by Jayne Louise
‘Are you going to be like that all day?’ I asked then.
Jem shrugged. ‘No. If you want me to help I will.’
‘I want you to,’ I said, ‘because I need the potty now.’
She nodded, and then after a moment looked down to see if there was anything within easy reach. She didn’t make much effort.
‘Oh!’ I said, exasperated. ‘Here they come, too.’ So I just opened the three buttons of the gray-green shirt and took it off for her. ‘Put this on, at least, and stay on the seat.’
She giggled. ‘You’ve got my bikini bottoms on?’
I looked down, nearly forgetting that I’d grabbed the first thing I’d found– no better than she would have done, I’m sure! The little bikini bottoms were pretty snug, and really low cut– she likes them that way. ‘Oh!’ I said again. ‘If that’s how you want to be–!’ And I shoved them down right there in the cockpit and hopped down into the cabin to use the potty.
The motor yacht was bearing down on us when I came back. ‘Give him room,’ I told Jem. ‘Just don’t run out of water.’
She nodded, squinting against the sun at the depth finder. ‘I’m almost put of the channel now,’ she said. ‘As long as there’s room for him, we’ll be fine.’
‘Is the board up?’
‘It’s down as much as you put it down.’
‘Slow down a little.’
She nodded and reached back for the throttle, screwing it back just a little. At that moment the breeze lifted the shirt away from her chest. The powerboat guys had binoculars out. I wasn’t sure they were looking at us, although they might have been. It was really a tricky place in the river. But for a second I felt totally naked in front of them. Well, I was totally naked, but I felt like they’d seen me and blushed terribly.
Jules handed me her long t-shirt and I got it over my head just as the powerboat came around the corner. We were now both on the same section of river, the channel was narrow, and they were doing about 14 knots. I had Jem back it way down and let us drift out of the channel, and the motor boat went by us about 50 yards away. They all waved again. There were three guys on the bridge and one in the cockpit. They didn’t know what they’d seen of us at all, only that I had been topless for a moment and that Jem’s shoulders were bare when we’d gone through the bridge. We’ll never even know if they thought Jem was me the second time, because she had on the gray-green shirt and I was standing up in the open hatch.
Jules brought me up the doughnut and juice and I sat opposite Jem and had my breakfast. That was about 8:00. Then the little darling asked if either of us would like to sun with her, because she wanted someone to put lotion on her back. Below the Lower Bank bridge it is very open without any towns and hardly any houses along the water, and the river widens and we can skim down along the edge of the channel pretty fast and not hit anything. I made Jem put some bottoms on at least– she actually put on the ones I’d taken off! –and those two went up to lie on the foredeck and sun for a while. They were both on their tummies when we passed some fishermen standing in the shallows casting lines ion the Atlantic County side. We all waved. I was feeling really privileged by now– like Jem I would have loved to stay naked all day. I took off the t-shirt and then, only as a second thought, put the gray-green shirt back on. I didn’t button it at all but let it fall open as I leaned back on the port-side seat and sighed in the breeze.
It did remind me that we had enough air to save gas, and finally, not even telling those two, I began to crank out the little jib above their heads. Our course was still too much of a tight tack to make it worth pulling up everything else, but Dove heeled a little as I sheeted it in, and I was able to back off on the motor a little. Once I turned a little more south and Jules yelled back, ‘Hey! Too much shade on me here!’
I made a face at her. ‘It’s a sailboat, honey,’ I called up. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll be there soon enough.’ After all the tide was with us by then.
A few hours later we went under the Parkway bridge with all sail up, but those two were back on their tummies and never even moved. I didn’t either. Dove was pulling really well on the breeze, even with the canoe back there and the engine off, and I sat well out on the high side, folding the tails of the shirt into my lap and didn’t even flinch when the top of it blew open. The traffic was way up there on the bridge and 90 percent of them wouldn’t even care that there was a sailboat sailing under them, even if one of the chicks on it had her chest hanging out.
