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A Beach Story

Joe Quigley

    I told the boss that a guy down the shore named Slink owed money to an associate of mine. No one knew Slink, not by that name, anyway. I told the boss that my associate couldn’t collect the debt and offered me the job, and the boss gave me the okay as long as I kicked him the usual twenty percent. No one, not even Turtle, asked for the name of my associate. That was good because my associate didn’t exist.
    “I already told you that you ain’t gotta split it down the middle,” Turtle said in the car. He talked like he had a tube sock stuck in his mouth and when he became excited and talked too fast you really couldn’t understand a word. The beer didn’t help. He was Puerto Rican but slurred like a mick after a few cold ones.
    “You’re coming for the job,” I said, “so we split it down the middle.”
    Turtle shook his head. His belly jiggled slightly. “Fuckin micks are bad with money.”
    “Fuck you,” I said. I passed him a beer from the twelve-pack between my legs. “If we’re so bad with money—”
    “You’re gonna say it again?”
    “If we’re so bad with money then why do you work with us, you beaner fuck?”
    “Micks are a bunch of ignorant motherfuckers. And beaners are Mexican, by the way.”
    I paused, then added: “Beaner.”
    Turtle and I went to the shore every summer and this time was no different except for the business with Slink. Turtle didn’t mind doing a job during our trip; he enjoyed the convenience of making a few dollars while on vacation. The town was perfect, a hidden gem on the Jersey shore. The neighbors were trusting, and unlike Wildwood there were no boardwalks with police on the lookout for drunken teenagers. The town had few attractions save for the beach and a few token bars. In all the years Turtle and I made this trip, I saw no bar fights, no DUI’s. Even the seagulls didn’t squawk as obnoxiously as they did in Wildwood.
    Really, if you were going to murder a guy, there was no better place to be.
    The combined effects of the drive and the beer left me yawning when we finally reached the beach. Turtle chugged a cold one and dragged the cooler to the sand. I stayed behind to call her. She cursed at me when she answered. I asked her how our little chick was doing. She hung up.
    I met Turtle on the sand and slammed a fresh beer. It chilled my throat and built sickening pressure in my stomach.
    “You talked to her,” Turtle said, smirking. “I can always tell when you talk to her.”
    “Shut the fuck up,” I said. I fell asleep five minutes later.

    A crab poked my arm. I jolted awake and swatted it away. A moment passed before I realized the beach was dark and empty. Artificial stars dotted the sky. The moon looked bloated and ugly. When it reflected off the water the waves glittered. I wouldn’t have seen the kid otherwise.
    A baby, actually, bobbling in the waves where the moon made the water shine. I saw fear in the kid’s face; no run of the mill grownup fear, but the simple, dark fear of children. The kid didn’t know where he was, what kind of trouble he was in, only that he was cold and wet, screaming because he was too far from home.
    I screamed for help but no one answered. Before I ran into the water, I realized how scared I was, and how much I missed Turtle’s company. The ocean groaned. It was the sound of her depths, the sound of an unseen colossus sending a cautionary message. Her waves broke into lines of marching angels on the shore.
    I dove in. I swam hard but I smoked too many cigarettes in my twenty two years and within seconds my lungs were shattered and broken. A wave caught the kid and tossed him. Another wave surged toward me. Water filled my nose and mouth with the taste of salt. I came up for air just as her angels swirled around the kid and pulled him under.
    The kid screamed. The ocean taunted me. Her voice was in front of me, under me, ahead of me.
    Leave her, she said. You know you want to so just do it.
    “Fuck you,” was what I tried to say, but before I could the angels slammed into me. I tasted blood in my throat. A nine-millimeter I used since I started this line of work hung on my waist. I wanted to shoot, though I didn’t know where to aim. By the time I realized the piece was useless, the bitch snatched it from me anyway.
    I know I’m a bitch. Just like I know that you don’t really want her.
    She must have meant the boy in the water. Anger pulsed through me.
    The angels pulled me under. I no longer felt sand beneath my feet. Unending nothingness nipped at my heels. Dread filled my stomach like rotten eggs as I imagined the bitch pulling me into her depths. I felt what boy felt, fear at the foot of a colossus, the primal horror of being too far from my mom. At once the bitch snapped me in the other direction. Momentarily I was head over heels, and her angels flipped me backward into shallow water. I hit the sand. A bone in my chest cracked. Fire filled my lungs when I tried to breathe. Out there, I couldn’t hear the boy scream.
     The angels reappeared on the sand. I realized that the kid in the water was a girl. She wore a pink My Little Pony sweat suit, the same one I bought for our little chick. The angels carried her gently. I had to shut my eyes when she rolled to shore because this wasn’t just a girl, but my little chick. Her face was bloated and purple. Her eyes rolled in her sockets without meaning or life.
    The bitch was laughing. The angels receded. I crawled next to her and put my hand on her cold, dead belly, content to stay, hoping that the angels returned to claim me.

