Student Spotlight: Caite McNeil

Why do you write?

We are sto­ry­telling animals. Our stories, others’ stories give us purpose and meaning. I guess I’m just finally lis­ten­ing to my instincts.Is there an author who has most pro­found­ly influ­enced your work?

My mentor just turned me on to Jo Ann Beard. She is rocking me. The way she writes almost entire­ly in scene, the way she cap­tures a child’s thoughts and voice. And her work is deep and infused with meaning without trying too hard. 

Why did you choose Stonecoast?

While apply­ing to MFA pro­grams, I was living in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. But my writing, my thoughts were almost entire­ly about my child­hood in western Maine. This state gets into your soul, and you can never quite quit it. Aside from Stonecoast’s amazing faculty, its com­mit­ment to equity and social justice, it was Maine that won out.

What is your favorite Stonecoast memory?

I’m still a first semes­ter Stonecoast­er and my first res­i­den­cy was virtual. I had to hide in a part of the house where my child could­n’t find me so that I could devote myself to the work of sem­i­nars and work­shops. When she did dis­cov­er my where­abouts, she was con­stant­ly barging into the room. My class­mates and pro­fes­sors were always gra­cious about the chaos that I and others brought to the res­i­den­cy. Despite the “vir­tu­al­ness” of res­i­den­cy, I got a true sense of Stonecoast’s sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ty. 

What do you hope to accom­plish in the future?

I’m in a super gen­er­a­tive mode right now, so I’m trying to just listen to and notice the themes that arise. I think it would be fun to pull togeth­er a col­lec­tion of essays. In the future-future, I have dreams of running a 4 season outdoor writing and med­i­ta­tion center for teens. 

If you could have written one book, story, or poem that already exists, which would you choose? 

Lorrie Moore’s “Dance in America.” That story brings me to my knees every time. She’s a master. 

This, The River

By Caite McNeil

Home: this, the river where I learned to swim, where I taught my girl­friends, and boyfriends, how to skinny dip. How, goose­bumped and shy at river’s edge we pitched in head­first, the water dress­ing us in its scanty gar­ments, in some­thing close to sin. Upriver, against the current, we dog-paddled and back­stroked until, our nails catch­ing gran­ules with the last few down­ward strokes, we reached the sandbar. Stand­ing waist deep in rushing water, we com­pared areolas, and shallow dived for fist­fuls of sand and glimpses of each other’s new bodies. Our chap­er­one, a great blue heron, watched side-eyed, its still body cam­ou­flaged but betrayed by the moving reeds at river’s edge. Drag­on­flies, all opales­cent blues and greens, mated without embar­rass­ment, in flight, in coitus, landing on our heads and naked bodies. This river where in the summer months I bathed exclu­sive­ly, skinny dipping solo, as though I alone knew the secret to feeling alive. The river silt col­lect­ed in my hair for weeks—I a feral, fertile something-teen—until some other body of water washed me clean.

This wily river is the object of legend. Local lore, passed down through gen­er­a­tions, and now the world-wide-web, is that the river was cursed by an Amer­i­can Indian chief, Squando of the Sokokis tribe. The Sokokis, a band of the Abenaki Nation, had lived along and wor­shipped the Saco for cen­turies, its waters a source of sus­te­nance, a means of trans­porta­tion and a life­force, a spir­i­tu­al pathway con­nect­ing the ocean to the moun­tains. The whites, Bap­tists, no strangers to England’s river waters, plunged into them as unsus­pect­ing infants and returned to land in the arms of a holy con­gre­ga­tion, returned to earth somehow blessed—and ever excused by their Chris­t­ian god, liked to tell tales of Indians, tales that likened them to the exotic beasts of this “new” land. The story that got them (and all of their descen­dants) into trouble was of river savages, whose lan­guages clicked and cawed like crow song, whose babes could swim like the native beavers and muskrats, innate-like.

Too bad for Squando’s wife Lin­doy­ah that fated fall day in 1675 when she, with child and round as the near-full moon, her baby Menewee, all finger points and rep­e­ti­tious words, set out in their canoe, trav­el­ing up-river to her sister’s lodge.  “Nebi, Nebi, Nebi” squealed Menewee, bright eyed and smiling with his two-toothed smile. Nebi, water, his first word and his last. But these Bap­tists, these who had been per­se­cut­ed in their home­lands, who left in search of a more peace­able kingdom, whose first sacra­ment was river water, were drunk with domin­ion. This land, now theirs, their god, all vir­tu­ous. Who was to stop them from testing the verac­i­ty of stories told about the muskrat people?  A birch­bark canoe, so light in con­struc­tion, was easy to flip, espe­cial­ly for the whites wield­ing god’s right­eous­ness. Lin­doy­ah and the child inside her, and Menewee the tot all drowned that day. Because of course Menewee couldn’t swim like the beaver or the muskrat. He sank to the river’s bottom. And his mama, a swimmer, yes, but so full of water and air and growing life, could not dive deep enough to rescue him. Afloat in the middle of a swiftly moving current, the water cold as the season’s first frost, Lin­doy­ah forced her body down­ward, arms reach­ing, feet kicking, but her belly buoyed her, again and again, to the river’s cruel surface. Com­pelled by an unar­tic­u­lat­ed force—to say mother’s love would be too simple—she plum­met­ed, resur­faced, plunged, re-emerged, each time more fatigued, but relent­less. Over and over Lin­doy­ah the mother, the buoy, descend­ed, ascend­ed until finally exhaus­tion, and prob­a­bly hypother­mia pre­vailed. Lin­doy­ah floated face and full moon belly down in the middle of the Saco River till her arms and hair snagged on branch­es and logs along the next cataract. Squando found his dead wife’s body at dawn, caught up in a whirlpool, rotat­ing  like the second-hand of a clock, still facing the river floor in an eternal search for her lost baby boy.  After his family’s murder, a heart­bro­ken and venge­ful Squando hurled impre­ca­tions toward the river’s falls and rapids: that each year the river must drown three of that foul race. To this day, the Saco River abides.

