St. Andrews Bay: Florida Man and the Unfinished Take

Rena had set out three chairs for Saturday's musicians. By Thursday evening, one of the cushions had acquired the shape of a person who was not there.

Florida Man noticed it while carrying a little table toward her piano. He stopped with the table against his knees.

“Are we early,” he asked, “or are they?”

Rena looked past him. The cushion was old green corduroy, with a shallow hollow in the middle. She pressed it flat. It rose beneath her palm, then slowly sank again when she stepped away.

She took the table from him at one end.

“Put it here. We'll try a sound check.”

Her private music room faced St. Andrews Bay through a broad side window. Beyond the dark glass lay the scattered harbor lights and a strip of water that moved them about. Inside, the upright piano stood under a warm lamp. Three music stands waited behind the chairs, and three envelopes of copied parts lay on the table.

Florida Man's job was to help make a complete reference recording. Rena had written a short piece for piano and three friends, who would meet here on Saturday to play it. One had arranged somebody to mind her children. Another was borrowing an instrument. All three had asked which of Rena's several last pages they should practice.

She had promised one answer.

“I know the notes now,” she had told him. “I'd like to stop introducing new ones by post.”

He had brought spare batteries. She had supplied the recorder and a diagram showing which button he was to touch. He appreciated a host who understood her guests.

Rena set the recording level while he read a sentence from the diagram. His voice came back small and perfectly intelligible. They could also hear her shoes and a gull somewhere beyond the window.

She nodded. “That'll do.”

A chair creaked behind him.

He turned. The second cushion had sunk.

No one stood by the door. He went to it and looked along the empty passage, then returned to the table. The ordinary room remained open behind them. He put his hat on the windowsill, where he could see it.

Rena sat at the piano. She loosened her fingers with a little tune Florida Man had heard at enough family gatherings to recognize without knowing its name.

From the chairs came a small, contented sigh.

She stopped.

“So,” she said.

“I heard it.”

“Good. I was hoping not to explain it alone.”

Florida Man looked beneath the chairs. There were no shoes, wires or hidden speakers. The third cushion remained flat. While he watched, its front edge bent, as though somebody had shifted forward to pay attention.

“Do you want to try another room?” he asked.

Rena considered the room and her waiting pages. “I'd rather know whether I can get this done here.”

“All right.”

He took his place beside the recorder. She arranged the score, lifting a crossed-out last page and putting it behind the others. Its replacement bore a broad pencil circle around four lines near the bottom.

“That's the ending?” he asked.

“Today.”

He smiled. She did not quite manage to.

She began the take.

Florida Man had heard parts of the piece before, coming through this window while he helped with a fence outside. Tonight the bits joined: a light beginning, a downward run, something that seemed to consider going back before deciding to go farther. He could not have told another person how to play it. He knew when she reached the passage she cared about.

Her shoulders settled. Her left hand kept a low, steady movement while the right held a note that seemed to have stopped beside a question.

Someone in the empty chairs cleared a throat.

Rena's right hand moved. The question became a pleasant answer Florida Man recognized from somewhere else. He had heard that turn at gatherings too. It brought the music neatly home before it had finished going anywhere.

A little rustle passed along the chairs.

Rena lifted both hands.

“Stop that one.”

He stopped it.

She sat with her fingers curled against her skirt. Beyond the window, a boat's moving light passed behind a fixed one and emerged on its other side.

“Erase it,” she said. “We'll start again.”

Florida Man put his finger beside the button she had marked for erasing. He had a compliment ready. He knew how to say something sounded lovely, and Rena had made a good deal of lovely music in his hearing. He also knew she had not stopped because she wanted a compliment.

“Could we hear the last bit first?” he asked.

“I can still hear that cough.”

“I'd like to know whether the recorder can.”

She turned toward him. Then she nodded.

He played the take back with her permission. The beginning returned, followed by the downward run. Rena listened without touching the piano.

