“They better have a good DJ this time,” Nick said.
“That last guy was illin' with all that Motown shit,” Reggie said.
NP said there wasn't going to be a DJ this year. Nick didn't believe it, but my mother had told us the same thing that morning, offering the hypothesis that there wasn't enough money in the budget “because they spent so much on those new Sag Harbor Hills signs of
theirs.” They were quite natty, the signs, standing at the highway entrances of all the development streets, the jaunty black whale with its come-hither look. Now Azurest would have to get its act together and get new signs, too. It was a cold war, but harmless. “That's messed up,” Nick said.
“That's some bullshit right there,” Barry David said. “I thought you said this was a real party.”
“There's the bonfire,” I offered.
“Wack-ass bonfire,” he said. “I'm gonna get me some iced tea.” He walked away and I asked Nick, “Who's that?” “That's NP's cousin.” He shrugged. “He came out for the day.” Out in Sag Harbor, it was good policy to wave at everyone you passed, whether you happened on them as they were removing groceries from the trunk or as they stood in the middle of their lawns with hedge clippers and a vacant expression on their faces, wherever, because there was a good chance you were related. Cousins like crab-grass out there. You never knew how close you were to those you passed. This day, that rule was in abeyance. You'd spend all day bowing and saluting, it was ridiculous. Labor Day, the population was at its highest, with one-weekenders out for their annual visitation, relatives caravanning like Okies to break in the new convertible bed, and the scattered alumni coming around again to see if it was as they remembered. The Sunday of Labor Day weekend we crowded into this one street to see one another and say good-bye.
Ninevah Place, the dead end to the beach the rest of the year, was today the dead end of summer. We could go no further. The next day we'd close up our houses, pulling in the lawn furniture, winding hoses around forearms in messy loops, leaning on faucets with all our might for that extra bit that meant peace of mind for nine months. School, work, autumn. As if autumn was not already here. Nights we zipped jackets to the neck, and days gooseflesh popped on our legs as we tried to squeeze one more use out of shorts we'd never wear again.
But forget all those city intimations. Today was the Sag Harbor Hills Labor Day Party. Card tables replaced the cars outside of
houses, set a-wobble by pitchers and Tupperware. We camped out, sharing our food and drink and stories. Mayo glued globs of potato salad to spoons, you had to shake hard to plop it into the compartment on the blue plastic plate. Potato salad, where would we be without potato salad clumped with yellow ladybugs of yolk, potato salad by the bushel and crinkled aluminum tins of greens steaming over Sterno cans of murmuring fire.
Bucket Webers and flat hibachis unfurled magnificent banners of gray smoke. With a plate in your hand, you mixed and matched from experience. There was Mr. Jackson and his grilled chicken. He'd made a name for himself with his Labor Day chicken, the parts marinated overnight in some handed-down Tennessee concoction. He had a long line waiting for a piece. He could hardly keep up. A few houses down, Mr. Turner prodded franks, looking forlornly down the street at Mr. Jackson and his followers and resolving to step up his game, although next year he'd be out with the hot dogs again, jealous again. We plotted and planned and next year came around and we were in the same place. Old reliable. And how could I forget Mrs. French and her cupcakes, soft as the ticking that angels stuff in their pillows. The cupcakes went before three o'clock and her brownies disappeared like that, reduced to smears at the corners of mouths and fingernails and the dirty shirts of dirty kids with no home training. The big bowls of rum punch were refilled punctiliously, in less-regulated proportions as time went on. You knew who to hit up for what.
At any given moment someone was playing “Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now.” Labor Day, we cornered the worldwide market on people playing “Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now.” It was the black national anthem. The disco version of “We Shall Overcome,” courtesy of Mr. McFadden & Mr. Whitehead. It came out of our cars as we drove to the store for last-minute paper plates and ketchup, issued triumphantly from sand-flecked boom boxes on threadbare beach towels, blared out of backyard patios from ancient amps plugged into bright orange extension cords uncoiled for annual duty. There've been so many things that held us down—check. But now it looks like
things are finally coming around—check. We're on the move!—check. Whether the association was civil rights triumph, busting through glass ceilings in corporate towers, or merely the silly joy of gliding around a roller rink as you chased your friends and occasionally held hands with someone, aloft in a polyurethane heaven, the song addressed the generations. No stoppin'.
