These Stupid Kids

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M argie and peg were arrested after they got drunk on

the chef ’s cooking wine and went into the parking lot

and rubbed butter on the windshield of every car parked

there. It was late at night. It was also late in September, and

long past the end of the tourist season. There had been very few

customers that evening, in the restaurant where Margie and Peg

worked, and there were very few cars in the parking lot. As it

happened, though, one of the cars that Margie and Peg buttered

turned out to be the police car of a Delaware state patrolman.

They hadn’t noticed that it was a police car. They hadn’t really

been paying attention. The Delaware state patrolman came out

of the restaurant and into the parking lot, where he handily

caught the girls in the act of vandalism.

Peg started to run when she saw him, but Margie shouted,

“Don’t run, Peg! He’ll gun you down like a dog! ”

Which Peg believed, although the Delaware state patrolman

had done nothing more threatening than bark, “Hey! ”

The patrolman held Peg and Margie in the parking lot and

radioed for a town cop to come and deal with the situation.

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p i l g r i m s

“Come and fetch these stupid kids, ” he told the town cop over

the radio.

The Delaware state patrolman stood in the parking lot with

Margie and Peg, waiting for the town cop. It rained and rained

on them. The patrolman was wearing a practical raincoat, but

the girls were soaked in their waitress uniforms.

“I wonder if we might be allowed to go inside the restaurant while waiting for the other policeman to arrive, ” Margie requested. “I wonder if it might not be more pleasant not to stand in the rain as we await the arrival of that gentleman. No? ”

Margie had a habit (newly developed that summer) of speak-

ing in such an aristocratic and refined manner. A very new

habit. A very new affectation, which was not enjoyed by every

individual she encountered. On this night in particular, Margie

sounded as if she were coming very close to calling the Dela-

ware state patrolman “my good fellow.” The Delaware state

patrolman looked at Margie, in her wet waitress uniform, talk-

ing so archly. Margie was clearly drunk. Margie had one eye-

brow raised inquisitively. She had one finger pressed coyly

against her chin.

“You can stand outside in the rain all night, for all I care,

Little Miss Du Pont, ” the Delaware state patrolman said.

“That’s very funny, ” Peg told him.

“Thank you, ” he said.

The town cop showed up. He looked bored. He was so bored,

in fact, that he charged Margie and Peg with public drunken-

ness, disturbing the peace, and vandalism.

“Gracious! ” Margie said. “That is quite a lot of serious

charges for a harmless little prank such as our own.”

The girls were loaded into the town cop’s car and taken to the

local jail, where they were fingerprinted and booked.

Peg’s boyfriend, a handsome guy named J.J., eventually ar-

rived to bail out Peg and Margie, but not before the two girls

had spent a few hours in the tidy jail cell.

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Come and Fetch These Stupid Kids

“Take a look around you, ladies, ” the bored town cop had said

when he was locking them up. “Get a feel for it. Remember

what it feels like to be behind bars. Not so nice, is it? Remember

that feeling, next time you decide to commit a crime.”

Margie and Peg took a look around. They got a feel for it.

They chewed some gum that Margie had, and then fell asleep.

When Peg’s boyfriend J.J. finally showed up to spring them out

of jail, it was already three o’clock in the morning.

“You two are turkeys, ” J.J. said, and he brought the car around

to the front of the station so the girls wouldn’t get any wetter.

They drove home. The rain was hitting the car hard, hail-

like. Each drop of rain had the weight, it seemed, of an un-

cooked bean. The Delaware shore was getting just a small piece

of some hurricane farther out in the Atlantic, but it was a

dramatic piece.

J.J. drove with his chin almost touching the steering wheel,

trying to see the road. Peg slept in the back seat. Margie found

some gum that was stuck in her hair and worked it out.

“The cop told me you two were supposed to spend the whole

night in jail, but I talked him out of it, ” J.J. told Margie.

“How did you manage to accomplish that, you clever dar-

ling? ” Margie asked.

“I told him that the road to our house might be washed out

by morning from all this rain, and I might not be able to come

and get you. He was nice about it.”

