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The Sugar Bend Observer, Sugar Bend’s Community News Source

Letter from the Editor, Liza Bullock

August 2022 | Volume 11, Issue 8

For those of you who have been following our reports on the boat that washed ashore upriver back in May, you know the boat was discovered to have been owned by Jay Malone, former owner of the Friendly’s Ice Cream establishments. You also know Mr. Malone went missing in 1982 and was never heard from again. Many people hoped the reappearance of the boat would cast new light on Mr. Malone’s whereabouts or reveal what actually happened to him. A bracelet was found in the boat, in surprisingly good condition, and we were hopeful that would give a new angle to follow.

However, the bracelet has been handed over to its rightful owner, and that’s where the trail stops. As of last week the boat has been hauled to the dump, according to Carl Waters, the contractor working on the house where the boat was found.

“It was never going to run again,” Mr. Waters said. “It was rusted through on the bottom and covered in barnacles and decay. Anyway, hauling it off seemed to fit, since we decided to tear the house down too.”

Mr. Waters originally planned to renovate the house, along with several others in the surrounding area, but he said the house had turned into a nightmare project.

“I’m used to working on difficult houses, but this one was something different. Absolutely everything was harder than it should have been, and it felt like we were working under a dark cloud. Once we made the decision to tear it down, everything just moved like clockwork.”

And so it seems that the mystery of Jay Malone will go unsolved, at least as far as it’s up to this editor, as this will be my last issue with The Observer. However, regardless of whoever the next editor is, I have a strong suspicion the truth about Mr. Malone will stay just beyond our reach. It seems some secrets are determined to remain in the past.

Fondly,

Liza Bullock

Eighteen

Violet was on the beach again, her eyes following the birds arcing through the sky and flying lazy loops over the water. She’d left her clipboard at home though, along with her binoculars and her data sheets. This time she was content to soak it all in—the feel of the sun on her shoulders, the squeak of sand underfoot, the scent of salt and time and memory on every breeze. She didn’t need to document each wing and song and trace every flying arc through the sky because today she was with Trudy. It felt good to be here with her sister, in this place where Violet had walked so many miles and recounted so many regrets and fallen dreams. Now was the time to trace over those miles with something else. Hope, maybe. Or possibility.

As a slow wave receded, Trudy reached down and picked up a quarter-sized pair of coquina shells, pale blue and still connected at the hinge. She inspected them, then set them carefully in the bottom of her bucket.