by Roy Freirich
Sam eyes the comma of grime crossing the Boy’s cheek, the smudge on the side of his neck, and turns to yank on the exam room sink tap and adjust the temperature. “Maybe we’ll just clean you up a little, for now. How’s that sound—?”
“Sam . . .” Paula’s warning voice spins him back: the Boy cringes there, wide-eyed and gasping at the gush of water bursting from the faucet. Sam flashes a hand out to slam it off. He smiles, too fast, too big. “Or not—later works, too!”
He and Paula trade a glance that at once suggests and agrees on the likely but vague initial diagnosis: trauma, and what it first requires—slow, careful going.
As if in agreement, the Boy has reached into his shorts pocket and pulled out his black little rectangle of a handheld electronic game. He grips it like something ready to fly off, and the gaze he turns to Sam now beseeches.
It’s a relief, for the moment, at least. Any semblance of normalcy is welcome for any sense of calm it might restore. Sam nods, and pitches his voice soothingly. “Hmmm. One of those, sure.” Sam looks closer at the inert thing. “Looks like the batteries are—” He checks himself. “Let’s see if we can find you some new ones.”
2
Heat seems to descend all at once this morning, baking the damp planks of the boardwalk in a torpid haze. Chief slows his patrol Jeep by the seaward rail near a group of teenagers eyeing him sideways, a few of them girls in a giggling huddle. He gives them his wry wave as he rolls by. Square, loser, is no doubt what they all think, but ten years from now, they’ll be getting jobs and knocked up and less hip by the minute.
Near the end of the broadest section of boardwalk, Chief steers for an access ramp to the beach and trades a nod out his open window with Sam Carlson just biking by, on his way to the Pines Beach clinic, somehow on time today, go figure.
Down on the sand, Chief slows again along the kelp-strewn high-tide line, near folks spread out in groups of gaudy towels or folding beach chairs, with their noses in those sleek eReaders, or their ears plugged with iPod or -pad or -phone buds, wires dangling. Why show up at all, just to tune everything out?
Not that anybody misses it, but there used to be plenty more drama: benders turning into bar fights, bachelorette parties ending ugly with blotchy shouting faces streaked with mascara, frat guys breaking limbs on dares. Of course, the place invites it. With no cars but beach taxis, it’s always been a DUI-free-zone, where a .12 blood-alcohol level is anyone’s hangover to have. The Pier View, the Pelican, Claude’s Clam Shack—for years, none of them cut anybody off until they couldn’t stand, and customers did get plenty clumsy sooner than later, with cheap well drinks at Happy Hour prices all night long, or tall-highball themed concoctions of sugary crème de menthe and rum, “The Haymaker,” or the standby “Sex on the Beach,” featuring peach schnapps and vodka.
Last few years, lawsuits have made bar owners wary; doormen check IDs, and pourers prefer their customers ambulatory. Kids who used to get wild seem busy with their own gadgetry now, and at their worst, content to just appear menacing—it’s a fashion statement these days.
Just ahead, four college guys try to look like players who mean business, but their sleeveless college tees showing off pumped “guns,” their surf jams, rapper shades and gleaming spiky hair are just more MTV beach party. They share the same goofy white-boy, pimp-roll gait, pausing to laugh with a hand hovering over their crotches, bending stiffly forward and back at the waist. Bozos, out from the local schools, SUNY at Brookhaven, or Hofstra, probably.
Chief looks away as he rolls by and heads down an emptier stretch of beach, where somebody’s bonfire last night has left telltale gray cinders and a charred log, ready for any sun-dazed tourist to blunder into and maybe get burned. He pulls up and climbs out, not so fast since sciatica has been nagging him and sending a funny-bone-like tingling down one leg. He squats to check the log: dead cold. But a yard away a flash of red catches his eye, brightness almost buried in the beige sand. He digs out a bikini top: C-cups, gotta be, and he imagines, or rather remembers, tits this size, with the unique heft that always stirred him, from bar girls in Subic, or some in high school, not a long list but a few; is there anything else on earth that matches the warm, luxurious consistency, tenderly weighed in his hand?