Her held note sounded from the little speaker.

There was no cough.

Her next notes came clearly. In the actual room, one of the chairs creaked; in the recording, her piano went on alone.

Rena leaned forward. She asked him to play those few seconds again.

This time he watched her face instead of the chairs.

“I put that in,” she said.

He waited.

“The easy ending. It isn't on this page.” She tapped the circled lines. “I used it in the first draft because I knew how it would sound. Then I wrote something else.”

“Which did you ask them to practice?”

She looked at the three envelopes.

“The something else.”

Florida Man stopped the playback. He could tell her what the recorder had heard. He could not tell her which notes ought to be hers.

Rena took the crossed-out page from the back of the pile. She put it in the piano bench and closed the lid over it. Then she asked him to sit beside the music stand.

“I need a page turn. I'll nod at the corner before I want it.”

He studied the pages. There were three, numbered heavily enough for him to read from his chair. The broad circle lay on the last. He set their lower edges in order and asked her to show him how far to lift each sheet.

The recorder stayed on the table within her reach.

“I'll start it,” she said. “If I raise my hand, stop. Otherwise, let me get to the end, unless we've got a real problem.”

He glanced at the three occupied-looking cushions. “I can promise to notice a real problem. I can't promise musical opinions.”

“I've had plenty tonight.”

She pressed the recording button herself.

She gave her name and the title of the piece, quietly, in the voice she used when counting people in. Then she put both hands on the keys.

The beginning sounded different to Florida Man, though he could not say that she had changed a note. He watched the lower corner of the page instead of looking for approval in three empty seats.

Rena nodded. He turned the first sheet.

Behind them came a soft, impatient scrape. The piano remained steady. Her eyes moved across the second page, and his hand went to its corner before he needed to be told.

At her nod he lifted it, laying it behind the first without covering the last lines.

She reached the question again.

The note held its own shape. Florida Man could hear the little hammer sound fading inside the piano. Something rustled behind his shoulder. Rena's fingers stayed over the keys she had chosen.

Then her left hand moved.

The music went somewhere Florida Man had not expected. It did not become louder. It opened a little space between one phrase and the next, then crossed it. The final lines gathered what had come before without putting it back where it had started.

Rena played the last note and took her foot from the pedal.

She sat until the sound had left the wood. Then she reached across and stopped the recorder.

“Now,” she said, “we listen.”

They listened all the way through. Florida Man could hear her sleeve at the beginning and the faint complaint of the piano stool near the middle. He could hear the ending she had circled. The chairs contributed nothing.

Rena asked for the last passage once more, then saved the take. She matched the copied parts in the envelopes against the three numbered pages and changed one pencil mark. After that she sent the recording to her friends, with a message telling them which last page belonged to it.

Saturday had something to begin with.

Florida Man gathered the spare batteries. At the door he looked back for his hat.

The hollow in the third cushion slowly deepened, then rose. The empty chair gave a small wooden sound as its weight shifted away.

Nobody crossed the room.

Rena lifted his hat from the windowsill and handed it to him. Together they carried the music into the hall.

A little of the real Gulf

Seagrass and salt marsh give St. Andrews Bay much of its living structure. Small fish and invertebrates use these habitats for food and shelter, and the bay also supports birds and larger marine animals. St. Andrews Aquatic Preserve was designated in 1972. Its protected environments include submerged grass beds, reefs made by mollusks and stretches of open bottom, all parts of a coastal system that changes beneath an apparently simple surface. Water also carries sound. NOAA's collection of underwater recordings includes the drumming of black drum, pulses from groupers and the snaps of snapping shrimp. Fish may produce sounds while reproducing, competing for resources or responding to danger. Scientists use underwater recorders to study these soundscapes, then examine patterns as well as listen. The official preserve account and NOAA's acoustic collection offer two ways to know coastal water: by the habitats it holds and by the activity a listener can detect.