On the Island

By Margaret A. Frey

As children, my sister Kat and I quarreled endlessly. Too needy, too restless, I guess. On the island, things were different.

Every weekend, we scrambled into our father's battered panel truck and headed to Brigantine, a small barrier island just north of Atlantic City. Local folklore says Captain Kidd buried a king's ransom beneath the island's dunes, but no one's ever found it.

May to September, the shore trek began on Friday afternoons and ended sleepily at sunrise on Monday. Occasionally, our father's schedule was thrown out of sync with nagging problems at his paint store — disgruntled customers or accounts he couldn't balance. Leaving late, we would wind up driving through the Pines after dark. The tall, dense trees cut off all ambient light, and the truck's high beams shot an eerie yellow funnel into the blackness. The sharp scent of pine duff filled the cab, but sometimes we passed through a pocket of salt air, as if an ocean spray had been snagged atop the scrubby treetops, drifted down across the narrow road to hitch a free ride home.

The odor made us antsy, impatient. We always smelled the Atlantic long before we saw it.

Once we left the Pines and drove along the sandy flats, the pungent odor of bay water rolled in — sea grass and crabs and rotting fish, eons of silt washing over old, swollen railroad ties. On the island bridge, the air changed again — the rancid smell of garbage from the county dump, the marine stink of fishing piers and bait shops and then, a dozen blocks away, the ocean stretching everywhere, as endless as we thought the world was. With each thumping wave, the salt air cleared our heads then filled them up with seahorses, mermaids and ancient whale songs.

Suitcases stowed inside the family's cottage, Kat and I would slip away and race to the beachfront. We pushed aside gloomy warnings: Be careful now. The currents are strong and dangerous; the riptides can swallow you whole.

The sand, still warm from the afternoon sun, reached out like a soft, pale hand. We yanked off our shoes and then scuttled down the dunes, racing, panting, our chests on fire.

Once home, we would forget about the seaside — the blinding light of midday, the fluttery squawk of gulls, the briny smell of the midnight surf — and resume our quarrels. In later years, we would argue passionately over family issues and child rearing, slights often magnified but sometimes painfully real. Three years ago, we stood side by side at a gravesite, Kat's beloved husband. A year later, we stood in Odd Fellows Cemetery beside our mother's grave. Our father, always a speed demon on those back roads, beat them both to the grave.

We are aging orphans, Kat now says with a wry smile.

Not long ago, we were children linking arms beside the ocean. We jumped over driftwood and foamy wavelets and laughed like there was no tomorrow.

It's a reverie I dare not forget as the days grow shorter in autumn. The road we once traveled was straight and true, a quivering arrow. It's the same road now, though it's easier to see where the Pines thin out and the land opens at the Red Devil Circle, a whizzing compass that spits drivers in multiple directions: Long Beach Island to the north, Cape May to the south or Brigantine, straight ahead.

One day, Kat and I will return to the island. If we're lucky, our heads will fill with seahorses, mermaids and ancient whale songs. As for Captain Kidd's treasure? No one's ever found it.

But then, who knows what's hiding beneath all that sand?