The Girl Who Kept Shooting

The apology

On Wednesday evening, Eldon came down to the beach where the whole family was sitting in our chairs, watching the sun go down.

He stood there for a minute, a big heavy man in a polo and khaki shorts, with his hands at his sides like he did not know what to do with them. Colleen was watching him. We all were.

“Bridget,” he said. “I owe you an apology. What I did the other day was wrong, and I’m sorry. I’ll pay you back for the camera.”

Bridget looked up at him from her beach towel. She took a long time to answer.

“Grandma already paid for it,” she said. “Thank you for saying sorry.”

She did not say it was okay. I noticed that. She did not say it was fine, or no big deal, or don’t worry about it. She just thanked him for the apology and turned back to the water.

Eldon stood there a second longer. Then he nodded and went back up to the house. Colleen followed him. Mama watched them go and did not say a word.

Later, I found three hundred and fifty dollars in twenties folded under Bridget’s camera bag. There was no note. Bridget put it in an envelope and gave it to her grandmother, and Mama took it without arguing for once.

Thursday on the beach access

On Thursday afternoon Eldon sat on the bench at the top of the beach access for a long time, all by himself, looking out at the water. He sat there for nearly two hours.

Colleen came down and found me where I was standing in the surf up to my knees. She stood beside me and looked at the water too.

“Can I tell you something about him?” she said. “Not to fix it. Just so you know.”

“Go ahead.”

“You know he lost his job when the mill closed. Six years ago.”

I knew. Eldon had worked at the textile plant in Greenwood for twenty-two years. He ran a weaving room. When they shut it down, he was forty-six and had never done anything else.

“He took the job at the distribution center,” Colleen said. “Sitting at a desk all day. He started eating at night. Then his knee went. He’s put on seventy pounds since then, Elise. Seventy.”

“I knew he’d gained some.”

“He won’t let anybody take his picture. He untagged himself from every photo on Facebook. He won’t go in the water past his knees anymore, because he won’t take his shirt off. Haven’t you noticed he wears a polo to the beach?”

I had noticed. I had thought it was just Eldon being Eldon.

“He told me last year he can’t stand to look at himself,” Colleen said. “He’s never told anybody else. Not even Katie. And Bridget turned around with that camera with the sun behind him, and something in him just snapped.”

I stood there in the water. A wave came in and soaked the bottom of my shorts.

“It doesn’t make it right,” I said.

“No,” Colleen said. “It doesn’t. I just wanted you to know it wasn’t about her.”

It did not make it right. But it made it human. And I found that once I knew it, I could not hate him the way I had wanted to.