According to the rules of the Nevis household, young Katherine was not permitted past the sandstone obelisks at the neighborhood’s mouth. But the morning after the dinner party her father was still abed with a pulsing brain, and would likely be that way all day. Knowing this, Katherine slipped through the gate after breakfast, wheeled her little 97 cc minibike out of earshot, and set a course to meet two pals of hers, Claude Hull and Denny Peebles, on the forbidden coast.
She found them by the public pier, and they greeted her with less commotion than she’d have liked. They were busy squabbling over some binoculars through which they were leering at the fat women out at sea on the pontoon barge.
“Let me look,” Claude begged Denny, who had snatched the Bausch & Lombs, an unfair thing. The Bausch & Lombs belonged to Claude’s father, who owned Port Miracle’s little credit union and liked to look at birds.
Denny sucked his lips and watched the women, herded beneath the boat’s canopy shade, their bikinis almost wholly swallowed by their hides. They took turns getting in the water via a scuba ladder that caused the boat to lurch comically when one of them put her bulk on it. The swimming lady would contort her face in agonies at the stinging water while her colleagues leaned over the gunwale, shouting encouragement, bellies asway. After a minute or two, the others would help the woman aboard and serve her something in a tall chilled glass and scrub at her with implements not legible through the Bausch & Lombs. The women were acting on a rumor that the sea’s bacteria devoured extra flesh. It had the look of a cult.
“Big white witches,” whispered Denny.
“Come on, let me hold ’em, let me look,” said Claude, a lean, tweaky child whose widespread eyes and bulging forehead made it a mercy that he, like the other children who lived out here, attended ninth grade over the computer. Denny, the grocer’s child, had shaggy black hair, a dark tan, and very long, very solid arms for a boy of fourteen. “Fuck off,” said Denny, throwing an elbow. “Get Katherine to show you hers. You’ll like ’em if you like it when a girl’s titty looks like a carrot.”
“I’m not showing Claude,” said Katherine.
In the sand beside Denny lay a can of Scotchgard and a bespattered paper bag. Katherine reached for it.
“Mother may I?” Denny said.
“Bite my fur,” said Katherine. She sprayed a quantity of the Scotchgard into the bag, then put it to her mouth and inhaled.
“Let me get some of that, Kathy,” Claude said.
“Talk to Denny,” said Katherine. “It’s not my can.”
“Next time I’m gonna hook up my camera to this thing, get these puddings on film,” said Denny, who was lying on his stomach in the sand, the binoculars propped to his face. “Somebody scratch my back for me. Itches like a motherfucker.”
“Sucks for you,” said Katherine, whose skull now felt luminous and red and full of perfect blood.
“You scratch it for me, Claude,” said Denny. “Backstroke, hot damn. Look at those pies. Turn this way, honey. Are you pretty in your face?”
Just last week, for no reason at all, Denny Peebles had wedged Claude Hull’s large head between his knees and dragged him up and down Dock Street while old men laughed. Claude loved and feared Denny, so he reached out a hand and scratched at Denny’s spine.
“Lower,” Denny said, and Claude slid his hand down to the spot between Denny’s sacral dimples, which were lightly downed with faint hair. “Little lower. Get in the crack, man. That’s where the itch is at.”
Claude laughed nervously. “You want me to scratch your ass for you?”
“It itches, I told you. Go ahead. It’s clean.”
“No way I’m doing that, man. You scratch it.”
“I can’t reach it. I’m using my hands right now,” said Denny. “I’m trying to see these fatties.”
Katherine sprayed another acrid cloud into the bag and sucked it in. Dust clung in an oval around her mouth, giving the effect of a chimpanzee’s muzzle.
“Just do it, Claude,” Katherine said. “He likes it. He said it’s clean. You don’t believe him?”
Denny took the glasses from his face to look at the smaller boy. “Yeah, you don’t believe me, Claude? What, I’m a liar, Claude?”
“No, no, I do.” And so Claude reached into Denny’s pants and scratched, and this intimate grooming felt very good to Denny in a hardly sexual way, so to better concentrate on the sensation, he rested the binoculars and held his hand out for the can of Scotchgard and the paper bag.
—
After an hour on the beach, Rodney put a flat stone in his paperback, retrieved his pants, and got up to stretch his legs. He had the thought that strolling through the still water might cushion his ankles somewhat, so he waded in and set off up the cove. Forbidding as the water looked, it teemed with life. Carp fingerlings nibbled his shins. Twice, a crab scuttled over his bare toes. He strolled on until he reached the pier, a chocolate-colored structure built of creosoted wood. Rodney spied a clump of shells clinging to the pilings. These were major oysters, the size of cactus pads. He tried to yank one free, but it would not surrender to his hand. It was such a tempting prize that he waded all the way back to the truck and got the tire iron from under the seat. Knee-deep in the water, he worked open a shell. The flesh inside was pale gray and large as a goose egg. That much oyster meat would cost you thirty dollars in a Boston restaurant. The flesh showed no signs of dubious pinkness. He sniffed it — no bad aromas. He spilled it onto his tongue, chewing three times to get it down. The meat was clean and briny. He ate two more and felt renewed. Wading back to shore, a few smaller mollusks in hand, he peered under the wharf and spotted Katherine Nevis on the beach with her friends. The desolation of the town had cast a shadow on the morning, and it cheered Rodney to see those children out there enjoying the day. It would be unneighborly, Rodney thought, not to say hello.
When Rodney got within fifty yards, Denny and Claude looked up, panicked to see a shirtless fellow coming at them with a tire iron, an ugly limp in his gait. They took off in a kind of skulking lope and left Katherine on the beach. Obviously Rodney had caught them in the middle of some teenage mischief, and he chuckled to see the boys scamper. Katherine cupped a hand over the beige matter on her face and looked at her toes as Rodney approached. He wondered about the grime, but instead asked after her dad. “I dunno,” she said. “I’m sure he’s doing awesome.”
Rodney nudged the Scotchgard can with his foot. “Stainproofing the beach?” he asked. Katherine said nothing. “Whatever happened to just raiding your parents’ booze?”
“He has to drive all the way to Honerville to get it,” she said. “He keeps it locked up, even from my mom.”
Rodney put the tire iron in his belt and dropped his oysters. He took out his handkerchief and reached for her, thinking to swab her face. She shrank away from him. “Don’t fucking touch me,” she said. “Don’t, I swear.”
“Easy, easy, nobody’s doing anything,” Rodney said, though he could feel the color in his cheeks. “It’s just you look like you need a shave.”
Cautiously, a little shamefully, she took the handkerchief and daubed at her lips while he watched. The girl was conscious of being looked at, and she swabbed herself with small ladylike motions, making no headway on the filth.