“Wedding Song” by Erin Dawkins

It seemed odd to everyone but her, to marry on an abandoned beach. Where its only refined quality, to the guests, would be the weathered driftwood in which the bride and groom, and many of them, would gather around for a photo following the ceremony.

But Bete Grise was where it had to happen. Mary combated negative comments from her mother about the limited shoe choices for a beach wedding and agonized over how the old folks would get down to the beach without handrails, without stairs. She lacked help from her fiancé, who simply shrugged with every question, every request for feedback and input, while holding his game console in hand, staring at a screen. Her mother persisted. Her imaginings of hems of dresses that would brown as the material pulled over the saturated sand. The delivery charges for the food, and the flowers, that would have to be driven in and delivered on the beach for an extra fee. And the guests would leave with cemented memories of swollen ankles from the bites of rove beetles and deer flies instead of the remembrance of a beautiful day.

None of this concerned Mary. She wasn’t even one of those brides that reminded people it was her special day, not theirs. All she could think about was its white sand. Sand that spoke. Sang even.

When Mary was ten, she visited this beach with his father. They were on vacation at a lakefront cabin rental thirty minutes north of Bete Grise. Following an argument with Mary’s mother, her father stormed out of the cabin and saw Mary, sitting on a rotting bench of the picnic table, picking at shards of rogue wood. He asked if she wanted to take a drive. On the ride, his fingers probed the aluminum steering wheel. His white knuckles turning ever so slightly around it. Releasing all the words, all the utterances that stayed bottled inside while in the presence of Mary.

He veered to the side of the road and parked. Though it was July, there was a sweeping fog that settled among the tops of clusters of tree species in the forest that lined the beach. Pine trees, maples, paper birch. Lack of life stretched for miles. The waves of Lake Superior crashed and curved as though extending their many hands as an invitation.

Mary’s father got out and removed a towel from the back of the car. They kicked off their shoes and walked through the patchy grass that found life in the dry sand, reaching so high that it tickled the back of Mary’s knees.

As they inched closer to shore, and the sand became as deep as it was dry, Mary’s feet sank. Each step required strength. She could hear the light panting from her father as he fought against the swallowing sand. Her calves burned. She felt them tighten and twitch, as though thousands of bugs in the grass burrowed into her skin. The sand responded to their struggle with a subtle bark. Each press of the foot accompanied this sound. Like an unhinged dog in the distance, rattled by an unexpected visitor or a squirrel taunting it from a tree.

Her father peered down and nodded at Mary once he found a suitable spot near the water, as though they agreed upon it without discussion. He handed one side of the towel to Mary, and they shook it out. Their hands guided it until it landed firmly near their feet. The corners were at once immersed in the parched sea of sand. After Mary’s father sat, he pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs. She thought he looked a bit like a child. Mary’s lips bumbled, balancing her heavy thoughts, the questions she wanted to ask him about why they were there on that beach, just the two of them. What did her mother do? What did she say to him to make him leave?

A light breeze carried a cluster of sand pellets to Mary’s cheek and glued to the sweat from their journey. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. As she lowered it, she saw a woman walking along the shore. It was as if she had appeared from the water, or the sand, and suddenly was upon them. She walked straight, upright, and her feet didn’t sink into the sand as she walked. There was confidence in her outline, enough that Mary looked over at her father, who also seemed to also straighten at the sight of her, losing his boyish stance by allowing his knees to fall to each side.

Her hair was dark and seemed to move fluidly with the wind. And as she moved closer, her skin shone radiance, not a single scar, not a freckle. Her skin was pale, as though not at all affected at all by the sun.  Her sharp elbows clenched an oversized teal shawl, as aglow as the lake that served as her backdrop, and made her arms appear even smaller than they were.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” my father said back.

“Enjoying the day?” Her shoulders rose and met on her upper back. She clutched the shawl, her fingers splayed through the lace holes, looking around her as though she could be credited for the beauty across the landscape.

“Now we are.” Her appearance made him forget about the scene in the cabin earlier.

She turned her back to them and faced the water. “Hard to believe this is a lake. Looks like something you’d see in the Caribbean.” The woman turned back and dug her toes into the sand and raised her right foot. The top of her foot held the sand that didn’t escape between her toes. “And the sand.” She moved her foot as though on display. “It speaks.” Her red toe polish wore a layer of grit.

Mary’s father chuckled.

“It’s true!” Mary said, her eyes wide with validity. “It made sounds when we were walking here. It sounded like a dog barking.”

The woman nodded.