Older folks sunk down in beach chairs and did not stir the whole afternoon, watching it all, waiting for people to come over and pay respect. They were the only ones able to savor or rue the small jokes of time. Like, isn't that Sammy Parkerson and James Norton Jr. playing with each other? Their grandparents were pals, the parents couldn't stand each other, and then the grandkids found each other one dead afternoon and became buddies for life. The seasons set everything right again. My parents' generation made the rounds, popping in for a drink at one of the houses, making carefully timed appearances at the functions they'd promised all week to attend, hot on the trail of lost friends rumored to be out after so long. They checked on their children only occasionally. Why worry today? It was Labor Day. Nothing bad could happen. They got a break from us. We got a break from them. Tomorrow it was back to the apartments and we'd be all over each other for nine months. We'd had all summer to sew up the tears and push the stuffing back inside, but it was over. The little kids zoomed. Me and my friends stood with our arms crossed, shaking our heads.
When was the first Labor Day party? The Last Chance Dance. Spur-of-the-moment thing one summer in the early '50s, a nice idea, some friends getting together, then becoming official as it became a hit, people looked forward to it, with a planning committee and folks jockeying for their little visions. Foot races for the kids appearing one year. The fashion show, which I never understood. Was this the handiwork of famous designers the girls strutted around in, previews from Parisian runways? The girls were game, mimicking poses from magazines. Throw a kiss to the crowd like I told you, dear. At dusk the dance party began, on the wooden stage erected the Monday before and sitting in the street all week, teasing, beckoning.
Jump on it to test its solidity. For a few summers we bused in a group of Alvin Ailey dancers—somebody had connections—and they moved delicately in their beige leotards, a slow exquisite display. They used Clive's basement as a changing room, and we crowded around the little window for a glimpse of nip or muff and were run off by Clive's mother. Always, always run off. That was our whole story. The bonfires started again around when the dancers stopped coming.
It was time for the last race. A woman snatched her toddler from the track. Everybody was ready, but Mr. Grady was having a problem with his stopwatch. At the end of each race, he checked the stack of paper in his hand, different colors and stocks from many years, to see if any new records had been set, if the legendary times of yore still stood. “And Stacy Carter maintains the record for girls' 11 to 12s, set Labor Day 1976,” he'd announce for the people in the stands. We looked around for Stacy Carter, now in her early twenties, a child on her shoulder, smiling at the mention of her long-ago feat, those next to her slapping her on the back. She ran this street, too, back in the day.
We waited. There was this new gang of kids, boys and girls I hadn't seen all summer. Where did they come from, these cocky little shits, acting like they owned the street? As if these were not our races they were running. Where had they been hiding? Biding their time all these months, on Azurest Beach while we tried to claim the ocean beach, spinning the comics racks at the Ideal now that we had abandoned them. They prowled around on their bicycles looking for the next caper or disappointment, floating above the seat, assaulting the pedals for a few seconds and then gliding for a while, savoring this process. Ditching their half-eaten slices at Conca D'Oro when their lookout finger-whistled of our approach. They bristled at the line while Mr. Grady dicked around reciting the rules they already knew. Our replacements.
“I should get in there and win that medal,” Barry David said. “Take that shit.”
“You're too old,” Reggie said. He didn't like this kid.
“I know that, shit. I was just saying.” He poked the last bit of hamburger bun in his mouth and licked his lips.
Mr. Grady took his time. We grew impatient. Let's get this show on the road. We were all there. It was where we mingled with who we had been and who we would be. Sharing space with our echoes out in the sun. The shy kid we used to be and were growing away from, the confident or hard-luck men we would become in our impending seasons, the elderly survivors we'd grow into if we were lucky, with gray stubble and green sun visors. The generations replacing and replenishing each other. Every summer this shifting-over took place in small degrees as you moved closer to the person who was waiting for you to catch up and some younger version of yourself elbowed you out of the way.
