Back then, we body surfed until saltwater rushed into our sinuses and pushed liquid mucus out our noses. When we tired of trying to catch the tide, we waded out, stopping to dive under incoming waves. Above us, the rushing water sounded like wind heard from within a plane landing. We surfaced and continued out to where we could not touch. We treaded and bobbed in the tide and congregated on sand bars. When that exhausted us, we swam back to shore and baked in the sun until the day turned to a haze of half sleep.
We lived for water, salt, fresh, and brackish. We waited out schooldays for the weekends and school years for the summers to return to it. We stood on our river’s mud shores and cast lines, hoping to catch something big, only ever reeling in catfish. We wriggled our hands into their mouths, unhooked their slimy insides, and tossed them back into our brackish river. After sweat and spray coated our faces, we kicked off our flip-flops and swam in murky waters. When the sun stole our shade, we moved on to the next shore or pier or dock or dinghy. We were all waiting for life after high school, after our no name-town in North Florida, so we figured we’d wait by the water.
On the best nights, we saw the glint of moonlight rippling on a current. I spent many evenings with the girl I loved in high school, Aubrey, trying to touch the moon’s reflection, our hands plunging through cold waters as if digging in the sky. I liked to stand in the glow and pretend we were characters in some fantasy book carrying out a ritual, my hair standing on end as the magic took
hold. But I think it was just the feel of Aubrey’s eyes on me, a Black boy on the wrong side of skinny, who never thought anyone would want him, least of all her.
The longest night we spent on the biggest river that runs through Palm Coast, the Intracoastal, was when I was seventeen and Aubrey was eighteen. We made plans at lunch. She was waiting at our table and I hoped to rush through the free-lunch line at school, but it was longer than normal. The growing number of middle-class kids in line, all of whose parents worked in real estate or landscaping, suggested something was changing. But I wouldn’t learn what until the 2008 housing crash gave my county the highest unemployment rate in the state that had the highest in the nation.
By the time I retrieved my lukewarm burger and french fries and joined Aubrey, a dark-haired white girl standing to about five-six, lunch was almost over. After we shot the breeze, I asked what her weekend plans were. She said she didn’t have any. I said we didn’t have a track meet tomorrow, Saturday. She said we were going fishing that evening.
Lost in daydreams about the night to come during my classes and at practice, the day passed by in a blur. On the school bus home, Des asked if I wanted to kick it; I said I was hanging with Aubrey. He extended his hand, dapped me up, and didn’t say anything else. When I got home, I told Mom I was spending the night at my friend Twig’s house. An hour later, she dropped me off and, after she left, I drove Twig’s car to Aubrey’s house. In her neighborhood, every street name started with a B—Bird of Paradise Drive, Buffalo Bill Place, Brushwood Lane—so everyone called it the B section. The houses there were bigger and the lawns better kept than in my part of town, but Aubrey’s driveway seemed poorly paved for the neighborhood.
I knocked on her window and she came out. Her hair was up in a ponytail and her teal Abercrombie shirt was just short enough that it exposed the seabass tattoo on her waist. I tried not to stare, but I kept glancing at the curve her hip bone drew.
You could’ve rang, she said.
It’s late.
I didn’t ring because I worried Aubrey’s sister would answer. A few weeks earlier, I stood behind her sister in line at Walmart. She was buying alcohol. When she reached the front, the white cashier with a buzz cut and goatee asked for her ID. She handed it over. He held it up to the light. She shook her head as she stared at his fake diamond earring. When he finally returned it and rang her up, she walked away and said, Fucking nigger. I wondered what Aubrey would have said to her sister if she was there.
They don’t care, Aubrey said.
She opened the garage. We hooked her dinghy up to a red truck as I tried to avoid looking at the Confederate flag bumper sticker that I assumed was her sister’s. Then we got in the car and drove to Bing’s Landing. As we pulled in, shadowy Spanish moss swayed from the branches overhead. We passed the one-room barbecue joint and the small grass square that made up the park. At the river’s edge, silhouettes swung and I heard a hook splash into the Intracoastal. I was trying to distinguish the line from the night when Aubrey reversed the truck down the ramp and the dinghy into the water. We got out, detached the boat, and held it still.
Get in, Aubrey said, barely more visible than the shadow people in the distance.
Where are you going?
To park. Can’t bring it with us.
What if I float away?
Hold on to the dock. As she walked away, she muttered, All them book smarts and not a lick of common sense.
I got in and grabbed its rough wood beams, which felt like they might splinter into my hand. The water bobbed beneath and I worried I would fall. Moments later, a gray-blue hue to her skin, Aubrey returned with the spear, the bucket, and the lamps.
Can we turn the lights on? I asked.
Got to wait till they’re in the water, she said.
I can’t see anything.
You afraid of the dark?
Aubrey got in the boat, shoved off, and guided us out with a pole. Then she turned the motor on and propelled us downstream. The front tipped up a few inches. The bow carved a V-shaped line into
he water that would become our wake. Beyond it, no one else was on the river. Overhead, the stars were scattered across the blue-black sky like spilled glitter.
This good? Aubrey asked, turning the motor off.
It’s good, I said.
Aubrey plunged the pole to the riverbed and steered us closer to the bank. The shore ran in a soft incline up to a darkgray forest where tree shadows faded into one another. She passed me the lamps and I dropped them in the river. They bounced on the surface. She turned them on, and they lit the bottom gray like the surface of the moon. Reedy, seaweed-like plants waved from below. Pebbles littered the dirt-sand, which looked softer than any beach I had ever set foot on. A thin fish floated off the floor and Aubrey yelled, Flounder.
