up until nearly dawn; drunken, giggling mystic artists with Day-Glo paints. Her mother had been mortified. Her father was amused. She loved it. She missed Trisha. They were out of cell range, so the almost constant flow of text messages and calls had ceased for this interminable period of weeks. She stared at the flat moon reflecting like a wobbling drunk on the surface of the lake. A loon gave its final call of the day, and a fish jumped at the last dragonfly before night took over entirely.
The lake house had bunk beds everywhere. Even when there weren’t people to fill all of them, they stood row on row in the main sleeping room, except for the “master” bedroom, if indeed you could call it that, with its one queen sized bed. Some nights she slept on top of a bunk staring at the ceiling, others on the bottom staring at the slats of the top bed feeling more like an inmate than a vacationer.
It was OK, but it wasn’t home. There was no town nearby, at least not one large enough to hold anything but bars and bait shops. It seemed that all the people did around here was hunt, fish, and drink. Sometimes at night she could hear gun fire through the trees and shouts of drunken glee as idiots with rifles and six packs shot at anything that came into their headlights on the winding roads that knit the woods together.
She looked down into the blue-black water. When she swam, she never touched the bottom, making sure to dive off far enough from the end of the dock to wind up in deeper water, always shocked at its coldness even in high summer. When her father had caught a 28 inch Northern Pike just off the dock casting late one afternoon, she’d looked at its gruesome teeth and considered never swimming again. But her bonehead brother did all the time. It was pure and cleansing in the high heat of July when she did forget the fish and dive in.
July was just far enough into the summer to still carry with it the relief from school, but also just far enough to start tweaking the sensitive social fibers of a 17 year old. Jen wanted something to happen. And it didn’t look like this pier was the beginning of that something. Just graying wood jutting sleepily from the deep bluegrass lawn, waiting for boats that never came nor went save for her dad’s pathetic little 14 foot aluminum flat bottom with the 5 horse outboard on back that started only after her father had sworn at it for about 20 minutes and worked himself into a lather pulling at the starter cord. Sometimes she got to take it out, just to have something to do, but she was afraid she’d pass some other kids in bigger boats – expensive Bayliners and Nautique ski boats – boats that held the progeny of probate lawyers and orthodontists. Her dad was an artist. So she putt-putted the aluminum boat slowly in and out of coves, hugging the shoreline lest she be spotted.
Jen was a “strawberry blonde” with skin that tanned well, but still revealed a light patchwork of freckles on her shoulders, face and upper chest. She never much liked her freckles except when they were tan. Everything looked better tan. Her long thin legs, muscular from 3 years of high school volleyball, looked good, she thought. She thought herself somewhat pretty. More “cute” than beautiful, yet when she was tan, she saw her green eyes glow from the smooth lines of her tanned face, framed by lightened reddish blonde hair. She hated her lips, which she thought were too thin, but other than that, she had to admit to herself that she was not ugly.
Chase was horrid. Well, most of the time at least in Jen’s eyes, he was. Chase was actually her little brother (who hated being called that), a thin, tallish boy of 11 with the sort of angularity of face that made for awkward looks now but that would eventually become handsome, probably. Chase was horrid not because of the things he did, but because of the very fact that he was tied to her like an anchor, especially at the lake house, where he was seen as not being old enough yet to watch out for himself. This actually served simply as a ruse to get Jen to take him everywhere with her because he had nothing to do, and her parents knew that she would be extremely limited in her social activities with a younger brother in tow. Not that she really had much else to do, but she chose to do nothing without him rather than with him. Besides, he had no life. Video gaming and writing computer programs that seemed to have no meaningful use to Jen composed his entire existence. Taking him to a lake house in the woods was like taking a fish to the desert. Thank God for laptops, she thought, although her parents restricted his use so that he would benefit from the nature experience, which of course he didn’t. He became a pathetic, sullen barnacle clinging to Jen simply because he had nothing else very relevant to cling to. She at least enjoyed the sun and, of course, always the odd chance of seeing guys in ski boats, with their thin waists, tan, strong upper bodies, lightly bleached hair from the sun. However, except for the big holiday weekends, like Memorial Day and the 4th of July, these were about as elusive as her father’s “big honkin’ walleyes”. When spotted, she only hoped they had binoculars to notice how her tan was coming along.