“Men certainly do like to talk about manly things like roads

being washed out, don’t they? ”

“That’s right, ” said J.J.

“Did you give him a firm and manly handshake, J.J.? ”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you call him sir? ”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good for you, J.J., ” said Margie. “Thank you so very much

for releasing us from that dreadful prison.”

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p i l g r i m s

When they got back to the house, Margie’s spoiled and fool-

ish boyfriend John was awake.

“I demand to have a drink with the criminal masterminds, ”

John said.

John had the same habit that Margie had, of speaking in a

refined and aristocratic manner. Actually, Margie had inherited

her speech pattern directly from John. John had invented it.

“Do you think we are loathsome, John? ” Margie asked, and

kissed him on the cheek.

John said, “I have a demand! I demand that we sit outside in

this magnificent rain and hear chilling tales about life in the big

house.”

Margie said, “Foolish John. Silly John. Don’t you realize that

this is the big house? ”

Margie was absolutely right. It was a very big house, indeed.

It was John’s house. He was only twenty-one years old, but he

owned this big house right on the Delaware shore. His parents

had given it to him as a graduation present. Margie’s parents, by

contrast, had given her a bracelet. Peg’s parents had taken her

out to dinner for a graduation present, and J.J.’s parents had sent

him a graduation card, signed by all his aunts and uncles.

John was rich. His father was a producer who lived in Holly-

wood and was very rich. As for John’s mother, she was a former

Miss Delaware. She was divorced from John’s father and lived

in a mansion on Chesapeake Bay. She had driven down only

once that summer to visit her son at his new beach house. She

had arrived in a Mercedes, and that car had looked as black and

hard as a wet rock.

John planned to live in his graduation gift house on the beach

forever, and he had invited his friends from college to live with

him just as long as they wanted. Originally, there had been five

young people living there, in John’s house. They’d had only two

names between them. There had been three Margarets and two

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Come and Fetch These Stupid Kids

Johns. Some had nicknames, and some did not. They were

John, J.J., Margie, Mags, and Peg.

“Gracious! ” John had observed with delight. “We are a full

house. We consist of a pair and three of a kind. Isn’t that lucky?

Isn’t that a marvelous hand to be dealt? ”

But Mags left the beach house at the end of August and

moved to Florida.

Mags secretly said to Peg, “I’ll tell you something, Peg. The

fact is, I’m beginning to hate John.”

John said about Mags, after she had gone, “She was welcome

to leave at any time. Nobody has to stay in this house simply to

please me. Although she might have thought to replace herself

with another Margaret, just to keep up our lucky hand of cards,

no? Alas! Now we are merely two pairs. But you will all stay,

won’t you? ”

“We will all stay! ” Peg had said, and hugged her handsome

boyfriend J.J.

“Is the house even winterized? ” J.J. had asked John.

“Oh, mercy! I don’t know, ” said the spoiled and foolish John.

“Couldn’t you winterize it, J.J.? You’re so clever. No? How hard

could that be, to winterize my house? ”

In fact, the house was not winterized, as its four occupants

were beginning to realize by the end of September. They did

not have any realistic way of staying warm. What’s more, by the

night of Margie’s and Peg’s arrest, it did not even appear that

any of the four young people had a job. J.J.’s job as a lifeguard

had ended right after Labor Day, when the tourists left. It

certainly seemed that Margie and Peg would be fired from their

waitressing jobs, after their drunken butter prank in the parking

lot of the restaurant. As for spoiled and foolish John, he’d never

had any sort of job whatsoever. John had passed his summer

growing his hair and writing sequels to movies that already had

sequels.

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p i l g r i m s

“Well, my resplendent jailbirds, ” said John. “Let us com-

mence to the roof. Let us sit upon the widow’s walk and drink

some alcohol while enjoying this magnificent rain.”

So it passed that the four friends climbed up onto the roof

of John’s big beach house to drink some beer and watch the

weather. They were just a dune away from the sea, and the

beach was having a difficult time holding on to itself against the

beating waves and rain. The four friends sat, exposed to the

rain, on four saturated lawn chairs. The cold water puddled at

their feet and pelted their backs.

