If the Tide Returns

It was hard to pinpoint exactly what about Billy made Sarah Bedingfield fall so quickly in love with him. They shared shy glances in school. At lunch, Billy purposely sat so that he could always have a clear line of sight on Sarah’s face, even sitting askew from the rest of his friends if need be. Under the broiling yellow sun of a North Carolina spring, the two were finally pushed together by their respective friend groups. A date was made–a night at a jazz concert in the big city. The forty minute drive to the theater was spent in great tension. Billy’s old car jostled along dirt roads, its engines roared to keep up pace on the highway, yet thrumming faster than any car on the street was Billy’s own heart. They said hardly a word to each other, save a compliment from Billy about Sarah’s essay from their Lit class and a returned compliment from Sarah about Billy’s latest performance at the inter-state track meet.

The drive home was full of laughs and easy conversation. The two felt as though they had known one another for a long time and were only just becoming reacquainted.

Need it be said that they were both attractive for their ages? Somehow, both had escaped scar-free from the pockmarked blusters of adolescence. Billy had full lips, elongated features, and simple athleticism. His blue eyes glittered from underneath dark brown hair that swept onto his forehead. He was tall. On their first date, he looked svelte in a dark brown suit. He hadn’t procured the farm strength of others at Little Creek High, but when he danced with Sarah, she felt the allure of his strong hand on her back, of his firm grip on her arm.

Sarah was the beauty of their school. She had full lips as well. Her features were elfin aside from a robust eyebrow ridge that accentuated the innocent expression she wore everywhere. Billy was surprised by how fast that expression could change into something sly. She stood just a little shorter than he did in her heels, and while the dress she wore was modest, it was incredibly flattering. Dirty blond hair tumbled over her shoulders, and her twinkling gray eyes captured the light of the ballroom like pinpricks of lightning amidst stormclouds.

When he dropped her off at her family’s farm, they lingered in the car over a kiss that felt like the union of two fates that had forever been intertwined.

“Billy!” cried Sarah, flashing her brilliant white teeth in a grin. “My mama warned me about men who kiss on the first date.”

His voice, mellow and soft, asked, “Oh? What did she say about them?”

She played with his tie with her delicate fingers. “That they’re only looking for randy things, sinful things… and that I shouldn’t trust them.”

They were inches apart. Billy kissed her again, placing a hand on her waist. When they broke apart, he asked, “Do you trust me?”

She pushed some loose strands of hair away from his eyes, tucking them behind his ear. Her heart hammered in her chest. She whispered, “I do…”

There followed a summer romance for the ages. They were both going to the local college in autumn, so it seemed that nothing could part them. They shared scandalous kisses in the library, Sarah giggling until the waspish Dr. Lenson–she made them call her doctor since she was indeed some erstwhile PhD who had fallen out of academia after being unable to hold a university job. As it turned out, she liked the bottle a little more than she liked to teach or write papers. Yet her checkered past would not prevent her from shooting the young lovers in her library scathing glances whenever she found them leaning a little too close to one another.

It was July 17th when Billy told Sarah that he loved her. They were laying out in a wheat field, a cool breeze sending ripples through the amber waves of grain. The sky was baby blue above them, the sun hiding behind the only cloud in that vast atmospheric expanse.

This was one of their favorite places to relax. Sarah would put her head on Billy’s chest. Billy would use a crumpled sweatshirt as a pillow. They’d simply breathe with one another, sharing the occasional kiss and joke that sent them into fits of laughter. It was here that they planned their future together. Billy would get a job as an engineer in the city. They’d buy a house perhaps twenty minutes from it. They didn’t fancy the bustling city life, but it was also far too quiet up here in Little Creek. They wanted a place with little brooks in the forest, but they also wanted a neighbor within reach.

Two kids. That’s what they wanted. As a pair of only children, there was always a slight yearning towards companionship that no friend, nor romantic partner, could satisfy. Ideally, they would have one boy and one girl, with the girl being older so the boy couldn’t terrorize her too much when they were little.

“And I’d wanna start having them around… 25. What d’you think, Billy?”

He smiled down at her. She was now lying on top of him, her benign face turned up at his. Brushing her wavy hair with his hand, he replied, “That sounds good to me, sweetheart.”

“And a dog! We need to have a dog. How about a golden?”

“They’re a lot of energy…”

“Please…” drawled Sarah, pouting her red lips at him.

He sighed. “How about a little dog? Something that won’t jump around too much?”

She smirked. “Alright, that can be our first dog.”