Tanner
“Wake up, for the love of God, Tanner! It’s 2 pm!”
Tanner heard this through half dream sleep, and it pissed him off. He’d heard approximately the same thing at eleven, noon, and one o’clock. It’s summer, for goddsake, he thought. If you can’t sleep late now, when can you? But by now his bladder was about to burst from last night’s clandestine beers, and besides, it was about “tanning time”. Tanning time was the time of day when the girls started laying out on the various docks and beaches. He spent less time skiing with his boat than he did cruising, really, although it was a hot ski boat; old, but with a huge V-8 engine and plenty of power. Hunger beckoned, as well, so he rolled out of his bed and into the early afternoon.
“What exactly do you plan to eat when you wake up in the middle of the afternoon?” his mother asked
“It’s not the middle of the afternoon...”
“Well, 2 o’clock is a bit early for dinner, and pretty late for breakfast or lunch!”
As she said this, Tanner half listened as he filled a bowl with half a box of Raisin Bran, dowsing it in milk.
“Breakfast of champions” his mother said, giving up the fight, carrying a load of laundry to the back porch where an aging washer and dryer behind screen wire announced to the world that they were good solid middle class folk.
Tanner was tall and lean, but muscular. The high school he went to was famous for turning out state championship gymnasts. A couple had even gone on to Junior Olympic teams. His strength was the pommel horse, an event which required both massive arm strength, balance and leg strength. His physique was perfect for it, and after almost 7 years at it, he was a state contender. It made him very popular in a school that favored gymnasts, which helped to overcome the fact that his parents were very blue collar. It also whispered of scholarships, a very welcome term in a blue collar household. A kind uncle had gone in “partners” with him to restore a ’69 Ford F-150 pickup – his uncle footing most of the bill – or he wouldn’t have wheels at all. The boat was a loaner from a team mate whose parents had three. Still, cool truck, star status, good looks and build, and the West side girls (the area of town where the wealthy families lived), still looked through him. Their boyfriends drove new cars. Cars that cost more than the house Tanner lived in.
With breakfast out of the way, Tanner announced he was going to take his boat out.
“Please be home by dinner, OK? That’s about 3 hours from now, so take a watch, and make sure you wear your life preserver. Just having them on the boat isn’t good enough. If you hit a stump…”
“Mom… “ Tanner interrupted. “I’ve heard this speech at least 3 times this week. Don’t worry, OK?” His mom shot him a look that combined frustration, dismay, and love at once, and Tanner left to walk to the dock where his boat lay tethered.
The Boat
Jen lay drying in the high sun. She could feel the small hairs on her arms prickling, then blowing free in the light wind as her arms dried. The lake was warming somewhat, but still held the chill of the night. She’d felt somewhat groggy – probably allergies – after breakfast and had decided to swim before lying out. The water, cold as
if holding some memory of its glacial past, washed all the grogginess out. She felt fully alive now.
Occasionally boys would swoop past on their boats close enough to check her out. When they didn’t slow, she figured (wrongly) that they didn’t like what they saw. Sometimes they slowed, and occasionally went to a full idle, just going fast enough far enough off shore so as not to be seen as gawking, but close enough to get their message across. It was to these boys that she gave a small wave and smile, lifting her head long enough to let them know she acknowledged the attention and returned it to some small degree. Coy, but not too.
Tanner’s boat was running rough. In fact, the reason he was hoving close to the shore was to make sure he was close enough to swim, pull the boat, or call for help if it died altogether. It was a friend’s boat, and although it was a good ski boat with a big motor, it was not new, and probably needed to be gone over thoroughly. Its inboard V-8 was running very rich, smoking more than usual, and he tried various throttle speeds to mitigate the roughness.
He didn’t in fact even notice Jen until he’d almost passed her. Finally, about to gun the engine in frustration, he looked