In A Perfect Place
A hundred-year storm’s coming. Flash fiction by David Summerfield
I saw an old man with thin hair and dirty clothes. He stood on the beach staring at the people leaving in an undulating snake of trucks and cars along the highway. A storm chaser for a local news outlet, I’d made it my business to be where we suspected the hurricane would make landfall. Not so many vehicles now, the old man stood still staring with a peculiar melancholy.
I approached him and asked, “Where do you live?”
“That one on stilts,” he said, pointing, managing a smile.
“Have you no family?” I asked.
“None. My wife and I came to this perfect place to enjoy the peace and tranquility,” he explained, “but in the last great storm my wife disappeared, swept away with no trace she’d ever been here, dogs and cats, too.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but aren’t you going to leave?”
“No,” he said, his eyes searchlights into the gathering gloom, probing for what I couldn’t tell.
“A hundred-year storm’s coming,” I said, “the wind and water will blow your house away and take you out to sea. First responders won’t come until it’s over. If you’d like, you can come with me to a shelter you’ll be safe.”
“I’ll be alright, I have provisions, can take care of myself, I always have.”
“You should reconsider,” I insisted.
“I’m seventy-five years old, and even if my wife never returns, this will always be our perfect place,” he said, “there’s no place left to go.” Looking tired, he added, “but thanks for your concern, I’ll be alright, I assure you.”
“Well, you should get inside then.” I looked at the swollen sea, hills of waves beginning to break, a reckoning of black clouds on the horizon.
“Yes, I need to get inside,” he said. I saw him sway a bit, totter toward the stilts of his home, as squalls of wind and rain began to inundate the shoreline.
With nothing more to do than remove myself, I had wished him the best. After the storm I returned amid the tranquility of the sea and the gentle flight of the gulls in the soft sunlight to see if his home still stood, as if he’d only been an apparition, a dream, a phantasm nothing had endured, no mark, no trace he’d ever been there, ever existed, they must be together, I reflected, in some other perfect place.
David Summerfield has been co-editor, columnist, and contributor to various publications within his home state of West Virginia. He is a graduate of Frostburg State University, Maryland, and a veteran of the Iraq war. Literary accolades include Northwind Writing Award Top Ten Finalist in Nonfiction sponsored by Raw Earth Ink. His fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and photo art have appeared or forthcoming in Paddler Press Poetry & Art Journal, Military Experience and the Arts, The Remington Review, Amphora Magazine, Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine, Carmina Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, El Portal (EUNM) Literary Journal, and more. View his body of work at his website: davidsummerfieldcreates.com
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