Page 12 of Pilgrims


  head straight ahead to water.

  Down at the beach, the spoiled, foolish John and the hand-

  some J.J. took off their shoes and headed into the water, fully

  dressed. They pushed their way through the rough surf, which

  was sometimes waist high, sometimes chest high. They pulled

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  Come and Fetch These Stupid Kids

  their legs up and over and through the water, struggling as

  though passing through dense, fast-moving mud. John got

  knocked over immediately by the first wave, but J.J. dived right

  into it and came out on top of another. John surfaced and

  cheered and was knocked over again.

  Margie stripped to her underwear, but Peg took off only her

  skirt. Margie ran in after John and J.J., holding the Dumbo tube

  around her waist and screaming.

  Peg stood in the surf for some time and let the tide bury her

  feet. Two waves was all it took to sink her over her ankles. There

  was enough dark and rain that she could not see very far past

  the three heads of her friends out there. She pulled her feet out

  of the sand and made her way to the surf, right into the face of

  a wave that stood for a moment above her as high as a chain

  link fence. The wave fell, and she relaxed and let it roll her.

  When Peg came up, she was on top of another wave. She saw

  John and J.J. and Margie in a valley below her, their mouths

  open. The trunk of Margie’s Dumbo tube stuck out of the water

  like a periscope. A bigger wave came down on Peg, and on her

  friends, too.

  When Peg surfaced again, she could not see her friends. She

  treaded water and ducked under three waves before she got

  high enough on a swell to see that they had gone farther out

  into the ocean. Her boyfriend and her two friends were out to

  where the waves were rising but not breaking. J.J. was separated

  from John and Margie, and he was floating on his back. Margie

  saw Peg and beckoned to her. In ten minutes of swimming, Peg

  made it over to them. John had lost his ponytail holder, and his

  hair was floating all around him, like seaweed.

  “Isn’t it loud?” Margie shouted. “No?”

  Peg was out of breath, so she nodded. A long strand of

  Margie’s hair was stuck from the corner of her mouth to her ear,

  making a black slash across her face, like a wound from a knife

  fight. They were all treading water gracelessly, spitting seawater

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  p i l g r i m s

  and stretching their necks to stay above the rough surface.

  Except for J.J., who was never graceless. J.J. swam around easily,

  his stroke as even and strong as though he were doing casual

  laps in a YMCA, instead of struggling with a storming ocean.

  “How deep do you suppose it is, sir?” John shouted.

  J.J. laughed, riding on a swell.

  “Twenty feet!” J.J. shouted. Then the swell dipped, and he

  shouted, “No! I take it back. It’s ten feet!” A new swell rose, and

  J.J. said, “No! It’s eighteen feet!”

  Peg held her nose and went under, pushing herself down and

  seeking bottom. When she did touch, her foot first hit stones,

  then something soft. She panicked and kicked until she was at

  the surface. She tried to wipe the seawater from her eyes, but

  the rain pushed it back again.

  “This would be easier if we were a species that didn’t have to

  breathe,” Margie said. Margie, with her Dumbo inner tube

  supporting her slightly, was less tired than her friends. She was

  the most cheerful, the least out of breath.

  “John, honey?” Margie asked. “How long can you go without

  breathing?”

  “Last time it was three hours,” John shouted back.

  “Goodness!” Margie said.

  John laughed and got a mouthful of water, which gagged

  him. He coughed wetly. Peg looked around and saw that they

  had been pulled out far past the jetties, a great distance down

  from the house. Without saying that they were doing so, the

  four friends began swimming toward the beach. They were

  trying in a casual way to head home. They were all getting tired,

  but nobody wanted to speak about it. For some time, they tried

  to swim toward shore but did not seem to make any progress.

  They stopped joking with each other and then even stopped

  speaking.

  After a long while, J.J. said, “Oh, fuck.”

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  Come and Fetch These Stupid Kids

  “What?” Peg asked her boyfriend; she was breathless. “What

  is it?”

  “Jellyfish.”

  Another considerable silence. By this point they had stopped

  pretending that they weren’t aiming for shore.

  Then John shouted out, “J.J.! My friend!”

  “Yeah,” said J.J.

  “I’m getting . . . um . . . rather tired.”

  “Okay,” said J.J. “We’ll go in, then.”

  John rolled his eyes, almost with annoyance. “My legs are

  killing me,” he said.

  “We’ll go in now,” J.J. said. “I’ll help you.”

  “My legs are very . . . um . . . heavy,” said John.

  “You’ve got to take off your jeans, John,” said J.J. “Can you do

  that?”

  The rain was cold right through the scalps of the friends, and

  their breathing was wet and sloppy.

  John grimaced, trying to get his jeans off. He was going

  under, coming back up, going under again. J.J. swam behind

  him and held him up by sticking his arms under John’s armpits.

