Beneath the Lake

by Christopher Ransom

  ‘What about the name?’ she says. ‘It’s got to have the perfect name. Something that captures the goodwill and neighborhood vibe, a little old school but not too old-fashioned, because this is the new twist on that.’

  Ray takes a deep breath. ‘This isn’t set in stone, but the one that keeps coming back to me is, Brothers’ Lounge.’ He swallows. ‘Because we are all brothers. Men of all ages. Friends, grandfathers, fathers, sons.’

  ‘Good,’ she says after a moment of consideration. ‘But not “Lounge”. Just Brothers, no apostrophe. It’s simpler, humbler, sounds less like a bar. It’s not obvious at first, but the people who experience it, they’ll understand, and that’s exactly the word-of-mouth cachet you want with this.’

  ‘Brothers.’ Ray tests it out, seeing the sign above the door. ‘Brothers.’

  She raises her eyebrows, nodding hopefully, yes?

  ‘It’s perfect.’ He can’t stop smiling. ‘You’re… that was something.’

  Megan grows quiet, looking worn out. Neither of them can add to it now. They went too fast, ending on just the right note, and there is nowhere to go but down. He wants to keep reliving it with her, all the restaurants and road trips and holidays and arguments ending in make-up sex, new adventures and their favorite movie, late nights in the backyard, wine and stars, and long Saturdays spent hiking, shopping, meeting each other’s friends, laughing, kissing, bringing home chicken soup on sick days, so much more to bring to life. He feels he should lean over and hug her and tell her it’s all going to be okay, it’s not too late. But there are many miles to go, and maybe the ability to ride in companionable silence is another test for them, for anyone.

  The miles roll by.

  The next time he looks over the console, Megan is leaning against the window, eyes closed, mouth open. He turns the radio off, trying to hear beneath the drone of the tires and the hot wind bracing the cabin the quiet of her breathing.

  Two Families: One Alive, the Other…

  They conquer the hundred and eighty miles on I-76, which merges with I-80 and crosses over into Nebraska. Then the next hundred miles or so along I-80 until they reach the town of North Platte, where they stop at the Whiskey Creek Wood Fire Grill for a lunch of baby back ribs, slow-cooked chicken, and sides of cornbread, coleslaw and macaroni.

  Over lunch they discuss Ray’s memories of the lake, what little he has retained of the five summer trips from his early boyhood. The view from the dam, when they were driving in, the ritual of their father telling them to look all the way down the lake, you couldn’t see to the other end, but if you concentrated hard enough you could make out the curvature of the earth. And Ray always did, seeing the great bend and feeling somehow that his father had done it for them, remaking the whole earth into a knowable place, this small kingdom that now belonged to them.

  Campfires. Kites in a dogfight. His sister Colt’s darkening legs and back. Leonard snorkeling, spear-gunning a carp, its brutalized scales falling like coins in the shimmering gold shallows. The fireworks tradition that evolved for the last night of the trip. Rows of tents strung together with clotheslines and jet skis and inflatable toys during those years when the water was low, exposing two hundred feet or a quarter mile of beach instead of the usual fifty feet or so, inviting small shanty towns of families and wild singles to sprout up, mingle, party, borrow each other’s tools, digging someone’s Jeep from a sand bog, form various alliances and grievances before packing up and heading home, never to see one another again.

  The sand. Fine blonde sand that worked its way into everything, your clothes, your tent, the food, the sleeping bags, your hair and teeth. It followed you home and stayed with you for days.

  Is he really going back there? Is that even possible?

  ‘We better get back on the road,’ Ray says, tensing now that the history has circled closer to the missing pieces. The waiter returns with the bagged leftovers.

  Megan looks disappointed, almost suspicious of his abrupt end to the nostalgic descriptions. But she follows him to the Bronco without further comment, and they follow Highway 83 northbound, right up the middle of the Cornhusker State. A few miles later, her feet propped up on the dash, she finds another angle into it.

  ‘So, how long has it been since you’ve all gotten together?’

  ‘Six or seven years,’ Ray says, knowing it’s been more like ten. ‘Does that sound like a lot?’

  ‘Depends on why,’ Megan says. When he does not take the bait, she asks, ‘What do your siblings do now?’

  ‘Last I heard, my brother Leonard was living in Seattle, making a living at poker. He was always very smart but has an addictive personality. There were a lot of problems with drinking, drugs, but I think he got through that phase. Or traded it for gambling, little side businesses here and there. He once bragged that he had hidden almost eight hundred thousand dollars from the IRS. I have no idea if that’s true because, among other things, Leonard is a world-class liar. You can’t trust anything he says. But if you know him well enough, you can read the subtext, so it’s almost like hearing the truth.’

