The Beach and The Paths That Led Us Home

-Gabe Adams

Two points of cool anchored my body to the real world in the swarthy mess of

summer lake-heat we were so gleefully trotting through, running a ley line through my body, from the sole of my foot to the frigid fingertips of my hand. My sole buoyed in the cold, rubbery trampoline of glistening lake sand, which was about half-mud and clogged together well to make the sandballs that had left evidence of a battle all over the both of us. Stepping gingerly at the sense of thinner, watery deposits of actual mud under the bowing top layer, we snuck our way to sturdier sand further inland towards the protective wall of trees reaching bald branches down from the cliff of eroded dirt to the sand. A beach full of

sand, nestled in the Rocky Mountains. What a spot the Sandy Bitch was!

I smiled in the sun, winking a mosquito out of my eye. Doubtless we both would have red bites all over us later tonight. Hopping from one firm roost of dry-ish sand to another, I perched on each landing one-footed. Like a crane watches for fish, I observed my fellow explorer’s shuffling gait, legs always turned out to some degree, moving his feet as if someone pulled his heels forward by a string and the rest of the feet just followed. It was as if no one ever taught him how to walk. Sort of like his mumbling dad, although surely someone had taught him to walk. Oafish as he looked, he was tough, and strong too, which

his abnormally thick shoulder and ox-like neck alluded to. I interject my own thought with a lunging joust, crossing close in front of my partner’s face.

“Woh there buddy!”. He stooped for another mudball, and I quickly brandished our treaty from the previous war.

“Hey now! We’ve gotta finish these before they’re warm”, I said with a buzzed grin, my head spinning from the drinks we’d never had before.

“These are great dude, I feel like a superhero or something”, he tacitly agreed as he brandished his own 12 oz Red Bull. We had, unbeknownst to my parents, NOT bought candy with the 5 dollars from my dad, but made the tantalizing impulse buy of 2/5$ Red Bulls that had caught our eye in ACE’s Hardware Store. We were pretty sure we were old enough to buy them, and the gamble had proved to be a grand payoff when the burly-bearded clerk who dealt in nails and family business ledgers accepted our legal tender with a grunt and a ding of the old-school register.

A good gamble indeed, the best gamble ever in the history of all gambles actually I thought, as we pulled in every line of every leaf and every chirp of every bird from our first caffeine buzz. Old enough to know being drunk off of caffeine was dumb but young enough to not care, we just enjoyed every bit of the beach. A wrestling match broke out, his thick brick of a body tackling mine as empty cans were tossed far enough to avoid rolling onthem. He was strong, and his porcupine helmet of inch-long hair formerly recognizable as a buzz cut poked into the underbelly of my neck. He had me pinned for a second, but a violent trash of my bony torso got me onto my side, and my skinny shoulder twisted inhumanly to allow me to pop out on top after. Time for my signature move. Gangly tentacles caught his arms against his chest, where weak muscles of the shoulder couldn’t

push against my wiry bear hug. A vibrating grunt from in between me and the sand - he was straining as hard as he could, but I’d started to outgrow him, and my home-cooked dinners had begun to outpace his cereal and microwave meals in their effect on our growing bodies.

Chivalrous knights that we were, I held for a second, then popped off and scrambled for a moment like I was scared of a chase. Young boys always want to win, but we didn’t want to beat each other, so our battles often became dances of unspoken courtesy. Silent understanding, the kind best of friends always relished in, and my heart burst with the joy of being of the same mind. We laughed, and made our way to the water, as we both glistened with sweat, which was essentially a PSA for mosquitos to come and feast on us. I would never say it out loud, but my brother-in-arms had left a faint sheen of grease on me from our battle, one he always had on him, and my run to the water was partly in haste to feel clean. He never stunk – his probably intentional coinsurer-ism in Axe Body Spray ensured that – but even past the wall of trees that hid us from the world, his origins in it still clung to his skin.

My heart twinged for a second as I mentally walked the mangy path from his front door to his room, hearing the unrehearsed mumbling of his dad from behind a stained door as we asked for permission to leave. As if he could stop us. As if he could even find the door half the time, with his teetering walk and eyes maladjusted to the light of day. On days he was up and about it was slurred inquisitions about the days plan, his sore-pocked face lighting up as he was reminded of an old boxing story. That was why his speech was slurred, of course – too many hours in the ring - except that the slurring seemed to come and go with the pockmarks and the times he could parade around the kitchen and trip over

the dogs. We always brushed it off, though, and escaped to my house or the purifying light of day.

