Pelicans come up just short
Heath's solid start nixed by home run in the first inning
Pelicans pitcher Deunte Heath watched the ball and his perfect record leave the ballpark at the same time Tuesday.
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9 p.m., Garden City Pier
The Sun News
Four friends huddle against the other blocking the frigid wind slicing through wooden slats on the Garden City Beach pier. They came in pairs from their homes in Socastee and Surfside Beach for a walk to ease off-season boredom. "There's nothing to do. Thursday night," Robbie McKinney hisses angst through a scarf looped over his face. "The bars don't even get good until tomorrow." Trista Gerbrick shivers beneath a hoodie while Chris Corbett and Ann Mellies dig their hands deeper in pants pockets. Their friendship circle unfolds into a boy-girl line, shoulder-to-shoulder and flat against edge of the pier. Their backs are turned from the invading lights and possible conversations with a clump of fisherman on the end of the pier. Their words are whispered and each sentence seems to be punctuated with synchronized nodding from the line. Less than 15 minutes later, they lock arms and walk in step like an unrehearsed chorus line back toward their cars off Atlantic Avenue. Sealed in a friendship cocoon, they peel off each other passing oblivious to smiles facing them inside the warm arcade at the end of the pier. "What did you say we're doing tomorrow night?" Gerbrick ask the group.
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8 p.m., Oak Island, N.C.
The Sun News
Lexi Jones is quick. She's quick to correct that she's "not three, 3 years old." In a practiced and mastered move of an escape artist, she drops her hips and twirls her wrist free from her father John Jones' hand when he tells her it's time for bed. In an instant, her shy smile turns to a screaming defining accent on a reddening face. Without warning the tantrum vanishes and she's staring into the face of her 11-year-old sister Janzen Jones. Janzen explains, with no room for options or discussions, that bedtime has arrived so they are going to get her to bed. The younger follows the older with a shrug as Janzen reminds that she's lived through being three and 3 years old. Side-by-side and in unison, the sisters bend to their knees and slide like rock stars around a bedroom. The slide ends on the left side of the bed as each folds her hands just in front of their chests. "OK little Lou," Janzen says, "Ready? Go." The girls bow their heads, pretend to close their eyes but each is secretly looking at the other through lowered lids. "Dear God," Janzen leads as Lexi takes up the rest with soft murmurs. After two inhales and exhales from Janzen, the two end the prayer in unison with, "Angels sent by God to guide me. Amen." Just as Janzen's hands reach toward her sister, a father's voice breakes the silence and calls Janzen to the telephone. "It's a boy," the voice says as the room seems to warm with Janzen's blush. Lexi watches her sister's back disappear down the darkened hall. "It's a boy," she whispers and slides beneath the bed to giggle until bed check.
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7:15 p.m.
7:15 p.m. Central Park, North Myrtle Beach His body arches in the shape of a wind-warped tree. He crumbles to earth, losing the struggle with gravity. The soccer balls flickers off his finger tips and bobbles in the corner of net 2A in North Myrtle Beach's Central Park. Head bowed in a defeated dip, Carlos Funes sighs as he reaches for the ball. He tosses it back toward the dancing feet of Elis Valesquez, 20 yards to the left. "Otra ves," the goalie challenges his friend. The men, squinting through the darkness, study each other's defensive moves until, finally, a foot forces the ball into the night and into the skyward Funes. The men had not called ahead to reserve the field and request the lights be turned on so they play in the dark beneath a moon slice. In broken English, the construction workers talk of practicing different moves for weekend games with friends in Conway. Car lights from Possum Trot Road sneak over the shrubbery and into Funes' eyes. He stares into the laughing face of Valesquez. "Otra ves," says Funes, digging his toes into the grass, ready to block another shot from his friend. Janet Blackmon Morgan/The Sun News jblackmon@thesunnews.com
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10:15 p.m., Loris
The town clock marks the minutes to fast-approaching adulthood as four teens gather within spitting distance of Meeting Street. Separated by a week of work and school, they come together on Sunday nights carrying on a tradition. Friday and Saturday nights are for dating, pizza and movies. Sunday night is when their world is reduced to the half-mile stretch on Main Street between the First Federal and NBSC banks. They park their trucks by the railroad tracks, climb into the bed of Mathew Strickland's Ford and catch up on who's dating, who broke up, who said what and what was said back. The trucks are clean. So clean that when Strickland's laugh spews out a wad of green gum on the bed liner, without inspection, he plops it back in his mouth. ``It's my last piece,'' he explains to a cringing Megan Ritzmann. ``Let's go,'' Joseph Fowler says, welcoming Ritzmann in his lap as Wesley Williams drops his large frame deep in the truck bed. Strickland makes one loop around town as rap music pumps from his speakers. ``Ah, there ain't nobody out now,'' Williams said just as Danielle Herring pulls her Honda Civic up close enough to yell out the window she's bound for home to finish an English paper. Herring's depar ture is a reminder of the curfew. Ritzmann gives Strickland a ride, leaving the out- of-high-school workers Williams and Fowler perched on the tailgate looking over the empty streets in their world. ``Hey, I still got that dead raccoon in the back of my truck,'' Fowler says in a phone call to Herring and a laughing Williams.
