Why am I taking a road trip? No clue here, just seems like the thing to do. My wife is dead, my children grown and gone and I am restless.

  The first thing you have to do is violate all motor vehicle laws. I tooled into the local convenience store, purchased a case of beer, iced it down and I am ready for life. Pop a top, turn on the radio, sans seatbelt, and I am in the other world. Cruising down 378. The music reminds me of my younger days. Maybe I need to get one of those rigs like the dudes in the hood, amps and speakers filling the entire back seat with a volume that could mutate all life forms on the east coast.

  Rather than bypass Columbia I take the "shortcut" that goes around the stadium. I was there in 1956 on a YMCA trip watching Carolina beat the crap out of some team likeFurman or PC. I spent a major part of the day peering over the railing at the ladies relieving themselves in the yet unfinished urinals. Some lady spotted us and stood guard and warned all entrants. You cannot spot a pubic hair at a 100 yards but it was cool.

  I stumbled and tumbled though the small towns that I love so much in the Southland. I wave to folks I don't know and they wave back. Somehow that is comforting to me. For on-coming traffic I give the old one finger wave. Just lift your index finger off of the wheel and give a smile. My dad taught me that. It is too bad that the South is in the South. It is too bad my dad is dead.

  I stop and piss by the roadside. Men do that. I pass the Bertha Goodman Park and Recreation center. Don't know Bertha. Fact is I don't personally know most of the folks that have made this country so wonderful. I think I will have another beer.

  I've got the munchies. I stop at an old timey grocery store. How do I know it is old timey? It sits in an intersection, is wooden sided, and has an old rusted Coke sign across the front that forces you to stop by and say hello. I walk in and am greeted by a gentleman at least 200 years old.

  "May I hep you, son?"

  "No sir, just looking."

  I stock up on Fritos, Doritos, and Slim Jims all of them designed to give me the RDA of all of those esoteric nutritional ingredients to insure my health and a significant medical bill when I collapse.

  "Where are you headed, boy?"

  "I know but I'd rather not say. It may no longer be there."

  "Beats the crap out of running a dead-ass grocery store in the middle of nowhere. Call when you find it."

  I continue on, not fettered by human demands. I get stopped at the Socastee drawbridge by a boat on its way to sea. No problem, I have a lifetime to live. I can wait while a boat heads up or down the waterway.

  I call the bridge that though it is probably properly named something else. Who cares? I am a Southerner and this bridge will always be the Socastee Bridge. . It is probably named the "Strom Fritz Memorial Bridge" but so what that it was named by the same idiots who renamed "Clark's Hill, Lake Thurmond. Thank goodness we elect politicians to do important stuff like that. I think Clarks' Hill has a lot more soul.

  I cruise up 17. Actually I aim more than drive. Thank goodness there are no state troopers to inhibit my exhibition. Myrtle Beach is a freaking mess. Capitalism has gone wild. I will not ever set foot in that catastrophe.

  I cross the NC/SC line. Do not have to show a visa or a passport. I am headed home, or at least where I am comfortable. I take a right on 710, or 204, or whatever the heck the road is. Doesn't matter, I know the way. I stop at the Food Lion. It used to be the Red and White but who cares. I loiter in the aisles, wandering aimlessly, biding time so that I hit the drawbridge at the right time.

  Perfect, I am the first car when the light turns red to signal the closing of the drawbridge from the seaward side. Actually it is not a drawbridge for it does not open up but turns sideways into the waterway. I get out and walk to the edge. The trawlers pass, the working folk. The yachts pass.........rich folks out on a hoot. The small aluminum skiffs shuttle by..........out to catch some flounder. My heartbeat increases.

  The bridge closes, the light turns green and I exit the womb. I cross the rickety bridge and I am in heaven. I look at the reeds in the marsh. The egrets are stalking their dinner. Crabs are dining on small morsels. A lone boy is casting his net for shrimp. This is as good as it gets.

  I maneuver or perhaps careen into the first real estate office I see.

  "Ma'am, I would like a place to stay."

  Looks like to me you could use a twelve-hour sleep-it-off, a good shower and a digital prostate exam. What are you looking for?"

