I made many visits to Fernandina Beach in Florida during my time living in the USA, and I would often stay with my Uncle Carl.
He wasn't my real uncle. He was one of Mom's childhood friends. Mom always respectfully referred to these dear people as our 'Uncle' and 'Aunt' and so my sister and I did too. Carl's mum, my Aunt Marion, was my Godmother.
Carl lived in New York (which I, as a little kid, thought was most glamourous) and when he retired, he returned to his childhood home of Fernandina.
On one of my visits, Carl decided we would visit one of his best friends and drinking buddies, a woman who had also been part of Mom's 'group' all those years ago. He called her the Sergeant Major but her name was Ellen and she lived on the outskirts of town, on the inland waterway side of Amelia Island, with her friend Doll and Doll's elderly father. Back then, this part of the Island was still heavily wooded, as it had been for years, but the land was already being cleared for the new resorts and residential developments that now characterise so many parts of Florida. Ellen was being courted by developers at the time, but she was holding out, reluctant to move away from the home and land that had been in her family for a very long time.
Many years ago, I was writing a work of fiction, but heavily based on real people and places, actual events, and stories I knew about Mom and her childhood home. I wrote about meeting Ellen, beginning by setting the physical scene before bringing my characters into the story. I'd like to say that my writing has improved since these early days but I was able to capture the scene and characters pretty well. For some reason, I wrote in the present tense, which I doubt I'd do now, and if I was to write about these experiences again, I'd write as memoir, not fiction.
The visit that day began like this ...
Carl suddenly veers off the road into a tiny opening in the jungle only he can see, and we find ourselves on a narrow two-rutted dirt track winding off into the woods. The grey moss hangs ghostly from blackened branches, and scrapes across the cab of the truck as we bounce and bump our way along. The light filtering down through the dense overhead canopy of trees gives the whole place an eerie quality of pale green luminescence. We come upon a clearing and a long, low, wooden house.
The house is crouched beneath the trees, solid and dark like a log cabin at a lake. There is a verandah running along the front. The left part of the house looks as if it has been tacked on as an afterthought, and sags down into the ground. The windows are small and set deeply into wooden walls that are covered in a bright lime-green moss in places. Behind the house I see the waterway and the marsh beyond, glowing pale gold in the late afternoon sun.
The house has an air of gentle decay. I can see it sinking ever so slowly and gracefully into the swirls and eddies of the silent water, to be carried away with the roots and vines in a lazy, almost imperceptible way, ultimately decomposing along with the rest of Florida.
We pull up and are no sooner out of the truck when three tan-coloured bulldog puppies come bounding up to greet us, snorting, snuffling, and making their baby woofs. They press their drooling muzzles against our legs and leap up with their muddy poinpricking feet, smearing damp earth across our knees.
'She breeds these,' Carl says, brushing one aside.
Then, right on cue, like an introduction at some vaudeville show, we hear shouting from inside, a great, raucous hollering in fact, and the screen door bursts open on its failing hinges. The mother of all bulldogs, a massive white and tan brindled mama, races through the door and heads for my legs, colliding with a force that knocks me back on my heels against the truck.
'Now is that any way to welcome guests?' says the source of the hollering.
'Here comes the Sergeant Major,' Carl says.
The screen door slaps open again and there stands Ellen. Sergeant Major is an apt description. She is big and broad shouldered with iron grey hair cut in a severe shaved style around her head and standing up on top like a battle helmet. She wears wire-framed glasses and a man's shirt with the tails flapping and a pair of old dungarees stained with unidentifiable things which I figure have something to do with the dogs, but as I come to make her acquaintance, I know the stains could be tobacco, fish juice, booze, mud, Tabasco sauce. She wears a pair of rubber sandals that flap as she strides across the yard to secure her errant puppies and their mother.
'I don't know how they got out,' she says, catching one of the squirming puppies. 'Doll! Come here Doll!'
There is more to this show. I think Ellen is calling to one of the dogs but then another woman comes out of the house. She is short, squat, with the biggest bust I have ever seen, straining against a dirty white T-shirt, all topheavy and struggling along on little spindly legs that seem way too thin to support the massive structure. She waddles towards us, swaying from side to side with the pendulous motion of the enormous breasts that threaten to overturn her if the wind blows from the wrong direction. Her hair is black with a sprinkling of grey, falling over eyes that view me with some suspicion. Her mouth works constantly with a life of its own and I eventually learn this is due to ill-fitting false teeth that she twiddles around in her mouth and pokes out on the end of her tongue after a few beers. I guess she is around 50 and Ellen is in her late 60s, like Uncle Carl.
'This is Betty Jane's girl!' Carl says, pushing me towards the Major for her review.
Ellen and I look each other up and down. She grasps my hand in a dry, firm, handshake. I look into her face, furrowed and creased with age, and think I am seeing someone who has suffered long from ill health or maybe a lot of hard drinking, but her deep, brown eyes are lively and kind, and she seems very pleased to see us.
'Don't you look just like your mother,' she says, 'our Betty Jane who went off to live with that man in New Zealand. Doll, come over here and meet this young lady.'
Ellen speaks in a heavy, breathy way, as if she has too much air in her lungs and has to expel it after every sentence with a 'humph' either through her nose or her mouth. Her raspy laugh is smoke-hardened, tempered by the years of liquor and, maybe, of shouting at Doll because Carl said they've been together for a long time.
Doll comes towards us, herding the puppies before her. She twists her mouth, wipes her lips with the back of her hand, and looks at me.
'Do you fish?' she asks.
'I haven't in a long time,' I say.
'Maybe I'll take you sometime,' she says, and with that she turns and takes the pack of writhing bulldogs round the back of the house.
'You've done better than most with Doll,' Ellen says. 'She's happiest out fishing with a cooler of beer and a bucket of ice.'
Ellen gestures for us to come into the house.
'And how are you young Carl?' she says, steering him towards the steps.
Next time: now that we've set the scene and introduced the major players, we'll bring in the action.