John proclaimed, “This storm shall bring the cold water in.

We shall not be able to go swimming anymore. My friends, I

am sorry to report it. This storm marks the end of our happy

summer.”

“No swimming! ” Margie said, horrified.

“No swimming, ” said John. “Yes! Sadly, this tempest brings

our sweet summer to a close.”

Margie seemed devastated. It appeared to be the first time

that she had ever considered the concept of seasonal change.

“No more swimming? ” she said again. She was shocked, re-

ally. “Can it be true? ”

“September is the cruelest month, ” John said.

There was a bag of potato chips open on John’s lap, and the

rain had made it into a soggy, salty feed bag. He fished some of

the damp potato chips out and tossed them over the edge of the

house.

“What a storm, ” observed Peg. “Gosh.”

J.J. said reassuringly, “This is nothing, Peg. This isn’t even the

real storm. The real storm is too busy tearing the shit out of

some other place to worry about us.”

“J.J. is correct, ” John announced. “Why, this is just the after-

thought of a real storm.”

“My goodness, ” said Margie. “It is raining very hard none-

theless.” Then she said, “Peg, sweetheart? ”

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Come and Fetch These Stupid Kids

“Yes, ” said Peg.

“Is it terribly difficult to get a job if one has a police record? ”

“We don’t have a police record, Margie.”

“Do we not? Did we not just get arrested, this very night? ”

“Yeah, but a police record is different. A police record is

something you have if you’re a career criminal. You can’t get a

police record until you’ve committed a string of crimes.”

“Peg sounds very confident about this, ” Margie said.

“For someone who has no idea what the devil she’s talking

about, ” said John, “Peg sounds like a veritable attorney general.”

“I happen to believe that it is impossible to get a job with a

police record, ” Margie said. “I shall never be able to get another

job, and neither shall Peg. We are doomed! John, sweetheart?

Will you always take care of me? ”

“Naturally, ” said John.

“But what shall become of Peg? She will have to become a

plaything of a rich old man. John, love? Do you know any rich

old men who need young playthings? ”

John replied, “Only my father. And I imagine that he already

has a plaything.”

There was an impressive flash of lightning.

“Oh, baby, ” said J.J.

John stood up. He took his ponytail over one shoulder and

wrung it out. He announced, “I have a demand. We shall go

swimming. This is our last chance. Let us not hesitate, for

tomorrow the water shall be too cold.”

“That’s funny, ” J.J. said. “I’m not going swimming.”

“That’s funny, ” Peg said. “I’m damn sure not going swim-

ming, either.”

“You are both exquisitely funny, ” John said, “because we actu-

ally are going swimming indeed. I demand it.”

“Nobody’s going swimming tonight, buster, ” said Peg.

John thrust his fist in the air and shouted, “To the sea! We

shall go to the sea with zeal! I demand zeal.”

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p i l g r i m s

Margie said, “My sweet John has taken leave of his senses.”

“The storm will be gone by tomorrow, my friends, ” John said.

“The sun will come out, but the water will already be cold. And

you shall be very sorry indeed that you missed your last chance

to swim.”

“John’s senses have simply left him, ” Margie said.

“This is not even the real storm, ” John said. “Is that not

exactly what J.J. said? No? And J.J. is a sensible man. This is

merely the afterthought of a storm. I would be embarrassed to

call this a storm.”

“I’ll go swimming, ” J.J. said. “What the hell.”

Margie looked from Peg to John and then to J.J., who was,

in fact, known among the friends as a sensible man. J.J. was

slouching with his beer on his stomach. His handsome body

was slunk down, low and wet, in the chair, in a terrible posture,

like someone’s drunken uncle.

“Sure. I’ll go swimming, ” J.J. said. And he added, as an expla-

nation, “We couldn’t get much wetter, could we? ”

“You got it, ” said Peg. “That makes sense, I guess.”

