The Bay That Storms Forget

Boat-with-Sponges

The Gulf is too hot this year. The water feels heavy, the air thick with it, and yet summer has nearly passed without a single storm. No spirals spinning on the maps, no frantic rush for plywood or bottled water. Just stillness, and stillness is never safe.

My grandmother used to say the Bay was blessed. She would tell me stories about covenants whispered into the tide, or a princess buried in the water with her drowned warriors guarding her rest. And when storms spun wide and furious, only to curve away at the last moment, she would nod and say, “See? The Bay protects her own.”

I believed her, until I met Daniel. He was a fisherman, older than me, his skin the color of weathered rope, his eyes always turned toward the horizon. He said the Bay wasn’t blessed at all. “She’s beautiful,” he told me once, “but beauty like that always takes something back.” He’d lost a brother to a calm sea — no warning, no storm, just a boat that never came home. “The Bay feeds on us,” he said, “and that’s why the storms don’t stay.”

I didn’t know what to make of it, not then. But I remembered when Daniel himself vanished. Clear skies, flat water, and he never returned. The Coast Guard called it an accident. His family called it bad luck. But I knew. The Bay had reached for him the way a jealous lover reaches, and she had kept him.

That’s when I understood what my grandmother never said out loud: spared doesn’t mean safe.

The storms still circle. They pace the horizon like wolves, throwing their weight against the Gulf, but when they reach the Bay, they falter. They turn aside. And every time they do, another village farther up the coast is torn apart, another marsh is drowned, another name is added to the roll of the lost.

People here still call it a blessing. They laugh about the bubble, say the storms never land, pour another drink while they patch their roofs. But I think about Daniel, about his brother, about all the others the Bay has claimed when the skies were calm. The Bay doesn’t protect us for free. She takes her payment in flesh and memory.

Now the summer is nearly gone. The air feels too quiet, the water too still, like everything is holding its breath. Maybe the storms will try again soon. Maybe the Bay will sing them aside, as she always does. Maybe she’ll ask for another offering first.

And you know how these stories go.
There’s always a storm.
There’s always a price.

Where the River Meets the Sea

Boat at Night

They knew weather conditions in the gulf were unstable, but her grandfather checked the maps and figured they were far enough south to avoid the brunt of any storms. So, they went to the dockside cafe and stocked up on fruit and sandwiches and bottled water, and  they took the boat out anyway.

Motoring down the Anclote River to St. Joseph’s sound they made up stories about the Original Occupants (that’s what he called native Americans) and their guardianship of the freshwater springs that dotted the coast.

“Sweet water,” she mused. “It doesn’t make you young but keeps you alive. Maybe we got the Fountain story all wrong.”

“How so?” His voice seemed craggier than usual.

“What if it wasn’t the fountain of youth? What if it was the fountain of life?”

“You might have something there,” her grandfather agreed. “Maybe you could make a story about it.”

He always said it that way.  Make a story. Not write one. And why not? Storytelling was as much construction as imagination after all.

“Maybe I could,” she agreed.

They kept the engine going until they were out past Anclote Key and into the Gulf of Mexico. Then they hoisted the sail and switched to wind power until they’d reached the secret beach.

They anchored the boat in shallow water and half-swam / half waded to shore, floating their cooler between them.

They picnicked under a palm tree and then she swam while her grandfather napped. It used to be that he would fish during these excursions and bring home the catch for her grandmother to clean and cook. But Grandma had left them several months before and it wasn’t the right time of year for grouper, anyway.

Before dusk, they returned to the boat, turning on the lights so they’d be visible. Again, they stuck to wind power on the gulf, heading home with her at the wheel.

Just outside the mouth of the river, her grandfather said, “It’s time.”

“Oh, Grandpa!”

The old man pulled a black plastic box out of a storage chest and leaned over the gunwale of the boat. He opened the lid and poured the gray-white contents into the water.

“Your grandmother and I met at a solstice celebration,” her grandfather said. “She made me promise to say goodbye to her on the first one after her death.”

He looked down into the water. “Swim with the dolphins, my love. I miss you.”

There were no words she could have uttered so she merely slung her arm across the old man’s shoulders and kissed his stubbly cheek. He smelled of tar and salt and peppermint, and there were times she wanted to wrap that scent around her like a blanket.

The motored back to the harbor in silence, tied the boat, and made to leave.

“You go home, honey,” her grandfather said. “I’ll bunk down below tonight.”

Reluctantly, she left him. But somehow, she knew that next summer solstice, her grandparents would be reunited.

Written for Brief #20 of Like the Prose 2021: Solstice