Member-only story
DEAD MAN SWIMMING
Live By The Sea, Die By The Sea
The day I almost became a body
In Cape Elizabeth, Maine, there’s a breakwater made of granite blocks connecting Crescent Beach to Richmond Island, two thousand feet out into the Atlantic.
At low tide, you can walk the rocks to the island.
At high tide, your bridge disappears.
It was August. My friend Martin and I, both of us twenty-years-old and everlasting, crossed over and spent wonderful hours exploring the island. There’s a forest on either end, a field in the middle, and wild sheep everywhere.
The sheep are leftovers from a long-dead farm. When you find the bones of the barn, it’s easy to stand in that graveyard and pretend Maine is old and that you never will be.
Richmond Island is known for its sheep, but it’s famous for its pirates.
They did business on Richmond: Captain Dixie Bull, Black Will, Paulsgrave Williams, and Captain Kief, who, with a lantern, would “ride his horse up and down the island in stormy weather, luring passing ships to their doom on the reefs.”
Martin and I kicked around for signs of piracy. We wanted skeletons in greatcoats and leather boots. We wanted gold.