  John squirmed around more, and then his jeans popped up to

  the surface, where they floated for a moment, dark, like the hide

  of a shark, and then sank.

  “We’re going in,” J.J. shouted. “If you girls can make it in,

  then go. If you can’t make it in, don’t get tired. Just stay out

  here.”

  Peg and Margie did not have the breath to answer.

  The boys swam away, and a wave immediately separated

  them from their girlfriends. The girls watched them for a while.

  It looked as though the boys couldn’t make it past the jetties.

  Margie’s teeth chattered. Peg swam over to her and grabbed

  Dumbo’s inflatable head.

  “No,” Margie said. “Mine.”

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  “I have to,” Peg said. Her legs ached from the cold water.

  When she kicked hard to warm them, she kicked Margie. Mar-

  gie started crying. Margie and Peg were pulled up on a wave,

  and they could see then that John and J.J. were not much closer

  to the beach. Peg held her breath and shut her eyes. A wave

  slapped her. She opened her eyes into water and breathed water

  and swallowed it.

  “We won’t make it back,” Margie said.

  Peg kicked her.

  “Shut up!” Margie shouted, although Peg had not spoken.

  Peg kicked Margie again. The girls treaded water and tried to

  see the progress of John and J.J. toward the beach. Which, after

  a great passage of time, the boys did reach. John and J.J. did

  eventually reach the beach, and when Peg saw this, she said to

  Margie
, “Look!”

  “Shut up!” Margie said, and kicked Peg.

  Peg could see J.J. pulling John out of the water. J.J. was in fact

  dragging John from the sea by his hair. A caveman and his wife.

  J.J. lugged John up the beach and dropped down beside him.

  Margie did not look. Her eyes were closed and her mouth

  was open. Then Peg did not look anymore, either. She could

  imagine J.J. slouched over John, who may or may not have been

  breathing. She could imagine J.J. taking some time to throw up

  the seawater from his gut, lean his forehead against the sand,

  retch a little.

  Then J.J. would stand on his strong and handsome legs, a

  little shaky. Peg could imagine it. J.J. would look out at the

  water to where Margie and Peg should be. He would probably

  not be able to spot them. His ragged breathing would continue,

  and he would stand, hands on his hips, slightly hunched over.

  He would look very much like an exhausted and heroic star

  soccer player, after a remarkable save.

  J.J. would stand there. He would have to decide whether to

  come out after Margie and Peg or telephone the coast guard

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  Come and Fetch These Stupid Kids

  and wait for help. It didn’t matter what he decided, because he

  would hate Margie and Peg either way. Whatever he decided,

  he would certainly hate them for it. Peg was sure of that, as she

  was treading water with her eyes closed. Peg did not have to

  watch more of this scene unfolding. No, she did not. Peg did

  not have to see it happen to know what would happen.

  J.J. would hate Peg and Margie for demanding that difficult

  decision from him, just as Peg now hated Margie for crying

  in the water beside her. Just as Peg now hated spoiled and

  foolish John for taking his friends out there in the rough ocean.

  Just as (most of all) Peg now hated her handsome boyfriend

  J.J. Peg hated J.J. for standing on the beach while she herself

  got dragged out deeper to sea. She hated him for being a strong

  swimmer. She hated him for wondering what to decide and

  for catching his breath, and she hated him (most of all) for

  hating her.

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  107

  The Many Things That

  Denny Brown Did Not Know

  (Age Fifteen)

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  No fault of his own, but Denny Brown did not know very

  much about his parents and their work. Denny’s parents

  were both nurses. His mother was a nurse in the burn unit

  at Monroe Memorial Hospital, and his father was a private duty

  nurse, also known as a visiting nurse. Denny was aware of these

  facts, naturally, but he did not know much past that.

  Denny Brown did not know the extent of horrors that his

  mother encountered daily in her work at the burn unit. He did

  not know, for instance, that his mother sometimes cared for

  patients whose skin was essentially gone. He did not know that

  his mother was considered an exceptional nurse, who was fa-

  mous for never losing her stomach and for keeping the other

  nurses from losing theirs. He did not know that his mother

  spoke to every burned patient, even the doomed ones, in cool

  and reassuring tones of conversation, never hinting at the agony

  of their prospects.

  Denny Brown knew even less about his father’s nursing ca-

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  p i l g r i m s

  reer, other than that it was unusual and embarrassing to have a

  father who was a nurse. Mr. Brown sensed his son’s shame,

  which was but one of the many reasons he did not talk about

  any aspect of his work in the home. There was no way, therefore,

  that Denny could have known that his father secretly would

  have preferred to have been a psychiatric nurse rather than a

  private duty nurse. Back in nursing school, Mr. Brown had

  trained at a large mental hospital, in the men’s ward. He had

  loved it there, and his patients had adored him. If he’d not

  actually felt that he could cure his patients, he’d certainly be-

  lieved himself capable of bettering their lives.