Sloughing off the caked-on sand, our duo hovered in the water of the Sandy Bitch and set out eyes on the next mission at hand. You see, the Sandy Bitch had two halves to it, the entrances to which lay on either side of a lazy ninety-degree bend in the neighborhood-style road that passed it – Somers Rd, to be specific. The side closer to the MT-82 Highway saw the sand cut off into a marshy bird conservatory that stretched a couple acres. The beach was open on that side, receding into what to the naked eye would have been a field, but we knew to be federally protected land. We figured that, more out of respect for the birds than the government, that side of the beach wasn’t worth our time. The other side of

the beach, as the lazy turn in Somers Road made its way towards historic downtown

(Somers, Montana had once been a major stop for the railroad) was much more exciting anyways. Taller and taller trees began to rise out of the churning ground, which never knew at any given point if it was sand, soil, rock, or marshland. It made for magical terrain, with stooping, leaning trees and paths that hopped over gargantuan driftwood logs and skirted swampy crevasses.

Part of the intrigue lie in the danger of it all. On the one hand, at some point in the beach there was a dividing line from the property of the State of Montana and the property of the disgraced railroad, which had polluted the water for a time with acrid tar from ill-placed railroad tracks. They had gotten in quite a bit of trouble from the government, likely with accompanying fines, and Somers was no longer a useful thoroughfare for goods, so it’s not like they used the land at all. Despite that, like a sleeping dragon that guards rings of

gold it can never wear, there was tell of the railroad prosecuting someone sometime for trespassing, which it technically was. Whether or not that was true, for a pair of 13-year-olds, the natural appeal of the terrain combined with the thrill of disobedience of an unknown villain was all too much to resist, and we were there every weekend. Plus, it truly was a great spot.

There was another player in the game, too, that made today an exciting excursion – aside from the 120 milligrams of caffeine coursing through our veins. Grumpy Dan. Who knew if he was grumpy, and I had no idea if his name was Dan, but that’s what some of the other neighborhood kids said their mom - who was a nurse and knew what she was talking about – had said his name was. He had moved from California, probably, and bought a two-story house on an already elevated pitch of land overlooking the only gravel path into the Sandy Bitch from the downtown side of the road. He claimed he owned the path, although that was a load of crap, but acted as a proverbial Cerberus over the skinny little thoroughfare.

The gravel road started off of Somers Road, in boldly open air next to Grumpy Dan’s front yard, and dropped down towards the water level at a gradual slope, just as fast as Grumpy Dan’s yard rose to meet the miniature, pine-covered mountain that overlooked the Sandy Bitch. Pretty soon, at the tense crux of the journey from Somers Rd to Sandy Bitch, travelers would have to bypass a railroad-owned hinge gate, which was always locked and had multiple no trespassing signs on it, as if people misunderstanding was the problem. Above and to the right was the second-story deck of Grumpy Dan’s house, overlooking scrambling miscreants from above akin to a guard tower in a prison break. That’s what it felt like, at least, especially after word got around that Dan had brandished a rifle at some older kids from inside his roost. Past the gate lie the woods, a safe wall of natural cover, which we were far on the other side of.

Like Marines scoping out an operation, or at least I certainly felt like that, we slowly scanned the area, scouring for rogue railroad men or the glint of a scope from Grumpy Dan’s house, the roof of which barely poked out over the trees. We had entered from the MT-82 side, and were looking to make our way back through downtown Somers, the much shorter route back home. Oblivious birds flitted in a spiral through some of the more beach-ward trees, impervious to the danger.

“You ‘bout ready to go?”

“Yeah, I’m sort of hungry, my mom’s got dinner for both of us she said.”

“Oh fire, I love your mom’s cooking!”

“Yeah me too.” Grim conversation in the face of such a threat.

We made our way off the water, stretching catlike within our tense frames as the sun wicked the water off of us. Diverging and reconverging, our trails picked their ways through the driftwood logs and rocky trails. Shoes back on only slightly dirty feet, we stood at the end of the beach trail, facing the maw that would spill us out at the ‘no trespassing’ gate.

“We’d better move fast”, I mused out loud.

“Yeah dude before we’ve got a bullet in our ass!”, he said as he crescendoed into a hysterical guffaw. “Hold up, check that out!”. He’s pointing to a hardly recognizable divot in the tree line, about 20 yards to the left of our typical trail. We jogged down to it.

Sure enough it opened up into a craggy, slightly overgrown, but recognizable trail. I peered back into it. “Do we even know where it goes?” I gently challenged.

“Bro, I think it drops down a little bit up into the neighborhood, like one or two houses up I think.” His flat hazel eyes eyes light up at the possession of useful knowledge all young men feel the sharp joy of when it first begins coming from them. “I think my dad said he’s used it before, that’s how I know.”

“Nahhh dude I’m prolly just gonna take my chances with Grumpy Dan’s path, its late and he’s probably eating dinner or something anyways, just come with me!”

