Free The Edge of the Gulf by Hadley Hury Page B

with his white hair whipping in the wind and his other hand on the railing, he looked like a captain at sea. Or the benevolent lord of a great estate, which, it occurred to Hudson, he no doubt was. He looked like a man who had been in this place not four decades, but always, a man in whom place and soul have become inseparable.
    “I remember,” said Hudson, “when I was a kid, waking up in the middle of winters in Memphis, from dreams about Fort Walton and Destin—that’s where my family used to come—and being completely wrecked that I wasn’t really here, but
there
, with my third or fourth grade class to walk to in a cold rain. The dreams were so vivid, so real. I couldn’t believe the cruel joke. It was devastating.”
    “Poor little guy.”
    “For a lot of years I think I fairly well lived for those two or three weeks in summer. I was always the navigator, in charge of the map, for the family car trip. I had everyone scouring the shoulders of the highway for the first trace of sand like prospectors for gold. We always had a contest as to who first smelled the ocean. When we hit the coast, before we got to wherever we were staying that year, my sister and I made my poor father pull over and let us out. We ran up the dunes and just stood for a minute or two. I guess that first sight of the Gulf was the purest joy I knew.”
    Hudson had been looking out to sea, but turned now to Charlie. “I wondered what it would be like now. If I’d feel either the excitement or that in some way I was coming home. The summer’s something of a test flight. I’ve been on automatic pilot for quite awhile.”
    “And?”
    “Nothing, here, there, or anywhere, is the same.” He paused. But it’s…good…. It’s good.”
    “God, I hope so. Maybe not pure joy, oh no. But something that’s always been here for you, something real.” He grasped Hudson’s arm. “Something.”
    Hudson nodded. They took in the magnificent view for another minute or so, framed by the tall old trees, the broad beach at Laurel white in the distance against a tangerine sky and the water going cobalt. “Let’s go in,” Hudson said. “Probably not for an old salt like you, but it’s still pretty warm for a hot-natured, air-conditioning addicted city slicker like myself.”
    “Did you notice how I whisked you up here through the sunroom? I’ll show you why, now. I have a surprise I’m pretty happy about and want to share with you in the living room.”
    ***
    “It’s a Walter Anderson. I’ve had it about a year now and I’ve never had a picture mean so much to me. It’s Western Lake at sunrise.”
    Charlie sat in his favorite chair in the long, handsome room, facing the large oil over the mantel. “I can sit here for hours, perfectly content, usually reading or doing a crossword puzzle, but sometimes just listening to music and looking at it. Great company.”
    Hudson could understand. The landscape, some five feet wide and four feet tall, was at once imposing and retiring; it drew you into its rich color treatment of the lagoon that lay just to the east beyond the side porch of Charlie’s house.
    “It’s
so
fine.”
    “Apparently it was one of the last things he did and someone got hold of it and had it in their home in D.C. for years, and then a dealer in Palm Beach got it who’d been over this way once or twice and knew what the inscription on the back meant. She called and made me an offer—an arm and a leg—but, of course, I had to have it. It was meant to be in this house. Right up there.”
    “I’d say so. Charlie, it really is magnificent. So, now that you’re divesting yourself of your real estate, is this what you’ll be doing?”
    “No, no. I had to have this. But no, I don’t plan to get any more serious about collecting. Don’t need any more. This is the crowning jewel.” Charlie modestly overlooked the fact that here and there, on walls throughout the house, along with a lot of excellent watercolors, oils,