A few yards on, he checks the rickety wooden boat shed, all peeling one-bys and rusty nails. He pushes open the door, scraping the bottom edge through loose sand, his eyes slowly adjusting to the dimness to take in the tarp-covered little sailboat, the jerry cans and coiled lines, and at his feet, a tiny papery stub—a nice fat roach, charred at one end, but a quarter-inch worth with enough bud inside for a buzz, not that he’s interested. It fogged him up too much the last time he and Jan took a few hits, and she had chuckled at his spaciness, which got him compensating with a bit more alertness, which of course she took for paranoia and found even more hilarious. He bends for the roach and steps back out into the glare to tear it up, wondering what else the kids might be into this year. PCP, maybe some other rave club or date rape drug? He hasn’t kept up, and there’s no need, since Long Island Iced Tea is the poison of choice around here, and trouble enough for most.
Except, of course, for the group of locals idling by now, stringy-haired surfers in unzipped wet suits, faces greasy from sunblock, carrying shortboards and trailing their leashes.
“Hey, fascist oppressor,” one greets him.
Chief barely glances his way, knowing the voice from every season of his decade on Carratuck. “Up yours, sharkbait.”
One of these stoners lets out a goofy chuckle, and they plod on toward the bright Atlantic, today barely rippling between slow sets of glassy two-footers, hardly a reason to get wet.
For all their piercings and tats, Chief knows they’re really just puppy dogs who want to catch a wave, pop a Red Stripe, smoke a jay and get laid, end of story. They talk a line about locals-only on this stretch, but Chief has heard them whine and bicker and fail to appoint one of their own to tell some clueless city kid to find another spot to get drilled.
As Chief scrapes the shed door shut again, his earbud bleeps and he clicks the call through. “Chief Mays.”
“Chief, good. It’s Sam. Listen . . .”
Chief feels the slow, careless morning already slipping away as he climbs back into the Jeep, still cool from the AC. He tilts his head back and a glint of sun off the surf wash makes him blink; his eyes feel tender from a poor night’s sleep. He sighs as he weighs the concern in Sam’s voice, and runs him through the short list of probabilities that put them where they are, apparently—with a little kid wandering alone, found dirty, hungry and silent. “Well, it’s a single mom or dad, some kind of misunderstanding. They left the kid with a neighbor or someone, waiting on a babysitter that never showed. Happens every other year. You know, or one parent thought the other had the boy, like that . . .”
Chief hears Sam’s silence as skepticism, but it’s early yet and more than likely that a sheepish, hungover parent will show at the substation or clinic to claim the kid—not the first time, sad to say. Carlson is just too new to know it.
“—just concerned that something’s happened, since he seems frightened. He won’t talk, he won’t write his name or his parents’. It’s something you see in people who’ve witnessed something upsetting . . .”
No one likes being talked down to, and Chief has had to draw the line before with these clinic guys slumming from the city, who think no one will ever know as much. “Understood, Sam, overwhelming experience, post-trauma stress disorder, sure. Upsetting things upset people, especially kids.”
“Well, there’s just a little more concern here, since we do have a few more question marks.”
There’s a hiss and snap on the line; a kite snagged in the cell tower, probably, or pigeons, but it clears just as suddenly, and Chief tries not to sound impatient as he pushes back: “Sure, but we get CPS here today and then he’s in the system,
ferry to the mainland, ward of the court, in a foster house. It’s a judge’s order to get him out. Sound better than giving it a few hours?”
“A few hours. Meanwhile . . .”
Chief puts the Jeep in gear, steering around another group of families setting up for the day. “Coloring book? Puzzle?” he offers.
Another gap of silence, until Chief finally does them both a favor: “Keep me posted, Sam.” He clicks off.
3
This morning Cort has been following a new hashtag, #sleepless43, with silent alerts, and now the tweets are coming faster, buzzing her cell as four of her high school classmates in a quick row join the game—Jenn and Cami in the Hamptons, Deena stuck in Bayshore the whole break, Evi on the far, tony end of Carratuck, from her music exec dad’s mansion on a gated dead end. The whole thing is crazy stupid, but harmless enough, so why not? She checks the time in her screen’s corner and quickly thumbs, “here”—all that’s required, every fifteen minutes on the quarter hour, to stay in the game.