    Turtle shook me. I woke with a start and yelped when the waves broke on my feet. Turtle handed me a beer.
    “Don’t sleep on the beach,” Turtle tossed me sunscreen. “That’s how you cook, Son.”
    My name isn’t Son. Turtle called me that in grade school. I hated the nickname. “How long was I out?”
    Turtle shrugged and handed me a cigarette. A breeze off the water whipped against my face. The beer was cold and I forgot about the dream.
    “Shit,” I said. My shoulder was red and tender. “I did cook.”
    “Irish bitch,” Turtle laughed.
    I didn’t look away from my shoulder. “Fuck you, beaner.”
    “Beaners are Mexicans. And the Irish are the lesser white race.”
    I held up my middle finger. “I wanna do the job tonight.”
    Turtle lay back in his beach chair and closed his eyes. “You should relax more.”
    She called my cell. I answered and she said that she just called to remind me that she knew that Turtle and I came to the shore to pick up teenage sluts and if that’s what I wanted then she and my little chick would be gone when I got home. I wanted to tell her that this trip was part business and that she would appreciate that business because I was doing it for her, but she couldn’t know. Not yet, anyway.
    She hung up.
    Turtle smirked.
    I said nothing.
    Turtle shook his head.
    “Shut up.”
    I saw three girls in the water. Two were blond, slender and tan. The third was a fat brunette. I swore she had more meat than Oscar Meyer, but her eyes caught my attention. Certain people had eyes that showed they were happy. It was a natural happiness. Turtle had it in his eyes, and so did Oscar Meyer.
    “I seen you look,” Turtle laughed.
    “I told you to shut up,” I said. I looked away from Oscar Meyer. Suddenly I hated her for that natural happiness. Turtle, too.
    “I’m just saying, if you and her had it so good then you wouldn’t be looking at girls like that.”
    “I can’t look?”
    “Not like that.”
    “You’re a fuckin idiot.”
    Turtle smiled and closed his eyes again. “That bitch got you trained, man.”
    She wasn’t a bitch, and even if she was, it wouldn’t have been any of his business. I admitted that sometimes she could be hard to get along with and said things she didn’t mean, but she wasn’t a bitch. She loved me. It wasn’t any of Turtle’s business, anyway.
     Oscar Meyer and her friends sat on some beach towels a few feet away. Oscar was looking at me. I held eye contact and smiled, though I didn’t mean to, and she smiled back, which sent an unexpected chill of excitement through my chest.
    Oscar waved to me.
    I shook Turtle awake. “Let’s go see Slink now.”
    He sighed. “I’m chilling. Leave me alone.”
    “If we go now, we’ll have the rest of the weekend to ourselves.”
    Turtle rolled over and stuck his middle finger up.
    “Fuck you,” I said. “It’s my job, fat boy, and I’m telling you that we’re going now.”
    Turtle growled. “Am I gonna know this guy?”
    I sipped my beer. “Nah. He ain’t from our part of the neighborhood.”
    “I asked around. Nobody knows a guy named Slink that brung himself all the way down here.”
    “He kept his head low, I guess.”
    “Shit, everybody knows everybody around our way.”
    I said nothing. Oscar Meyer was looking at me again.

