{Scene}
A gravel drive leads to four racks with bikes alternating the front tire’s direction to oppose the one beside it. Kayaks lay against a ten foot wooden divider. Long boards are stacked side-by-side in an open shed. The sign, which used to stay lit throughout the night, now blinks on and off displaying, “Beach Rentals.” October sunsets prove not only in the beauty of sharpness with distinct color, but also the conclusion of the ever-so-profitable summer. Inside the humble abode of a store, stood a woman reading an article, a time distraction of her normal business hours in the off-season, which were supposed to end at four o’clock.
{Sam}
Crying my eyes out, I took one good look at the watch and realized it was time for me to go home. I was going to surprise my husband by beating him home from work. Normally, I’d spend my time writing up the preorders from renters for the week to come, or strategically planning out the pickup routes for my teenaged employees to gather the equipment from the houses after the tourists left, or because I was reading an article that came out once a week from my local newspaper back home.
The latter was the reason for my tardiness to tend to my husband’s surprise of homemade noodles and veggie chicken – his favorite.
The article was also the reason I was crying hysterically like a little girl. Every week the syndicated columnist would do an article on her son’s brain cancer treatment and his recovery. And every week I cry harder than the week before. Although her son was now in remission and starting his own brain cancer fundraisers, there was still something heartfelt in a young man who will fight even if odds are against him.
I packed up the last bit of the rental grills and made sure my employees cleaned them to a reasonable shape. After that, I was locking up the bikes and closing the surf board shed. As I walked back inside, I looked at the clock, 4:08pm; it was a whole hour before I normally got off in the summer months. Which also meant I had just enough time to have dinner cooked and in the oven. Every year, whenever it was the last week of the October month, I tried to surprise my husband with our special dinner. It was like a tradition ever since I opened up the store.
One last thing I had to do before going home was the gratifying, satisfying, highly deserving, rewarding turning of the “OPEN,” sign to “SHUT.”
As I was walking to the door, a family of four came walking up and I had to make a choice: Either turn off the lights and hide behind the counter until they left, quickly run over and turn the lock on the door and laugh as they try to open it, or get a quick rental for them and get home as quickly as possible.
I greeted the family in and tried to give them a hint by glancing up at the clock on the wall – oh how the subtleties failed me on this day.
“Hello.”
I could tell by her accent and her facial features and short stature that she was not from the United States.
“How much?”
I spoke in a frustrated bafflement, “For what?”
Her English proved to be the reason for her defeated sounding voice. “Bike?”
I said, “How much for the bikes?”
Her son cut in, “How much for the bike rentals?”
The son couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old and the other one looked older, but not by much.
The same son spoke again, “We would like to see how much the bikes cost for a week’s rental?”
“How many bikes?” It was like I wanted to continue this conversation until its painful end. I started to lose patience with the family as my hints of looking up at the clock and down at my watch weren’t working.
The older woman spoke first, “One. No. Two.”
I was getting ready to say sixty-five dollars before the family seemed to have huddled up and started talking in a foreign language. I didn’t want to disrupt them, but it seemed like something was wrong. Something besides the fact she was only getting one or two bikes when clearly they had at least three people in their family.
Now, the son that hadn’t said anything yet spoke up, “One.”
Before I could answer by saying thirty-five dollars, the other son interrupted, “Two.”
My frustration only proved to be the beginning of a marathon of obnoxious window shopping.
4:18pm
Then, they decided to call an audible, without the family huddle, and check out the store for some other rental gear.
Every object they took off the shelf seemed like another tick of the clock. They were scatter around the store as if they were searching for loose change around the store. One would go to the corn hole set, then the other to the wooden chairs, and then the mother would look at the life jackets. I wanted to scream at these people, of course I could never do that, but it got to the point where I was about the say something.
4:42pm
The personality I take part in has no way of expressing urgency among my customers because I do need their business, but there are certain parts of supplying rentals for tourists that I hate. One of them was definitely waiting for this family to decide on something.
As I stood there looking at the article I had just read, I tried to search for a happiness amongst the never ending saga of tourist sales. When finally, after one last family huddle, the mother came back to me at the front desk and it seemed to be the end of this parsimonious escapade.
“We take one bike for one week,” she said in her accent.
“Okay. It’s thirty-five dollars please.”