We passed a father and son sailing two Lasers together, and they waved. I waved back at once. The boy seemed cute, maybe about 14 or so, with little– I should say very little– wet blue shorts on. Leaning back with his feet under the straps made his chest and stomach look very strong and athletic. He was well tanned, too. The father was pretty fit-looking himself. I like seeing people being so healthy like that.
We bore off more east then towards the end of Osborne Island. Beyond that lies Great Bay and the long series of islands that extend out from Mystic Islands towards the ocean. The islands stop well short of that and on the very end of the last one is a very nice little beach, calm and salty and blown with wind and spray like a desolate seashore somewhere. But it’s still about three miles across open water from the open ocean and four miles, at least, from the top of Brigantine. From here you can see all the stupid skyscraper casinos of Atlantic City. At night they light up the sky like some alien spaceship is landing there.
I love the end of Great Bay Boulevard– Daddy and I have gone down there a few times just to look at the bay there. But that is the worst part about it, and it’s a big worst part. As remote as it is, it’s still too easily accessible. The bridges between the islands are very narrow and always crowded with fishermen. Lovers drive down there and throw their condoms out of the car. People get wasted there and leave their cans in the sand. It’s what Daddy calls a ‘wasteland’. As good as it looks when you are there, it is definitely not the kind of place you plan on going to lie naked on a beach and collect sun in peace.
On the last island of the chain, over a few narrow, wooden bridge, is an old hotel that is used as a research station for the weather service or the Coast Guard or someone. It is always occupied but not by very many people. Beyond that, on its own island a quarter-mile or more away, is the abandoned fishery. There is a channel inside it for the research station and on the other side is nothing but shallows and occasional marsh. We go by this place several times every summer, sometimes stopping to explore. We’re really not supposed to, but no one ever stops to chase us away. A few times there have been other people there– stupid speedboat guys go there to drink beer and make out with their girlfriends and we have seen their litter from that. But it’s also funny that when we see someone else already there, we don’t stop, and when other people see us there, apparently they don’t stop either. So we were hoping to find it all to ourselves.
‘So far, so good,’ I said as we neared the eastern side of it.
‘Yes,’ Jem said, staring through the binoculars. I could feel the tenseness in her voice. She had put on the brown t-shirt, but she obviously didn’t like having to wear it.
We could all see the light through the blown-out windows, the strips of lath and shingles dangling in the air, and the flurry of seabirds going in and out of what’s left if the roof. It was spooky in a very romantic kind of way. The usual way to approach the island is from the east, where there is a little beach. The speedboat people just run their boats onto the sand and stay there till the tide changes. Right now there was no one there– a good sign.
Jules came aft along the high side, her soft light-brown hair billowing like a banner in the light breeze. ‘Hi,’ she said happily. ‘Are we going to stop?’
‘We don’t know,’ I said quietly, and steered a little more downwind, up the Bay. Jem bent to release the main sheet and let it jibe over. Jules trimmed the outer jib a little. Going mostly downwind there was little air moving on deck and the sun, just past dir
ectly overhead, was blindingly bright and hot. We were all sweating, even me, even though all I had on was the gray-green shirt with about three buttons buttoned.
A few other boats went by in the eastern channel, heading up towards home or down towards Brigantine. None of them were very close to us. I steered us around to the north side of it, between the fishery and the research station. Jules drew the traveler up a little. Dove heeled. Jem scanned the place through the binoculars again. It was very quiet, even across the channel where we should have heard fishermen chatting from the bridge upwind. In fact there was no one there right now– they’d all be at work. This was probably the best opportunity we’d have.
Jem and Jules must have realized that too. Jem peeled the t-shirt off again. Jules stood up and took off the little white tanktop too. ‘You’re next,’ she teased me.
‘Not yet,’ I said seriously.
