The Islander...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas | Sometimes I would sneak up to them on my way to an evening jog on the beach. They'd ignore me, they would ignore the sounds of my old tennis shoes flapping in the dune sands, my whistling and my singing.

I was fine with it, sure, although I knew blades of grass and brush love to talk, to gossip. Oh, Hell yes.

If only they could talk. Blades of grass, like low-hanging tree branches had a certain view of the land. And ears. Grass has ears? The best!

". . .What's shakin'?" I would say to them as I cleared a path to my established jogging path, a winding, self-charted sonofabitch just because I like the unique feel of a winding walk, that ride-like, this way and that way with the head and shoulders.

They blew me off, all of them.

I knew. Of course. I knew.

I knew that they'd been there all day and seen the masses arrive for a day of frolic on the sand and in the water. Had they seen something cool, of interest, a rare occurrence, like a young, daring lifeguard drowning, or maybe the wife of someone hitting the ever-crashing surf with the husband of someone else? Surely.

I smiled at the big, about-to-be brightened sky.

The sky also knew, it knew what the windblown blades of grass and brush had seen and heard, what they were for the moment keeping to themselves.

And in their animated world spanked silly by the ceaseless Gulf winds, well, it really was something to behold...

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