We were closer to home now, The air cooler. I remembered the snakes I had painted beneath Hilary and Chelsea's feet. I said: "Sid, I am afraid of dying." Turned off route 4 and in the distance saw my house on the hill above us.

"Paint about that," he said.

I was not sure whether he meant the fear of death or the way my house looked in the setting sun.

his hands in the photographs

About ten years ago, sitting on this same beach Sid had said:
"Sometimes I think of moving to...."
He named a small town a little up the coast.
Silver Beach.
"Would you like living there?"

"I don't see myself living in Silver Beach," I had said,
and that was the end of that.
Did he remember?
We watched the water.
Drank champagne.

"We kids all knew about the abandoned antiaircraft installation," Joy said, "but if we asked the grownups about it, they changed the subject. Those unacknowledged ruins on the top of the hill permeated growing up in Crockett in the 50's. Something dangerous and yet protective. It is hard to explain. The abandoned installation on the top of the hill. The sugar factory in the gully. And in between our houses perched on hills so steep that I thought they would fall into the sea."
about this work | begin again | Dorothy Abrona McCrae | Judy Malloy |