“The sand here is very special…” and she paused, waiting for the father and daughter duo to make a proper introduction. Once her father realized it, he brushed his hands together, removing the excess sand, and extended it to her. “Rob,” he said. She slid her hand into his. He held it for what seemed like a long time.

“I’m Mary,” she said.

The woman smiled at Mary.

“Nice to meet you. Both of you.”

“What’s your name?” Mary asked.

The woman put her hand into the pocket of her dress. Though it hung on her like a brown sack, somehow it accentuated her slim figure. She held her palm open in front of Mary’s face.
“Do you know what this is, Mary?”

Mary looked at the cloudy cluster of rock seated in her palm.

“It’s a sparkly rock.” Mary looked at her father for affirmation. But his eyes were not on the rock, they were on the woman.

“That’s right.” Her voice was hypnotic as their collective gaze was captured by it. “That’s why you thought you heard a dog barking. This rock is in the sand, but it’s much smaller. As small as the head of a pin. When the sand rubs together, it sounds like a song.”

“Or a dog?”

The woman laughed. “Or a dog.”

Her eyes lifted from the rock and met with Rob’s. “It’s also said that it can speak to you.” She knelt and brushed her hand gently over the sand. “Just by running your hand over it.”

“It’s like fairy tale sand,” Rob said.

“Dad,” Mary protested. “I’m not a baby.”

The woman stood up and brushed the sand off the front of her sack.
“I’ll leave you two to enjoy your day. Nice to meet you, Mary.” She locked eyes with Mary’s father. “Rob.”

The wind swept her away just as quickly as it brought her to them. Their eyes followed her like a shadow as her sack wrestled with the breeze. She reached up and swept her dark hair to one side as she disappeared into the distance.

“Oh no!” Mary yelled. “The rock!”

Mary stood up and ran toward the woman, each step releasing a different sound from the quick punctures of her feet in the sand. But as Mary tried to catch up with her, she felt that the distance to the woman was an unattainable stretch. That no matter how many steps she took, no matter how quickly she ran, she would never reach her.

Mary closed her hand over the rock. When she turned around to return to her father, she saw that his hand was brushing the sand next to the towel. He lowered his head as if he was listening to it. Talking back. Nodding as though it made sense. Closing his eyes to visualize what it was saying. And nodding again.

While Mary attempted to approach quietly, the sand serenaded him with her return.

“Dad?”

Mary’s father opened his eyes. He looked as though he had been asleep for hours. His face unaware, his eyes drowsy. He looked at Mary. “Time to go back.”

He stood up, balled up the towel, and carried it under his arm. A trickle of sand followed as it fell from the towel’s fibers.

Mary sat on the bench of the truck and felt the grains of clinging sand dig onto the back of her thighs. The ride home was quiet. No mention of the woman, or the rock, or the singing sand. As they approached the drive that led to the cabin, Mary’s father put the car in park.

“Go on,” he said. “Go on inside. Your mother is probably worried.”

Mary threaded her hand through the handle of the door. “Aren’t you coming?”

Her father reached over and placed his hand on the back of Mary’s head and brought it close to his face. He placed his lips on her forehead and kept them there for a long time.

“You go on.”

And when Mary arrived at the house, she opened her hand and held the quartz stone to her ear. Hopeful of hearing something other than the sound of her father’s car reversing and throwing up powdery gravel as he drove away from the cabin.

- 

Mary stood on the beach just after sunset.  A small light in the distance guided her steps. It was bright from the inn where her fiancé, her mother, and their guests were staying for the night. Mary imagined her mother undoubtedly panicked at her absence. She patted the stone in her pocket. Hope for the resurgence of her father, of the unnamed woman on the beach from so many years ago, or perhaps both together, walking hand-in-hand along the shore. A vision that she returned to frequently as she grew up and had to imagine his whereabouts.

Mary knelt and reached down to the sand. The sparkle of her bright diamond quieted under it; its brilliance faded in the silhouette of the moon. She brushed it back and forth. Her hand hovered over it, and she listened closely. Over the crashing of the waves on the shore, and over the light wavering of the taffeta draped over the ceremonial arch.

She stood up and peered among the landscape. Dreading sunrise and its promise of a new day, an important day. Her eyes followed the rifts in the sand. Patterns created by quartz, the wind, and the water.

Patterns, she thought. Patterns. Mary walked in the opposite direction of the inn, following the sand and its song.

Erin Dawkins (she/her) is a Michigan-based writer. Her work has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine, Sky Island Journal, and The Orange Rose, among others. Read more at https://www.erindawkins.com/.