Cement by Barry Yourgrau

Having fun at the beach - swimming, rafting, building sand castles, burying someone in the sand. But then the unexpected . . . Barry Yourgrau style.

CEMENT by Barry Yourgrau
I am at the beach with my mother. I bury her up to her neck in sand, "Alright, now please let me out," she says finally. "It''s hard to breathe." Only if you pay me a tremendous amount of cash," I inform her, teasing. I start to dig her out, but I can't. The sand is like stone. It's turned to cement. "Please, stop joking, get me out," my mother pants. "I can't breathe." I'm not joking, something's wrong," I protest. I scratch at the cement desperately. I pound on it with my fists. The surf surges around us, splashing my mother in the face. "Help me, help me," she bleats, wildly. "I''m trying. I can't do anything.!" I cry. "I'll have to get help!" I rush down the beach, waving and shouting, frantic. Some men are drinking beer by a pickup truck. They run back with me with shovels and pickaxes.

I wander about holding my head in my hands. They smash up the cement, their pickaxes swinging high and low, violently. "Careful, oh please be careful," I plead, walking back and forth, helpless. One of them crouches by my mother, cupping her chin out of the water. Her eyes are haggard with terror. "Can't breathe . . . can't breath . . . " she keeps bleating, through clenched teeth. "You'll be okay, you'll be okay," I promise her desperately.

Finally they have her out. The seawater gushes and roams in the rubble. Other, different men appear, they bear my mother over the dunes, carrying her high in a litter. An oxygen line runs into her nose from a cylinder. A catheter bag sways from a little handle, its hose running up under her pale thighs.

I follow behind in a distraught daze, plodding through deep sand carrying our sandy beach towels, my mother's much-ornamented beach bag. "How did it happen, how did it happen?" I moan, over and over again. A small plane flies low over the beach, dragging a long, fluttering sign. I give out a sobbing cry, imagining the sign bearing her frail name, the helpless dates and particulars of her obituary.


*Note - Cement is among the short stories included in Barry Yourgrau's Wearing Dad's Head