Jed Wolf

My sister and I share enduring memories of staying with strange families while my parents travelled.

Why wouldn’t we appreciate chalets in Vermont, summer homes on the Cape, Nantucket or off the coast of Maine and their old-monied owners, nostalgic for previous eras who offered us mousy sleeping bags in rambling porches, boat houses and moldy army tents, believing hauling supplies to and from boats instilled yankee values?

Before 1965, my parents pulled over so I could vomit, but after eight years of boys school and sobbing on too many ski trips, I wound up with folks who barked “shape up,” at the slightest hint of apathy. With no other choice, I participated in scheduled activities like water safety, trail clearing and boat painting without whining, ‘til I could sneak away and explore the natural realms beyond.

Cape Cod sand dunes with 360° views seemed accumulated specifically to be ascended and dived from. Fragrant Maine spruce forests, cluttered with lichen, blackberries and windfalls taught my bare feet to step carefully, while tidal creeks reversed direction daily between boulders arranged perfectly to leap between. Rugosa Roses, heavy with bees made Nantucket as sweet smelling as it was impenetrable, where hot tar roads burnished my callouses with stains I detect to this day.

Seals staired, eagles watched, and deer stood scrutinizing the loudmouth croquet, volleyball and continual shouting from the sandy lawns where my sister and I first learned all newcomers were required to pass swim tests before venturing out alone.

There’s nothing warm about the ocean off New England, but minutes in burning cold Atlantic in downeast Maine can be lethal. My sister and I were busy watching embryonic sharks swim circles in buckets on a dock when someone made us prove we could capsize a canoe and swim it to shore. Older kids who’d been slicing open the pregnant sharks to catch cannibalistic adults, assured us laughing, no one had ever been attacked ‘cause no one ever swam.

My sister and I crawled from the bloody dock, into the canoe then tipped it over as everyone watched us abandon the boat to save ourselves. Trusted to be left alone after that, my older sister befriended kids her own age and I took off alone.

Too insecure to enjoy group activities, I snuck around eavesdropping on conversations and watching others from the woods. Peering from dunes I’d been scolded for climbing, I spied on older kids making out and witnessed my first fuck on a trail I’d helped clear.

I first heard about Hurricane Esther on the Nantucket ferry. Five years earlier, the cat 3 storm created what the locals named, “Esthers,” a narrow dune-covered barrier island populated by rabbits. At age nine, when I learned we’d be heading there to relocate them, I dreamed of taking one home.

A dangerous channel swirling with currents separated the island. If rabbits marooned there devoured all the dune grass, the island could wash away, exposing the town to the ocean but I was more concerned with what to name my rabbit as we waited for the weather to clear.

Drizzle finally let up beneath spongy low clouds as about a hundred townspeople gathered at a village beach where motorized skiffs, Whalers and dories waited to ferry us across.

When the boat someone lifted me into hit the currents, the guy steering it ranted like a pirate about whirlpools and Great Whites. Hopeful it was too early for adults to be drinking, I gripped my seat as the currents churned around us heading into fog.

I had no idea which boat my sister was in. We’d been swept up in it too fast to keep track of each other so I asked about how we were going to catch the rabbits and heard, there’s be gloves and cages on the far side.

We reached a desolate beach, got out and hauled what boats we could above the tide line. “Okay people,” some guy yelled,” Split into two groups and hold hands.”

No way, I thought. I’d never held anyone’s hand in my life except for being yanked around Europe by my grandparents and in dancing school where odd girls wore white gloves. As I scanned for viable medical reasons to opt out, the guy said, “This half, go to the left, the other half to the right, then meet in the middle.” I hadn’t decided which direction might be more advantageous when someone yanked me their way.

One hundred or so strangers stretched the width of the island with me somewhere in the middle. As my shoulders worried they might dislocate, someone asked whose kid I was and they automatically shrugged.

“Okay people,” the leader continued. “The object is to flush them ahead of us while being careful not to stomp the grass, okay?” “Okay,” the crowd shouted in unison. We set off over the undulating sandy knife point that pierced the ocean on either side and narrowed into the mist.

I marched as best I could, trying not to trip but it was hard to keep from feeling sorry for myself. I’d always hated being dragged and scolded for hating it. My mother walloped me for nearly drowning after I’d been swept away by a swift current and pried my fingers from her swimsuit then slammed me on her blanket for crying.

Whenever I hated things, bad memories flooded in as if reminding me not to cry or else.

But thoughts of being spanked, screamed at, and left alone crying in cars didn’t go away even if I acted strong. Knowing I’d get no sympathy on the dunes and shamed if I acted weak, I conjured the most distracting image I knew. I was recalling the teenage boy’s naked ass humping in the woods and everything else I imagined happening underneath, when someone yelled “Rabbit” and one I tried to step around lunged like a bobcat and grazed my ankle with its talons.

Rabbits flushed from nearly every clump of dune grass as we marched and people finally stopped reprimanding one another for stepping on the grass when I wriggled my wrist out of a woman’s grip. I yanked my other hand to myself and the guy who’d been holding it scowled until I waved my arms like an adult on a cattle drive yelling, “heahh.”

As we reached the island’s mid-point, the rabbits scooting ahead began forming herds. Our brigade became increasingly disconnected, as people began stomping on boroughs. I was reprimanded for letting a few rabbits shoot behind me, but some had begun defiantly standing their ground. Tiny ones crouched in footprints left by marchers ahead and thanked me for not stomping on them as I’d seen others do. I imagined lying in the sun with my dog and swimming underwater in pools while staring skyward, stepping over limp bodies unable to close my eyes.

The dunes abruptly ended as we descended onto the fog-shrouded sand-spit and followed their tracks into the mist. I dreaded catching the frantic animals and wished I could turn around when someone whispered, “There they are.”

Hissing breakers fell from either side as I imagined Porky Pig surfing and a woman grabbing her children said she was going back. A few others stopped and stared but most began running toward the bobbing coconuts or what I hoped were sea otters.

Rabbits who hadn’t yet plunged into the waves huddled together in fright. Some folks frantically tried to make room for them to escape while others herded them into the waves where they bobbed for a while, vanished or washed-up dead.

Other kids were being led away sobbing when my sister found me. We were giving each other the same look amid the arguing crowd, as we had during our parent’s fights, when a teenage boy began ripping off his shirt and shoes. Sucking our teeth, we shook our heads as he raced to the water’s edge like in a movie and valiantly dove into the waves.

People gasped as he fought incoming surf from two directions. Folks stood knee deep in the frigid water waving their arms and others sobbed as the determined boy closed in on a rabbit equally committed to escape. A few people half-heartedly clapped as the swimmer swiped the flagging rabbit by the ears, turned, and headed back with it frantically kicking above water.

Prepared to witness the swimmer being blinded, I was a little disappointed to see the drama end when a waist-deep man grabbed the boy’s arm to help him, but the boy dramatically pushed the man away and walked toward the crowd with the limp, dead rabbit in his arms.

Like Mary holding Jesus in the Pieta, I thought. Having seen the original in the Vatican, I’d have rather been feeding the pigeons. But worse than being dragged through Europe and everywhere else, was the shame I felt for despising every minute of it.

My parents were right. I hated everything. I was ungrateful, difficult to be around and didn’t appreciate them or anyone else, including the show off swimmer and vowed that day to never, ever allow myself to be rescued.