Free Waking Up Gray by R. E. Bradshaw

some of them. They just washed away.”
    Lizbeth loved these island people. She said, “It’s so amazing how the folks down here just clean up and go on. You never hear them complaining.”
    “There’s a price to pay to live in such a beautiful place,” Gray said. “Every now and then we have to pay the sea back for what it has given us, at least that’s what Grandpa always said.”
    They were now on the Back Road. It too was a narrow street, but it was paved with asphalt and had clearly marked lanes. The winds had calmed to a light breeze. It was still warm, probably in the mid seventies. The few clouds there were earlier had blown away, exposing a clear beautiful blue sky fading to lavender above. On the horizon, ahead of Lizbeth, she could see the faint glow of the reddening sunset through the trees. It was a perfect evening. There were still no indications of the coming storm off shore.
    “So, how’d you end up a forty year old college senior?” Gray asked.
    “Life,” Lizbeth answered, not offering anymore.
    Gray took the hint and changed the subject. “I can’t believe I don’t remember you, except for the rope incident. We must have crossed paths more than once.”
    “We were always so busy being on vacation, I guess we just didn’t run into each other, and if we did, you wouldn’t have been hanging out with dingbatters like us.”
    Gray laughed. “No, I stayed out on the water pretty much. Didn’t have too much time for foreigners, I guess.”
    “How did you ever leave this place?” Lizbeth couldn’t understand why someone would leave a paradise like this.
    “Fanny insisted I go to college. I wanted to anyway. I loved school.”
    Lizbeth interrupted. “I’m a little surprised. You don’t strike me as the structured education type.”
    Gray grinned. She knew what Lizbeth was saying. “Structured no, but reading and learning, yes. I made good grades, got a scholarship, and went off to East Carolina.”
    “What’s your degree in?”
    Gray showed a little pride when she said, “Marine biology. That’s why I got the job at Sea World. Not much of a marine biologist job market here.”
    “No, I guess not,” Lizbeth commented. She paused and then asked, “Were you homesick?”
    Gray looked reflective as she thought for a moment, and then answered, “A little, sometimes, but I was young and seeing the outside world, really for the first time. My time in San Antonio was full of so much life. I didn’t have time to be homesick until just before I came back. By then I was overwhelmed with the need to come back here.”
    “How long have you been back?” Lizbeth asked.
    “Five years, in December.”
    Lizbeth saw the first flicker of something in Gray’s eyes, pain maybe. Something had happened to Gray five years ago.
    Gray shook off whatever it was and continued, “I started working at Sea World the first year they opened in Texas, as a lowly hired hand. I had just graduated. That fall I got to see the first killer whale born there, Kayla. I fell in love with her and my job that day. Seventeen years later, I had worked my way up to Aquarium Curator.”
    Lizbeth was intrigued. “And you just decided to come home?”
    “Yeah, something like that,” Gray said, softly.
    Lizbeth wanted to know more, but she let it drop. It appeared they both had pasts neither really wanted to talk about.
    They reached British Cemetery Road and turned toward North Point. The sky above was darkening, turning more lavender than blue, a pink cast toward the horizon. As they approached the British Cemetery, Lizbeth grew quiet. She had always felt this simple plot of land, donated by the people of the island to England, was a place owed respect. A German U-boat torpedoed a British ship on May 11, 1942, and the tiny plot was the final resting place of four of her seamen. All hands were lost. These four men washed ashore on Ocracoke and the villagers gave them a Christian burial. It was a reminder of how close the