“Hey, kid? Yeah, you.”
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m heading to Mashnee. You know your way around the island?”
“Better than just about anyone,” I replied, like I owned the joint. “Where are you trying to go?”
“Great. How do I get to the rental office? They tell me I gotta pick up the keys there.”
“Oh, that’s easy. You’re already on Mashnee Road. So just head straight, past Mooring Road, then the office is at number 146, you’ll see the sign. Grey building with green shutters on your left. If you hit Captains Row, you’ve over-shot it.”
“Well, I guess you do know. Thanks, kid.”
“Sure thing,” I replied, immediately noticing that for some reason the hairs on the back of my neck and arms were standing at full attention.
Dude’s creepy, I thought, then shuddered my shoulders.
Chapter 25
Transport
As typical teenage boys, we spent each Saturday morning meandering around the island desperately longing for true love, hoping against hope that week’s rental turnover would produce the girl of our dreams, (or if not, girls who were easy). When all else failed, we would head over to Memorial Beach and at the risk of side-eyed looks and bloody noses, openly flirt with the locals’ girlfriends, as the feud across Phinney’s Harbor continued to fester. Much to the locals’ dismay and the source of additional rift, two of the prettier Memorial Beach girls, Christine and Sally, started hanging out exclusively at Mashnee, and Christine, a cute, perky, brunette with short hair and a winning smile, quickly became my steady girlfriend. The best summer, off to the best start!
We were no longer kids marooned on Mashnee without transportation. That was a thing of the past. We were teenagers. We had cars, and we had boats. We were free. Well, at least as free as our parentally-imposed curfews and boundaries would allow for, and then some. No longer would our explorations be limited to Phinney’s Harbor. We now set sights on such remote destinations as Pocasset, and Catumet, Wings Neck, Onset Harbor, and the biggest nautical undertaking of them all, The Cape Cod Canal.
One if by Land…
Tommy’s shiny, new, black 1970 Mustang Boss convertible was both super-cool and ridiculously loud. His stereo system was up to the task of the dual headers, matching them decibel for decibel, much to the dismay and often quite vocal displeasure of many a Mashnee resident, their attempts at lecturing the “young man” on the importance of proper island sound etiquette laughingly shrugged off by Mr. Cool. I should also mention the car had a four-on-the-floor fancy stick shift which only he knew how to drive.
The car was certainly eye catching with its jet-black paint job trimmed with red racing stripes, and bright white sporty interior with bucket seats. Oh man, it looked to be the perfect chick magnet! She was (Cars are female, right?), in fact, a beautiful car. She even had a sexy nickname: “Lady Killer,” which in those days meant more of a playboy than actual murderer, we assumed. All things considered, Tommy Bourdon and his bad-ass car were well paired. And as far as Tommy was concerned, his car’s namesake was the understatement of the year. A ‘lady killer’ he may have been, but his pretty girlfriend kept a close watch.
Along with our flashy modes of transport and the promise of a summer filled with unbounded flirtation, our gang of happy-go-lucky summer compadres started to take on the personality of our new, fearless leader. Which is to say, tough, or in my own case and others, pretending to be tough. Since Tommy became our de facto leader, tough equaled cool, and we sure as shit wanted to be cool, real cool. We spat more, swore more (most of them beginning with an F), smoked more, wrestled around more, swiped more candy, punched more arms and told more lies. You know, tough guy stuff.
They were mostly white lies, mind you, the kind you tell when you’re a fifteen-year-old virgin wanting to be tough and still soaking wet behind the ears.
The kind you tell when you’re trying to fit in, or at a minimum, not stand out.
And the kind that can get you into trouble. Big trouble.
Two if by Sea…
Our (parentally owned, adolescently maintained) fleet of speedy skiffs was quite impressive. Tommy’s no-frills seventeen footer with a mean-sounding Mercury engine and torn-up green plastic bucket seats was by far the fastest. It was nothing to look at, but provided a hold-on-for-dear-life experience. With its huge engine and light-weight frame, it literally jettisoned over waves, taking on more air than a California surfer on a wind-blown day chased by a man-eating shark. You know, Pissah!
We mostly used his boat for racing around and getting into trouble and mine for water-skiing and picking up girls, although when Tommy was around we called them chicks. Mine was fancy and luxurious, his boisterous, mine soft and safe, his more daring, together making for a dynamic duo of horsepower.
Stevie Bird also had a pretty cool boat, brand new in fact, shiny red, but we never trusted him to drive it. Between his herky-jerky arm gestures, facial twitches, and perennially cracked eyeglasses which gave us zero confidence in his visual acuity, he surely would have killed us all. On the few occasions we did take his boat, he wasn’t allowed to drive it, only Tommy was, per Tommy. The Bird was too overmatched to resist the direct order. Just don’t tell his parents!
Chapter 26
Track
It didn’t take long for trouble to start.
“Hey, Tommy,” I shouted across to the other side of the ping-pong table, our match now entering its second hour after we retreated to the trusty ping-pong room in an attempt to fight boredom on this gray and drizzly day. “Wanna go upstairs and grab a burger. Or a dog? I’m famished, man.”
The question was punctuated by a forehand slam which nicked the end of the table and went careening off the cement wall behind him, ricocheting back;
“Hey, Jimmyrocket? I’d rather eat shit and die,” Tommy shot back.
Just then Stevie Bird came scuffling in, briefly stumbling over thin air, while—what else?—adjusting the unraveling tape on his glasses, and joined the conversation.
“I heard Ronny Parker’s working at the go-kart tracks today and we can get in free ’cause of the rain and shit if we get there before two.”
Although still overcast, the rain had pretty much let up by then, plus we didn’t give two-hoots about rain so it was worth considering. That, and the fact we had nothing else going on.
“Ok, cool,” Tommy replied, confidently answering for all of us without bothering to ask if we agreed, a trait to which we would grow accustomed.
And with that, as if a flash-bang had been set off, there was a mad dash between me and Stevie for Tommy’s front passenger seat. “I call shotgun!” Stevie bellowed, even though I’d already blown by him, hell-bent on making the coveted front seat my own.
“That’s not faairrrrr!’’ he whined pathetically, as his fate to sit in the back seat was once again sealed. Truth be told, the only times I had ever lost a race to ride shotgun, (as the front passenger), was when somebody sucker-punched me, or noogied me, or worst case, threw me into the hedges (Eddie!). But I’d grown wise to their evil chicanery and smartly guarded my periphery!
It was interesting the effect that car had on me. On us. I felt at least two or three years older just sitting in the front seat of the Lady Killer. I also felt a lifetime cooler. Riding in that car was raw adrenaline. Looked cool, sounded cool, handled cool and it even smelled cool (a mix of fuel, cigarettes, maybe pot, and most definitely sex, of that we were certain). And dammit, if you were IN that seat, then, by default you were cool too! And tough!
With the depression of the clutch and turn of a key, the Lady Killer’s engine absolutely roared to life, shooting some nasty-ass black soot through its dual exhausts and making the front bucket seats shake like a vibrator inside of a blender inside of a loop-the-loop ride, or something like that.
Then Tommy shifted into gear, let out the clutch, and peeled out, spinning-rubber and doing a full donut around the parking lot, (tone deaf to the old ladies screaming at us) then hauled ass down the causeway at a fast-enough clip to pin us in our seats and make all of us joyfully nauseous. He didn’t slow down until we went flying sideways (with a dramatic cloud of dust) into a prime parking spot, directly out front of the Kart-o-Rama. Freakin Batman!
The slick roads had just made the adventure more fun! Was I scared? Naah.