At that point, it was as though an official decision had been

made. It was as if the four friends were a conference of business-

men in strong agreement. It was as if the four friends were four

CEOs in consensus, the way they stood up and headed down

the stairs, over the dune, and to the beach. When they passed

through the front porch, Margie picked up her Dumbo inflat-

able inner tube and slipped it over her head and around her

waist. It was a child’s toy, but it amused her. She had taken it

swimming all summer. She held Dumbo’s plastic gray trunk in

her hand, as though it were a divining rod, and followed the

head straight ahead to water.

Down at the beach, the spoiled, foolish John and the hand-

some J.J. took off their shoes and headed into the water, fully

dressed. They pushed their way through the rough surf, which

was sometimes waist high, sometimes chest high. They pulled

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Come and Fetch These Stupid Kids

their legs up and over and through the water, struggling as

though passing through dense, fast-moving mud. John got

knocked over immediately by the first wave, but J.J. dived right

into it and came out on top of another. John surfaced and

cheered and was knocked over again.

Margie stripped to her underwear, but Peg took off only her

skirt. Margie ran in after John and J.J., holding the Dumbo tube

around her waist and screaming.

Peg stood in the surf for some time and let the tide bury her

feet. Two waves was all it took to sink her over her ankles. There

was enough dark and rain that she could not see very far past

the three heads of her friends out there. She pulled her feet out

of the sand and made her way to the surf, right into the face of

a wave that stood for a moment above her as high as a chain

link fence. The wave fell, and she relaxed and let it roll her.

When Peg came up, she was on top of another wave. She saw

John and J.J. and Margie in a valley below her, their mouths

open. The trunk of Margie’s Dumbo tube stuck out of the water

like a periscope. A bigger wave came down on Peg, and on her

friends, too.

When Peg surfaced again, she could not see her friends. She

treaded water and ducked under three waves before she got

high enough on a swell to see that they had gone farther out

into the ocean. Her boyfriend and her two friends were out to

where the waves were rising but not breaking. J.J. was separated

from John and Margie, and he was floating on his back. Margie

saw Peg and beckoned to her. In ten minutes of swimming, Peg

made it over to them. John had lost his ponytail holder, and his

hair was floating all around him, like seaweed.

“Isn’t it loud? ” Margie shouted. “No? ”

Peg was out of breath, so she nodded. A long strand of

Margie’s hair was stuck from the corner of her mouth to her ear,

making a black slash across her face, like a wound from a knife

fight. They were all treading water gracelessly, spitting seawater

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and stretching their necks to stay above the rough surface.

Except for J.J., who was never graceless. J.J. swam around easily,

his stroke as even and strong as though he were doing casual

laps in a YMCA, instead of struggling with a storming ocean.

“How deep do you suppose it is, sir? ” John shouted.

J.J. laughed, riding on a swell.

“Twenty feet! ” J.J. shouted. Then the swell dipped, and he

shouted, “No! I take it back. It’s ten feet! ” A new swell rose, and

J.J. said, “No! It’s eighteen feet! ”

Peg held her nose and went under, pushing herself down and

seeking bottom. When she did touch, her foot first hit stones,

then something soft. She panicked and kicked until she was at

the surface. She tried to wipe the seawater from her eyes, but

the rain pushed it back again.

“This would be easier if we were a species that didn’t have to

breathe, ” Margie said. Margie, with her Dumbo inner tube

supporting her slightly, was less tired than her friends. She was

the most cheerful, the least out of breath.

“John, honey? ” Margie asked. “How long can you go without

breathing? ”

“Last time it was three hours, ” John shouted back.

“Goodness! ” Margie said.

John laughed and got a mouthful of water, which gagged

him. He coughed wetly. Peg looked around and saw that they

had been pulled out far past the jetties, a great distance down

from the house. Without saying that they were doing so, the

four friends began swimming toward the beach. They were

trying in a casual way to head home. They were all getting tired,

but nobody wanted to speak about it. For some time, they tried

to swim toward shore but did not seem to make any progress.

They stopped joking with each other and then even stopped

speaking.

After a long while, J.J. said, “Oh, fuck.”

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Come and Fetch These Stupid Kids

“What? ” Peg asked her boyfriend; she was breathless. “What

is it? ”

“Jellyfish.”

