A Storm in the Making

Chapter 1--Donut Holes

A Storm in the Making

Chapter One

Donut Holes

The sun overhead was blistering hot, as only an August sun in Florida can be. Not a breath of air stirring. It was stifling, and choked with the bitter, briny smell of layers of rotting kelp and other detritus abandoned along the beach by the outgoing tide.

A few sea gulls had braved the heat to pick half-heartedly at a dead fish. Other than their noisy quarrel over their rotting dinner, the beach was silent. The summer locals had had the good sense to abandon the scalding sands hours ago. Even the waves found it too hot to do more than murmur to themselves as they slowly shrank away from the shore into cooler waters.

I placed the point of my shovel into the soft sand and grunted as I pushed the shovel deeper with my sneaker-clad foot. My leg muscles burned after nearly three hours of shoveling sand. When I heaved the shovel full of sand towards the sorry-looking tire ruts that passed for donut holes, my back screamed in protest. I grabbed my back, and wished the Lakahatchee police chief, Cecil Brannon, to the fiery pits of hell for about the gazillionth time that afternoon.

I’d never made the tire ruts in the beach where I had been doing my community service this particular day. A beach owned by the good town of Lakahatchee, Florida. A town over which Cecil Brannon held complete jurisdiction. The very police chief who had decreed filling in ANY donut holes made in HIS beach during the entire summer would be my court-ordered community service. Thus, my grudge against Cecil Brannan.

Not that I didn’t deserve the punishment. I did. I was guilty as hell, and I’d be the first to admit it. No, my beef with Cecil Brannan had always been for not making Bradley James Carter--the boy I had been competing against the day we had been caught red-handed making donut holes in the beach-have his butt out here shoveling sand in the heat alongside me.

Donut holes, made by vehicles spinning around in circles in the sand, when done right, looked all for the world like a huge round donut. I have to admit, from my new perspective, donut holes really did tear up a beach.

I pushed the shovel into the sand again and paused to lean on the handle a moment and check my watch. I sighed with relief when it read 4:30 PM. Thank God! My three hours were up. I could go home.

As I reached for the hem of my Tee shirt to wipe sweat out of my eyes, the distinct sound of Bradley James Carter’s truck roaring down the beach towards me shattered the silence and crushed any chance I had of getting to work on time.

Above the booming of the truck’s stereo speakers, I could hear the laughter of several male voices.

“Ah, hell,” I groaned and dropped my tee shirt. I gritted my teeth and prepared to be humiliated as the sound of the truck grew louder. Why couldn’t I come down here one Saturday afternoon without Bradley James and his truck full of baboons showing up to torment me, I wondered?