  "I would like something on the beach, it doesn't have to be that big. It is just my shaving kit and me."

  "Jesus, I work here for thirty years, my husband has high cholesterol, craves oral sex and takes a gazillion pills, and my daughter is a senior at Queens and on birth control pills. My son has a goddamn stud through his eyelid. I can't pay my bills and I have to find a place for you and your friggin shaving kit! Let me tell you something, all the houses here on the beach are duplexes. Some Yankee bastard came through a few years ago and convinced all the owners to put a wall down the middle. Double your pleasure, double your fun, but most of all double the rent." You can't afford a place unless you rent Gerties‘."

  What is Gerties'?"

  "No, Who is Gertie?" Never you mind. You can have the room for $500 for the week. It is the downstairs room with a kitchenette and bath. Don't pay me now, just stay a couple of days and then come back."

  I drove to the Eastern end of the island and pulled under the home. Had to be the right place for my key worked the lock. No sooner had I tossed my bag on the bed, put my kit in the bathroom and hung up my clothes and paused to take a leak, when all hell happened.

  The door slammed against the wall. A terrible shadow obstructed my view of the doorway.

  Had to be a vision..........A block filled the door. A huge shape occupied the entire entrance.

  "Put that silly thing back into your trousers and come and talk to me." And careful you don't drip pee on the tile."

  I gingerly put my member back into my trousers and did indeed notice a couple of drops on my Weejuns. Then I walked outside.

  "I'm Gertie, Gertrude Gordon, I own this place. Do you drink, I know you drink beer, but do you drink? Good, me too. Run out to Ralph's and get us some gin. I like it cold. Take that rat-ass cooler you got, put some ice in it and come up to the porch when you got it done. I don't care if it is cheap or expensive, it all makes you talk right".

  "May I ask why you came down to talk to me?"

  "Well my first clue that we needed to talk was when I felt the house shake when you hit the pilings of my house. Thank goodness the only damage you did was to your left fender. Most drunks hit the right one. Then I noticed all the aluminum you had in the rear seat. You came down here for a reason and I think I know what it is. You are one screwed up soul and Gertie will not tolerate that. Leave if you wish but get the gin first, I could use a little slip down my throat."

  Here I go to the bridge again. Why does it entice me so? Rickety it is. I guess that phrase came from the disease. If I parked in the middle would I get arrested? Could I have a standoff with the NC troopers? I have a canister of instant tire-repair. That gooey shit should keep them at bay for at least an hour. I escape my reverie and motor onward.

  Naturally the first building is a restaurant………"Best crab cakes on the Carolina Coast." Don't believe that, I have eaten there. They taste like shoe leather with tartar sauce. Tarter sauce ranks just below ketchup as my favorite condiment, and I hate ketchup. Then the next stop is Ralph's liquor store.

  I enter through the faded and weathered glass door. The bells tingle and chime to announce to Ralph that a customer or a deranged psychopathic killer has entered the establishment. But it ain't Ralph. Must be Ralphina.

  "Oh, you must be the guy staying with Gertie. A bottle of Gilbeys will do the trick. What else?"

  What else? What the fuck is going on? The real estate lady tells Gertie, Gertie tells you and I am on the friggin' front page of the Sunset Beach Times. I came here to relax and remember.

  "Well gin ain't gonna help you remember shit. But Gertie likes a sip now and then. Pay me and go back to Gertie. Hey, listen to that woman, she knows the koojama."

  I drive back to her house, crossing the bridge I love so much. I park under the house and take the cooler with gin upstairs to the porch. Gertie is there. Sitting in and old oak rocker.

  "Took you long enough boy. Did Maggie bend your ear? I bet so. She is good folk. Go pour us a modicum. I like two ice cubes."

  I returned to the porch with our potions, placed hers before her and sat down with mine held firmly in my hands.

  "The difference between us is simple boy, but hard to cure. I drink because I like it; you drink because you have to. We are gonna take care of that this week." Ain't gonna be easy, you will curse me at the top of your lungs, but we are gonna straighten your ass out."

