Spellbound at Chincoteague

Literary Review, Summer, 1994 by Jane Bradley

On Assateague Island across the narrow inlet I saw a pair of foxes running last night, two brown smears of motion flashing over the dunes, chasing laughing gulls circling above. I can still see them scattering sand, scampering up and over to cross the line between yellow-gray land and purple-pink sky.

We saw white-tailed deer there. A speckled fawn leapt over a bush, rushed to its mother to nurse, and I paused on my bike, called to my daughter, "Susan, look." And we both froze, mosquitoes swarming around our legs as we watched the wild animals looking back at us, bored it seemed, with the steady flow of tourists, the human gaze. We saw wild ponies. More birds than I could name rose up from water, marshlands, trees, curving flashes of white wings, black, gray, red, yellow, colors arching rising falling, moving so fast sometimes we could only turn our heads to see what was gone.

Inside my cottage I hear the rhythm of Paula Abdul, the thumping of my daughter's bare feet as she dances with her new friend, Sarah, both wiggling, stepping, turning, waving slim, tanned arms in the air. I hear the melody of lyrics I've heard enough to know: "Spellbound. So spellbound.... Spellbound. I wouldn't help it if I could." I'd like to go back inside for ice water, but I know that the instant I push against the door, the girls will stop dancing, freeze, look at me.

My neighbor's Grand Marquis glints in the sunlight without a scratch or a smudge I can see; he keeps the seats covered with sheets to protect the plush maroon upholstery from sunlight and sand. Tom and Ethel, both lean and tan and strong for their age, have been coming back to this place for thirty years. They have brought their daughter Laurie here since she was a girl, and now they bring their son-in-law and granddaughter. Sarah is inside now, wearing one of my black shirts belted as a chic dress, like my daughter, who wears another black shirt. Bangles shake, and their hair combed in high blonde ponytails bounces and swishes the air as they dance.

The girls rewind the tape, and I look out at the water where Tom and his daughter fish. No doubt they will bring home more flounder, and Tom will clean them, then stuff the heads in a white plastic garbage bag. Crab bait, he told me when he and Sarah gave us our first lesson on catching crabs.

We used the rubbery gray heads of flounder cut from the bone - the fillets neatly cut away to be battered and fried. Tom showed me how to do it, how to tie a head with a weight and twine, how to toss the dead thing into the water and wait for the bait to bring in a crab. The dead yellowish eyes looked almost crossed, stupid, stunned. Red, gray, and salmon-colored entrails tumbled from the fish head as Tom scooped them out with his fingers and tossed them in the air to the laughing black-hooded gulls that flapped and chattered, grabbed the glutinous stuff in their beaks and swooped for more.

He taught me. I did it. I held the lead weight heavy in my fingers as I used by thumb to open the dead flounder's gill. I looked inside and saw the liver-red feathered fan shape that once filtered water. Now it hung bright and dead as plastic. I opened the gill wider with my thumb, pushed the weight in and up toward the tough whitish mouth puckered tight in a dead grip on air and lined with saw-like white teeth. I pried the mouth open with a knife and pushed the weight deep in with my finger, watched the gray open mouth for the weight to come through, and I cringed at the cold rubbery feel of a head pried open with a knife and skewered on my finger as I pushed the weight through and pulled on the twine then knotted it. The two dead eyes stared up from the gray fish that when alive hugged the ocean floor with its white belly until it saw a flash moving in water, moved for it, and bit. Surely the thing felt rage with the yank and tear of the hook that pulled it up through the water to the glare and heat of sun, the sudden noise of engines, gulls, voices filling the air that must have hit like a whack of metal, stunned it dead.

Tom scooped the entrails from another fish head and tossed them to the gulls. His gray-white hair gleamed in the sunlight, his freckled arms still strong as he lifted the old metal cooler and a netted sack of lead weights, arranged them neatly on the boards of the dock. I've seen those arms wrapped around Ethel as they stood on the shore watching birds swoop over waves; his arms have carried Sarah laughing, bounced and balanced her like a sack of potatoes at his side. I hope I can grow old like this, hope I have the option of returning to this place with a family for the next thirty years.

We tied eight flounder heads and I got faster, less squeamish with each pulling open of a gill. As I baited the heads and tossed them, I watched the dead flesh drift down, tipping back and forth as it sank in the dark water toward mud and weeds. I heard the girls laughing beyond the dock. They were scrambling over rocks, collecting mussels washed up at high tide. They cried out, "Here's a good one," as if they would eat these mud-caked things. They planned to have me steam the mussels and make a butter sauce so they could sell them at a nickel a piece. A look of disgust pulled at their lips smiling, eyes gleaming, wondering would anybody really eat these things.