Six. The Kids
I picked my way over to the kids and their wonderful nothing. Ten pairs of eyes turned towards me in the same moment.
“Hey.” I waved a hand. “Mind if I pop a squat?”
“Pop a squat!” A crowd of voices sputtered back. One fell on his back as he laughed.
Then one of them removed his sunglasses. A pair of eyes shifted from a flaming cigarette to flare into mine. And I met Jack Anodyne.
“You’re a long way from home,” he purred. He was brown from endless afternoons of beer and backyards, and as he slid off his rainbow-colored glasses his thin lips parted into a dazzling smile. In one deft move he yanked at a lawn chair and presented it as a snoring tangle of arms and legs went tumbling into the grass. “For you.”
Jack had just turned 29 and believed strictly in three sole pleasures in life – wine, women and the island. Food was never savored or desired in any context. Rather, it was only for necessity and to keep the heart beating, as it detracted both his finances and senses from his other, more prominent loves: the wine to pursue the woman, and the island for solace when the plan had been failing for days on end.
The sheer length of his stay on campus had made him something of a legend. In his first week at university Jack decided that he was going to save the world. He had now been there eleven years. It had been eighteen hours and Jack hadn’t slept.
Of course, I didn’t know any of this at the time. Back then Jack was just a cigarette and a low breathy voice that rolled warm over the senses.
“Pleased to be your neighbor,” I said.
“Oh, this isn’t our campsite,” Jack looked around. “We just acquired it.” He settled back. “But the shade is over here. And thus, so are we.” He nodded to his right and caught a beer flying through the air. “Where did you come from?”
“America. The city. Over there,” I replied, nodding to a hill.
“The city!” He swept an arm over the bowed heads. “Us too.”
"This beach is so beautiful,” I sighed. “Where are we anyway?”
“You don’t know where this is?” A boy laughed. “After the moon, this is the farthest place in the world.”
“You hungry?” Jack cracked open a spiky shell that oozed black water and pointed to what looked like a small orange tongue. “Try that.”
"What is it?"
"It's kinna." The kids to his right exchanged a wary glance.
"You first," I said.
"I can't.” Jack pressed a hand to his chest. “I'm a vegetarian.”
So I took a slow bite. And just as fast rushed to spit it back. The texture was all wrong. My mouth flooded with salt. Jack roared with laughter. I realized after a few moments I was smiling. And I started laughing too. As the hours flew by in an unending stream of beers and sun, I found myself lulled into a comforting state of numb oblivion. I took an inherent liking to Jack after quietly watching his evasion of responsibility for hours on end.
“Jack,” Shelley commanded, marching over to the circle, carefully stepping and avoiding bodies and appendages along the way. She dumped a beaten dirt-encrusted banner at his feet. “I need this banner up over there by four o’clock. Everyone else is out kayaking.” She eyed Jack suspiciously. His mouth slid into a Cheshire grin.
“Consider it done,” Jack purred at her, nodding in time with her swaying hips as she retreated back to her tent. The girl on his right looked suspicious.
“Are you going to actually put up that banner?”
“Naw.” Jack nursed his bottle. His eyes turned to Jamie, who had returned from earlier wanderings and was in the process of stumbling back to where we sat. “I’ll get Jamie to do it.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Oh, he’ll do it.” Jack flashed a grin and whooped as Jamie slowly walked over and crashed to the ground. “Jamie, my man!”
“Ugh,” Jamie groaned in reply.
“Oh, hey, Shelley has a mission for you.”
Jamie picked up his face. “Oh?”
“Yeah, she said you have to put up this banner by four… somewhere over there.”
Jamie turned his head to follow Jack’s pointing finger. “Ohhhh…”
“It’s okay though.” Jack slapped him on the back as he popped up. “I’ll help you do it – as soon as I’m done here with Addison.”
Jamie’s demeanor softened. “Hey, thanks, man,” he cried as he hopped up and trotted away with the banner.
“Come on!” Jack leapt up. “I'll show you around.”
Jack took me round the field, leaping and prancing through the land of broken tents. We slowed at blankets as Jack fetched beers from chilly bins and wiggled the volume on stereos and introduced me to all of his subjects.
"Did you come out here for a reason?" I mused as Jack plucked a guitar out of someone's hands and played a few chords while strolling on. "Or do you have no purpose at all?"
"Both, my dear," Jack said, trading the guitar for a beer and cracking it open against a tree. "For life is all about pleasure. It is the one absolute good. For pleasure never lies. All men and women are defined by what they enjoy... the drunk, the whiner, the speed freak, the ranter, the druggie, the workaholic, the sleaze... everyone knows oneself – and others – by the pleasures of their choice.”
The afternoon swirled into a gray haze.
“Would you like one?” A boy nodded to the bucket of mussels at his feet. “Got ‘em this morning while diving.”
“Always.” Jack cracked open a shell with one hand and popped the mussel in his mouth.
