Stephen Dixon - 30 Pieces of a Novel

After they get off the subway the kids tell him they want to go straight to the rides, which is the main reason they like coming out here, and they walk on the boardwalk — some of the cheaper rides are right off it — and he wonders, just as he thinks he must have wondered the last two times, what spot under it his cousin was killed. “Should we go on that big turning wheel?” his younger daughter says, and his older daughter says, “Yes, please, Daddy,” and he says, “Okay by me, if you’re game, but it’s going to count as two of your permitted six rides, it’s so expensive,” and they walk to it while he’s thinking, Or did the killer, who was probably the drug dealer, kill his cousin somewhere else? Or a friend of the dealer, or two friends, or just two thugs working for him, on the beach at night, his cousin somehow lured there, or maybe his cousin walked out there on his own — to see the stars better, he was somebody who’d do that, or because he liked solitude and he’d find it there more than any other place here at night — and they followed him, or even on the boardwalk when nobody was around, and dragged him under the boardwalk to get him out of sight and go through his pockets and slice apart anything that might contain money or credit cards. Why the tie over the back? Maybe in the scuffle, if there was one. Or else as a symbol of something then or only in this particular part of Brooklyn: “This is what we do to someone who pokes his nose into our business.” Lots of cops around, he notices. He read in the paper a week or two back about a Russian woman being raped under the boardwalk by three boys, so maybe that’s it. Kids, she said they were: fourteen, fifteen at the most. They slashed her face and chest with knives and razors, then raped her. They used condoms. Why, they were afraid of getting AIDS? This respectable Russian émigré mother of two small children, jogging on the boardwalk, would have AIDS? And they’d think like that? Or it could be they thought it cool, using condoms. “Hey, let’s all use bags when we rape her, that’s something new.” Or else they didn’t want — this is probably it, and learned from some older guys — to leave any semen in or on her. You can be identified as the rapist by your DNA. And they must have taken the condoms with them, the newspaper article said, since the police canvased the rape area and the three or four condoms they did find were so old they could have been from the previous summer. He didn’t tell his wife about the woman because he didn’t want her to use it to keep them from coming out here. She knew about his cousin, but that happened years ago and, as she said, “Deplorable as his murder was, in some ways you could almost say he was begging for trouble. Because what would you have done? Confronted the dealer if you saw him trying to sell drugs to kids — even to our kids?” and he said, “Maybe,” and she said, “Don’t ever, ever . You get a cop. Otherwise, you put not only yourself in danger but also our kids.”

Lots of garbage, he notices, while his girls are in one of the cars high up on the Ferris wheel; plenty of screaming from up there and he listens carefully but can’t tell if any of it’s from them. The area around here always had lots of garbage, but he doesn’t remember this much. “Why are you going out there?” his wife said this morning, and he said, “Because the kids like it, they can let off some steam, it’s a day at the beach after a couple of weeks in the hot city, and some old memories for me are brought back when I’m there. Looking up through the boardwalk slats at people walking. My Aunt Essie and her family. Nathan’s. At the time it was — before it was a chain— the place to go just before you took the subway home; it’s right across from the station. With the best hot dogs, best fries, and certainly the best hot buttered corn anywhere, or that’s what we thought. And as a kid, you go out there thinking that, you usually end up confirming it, even if the food really isn’t that great. Or maybe it was. Maybe the hot dogs were kosher then and fresh and grilled perfectly and the corn was the best any joint could buy and picked that morning and they boiled or steamed it the absolutely right number of minutes, but not anymore. Last year and the year before — I gave them a try twice and that’s enough — the food was crap and the place was seedy and dirty.”

