The Beach House.

He placed the guitar down on the sandy floor, stood from his chair and walked slowly towards the porch.

Jeremiah walked as if his spine was curved and as he sauntered forward from side to side it would slowly straiten out into the exclamation point that he lived in. When reaching the doorframe to the back porch he placed his leathered hands upon the weathered wood and looked out into the great expanse of blue and silver ribbon swaying on the horizon.

Breathing a sigh, he looked down to see his pup lying on the sun-bleached boards of the porch. The dog was panting and goo was running from his jowls like marmalade form the jar; he looked up at his master, his father. The old man slowly bent over and touched the course hair on his dog’s neck commenting to him lovingly, telling him how swell he was and how much of a good boy he was. Then stepping out onto the deck and off into the sand that surrounded the old wind worn house he steadily strode towards the water that he so longed for. The water that called his name every night while he laid in the bed that he shared with her.

As he walked to the water’s edge his mind remembered her and the soft straight hair that wove itself all the way to the small of her back and how he would brush it for her every evening at dusk. And sometimes how he would wake in the middle of the night tangled within it and how he would be utterly frustrated at it. But then he would remember how much he loved this and her and everything that he got to live in everyday. He thought of her fingertips and how they made him feel like a young man whenever they would touch his aged skin. And how with each touch, she brought back a small piece of his high school days and she helped him remember how strong he was and how capable was a word that one could use to describe him.

Jeremiah stopped walking and looked back at the house. It stood proudly as if it had been there since the dawn of the age as if maybe cavemen had once cut open mastodons behind his bedroom. His dog, still sprawled on the deck, panting and drooling, looked at the old man as if this were his last day. Then, for the last time, the old man breathed a sigh of relief and sorrow and joy and heartache all at the same time for his lost love and began walking slowly towards the blue mirror that lay out in front of him.

The water taunted him like a child wanting to be played with. It called to him, beckoning him to its edge and further. Reaching the edge the poor old man looked down to his feet and watched the water splash back and forth onto his wrinkled toes. He stood there for what seemed like an eternity; never taking his attention from the water that rippled and swirled ever so lightly around his feet. Gently and somberly he began to step out into the water and feeling the sand on the floor of the sea rise between his toes put one foot before the other. Soon the water was at his waist and he stretched his tired arms out over the oceans glass tabletop; he started gently caressing it with his fingertips just as his love had often done before him. He would lift his hands and drip the salt water from his fingertips back into the ocean. He did this over and over and over again. He wondered if she could be in these drops. He wondered if she knew he was here, waist deep in the sea. He wished that she could be with him and yet she was all around him.

Jeremiah stopped and started walking again, trudging, sifting his feet along the bottom of the ocean. As the water rose around his shoulders he stopped and looked to the blue sky above, searching for something. Slowly, a tear rolled from his eye down to the bottom of his chin. Time seemed to stop for a moment and as if God himself was going to catch it the tear plopped down into the sea, into the salt and into her. The man then took one more deep breath and plunged himself down beneath the water’s surface and remained there, where he wanted to be. It was there that he would find the one who he had lost and it was there that he would find his heart once again.

As the sun set on the house, the old dog, shaking, slowly made his way back into the house and lay down again on a pile of old newspapers. The dog would pass on, as did his master, and his love before him, but the house would remain. It would stand on the shores of the Pacific preserving its stories within its walls for the remainder of its life, never to be told. And as wood began to rot, and windows became too sandy to peer through, the memories still lay soundly within it. For it was not those things that made the house what it was, but of those who lay within. Those few forever remaining in the place where the water met the sand and where souls longed for one another.