Another considerable silence. By this point they had stopped

pretending that they weren’t aiming for shore.

Then John shouted out, “J.J.! My friend! ”

“Yeah, ” said J.J.

“I’m getting... um... rather tired.”

“Okay, ” said J.J. “We’ll go in, then.”

John rolled his eyes, almost with annoyance. “My legs are

killing me, ” he said.

“We’ll go in now, ” J.J. said. “I’ll help you.”

“My legs are very... um... heavy, ” said John.

“You’ve got to take off your jeans, John, ” said J.J. “Can you do

that? ”

The rain was cold right through the scalps of the friends, and

their breathing was wet and sloppy.

John grimaced, trying to get his jeans off. He was going

under, coming back up, going under again. J.J. swam behind

him and held him up by sticking his arms under John’s armpits.

John squirmed around more, and then his jeans popped up to

the surface, where they floated for a moment, dark, like the hide

of a shark, and then sank.

“We’re going in, ” J.J. shouted. “If you girls can make it in,

then go. If you can’t make it in, don’t get tired. Just stay out

here.”

Peg and Margie did not have the breath to answer.

The boys swam away, and a wave immediately separated

them from their girlfriends. The girls watched them for a while.

It looked as though the boys couldn’t make it past the jetties.

Margie’s teeth chattered. Peg swam over to her and grabbed

Dumbo’s inflatable head.

“No, ” Margie said. “Mine.”

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p i l g r i m s

“I have to, ” Peg said. Her legs ached from the cold water.

When she kicked hard to warm them, she kicked Margie. Mar-

gie started crying. Margie and Peg were pulled up on a wave,

and they could see then that John and J.J. were not much closer

to the beach. Peg held her breath and shut her eyes. A wave

slapped her. She opened her eyes into water and breathed water

and swallowed it.

“We won’t make it back, ” Margie said.

Peg kicked her.

“Shut up! ” Margie shouted, although Peg had not spoken.

Peg kicked Margie again. The girls treaded water and tried to

see the progress of John and J.J. toward the beach. Which, after

a great passage of time, the boys did reach. John and J.J. did

eventually reach the beach, and when Peg saw this, she said to

Margie, “Look! ”

“Shut up! ” Margie said, and kicked Peg.

Peg could see J.J. pulling John out of the water. J.J. was in fact

dragging John from the sea by his hair. A caveman and his wife.

J.J. lugged John up the beach and dropped down beside him.

Margie did not look. Her eyes were closed and her mouth

was open. Then Peg did not look anymore, either. She could

imagine J.J. slouched over John, who may or may not have been

breathing. She could imagine J.J. taking some time to throw up

the seawater from his gut, lean his forehead against the sand,

retch a little.

Then J.J. would stand on his strong and handsome legs, a

little shaky. Peg could imagine it. J.J. would look out at the

water to where Margie and Peg should be. He would probably

not be able to spot them. His ragged breathing would continue,

and he would stand, hands on his hips, slightly hunched over.

He would look very much like an exhausted and heroic star

soccer player, after a remarkable save.

J.J. would stand there. He would have to decide whether to

come out after Margie and Peg or telephone the coast guard

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Come and Fetch These Stupid Kids

and wait for help. It didn’t matter what he decided, because he

would hate Margie and Peg either way. Whatever he decided,

he would certainly hate them for it. Peg was sure of that, as she

was treading water with her eyes closed. Peg did not have to

watch more of this scene unfolding. No, she did not. Peg did

not have to see it happen to know what would happen.

J.J. would hate Peg and Margie for demanding that difficult

decision from him, just as Peg now hated Margie for crying

in the water beside her. Just as Peg now hated spoiled and

foolish John for taking his friends out there in the rough ocean.

Just as (most of all) Peg now hated her handsome boyfriend

J.J. Peg hated J.J. for standing on the beach while she herself

got dragged out deeper to sea. She hated him for being a strong

swimmer. She hated him for wondering what to decide and

for catching his breath, and she hated him (most of all) for

hating her.

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