“Bro, I know this one is a legit way, we could totally avoid Grumpy Dan, plus it could be like our secret path that no one knows! C’mon bro.” He implored me, but I was as cemented as him.

“Alright, I’ll just take my way, and you take yours, and we’ll meet up at the other end!” I figured we’d at least have the rest of the walk together, plus a proper feast after that.

“Sure bro, just loop up into the neighborhood and meet me on the street, Dan can’t get mad at you for that!”

I laughed; he really truly cracked me up. With a deeply etched smile and a crisp dap, we looked at each other deep in the eyes for a second, a look we often shared. Looks like those in between 13-year-old boys come easier than in 30-year-old men, born of hours of side-by-side bonding, and true admiration for the other. It’s much easier to truly love a friend when your ego hasn’t kicked yet – that usually happens towards the end of puberty. He seemed like another brother during these long summers, one I enjoyed, and who I knew I was truly enjoyed by. There could be more said, but not much more needs to be when describing the essence of a friendship.

Dirty in both skin and mouth – he cussed more than the Slim Shady tracks we

memorized on walks to the lake - he wasn’t even a good influence, teaching me how to make flamethrowers out of Axe spray in the winters and putting me on to how he got with his older sister’s hot lesbian friends. His sister was 22, so I took a lot of his stories with a grain of salt. Through all of that, though, his eyes, I noticed in that moment, were never tainted, never dirty. They always glinted, sometimes golden hazel, sometimes emerald green, but always happy to have the day all laid out in front of us.

I thought all of this as I made my way down Grumpy Dan’s trail – which, I made sure to think loudly and firmly, wasn’t even his anyways. I hopped the fence, landing silently and running stooped over until I was almost to the trail head, where I opened into a run. I knew it was a race, so I kept the run up into the neighborhood Grumpy Dan’s house guarded, until I was about two houses up. I stopped and tried to peer for a trail head without seeming suspicious. Wouldn’t want anyone thinking there was a new gang of middle school boys scoping out houses to rob.

I wait for a while, then carefully move into from side yard to side yard, peering into the end of backyards at the forest line, trying to find a trailhead. I stop once I get eight houses up and the neighborhood curves away from the trees. Jogging now, I do a cursory search of the forest wall on the way back to Grumpy Dan’s, thinking that he would pop out there, having realized his way was a dead end. Nothing. My chest tensing, I prepare to take drastic measures as the evening roar of cicada begins to hum from the forest, as if every inch of that the trees and bushes took up was screaming at the neighborhood. Taking two

preparatory hops on the balls of my feet, I dive back in at a full spring past Grumpy Dan’s house, spilling out back onto the Sandy Bitch. It’s darker not, and shadows start to fill the marshy crags and underbellies of the driftwood trees.

Wasting no time, I turn right and right again but abruptly stop as I find nothing but overgrown bush. Thicker than it had seemed before, to even begin to walk this path seems now so much harder than it did before. Perhaps I had underestimated my friend’s strength, his shuffle was as perseverant as it was ungainly to get through these woods. Failing to find a way in, I felt panic starting to set in. This disappearing road now seemed sinister, as if it had always planned to take explorers in. Ahh, what was I doing! He probably had beat me back to the trailhead after doubling back through Grumpy Dan’s trail and couldn’t find me while I was eight houses up in the neighborhood. I would find him walking back to dinner, and we’d laugh about what a silly worrier I was being.

I ran the way home, pausing at the tops of hills to look around at possible other off-road paths we sometimes took, but I couldn’t find him. Panting up my porch, I opened the door to the smell of meatloaf and the sound of my sister’s Just Dance pumping in the living room. Still, my partner in crime nowhere to be found.

My mom smiled at me as she walked dinner to the table. “Just in time!”, she sung.

“Where is...”

“Was he joining us tonight? I thought you were just going swimming?” Oof. I had totally forgotten to tell my mom.

“Well, he was supposed to have dinner tonight, but I couldn’t find him at the beach and I thought he was here.” I was starting to choke up.

“Honey what’s wrong?” My mom was starting to look concerned; I was pretty tough at 13, and crying wasn’t a common occurrence for tough boys.

I raced through the options but had no explanation for what had happened at the beach. Sure, we had split up for a bit, but it should have been easy to find him at the other end of his dad’s supposed trail. I thought about turning back right then and looking, but it was dark, and dinner smelled so good, and I was starving, and hungry, and sweaty, and he would be fine!

“I’m good, I just can’t make sense of that guy sometimes.” I mumbled as I sat down.

We were both readily establishing young men with minds of our own, so he probably had just headed back for his dad’s place, thinking that I had gone home myself. I’d make sure after dinner, but right now wasn’t an emergency. A little pissed off at him for doing his own thing like that, I thought to myself that I had things to do and I would look after dinner, which we were supposed to be eating together. I wish I’d looked harder.