post.
“That might look like a postcard, but
that
looks like a poem.” Sarah pointed out her window as the car followed a wide turn. We broke free of a stand of trees and the docks of Smithport bustled into view. I pushed the button to roll down my window and with the first sweep of wind into the car burst the mingled smell of fish and salt and sea spray. Large rusted boats docked beside larger, rustier ones, with a mess of cranes, nets, cages, and crates littering the scene. One syllable shouts burst into the air like shots fired all around me. “Oy, Off, Down, Ho!”
They really said Ho!
Not to mention some other one syllable words that aren’t repeated in polite company. “They’re getting ready for dinner,” Sarah explained. “In the summer they take their catches across the harbor to the tourist towns and sell directly to the public. Put on quite a show, too.”
Above the disorganized docks three wooden buildings crowded together on a stony rock ledge where two restaurants with small patios shouldered brutally against a general store, each pushing for a view of the water. I could see the waves bobbing and dying far on the horizon, but the current rolled in gently here, sheltered by the distant, rocky arms of land fending off the determined ocean.
“Is this where my grandfather worked?” I asked as I watched the men in thick yellow overalls loading their boats as they called directions. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the scene fifty years ago. All I had to do is switch out the cars for older models and put the women in dresses.
“Often. But usually he took his catch to the canning facility in Anchorton. They canned sardines. It closed ten years ago, but it did well in its time.” Sarah pulled over and parked so I could look longer. An annoyed car zipped past us with a rude swerve. “They think we’re tourists, coming to look at the fishermen,” Sarah said with a laugh, nodding to the disappearing car. “That’s why they got mad.”
“They don’t like tourists?” I asked in surprise.
“Not …really.” Sarah let the words out grudgingly.
“Why?”
Sarah deliberated, opened her mouth and closed it again thoughtfully before delivering a prudent answer. “Smithport is an old place. It is fiercely proud of its history and it tends to be just a bit … exclusive. Newcomers aren’t exactly embraced.”
My pride rankled at her words. “So they don’t want me here?” I challenged.
“Oh, no!” She said with a relieved laugh. “You do not fall under that category at all. There are a lot of people curious to see Claire’s daughter. You are a true Smither, without a doubt. Even if you didn’t know it.”
“A what?” I asked
“Oh, a Smither. It’s what we call each other. So,” Sarah said happily, as if all my worries had been put to rest, “do you want to see Shelter Cove now?”
I nodded, my eyes still riveted to the men on the docks. They moved with a sharp focus, never still, never distracted. I wanted to stay longer, walk down the crooked planks for a better look, but Sarah reversed the car back into the street.
The road to Shelter Cove followed the rocky banks, unwilling to leave the side of the ocean after working so hard to find it. Some scrawny pine trees tried to obstruct the view by pushing between the water and the street, but they didn’t get far. The ocean reappeared again, watching me, following me, tugging her foamy white skirts along the jagged rocks to keep up with the car. Her restless body defined everything in sight. Her waves crashed against the broken boulders that glistened like beached whales. Her endless blue framed the boats on the horizon, painting the heavy, metal vessels with sentimental strokes. Even the sky seemed nothing more than a massive looking glass for the ocean to admire her swirling face, the clouds imitating the waves as they heaved across the azure dome.
The houses farther down the road lacked the grandeur of the structures on Main Street, but did not have the shabby, run-down feeling of Shanty Street. Here they nestled into the trees, contented and natural. No neighborhoods existed in Smithport, only clusters. A few homes huddled together, followed by the untamed wilderness, followed by another group of buildings, like tiny, inhabited galaxies scattered across the universe of the landscape. Sarah turned down a gravel road with trees nearly touching their tops high above the car. Haven Lane. Turning one last time, the car coasted into a short driveway and sat idling before Sarah slowly turned the key and killed the engine.
“This is it,” she said. The square yard pushed the trees away from the house, but could not tame the sand and rocks. Grass grew intermittently between the sandy bare patches and clustered stones. In the middle of the struggle between lawn and wilderness stood a bright, orderly home. A small brass plaque reading
Shelter Cove est. 1901
hung beside a faded, red door. The thin, white paint did not completely obscure the sheen of weathered wood, but every imperfection felt carefully calculated to add to the charm. Two colorful, decorative floats, just like the ones littering the boats on the docks, swung from the porch railing and flower boxes sprouted red pansies beneath the windows framed in black shutters.