  ‘Sounds like quite a character,’ Megan says. ‘Were you close, as kids?’

  ‘I was always kind of in awe of him. Scared of him, but I looked up to him a lot, too. He could be very resourceful, in his own weird ways.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘When Leonard was in sixth grade, he sewed a pair of gloves out of mice hides.’

  ‘Mice hides?’

  ‘Don’t ask me where he got the mice. He changed for the worse around high school. He always liked to prank me, and I didn’t mind, until the pranks turned nasty. He hid my bike from me for a whole week one summer, which made me cry every day. Once, he tied me to a tree and took target practice with his bow and arrow. He used to wear three-piece suits to high school, even though he only showered about every third day. He had rock-star hair and was basically an asshole to everyone, which sort of made it equal and not all that offensive, if you knew him well enough. It was just his way. Girls loved him. By the time I was thirteen, Leonard was living in Paris, then Budapest, Mexico City for a while. We grew apart. I always thought he would wind up in jail or stabbed in an alley.’

  ‘And you have a sister, right?’

  ‘Colt.’

  ‘Your parents were into horse racing or something?’

  ‘Short for Colette. It was how I said her name when I was too young to pronounce it, and I guess it caught on.’

  ‘I’m imaging a tall blonde,’ Megan says. ‘Queen of the prom. Or a real tomboy.’

  ‘Neither, really. She was average in a lot of ways, sort of a late bloomer. She was brilliant, but never wanted to stand out. She played the nerd for a few years, but there was never a pattern with her.’

  ‘She’s older too?’

  ‘Four years ahead of me. She was in the house until she turned twenty, and then she announced she was going to the East Coast, skipping college because she already had a job lined up. She got into ad sales with a tiny cable channel when she was in her late twenties, convinced the owner to sell her a minority stake, then sold it for a small fortune about five years later. Last I heard she was engaged to a banker named Simon.’

  ‘Wow. Successful woman. Sounds like she takes after your dad.’

  ‘My dad was just a hustler, a natural salesman. Mom saved him from a lot of mistakes. It was her idea for him to buy the first company, a failing mini chain of flower shops, something he knew nothing about. But she showed him how to turn it around. After that it was just a run of deals, investments, partnerships, the booming nineties.’

  ‘And your parents, they left Colorado too?’

  ‘Soon as I finished high school, they set me up in one of the rental houses and headed south for Miami.’

  ‘It must have been difficult, your whole family leaving.’

  ‘Most kids go away to college. It was like that for me, except the reverse. My family left my hometown, but in another way it was like they never lef
t. His lawyer, an old friend of the family, Gaspar – you’ve seen him in the Rojo?’

  ‘Older man with the bushy eyebrows and gray suits?’

  ‘That’s him. He and my father were very close, roommates from college. They served in Vietnam together. The story is, my dad saved his life over there, and a few years later, Gaspar pulled a bunch of strings to get my father his first real business financing. They go through these battles together, like an old married couple. After my folks moved away, Gaspar became the company’s lead counsel and my dad’s presence out here. He used to take me to lunch once a week when I was in school, ask me if I had enough money, how my classes were going, were there any girls, all that. He was like my uncle, a mentor, and something of a spy. My father’s eyes. And between him and the whole Mercer business thing scattered around town, my parents were never really gone. I saw them almost every time I drove across town, you know?’

  Megan looks pensive, lost in thought.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he says.

  ‘It’s just a little too… how we both had these distances in the family. I had an aunt that looked after me, and she still keeps tabs.’

  ‘What was it?’

  Megan’s voice flattens. ‘My dad was drunk. He was driving us back from a Thanksgiving celebration at my aunt’s house in Colorado Springs. My brother and I were sleeping in the back seat. I never found out what my mom was doing, if she was awake or not. If they were arguing about something. It doesn’t really matter. We went through a guardrail and rolled down a big hill. At the bottom, I was thrown out the station wagon’s rear window. I broke my collarbone, my arm, some ribs, and had a punctured lung.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘No one who stayed in the car survived. Well, my mom for two days, but that was just a technicality. Her brain functions… I spent five weeks in the hospital. My aunt was there around the clock. After a few days I figured out why she was the only one. She didn’t have to say the words. I knew.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Almost six.’

  ‘I’m sorry. No child should… Jesus Christ.’

  ‘I wish I had been a little bit younger,’ she says. ‘Or a lot older. I don’t know. Maybe it happened when it was supposed to happen.’

  Ray thinks about that.

  ‘I’m lucky I had my aunt.’

