“How’s this?” asked James, leaning heavily on the shovel handle. He wiped a sleeved arm across his sweaty forehead. I tilted my head and looked down at him; he was standing in a two-feet-deep by four-feet-wide hole on the beach.
“Almost perfect!” I exclaimed. “About another foot deep and you’ll have it.”
“Hey,” said Terry, unloading the deck chairs from the pickup, “how come you always get to be the supervisor?”
I grinned. “I prefer the term ‘Pit Boss’.”
It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it. And, if I do say so myself, I’m pretty good at organizing beach bonfire parties. The first step is the hardest: Choose an evening when it isn’t going to rain. Much.
Next, a suitable location must be selected somewhere above the high tide line, not too close to the dunes, and near enough to the restrooms on the beach approach.
James is in charge of digging the fire pit. “It’s my contribution.” He smiles. “Some people sing for their supper; I dig holes in the sand.”
James is too modest. He also hauls the coolers, camp chairs, portable tables, blankets, towels, roasting sticks, shovels, asbestos gloves, kindling, and a sizeable amount of dried and split firewood to the bonfire site.
Once the hole is complete, it was everyone’s job to wad mounds of newspaper to pitch in with the kindling.
“But not page four!” I admonished them years ago. “Not my column! I couldn’t stand to see my words go up in smoke!”
“You want us to save your column to wrap fish in?” mocked Audrey.
I looked the other way as the match was struck.
“Cheer up,” said Scott, “I brought my guitar.”
And Scott proceeded to strum familiar tunes while the rest of us muddled through the first three or four lines of each song.
“How ’bout a word game?” asked Scott after an hour or so of ‘Name that Tune’. “Let’s go for one-word movie titles.”
My eyebrows indicated a lack of comprehension.
“Like ‘Superman’,” he explained. “Rocky, Backdraft, Earthquake, Twister—”
“Dumbo?” interjected Terry.
“Bambi,” said Audrey. “Lassie, Cinderella, Hair.”
“You only got ‘Hair’ cause you’re a hairdresser,” said Terry.
“Shampoo!” exclaimed Audrey.
And so, between snippets of conversation, roasting hot dogs and keeping any more sand from getting into the potato salad, we kept the game going with the likes of Oklahoma, Camelot, Halloween and Flashdance.
As often happens at the beach, the evening floorshow was spectacular. We watched in awestruck reverence as the sun silently slipped into the sea, leaving the dusky pastel sky awash with stunning color.
“It doesn’t get any better than this,” I whispered.
For a long time, no one spoke; no one had to. The occasional pop of the fire, the ever-present background cadence of the ocean, and a few solitary gull cries said it all.
When the stars began making their presence known, Audrey was first to break the silence. “The Sound of Music,” she sighed.
“That doesn’t count,” teased Scott. “It’s more than one word.”
“Deliverance,” she countered.
“Help!” He laughed, and the reflective mood of the group abruptly swung back to a more jovial tone.
“Who’s ready for S’mores?” asked Terry, opening the bag of marshmallows.
“It’s the best way I know to mess up an otherwise perfectly good piece of chocolate,” said Audrey, getting out the graham crackers.
And in no time at all, we produced more than a dozen flaming marshmallow torches to light the night sky.
“Can’t anybody here toast a marshmallow without setting it on fire?” asked James.
Six of us handed him our roasting sticks. “Go for it,” I said.
Half a bag of marshmallows later he conceded: S’mores taste just fine with charcoal-colored goo oozing out between the warmed chocolate and crispy graham crackers.
Our amicable group solved the problems of the universe sitting around the bonfire that evening. Politics, religion, health care, unemployment, censorship, sexism, racism, any ‘ism’ at all—no topics of debate were off limits. We knew we’d still be friends in the morning.
And morning came all too soon. The fire burned low, and by unspoken consent, no one moved to add another log. When the pit contents were reduced to nothing more than a few glowing embers, James got out the shovel and began quietly filling the hole back in.
We left no trace of having been there; it was as we had found it.
I caught only a couple hours sleep before the phone rang.
“Beaches,” said James, continuing our one-word movie title game.
And for once, I let him have the last word. RIP my dear friend. I miss you.