The kids come off the Ferris wheel hungry, and he says, “Okay, let’s get some grub,” and they chant, “Nathan’s, Nathan’s,” and he says, “You don’t remember last time? One of you got sick, even, I think, but I forget on what.” They go to a fast-food chicken place on the boardwalk. He has coffee; they get a plate of fried chicken and fries and cole slaw. The slaw’s sour and the chicken tastes funny, the kids say. “Taste it,” and he says, “I take your word. After we drink up, we can get something somewhere else,” and his older daughter says, “But we don’t want you to think we’re wasting good food. See for yourself,” and he pulls a piece of meat off; it looks okay but it tastes as if it’s been cooked in the same oil they fry fish in. He thinks, Should I? Ah, go on, no harm here, and they give me one bit of lip I’ll say, “Okay, just saying,” and goes up to the counter with the plate and says to the woman behind it, “Excuse me, but was the chicken and maybe even the fries — I didn’t have one — fried in the same oil the fish is? It sure tastes it,” and she says, “This is a chicken place, we don’t cook fish here, just chicken and things that go with it,” and he says, “Then I don’t know, then,” and goes back, and his older daughter says, “No luck?” and he says, “Well, I didn’t really try.” A dog walks in off the boardwalk, sniffs around, the kids offer it a chicken leg and just as he’s about to say, Don’t, people eat here, the woman says, “Please, there, nothing for the mutt or he’ll never stop coming back. Give him a kick outside, but watch it he doesn’t bite. I know him from before: a stray,” and he whispers to the kids, “Let her do the honors,” and dumps their plate and cups into the trash can, yells “Thank you,” and they leave.

Few more rides. The last, the Water Flume, is the only one he ever goes on, because the spray, whenever the boat makes a sharp turn or slides down the tubing and hits the water, cools him off. “Okay”—wiping his arms and face with a handkerchief, he had the lead seat—“now time for the beach, and I’d like to read,” and they both say they don’t want to go, and his younger says, “I can’t stand that horrible smelly house to change in,” and he says, “Listen, we came this far to the ocean — more than an hour’s subway ride; the walk from the station to here — we have to spend some time in the water or along the shore. Half hour max, then, I promise,” and they go down to the sand, kids take off their sandals and roll up their shorts and look for shells by the water. He puts his sun cap on, lies on a towel facing the water, and reads. It’s windier here, sand gets in his eyes and on the pages, sky gets darker — is it going to rain? Wasn’t forecast and there’s still plenty of sun behind him and are those rain clouds or just — well, another kind of cloud? — when some lifeguards at the station nearest him are blowing whistles and shouting and waving and people on the beach are pointing out to the water and some are running down to it and the lifeguards throw off their caps and shirts and race to the water with ropes and a small surfboard or float, and he squints in that direction and sees someone in the water about two hundred feet out, maybe more, can’t ‘“ell if it’s a man or woman but it’s an older person, he’s sure, and now it seems a bald one, so a man, or maybe that’s a racing cap, waving his arms to be saved, it seems. He listens but can’t hear the man, if he’s screaming, maybe because of all the yelling around him to the lifeguards in the water: “He’s over there … there … to the right … to the left … get him before he drowns.” Lifeguards are halfway to him by now, then reach him and seem to stretch him out on his stomach on this board or float and start bringing him in, two on either side, one in front pulling a rope, when a woman, it’s clear by her voice, about fifty feet out and thirty feet to the left of the lifeguards and the man, yells, “Help, help, stuck, help!” her arms flailing, and then her head disappears and bobs up again and two of the guards swim hard to her, grab her from behind and hold her out of the water by her waist and she seems to calm down — Gould even thinks he sees her smiling — and swims in with one of the guards, the other swimming back to the third lifeguard and the man on the board. Gould’s standing now, kids beside him, his younger clutching his hand. More lifeguards drive up to the shore in a Jeep, two of them jump out to help the three lifeguards walk the woman and the man out of the water, another lifeguard stands on the front seat and says over a bullhorn, “All swimmers out of the water now…. Attention, attention. All swimmers must leave the water now. This is your lifeguard speaking, this is a city lifeguard speaking: everyone out of the water till further notice. No swimming in this area till further notice. Serious undertow, there is a serious undertow, so nobody in the water till the all-clear signal’s given. I repeat: no going into the water till the all-clear signal’s given,” and a man asks her, “And what’s that?” and she says, “When the time comes, we’ll let you know.”