“I thought you were a vegetarian.”
“I'm a pescatarian,” he corrected.
At that point he could lie to me all he wanted – I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I had the feeling Jack could turn even the simplest action into walking art – and I wanted to follow him everywhere just to see. At times I stop processing his words so I could just enjoy the sound what he said. His laugh bubbled up out of his throat and ran down my back like honey.
“Check it.” He pointed to the kids on car hoods looking out from the cliffs. “Last year a drunk foreigner went the wrong way to take a piss and tumbled to his death.”
“So it goes,” I said.
Jack took off his shirt to wipe off the sweat and brought a jug of water up to his face. No matter where he was or what he was doing, he always had a knack for making it seem like the world’s most beautiful place.
Streams of cars and rattling trucks coughed up steady clouds of dust. More kids were on their way.
Everyone knew Jack and everyone loved him, even the row of girls pulling on strawberry stems underneath drooping hats who looked at Jack they wouldn't trust him for a second.
Perhaps it was because he always strode to his own rhythm, never venturing, never compromising for anything — so if you happened to get caught in the crossfire, he was not to be blamed. Plus, he was unfailingly polite, and he looked so good, even when he was lying to you through his teeth.
He floated as if a little pair of wings carried him from place to place – fluttering faster when he was excited, like a dog's wagging tail, giving all his emotions away.
“Come and get it!” Jack crowed, shaking the bucket of mussels. “Fresh from the sea.”
“This is awful nice of you.”
“Nonsense,” Jack said. “You can’t keep something that has been given as a gift.” He plucked a flower off a tree. “Do you know what this is?”
"A moly?"
"Wrong!" He closed his fist, crumbling the plant in his hand. “Eat three of these and you'll get more gone than you’ve ever been in your life. It’s also poisonous…” The low chuckle rumbled under his tongue. “So you may die.”
I twisted the flower between my fingers and looked up to the tree. It was as if its petals were a pair of ruby lips nestled in the rough dangling vines, that all at once called out, ‘Kiss me!’ and promised death if you did. I put one in my hair.
Jack laughed
so hard he bent in half as a boy trudged through the water, fully dressed and soaking wet. "The classic mistake – visiting a high tide beach, at lowww tide."
"It was worth it," the boy approaching replied.
“How was the ride?”
“It’s very, very unsafe.”
“What ride?”
"I was out on the sand dunes testing the buggy I made. I would have stayed longer if it wasn't for the seal."
“The seal?” I cried. “I want to ride with a seal!”
The boy was less impressed. “Have you ever met a seal?”
I couldn’t say I had.
“Those jerks are nasty.” The boy brandished a knife. “But I'll take any opportunity to match wits with a seal – and win." He flicked his wrist and the knife disappeared back into his hand.
“What’s your name, so I can forget it?” I asked.
“Adam,” he grinned. “And don’t ask again.” Suddenly a pair of keys dangled down from his hand. "Anyone want to go jump off a twelve meter cliff?"
I caught Jack out the corner of my eye shaking his head. "Not so much,” I said.
"Suit yourself! A roaring cloud of dust sputtered into the air.
Jack plunged a hand into the shallows and pulled out a dull gray shell. The wings beat fast and he turned with a smile. “Looks pretty boring, right? But only to the untrained eye.” Jack spread open the shell to reveal a searing swirl of colors. He pulled down his shirt to reveal a matching one around his neck and wrapped the shell in my palm. “Now you can take a piece of the island with you wherever you go.”
“Go?” I didn't ever want to leave.
The sun blazed red in the summer sky. My eyes pulled heavy on their lids. If only I could rest for a minute. I sank down to the sand.
When I opened my eyes everything was dark. The tide had gone out. There was nothing but black sand for miles around, dark as the midnight sky. Drums thundered in the distance. Figures drifted through the sand. I made soundless footsteps towards the shadows in the fog.
After a long journey into a flat wide black desert of iron sand comes a roar, and then the white strips of waves licking up in the waters for miles out to sea. There was a bonfire at the end of beach. Speakers had been dragged out onto the sand. And all the kids were dancing with fire in their hands. I followed the spinning trails of fire as they moved in untraceable patterns of heartbreaking elegance. They danced through the fire and it did not burn them.
Who were these people, these shadows, these souls dancing on the edge of the earth under a forgotten southern sky? Dancing and vanishing in the secret of night?
Manhattan could have been razed to the ground for all they knew or cared. Out here you couldn’t care, where phone lines were broken and towers blinked on the fritz and cable faults sputtered short and tumbled cities into darkness. Perhaps the happiest place in the world was one where you had nothing to lose.
The twirling and whipping fire seared to a halt. At the end of the flame stood Jack. We stood apart on the field, our eyes locked on one another, facing each other over the curling, slurping fires. He held out his arm, his eyes ablaze, the flames licking up between us. I smiled and took the stick.
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