We turned round the northern corner and and trimmed up sail for a tight port tack, towards the channel we’d been in when we came up here. This was the back of the fishery, the protected side where the fishing boats used to moor and unload. At the docks we saw no one, but it’s not the best place to tie up. It’s rough and dangerous and the docks are not in good shape to either walk on or trust your boat to. A sailboat about the size of Dove was coming out towards the channel, but they were obviously going right by and did not seem to pay any attention to us.
Jem saw them but still stood up on the cockpit seats without caring that she was topless. ‘Looks good,’ she said into the binoculars.
‘Are you saying that because you want it to be, or because you don’t see anyone?’ I asked.
‘I don’t see anyone,’ she said. ‘I say we go for it.’ She lowered the binoculars. ‘Come on, we need this adventure.’
I laughed. ‘Like we haven’t had enough adventure already?’
Jules laughed too. ‘Well, it will be the perfect ending to our adventuresome days, then.’
‘Yes,’ Jem insisted. ‘The denouement.’
I laughed again. ‘Go up and free up the anchor.’
‘Yes!’ Jem cheered, and practically ran up the side deck.
I winched in two jibs and put the boat around into the wind so that the headway died off. Jules let the anchor go, a little early, and I released the main sheet and sort of backed the boom a little to help the boat fall backwards. They tied off the anchor line at about 30 feet. ‘The tide is going to change,’ I said. ‘I want to set the other anchor.’
They both whined, but I insisted. So we brought the canoe along the port side and lowered the smaller anchor into it, and then we all had to discuss what we’d bring. ‘Nothing,’ Jem said. ‘I’m not bringing anything.’
‘You’re going like that?’ Jules wondered.
Jem smiled at her. ‘Almost.’
‘Boots,’ I said. ‘If we’re exploring we should bring the boots.’
Jules nodded. ‘I’ll get them!’ She dipped her head down the foredeck hatch and came up, one pair at time, with all three pairs for us.
Jules and I furled the main on the boom while Jem packed a backpack with sand towels and bathing towels, and then I got out another backpack to hold a few juice boxes in the cooler bag with two ice bricks. I also got the small first-aid kit out of the cupboard. This is a place where a big long gash from broken glass is not impossible, you know.
Another boat went by, not far off, but Jules was already standing in the canoe on the other side of the boat and they never saw that she was topless. Jem came up with her backpack then, handing it over to her, and as soon as the other boat was gone past the end of the island she shoved down the bikini bottoms and dropped them down the hatch. Jules laughed. But we might have expected nothing more, you know.
I didn’t tell them I’d brought ‘safety clothes’ just in case we were visited before we had a chance to escape to the boat. So when Jules pushed off the little pink panties, the only thing she’d had on all day, she was probably surprised that I didn’t say anything.
I’d put a long mooring line on the little anchor and we were able to carry it all the way in to the island. Jem had got her boots on in the canoe and stepped over, where the water was only a foot deep, and helped us ease the canoe into the bog. Jules handed her the anchor. It was scarcely long enough to plant into the squishy bank. At first she tried to pull the boat in with it, almost lost her footing once, and did end up sliding down on her bottom in the wet sea grass. ‘You twit,’ I said to her. ‘You can’t move the boat. The other anchor is set.’
‘Oh,’ she said, and watched as I took one of the canoe’s mooring lines and tied it to the anchor line’s thimble, leading it another 15 feet ashore before clipping the anchor back to it. Well, it wasn’t supposed to hold the boat, only give us a safety line in case the other anchor dragged. This way, we wouldn’t lose the boat and be stuck here.
That reminds me– I also packed the cell phone.
Jules had tied up her boots too and joined Jem for a stroll up towards the building while I sat on the bank and tied up mine. The boots are all the same, except that mine and Jem’s are olive and Jule’s are dull black. They are rubber to be waterproof and have big thick lug soles for walking in mud and marshes, up to about 15 inches deep. They lace all the way up to just under the knee and have a soft flannel lining so they’re soft. They are best with a pair of athletic socks under them, but we’ve worn them many times without anything, just for expeditions like this. And once I wore them with thigh-high black stockings– but that’s another story!
