Barefoot Blunder (Jayne's Nature) Read online

  from Jayne’s Nature:

  Barefoot blunder .

  by Jayne Louise.

  Wednesday, August 11, 2004

  I guess I have said this before but we do sometimes hike out in the pines with no shoes. We keep our mucking boots on the boat and we all have good running shoes and deck shoes and Timbs that are good enough to hike in, but sometimes it is just perfectly soothing to have nothing on at all. Well– I have always gone barefoot at home, even walking up to the beach in the middle of summer when the street is about 80 million degrees. The truth is that my feet are like leather. Once on a dare I walked barefoot across a whole black-asphalt parking ot full of broken shells and pebbles and bits of glass without even an ‘ouch’. I really didn’t notice much of anything from it. But we do most of our naked adventuring in the dark, because it is more secure, and so for that we wear sneakers.

  On Wednesday we went sailing and decided to anchor to lie out and go swimming. So we sailed Dove up to within a few yards of the marsh in the middle of the Bay and dropped the hook. Jules rolled up the two jibs from the cockpit and Jem and I furled the main.

  Naturally by this time we were all getting naked. Jules went through the cabin shedding her swimsuit, and emerged out the forward hatch to lie on the foredeck with a beach towel. Jem stood up, already with her top off, stretched rather conspicuously, and peeled of the bikini bottom, dropping it carelessly down the hatch and then kneeling down to apply the lotion to Jule’s back. I decided to have a little dip first. The water was about three or four feet deep, which is really typical for the Bay, wherever you are out of the channels. At the stern of the boat is the rudder, which hangs on the transom, and to one side is the motor and to the other is the swimming ladder, The ladder doesn’t go all the way down, so as I was descending I was expecting one great step to the bottom, probably about two feet or so. The mud was soft of course– I knew I would sink into the bottom, a lot, probably up to my ankle at first. Just as I put all my weight (which I won’t dare mention!) on the ball of my foot, it pressed onto a broken bottle under the mud.

  Crunch!

  I admit it– the first thing I did was to cry out. Both of them looked up, expecting that a crab had bit me. But I knew what it was– crabs just pinch and let go the moment you react to it, just to get away. This stung– bad. And it was on the very bottom of my foot. I seized a hold on the ladder of the bobbing boat and got my good heel on the lowest step to pull myself off the bottom. Even as I lifted my foot through the water it got worse and once in the air it was awful. Now of course there was blood everywhere. I turned and rested my bottom on the edge of the boat, lifting my foot to look at it. I was pretty sure there was nothing stuck in the wound, but I was crying and cringing from squeamishness, at just the thought of landing so gently and carefully and so perfectly on the sharpest corner of someone’s discarded beer bottle in the middle of our beloved Bay Jem came aft, leaned over and saw the blood. In one second she knew what to do. ‘Get the main up!’ she called to Jules. ÒShe’s going to the hospital!’

  That worried Jules who leaped down the hatch and lunged through the boat to come up in the cockpit. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I cut my foot,’ I said. ‘jem, it’s not that bad.’

  ‘It’s dripping blood into the water!’ she said, and squeezed the fuel bulb then. ‘You’re going to draw sharks with that bleeding like that. Get in here so I can get this started.’

  So Jules tended the anchor and Jem got the outboard started. I attempted to help, to at least my fair share, but Jem wouldn’t let me. Now of course I was bleeding all over– red rivulets on the cockpit floor were running literally running out the drains. I was just staying on my heel and still trying to help by unfurling the little jib.

  Finally Jem got mad and said, ‘You just sit down and put your foot up so I can do this, all right?’

  She had us on a course for the yacht club about two miles away. Dove heeled, under the press of the small inner jib and the speed from the motor, which she had at just about wide-open throttle. Jules stepped down into the cockpit and, in spite of wincing at the sight of blood, had my soak my foot in the ice of the cooler while she went below for the first-aid kit. Then she cleaned it with antiseptic wipes from and wrapped it snugly with lots of gauze and tape before putting a sock on my foot to hold the bandage and then helping me get into a t-shirt on and some shorts. At some point Jem requested a t-shirt herself, since she was still naked and standing spreadlegged in the heeling cockpit expertly piloting the boat through the increasingly crowded channel towards the club. And she really did skipper us all the way in to the yacht club, in broad daylight, in no more than the t-shirt and a pair of panties. My sister Jem is really fearless about some things, but she’s right in one way, you know– like, cotton or not, who’d imagine it wasn’t just a swimsuit? I mean who ever expects a girl to be sailing in her underwear?

  Neither one of them would let me do a thing to help moor the boat– both of them did everything with me doing any more than giving suggestions, which they didn’t really take. I’ve never doubted their ability to handle Dove on their own– it does belong to all of us. But I’d never seen them actually do it without my help before and they did just fine.

  Of course I had to drive since neither of them has a license. Jem suggested– that is, she insisted– that we go straight to the doctor’s instead of going home. I winded each time I had to depress the clutch, but it was not too bad once I got going and I tried not to have to shift gears too often. Only when we were nearly there did Jem ask Jules to find her shorts in the canvas beach bag. I laughed at her then.

  My hair felt gooky just sitting there in the waiting room. I was just glad they would see us. I’m pretty sure if we had gotten there even half an hour later the would have sent us over to the hospital. The doctor said the ice had really helped and said he was impressed with how quickly and how well Jules had wrapped it. I got seven stitches in the ball of my foot and was told to stay off it. ‘Um, we have a show this weekend,’ said Jem.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but don’t do any unnecessary standing.’

  The three of us laughed then. ‘But we have to stand up on stage!’

  The doctor laughed too. ‘Well, sit on a chair.’

  ‘Like I can really do that?’ I wondered. I’m the guitar player!

  I did keep off it as much as possible and it did heal quickly. For the show on Friday I wrapped it really tightly and left my sneaker a little loose, and it started hurting a lot by the last set. The worst part was peeling the bandages off afterwards, because they were stuck to my foot. –and the sock. –and the new shoe. Fortunately the blood stains didn’t soak all the way through.

  So much for going barefoot in the middle of the Bay! –as though I could have expected this!

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  Barefoot blunder.

  Text © 2004 by Girls Of the Dove LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  This e-text is covered by Digital Rights Management.

  No part of the manuscript or artwork included in this e-text

  may be reproduced, stored or transmitted by any means

  without express written permission from the Publisher.

  Text edited by Melissa Stockhart.

  HTML edited by The Girls of The Dove.

  First Kindle® edition, January 2012

  From the original America Online journal of 2004

  Surf City Source media group

  New Jersey

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  More adventures are told

  in the upcoming complete edition


  of Jayne’s Nature,

  from Surf City Source media group.

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  Jayne Louise, Barefoot Blunder (Jayne's Nature)

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