The dream comes each year as summer nears. It is always the same. I am running down the dirt road, my feet skidding and slipping on the scree. I am pounding down the sloping trail. Pines, maples, black, wet bark, blurring green, glinting sky, morning sun, kaleidoscope as the woods on either side slide past. Pounding, jarring, aching joints, muscles twitching as the grade becomes steeper and my legs jackhammer down, knees straining. Cold air rushes into my mouth, puffing out my cheeks, burning my throat. Blood pounds behind my ears and behind my eyes.
The road opens to the lake. Jagged borders of weeds and water – glassy water, bumpy in places with polyps of weed-heads skimming the under surface, poking through bubbles. The docks shift and screech and sway, as I slam onto the boards from the gravely shore. The docks lurch and rock; my legs bend and spring. Then I am swimming – long strokes. My arms push down and down, grazing the tips of the weeds. Tendrils of weed grasp and slide over my legs. Scratchy stalks brush my stomach and I am pulling myself through the water. Everything seems reversed and I look down into the water as though I am looking up to the sky. But now the clouds are green, the birds are darting fish. I pull deeper. Silver bubbles rush past me. I am silver. I gulp the water and settle down in the slippery, weed branches and rest. Something shifts, rocking me. A large turtle cradles his bulk next to me. His thick, rough shell is velvety with brownish green moss. His delicate, clawed finger reaches out and traces my skin. His dark beaked mouth smiles. I wake up.
We lived on a boat each summer. That year it was docked at Piney Point, Maryland, off the Chesapeake Bay. I haven’t been back to Piney Point since that summer. Our family never mentions the place – one of those off-limit topics. Even Katie and I never speak of it, although I had often wanted to; I wanted to tell her I was sorry, because somehow I always felt that what happened was my fault. All these years later, I can’t help but think it has come between us. We had been close until that summer.
That summer Katie was fourteen and I was twelve. We spent mornings drifting in a dinghy, back heavy with a fifteen horsepower Evinrude. We would skim over the small harbor and explore the several islands that dotted the inlet. Evenings we dragged a line-tied chicken back carefully toward the surface and with a long handled net we scooped up crabs: peelers and soft shell and, sometimes, doublers, the female crab’s armored apron tucked over the smaller male crab, almost maternal in mating.
Piney Point was different than Colonial Beach, Annapolis or The Tide’s Inn. It was not really a yacht club, but aspired to become one. Instead, few pleasure boats docked there. Those yachts that were in the slips, rocked on spring lines and remained shuttered up tight. There were dock boys with bad teeth who washed down the boats using high-pressure hoses and long handled bristle brushes. Gas pumps on another dock filled up the boat tanks, with the ding and flip of the gauges ringing over the water. Then there were the oystermen, with their curved knives stuck into thick leather belts. They drove powerful flat-bottomed boats, white and green with scuffed gunnels and rust stains streaking the sides from oxidized oarlocks and fittings. The oystermen went about their business of dredging for oysters with long metal netted rakes on chains.
Katie and I were like a small water bug in our dinghy – flighty, capricious, moving, resting, and darting around the shorelines and the small islands. One morning we set out early. The teak deck of the big boat was cool and damp. Swallows in the rafters of the dock were still nest-bound. The water looked gray-blue and opaque. Throaty rumbles of boat engines rolled over the waterway. Misty fog hung around the buoys in the channel making them look like giant fishing bobbins tugging in inverted clouds. We lowered the dinghy from the stern of the big boat, one of us at each winch with thick, smooth twisted rope running slowly through our hands. The dinghy hit the water with a splash and we dropped in towels, sacks of sandwiches and our long-handled net. We lowered in our empty pail and a steamy plastic bag of chicken necks. The ribs on the boat bottom bruised our feet as we jumped down into the shifting dinghy. Each took an oar and paddled canoe-style out into the open channel.
We knew the drill: check the gas can, squeeze the bulb to prime the engine. Iridescent rainbows swam around the prop as we lowered the engine – click – into place. She was older and always got the first tug at the starter cord. Blue smoke billowed in our wake as the engine choked, coughed, gurgled and finally caught and hummed. She engaged the gear and the boat lurched forward, nose rising, blocking the horizon. The pail clanged and I caught my balance as the boat revved and raced toward Porcupine Island.