Sarah didn’t speak while I took it in. The silence pressed in on my ears, but I couldn’t break it. I felt the Past push against the car window, its hands thrust to the thin glass, waiting to clasp me the moment I exited. I would meet ghosts here. Not the kind that haunt and wail, but the ones that make you remember. The very air seemed to be a memory. I could never explain it, but I felt it in the tiny bumps of raised flesh on my arms.
“It is so beautiful,” I said at last. The words
Truth is Beauty, and Beauty Truth
leaped into my mind. I stepped outside, trying to remember who said it. Emerson? That didn’t sound right. Not Shelley. Regardless, I never agreed with it before. I can’t say I agreed with it in that moment, either, but it pierced my mind, cutting away all other thoughts.
Truth is Beauty. Beauty is Truth.
I met Sarah’s curious eyes over the hood of the car, watching her watch me. Somewhere in this beauty, I would meet the truth.
I followed Sarah to the front door, my suitcase bouncing over the gravel driveway and clumping against the wooden porch steps. Before we reached the door handle there was a rustling from the yard and I turned to see a medium-sized dog burst from the forest and race across the yard.
“Don’t be scared,” Sarah said, “that’s just Charlie, my mutt.” The dog reached us in less than two seconds and began a frantic dance on his back paws as his tongue waved indiscriminately, looking for exposed skin. “Charlie, sit! Sit down!” Sarah yelled, pushing his bottom rudely to the porch planks, where he commenced wagging his entire body back and forth in glee. “Sorry about that.”
Charlie’s short white hair was only interrupted by a large, black patch that encircled half of his head, including one dark eye and a floppy ear. “He’s friendly,” I said, wondering if petting him on the head would calm him or just increase the hysterics.
“He’s crazy,” Sarah said, affection tinting the insult. She looked at him sternly, “You behave. Be still.” Charlie’s head tilted intently each time she spoke. When Sarah was sure he wasn’t going to jump back up she turned to me. “Now, let’s try this again.”
She pushed the front door and stepped back as it swung open. The first thing I saw was a kaleidoscope of deep, but faded colors from the Oriental rug laid over the honey colored, wood floors. Then the walls, covered in black shelves crammed with books of every size, color and condition. The books stopped only for the large stone fireplace and the tall windows on either side of it. Marooned in the middle of the room was a slouchy, white sofa and chair arranged around a shining brown coffee table. A single, twisted piece of driftwood sat atop a large book on the wooden table. Charlie charged a large, orange cat who arched his back and rose from his sleeping spot on a cushion. One hiss later, the exuberant dog stopped and dropped to his haunches.
“That’s Chester, our resident grouch. He only loves us when he wants to,” Sarah said. My jaw dropped open as I stared across the room to the most astonishing feature –a mural only God could paint. The windows framed a rim of stubborn trees at the edge of the yard that thinned to brush, then to glossy gray and black boulders and at last to patches of thin, high grass and sand the color of tin. The ocean had long ago carved a tiny bay with her continuous shoving of foamy white waves and the effect stole my breath.
I had the sudden impulse to
touch
everything: the hand cut planks of the floors, the thick wooden banister at the foot of the staircase, the velvety smooth piece of driftwood, even the panes of glass in the window. I felt like a blind person in a gallery of sculptures. My fingers folded into claws as I restrained them. I didn’t speak, my eyes too hungry to share my brain with my mouth. Framed photos cluttered the muted, yellow wall of the stairway. I wanted to run to them, but I forced my feet to walk at an acceptable pace. “Who are they?” I asked as I stood before the multitude of strange faces.
“It would take all night to name all of them,” Sarah said casting her eyes up to the last of the pictures at the top of the steep staircase and back down again. “Besides, I don’t know all of them. My mom put most of these up. This is her - your grandmother, Hazel.” She pointed to a large photograph of a young woman with yellow hair, green eyes and painted pink cheeks. Her face looked more like my mother, but her coloring resembled Sarah’s. “I was my father’s girl,” Sarah said, reading my thoughts. “This is your grandfather.” She pointed to another picture, blurrier, taken outside, of a man with a boat behind him. His floppy cap threw one eye into shadow, but the other smiling eye sat atop the same high cheekbones as Sarah’s. I ran my finger over my own cheekbone, disappointed that it fell a bit lower than theirs.