Guys Like Us by Sean Nolan

Author:Sean Nolan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: GemmaMedia
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The summer drifted by the way it does when you’re young, and there’s no job to be going to, and the dread of the coming school year is somewhat toned down by the fact that you forget to dread it as you’re at the beach all day. I mostly forgot about the car raffle, because even Joe could not guarantee victory in a church raffle, no matter how close to God he claimed to be. He wouldn’t let anyone forget, though. He told everyone. He mentioned it at the ice cream store. He mentioned it when he went to buy milk. He mentioned it everywhere.

“Have you seen that Cadillac out by the church?” was usually the way he started. Then he’d engage them in his whole conversation about how he’d never won anything. There was scarcely a person from Point Pleasant to Seaside Heights that didn’t know that Joe Nolan had never won anything in his life and that he was going to win that Cadillac.

We were at the beach one day in August, me under a beach towel that I had put over the back of my mom’s beach chair on one side to make a little fort. The other side was held down by two pieces of driftwood, which unbeknownst to my family I would carry home with me in the folds of my beach towel to squirrel away in the attic. I had an entire driftwood collection no one knew about. I was fascinated with the stuff, but could think of no practical purpose for it. You couldn’t even really display much of it in your room, Kathy had seen to that. It fell under the category “crap” in her book. So I hid it away in hopes that I would eventually discover a use for it, perhaps when I took up whittling in my old age.

The ocean was full of jellyfish at that time of the year, so I wasn’t in the water. I burned easily in the sunlight, so I’d built my fort for protection, but also so I could read without being bothered. It amazes me how comfortable people feel in disturbing you when you’re reading. “What are you reading there?” they say. Well, nothing now. Now I’m talking to you.

The peace of the afternoon was cut short by gigantic laughter and the sounds of people talking excitedly. I’d barely looked up from my book when I heard my name called. I emerged from my hiding spot and a group of people were all gathered around the Fifth Avenue beach entrance, smiling and laughing. Kathy was waving me over, so I put my book down and put on my T-shirt and hat so as not to be burned. I ran up to the group and saw Joe emerging from the scrum wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat and white patent leather shoes and a huge smile. He was guffawing and people were laughing with him. It was all people from the neighborhood who knew us.

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