Where was my replacement, then? Which boy was it, standing with the others at the starting line. Waiting for it to begin. Probably that knock-kneed creature in the green mesh T-shirt, with the scabbed knees and telltale messed-up Afro. Just looking at him, you knew he wasn't going to win. It was in the way he carried himself, last place before he'd taken a step. But he'd give it a good try. Like he always did. They hadn't beaten that out of him yet.
“Get on with it, Grady!” someone yelled, and the grown-ups laughed.
And who was I replacing? According to this scheme, he had to be here on this street, chowing down on some of Mr. Baxter's pork ribs. Was he one of Those Who Didn't Come Out Anymore? Had he been happy out here, or was he out in the world never speaking of this place just as it did not speak of him, the one who did not turn out as expected. Did he find someone? Was he here watching over his kids to keep them safe and reminiscing with the old pals, shaking hands that were cold and wet from beer-snagging dips into coolers, catching the eye of his wife from the other side of the street. She smiles back and they share this moment in the crowd. Maybe he didn't exist and I was the first of my line. The mutant strain. Or I was in his vicinity, but I couldn't recognize him because I didn't believe I could grow into that one day, smiling and assured and at peace. That sleeping
part of me finally roused to action. Maybe I saw him every day out here, passing him by, I was looking at him now, and I pitied the very sight of him, too scared to acknowledge how I would turn out.
The pistol sounded. They ran down the street, all the boys 11 to 12, minus the asthmatics, slapping down the pavement in their cheap rubber. The obvious winner, the tallest kid, the most put-together kid, the one who knew how to move through the world, quickly pulled out in front. The kid I put my money on, the one in the green mesh shirt, didn't come in last, but just barely. He hunched over by the finish line, panting. Tough race. The first time we ran it, I remembered, this street was still dirt. They finally put some asphalt down and then people started retiring out here, staying past Labor Day and through the winter. It wasn't their summer place anymore. It was their home.
The winner jumped up and down. Mr. Grady said, “Almost beating Gary Osgood's famous record from 1981, but not quite, is Little Clive of Azurest!” There was a Little Clive? How could there be more than one Clive, it was ridiculous. The recent overlap in Mohammads and Malcolms made sense, times change, but how could there be another Clive?
With the races over, the crowd reclaimed the street after being penned in the sidelines, bumping their butts against the folding tables and old ladies' chairs. I caught sight of my runner as the people hustled in. He turned from his friends and a darkness churned through his features for a moment before he found his mask again. Yeah, he had to be me. That was me all over. The look of fret when he slips up and for a second other people can see it. Sometimes you recognize yourself in other people right off and sometimes it's subconscious. When you get older, you gather friends and lovers for reasons other than the accident that your houses are close together. There's an affinity, stuff you share in common and things you seek out in other people. Something drew you together but you didn't understand that secret undertow until one day after years and years of talking, it comes, the key story that lays it all out. Who could know at the start of that innocent evening that this was the night to make
it plain. They tell you what happened and you think, we're more alike than I knew, but of course you did know, it's what brought you together. Incomplete children become incomplete adults. You can see it. You find each other.
Maybe my earlier model, the jolly son of Sag Harbor I was replacing, was looking at me in that moment, a can of Budweiser resting on his paunch, bad mustache shrubbing his lip, thinking, Why is he standing around when he could be out having fun? Such a chump. I can relate. Talking about that summer all this time, sometimes I have to stop and say, I don't know who this Benji kid is, either. Certainly he would not recognize the man he came to be. The poor sap. I need him to figure out how I got where I am, and he needs me to reassure him that despite all he knows and has seen and feels, there is more. I can listen to him. But of course he can't hear a damn thing I say.
“You can run, but can you jump? Look at you. You can run, but can you jump?” Barry David was playing keep-away with Little Clive's First-Place medal. The younger boy grabbed for it and Barry David snatched it higher. Was there anything worse than a bigger kid playing keep-away with your stuff? That dreary rehearsal for adulthood. It wasn't something we'd do to the little kids. Well, some of us, maybe. But never on a weekend, when parents were around. Barry David didn't care who saw. Little Clive's cheeks reddened. “Look at you!”