A plane was flying overhead, sending little trails of white along the perfect azure sky like lines of powder. Billy looked up at it and then down at her, this beautiful girl with her sundress that had the hem up high so her long, sleek, strong legs shone in the sun–this beautiful girl who looked up at him with joy alighting her eyes, with her head propped up on her hands as her elbows dug gently into his chest.

He couldn’t help but beam at her and kiss her forehead, rubbing her back with one hand.

She grinned. “What was that for?”

“Nothing,” he said. His heart was still, calm. The words spilled out of him as though he was destined to say exactly this at exactly this moment: “I just love you.”

Sarah’s eyes sparkled with sudden tears. “Oh, darling… I love you too.”

She moved her face up to his, and the two began kissing with newfound ardor. Before they knew it, they had rolled over and Billy was on top, the two smiling coyly.

Afterwards, a combination of the warm air and the unrelenting sun beating down on them brought a bout of drowsiness upon them. They fell asleep, woken only by the sound of dogs barking in the distance. Realizing they had meant to be home an hour ago, they leapt up and raced over to Billy’s car. Sarah lagged behind a little, not because track-star Billy was running at a great pace, but because she liked to watch him run from behind.

The sun was aflame in an orange twilight that bathed the horizon and turned the isolated clouds a little bloody. Billy drove like a bat out of hell to get to Sarah’s farmstead, but the two of them weren’t anxious; they were laughing. They were holding hands and neither of them cared about the whooping they would get at home. They didn’t care because both of them knew that what they had said and done that afternoon had solidified their futures. They would get married, have the house twenty minutes from town, the two kids and a dog (Billy knew he couldn’t say no to the golden retriever now), and no one could get in their way even if they wanted to.

That unique and unshakeable faith that young people have in their convictions meant that even after Billy had shut the door to his room, his cheek still stinging a little where his mother had hit him, his gaze was starbound. The poster of Joe Dimaggio in his room and the smattering of toy cars and relics from his childhood seemed so foreign to him. All that mattered was this future with Sarah. Patterson, that was Billy’s last name, and so he spent time in his bed that night–when he wasn’t fondly recollecting what had happened that afternoon, whispering to himself, “Sarah Patterson… Sarah Patterson….”

The hopeful future Mrs. Patterson was in her room. Her parents had given her a stern upbraiding, but the color of her father’s bald head had not even reached the shade of a ripe tomato, so all things considered, she’d gotten off pretty easily. She looked outside of her window and saw the endless carpet of stars above and imagined what it would be like in the future to sit out on the porch with Billy in their rocking chairs, drinking sweet tea and reading their books while the kids argued inside. An arm of the galaxy stretched itself magnificently over the sky, its turbid clouds hiding mysteries that perhaps their great-great grandchildren would plumb. Sarah had always had a bit of an obsession with space, and she decided right there and then that wherever they lived, they would have a telescope to map out the night sky with them.

Maybe one day, she thought wildly, they would discover a binary star system and they could name them Billy and Sarah. She giggled to herself at this thought. Of course, that was silly.

Yes, life seemed unable to get in the way of the young couple. They basked in the amber grain when they could. They took trips to neighboring towns and watched the sun rise over emerald hills at Billy’s cousin’s place. This same cousin showed the couple how to ride in a four-wheeler and went dangerously around the farm, zipping around corners and all-but flying over hills. Billy and Sarah were red in the face and breathless from cheering.

One morning in late August, as they were laying in a meadow nearby and Billy was trying to keep his cool around all the bees, Sarah asked, “Hey, can we go to the beach?”

“Beach? What beach?”

“Mindy Aster went to Lake Browning last weekend and she said it was lovely!”

“Lake Browning… I think I know where that is. You wanna go?”

Her face turned away a little, looking longingly in the distance. “Yeah… I haven’t seen real water–I mean, water outside of those little cricks we have here, in years Oh, and that weird pool down by the courthouse doesn’t count.”

Billy sprang up and pulled Sarah with him. His face was set in determination. “Then let’s go! What’re we waiting for?”

A quick trip home for some towels and bathing suits, then the two of them were racing off to Lake Browning. It was packed on that sweltering day. People from all over the county were coming to cool off in the water, and our young couple was ogled at by many a conservative parent as they sprinted through the sand and threw themselves bodily into the shallows. They swam out as the lukewarm water of the lake lapped around their necks, and eventually they were floating far away from most other people. They were laughing heartily, splashing one another with water.

“Oh, Billy, this feels so nice!” cried Sarah as she started swimming the backstroke. The water turned her hair nearly brown, and her face was shining with ecstasy. Billy beamed at her and swam the breaststroke to catch up, eventually grabbing her hand and pulling her close.

