Fall 1999 The Anthologist
Somewhere between the Park and the Heights
Patrick Eamonn
We went to Seaside a lot the summer after we graduated. Not every night, and never during the day. During the day it's all families on the boardwalk and the beach, and little middle school punks who hang around the arcades and at tough until they have to go home for dinner. Night isn't that much better. There's still a plentiful amount of white trash everywhere, many of them stumbling out of the Beachcomber of the Bamboo Lounge, either in the midst of a fight or getting it on against the rails.
We went there most nights, after the punks' curfews and before the bars closed. We still didn't like it that much. At least I didn't. Point Pleasant I know is a lot nicer. It's cleaner, and you don't have to worry about the ride that you're on falling apart and flinging you into the ocean. And I've always heard how Long Beach Island south of here is great; Dana Brown has a house down there that everybody's gone to but me, and they always tell me I have to go sometime. But both are a drive. To get to Point Pleasant, you either have to drive up the island from Seaside, or you have to go through Brick to Route 88; to get to LBI, you have to take the parkway down to Manahawkin. Seaside is always just a hop over the bridge. After a day of working, none of us wanted to be taking road trips. Seaside was just more convenient.
But there's a dirt to Seaside. I noticed it as I grew older. When you're a kid, it's THE BOARDWALK, and everything about it is great. It's one giant carnival on wood. Cotton candy, pizza, the Poltergeist, the log flume; it's just the best thing in the world when you're ten and with your friends while someone's father tails behind you. But then one day the burger you just ate has this rancid aftertaste and makes you feel queasy, and then the Poltergeist just makes it worse. You notice how the rides all shudder and rock in ways they're not supposed to. And you start to read the paper, about the drunken fights after midnight, or the guy who got beaten to death by guys with baseball bats, just outside his very own rented house. You notice the garbage lying around, the litter and the dirtbags, and you can smell something dark and sour underneath all the sweet stuff. There's just this dirt caked into its cracks, and once you see it, you can never not see it again.
I don't know if the others ever got to that point. But I did, and it got to me. But I was still too tired to drive anywhere else.
It's the night a few days after we graduated which sticks out in my mind. Tommy Apple and I went together that night in my car. Everyone whom we saw there and spent more than five minutes with would probably say that they were the ones with Tommy, and they would be right in a way. I'd drift away from Tommy and the rest during the night and find myself alone. Tommy though had this energy to him. That night he wore his yellow shirt that was so bright it stung the back of your eyes to look at it. But you could pick it out of a crowd anywhere. Whenever I turned around, I'd see that yellow shirt with Tommy in it dancing through the people. That's the way I'll always remember him. Even then, not a week after we had graduated, I couldn't remember what he looked like in a cap and gown. I have no idea what the boy's yearbook picture looks like, and I can't name a single class we shared together. But I'll always remember Tommy at Seaside. I'll always remember the yellow shirt. Tommy had never seen the dirt.
"Take care, m'boy," he said at one point during the night, throwing his arm around me and playing the drunk. "You wan' to smile more of'en, you ge'me? Don' be a mis'rable fool, you hear?"
And then Tommy was off.
We parked down in Seaside Park on M Street, and we walked up the beach before we reached the Heights and the piers. It was just the two of us then. It was a little after eight, I figure. The sun was pretty much gone, but there was still that dim blue light hanging in the air. It made Tommy's shirt some motley color. Tommy was running into the ocean, charging into the tide. He'd get soaked from the waist down from the breaking waves, and then he would come running back out to the surf. He'd run a few strides further up along the beach to keep up with me, kicking sand up everywhere, and then he'd scream a battle cry and charge into the water again.
Out on the horizon, I could just make out the little dots of light that marked where the big ships were. I was looking around at the whole beach bathed in that queer blue light. I stopped walking and took it all in. It would be dark soon, and the only light would be from the street lights and the electric piers. The clouds would get that orange glow.
In the meantime, Tommy just kept charging the blue waves.
We reached the pier, and my sandals went right back on my feet before we got onto the boardwalk. When I was a kid I heard about how someone stepped on a syringe that was stuck in between the boards and got some disease or something. I can't walk barefoot on it anymore.
We ran into people from school from then on. They came and went. We dropped some off and picked others up just as quickly. We were like one of those weird trickles of water at the bottom of the tub in a shower, tracing its way down to the drain, sucking little puddles up and leaving drips and streaks of water behind.
We went on the rides. We went into madhouses and arcades. Tommy had a Madame read the fortune in his hand for five bucks. It was only the beginning of summer, the one before college, and we didn't mind dropping the cash yet. Expenses were few and we could afford luxuries for the moment. By the end we'd all be more tightfisted and would only spare enough for a bite to eat. But on that night we were still gluttons for it all, and we wolfed down as much as we could before we swelled up and puked it back out.
Dana Brown's younger sister was there that night. Ashley was three years younger than the rest of us, and she liked to point out how we were all the freshmen now. I liked it when she came along with the older Brown. Talking to her refreshed me somehow. The two of us left Tommy and the rest to get some pizza. We went to Three Brothers. By my count there's four of them along the boardwalk; one of my long-running and tired jokes is that I guess the fourth is run by a cousin.
We sat down with our slices, and we had to squint to see them in the harsh electric light. The place was so bright that there weren't any shadows.
"How come you didn't go to the prom?" she asked me.
I shrugged. "Don't like dances much. The last homecoming I went to kind of destroyed whatever allure they had for me."
"What happened?"
"I was standing outside of the gym in the hall, where the buffet line was, and I was bullshitting with this one kid on line. As I'm talking I'm watching this one girl drinking out of the water fountain by the bathrooms.