  ‘She must be very special to you. What’s her name?’

  ‘Vicky. Not even a real Victoria, just Vicky.’ Megan smiles. ‘Isn’t that the perfect name for a crazy aunt? The kind who lets you get away with whatever you want?’

  ‘Sounds about right,’ he says.

  ‘At least you get to see them again soon,’ Megan says, as if they have been talking about his family all along. ‘Even if it’s awkward or difficult. At least they’ll be there. Something as important as family should be confirmed once in a while, I think. Because you never know what you’re going to regret.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Megan keeps glancing at him, and he knows she’s coming to it.

  ‘Was it some kind of falling out, or did you all just sort of drift apart? I can’t tell if you know and don’t want to talk about it, or if you really don’t have any idea.’

  All at once he feels very tired. He wants to pull over, find a hotel, and watch a lot of free HBO.

  ‘Sometimes I think it all started with our last trip,’ he says. ‘Other times it seems like maybe that just fed into the dynamic we already had. It drove me crazy for years, and then I tried really hard to stop thinking about it. I never imagined they would decide to go back.’

  Megan clamps the tip of her straw between her teeth.

  ‘The lake,’ Ray says, realizing he owes her the truth, while there’s still time to back out. ‘I was eight that summer, when the bad things happened out at the lake.’

  Exit Camp

  Abandoned, eight years old, Raymond sits stunned and crying over the violence he has just witnessed. More frightening that the physical assault, the bodies rolling in the waves, is the question of what it all means. He has been given a glimpse of something far too adult and cruel – things he never imagined people doing to one another. A darkness has stained his world, the purest place in it. For a long while he cannot move, his imagination flooded with horrible possibilities, working to fill the void they have left in their ugly wake.

  His family hurt, killed. The other family tying his mother up with rope. Leonard running and hiding in the trees while the big man chases him with a knife. The storm raging on and on all night, for days, stranding him here forever…

  But the winds do taper off. The sun does break through the clouds. The rain thins and slides away, leaving only a sunset mist. The churning lake becomes a pattern of smaller swells, the gray fading to a welcome deep blue.

  It’s over now.

  Raymond slides down from his bunk, legs weak, stomach sour, and pads his way to the camper door. His feet feel lopsided, and when he looks down he understands why. His right foot is still in his Incredible Hulk sandal, the left is bare. The storm took it. He pauses, hand on the doorknob, thinking about the frightening race up the cliff with his mother, the whirling sand on the point where he lost it. First he will find his sandal, then he will go look for them, feet protected from the burrs and sharp sticks.

  That’s what Leonard would do. Right?

  But he can’t bring himself to open the camper door. The frosted window has turned deep gray, deeper than the lake when the storm was at its worst, and he knows that an unnatural night has fallen on the other side.

  He holds the doorknob, torn between two important needs. One is to find his family, make sure they are safe. The other is to stay inside, hidden, safe. He remains stuck for a long time, until time itself loses all meaning and his fears take full ownership of their host.

  Until a dark shadow two times the size of a real man looms on the other side, then presses itself against the window. A fist that sounds like a mallet begins to pound on the camper door, sending vibrations of anger down into his hand. Raymond wants to let go and run, but there’s nowhere to go. Whatever it is will catch him in here, batter him to death and throw his body in the lake.

  The knob turns. The fist slams the door once more before the knob is pried from his stiff young hands with heart-stopping force. Raymond screams –

  His father steps in, kneels and clamps one hand over his mouth.

  ‘Quiet, son,’ Warren says. ‘It’s all right now. We’re safe.’

  Instead of following his father into the camper, the others stand around the fire pit, silent shadows in the night that is almost morning. Warren leads him outside, where he sees Colt and Leonard and their mom. Everyone is here, together, alive. But they do not rush to him in apology or explanation. Even his mother does not hug him. No one speaks. Raymond’s family looks too tired to speak and, even in the dark, he can tell they are avoiding looking him in the eyes. He begins to ask the questions – Where were you? What happened? Why did you leave me for so long? – but they do not answer. Something heavy in their silence in turn silences him.

  Colt’s shoulders bunch up and she coughs out a single, sore-throated sob before covering her mouth and turning away. Raymond has the impression someone told her not to cry, no one is allowed. He takes a step toward her and Leonard catches him by the arm as Mom and Dad close around Colt. They walk her into the camper, and Warren nods at Leonard as if passing some kind of secret code, then shuts the door.

  ‘Mom, wait —’ Raymond begins.

  ‘No,’ Leonard says, tugging him away from the camper. ‘Colt’s staying with them tonight. You’re with me in the tent.’