The Aloha Shirt

The Aloha Shirt

a Ted Carrol story by Stephen Brooke ©2024

Hmm, cotton. Nothing wrong with that, really, but an Hawaiian shirt, an authentic aloha shirt, should be rayon.

Or silk, not that anyone was likely to see that these days. I lifted the hanger from the clothes rack, held the shirt up at arm’s length. Red with white hibiscus. Plastic buttons, of course; one rarely came across the coconut shell sort, at least in department stores. Not that one couldn’t be surprised. Stuff found its way into this discount outlet.

As I had, this afternoon. Killing time. Being indecisive, I suppose, unsure whether to drive on north or go home. Halfway between. That’s where I stood.

I could just surf a little more. It might glass off a little toward evening or I could hang around Cocoa for another day. Maybe camp up at Jetty Park. Then head back to Genoa. The home town, the place I’d grown up, though I had wandered since. I’d lived a while in this town.

Not again. Cocoa no longer held much attraction for me. Nor did Genoa, not really, though I loved the beaches, the old part of town. Too few waves, to be sure.

And too many golf courses. It was no longer the sleepy little Gulf Coast town I’d known as a kid. I held up the shirt again. If I opened my own shop, I could be selling these. Only the designs I actually liked. A big change, one that I had been considering for months. At least months—maybe it had always been in the back of my mind. Yeah, I’ll buy this one. Another for the collection.

Nothing else this day. I carried it out to my truck in the shopping center parking lot. East to the ocean? Or inland? I hadn’t driven down Merritt Island in years. Possibly I never would again. I turned onto Three and followed the way south. All the way to the tip, I’d go, past the secluded homes, hidden among old trees, the pocket orchards. Could I afford it, I’d want to live right here, my back to the water of the Banana River. Or the Indian River. Either would do.

All the way to the end, yes, and across the old bridge out to the beaches again. Out to where I had started the day, into the surf at sunrise. I pulled into a parking lot across from the air force base and watched the wind-blown waves for a few minutes. Still putting off a decision, Ted, I told myself.

But there was no hurry. Only early afternoon, nothing I needed to rush to in any direction. What was right in front of me was what I wanted, wasn’t it? The surf, and more than the surf. A life built around what I loved. A life I’d never quite settled into, with a stint of surfboard shaping or glass work here and there, remaining the nomad until I was called home. Home to duty, home to care for my parents at the ends of their lives.

That was done. I’d let that wave carry me all the way to the shore and it was time to paddle out again. Maybe the next ride would be better. Forty years old and nothing to show for it, no family, no attachments to anyone or anywhere. I’d always thought that was good, that all I needed was out there, between beach and horizon. There had been times I felt like paddling toward the horizon and not returning till I learned what lay beyond it.

A couple stubborn surfers lingered in the break, attempting to find at least one more decent wave before giving up. The wind would only get worse for the next few hours. The sun was too high, too strong. School had reopened for the fall, hadn’t it? They did that earlier than when I was a kid. The after-school crowd would show up and my elusive solitude would be as much beyond my grasp as that horizon.

It might rain, too. It was that time of year.

I backed my truck out of the parking space. The horizon lay behind me. Before me, A-1-A ran north and south. Maybe I hesitated a moment before turning north. It was time to see what lay that direction.

Time to say ‘aloha’ in all of its meanings. Aloha to the life I knew, aloha to a new life.