Hands on a Hardbody—that was the old documentary movie everybody downloaded to laugh at how pitiful those rednecks were, standing in some shopping mall with their hands on a Ram Runner or Doredo, or whatever monster truck, to see who would let go last and win the gross, gas-guzzling, planet-killing thing. This contest isn’t so different, a virtual version, more like, with nothing but bragging rights to whoever tweets on schedule the longest to prove it. A prize, in fact, would probably ruin everything, since somebody would get the bright idea to team up and tweet from each other’s accounts in shifts so they could split up whatever they won, or else figure some automated workaround with a client app, which someone probably has already.
Cinder, a Junior and a year ahead but dumb enough to get left back, started the whole dumb thing and is a famous complainer and kind of a hypochondriac. Her dad is mean, she has a stomachache, or she barely cut her foot on a pop-top or a shell and the doctor at the Urgent Care made her wait. Her eyes are dry, or her ears hurt from her earbuds. Cort can’t remember if the “43” is supposed to mean forty-three hours straight, as a goal, or what—but who has time to scroll back?
She double taps her home button and brings up messages; pathetic, because it shouldn’t be all about whether or not Tay is here yet—for god’s sake, get a life, right?—but she checks texts for the tenth time in as many minutes and twitches her sunburned shoulder beneath her shirt and scratchy bikini strap. Probably she has gone with the wrong suit—this tiny retro madras with little boy-short bottoms—since it does nothing for her broad, too-flat chest, which Tay seemed more distracted by last year than not, glancing and glancing away, as if she didn’t see. The boy-shorts ride up plenty, though, and she has caught some looks and had to adjust to avoid the complete wedgie disaster when she steps out of the surf, before she even wipes the salt from her eyes or twists the water out of her hair.
Last year, she met Tay at a full-on run from halfway down the boardwalk, across the dunes from the marina to the bottom of the main beach stairs, so lame, even though his smile seemed really glad before he downshifted back into his cooler, blissed-out surfer self. This year, she knows better, to go with a vague shy wave as she glides up, distracted, with maybe an eye on her cell or, even better, someone else to wave to on her way to him.
For Mom, who hates all boys, Cort has the perfect alibi this year: the chattery, kind of tweaky lady with the crooked lipstick and her big-eyed eight-year-old boy at Roscoe’s Market looking for a babysitter, staying in a weekly bungalow on Spinnaker just a few lanes over. The little boy was so cute, with eyelashes a mile long, holding a little GameBox, smiling and saying, “Hilo,” like a combination of hi and hello. Cute, but maybe a handful; the woman had left a wacky, stressed message begging Cort, but that was already days ago.
Mom will never check up, anyway, and just needs to hear a story, and the little details here are plenty enough to sound real and make total sense with Carratuck’s house-share and hook-up mania. Not so great to lie, but better than sitting on their patio with iced teas all day, listening to Mom’s running commentary on every passing person’s sad lack of physical charm and fashion sense: “Whoa, sunburned muffin-top—lipo and bronzer, anyone?” or “Greg Norman called and wants his lime-green pleat-fronts back.”
Cort glances up to see the local doctor guy who gave her a tetanus shot last year biking by and almost waves, but BLIIIING!—incoming! In a little blue rectangle on her cell’s screen:
Just got here! East Beach!!!?
She promised herself she wouldn’t, but how can she not? So she does, over the broadest straightaway of the boardwalk, by the old Skee-Ball parlor and the ices stand, down a worn beach ramp and past a patrol Jeep and a group of families of kids and dogs, to his hard arms and the light of his deep green eyes, she runs.
A silhouette against the flash and glare from the sea, he stands with his shortboard leaning against a shoulder, a hand draped around the nose, the other thumbing his cell. She slows to watch the light find him as she does, approaching to see the sheen of his half-peeled, soaked wet suit and the smoothness of his broad caramel chest, drops of water shimmering there, and a spike of wet hair hanging over his forehead.
Last second, he sees her, but she is already near enough to bump him with a hip and laugh, so she does, and his eyes squint as his face completely lights with gladness to see her. Her.
“You!”
“You!” They shout witlessly at each other.
