Sifting the Sands

By Michael D. Harrison

In the condo community of the Laguna Sands in Southern California, there are a few surprises for the residents. This is a story about relationships and adaption, personal compromise and overcoming the emotional damage that life deals us. Some of that damage is self inflicted,

Laureen did not know the day she was injured in a surfing accident she would begin a new life built around her ability to adapt to new relationships. As her adventure evolves she meets other residents in the condo community; each one having their own complex growth challenges to handle. Struck down by the life changing injury she must find another way to get on with life. She is the bookend the story is built within.

Tommy the roofer stutters. Young, athletic, and sensitive he finds a way to deflect the worst in people. Sometimes that is not enough to protect those you love. His antagonist, Beef, only seems to have gone away. And then one day...

The elderly ladies Irene, Maddie, and Dee form a friendship of convenience to protect their beloved pets, but must deal with the tension of their own competition. They are not all easy to get along with. Which of them survives the tempest of their lives best may surprise you.

Patrick the detective, and Jack the retired Marine are still adapting to the effect of the wars they have fought, making domestic life a mess for them unless they can exorcise their demons. And they really don't have so good an outlook on how to treat women or a son. Or is it just everybody?

Olivia cooks for love and control while her husband Juan of thirty years, eats, just eats. When will Juan make the right choice? Or does he really have one?

By the middle of this story you see their lives come to a crossroad, forcing each of them to make choices that inadvertently affects the others. From there the story escalates into a dangerous final encounter. The ending is, well, painful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael D. Harrison
• Release date: Nov 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301198306

Michael D. Harrison

Michael D. Harrison retired after 33 years in the Transportation Industry with UPS. He had published several poems in the MUSE at Riverside Community College in the mid-1990s. He began writing fiction in 2010. His favorite genre is Literary Fiction. The book "Sifting the Sands"is his first adult themed story, having mature content and was published in 2012. The 2013 children's story, "Leaving Nora's Garden", is his first children's themed story written in a format enjoyable to adults as well as children. In 2022 he has published another family children and adult read aloud story, "The Sunny Side of the House." Currently Michael is publishing only in electronic format.

Book preview

The Wedge

Silence. I am surrounded by silence.

Laureen heard neither her sister’s frantic warning nor the waves which pounded the shore. Astride her short board, tip clear of the water since she sat over the skegs, Laureen saw the water surface turn to satin smoothness. The rogue wave’s shape formed behind her and drew so much water into itself she felt first its shadow block the soft sunshine and then realized she idled in the trough before it. She held her breath to control her heart beat. The tickle of excitement rose from her stomach into her throat.

She accepted the current which pulled her toward the rising wall of the wave and paddled on her knees to take advantage of the momentum. Near the top of the wave’s still growing face she spun to face the shore once more. Taking control, a golden strong-shouldered woman, she knew she could beat the Wedge.

Forced too quickly by the great height of the wall she chose an angle towards shore. Laureen pushed to a stance at the middle of the board. Her timing adjusted to the wave’s deep staggering rhythms. Gathering speed she shifted to the rear of the board, angry at herself for the trembling she could not stop in her thighs.

I can do this.

The accelerating steepness of the wave slope made the twin skegs sing where they sliced through the waters' skin so she felt the vibrations in the soles of her feet. Laureen saw that no curl formed in either direction. The wave rose higher by drawing more water from before it. Her grey eyes thinned as she saw she was no closer to the bottom.

There’s no way out.

Above her golden shoulders the wave reared, flashing white foam, but it did not fall forward because the thickness of the foundation increased faster than its height as it swelled into the near shore riptide trench. Beneath her the compounding water shrugged upward. The tickle inside her was gone. She felt how her feet barely touched her board's surface and in response she curled her body smaller to create gravity, to keep from grasping the edges, to regain control of the board.

The face of the wave leaned, tipping beyond vertical and still did not collapse. Fifteen feet of water which had become twenty became thirty, translucent enough in its grunting girth that Laureen saw the impression of Kathleen in the trough behind it. She turned her head shoreward again and saw how the previous wave withdrew, rushed seaward with veined transparency, racing to expose the coarse sand.

