But Heroes Often Fail - #fridayflash

There was weeneys and beans for supper and a fight with the wife for dessert and now Gordie sat on the beach watching the waves roll in.

After he called her a stupid cow and she bounced a wooden spoon off his pasty forehead he slammed the door of the Featherlite travel trailerette and stomped through the park, funneling his pissed-offedness through the rubber soles of his skids.

He marched by other campsites where normal families at picnic tables were just finishing their suppers, or they were lighting the evening’s fire. There was no yelling, no wooden spoons. No Gladys, his own personal fly in the greasy ointment that he called life. It had been a good day, weather-wise, and the other campers were satisfactorily sun-screwed, growing new dollops of skin cancer even as Gordie walked by on his way to the beach. 

He didn’t figure there’d be many folks there at this time of night. And he was right. It was just him, a bunch of airborne division shithawks and one family. Gordie took his shoes off and dug his hairy white toes into the warm sand. He wriggled them a bit and darn if it didn’t feel good. He felt the lump on his forehead. It hurt to the touch but at least it wasn’t throbbing anymore. 

Gladys.

He sighed.

A sandpiper skittered by, legs moving almost faster than the eye could see, head bobbing back and forth, back and forth. “Look at you, you silly little beggar,” he thought, and he smiled. The wind was picking up; the waves were crashing hard on the shore now and he could barely hear the mother yelling for help as her floating tube carried her fast away from the beach, out and away from where her husband and kids played in the surf.

“RICHARD,” she screamed, her voice terrified and muffled on the wind. 

Her husband looked up, startled, and saw his wife moving away from them, moving fast. He saw the panicked look on her face and he yelled at the kids to get out of the water. Gordie quick jumped up, ready to go help, but Richard was already on the move, splashing hard through the shallows, yelling at his wife to paddle, to kick, yelling at his kids to stay on shore, just about every word out of his mouth an obscenity.

“JESUS CHRIST, TAMMY, WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? KICK YOUR GODDAMNED FEET, KICK THEM HARDER. JESUS ON A STICK,” he yelled, feet pounding, making headway, getting closer to his frightened, wide-eyed wife.

“I AM kicking!” she yelled back. “RICHARD... help me!”

The water was getting too deep for running so Richard dove in, arms windmilling, legs kicking. He swam like an athlete. Gordie was surprised and a little impressed, seeing the domesticated middle-ager cutting through the waves like David Hasselhoff in an old episode of Baywatch.

The kids stood shaking and dripping on the beach, crying and mewling, afraid they were never going to see their mommy again.

But their worries were groundless because their daddy had mommy within his sights. A few more strokes and he had the tube in hand, swimming it back to where he could stand again, dragging it through the churning wake, swearing at his woman like a poet sailor with a pocketful of new cusses.

Gordie watched until he was sure they were going to be alright, and then he went back to his spot in the sand, plopping himself down to watch the proceedings in comfort and slow the drum-knock beating of his heart.

The kids ran up to their parents, throwing their baby arms around them and hugging them tight. Tammy hugged them back and Richard scruffed their hair and told them to go get lost, he had to talk to their mother. So they did, went to the water’s edge and started digging a moat, and Richard said a bunch of choice words and Tammy just stood there, still shook up, until Richard stopped his swearing and grabbed his wife and pulled her tight against his heaving chest. She lay her head there, in the pokey-soft mat of graying chest hair, where she couldn’t see tears springing up in her husband’s eyes. They stood that way for a while, the sun turning everything red and gold on the horizon, bathing the couple in a rosy glow.

Gordie couldn’t hear what they were saying, now that nobody was screaming anymore.

Something was said, though. He saw Tammy laugh and pull away slightly, checking the kids out of the corner of her eye, her rounded hip snug against her husband, her arms still loosely draped around his middle. She looked up, into his eyes, and that light, that golden light outlined her hair and her face, painted her with burnished goddess beauty, and Gordie’s breath stopped, it just stopped with the sight of her.

At that, he closed his eyes and laid back in the sand, not wanting to see anything else but the image of her and him standing on the beach, the golden wife and her middle-aged, cuss-mouthed husband, an unlikely hero if there ever was one, but a hero nevertheless.

Long after they had gone Gordie lay on the beach, his mind tugging with an idea for a song; something about heroes. He imagined traditional heroes, knights in shining armour, castles; cowboys in paperback novels, the cheesy kind the drugstores sell. Unlikely heroes, too. Like Richard. Or failed heroes, like himself.

And movie queens. Golden beauties any man would risk his own life to save.

He fell asleep in the sand, lullabied by the waves and his own thoughts, one name on his lips.