So we explored the fishery again, going through the broken old building and piecing together what they place must have been like from what we could see now. There is a great big hall, all open to the air on three sides, where fish were thrown out of the nets and sorted, and then there is a processing room where I guess they chopped them all up and then a packaging room. Fifty or 75 years ago this was probably cheap real estate. Now it looks like the perfect place for some New Yorkers to build an exclusive condo resort.
Up stairs were offices and what were probably washrooms for the fish-cleaning crew. That must have been an awful job, working in the heat of summer with the stink of dead fish all around and hordes of greenheads eating the sweat and slime off you and no place to get clean and cool, and all this while waiting for a boat to take you home to Tuckerton again at the end of the day. The poor guys must have felt trapped out here.
Jem, however, was in her element out here, free and naked in the boiling hot sun with absolutely nothing to do. There weren’t many flies out here any more and the Off helped with the ones there were. Practically living in SPF 30 we weren’t worried about the sun right now. And the boots made us brave about tromping off anywhere, over broken glass and splintered wood and prickly vines. We selected a pretty safe little spot of sand that had a view of the anchored boat and was mostly free of bird poop, and lay down there with the marsh grass to hide us from nearby boaters. We each took off the boots, drank juice, and applied lotion to ourselves. I think we were there about an hour. The grass that blocked all views of us here also blocked the breeze, and with the building directly behind us the air wasn’t going anywhere anyway. We were all drenched in sweat, the kind of discomfort that drinking two or three juice-box drinks does not help. Finally I got bored and got up, half crawling to stay hidden from passing motorboats, and stepped into the shade of the building to lace up my boots. ‘Where is she going?’ Jules asked behind me.
‘Nowhere,’ Jem said. ‘There’s nowhere to go.’
I looked back and Jules was half-rolled around onto her side with her head swiveled around looking after me. ‘I’m just stretching my legs,’ I told her, and she nodded a little in that position and watched me go.
I went into the south end of the building and actually made my way up some dangerous-looking stairs to the loft. I wasn’t going to go too far up here, but I was eager to have a view of the bay from this high up. I found an even scarier set of stairs lead
ing up from there, but it was firmly fastened to the wall and I dared to ascend all the way up to the next floor. There I got a magnificent view of the channel we had come up and also of my two sisters, lying there on their backs under the dazzling sunlight, Jem on her pale green blanket and Jules on her faded lavender one, with the boots standing at the corners like fenceposts around their private little sanctuary.
I got back down safely but decided not to tell them about going up there because I’d only have to worry about them going up too. I wandered back through the fish hall and out to the little beach there. Almost immediately I perceived a speedboat close by and ducked back into the shade, crouching down beside a table. Then they went by, two guys and two young women in a Checkmate, the motor rumbling like some macho guy’s daydream as they looked over the place. Maybe they’d never seen it before. I could hear the women talking to them, maybe suggesting it looked romantic, but they wouldn’t want to actually go here. I hoped that’s what they said.
I got tired of crouching and I saw a safe spot to lower one knee and rest a moment. The people in the Scarab were going. I got up as soon as I could and followed them, making my way through the dark shade of the long open room to the northern end, where I hid inside the doorway and peered around to see that they would not come around to where Dove was. As soon as I put my head out the guy hit the gas and the big engine ran up, carrying them off in a bit mess of white water. The two women were sitting in the backwards seats looking straight at me. I’m not sure they could actually see me through the mist behind their boat. I even stepped out the door way and stood there staring at them, like a haunting ghost saying, ‘Good. And stay out!’
At the docks I peered over the bulkhead and watched the crabs crawling around on the bottom. Over all the time the sand has silted up and now the boat slips that 70-foot fishing boats used to use are only a few feet deep. At the bottom of one lay the remains of a cute little rowboat, with its curved prow just sticking out of the water. That reminded me– it was nearly low tide again.