Hazel ‘Cranberry’ Sheffield was maybe in her 50s or early 60s...maybe. It was hard to really tell because she spent a good amount of time in the glowing caskets of the Buns In The Sun Tanning Salon and Dog Boarding, “preparing” for an unscheduled cruise to the U.S. Virgin Islands. “I ain’t going nowhere that ain’t owned by America.” She was a floral and coconut scented, glowing mass of expertly oiled, smooth suede. Her hair was bleached blonde and kept together with so much hairspray the manager at Buns In The Sun Tanning Salon and Dog Boarding had extra fire extinguishers on hand just in case one of the tanning lights accidentally sparked. “Lord knows how big that crater would be...might kill all the dogs in the back.”
Little was known of Hazel’s profession, income sources, or relationship status except from one could glean by observing at her. She did not wear a wedding ring. She had two small grandchildren. And she had enough money to tan and buy an orchard of banana trees every year which she planted in her front yard wearing cut off shorts and wielding a post hole digger with impeccably manicured nails. The previous years orchard always wilted into a moist brown pile after the first frost of the year. “I cain’t understand why these dang things won’t survive out here.”
Every Tuesday afternoon Hazel would drive her teal Lincoln Town Car to her daughter’s (Lizzy ‘Liz’ Cooper-Andrews) split-level ranch and pick up her two grandchildren for an afternoon at the park. While the kids ran around the rusty jungle gym, Hazel would drag a folding chair and a duffle bag over to “The Sand Tire,” a sunken oversized military surplus tire filled with uncharacteristically white sand for an area surrounded by red clay so pigmented with iron oxide it should have only taken a child getting a clod on their shoe and entering the pit to turn the entire collection of sand into a orange cream colored mess...but it never did. “I bet not even the Virgin Islands have sand that beautiful…”
Hazel would open her duffle bag and start pulling out small tools and bottles and lining them up on the top of the tire in a neat row. She would peel off her sandals and rest her feet on the warm, aromatic rubber, baking away in the sun... As the children played in the sand they would sometimes take shovels and dig to the clay earth and rocks beneath and try to mix it with the brilliant white sand and watch in amazement as no matter what they did, everything that wasn’t white would just sink down to the bottom.
A breeze would blow through the loblolly pines around the park and Hazel would grab a copy of the Julep Gazette, reach for one of her tools, an emery board, and start going to town on her fingers as she caught up on the past weeks police report. “About time he got locked up.” A fine dust fell from her fingers into the sand. While catching up on the obituaries she filed down her toes and picked up a heel shaver to smooth out her feet, dehydrated slightly, from the tanning bed. “About time she died.” Snow white flakes floated to the sand. When she perused the weekly ad for Tony’s Grocery, Deer Processing, Sportswear it was cuticle time. “About time they put that sale.” Fine grains of cuticle fell. Microscopic pieces of pristine sand. Finally, as she smirked and read the divorce records she carefully painted her nails and carved out perfect french tips. “Wonder if he likes banana trees.”
Hazel would give her grandchildren a bag of muscadines while her hands and feet cured atop the massive tire and watch as they spit the tiny seeds out into the sand and sunk to the bottom of the phenomenon that was “The Sand Tire.” Then she would load them into the car, go to the tanning bed, and prepare for her cruise.
One year a frost came early and killed her banana trees in September so she finally gave up her horticultural efforts and decided to use the money to take the cruise she had been preparing for all these years. Unfortunately the grandchildren wouldn’t be able to play and eat muscadines that week. “They’ll deal...Memaw needs some Me time”. When she returned from the trip she told everyone tales of the exotic beaches of the Virgin Islands and how breathtakingly white the sand was. She gave the kids some shells she bought “from a native” and loaded them up for their Tuesday day at the park. The kids were excited to take the shells to the “The Sand Tire” and pretend they were on an exotic beach. Oddly enough, as they arrived at the tire and Hazel realized how much work her nails needed...everything had turned to orange.