SURFMAN BRAINARD'S "DAY OFF"
Ashley Brainard left the life-saving station and lounged across the wide beach on which the cadenced breakers tumbled green and white. Beyond the gentle surf the Gulf Stream dyed the sleeping sea deep turquoise. The curving coast line wavered in the glare of sunlight fierce as midsummer, and the little landward breeze was warm and fragrant. Barefooted, clad in a sleeveless jersey and a frayed pair of white ducks, Brainard dug his toes in the wet sand and stood scowling at an automobile that moved swiftly up the beach. He seemed to resent its jarring intrusion upon the brooding peace of the tropical landscape as if a personal grudge were involved. In truth he was angry with himself that he could not smother the sudden discontent born of the sight of this drumming, flamboyant chariot which had swooped down from the big hotel five miles to the northward. When the car became a swerving speck and then vanished beyond a feathery clump of cabbage palms, the youth turned back to the station muttering:
"Now that Tarpon Inlet has closed up, I suppose we'll be pestered to death with these silly tourists. But, whew! it was like getting letters from home to see my kind of people again. I'd forgotten what they looked like."
The lusty surfman rubbed his tousled head as was his habit when restless or perplexed, and focused his irritation on the red-roofed cottage in which hitherto he had found contentment.
"This life-saving business in Florida is all tommy-rot. Here it is the middle of winter, no ice and sleet, no storms, nothing you ever read about to fit in with this game. I'm due to take a day off and get away from it."
He flung himself into the house, past the surf-boat that filled the lower floor, and climbed to the airy living-room above. Jim Conklin, mending a cast-net on the piazza, called cheerfully:
"You don't look happy, Boy. I thought you'd be glad to see some of your gilt-edged pals again. Did they try to borrow money from you, or did they make fun of your clothes?"
Brainard growled with an air of petulance absurdly boyish for the fine-conditioned bigness of him:
"I'm tired of shooting life-lines across a pole stuck in the sand and pulling my back-rivets loose in the boat after imaginary wrecks. It's mostly dress rehearsal in this shack. And we sit around and tell each other the same old hard-luck stories until I'm going daffy."
Conklin's weather-beaten face twitched and a little protesting gesture showed that he was hurt. Commander of a big passenger steamer at forty, he had piled her ashore in a fog three years before, and the iron law of his calling had thrown him "on the beach" without another chance. Offered a berth as watchman on the company's dock, he could not bring himself to this degradation even for bread and butter, and he had come to the surface again as one of the Tarpon Inlet crew.