The mother looked down, shameless as her sons paid for the rental. Way to go mom! Let your sons support you! I thought in my head.
“What’s the address so we can deliver it to you?”
“Address? What do you mean?”
“What’s the house number? House name? The street you are staying on?” The speed of each question was made in my clearly evident annoyance.
The son paid the bill and shook his head, “It’s okay. We’ll just ride the bike to our house.”
I wanted to ask how, because there were three of them and only one bike, but I didn’t. I just wanted to go home. Even if veggie chicken and noodles was out of the question. I held the money in my hand for second, summoning up the words I was going to say to them. I thought about the article, the pain of a mother with a dying son, and I decided to do something to make this mother happy.
“I’ll tell you what. How about I give you three bikes?”
The old woman frantically said, “No. No. I can’t pay for it.”
“You don’t have to.”
{Scene}
A store owner and her husband washed off the chairs in the lot while the teenaged employees scrubbed the grills. A week had past and three bikers approached the store pedaling slow and smooth like the current crashing against the beach.
{Sam}
It was a hot day for October and one of my “Eeyore” employees, Thad, was talking about how awful it was to be out in the heat and how we were all going to die one day from heat strokes because we never invented outdoor air-conditioning. None of his stories made sense nor did they seem to show a depression in his daily life, he loved surfing, so I passed on his sadist remarks as a joke and continued my work.
I watched as Thad put up a couple of bikes and headed toward me. He gave me an envelope, and finished by saying, “You didn’t charge her for all three bikes did you?”
We had discussed her visit as one of the normal “needy-customer stories” that made us laugh as we ate the pizza I ordered the staff on Saturdays. We always had great material with all the clueless tourists we encountered.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, she handed me this envelope and I said, ‘You already paid for your bikes.’ Then she said, ‘This isn’t the thirty-five dollars. This is a letter.’ So…”
He paused for a second while he almost opened the letter. I knew I couldn’t lie and I also knew I was too prideful to tell him the truth.
Thad continued, “And I know how much a bike rental costs for the whole week. And I know how much three bike rentals…”
I cut him off, “Alright give me the letter and get back to work.”
I tried to seem stern, but I laughed at Thad’s disappointment as it was amusing to see his face turn to the side in one of those, I thought so, faces.
I laughed, “Okay. Now give me the letter or you’re fired.”
Still unable to see through my jokes as a stern superior, Thad childishly sprinted back to the grills and began cleaning right away – Oh how I love the teenage staff.
Intrigued by the letter, I motioned to my husband that I would be going back inside for a bit. On the front of the letter heading it read, “Rental.”
I opened it up on the table in my office and locked the door so I had no distractions.
Dear Sam,
My name is Kim Cho. My son is helping me write this. You met my two sons, Jett and Jeremy. We have been coming to this beach as a family ever since Jeremy was born. He’s nine-teen now and Jett is eight-teen. Every year it seems like the sun gets more and more beautiful here. We don’t like a lot of crowds and traffic-heavy places. It seems like October has the prettiest of all sunsets. The air is sharp, clear, and crisp. My whole life I have been a stay-at-home mom for my boys. When their father got sick, I became a stay-at-home wife too. Luckily, the law firm had a good insurance policy that allowed him some time off for medical leave. They paid for most of the surgeries too. Then it got worse. My husband was a fighter though. He always was. I used to tell him, he was as stubborn as a mule. I told him one day, as he slept in the library of our house with an IV in his arm, “Jacovi, you mean everything to me. You can’t go, I will be lost without you.” Then he said, “We’ve already lost the job and the retirement money. You know what’s next.” I knew that he’d keep fighting and we would make it through as a family. I just couldn’t give my husband something immediate for him to look forward to. It was half a year away before our vacation.
Shortly after we talked that night he passed away without saying goodbye. My husband worked so very hard for so very long and it was like we were always counting down the days until our vacation here at Holden Beach. After many years of us three trying to get jobs, we lost our house and our timeshare here. We lost everything except for each other. We had so much fun as a family here; you would have never known we had just slept in our van for entire week.
I knew this vacation was going to be tough, but it has made my summer complete. This was the year that my boys decided to take on two jobs each, on top of school, just so we could have our family vacation. See, it was more than just letting us have two bikes for free. You gave us a helping hand to keep our family tradition going. Thank you
In loving memories of our past, may we keep our tradition alive,
The Cho family.
