narrowed to one lane. We passed a shack of a general store-an old man in a down coat sat in a lighted telephone booth and waved as we drove by-and some screened bungalows set far back on properties bulkheading the Wicomico. The road ahead, veined now with deep fissures and cracks, seemed to narrow even further. And then, without warning of any kind, the road simply ended.
We parked the car in front of a steel guardrail serving as a barrier. To the right, on a raised plot of dirt and naked turf, stood a post office the size of a tollbooth. Billy and the bearman got out of the Maxima, and Maybelle scrambled over my legs to follow. Ken was next out, and then me. I felt the temperature drop sharply as my face met the winter wind that was coming out of the southeast and off the river.
Billy cut the engine and the lights; the music still played. I trailed the group-Maybelle had trotted off into a wooded area to the right-and climbed over the barrier, on which was posted a NO TRESPASSING notice peppered with buckshot. What was left of the concrete road continued, buckled and in pieces, on a downward slope to the river. The swells of the Wicomico shimmered from the light of the moon and moved diagonally toward the shore in rough cadence with the wind. South beyond the point the Potomac merged with the Wicomico in cold, deep current. I zipped my jacket to the collar.
Ken and the bearman stopped at the waterline; one of Ken’s fists dug into his jean pocket, the other gripping the neck of the Bud. The bearman appeared to be rolling a joint-he was carefully twisting it now, his muttonchop hands working the papers very closely to his small eyes-and Billy, with the cheesecloth bladder that had plagued him since childhood, was pissing like a filly near a grove of sycamores on the edge of the gravelly beach. I drew the pint from my jacket and knocked back an inch of bourbon.
Down on the beach I joined Billy and passed him the bottle. He had his taste and then we both followed it with beer. The wind was lifting Billy’s hair off his scalp and blowing it about his face. Music came from the road and through the trees-Steve Earle had yielded now to Neil Young on the tape. The feedback and grunge of twin Les Pauls and Young’s wailing vocals pierced the rush of the wind.
“The road ends at Rock Point,” Billy said out of nowhere, stating the obvious and pointing his beer bottle toward the river with uncharacteristic dramatic punctuation. “I used to come here all the time, that first summer when me and April got together. She didn’t understand the attraction-to her it was the place where she and her friends came to smoke pot and drink and screw when they were growing up-but there was something to it for me. Something about the road running right into the fucking sea.”
“What about now?”
“It went to seed,” he said, adding, with a bitter edge, “like everything else in this life.” Billy drank his beer and wiped the backwash on his jacket sleeve. “Rubbers and beer cans, and gooks fishing for spot. That’s all this place is now.”
I nodded in the direction of our new friends. “You know those guys?” The bearman had lit the joint and was stooping low as he shotgunned Ken, the Cubs hat now set far back on the little man’s head. Ken had cupped his hands around the bearman’s face to get it all, and the cloud of smoke emanating from their union was great and wide. Ken’s head appeared to be on fire.
“I’ve seen ’em around the island before. Barflies.” Billy looked at them and chuckled. “That’s just what April’d be doing right now, if she hadn’t met me. Gettin’ high and hangin’ out.”
“There’s more to this place than that. After all, she keeps coming back.”
“Most people don’t have enough sense to stay away from home, even after they outgrow it.” Billy finished his beer. “Come on, man, let’s get out of here.”
“What about those guys?”
“They’ll want to stay down here,” he said. “Come on.”
Billy and I walked back up the buckled fun house road and climbed over the barrier. Neil Young was shouting “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown,” backed by the primal electric rage of Crazy Horse; the wind kicked at our backs. I looked back to see if the bearman and Ken were following, but Billy was right-they had drifted. The bearman was doing a slow shuffle on the beach, and Ken had leaped out into the river to a slab of concrete that the tide had not yet covered. He was dancing some sort of whacked jig, and he appeared to be singi {d ta sng toward the sky.
We climbed into the Maxima, Maybelle appearing suddenly from the trees and taking her place in the backseat. Billy lowered the music and cranked up the heat, rolling the windows up as he did it. I looked back through the rear window. The music no longer reached his ears, but Ken continued to dance out on the concrete slab in the river. The bearman stood with his hands buried in his pockets, a stoned stare focused up at the full December moon.
The gravel road to April Goodrich’s property was at an unmarked turnoff two miles back up 257. We followed it straight into a wooded area, and then it turned to hard dirt as it continued out into several acres of plowed field. The road ran through a field bordered by woods on three sides and on the fourth by a wide, still creek. In the center of the field stood a hickory tree, under which a small trailer was mounted on concrete. It had a poured concrete patio in front and a corrugated Plexiglas eave hanging over it. The road from there went back through the field and down to a dock that ran out and into the creek. We passed the trailer and drove down to where the road ended at an open boathouse that stood near the first planks of the dock.
Billy cut the engine and the lights. I could hear Maybelle’s tail excitedly thumping the backseat, but beyond that there was just the deep silence that exists at night and only in the country.
“What now?”
Billy said, “Let’s get out and feel the water. Finish the whiskey.”
We exited the Maxima. Maybelle bounded out before us and ran out onto the dock. I waited for Billy to lead the way and then stepped out onto the vertical planks that bridged the severely eroded bank to the dock. Beneath my feet the wood was white with the excrement of gulls. The wind had abated here, though the air was damp and bitter.
The dock ended in the head of a T. I sat on a piling and buried my hands in my jacket pockets. Maybelle lay on her stomach to my right. Billy climbed down an aluminum stepladder that had been halved and lashed with thick rope to the pilings on the eastern corner. He was out of sight now, but I heard his hand splashing in the freezing water.
“Ice cold,” his voice said. “Not frozen yet, though.”
“I’m not comin’ in for your ass if you fall in.”
Billy climbed back up the ladder and said, “Sure, you would. If there’s one thing I know, that’s it.” Billy rubbed his hand dry on his jeans and had a seat next to me. He leaned back on one elbow and pointed at my jacket. “Let’s have a drink and a couple of those smokes.”
“Sure.”
I brought the pint and the Camels out from my jacket and rustled the pack in his direction. Billy drew one from the deck and put it to his lips. I fired his up, put one in my mouth, and lit it off the same match. The tobacco hit my lungs and I kept it there. I watched the silver exhale drift slowly in the motionless air like a ghost and spread out over the creek.
Billy took the Beam off the dock, uncap {e deekped it, and had a drink. He sighed comfortably and stretched like a waking animal. “Good night,” he said.
Across the creek one prefab rambler stood in a clearing in the woods. Mounted atop a pole in front of the rambler was a spotlight that illuminated the property. A horse stood beneath the spotlight inside a small grassy area framed by a split-rail fence. The horse’s breath, backlit and haloed, poured from its nostrils and widened into two even streams.
Some time passed. Billy pitched his cigarette out over the dock and into the creek. I followed the orange trail and listened to the quick, dull finality of the fire hitting water. Then I had a last drag of my cigarette and threw what was left of it in the direction of his.
“Your head’s rolling,” Billy said. “Let’s go on up to the trailer.”
I looked around at the dock. “Where’s the dog?”
“You’ve been noddin’. I was waiting for that smoke to burn down into your fingers-would have let it too. But you woke up.” Billy stood and reached for my hand. “Maybelle ran off. She’ll be all right.”
I stood with Billy’s help. “We ought to find her. She’ll freeze.”
“Not cold enough. Come on, let’s turn in.”
We walked off the dock and onto the dirt road that cut through the field. Some clouds had drifted across the
