As a child, I can remember my father being a serious commercial fisherman and nothing at all about my mother. The times I would ask him about her, he'd simply say that she hated loneliness and moved on.
He was the no nonsense type and he only played the few days (or nights) each month that he was home from the sea.
It was well known throughout town that he was tough and hard and that he played hard, and it was no surprise when he never returned from his last trip out.
We lived in a small fishing village in southwest Florida. It was a big old rough sawn wood, two story beach house on the water at the end of a shell road. It was built on posts with an eight foot open space under it and outside wooden steps to the main and upper floors.
When the Coastguard search and rescue failed to find my father, the local court awarded the old house to me.
At eighteen, I had no real income so with what money I had, I pooled with the settlement from his boat and converted my home in to a vacation rental, with me living upstairs.
I built it out in a simple beach style with nautical décor and plain wooden plank floors. When word got out, it caught on quick and I had continuous bookings for the entire winter season.
Edna came first, a tall slender mature woman with a skinny eighteen year old daughter named Sally. She looked to be kind of a tomboy and a little homely looking like her mother.
I would have preferred a couple but had no objection to this arrangement other than the fact that Edna was constantly cleaning, the "wipe your feet," "stop dragging in sand," type and I could hear her constantly yell that through my floor.
Early one morning while getting ready to go into town for some breakfast, I noticed sunlight coming from the floor between the planks that hadn't been there before. I went over to it and noticed it was coming from around the ceiling fan of the bedroom below.
When I laid down and looked through it I could see the bed and most of the floor around it. Edna must have bumped it during one of her cleaning frenzies knocking it off center. I wondered what would possess someone to take their vacation time to clean a fan.
It wasn't two nights later that I woke from a creaking sound from my porch. I looked out the front window and saw Sally sitting there smoking a cigarette and then I heard a muffled commotion from downstairs.
As quietly as I could so I wouldn't startle her I stepped out on my porch and I ran smack into Sally who must have stood up when she heard the screen open.
Her eyes were as wide as saucers and when I whisper "what is going on," she cupper her left hand around my right index finger and slipped it in and out a few times and I got the message.
The Next day I felt little frisky thinking about what we had heard and I asked sally if she would like to peek in on them the next time we hear it, telling her that she had to swear to keep it our secret. She grinned and told me she would.
The next evening I was coming home with some beer and as I got out of the car, Edna was leaving and telling Sally that she would be back later and that she was walking down to the bar.
As she walked down the path to the beach, I asked Sally if she would like to come up for a Coke. She said no but she would love a beer. I smiled and jokingly told her she was only eighteen and she said I wasn't much older.
She came down, grabbed the bag of snacks and we walked up the two flights to my place. She walked right in with me like she'd been there before gabbed a bowl from the cabinet and filled it with chips. I put the beer in the fridge, snagged two and we went out and sat on the porch and watched the water.
Sally told me that her mom was always a bit kinky and when on vacation she would really let her hair down. She told me that her father had left them when she was a baby and her and I basically made small talk, trading our family stories and enjoying our beer and each other's company.
Several hours later we heard some singing coming up the beach and we got real quiet and pretended not to be there.
Edna came up the path first holding the hand of another woman and Old Doyle (a local fisherman) was holding her other hand.
It was rather comical as the human chain stumbled around in the dark past the row of mailboxes.
With a bag of ice in Doyle's free hand and a bottle in a bag in Edna's, I was surprised they made it up the steps.
When the screen door slammed, Sally was up looking down over the railing and I asked her if she wanted to peek in. She shook her head yes.
As quietly as possible I took her to the place in my living room floor.
In the dark of night the light showed though the hole in their bedroom ceiling, illuminating my place enough for us to see our way around.
