A Walk on the Beach in October
 
The odor of the Cape Cod marsh refreshes and sickens me at the same time. Refreshing---because, as we drive through the green-turning-brown sawgrass by way of a dirt road only accessible at low tide, I’m glad I’m not there, lodged among textbooks and electronic paraphernalia, with shirt sticking to sweaty sides and shoulders slumped, inducing a permanent lower-back twinge. Sickening---because the marsh’s spongy, fly-infested texture reminds me of decaying plant matter and decomposing fauna waterlogged beneath the deep mud and peat.

So, as we drove down the causeway leaving the Island where we were staying, windows rolled down despite the green-head biting flies, I simultaneously held my breath and inhaled the change of scene. My parents had scheduled a socially distanced walk along the ocean shore with a few old family friends who come to Cape Cod every summer, and I always used to get along well with the kids: Daniel, a year older than I, and Emma, a year younger. As our car clattered over the wooden bridge separating the marsh-covered island in Cape Cod Bay with the Wellfleetian ocean-side mainland, I could only wonder how their lives had transformed since we last saw each other several years ago.

We drove to the oceanside schoolyard and parked by the bus fleet, lifeless and half-sunk into the clamshell gravel, I suppose, because school was on Zoom that term. October in New England seemed so empty, compared to the summer. The other day, when we drove down to the pier where we used to play tennis, Mac’s Seafood was boarded up for the season, the Wellfleet Clam Shop had sold its last fried shellfish, and Sick Day, the surf shop, had put its whole catalog of merchandise on sale out on the front deck to attract the few local surfers not scared away by the sharks. When we arrived at the beach path, it was just us in the schoolyard parking lot, and I stared at the lusterless school buses, thinking of the duck pond where Daniel and I skipped rocks so many years prior. Then:

“Oh my gosh! It's so good to see you!” said my mother, opening the passenger side car door and stepping out onto the sandy shells. I followed suit.

“Hi! Wow, you’ve grown so tall,” said Daniel’s mom, walking down the hill towards the parking lot. “You were up to here just an instant ago!” She gestured to her shoulder area while deliberately craning her neck upwards.

“So how have you been in these crazy times…”

The chatter continued. Daniel, too, padded down the hill, brown flip-flops kicking up the sand as his Vizsla tugged at the leash, barking at our unfamiliar faces. In his other hand, he held a sandwich. He was now taller than I. He waved.

“Hey there,” I replied, running my hand through my hair to keep it from blowing in my eyes. The wind wasn’t too strong at the parking lot, but I knew that on the beach it would certainly howl. He took a bite out of the sandwich.

“From PB’s,” he mumbled, mouth full. “It's a croissant with egg and bacon,” I remembered that PB’s is a French bakery from which we used to buy tarts, chocolate, and cheese.

“Huh, I guess they’re still around,” I said, “though it must be hard to stay in business.”

“Yeah, that’s for sure. I was supposed to work at Mac’s this summer, but they wouldn’t hire me. It's probably better that way anyway.” He wiped some bacon bits from the corner of his mouth.

“You two take Casey and go on ahead,” called his mother, leaning against our car between my mom and Daniel’s dad, as Casey pawed at her waist. I couldn’t remember how far the schoolyard was from the beach, so I told Daniel to take the lead as we headed onto a narrow sandy footpath that cuts through the dunes. He let Casey off the leash, and Casey promptly trotted out ahead of us. For a while we walked in silence, taking turns throwing a tennis ball for Casey, who would break after the ball into the scraggly shrubbery and then return a few minutes later after sniffing the terrain on either side of the path.

“Where’s Emma?” I asked.

“She’s at school.”

“Oh really? In-person?”

“Yeah, they seemed confident they could create a closed environment of some sort. The perks of going to boarding school I guess.”

“Yeah. She’s dancing a lot?”

“I’m pretty sure. She said she loves St. Paul’s program, at least compared to the tiny studio in Clinton.”

“That's good,” I remembered that there was some rape scandal there a few years back. Wisely, I think, I declined to mention it.

“Yeah, sometimes I wish I were away.”

“Away from--?”

“My parents, school, parties...” I paused. “Tennis… Sometimes I see what my teachers want from me and I’m just like: ‘Sorry, but it’s just the same things all over again.’ Yeah?”

He nodded, looking down at his shoes and fiddling with a loose thread on his left pant leg.

The day was dry but overcast, though the clouds didn’t seem thick enough to rain. As we approached the crest of the dunes the wind began to gust. The chill of the first few days of Fall made me regret wearing just a hoodie and shorts. Daniel seemed alright, though, polishing his glasses on his shirt without a shiver. The path began to wind upwards, and we quickened our pace, taking the log steps carefully wedged in the sand two at a time. I wondered if my mother would have trouble with the incline, given her heart condition. I knew, though, that we were still quite far ahead of the adults. As we ascended, the vegetation thinned, until the rolling dunes were only covered with scattered patches of grass and squat bushes. It seemed so wild coming to the Cape in October, untamed almost because when the toddlers, the bikini-girls, and family vacationers disappeared, all that was left to see were the swaths of seagull nesting grounds and the bayberry bushes with hard fruit burgeoning from their leaves. Indeed, as the sound of the waves carried over the wind, I could hear the beach’s desolation within the arhythmic whisper of the wind-chopped waves breaking on the sand, as if it had begun to settle into winter hibernation, waiting for the stampede of feet to reawaken it in May.

As we crested the rise at the beach entrance, we passed an old couple huddled in their winter coats, perhaps more equipped for the wind than we were.

“Casey, c’mon!”