  However, there was no mental hospital in Monroe County.

  Therefore, Denny Brown’s father had spent his married life

  working as a private duty nurse instead of the psychiatric nurse

  he ought to have been. He worked purely out of economic

  necessity and did not enjoy his assignments. His talents were

  unrecognized. His patients were old, dying people. They did

  not even notice him, except in spare moments, when they came

  out of their death marches only long enough to be suspicious of

  him. The patients’ families were suspicious as well, always ac-

  cusing private duty nurses of stealing. Society as a whole, in fact,

  was suspicious of male nurses. So Mr. Brown was met with

  skepticism in every new job, in every new home, as though he

  were something perverse.

  What’s more, Denny Brown’s father believed that private

  duty nursing was not nursing at all, but merely tending. It

  frustrated him that he did more bathing and wiping than he

  did nursing. Year after year, Denny Brown’s father sat in home

  after home, watching over the slow and expensive deaths of one

  wealthy, aged cancer patient after another.

  Denny Brown did not know anything about any of this.

  Denny Brown (at age fifteen) did not know that his mother

  regretted the rough things that she often said. She’d had a wise

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  The Many Things That Denny Brown Did Not Know

  mouth as a little girl, and she had a wise mouth as a grown

  woman. She also had a dirty mouth. The wise mouth had

  always been with her. The dirty mouth came from her year of

  nursing in Korea during the war. In any case, she often said

  things that she didn’t mean or later was privately sorry for. Very

  privately sorry.

  For instance, there was a young nurse named Beth in the

  burn unit where Denny’s mother worked. Beth had a drinking

  problem. One day, Beth confessed to Denny’s mother that she

  was pregnant. Beth didn’t want to have an abortion but couldn’t

  imagine keeping a child on her own.

  Beth said desperately, “I was thinking of selling my baby to a

  nice, childless couple.”

  And Denny Brown’s mother said, “The way you drink, you

  could sell that baby to the fucking circus.”

  Mrs. Brown was instantly mortified at herself. She avoided

  Beth for days, secretly asking herself, as she often did, Why am I such a horrible human being?

  At the end of Denny Brown’s sophomore year, he was in-

  vited to the Monroe High School Academic Awards Ban-

  quet. Denny’s father had to work, but Mrs. Brown attended.

  Denny got a handful of awards that night. He was a very good,

  though not exceptional, student. He was a smart kid, but he did

  not excel in any particular subject, as he did not know yet

  whether he was very good at any particular thing. So Denny

  received a small handful of awards, including a certificate of

  merit, honoring h
is participation in something called Youth Art

  Month.

  “Youth Art Month,” his mother said on the ride home.

  “Youth Art Month.”

  She pronounced it slowly: “Youth . . . Art . . . Month . . .”

  She pronounced it quickly: “YouthArtMonth.”

  She laughed and said, “There’s just no right way to say that, is

  there? That’s just an ugly goddamn phrase, isn’t it?”

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  p i l g r i m s

  And then Denny Brown’s mother recognized her son’s si-

  lence. And she too was silent for the rest of the drive.

  She drove on. She did not speak, but she was thinking of

  Denny. She was thinking, He does not know how sorry I am.

  Denny Brown did not know, at the beginning of his sixteenth

  summer, what he was going to do for a job. He did not know

  what he was interested in. He did not know what was out there

  for work.

  After a few weeks of looking, he ended up taking a part-time

  job at the Monroe Country Club. He worked in the men’s

  locker room. It was a fancy, carpeted locker room, fragrant with

  hidden deodorizing agents. The distinguished men of Mon-

  roe Township would use the locker room to dress for the golf

  course. They would put on their cleated golf shoes, leaving their

  dress shoes on the floor in front of their lockers. Denny Brown

  did not know anything about golf, but this was not required for

  his work. It was Denny’s job to polish the men’s dress shoes

  while the men themselves golfed. He shared this job with a

  sixteen-year-old boy from his neighborhood named Abraham

  Ryan. There was no apparent reason that two people were

  needed for the job. Denny did not know why these men needed

  their shoes polished every day, in the first place. Denny did not

  know why he had been hired.

  Some days, Denny and Abraham would have to polish no

  more than three pairs of shoes during the entire course of their

  shift. They took turns. When they weren’t working, they were

  instructed to stay in the corner of the locker room, next to the

  electric shoe-polishing machine. There was only one stool in

  the locker room, and Denny and Abraham took turns sitting on

  it. While one sat, the other would lean against the wall.

  Denny and Abraham were supervised by the Monroe Coun-

  try Club sports and recreation manager, a serious older man

  named Mr. Deering. Mr. Deering would look in on them every