The Woods Hole Wall

by Raimer Rugh

Full transparency: Raimer Rugh is the editorial director of the Drift & Dribble Miscellany and his work is featured here, not because of unrestrained ediorial power, but because it was part of our "What wasn't said..." 5-minute reading event.

It’s always a traffic summer.

I’m 14, sitting the wall, watching tourist TV. MAP

A man in an old Pontiac sees me, leans across his son. “Where to park?,” he says; big smile Chiclet gap, ignoring the cursing in the truck behind him.

An empty spot divides us.

“Overnight,” he explains, shifts to park.

Townies on the wall burn a hole in the side of my head. I’ve no rights to sit here: I'm just a summer-person. But I hold the code of silence.

He says, "Meet me halfway," and his son knows I’m going to break.

"The motel?," I say, pointing out of town.

He slides his son closer, says, "Show me," and I hop in.

We rev out of town and I point to the motel zipping by. Stranger danger wasn't a thing in ‘78 but

I still lose my breath until he fish-tails up the drive. He backs his bumper deep over a parking stop, and grinning, explains that he’ll sue the tow-trucks when they scrape it up. His son reaches under the seat for a big clergy placard and the father sets it on the dash. He doesn’t look like a priest to me.

The father, Tom, pumps me for info on bathrooms and where to fill jugs as they coin-scrounge the phone booths. He shakes his son Samson. "Didn’t I tell you we’d be summering on the Cape?" Tom asks everyone the time, mostly to clock getting back to the ferry. Tells whoever’ll listen about his wife and little girl like they’re the second coming arriving by Steamship Authority. MAP

At the anointed time, the ferry empties and Tom declares, “Definitely next boat.”

Samson winces at me like he's a fool for having a father like that.

But 3 AM, that’s when I come alive. I sneak out to freewheel under a slice of a moon, bare feet to pedals--before helmets, when skulls were thicker. My 3-speed floats through the dark—navigating by muscle memory. No souls in the world but mine. I ride middle of the road, hands behind my head until I swing through town and giggling echos off empty shops. A guy and two girls sit the wall, buck naked. They see me, flick their cigarettes, and scramble off in their junker.

I'm still processing when a police car pulls in front of me. He steps out. "No lights," he says. “Nobody can see you.”

I say, "I don’t really want to be seen."

But he wants to know what I’m up to; wants me to admit to home invasion or something good, but all I got is, "Wandering?”

He shakes his head. Says, "In Woods Hole it’s hard to ascertain between suspicious and normal."

He's funnier than he knows.

I feel the night mist on my cheek along Bar Neck where I come across Tom’s car; MAPwindows blocked up with cardboard. I lean in for a look through a slot cut-out and flinch at Samson's bug eyes. I pedal on to the deck of the yacht club. MAP In a minute, Samson is sitting next to me in his briefs. He's smart as a fiend and knows what I’m going to say before I do, so I shut up. We listen to the harbor, ropes pinging off metal masts. He imitates the sounds and it cracks me up.

I ask him about his mother.

He says, "Dad chopped my sister’s hair off."

I say, "Yours too, it looks like," which is pretty good but he doesn’t get it.

The ocean is spilled oil with scattered toenail moons. I know there are sharks out there and point at a shape. He looks at me the way he looks at Tom, walks out, hangs his legs off the dock and waits, like he’s fishing. Behind him, lightning flashes on the Vineyard in a bank of clouds like a rock concert. No sound. No thunder.

He comes back and squeezes my bike brakes. He wants to tell me something. He says, "He shaved her bald to teach my mom a lesson."

"Your sister?," I ask.

He's done, but yeah, and that makes no sense.

"Take a spin," I say.

Tom’s head runs by over the bushes, no shirt--frantic--so Samson sneaks back to their car. Later I coast by and his father is still badgering him.

Next day from the wall, Samson looks side-eye’d down the street at his father as the ferry unloads and his old man goes round and round that terminal.

Samson straddles my bike, revving the handle as Tom mopes back and says, "I’ll get us some bikes and then I’ll teach ya. Okay, bud."

At that, Samson shoots off down School Street. Tom chases, flip flops slapping to the bottom of the hill where he collapses on the hot grass, arms splayed, drenched. MAPFrom above I can see his lungs working like cheap cardboard.

The next morning the bike is in my driveway with a clump of lilies in the basket. There’s a hole in my neighbor’s yard where they yanked them out. I plop them back in. No problem: it’s a nice gesture and the last I see of them.

I check the ferry out of habit. A few days later, the boat and everybody is gone, except a girl in a pretty yellow sun dress with cropped hair under a pink headband. Her mother sits close. They stare at me as I ride up, like I'm about to say something.

But I don’t. I'm just a kid.

And I go back to sit on my spot on the wall.

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