We stepped to the side so that they could pass. They mouthed a brief “Hi” with a smile as they brushed by us, slightly out of breath. From the top of the cliff, we could see out across the ocean to the gray horizon. I took off my sneakers and socks, my toes padding on the sand-covered red clay lining the beach. It was windy enough for us to put our masks in our pockets. Daniel held his flip-flops in his hand as we set out down the cliff.

“Race to the water?”

“Sure.”

Running down the sandy hill pumped my limbs with exhilaration as we sprinted side by side down to the waves. Casey overtook both of us with ease. I beat Daniel, though, and dipped my toe into the water with a wince.

“It sucks that we can’t surf here anymore,” I said. “My mom says it’s too dangerous to even paddle out.”

"Yeah. But now it might be too cold for the sharks?” I recalled the gory newspaper image of the dismembered man who died on that very beach a few summers ago.

“I dunno, I wouldn’t risk it. Plus, I don’t know if I could survive the chill of more than a few October waves, even with a wetsuit,” I said.

“It’s been too long since those lessons,” he said, staring out at the waves.

“So which way do we go?” I asked, looking in both directions.               

“Let’s go left.”

So we did. We walked along the firm part of the sand, the damp part that always gets submerged at high tides. Daniel seemed to grow as we went, his legs blending into the stones and crab shells dotting the sand, his face turning into shadow as the sun moved to our backs. The beach was slanted, so we trotted with slight limps, dancing back and forth to avoid getting splashed by the remnants of the frigid incoming waves. Then Daniel found a dark bulge in the distance. It was laced in seaweed and flotsam, but when we picked it out of the gunk we could see strips of tattered red and muted gold nylon held together by decaying seams, the remnants of a massive kite, perhaps left behind on the beach from the summer. It was nearly ten feet long and five wide, with the brass bars that were supposed to hold its structure taut bent and rusted. The tails of the kite were so tangled in brown algae that it seemed to have risen from the marsh itself. The string had fallen off.

“Someone probably flew it on a windy day like today and the string snapped.”

“Might have gone out to sea for a while, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Daniel brushed the sand off and held the nose of the kite, letting it billow out behind us as we walked. We started talking about college apps and his plans to take a gap year until it all blows over and sail around the Mediterranean.

“You know my Grandmother is going to give me her boat this summer.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, she owns a sailboat and it’s going to be my graduation present. Needs some repairs, though, so we’re doing that right now but, umm, yeah we bought a mooring in Provincetown, and we’ll launch it in May when we come up again.”

“Damn, that’s actually insane--you know I’m gonna have to take a ride in that right? Next time we come out here?” He glanced at me and pulled out his phone, shading it from the already-diluted light filtering down from the clouds.

“Here; check it. She was named Island Girl, but we’re going to rename her once we repaint.” It was almost 20 feet long, with a spinnaker. I ground my teeth because I could imagine that boat bleeding money, and I wished I could scoop some up to pay for my mother’s medical bills. 

“Have you been fishing lately? With that we could go in the ocean; why stay in the bay?” I said.

“For sure.” He smiled.

I threw a tennis ball into the waves for Casey, who returned with his prize, triumphant and soggy.

“I probably shouldn’t have done that,” I said, as Casey shook the seawater and sand out of his hair right in front of us.

But I didn’t know when I would be out on the Cape Cod beaches again. My dad didn’t want to spend anything more than the school fees, not after we took out a mortgage when the stock market crashed last March. I stopped walking, then, pulling my hood up over my face and staring out at the choppy water.

“I’m kinda tired.” Daniel nodded and said something, I don’t know what. The wind was too loud, rushing onshore, skimming over the top of the white sea-foam. I couldn’t see the parents down back from where we came. So, instead of continuing to walk along the sandy slope, I stuck my hands in my pockets, turned my back to the wind, headed towards the cliffs, and sat down in the dry sand, feet facing the ocean. Daniel sat down beside me.

“Pass the kite.”

I took it in my hand and slowly leaned back against the sand, knees bent toward the sky. I pulled my hood over my eyes to shade against the residual light coming through the clouds. If Daniel was speaking, the wind carried his words away. I smothered my face in the half-rotten, barnacle-covered kite, wishing that it would fly and take me along for the ride, out across the ocean, until one day the tide would bring me back to the beach, for some late season beach-walkers to find my body. Daniel lay down beside me, perhaps. The sand absorbed the heat of my feet and hands, cool between my toes, knotted in my overgrown hair. It started to rise, first covering my feet and then my ankles, fine grains seeping into my pockets and my mask, pleasantly chafing against my skin. It rose over my arms and shoulders and thighs, burying me beneath a layer of cool compression. It pooled around my neck, too thick for me to turn my head towards Daniel. It rose and rose, above my waist, over my knees, around my mouth and forehead, sealing the hoodie over my eyes. I couldn’t feel my hands either. My eyes were the last to go, the sand scarring and scratching my corneas, forcing my eyelids closed. I thought about how when we last came to Cape Cod over the summer, I saw one toddler burying another in the sand, laughing as he used a pink shovel to completely cover his friend. I wondered if Daniel had ever been buried. At last, I saw the kite fly; staggering upwards along with the gusts of wind, ragged, torn, barnacle-clad, free of the string tying it to any human beach-goer… I wasn’t sure if it ever made it out to sea again, but I bet it floated out on the low-tide wind.

Then I was in the car with my mom and dad again, listening to SiriusXM radio play Bruce Springsteen’s live concerts from the 80s. As we drove back across the marsh, windows rolled down, I stared at my phone, wondering when the beach ever got so cold.