A Sandbanks Memoir

The side of the County Road 27 is littered with burrito wrappers, beer cans, muddy socks, shopping bags, wax paper with the edges of melted cheese from a burger still stuck to it, even a sand-worn pregnancy test. Without picking it up, I inspect it up close and it is unclear whether or not it is positive of negative; but regardless it is certainly horrifying and comedic to think of the circumstances under which this was discarded so carelessly on the side of the road.
I imagine a teenage girl riding in the passenger seat of a Dodge Neon with her boyfriend who is drinking a Mountain Dew with one hand and gripping the steering wheel with the other. They have left her parents house, where she urinated on the stick and quickly left without her parents noticing and hopped in her boyfriend’s car.
This is where the story forks:

A). They are approaching the Park Street bridge where County Road 27 begins at 35 miles per hour. A pink plus sign materializes on the strip. “Positive,” she says too softly for her boyfriend to hear. “What?” he says. “It’s positive,” she says, “I’m fucking pregnant.” With a flash of frustration and fear she hurls the stick out of the cracked window and the Dodge Neon continues down County Road 27 past the gas station towards the four corners and blinking red light.

B). They are approaching the Park Street bridge where County Road 27 begins at 35 miles per hour. A pink minus sign materializes on the strip. The girl betrays a relieved smile and her boyfriend, not knowing exactly what this ambiguous expression means, says, “Well, what’s it say?” She lifts her gaze to his and says, “I’m not pregnant.” The boyfriend sets the Mountain Dew in his hand in the cup holder and holds her hand. She nonchalantly flicks the pregnancy test out the window as if it where a cigarette butt and says something to the effect of, “Phew. That was a close one.”

But I’m just flexing my imagination. Maybe there were four girls in the car when the test was thrown out the window. Maybe it fell out of an eviscerated trash bag. It doesn’t matter. This does: we are now strapped to the hood of that Dodge Neon going 40 miles an hour down County Road 27, accelerating to 60 miles per hour as we head towards the gravel parking lot at the trailhead of the swimming hole nicknamed the Sandbanks.
Once the car is parked, the trick is to bee-line it down the trail at least two hundred yards. If you dawdle in the gravel lot there is a chance that one of the five law enforcement agencies will pull up behind you and summon you back, pointing to the sign posted on the gate that stipulates that swimming is not allowed there. But imagine for a moment that one of the five law enforcement agencies in town—whether it be the Canton Police, the New York State Troopers, the County Sherrif, St. Lawrence University Security, or SUNY Canton Police—has not followed you here and you’re walking down the trail swatting gnats and mosquitos from your neck and shoulders and squishing in the mud with your sandals and listening to the Downy woodpecker making mulch out of a dead pine tree as you walk down the trail to the Grasse river.
At the end of the trail, the far bank of the river is a thin ribbon of water. On this side of the river a four-foot high embankment of sand has been carved by the water. Bank Swallows have burrowed holes in the sand for their nests. The sand has the sticky, granulated consistency of brown sugar. At the top of the bank there is a pile of ash and fragments of wood in a spent campfire. Exposed tree roots dangle over the edge of the bank, making a sturdy ladder with which to hoist yourself onto dry land from the water below. A massive white pine tree bowed in the shape of a rib hangs over the middle of the river. A series of 2x4’s nailed to its trunk form a ladder. There is a long knotted rope swing dangling the highest branch. At the end of the rope there is a young man of about twenty-one with wild brown hair swinging into the water, legs akimbo, hands gripping the rope tentatively, waiting for the right moment to release and drop, anticipating that moment where the water will catch him and force him up in a wreath of bubbles.

- Raurri Jennings

http://denny-morreale.artistwebsites.com/featured/raurri-the-sandbanks-and-the-tree-that-broke-my-heart-denny-morreale.html