Astray

   

         Of course it fell to me to be the scaredy-cat. When it comes to the sort of inspired diversion and questionable judgment that helped fend off the ennui of endless summers, I'll admit it; I was a follower, not a leader. Absconding with some besotted grandee's Lincoln for an adolescent joy-ride, burgling the local country-store for warm Schlitz and Fluff or pulling traps and poaching chicken-lobsters never really seemed like a smart move at the time, and the frisson of danger and jeopardy inherent in these bright ideas left me more nauseous than exhilarated. Blowing urinals off the wall with M-80's at Camp was certainly a thrill – more for the mystery of the homespun engineering, in my case, than any pleasure or satisfaction in wanton destruction - but Russian roulette, clutching simmering fireworks or igniting anything more substantial than a pile of driftwood in a sand-pit on the beach never appealed.

   If an often cautious and somewhat less enthusiastic follower, I went along in any case, as the scorn of my peers seemed a greater retribution than any consequence my nascent imagination could convey. Before we had access to cars or boats - or soft and summery, nut-brown girls to impress - there were thrills, for some, afforded by such double-dares as shoplifting, choking on gin and purloined Pall Malls or running away from home. I was a timid and remorseful thief, pocketing the occasional lurid comic-book or Chunky while some accomplished peculator distracted the harried clerk with inquiries about  Prince Albert in a can. I gagged on smoldering corn silk, regurgitated strange brews concocted from abandoned cocktails in bottles of O-So-Grape and dutifully followed my brother or cousin as we snuck away at dusk with bandanas strung on sticks, stuffed with powdered KoolAid, band-aids and stale bread, stifling the urge to ask when we'd turn home.

    Richard had the first car, the first boat and enough charisma to convince us that it would be a great idea to head out to Seguin and spend the night swilling a wine-jug full of plundered spirits, carelessly blended, in the old Coast Guard boat-house at the foot of the island's rickety, rope and plank gantry that spanned the deep abyss between the shore and the lighthouse high above. We loaded sleeping bags, an enameled, dented pot and potato chips up under the nose of the Kaiulani and headed east in the growing dusk, around the Point and into the rising, wet chop of the open ocean.  After a while, when the mainland had diminished in scale so that the lights coming on along the shore seemed no larger than the emerging stars above, Richard pulled alongside a buoy and called for us to help him haul. I'd heard you could be shot on sight for this and scanned the empty horizons before halfheartedly joining in. An hour or so later we cut the engine and rode the swells silently in to the island's tiny harbor.

    By the time we'd gathered wood, built a small fire in the rocks and drowned the lobsters in a pot of tepid seawater, we'd managed to choke back nearly half the bilious jug and it was only a matter of another hour or so, during which someone upended the fetid gurry atop the sleeping bags, before Richard suggested we climb the terrifying catwalk in order to party with the Coast Guard. Even a bellyful of bad booze couldn't convince me that this was a good idea, but I stumbled out and brought up the rear, afraid to go, reluctant to stay behind. The span was made of rope and planks, laced along braided, wire cable and looked more like something out of Lost Horizon than anything you'd expect to find within the purview of the Coast Guard. My buzz was dead within a dozen yards, and watching John and Richard swaying, giggling and dropping occasionally to the rickety slats ahead did little by way of encouragement. At some point, clutching the rope railing with both hands, inching along above the pine-tops, it made no sense to turn back, and, forging reluctantly ahead, I reached the summit at last only to be caught in the tight embrace of a livid petty-officer and escorted, bodily, to the concrete bunker at the base of the flagpole. There I found Richard and John, slathered in lobster goo, engaged in a futile effort to convince our hosts of their sobriety while rolling about in mirthful hilarity beneath the Stars and Stripes.

   

     And there we sat for the rest of the night under the watchful glare of a guardsman who might have been in bed himself had we not shown up. Forbidden to move a muscle until we could prove to him an ability to negotiate even the flagstone walkway to the bridge, one or another of us would, at random intervals, rise up and make an earnest effort at this fiction, only to trip on something real or imagined and go down like a sack of rocks before so much as a word could be uttered. It was Richard, of course, who finally pulled it off at dawn and led the way back down. Abandoning the jug, the putrid sleeping bags and the nasty slick of shell bits, feelers and tomalley on the boat house floor, we climbed aboard the boat at first light and were tucked abed, sober, exhausted and none the wiser before the sun had risen above Seguin.