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     Summertime was always my favorite as a child, but I’m not a child anymore.  

     During my childhood, my mother would drive my sister and I up to the beach 
house. We’d spend the summer hunting for seashells and skipping stones across 
the waves while Mom would gather wood for us to roast the fish Dad caught at 
work. It was perfect. It made leaving once Labor Day rolled around that much 
harder.  

     For years, in the middle of summer when the nauseous heat clung to the 
undersides of our bones, our mother’s brother would come to visit. He’d arrive in 
the dead of night, the only time the heat was tempered by the promise of morning 
dew still smokey from the previous evening’s campfire. His bags were so heavy, 
the straps dug into his shoulders in such a painful manner. The long tubes of iron 
hidden within the zippers and pockets rattled against his femur with each uneven 
step he took. 

     I always loved when he’d visit. As a small child, I’d run up to him and throw 
myself into his arms. There was something about his deep laugh that felt so com-
forting to me. Maybe it was only mid-embrace when I heard him laugh like that. 
We’d spin around, and once he’d set me down, he’d wrap his tri-colored polyes-
ter around me. I’d wear it so proudly– running around the house with it waving 
like a flag behind me.  

     He’d put his bags in the guest bedroom and give my mother an apple pie. It 
was cinnamony and sweet, but the doughy crust was salty. It flaked apart in my 
mouth and melted on my tongue. Mom would scold my sister and me for sneak-
ing pieces of it before dinner, but our uncle would just smile and slide us slivers 
under the table.  

     He’d leave dirty finger prints on our mother’s white plates. He always smelled 
like charcoal and sulfur, and no matter how many times he said he’d washed and 
changed, the dark powder remained under his nails and behind his ears.  

     Today, my uncle wakes me from my uneasy sleep. Seventeen years old, and 
I had long since outgrown the twin-sized mattress my mother bought for me the 
first summer we had the beach house. He beckons me to come hither, to follow 
him out to the beach. Rubbing my face, I stumble behind him. The sand is cool 
from the morning dew beading on the few strands of grass out this close to the 
ocean. Twilight still lingers, but the dawn is creeping up off of the horizon and 

Elizabeth Terhorst

Sammy



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bringing the brilliant sun with her monstrous, muggy heat. He is sitting near the 
water, his legs and the waves all white with foam. I sit next to him, shivering un-
til he strong arms me against him. My uncle points towards the sky where we can 
see birds fly across the dying dark blue –red cut through sky with white underbel-
lies, chirping as they dance around each other’s beady hawk-eyes and eagle-like 
talons. His tight grasp is warm against the perilous winds rolling off of the waves, 
but it makes me think of when I would watch him and my sister huddled up on 
the shore all those summers ago. 

     As a child, I watched him wake my sister from her slumber every July, and 
they’d sit with the sand sparkling around them with the first light of dawn. There 
are still divots from my eager fingernails in the wood panelling of my window 
from when I would watch. 

     But, Liberty left so long ago. 

     Now, it’s just Uncle Sammy and me underneath an endless skyway.  

     Up close, and with the morning fog lifting up towards the fading smoke, Sam-
my doesn’t look how he did from my bedroom window all those golden years 
ago. His smile has hardened and his top hat has grown askew. Even his apple pie 
recipe has changed, and the changes remain unpardoned.  

     The iron barrels he keeps hidden under his bed no longer make my home feel 
as sweet, and the draft is to come sweeping through my house soon. I know Sam-
my will take me away as coldly and swifty as he took all the other boys in our 
family. It will not be slow and searing like my sister’s departure. 

     As children, he promised her and I that as long as we stood with God in our 
hearts and him in our hands, we’d never fall. But, I fear I cannot trust in our bond 
anymore; I don’t feel safe nor brave in his arms. Yet, I long for the summers 
when I was a child with Liberty by my side. It pains me to say I do not love sum-
mertime anymore.