But it's also fate, luck, chance. All the things that are not you but
that will change you anyway, irreparably, forever.
Maybe you'd better forget all this.
I'm still a fool, and I meander.
*
But right away she scared me.
They all did, actually. All three of them. They were rich kids, for
one thing, and I wasn't used to that.
You should know right off that there was, and is, no more depressed
county in the nation than Washington County. The per capita income is
right up there with, say, Appalachia. Everyone I knew was barely
scraping by. And here were these three rich kids popping around in
Casey's fabulous old white '54 Chevy convertible Steven's blue Chrysler
Le Baron as though tired, sad old Dead Rive were Scarsdale or Beverly
Hills. What in the hell their folks were doing in this part of Maine
at all I never could figure. Mount Deser sure. But DeadRiver? I
knew that the three families were fri enc back in Boston, and I guess
it was somebody's idea of getting awa^ from it all that brought them
there. But I don't think the kids knew either.
They resented it, though. That was for sure. And I think resenting it
made them crazy.
That was what really scared me.
All you had to do was look at them to see it. Casey most of all. You
could see it in her eyes. Something caught in the act of throwing
itself away, right there in front of you.
Recklessness. It scares me. It scares me today.
Because just writing this, that's a kind of recklessness too. It's
going to bring it all back to me and I've kept it down nicely for a
long
time now. Not just what happened. But how I felt about Casey, how
I feel about her still. I don't know which is worse, really, but I
guess
I'm going to find out.
Starting now.
I'll tell you how I knew she was crazy. It was the business with the
car.
It was June, a Saturday or Sunday it must have been, because Rafferty
and I were both off for the day. I remember it was unusually hot for
that time of year, so we'd stopped at Harmon's for a six-pack and
headed for the beach.
There's really only one good stretch of white sand around DeadRiver.
The rest is either stone or gravel or else a sheer drop off slate cliffs
nearlythirtyfeettothesea. Soon hot days just about everybody you know
is there, and this was maybe the second or third good day that year, so
naturally she was there too, way behind us by the cliffs, near the goat
trail. The three of them were there.
We were hardly aware of them at first. Rafferty was a lot more
interested in Lydia Davis, lying on a towel a few feet away. And I had
my eye on a couple of tourist girls. Occasionally the wind would slide
down the cliffs and pull the music from their radio in our direction,
but that was all. The beach was pretty crowded, and there was plenty
to look at.
Then I saw this girl walk by me to test the water. Just a glimpse of
her face as she passed. The water was much too cold, of course. Not
even the little kids were giving it a try. You wouldn't find much
swimming here till late July or August. I watched her shiver and step
backward when the first wave rolled over her feet. The black bikini
was pretty spectacular. Somehow she'd already managed a good deep tan.
From where I sat, I could see the goose bumps.
I watched her step forward. The water was up to her calves by
Rafferty was watching too. 'More guts than brains,' he said. I
mentioned that she was also beautiful.
The dive was clean and powerfi spouting, long dark hair plastered
smoothly back from the high, widow's peaked forehead.
I knew immediately she was not a native.
I remember her face looked so very naked just then, so clean and strong
and healthy. She could not have been bred around here. Not around
DeadRiver.
We're all of a type, you see. Or one of two.
We're all as poor and stunted and miserable as the scrub pines that
struggle up through the thin hard cliff side soil. Or else- like
Rafferty and me you grew up long and lean as the runners that crept
along the ground each spring and tried to strangle them. Either
But this girl showed you nothing. She was all smooth lines and
breeding and casual vigor. With skin most girls just dream of.
Surfacing sleek as a seal, laughing. In water the temperature of which
only a seal could love.
She opened her eyes. And that was another revelation.
They were such as hade of pale, pale blue that at first it was hare to
see any color in them at all. Dead eyes, my brown-eyed father calls
them. Depthless. Like the color of the sea when the sand is coral and
the water's calm and shallow. Reflecting light, not absorbing it
The cold must have been amazing. I watched her roll once through the
water and turn to face us again. Just her head and neck showing. I
could see her tremble, lips parted, blue eyes blinking, blind-seeming.
The sun was warm on me, but I could almost feel the ache in her
bones.
They say that very cold water can make a kind of ecstasy. Bi first
there's pain.
I saw the face muscles contract and knew she had the pain.
I watched the drops of water roll down her body as she wa dec back to
shore, sliding from muscle to muscle across the tight browr surface of
skin. The bikini told you everything about her but the color of her