I will not let Kathleen see me use my hands.

Laureen's nostrils flared as she cheated her feet wider. The thirty foot wall of water bent forward, staggered again, over-reached until the wet sand glistened below them. The braided ponytail snapped, a quirt mark splashed across her cheek, and at last she pushed off the short board, knowing she was too late to escape the shore breaker's predictable body slam. She hung at the peak of her futile flight, illuminated against the sunlit backdrop of the caving wave, remembering then that she was still tethered to the board which would chase her into the sand.

Laureen broke as the wave intended. She struck first face and chest, pile-driven and penetrating a mere inch into the packed sand. Her lithe legs bent wrong, backwards until her heels touched the crown of her head. Afterwards she rolled without resistance in the withdrawing water which had already turned from exciting white foam into a bland retreating froth. Only Kathleen's wild dash through the next shore-breaker stopped Laureen from following a mangled Plover beneath the rip.

Sound returned.

The solid green waves burst upon the shore, the scattered onlookers called for help, the gulls settled once again upon the jetty, the responding siren of the constant paramedics arrived at the Wedge, and mostly, Kathleen's keening beside her sister's broken body filled the air.

But Laureen remained silent as she lay upon her back, warmed in the loose sand beyond the reach of the Wedge. She turned her head away from the noise up the beach to watch the peaceful violence of the ocean below. She could see the parallel troughs her heels had made when Kathleen dragged her uphill. She noticed how her heel furrows became closer together the further down slope they went until the smooth high water line made them disappear.

What a way to learn about perspective as an art technique for my murals.

She did not remember the moment of the impact. Already her mind protected her where her body and her twin could not. Her arms rest at her sides and constantly, steadily her hands dipped into the warm sand to let the hourglass grains sift through her fingers.

Laureen observed it all within a state of detachment while Kathleen sat caressing her forehead. She marveled at the clarity of the sunlight beyond the wave-made mist and at the beautiful specks of golden sand on her kneecaps. She saw the watchers turning away, the paramedics looking into her eyes, the movement of their lips as they counted before they controlled her roll onto the stretcher.

I do not want to forget.

Because the paramedics had braced her head she saw only the impatient gulls circling in the marvelous blue sky as she was carried off the beach. During the tilt angle as her gurney was lifted into the ambulance she recognized at the curb her elderly neighbor Irene from the Laguna Sands.

And within the sudden hollow quiet of the sterile ambulance strong shouldered Laureen closed her eyes and cried for the first time, having seen that Kathleen held onto her foot to comfort her and she understood she could not feel her sisters touch.

Next to Kin

Watch her angry eyes, see her hungry eyes, see her hidden so well from human sight. She did not blink. She struggled to focus down her sharp snout as she panted against the heat. The heat worsened from the humidity of the heavily watered lawns. There was no saliva in her dry mouth, just noiseless panting at the same pace as her heart beat; one hundred rapid pumps per minute to cool the fever which raged within her. How she wished she could rip away that one infected teat.

Motionless within the hillside brush, she blended into the sun-speckled leaf brocade so well had Irene looked straight at the coyote she would have seen nothing. Her huntress eyes narrowed as the tension increased. The bothersome sparrows went silent and she feared the woman would hear the quiet; a silence of which neither Irene nor Poo were aware. She would wait until the right moment came, calculating the angle of the woman's hobbling approach, judging the length of the reeling leash which fed the dog out into the brush, anticipating the likely resistance of the straining creature.

The coyote had not eaten since the canyon fire three days before and her pups needed milk. Although two miles distant, if this hunt worked she knew tonight she would move them closer.

Irene babied her little Poo, the last remnant of her life before moving alone to the Laguna Sands. Sure the dog was a bother, but it snuggled at night. Since Rob had gone, she spoke to the mutt the way he had, blowing into each ear in affection and play and Poo tolerated it and sometimes even let her scratch the pink hairless spot in the nook behind her ears.

Poo tugged on the reeling leash to get further into the brush. She hated to do her business on wet grass, she hated the woman yanking back when she was positioned, and in fact she really didn't like the woman at all.