  We sat, we drank, and we talked. No I mostly listened as Gertie talked. What all she said, I do not remember for the gin was getting good to me. Then Mother Nature pulled that sunset trick she does so often...myriads of colors spilling from the sky onto the surf.

  Feed me.

  I go inside and fix us each a plate with a sandwich and chips. I don't recall what kind of meat was on the sandwich, but it was flat and grayish. I put some greenery I found in the frig on Gertie's sandwich.

  I was getting absorbed in the moonrise over the sea, when.Gertie burped modestly, wiped her mouth and arose. "I'm going to bed boy. You best do the same. We have a long day tomorrow. By the way, that sandwich was great. The greens came from the remains of the spray I fixed for Charlie Markum's casket. Did more for me than it did for him. Don't know what they call that green stuff."

---  2  ---

  Whammmm!!! The doorknob deepens the indentation in the sheet rock. The covers are ripped from my body.

  "Nice tent boy. Go piss it away and get dressed. We got some walking and talking to do."

  "Gertie, couldn't you just knock on the door?"

  "Ain't got time boy. At my age I could keel over at any second. Got no time to waste. Get up and get moving."

  I got dressed hurriedly and stepped outside. Gertie held a couple of plastic bags in her hands.

  "What are we going to do Gertie, commit suicide by putting bags over our faces on the beach?"

  "Hush boy. These are for shells. Shells are hopes, wishes, dreams, aspirations, shells will bring you peace. Shells are what you are looking for. Come on, let's walk."

  She guided me to the tide line where the detrius of the ocean had been deposited by the tide. She knew all the shells. A baby's ear, soft and white and opalescent.Turkey wings, ugly things but a very descriptive term. A "devil's purse,"the spawn of a stingray. A lady's slipper, and a bunch of cockle shells. A bunch of cockle shells.

  "Pick that up."

  "That cat turd?"

  "That is not a cat turd you idiot. That is an Olive, the state shell of the Palmetto State. Don't find nearly as many as we used to. The shell or whatever the heck the biologists call it winds to the left. Seems to me that is the primary difference between Conchs and Whelks. One winds right, the other left. Can't remember which one or why they do that."

  I pick up the Olive and examine it before I put it in my bag. It is smooth, so smooth, with subtle markings on the sides. How in the heck did this become a state shell? It is attractive but so was Elizabeth Taylor.

  "Here we are" said Gertie.

  "Where exactly are we Gertie?"

  "Tubb's Inlet, one of natures' passageways for the ocean to feed the estuaries. It may look like a small stream now but at high tide you could not stand up in it. You would be helplessly swept away. A gazillion gallons of water go in and out each day. Let's cross. This is the start of your life. Wait"

  "Wait what?"

  "Look down."

  "Gertie, you are going to have to give me more information. All I see is sun-baked sea- bed. What am I looking for?"

  "What you are looking for is a commercial. This is the spot that they recently filmed a geriatric drug commercial with some guy raking clams. The drug cured what ailed him and he went and had sexual pleasures with the Dixie Babes or whatever. Let me say this about that, I have been on this piece of coast for fifty years and I have never seen anyone rake for clams. Fact is I watched some guy bury a burlap sackfull of clams under the sand before they started the shoot."

  "Dixie Chicks Gertie, but that is of no moment. Now what are we going to do?"

  "We are going to wade across this bit of water and stand on Holden Beach. Which in itself is not much but it is the start of your revival."

  "Why cannot we just start here?"

  "Jesus boy, do as you are told. You have to take some action, move forward. Hold my hand. I don't quite trust my supports anymore."

  I hold Gerties weathered hand as we maneuver the inlet. We successfully cross the bar.

  "Hug me."

  "What?"

  "Hug me boy. Put your arms around me and squeeze. Ain't a whole lot of athletics involved in that. Hug me, hug. Do you like me?

  "Gertie, I like you but what is this all about? Why couldn't I hug you on Sunset or why should I hug you at all?

  "Constipation I can cure in a morning, stupidity may take a little longer. Just do what I ask, hug me.

  I envelop Gertie in my arms, I squeeze.