    The bookstore was five miles from our motel, along a road beside the ocean with nothing on it except Slink’s bookstore and the odd pile of seagull shit. We toyed with our fishing rods as we waited. Now and then I heard smacks against the water and when I looked over the edge I saw silhouettes of crabs.
    Turtle grunted and checked his watch.
    “Give him a few more minutes,” I said. We were parked a quarter-mile away from the bookstore. It was closed, the owner long gone, but we saw a red security light dimly through the windows.
    He flipped his line out of the water and recast it, this time further out. “You said he lives here?”
    “Yeah. With some faggot.”
    “He’s a faggot?”
    “I don’t know.”
    Slink wasn’t a faggot. I knew this. Turtle didn’t have to.
    “I hope he’s not a faggot,” Turtle said.
    “How come?”
    “I dunno. I never killed a faggot.”
    “I guess it wouldn’t be any different.”
    “As long as they ain’t...you know...the girlie ones. ‘Cause that’s too much like doing a chick. I would never do a chick.”
    I was looking into the waves. By now my dream had faded from memory, but the foam atop the waves still gave me chills. “Nah, I wouldn’t do a chick neither.”
    “I know one chick you would do,” Turtle laughed.
    “Shut the fuck up,” I said. “I told you earlier that I don’t want you talking shit about her.”
    “I meant the fat one from earlier.”
    I was grinding my teeth.
    “Seriously man,” Turtle said, “you know I got no problem with her or the baby. But look what happened with the birthday party.”
    I remembered the birthday party. It was two months ago, my little chick’s first. Her and I were in a fight over some nonsense and she told me to leave the party because I wasn’t my little chick’s real dad and eventually I would run out on them.
    He messed her up when he left. I don’t know if she loved him, but after he left she was different. When she was really angry, she said, “You’ll leave us just like John did.” Sometimes I wondered if she loved me or just wanted a guy to stay with her. But there was love. I loved both of them.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes she gets rough.”
    “Maybe you should think it over more. You know, before you do it.”
    I glared at Turtle. No, there was no way he could have known, no way he could have figured it out. He didn’t know Slink. He knew nothing of the bookstore or the faggot that allowed Slink to live there.
    “Before I do what?” I said.
    “Before you get in too deep, man.” Turtle stole a cigarette from my pocket and lit it. “I know you love them, especially the baby, but I dunno. How long can you go with her constantly up your ass about some bullshit?”
    I lowered my eyes to the water. Out there, I heard the Atlantic roar.
    “I guess you have a point,” I said. “I’ll think about it.”
    Turtle punched me in the arm as hard as he could. “You know I’m just looking out. If you love them, then fuck it, do what you want.”
    I swung back. Turtle ducked, but I caught him with a two-piece in his ribs. “Fuck you, you faggot-lovin’ motherfucker.”
    Headlights appeared in the distance. We went quickly back to our fishing poles. Slink’s car passed us and continued to the bookstore. I hesitated. I didn’t know why. A quarter-mile down the road I watched Slink stumble out of his car, most likely high on dope, and I thought of how much I despised him, and how much I wanted to kill him, yet part of me screamed to go home, to forget Slink. Dread filled my stomach, it reminded me of rotten eggs, and this dread told me that I’d regret finishing the job.
    I turned to Turtle. “Fuck it, man. Let’s go home.”
    Turtle raised an eyebrow. The normal cheerfulness in his cheeks was gone, the warmth in his eyes chilled to nothingness. It was easy to forget what Turtle did for a living. For years I worked with him and saw this exact look on his face as he finished a job, but I had never seen that look turned on me.
    “Something wrong?” Turtle said.
    I paused. “Nah, man. I’m just fucking with you.”
    Turtle’s expression didn’t change. “You sound funny.”
    “I’m cool.”
    “You sure?”
    I nodded. “Stay here and keep an eye out.”
    “We’re alone for miles.”
    “If anybody comes past, it’ll look suspicious with the car just sitting here.”
    Slowly, Turtle’s face reverted to the one I knew so well. I was relieved but felt uneasy knowing that he could turn that look on me again. “You gotta stop being so paranoid, you mick asshole. Nobody’s gonna see us.”
    “It’s my job, so it’s my rules. I go in alone and you keep an eye out.”
    “Then why bring me?”
    “Because I need someone to keep an eye out.”
    “Man, that ain’t fair,” Turtle said, kicking the ground.
    “I got this,” I said.
    “I don’t want half if you’re doing all the work. If that’s how we’re doing it, I want less.”
    I smiled. “Man, you’re getting half.”
    I cocked my piece and started toward the bookstore. I knocked. Slink answered and I greeted him with my nine-millimeter.
    “Hi John,” I said. He wore a short sleeved shirt that revealed the track marks on his arms. “You’re looking well.”
    He was high. The motherfucker was always high. She had to get my little chick tested for all types of bugs when she discovered that he had been shooting up before he got her pregnant. She was terrified that little chick might have contracted a bug, and I remembered how scared she was as the days dragged on, all the while wondering if my little chick had AIDS or Hepatitis.
    I remembered this. Any hesitation I had disappeared.
    “Inside,” I said.
    John led me inside. “I got nothing,” he said. “I came here because I didn’t want nothing to do with her or that fuckin neighborhood.”
    “Where’s the certificate?” I asked.
    “It ain’t here,” he said. I understood why he wanted it. John took the certificate before he left. He thought it was the last piece of my little chick he could hold on to.
    I pressed the barrel against his forehead. “You think I won’t?”
    He closed his eyes. “Okay.”
    He led me to the second floor. I asked John if he had to suck that faggot’s cock for a bedroom and a job. John didn’t answer, so I bashed him in the face with the butt of my weapon. Then he said no, he didn’t have to suck cock to live here. “Good for you,” I said.
    John shuffled through his underwear drawer. I kept the piece pointed at the base of his neck. I told him that if he got tricky with me, I wouldn’t kill him. Oh no. Instead I would shoot him in the spine and make sure he was paralyzed from the neck down. “Then try sticking a needle into that arm,” I said.
    Finally he found the certificate. I snatched it from him. The space reserved for the father’s name was still blank, just like she said. Of course she didn’t know I was here getting the certificate, but it would be a nice surprise when I returned home. Now my little chick could really be mine and she wouldn’t accuse me of wanting to leave ever again.
    John’s eyes were glazed. “You can leave now. You have what you want.”
    I shook my head. “Money.”
    He emptied the contents of the safe into a trashbag. There was only five grand but I had to come away with something or else the boss and Turtle would get suspicious. When John finished he looked me in the eye and said: “You can say what you want about me, Son. About all the shit I squirted into my arm. But I promise you that I never meant to hurt either of them.”
    I pressed the barrel against his forehead. “You shot heroin while she was pregnant. You could have gotten the baby sick.”
    He was crying again.
    “Then you bounced on them,” I said. “You left my daughter.”
    John’s eyes flew open. “Fuck you. You were fucking that whore while I was still with her.”
    I shot John in the face.