He yanks her into a one-armed half hug, the rough shoulder-bump of guys, but with his eyes happy instead of hooded and cool.
And now they are simply regarding each other with smiles like laughter that cannot be stopped, as a group of tweener girls goes by, teasers in tiny halter bikinis and hushed pursed lips at this boy and girl standing like it’s just so completely on, as his eyes stay with hers, only hers, and he asks, “Where to?”
“I gotta stay low, told my mom I was babysitting.”
“Original.”
Her cell buzzes and she curses softly, yanking it up for a glance. “Oh, fuck.”
“What?”
“Don’t ask, it’s too dumb.” Rolling her eyes, she thumb-types back, like answering roll call in homeroom.
4
Sam’s day finds its own momentum, ten minutes or so per patient, no breaks, as he ducks into one room and then the next:
“Paula, curettage in Three. Maybe stitches. Grab that gauze?”
“Do not ice it when you get home. It destroys the tissue. Just the salve, okay?”
And the next: “If I can just . . . Hold her still? Wait, wait, okaaaay . . . there. All good!”
Most are victims of typical mishaps—a knee scraped on a jetty rock, a finger burned on a hot pot handle, a baby wailing with a grain of sand in its eye—but are there somehow more than usual lately? A few complaints don’t quite add up: the heightened noise sensitivity, the severe headache with no apparent cause or history, the sudden-onset restless leg syndrome. Some of these are returnees from earlier in the season, who’ve shared the same wry observations about Sam’s worn look, and Carratuck’s hard-partying, “I’ll sleep when I die” ethos.
Chief is wrong about the Boy, it turns out. Nothing—book, puzzle, cartoon DVD in the waiting room—seems to interest him; he sits all afternoon in a plastic chair, his eyes fixed on his little handheld game. Sam makes a point of pausing every once in a while to smile at him and ask, “How we doin’, Captain?” The Boy’s impassive gaze unnerves, though at least his panic has subsided.
But when the sky outside the big storefront windows turns streaky with gold and purple, still no one has come for him; Sam’s got a Highlights magazine and an old Blues Clues DVD ready for the chief, since he has no better ideas, and since police and Child Protective Services jurisdictions dovetail in these cases, as they should. If nothing too untoward has occurred, it’s reason enough to think the Boy will be fine sooner than
later. If anything has, then certainly County needs to establish custody and a longer-term clinical setting for their own specialists to treat him.
When Chief walks in, wary, Sam keeps his gaze carefully neutral. They confer while Paula straightens up and gets ready to close, hovering within earshot. Sam pitches his voice low, and asks, unnecessarily, “No one?”
Chief glances at the Boy, his lips pursed, musing, “Yeah, no. Nothing. Go figure.”
“I’ll call CPS.” Sam checks for the number on a clipboard hung above a shelf and pulls out his cell.
Chief checks his watch and shakes his head. “Damn. Next ferry’s not ’til tomorrow. Might as well call then. Meanwhile, the kid’s in good hands.”
Sam hesitates.
Chief sighs. “Look, Sam, when I say the system is last resort, I know, okay? I called and put a kid there, year before last. Let’s just say foster care did not do well by her. Let’s give the parents a chance to get here with some answers.”
The logic isn’t without merit, but is Chief offering to babysit? Sam barely remembers his wife’s name, though it’s not so many months since she and Chief and he and Kath had shared an awkward, obligatory dinner at Claude’s Clam Shack. Janice, Janet? Whichever, nobody’s wife likes to be ambushed with a new responsibility.
For a moment they regard each other silently, stonewalling, only the sounds of Paula shutting cabinet doors and their day aide Andrew shuffling charts intrude. Sam finally offers, “Well, we have some cartoon DVDs you can take with him.”
Chief makes his eyes wide. “Hey, you know what? Wouldn’t . . . it be better if you and Kathy keep an eye on him?”
“I’m not so sure about that . . .” Sam tries to demur. Kathy would be intrigued by the Boy first, and then obsessed with him and what his story might be, imagining the worst. She might try too hard, smile too big, talk too much to fill the silences. Her fear for him would feed on itself and make everyone edgy, when the exact opposite is required.