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6 p.m., Barc Park in Myrtle Beach
Jazzy aches to be friends. Her dark eyes plead for acceptance from this pair of strangers. She nudges the blond shepherd mix Christy and gently makes nose-to-nose contact with the smaller blond Dillon. A growl and snarl meet Jazzy's tentative question. "He doesn't really like other dogs," Martin Camire apologizes, shifting legs between the dogs' meeting.
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5:00 p.m.
The Sun News
Across town, the peanut warehouse's porch is dressed in white lace and flowers. Inside, beneath a canopy of twinkling lights, a couple makes forever vows. Here, on the shady side of Lake Busbee, Naomi Tucker ponders the ties that bind us to forever.
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4:30 p.m.
The Sun News
In a whisper equal in tone and volume to the afternoon breeze, Sunny Chesney Hardwick runs through the alphabet backwards. "Now I've said my C, B, A's," the four year old sings as she watches her new tire swing bounce off a backyard sycamore tree trunk.
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3:10 p.m.
Leaving hesitation wadded with his shirt on the sand, David Bessent runs to the Waccamaw River. In a half dive and half hug, his body disappears in the tea-colored water at Red Bluff Landing. His head pops up close to the shade line drawn by the bridge on Highway 31. Eyes snapping to and fro, he spits water out with a primal grunt.
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10:00 a.m.
JANET BLACKMON MORGAN/The Sun News
Inside there's hairspray, homespun sayings tacked to the walls, bottom-shaped forms left in cushioned chairs beneath hair dryers, open arms folding friends in warm hugs and Billie Rae Dudley doing dos for others.
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2:15 p.m.
This matronly chaperone is not new to the cotillion. Standing six symmetrical columns wide for a century on Prince and Broad streets, she's getting gussied up for a new family.
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1:15 p.m.
The Sun News
Love gone wrong chords blast from the corner speakers and a breeze whispers around the cornmeal sprinkled on the plywood dance floor.
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12 noon
The Sun News
An "Amen" chorus seeps past the two sets of wooden doors of St. Mary's A.M.E. Church. Lomax Myers opens the first set of doors watching the bottom edges form wing patterns in the red carpet leading to the altar. Church is over and he stands sentinel watching this girl in a pink dress share Sunday morning secrets with a friend.
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8:00 a.m.
JANET BLACKMON MORGAN/The Sun News
Jeremy Sansbury's eyes squint and his head snaps to the right as an echo of a gunshot tears through the silence of this horse pasture. Standing between two dogs and a Belgium draft horse, the 25-year-old stares off into pine trees lining the edge of the field.
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7:18 a.m.
The Sun News
The ringer is off, but a familiar voice yells through the answering machine. "I'm sorry, honey, but I wanted to let you know your uncle died a few hours ago."
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6:15 a.m.
The Sun News
Peace, like the tinge of pink on the horizon, is fleeting. Soon enough there will be others at the end of Springmaid Beach Pier casting their lines with Robbie Nolan.
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12:17 a.m.
Tamela Maynor glides past the red-glow a bar before turning to answer her mother's call. Passing the wanted and wanting, the hopeful and hopeless tangled in midnight mushiness, the six-year-old gets one more look at the ocean.