    I gave Turtle our cut after I set aside the boss’s percentage. Turtle didn’t know how much money I took from Slink and when I handed him the entire cut he figured it was only half.
    “Damn,” he said, “I didn’t think some faggot in a bookstore would have money like that.”
    His suspicions from the night before vanished once he counted his money. When I woke up the next morning he wasn’t in the motel room; I looked out the window and saw Turtle at the ice cream stand buying double-scoop cones for all the children by the pool. I remember wondering how Turtle could be so happy. Turtle made me think of all the people in the world like me, who felt that happiness was a privilege. That wasn’t true for Turtle. Happiness was normal for him. I was partly jealous, but in a good way. He gave me hope that one day I could be that happy.
    We went to the beach after breakfast. We each drank two beers before we carried the cooler to the sand. I felt loose and happy being here with my friend. As we passed the dunes I spotted Oscar Meyer and her friends nearby, packing their things. She smiled at me. I tried to ignore her but I smiled back anyway.
    Turtle snickered.
    I wanted to tell him to shut the hell up, that it was none of his business, but instead I snickered too. Oscar Meyer didn’t look fat from here. Her eyes showed the same natural happiness that Turtle had. A thought ran through my mind like ice water, refreshing but making me wince at the same time: I could talk to Oscar Meyer now and look into her eyes and perhaps I would feel that same natural happiness.
    Oscar Meyer and I exchanged smiles again. She stood by a dune while her friends continued away from the beach, as if she were waiting for me.
    Out there, I heard the groan of the ocean. Her calls grew louder, the beckoning of the hidden colossus. Her angels broke on the shore and crept along the sand until they covered my feet, like they were trying to pull me into the water. Her voice and her angels pinched my heart and I wanted to go home to her and my little chick very badly. But the water scared me. Even from here, far from the deep parts, I feared the water would toss me, break me, and forget me.
    “Go ‘head,” Turtle said.
    I smiled at him because I knew I couldn’t go.
    “Nah man,” I said. “Let’s get whacked on the beach before we go home.”



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