“You’re out in the heat, I see,” Sheldon said.
“The North Carolina sunshine can be unforgiving. The camp bus was a little late, and I had to get to the post office. How are you this morning?”
She asked the same question every day he saw her, which was usually Monday through Friday. “I’m managing,” he answered her as he always did.
She waved then and kept walking. Sheldon watched her go. He was impressed with how she doted on her grandson. She was patient and caring. Sheldon had often seen them along the water. Audrey mentioned she was a schoolteacher and had the summer off, so she had the days to tell the boy about the sky, the clouds, the sea, sea creatures, the sand. Sheldon even heard her explaining how glass was made from sand. He was surprised to learn the process himself.
It was amazing the things he didn’t know and had never been interested in before. But what was more amazing was watching the way she treated her grandson with kindness and love. His father had never treated either him or Jason with the sort of care Audrey bestowed on her grandson. Sheldon had been cloistered in his father’s narrow-minded world. Sheldon was glad to see how other people lived and how they looked after one another.
When noon came, Sheldon knocked off for lunch and headed home. Along the beach were a series of cheap but cheerful bungalows that could barely be called houses, but that’s what they were for some of the lower-income families in the community. Sheldon lived in one of these cottages that he rented from a man in town. The summer was sweltering, but this past winter, when he’d arrived in Meadesville, and taken the cottage, the winds had blown in off the Atlantic and swirled around the estuary freezing his fingers and feet. He longed for his warm bed back in Maryland. But that was no longer his and would never be again. Sheldon didn’t want to see the place where he had been born and raised go to strangers. He wondered what it was like now. When he’d left the Kendall, the main house was no longer the pristine white color with black shutters it had been before his father died. When Sheldon was locked out the grass was overgrown, the paint was peeling and there were several leaks needing repair. The barn was empty and Sheldon owed thousands of dollars for feed, repairs and services. He had every cent he owned—$208.76—in his pocket when he was evicted.
That hadn’t taken him far and he found himself doing things only Jason would do. He hated Jason more then. Irrationally, he knew his predicament wasn’t Jason’s fault, but Jason would think nothing of hitchhiking, digging ditches, working on road crews or taking refuge at a homeless shelter. It was beneath Sheldon. He thought he would never do anything like that.
But he had.
He’d done that and more. When he couldn’t find a soup kitchen, when he was too far from anyplace, when he had no more money, he scoured trash cans, looking for anything to eat to stay alive. Now he had a job and a place to live. His pay was a little more than minimum wage. He had no savings and usually cooked and ate his own meals—simple ones, nothing fancy. His bathroom had no mirror in it, so he didn’t always know what he looked like, but the last time he saw a reflection in a store window, he seemed identical to his father if his father was a fiftysomething vagrant. He had a beard and unkempt hair. He’d lost at least forty pounds and wore thrift-store finds.
He no longer resented Jason. Jason was a survivor. He would adapt, do what was necessary to get back on his feet. Sheldon used his brother, no longer thinking of him as a half brother, as an inspiration. Every time he wanted to quit the menial job, he considered what Jason would do. Jason would stick it out. He’d perform the tasks at an exemplary level until he raised enough money to move on. Then he’d go to the next job. Sheldon was a Kendall, and while Jason was also a Kendall, his half brother had a tougher bloodline on his mother’s side. It had made him strong. Surely Sheldon could at least do half of what Jason would do.
Again, he stopped to look over the marina and speculate where Jason might be. Had leaving the farm destroyed any love he had for the Kendall? Would he ever return? Sheldon was hardly in a place to know. He didn’t ever expect to see the Kendall again himself. Knowing it was no longer in his family, yet being nearby, would be too much for him. He’d disappointed his father and the generations of Kendalls that had come before him.
He would not go back.
In his bungalow, Sheldon set a small pot in which he’d dumped a can of soup on the burner and waited for it to heat. Even though the temperature outside was nearing the century mark, he lunched on soup and bread, saving his dinner for the larger meal of the day. Tonight he was having canned chili with rice.