And I'm thinking, here's a girl who's wearing a dress that's probably a hundred bucks or so, with her nails all done up, and her hair all nice and done, trying to look all special and nice. And here she is drinking out of the same water fountain that I come in from cross country practice to rinse puke out of my mouth with."
Ashley gave a surprised laugh and looked between her pizza and me. It was dripping orange grease from its fold onto the paper plate. "Thanks. I really don't think I wanted to know that now."
I laughed, but she continued, "But really, why?"
That caught me off guard. I didn't know; the only reason I had was that prepared story. I just shrugged my shoulders again and ate my slice.
As soon as we stepped back outside, I could see that yellow shirt flying around again. Tommy picked us up in his whirlwind storm, and we were headed back down the way we had come. We all hit the log flume again at the end of the pier, and after we got off everybody else wanted to go to the Sawmill across from it to get pizza. Ashley and I went with them.
They got a whole pie, and Sawmill pies are gigantic. It would take them some time to eat all of it. The lighting was poor and my eyes strained themselves. I shut them, and I could almost hear the grease dripping onto the dissolving paper plates to spread on the tabletop underneath. The place was full of cigarette smoke, and underneath it all I could smell the sour stink of the dirt again. My throat was bobbing and my eyes were starting to tear. I got up and asked Ashley if she wanted to go take a walk. She wanted to stay with the rest. I left anyway.
The Sawmill is at the end of the pier, and I got off the boardwalk and went down onto the beach again. I walked along the tide, leaving the pier and its lights and noise behind me. I went about a hundred yards or so, until I was somewhere between the Park and the Heights, in that hazy border between Seaside's two boroughs. From the beach you can never really tell which part you're in.
I walked into the water enough to get wet up to my shorts from the waves. I looked out over the ocean. Beyond the white caps, I couldn't tell which was darker, the water or the sky. The dark seemed to bleed from one into the other. The ships' lights were still on the horizon. They were easier to pick out now that it was darker.
There were five of them strewn along out there, four white ones and one red. They looked like a sparse strand of Christmas lights.
The surf would rush up with its icy freshness and soak my legs. Sometimes a little would splash into my crotch, and I'd jump onto my tiptoes in shock. But I got used to it and eased my feet into the sandy bottom again. A warm breeze was coming off of the water, a nice and gentle one, just strong enough to push my hair back. I closed my eyes and let the waves rock me.
I felt them crash into me again and again, and I let the marooned water pull me in with it as it flowed back into the sea. I drifted further out into the water, letting it swallow me up to my waist. The wet ends of my shirt clung to my body. The cold waves struck my chest now, and each one was fresh and new. I stood on my toes in the troughs in between, eager to meet the next one. When it finally came, time after time, I'd gasp, feeling revitalized. I loved it. I was absolutely soaked now. The cold water made my testes shrink and hide in between my legs, but I was smiling.
And in my mind I let myself go further out, until I was standing on tiptoes to keep my head above water. My head barely broke the surface. The waves surged by overhead; I'd swallow as much air as I could in the troughs, before the next wave rolled over me. I could feel the forces at work underneath the water's surface. The sandy bottom disappeared from underneath me and I was left floating in the water.
Then the riptide suddenly caught me by my loose feet, and it dragged me underneath the white caps. The black water rushed by all around me, but I could see nothing. It took me a moment to realize that thing that just struck my face was my own flailing arm. I screamed in the water, but it was lost in a gurgle. I felt the air bubbles slip by my face.
And then suddenly the riptide's grip was gone. I bobbed up in the ocean with a gasp and looked around. I was a long ways off from the beach. All I could see was water, stretching from one horizon to another, the same dark surface for miles around. Gentle swells lifted me here and there, but there wasn't one white cap streaking across the dark color of the ocean. The pier lights were no where to be seen. Everything around me looked the same; only I broke the dreadful plainness. I shivered in the rolling water.
"Hey mister."
My eyes snapped back open. This Mexican girl, about seven or so, was standing next to me on the beach. I could see the fresh drops of water from the waves on her dark skin. Another girl, a couple of years older, was running after her. Still farther back in the gloom was somebody even older.
"Yeah?"
"Are the crabs gonna come out tonight?"
I blinked, not sure of what I heard, and fixed a firmer look on her. "Say what?"
"Are the crabs gonna come out tonight?" she asked again, pointing toward the black surf. Her older sister reached us and took hold of the younger girl's arm, panting, her eyes following the girl's finger to the waves. I looked at the two of them, the younger one fidgeting, excited, and the other just watching the waves break, both waiting for some story about crabs coming out of the sea to come true.
I glanced back at the pier behind me. I could hear people scream as they plunged down on the log flume, and I could almost see the logs going down, too, through the lights glaring above it. I'd never been called "mister" before, and part of me thought I was too young for that yet. A larger part of me didn't.
I turned back to the two Mexican girls. "No, kid," I told the younger one. "I've never seen no crabs. But I don't know. There might be some."
It seemed enough for her, or her faith that the crabs would come was stronger than anything a local had to say about it. The two girls stayed put to keep guard by the tide, and the older woman had almost reached us. They were there to stay.
I walked back up to the boardwalk and went to the Sawmill. They were just finishing up and throwing their plates out. That's when Tommy Apple threw his arm around me and told me to smile more often, or I'd look like a miserable fool. I gave him a misplaced grin, and with some stupid, forced defiance for their benefit, I led us back onto the log flume. Ashley sat next to me, but suddenly once we were climbing our way up the track, I felt bad for some reason that she was there. As we neared the first drop, I told her I'd take her to Point Pleasant next time. "There's no dirt there," I said, "not like here."
"What dirt?" she asked, but then we were already going down.
|
|