One such drown­ing, a child, James Man­ches­ter, lived and grew in the same house I did, only 150 years before. He lived and grew and played and swam until the river’s curse col­lect­ed its due. James was nine years old, and I know this because he is buried in the little ceme­tery in the field behind my child­hood home.

James Man­ches­ter

1833–1842

My daugh­ter, now three, likes to pretend the gate to the ceme­tery is the door to her grocery store. James’ stone the clerk from whom she buys nec­es­saries like straw­ber­ries and choco­late chips. I always linger outside the ceme­tery gate when she goes shop­ping, a bit embar­rassed at her lack of rev­er­ence, offer­ing silent apolo­gies to James and his other rel­a­tives whose stones stand in for shelf-stock­ers, other shop­pers, perhaps? But who am I to stifle my daughter’s imag­i­nary play? The truth is that James, though he’s now only a grave­stone, is the closest thing she has to a play­mate these days.

What would James’ mother have done? Her name, a mystery, her grave­stone, else­where, her story, not one of legend, she lives only in my mind. What did James’ mother do, how did she weep and flail and faint when the cursed river pulled her darling boy under? How could she keep living here, along these malev­o­lent banks? With what spite did she drink of her fluvial well? How long did she survive without her young son, resigned to wash her skirts, her hair, her living children’s bodies, to irri­gate her barley fields and beans with its cursed water, its solemn, stick­ing silt? Who did she blame? Besides herself. The curse, perhaps, or James’ older brother who was sup­posed to be watch­ing. But surely herself. On certain washing days she imag­ined the  fate of Lin­doy­ah was hers. Just think­ing those thoughts, so profane, a momen­tary gift. A liberation.

 My best friend Anna lived three miles upriver, past a patch of rapids, beyond the ruins of a sawmill, beyond a rusty green truss bridge and in a house on the once grand Main Street. A half-day paddle against the current, or a three minute drive along blue highway in a blue minivan. And behind her house was the public beach at Steep Falls—the river feature, an epony­mous warning, the name of my home­town. Teenagers would collect at that beach to swim, smoke pot, take chances. Tan­ta­liz­ing were the chances one could take at the river. Wet bodies in neon swim­suits stretched thin by chlo­rine and under­wa­ter groping. Soggy bags of weed and blown glass pipes stolen from parents or older sisters. Cans of beer, smug­gled, body tem­per­a­ture. And beyond the realm of body and mind, there was always the river, its high cleaner, more euphor­ic, and so much more dangerous.

The risk takers (read: teen-aged boys) swam toward the falls from the river­bank astride the drop. This took strength (and fool-heart­ed­ness? and willpow­er fueled by that ancient caveman desire to impress?) and a fair degree of pre­ci­sion. In the low river months or after a dry spell, the boy crawled along the rapids—all slick with an eter­ni­ty of moss and river muck—his hands and feet fishing for holds while his face got pum­meled by the water of the rip. Once he reached the big rock in front of the falls, a kind of promon­to­ry all its own, he shin­nied up its dry side, gained what footing he could manage, then waved back­ward toward the beach, all gangly arms and wet bangs flung side­ways. This was boy, perfect, young, care­less and strong, a moment cap­tured in pre­car­i­ous amber, on fuzzy polaroid. Next, a pencil dive into the swirling bowl behind the big rock, then down, down, down, fifteen feet or more, away, away from the deaf­en­ing per­cus­sion of the surface until near silence, near stillness.

Later, on the beach, he showed an adoring hoard of onlook­ers the stone he col­lect­ed from the cave under the water­fall. It was the color of onyx, smooth, almost a perfect sphere and no bigger than a marble. “There’s mil­lions of em under there,” he bragged, and they, the onlook­ers, sat staring and cov­etous. Of the shiny rock he held, of his courage, of his monop­oly on that elusive feeling of being alive.

 And I the onlook­er sit staring and cov­etous of his youth, his sheer being, despite the danger all around.

“Your mother!” I call to him.

“The curse!” I cry.

My entreaties go unheard, the falls  are too loud, my voice buoyed up, up into an ether that rarely travels back­ward in time, and in a pitch too high, too des­per­ate and mortal for the teenage ear to reg­is­ter anyway.

Caite McNeil is a writer and illus­tra­tor. Her work is place-based and often humor­ous, pulling inspi­ra­tion from a child­hood spent in rural Maine, and an adult­hood in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Her latest project is an exam­i­na­tion of inher­i­tance– phys­i­cal, psychic, and ecological–prompted by a return to her child­hood home to live with her parents in the midst of a global pan­dem­ic. When she’s not teach­ing English and mind­ful­ness to middle and high school­ers, she’s taking long runs through the woods, tack­ling multi-step baking projects (bagels, strudel, Russian honey cake!), or biking round town with her toddler in tow.  Someday, she hopes to run a 4‑season, non-profit outdoor writing and med­i­ta­tion center for teens.  Caite lives in Brunswick, Maine with her husband Josh, daugh­ter Nina and little dog Bowie.