Page 34 of Stony Point Summer
“Yeah. Me, too.” Kyle casts his line over the water, right in the path of silver light falling from that low moon. “What’d you do all day?”
“Hung drywall in a hotbox. No a/c, either. So man, did I sweat.” Neil takes a swig of beer. “Really needed this sea breeze tonight,” he says as a slight wind blows his wavy hair.
“Yeah. Jesus, it’s been hot.” Kyle lifts his bucket hat, swipes his forehead with his arm and drops the hat on his head again. “I spent the afternoon up on scaffolding, welding vessel seams in this heat.”
“Tough on a day like today. At least you were on the water.”
“No shit.”
“You almost done with your apprenticeship?”
“Yep. Another month to go.”
“Good for you. You’ll be a union man, then.” Neil tips up his beer can.
“It’s been a long haul,” Kyle tells him, drinking to Neil’s toast.
“Thank God it’s the weekend.” Neil gives his fishing line a tug, but the line’s slack. “Where’s Lauren tonight? She around?”
“Should be. She’s taking summer classes so she can graduate early. Goes back and forth to campus from her grandparents’ cottage here.” Kyle glances down the beach toward the boardwalk. “I’ll swing by after a little fishing.”
“That’s cool.” Neil sits there, glancing at his watch. “And where the hell’s my brother? He’s always late.”
“What’s Jason up to these days?” Kyle asks. He sets down his fishing rod and taps out a cigarette from a crumpled pack tossed in his cooler.
“He’s got a junior-level architect position in Hartford. Working on conceptual ideas for the firm. Doing some CAD work. Some designing.”
“Not a bad gig.”
“No, it’s all right. He took on a side job, too, redoing a garage apartment for our neighbor.” Neil reels in his line while he talks. “So he’s busy.”
“That dude’s always busy. A hustler.” Kyle takes a drag of his cigarette. “Speak of the devil, there he is now. On the driftline.”
“The what?”
“Driftline, man,” Kyle says with his cigarette between his lips as he reels in his line. “You never heard of it?” he asks through the rising smoke.
“No.”
“The tideline,” Kyle says.
“The seaweed there?”
“It’s not just seaweed. It’s called a driftline because of everything else that drifts inwithit. You know. Shells. Stones. Driftwood. Pieces of sea glass. All tangled up in that seaweed.”
Neil looks out to the night beach. Beneath pale moonlight, that tideline wavers along the sand. “I like that. The driftline.” He pulls a small journal and pencil from his back pocket. “Let me jot that down.”
“I read it in a handbook on beach life.” Kyle walks to the lower rocks, near the water swirling in a tidal pool. Bits of seaweed sway in the small waves splashing there. “In that blue cottage my old man rented every summer? Read the book every summer, too. The whole book,” he says, flicking his cigarette butt out into the water. “Front to back. Practically got it memorized.”
Neil looks up from his jotting to the beach shadows. “Who’s that with Jay?”
Kyle sloshes through the tide pool to see. “Looks like Matt.”
“Oh man, you hear what he did?” Neil asks. “Knocked up Eva but good.”
“Yeah. Tied down for life now.”
Matt and Jason are climbing across the rocks. Both carry fishing poles and make their way to Kyle and Neil. “Yo,” Matt says, lifting a brown paper bag. “Brought some brews.”
