Page 4 of On the Line
Sammy laughed. “Hopefully by then I’ll have something a little more permanent built.”
He’d scrimped together the money for half the price of the beachfront property the shack sat on, and convinced the owner to finance the rest. He was scrimping again to save for a real house. But he didn’t seem to be in any hurry. TheRobinson Crusoe life suited Sammy, which was why he was one of my favorite people.
Ellie sat on a stool and watched, quiet as a mouse while I helped Sammy sling ropes over the log beam to string up two more hammocks. “How’re you related to Bernard?”
Bernard Russell was a local hero. The fire department was named after him.
“He’s my great uncle.”
“Funny you mentioned hurricane season. Hearing him tell his stories of the ‘35 hurricane on6o Minutesgave me nightmares for weeks when I was a kid.”
“We don’t talk about that much in my family,” Ellie said softly. The Russells had lost over a dozen in that storm—a founding family decimated. Ellie’s eyes roamed the rough-hewn rafters. “I don’t suppose you’d try to ride out a storm here if one was coming.”
“Nah,” Sammy said. “I take too many chances sometimes, but I’m notthatstupid.” He shot me an unmistakable look.
I tried to ignore what I figured was a dig at my idiocy for being mixed up with George’s operation, and pulled the other stool next to Ellie, facing Sammy as he sat down in his hammock, his feet swinging over the dirt floor. Ellie’s gaze wandered to the shelves made of cinder block and planks. “You collect shells for a living?”
Sammy looked around the sparse surroundings, a smile in his eyes. “There’s a much better living in it than my current accommodations suggest.”
He made plenty of money harvesting shells nine hours a day most days. But he’d saved every penny and put it into hisdream. I admired his dedication and determination. That would be me someday.Minus the dirt floor, I hoped.
Sammy told me that he had set his sights on the property as a teenager while on a family vacation, during which he told his attorney father that ‘he was going to build a hotel there someday.’ His dad said he’d be back home, broke, in a year when he dropped out of pre-law at NYU to come down here to make a living diving for shells. Five years later he was well on his way to his dream.
“Honestly, being out there every day is reward enough,” Sammy said. “I’d rather be underwater than on the surface. Because life on the surface is superficial. It’sonlysurface. You know what I mean?”
I shook my head, chuckling under my breath. “You mean life underwater isdeeper?”
“Totally!” Sammy leaned forward on his hammock, looking like he might leap up to shout it louder to whoever would listen.
I laughed, running my fingers into my hair, trying not to think about the blue lights back at George’s. “You've been smoking too much weed, man.”
“Fuck off.” He reached down from the hammock to pick up a piece of gravel and chucked it at me. “You know what I mean. You get it.”
I dodged the rock and chuckled. “Yeah, I know.” He was right. I did get it. Being out on the water fishing was the same for me as shelling was for Sammy. If you’re where you want to be, doing what you love, it’s not work at all. It’s just a happy life. I didn’t need to go to college to figure that out. I just needed a boat.
My little Boston Whaler was only good for calm waters and three passengers max. To have a real fishing business, I needed a real boat. And every lookout trip I ran for George got me one step closer to it.I’d been tucking away most of my earnings, with the pipe dream of buying a sport fishing boat I could run real charters on.
“Check this out!” Sammy hopped up, excited for whatever he’d just thought of, and went toward the single wooden table along the back wall of his hut. He lifted a small carved shell container, admiring it before he twisted the top off. He pulled what looked like a pink pebble from the box, holding it up in the dim, flickering glow of the old lantern for us to see.
“I found this beauty today,” he said, his teeth gleaning in a big grin. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at until he explained. “It’s a conch pearl.”
“Oh wow,” I said, squinting to see its details. Most pearls come from oysters, and they were rare. Those coming from Conch were even more uncommon, I knew. “You don’t see many of those.”
Sammy smiled, proud. “Especially not these days. Conchs are fewer and farther between every day. And pearls occur in one of every five hundred. One this nice is maybe one in ten thousand.”
I blinked, an amused smile spreading at Sammy’s scientific explanation. Ellie’s eyes were wide, surveying the tiny gem in his palm. He handed it over gingerly, so as not to drop it onto the sandy earth floor. Ellie rolled it between her fingers, holding it up to eye it in the dim lantern light like it was the finest diamond in Africa.
“It’s beautiful,” she said with a wispy air that caught in my heart.Seeing her so taken by the pearl, her blue eyes wide,thatwas beautiful.
Sammy nodded. “The nicest one I’ve encountered in five years doing this.”
Ellie looked at it like it was suddenly too perfect to keep and started to give it back to Sammy.
I intercepted, closing her fingers around the pearl, her soft hand warm in my calloused palm. Her touch sent a jolt of warmth through me, as if her tenderness could soften even my hardest edges. “You like it? It’s yours.” I looked at Sammy. “We’ll settle up later.”
Ellie tried to refuse, shaking her head. “You don’t have to do that.” She smiled at Sammy. “You should sell it, to help build your house.”
I squeezed her slight hand in mine. “I’ll pay him. You keep it,” I insisted. “I can tell you like it.”