Once out in the open water, the sun warmed us and we peeled away sweatshirts and shorts down to our bathing suits. Circling the island, we looked for the landing point. Tangled driftwood, tall weeds and broken trees edged the island, but near a sandbar was a spit of beach. Katie cut the motor and pulled up the engine. We used oars like poles in a pontoon to drift through the shallows and beach the boat. We stepped over the side and dragged the boat up the wet sand.
Katie and I explored at our own pace, wading, picking through driftwood, shells, and rotting seaweed. We drifted apart, heads down, eyes searching for anything of interest that the tide may have washed up. I caught a small crab in the shallows and let it pinch my fingertip and dangle. Its shiny black eyes pivoted on stalks, fierce in its helplessness. I dug a small bowl, a depression in the sand, creating a small world for the crab – bits of seaweed, a shell, a bit of stick – things a crab’s world might require. I watched the creature scramble sideways around the edge of the bowl, arms raised waving pincers like swords, never taking its eyes off of me. A shadow fell over my work and I turned to show Katie my crab. The sun silhouetted a tall figure. I smelled fish and gasoline. His arms were akimbo, thumbs stuck into a thick leather belt. I squinted my eyes and sun glinted off the hooked blade of an oyster knife and a bit of gold in his mouth. He seemed rooted in the wet sand like a huge oily tree, a snakehead smiling through the hairy, tangled foliage. Losing my balance, I fell back from squatting and sat back hard in the clammy crab bowl. Scrambling to my feet, I skirted the man and ran to the curve of the spit just as Katie came out of a thicket of trees. I ran to her and grabbed her arms, pulling her toward the beached dinghy. Down the sandbar I saw a shipped and scraped flat-bottomed boat next to ours.
Alarms knotted my stomach and jangled behind my ribs; my knees felt watery and my mouth was dry. Katie was pulling against me, confused and I was trying to explain that we needed to leave. She finally stopped fighting me and we scrambled to the dinghy. The tide had receded and there was an expanse of beach to portage. Shells and coarse sand crunched and growled as we pushed and lifted the boat toward the shallow water. We reached the edge of the water and I looked back. His long strides brought him to the track we had made in our efforts – a curved trail like the struggle of a large turtle returning to the sea. The gunnels of the boat felt warm, almost hot under my hands. There was a dangerous deliberation in his stance: legs spread, arms crossed over his stained T-shirt. He wore heavy boots with brass rings on the sides. His jeans looked worn and tarnished in places, bunched and molded to him. His crooked grin seemed comical and jarring, revealing ruined teeth, purplish gums and that glint of gold. His eyes were crinkled and rimed with salty crust. He watched us.
Katie, still confused, seemed to relax. She said, “Hello.” His smile faded, arms dropped and he was momentarily caught off guard. Then his face split into a grimacing smile; the gold tooth, like some strange ornament in the maw of a huge, strong fish, mesmerized me. There was a tension, a danger emanating from him, but she never guessed. I turned back to our boat. The spell broken, he leapt and was on her, pulling her down, pulling at the bottom her suit with clumsy hands. Her mouth shaped an “o” and her eyes squeezed shut then opened slowly with a sudden terrible knowledge. It seemed like my arms were yards long and anchored deep in the wet sand. I dragged them up and up and finally over the side of the boat, feeling for the oar, wrenching it from under the seats. Turning, gripping, swinging, I grunted as the thin edge of the oar connected with his temple. The shock jolted up my arms to my shoulders and his eyes looked into mine as he sank, still grinning into the shallow water. Katie scrambled over the side of the boat, her legs dragging behind in the wet sand as I pushed the dinghy further into the shallow water. I slammed the engine down and tried to think, tried not to panic. Pull the cord; pull the cord. No, first squeeze the bulb, hurry. Hurry. I looked up and he was standing again, arms tensed at his sides, grin in place. I hadn’t hit him hard enough! I hadn’t hit him hard enough – he took one step, tentative, staring. The engine caught and its thrum drowned out Katie’s gasps as I turned the boat sharply into the channel.
I remember feeling that dread kids feel when they know they are in trouble. I knew we were in trouble, but I didn’t know exactly what we had done. Getting back to the big boat the story tumbled out of me. Katie seemed in shock. My mother was trying to comfort her. My father was in a sort of fury. The local sheriff was called and the oysterman was caught and questioned. Katie had to go with my father and the sheriff to identify him, when I could have done it and saved her from having to see him again. But then we left Piney Point. That was the last we ever heard or spoke of the place. But the circle of her mouth, his smile and the dream stay with me.
