I have to admit, another thing factored in. Some kids at school were peacocking around with their plan to hit the beach over spring break. This is the Bettina Cook crowd with their Abercrombies and Daddy Express cards and sixteenth-birthday cars with the big yellow bows from CarMax. Kids that only need to say the words, “Hey! Let’s all get shitfaced at Myrtle Beach,” and presto it happens. Half of them probably didn’t care about the ocean, and the other half wouldn’t notice it if they passed out tits-up on the fucking dunes. Not bitter or anything, me.
But to lose my mind that way, thinking I was in the league of those kids, wanting and getting? Dori had never been over a state line except to take her dad to heart-lung specialists, and lately was lucky to see the back side of Walmart. I was an asshole to dangle this trip in front of her, and then go, knowing she couldn’t. I have no good excuse. Maybe all kids are like this, wanting too much. Like Maggot, working every angle too far, to blow the gaskets of his poor grandparents that married at fifteen with no bigger hope in the world than to have kids and not watch them die. Us though, give us the fucking world. We pretended we were as good as the Bettina Cook kids, while Bettina pretended to be a Kardashian. We’d all cut our teeth on TV shows where parents had jobs, and kids lived out big-city dreams in their wardrobe choices and rivers of cash. Even doing drugs, these forgivable schoolboys, and it’s a comedy because they’re not poor. In their universe, nobody shuts you down for being different and wanting the moon.
In ours, you live on a tether: to family, parents if you’re lucky, older people raising you if less so, that you yourself will end up looking after by and by. Odds are about a hundred to one, you are not destined for greatness. Your people will appreciate you all the same. On the other hand, if you poundcake someone or push them too far in the shame or shock direction, you will run into their people at Hardee’s or the Dollar General parking lot, in all probability within the day. There will be aftermaths. Same goes for raising your head too high on your neck, the tall weed gets cut. So. You wind up meeting in the middle on this follow-your-heart thing, at a place everybody can live with. Show me that universe on TV or the movies. Mountain people, country and farm people, we are nowhere the hell. It’s a situation, being invisible. You can get to a point of needing to make the loudest possible noise just to see if you are still alive.
The first night we made it as far as a place called Hungry Mother. Not kidding. We’d got off to a woefully messy start with everybody excited, needing their calm-down of choice. Then needing to sleep that off. And leaving Dori called for I’m-sorry-baby sex, which takes more time than the regular. So now we were only a few counties down the road, it was getting dark, and here was this highway sign. Hungry Mother turned out to be not a restaurant or sad female human but a park, with picnic tables and such. A lake. It was February, we didn’t wait for spring break, being way out ahead of those rich kids plus more willing to ditch school. The park was empty, its picnic area and lake all ours. At the water’s edge, a big patch of sand.
“Gol dang, children. It’s the motherfucking beach,” Maggot said, getting out of the truck, unfolding himself like a jackknife. He stretched his long arms wide and bounced on his toes.
“Let’s not rush to judgment,” I said. The sand was dark brown, like a worn-out welcome mat to the drab pavement of lake. But Emmy was singing “Beach, Beach, Baby!” and skipping sideways across the parking lot, a leggy colt in her skinny jeans and tall leather boots. The three of us climbed over a small fence onto the sand. The entrance was a locked gate beside a little block of rest rooms and vending machines, all deserted. Fast Forward lit a cigarette and leaned on his truck, watching us in his usual way, head tilted back, eyes narrowed.
This sand patch was no more than fifty or sixty yards wide, with log pilings holding a rope fence on both sides. Beyond that, the normal dirt and woods resumed. Somebody had just scooped up truckloads of sand and dumped it here, thinking no one would be the wiser. This fake beach moreover was pretty gross due to what all people had left there: flattened drink cups with red straws poking out of the lids, the black remains of a campfire. A torn white bra, half buried in sand. Maggot lit a joint and started singing about Margaritaville. Emmy formed big balls of wet sand one after another that fell apart as she threw them at us. Both those two were laughing like kids. I got a bad feeling as regards their interest in reaching the real ocean.
“You all, this is not the beach. You know that, right?”
“Stepped on a cow flop! Blew out my tip-top,” yodeled Maggot, swaying his hips and tiptoeing across the sand in his weird boots.
Just to prove the entire world was against me, a seagull curved in and landed near us. Big, white, we’ve all seen the pictures. It stepped along the brown scum at the water’s edge, keeping a mean eye on me. “Hell-o-o, this isn’t the sea!” I yelled. The seagull paid no heed.
Our curly-headed Marlboro Man was still over there in his cowboy boots and tight white T-shirt tucked in his jeans. I didn’t really trust him, but maybe never did. A kid in my shoes takes what power he can find. As far as him and Emmy, no guess. She’d been flirty all day, wearing a soft blue sweater that buttoned all the way up the back, seemingly designed to make you think about taking it off of her. How would she even get that on by herself? Fast Forward had driven left-handed with his arm draped around her, but seemed his usual self, like he’s just waiting for a better offer. From time to time asking her to crack open another tallboy from the case at our feet.
Now we watched him flick away his cigarette butt and stroll towards us, getting over the fence in one motion like clearing a hurdle. No bad knees. Quarterbacks let others take the fall. “Me oh my,” he said, taking it in. “What have we here? Ask and you shall receive.”
“Not the ocean. Not the beach,” I said.
He walked towards the water. I stared at his pointy-toed footprints in the sand. He leaned over and scooped up a squashed yellow Styrofoam clamshell stained with ketchup and held it up to his ear. “Shhhh.” Finger to his lips. Eyes wide. “I can hear the ocean.”
I picked up a crushed beer can and fired it at the seagull. The bird flew away.
Emmy laughed her starry laugh. Fast Forward grabbed her hand, twirling her around, and just like that they were doing a two-step: his left hand holding hers and his right spread wide on her shoulder blade, pushing her backward with little steps. Like they’re hearing LeAnn Rimes singing “Can’t Fight the Moonlight,” and too bad for the rest of us if we’re not. Maggot crouched on his long legs, elbows on knees like a praying mantis, looking pouty. They’d obviously done this, gone out dancing. Emmy would place her demands. They looked like a movie couple, Emmy matching his steps, her back arched, smiling up at him. The outline of a thick wallet was worn into his back pocket. They twirled around the beach and then he lifted her by the waist and set her on one of the posts of the rope fence. Emmy raised her pressed-together hands above her head and stood balanced with the bright moon rising through black pines behind her. She looked perfect up there. A church steeple.
Then Fast Forward grabbed her around the waist, flinging her over his shoulder like a grain bag, Emmy laughing and kicking her legs, and the beauty was over.