With her angry eyes blazing the bitch coyote grabbed the squatting Poo by the nape of the neck while passing her in full stride and ran like a hooked trout deeper into the underbrush. Irene lurched forward and hanging on to the leash she clattered to the ground in the way older people often break their hips. Poo, no longer seen, yelped once and was dragged into the never ending darkness of dog death. Irene let go of the self-reeling leash and it chased the coyote, gaining until it snapped against her lip, driving her faster up the hill until she was sure no human followed. Among the Sage and Baywood brush she ate and rested while the ache in her teat increased.

Irene recovered in several days, but she was not forgiving. There was a code about kin. And in less than two weeks three more small dogs were yanked from their leashes in plain daylight. Rob had left her a scoped .22 rifle, a lightweight Ruger with a ten shot rotary clip which hurt her finger tips as she pushed the small bullets into its cavity. Each day in the silence of her condo she practiced loading and unloading to get the proper feel. In the secrecy behind her drawn curtains Irene dry fired the rifle as she took aim through the scope's simple crosshairs at old lamps and light switches. There were not going to be any conspirators, so she kept silent about her preparations.

Irene mapped the site of the coyote attacks. She was good at logistics. In fact, it had always been her, when she and her spouse traveled, who had calculated the routes and searched for the best places to stay. So she had developed a good triangulation about where the killer would hide. It was simple math about which day it would attack again.

Irene hesitated when she got the crosshairs settled on the coyote's right eye, waited to let her own breath out to its natural limit just like Rob had taught her. At the point when she squeezed the trigger there would be no reflexive jerk. Irene fired from the dark shadow of her curtain, through the screen of the open window and the killer, which had taken the last living remnant of Irene's former life away, dropped like a stone.

Irene had prepared herself for this moment, for the repercussions of shooting a coyote within the meandering condo complex. But a pet is family too and kin must be avenged. She opened her door and stepped out with the rifle barrel safely down. She saw two other doors open. Two women, rifles tucked under their arms, met Irene at the walkway confluence. They nodded at each other. Together Irene and Maddie and Dee walked to where the coyote lay, no longer hungry and hurting.

A Full Meal

Juan O'Reilly burped after patting his sagging stomach, hitched his pants and groaned, dropping onto his chair. It creaked. Olivia heard the maddening scrape of wood on linoleum as he jammered the chair and himself under the table edge. Even without turning from the stovetop she knew there was no chance any scraps of food from his smacking lips would find their way past his taut undershirt to the floor. Olivia knew what was going on down there.

Probably, she thought, the dog would whimper next; impatient it would nose his crotch until, annoyed enough, Juan would slap that damn mutt on the head and he'd wipe a handful of bacon grease and stinking dog hair onto his thick thigh. It'd always happened in that order, as long as she could remember. Daily. Weekly. Throughout the years.

You know, said Juan in mushed words through the food, I love the bacon. You cook great bacon. His small eyes never looked up from the plate as he forked the limply-cooked bacon into his vacuous mouth.

Olivia's straight upper lip, darkened with the lint of returning hair, was damp with dew from working over the stove. She wanted to wipe the moisture away but wondered if there was any point because it was so humid in the kitchen this morning. Behind her Juan grunted. He was done with the pancakes and stood again. Being full versus being hungry were the two great battles raging daily in his mind. When he burped Olivia knew hunger had won again so she did not turn from the stove, preferring not to look. Her eyelids grimaced at the next question.

How about some more of them pancakes, Sweetie? She almost shuddered.

Puerco, Olivia thought, and then she nodded. It would take two minutes for the batter to bubble and then the bubbles to pop before she flipped the pancakes. The sound of his hollow panting breath felt heavier than the kitchen heat, as if he were slathering upon her neck. She was glad for the sweet smell of half-cooked bacon in case his breath traveled across the room.

Olivia no longer welcomed his attention. She thought even if he were still the man he was twenty years ago, it would not matter. Being the object of his pig eyes was as distasteful as if he'd run his fingers down the crease in her back; all the way down. She regretted how the moist air near the stove made her worn cotton dress cling where the apron did not wrap around to protect her backside. But she