Aubrey stabbed the spear through it. A ribbon of pink curled out. Then a sand cloud rushed up from where Aubrey hit the bed and blotted out the blood.
That’s what you’re looking for, she said, pulling the flounder out of the river and tossing it into the bucket. Sometimes they look like rocks. Only way to know is to stab.
You go first. I’ll watch.
Aubrey and I switched places. I steered the boat from the back, pushing the pole to the bottom, leaning my weight on it and pulling it loose from the sticky earth. The dirt shores on our right gave way to short cement walls that I assumed the river overcame during hurricanes. Above them, long wood docks lit by lamps led to waterfront houses. How often did they drain floodwaters from their floors?
Go slower, Aubrey said. Can’t see anything if you don’t go slowly.
As she peered over the side, my eyes adjusting to the night, I could almost see her bony shoulders through her shirt. It crept up to reveal a thin line of vertebrae. I tried to count them, imagined what they would feel like.
Slowly now.
She let her dark-brown, almost-black hair down. I was surprised to see it fall so far below her shoulders. It was straight. She must have just straightened it. When she leaned to stab at the floor,
her hair swung a long arc, blurring in the dim light before settling in front of her shoulders, a thicket hiding her face.
Slowly. They get scared if you don’t go slowly.
She had curled her hair for homecoming. Her pink ruffled dress almost matched the shape of her dark curls. The picture was so clear in my mind that I must have stared when I saw her.
Slowly, she said. Then she stabbed. I pushed a few more times and she speared again. When she hit rocks, she laughed as if mocking someone.
Slowly.
I am going slowly.
You’re going faster than you think.
Show me then.
We switched. Up front, I stabbed at every gray disk on this moon’s surface. At first, I cut through the water. Then my shoulders began to burn. The spear moved slower. My arms ached. I stabbed less than Aubrey did. How did she get so strong?
Can’t believe you’ve never been gigging, she said.
Not something my friends do.
All rednecks do it.
Don’t hang with any rednecks.
We’re hanging right now, she said.
You’re not a redneck.
Sure am. Daddy’s from the Panhandle.
I looked at the shore. The large houses with sprawling lawns began to look like miniature plantations. I could almost see the enslaved people, just now leaving the master’s house for their homes.
Still don’t think you’re a redneck, I said.
I go mudding. Wear camo.
No accent.
Only when you’re around.
We passed a clearing where there were RVs, trailers hooked up to trucks, and six or so rectangular trailer homes. The light was on in one. Two shadows stood opposite each other, then came together until they overlapped in an inhuman shape. Worried Aubrey would notice me watching them, I turned. At the clearing’s edge, instead of a wall, the earth crumbled into the Intracoastal.
You’re not like the others, I said.
What’s that supposed to mean?
I didn’t say anything. Aubrey asked to switch spots. As we tried to step around each other in the
small boat, I smelled the river on her. Her body brushed against mine and it was softer than expected. She looked me in the eyes. My cheeks burned at our contact, at being close enough to catch her scent, and I turned away. I stepped to the back of the boat, pushed for a little, and then stopped to watch the bed. The mud floor looked soft enough to fall asleep in.
Tired already? she asked.
It’s hard work, I said.
Ain’t you Mr. Track Star?
That what they call me?
What my sister called you, when I told her what I was doing tonight. Probably shouldn’t have told you. Don’t want it to go to your head. She paused and looked up at the sky. Think you’re going to miss all this when you get that scholarship?
If I get a scholarship.
You going to get one.
Tell the truth, I don’t think much about that. Just think about getting on out of here.
You scared of ending up like your brother?
I didn’t say anything. In the distance, the river was black. As we got closer, it yellowed. Then it turned gray and transparent. If we went on for long enough, we would travel the path debris takes when it follows the current out to sea. We would stall where the river fought the ocean.
Beautiful out here, I said.
Nothing like it.
Quiet.
Sure is.
Never heard your voice so clear, I said.
What you mean?
School’s so loud. Out here you sound different. I never noticed your voice was so, and then I trailed off into silence.
Shrill?
Airy.
We were quiet as a big boat motored by. In its wake, we bobbed, and it felt like I was standing on the waves. The bank looked like it was floating, the plantation-style houses and trailers like they might rock off the shore. Aubrey cussed under her breath. But when the bobbing stopped, even though our boat was small, it felt firm.
You good? she asked.
I’m good.
I was quiet as I looked at Aubrey, a gleam to her face from some mixture of sweat, river, and moonlight. Shorter than me but seeming to stand at eye level, she wasn’t smiling or scowling, as she so often was. Her dark hair framing her face, her large brown eyes wide open, she just let me watch her and watched me back. No one had ever stood so still in my gaze nor had I done the same for anyone else. I didn’t worry about my nose’s acne as I often did when I noticed other people looking at me at school. I didn’t feel a need to fill the quiet. As the frogs droned and the water slapping against the shores sounded like a dog lapping from a bowl, I didn’t fret about my crooked teeth and I smiled.
I’d ride down this forever if I could, I said.
We’d hit the inlet eventually, she said.
We could keep going.
Into the sea?
Across the world.
We stopped pushing and coasted in the current. Unoccupied by anything but watching the shore pass by and counting the silent seconds, we felt the weight of all the things we had not shared becoming too heavy. Believing love to be defined by mentioning every unmentionable, we spilled our secrets in jumbled words, sentences without periods. (I can’t bring myself to share them here, now.) We touched. We turned around, headed back to land. We waited out the moon on shore. We parted as the birds awakened around us.
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