He said, “Oh come closer, I’m cold!”

Sarah giggled and gasped, “Billy! Here?”

“What, you don’t wanna?”

She pulled him closer to her as well and said, “Oh, I want to…”

The couple left the beach that day exhausted and flushed both with the burning of the sun and their passion. Their hands held one another so comfortably now; it was their natural state. Billy couldn’t remember what it felt like to have his fingers not intertwined with hers. Whenever he needed both hands to drive, his right always felt naked.

As the dog days of August set in, it really seemed that nothing could get in the way of the young couple. However, there came a letter one morning with an official insignia on the front, a letter that made Mrs. Patterson faint and Mr. Patterson blanch instantly. When Billy got home from his time with Sarah that night, he found his parents in a shambles.

Later, he held the letter in his numb hands, his face dry but only because his heart was purely unfeeling. Everything had been drained out of him by that letter.

It stated in no uncertain terms that he was to go out to fight the war. A call to arms against the Axis powers! Roosevelt needed every able-bodied man out in Europe to fight, and there was no time to waste.

But Billy was not a fighter. He was scared of bees, for Christ’s sake! He scowled deeply, the numbness giving way to great wrath as he crumpled the letter and threw it against his poster of Joe Dimaggio. Why the hell should he go and fight? Who were they to rip him from his home, to take him away from Sarah?!

Sarah… His voice was high and thin as he called Mr. Bedingfield and asked to talk to his daughter. Mr. Bedingfield was a true patriot, and from his armchair with the beer perched upon his voluminous belly, he’d often rave and rant about how not enough young men were prepared to die for this country anymore. But what was the country to Billy? All it represented to him now was a great and terrible object in between his heart and Sarah’s.

Sarah… she burst into tears when he told her. He had one week to get to the nearest boot camp, wherein they’d beat the life out of him until all that remained was a useful little maggot who followed orders and knew how to shoot his rifle in the general direction of the enemy. The next few days were spent with both of their hearts slowly fracturing and then being pulled apart like taffy, each hearstring bearing the weight of the universe upon it as it struggled to keep the heart together. Billy and Sarah hoped against all hope–they even prayed together, for some act of divinity that might absolve Billy’s requirement to go to war.

He’d already decided against dodging. He knew that some people went up to Canada, or perhaps down to Mexico, to escape. Yet he didn’t know if he could look himself in the mirror every night if he ditched this greatest of responsibilities. Though if he were honest with himself, he didn’t want Sarah or her family to think of him as some coward with a weak heart.

If only he’d talked to Sarah about this, she would’ve told him that they should just tell her parents to go to hell and send a forwarding address to Canada for their mail, for she would of course run with him.

But there was no conversation about dodging, and so Billy and Sarah spent their last night together out in front of his parents’ farmstead. The sun was pitching a rusty twilight along the edge of the horizon, its bright yellow pinprick still visible in the west. The indigo sky fell like a damning blanket… the last night of freedom for Billy Patterson.

It was here, in Sarah’s warm embrace, that his tears started to fall. Hers had already wet a spot on the breast pocket of his shirt, and now his fell unceremoniously into her hair. They whimpered, they mumbled and sniffled their love for each other, and Sarah promised with all her heart that she’d wait for him for as long as the war lasted. She’d pray for him every night and she’d even look to join the nurses on the front lines if only it meant being close to him.

He’d have to leave early the next morning, before the sun rose, but they clung onto one another for as long as they could, and she was even up at his farm as he was slamming the trunk to his car before dawn, a watery smiling gracing that ever-beautiful face as she told him one last time that she loved him.

He repeated the words to her and drove off, tears blinding his view of the road.

That was almost nine months ago. Now Billy Patterson was staring into the tumultuous gray sea. He had thrown up once, and he was not the only one. They were going to take Normandy, said the commanders. They were gonna have to fight like hell. Everyone in their boat, including their captain, was green in the face and shivering. Boys, almost all of them, some of them feeling their bodies as though they had already been struck by German bullets. If this was to be such a great victory, then why could the captain not rasp even a single word to rally his troops?

Billy looked out over the ocean, its grayness reminding him of Sarah’s eyes, Sarah, to whom he had so recently written a passionate letter. Yet in this grayness there was not the sparkle of joyful tears, nor the starry reflection of ballroom lights. Here, there were only sharp waves with biting foam, the infinite expanse below that threatened to swallow them before the battle, and the contents of Billy’s stomach. He could not foretell the screams of the coming fight, but his heart already wondered if his blood would soon flow with the waters into which he gazed.