Beneath the Lake

by Christopher Ransom

  ‘He gave it to me when I turned eighteen. I brought it out of hiding for old time’s sake, which is starting to look like the dumbest thing I ever did.’

  Leonard scratches his chin, contemplating in the moonlight.

  ‘Clothes!’ Ray says. ‘Put some clothes on, for God’s sake!’

  Megan laughs.

  ‘I’m on beach patrol, the natural way. You should try it.’ Leonard smiles at Megan. ‘There’s no one out here, kids. We own this fucking pond.’

  ‘Are you sober?’ Ray asks.

  ‘What, you mean in real life or just right now?’

  ‘I guess it would be too much to hope for both.’

  ‘I haven’t had a drink in fourteen years.’ Leonard’s chest swells with pride. ‘Only drugs go in this body are my two Cs – the cholesterol meds and lucky Cialis. I’m old, Ray. Older than I ever thought I’d be.’

  Ray is almost but not quite moved by this lament.

  ‘Do you know whose camp site this is?’ Megan says, gesturing at the green tent.

  Leonard smiles. ‘It’s rather Spartan, but that’s how I roll. Got a blacklight inside. You like it?’

  ‘You brought that?’ Ray says. ‘The truck too?’

  ‘Who else you think? Colettey and her little brat?’

  Megan looks to Ray for an explanation.

  ‘Not now,’ Ray mumbles to her, disturbed. His brother either thought it would be funny to recreate that family’s – what were their names? No one ever told him – camp site in period detail. Or, far worse, Leonard somehow managed to acquire their actual tent, truck, and all the rest. Is that even possible? What chain of events would have had to transpire to allow that?

  Leonard appears offended. ‘Something wrong with my gear?’

  ‘Something wrong with everything about you,’ Ray says. ‘Where’s Mom and Dad? They make it or are we stuck here with you?’

  ‘You know how the old man is.’ Leonard retrieves his rifle. ‘Got here at five this morning. Did it all himself. Right down to the last bungee cord and welcome mat.’

  ‘Colt brought who?’

  Leonard nods. ‘Sissy had herself a roll in the cabbage patch a few years ago. Kicked out a little blonde version of herself. I think its name is Sienna. No, Sierra.’

  Ray has a niece, and no idea what to make of the news. ‘So it’s Mom, You, Dad, Colt, Simon and Sierra?’

  ‘Simon wised up and booked it home to London,’ Leonard says. ‘Come on. Camp’s all set up, just down the beach a ways. I’ll walk you to it.’

  Ray glances at Megan. Another long walk down the beach? No thanks.

  ‘Just tell us where to go, Len. We’ll take the truck.’

  ‘You can’t drive in there,’ Leonard says. ‘You’ll wake up Mom, and we don’t want that. She’s in a fragile state. Besides, it’s only a couple hundred feet. Right back in the trees, safe from the wind. Got to watch out for those storms, you know.’

  Leonard bobs his eyebrows at Megan.

  ‘Put some clothes on first,’ Ray says.

  Leonard nods and slips into his tent.

  Ray turns and hugs Megan. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she says into his chest. Her shoulders are concrete with tension.

  ‘No, it’s not. You should press charges. I might.’

  ‘He seems kind of sweet.’

  ‘Nice to know you still have a sense of humor. Say the word and I’ll take you home. Like, now.’

  ‘I just want to lie down.’

  ‘All set?’ Leonard steps from the tent wearing a pair of baby blue skivvies and a yellow trucker hat, nothing more. The gun is no longer with him, so all things considered it’s an improvement.

  Megan laughs. Ray laughs with her. There is no other way to deal with it.

  Mercer Base Camp

  Only once inside the small compound Warren Mercer has constructed in the last twenty-four hours do Megan and Ray understand how they could have driven past it three or four times. From the broader beach out where Leonard has set up his homage to the glories of white-trash past, the view of the sand hills which occasionally sharpen into cliffs is like a wall. But up close, on foot, the breaks in the wall become evident, sections set deeper into the bluff revealing gaps and crevices that even in daylight would only be visible up close.

  Ray also knows none of these hidden crannies would be accessible if the lake itself were not half drained, underfed and otherwise evaporated. The narrow channel Leonard walks them through, which opens into an entirely ‘new’ campable area the size of a grocery store parking lot, used to be underwater. The basin floor is hard-packed sand, shrubs, human-high weeds, and smaller dust-gray dunes, all divided by bare walking paths and thickets of willow. The journey into it is a disorienting maze, until the path of tiki torches begins to lead them into the heart of Mercer Base Camp.

  Somewhere in the center of the hills on two sides, and a sheer dark brown cliff on one more, is a round clearing that appears almost man-made, as if their father had sent in a team of landscapers to clear the ground weeks in advance. The circle is illuminated by a perimeter of ten or fifteen more torches and a small fire in the stone pit at its center. Set back against the cliff, positioned under cover of what will be the daytime shade, are a black Land Cruiser and polished silver Airstream trailer (the parents), and a small red tent beside a pearl-blue Audi Q5, which Ray guesses belong to his sister.

  It must be after 2 a.m., a little late for saying hello to the rest of his family, and this is fine. He and Megan are bone-tired, dizzy from driving and a lack of dinner and the scare Leonard gave them. They are also dehydrated, sliding into an early hangover after the four or five beers they each consumed. Ray knows all they both want is to be left alone with a bottle of water and a bed. Or beds. He is not sure what the arrangement will be.

  ‘The old man’s already braced the trailer and sunk the dead man anchors for the tents,’ Leonard says. This is his second allusion to the storms, Ray notes. His memory must not be quite as poor as he has made it out to be. ‘The rations are packed in three fish storage lockers cooled with solar gennies. Everything is military crisp, secured, inventoried, bungeed and otherwise un-fuckable without the captain’s say so, as you will discover in the morning. You’re back in the woods a bit. Dad wanted you out here but I told him baby bro might want his privacy. You always were the special case.’

  ‘Sounds fine.’ Ray is too tired to care if this is supposed to be an ominous reference to the past or just another insult.

  Leonard leads them to the right of the vehicles, down a suggestion of a trail through a tall stand of dead cat tails and furry green weeds. There are no grasshoppers, their absence reminding Ray of those summers when they caught dozens the size of Matchbox cars, hard as bark and full of spit.

  ‘You seen any wildlife out here yet?’ Ray asks. ‘Toads? Box turtles? Anything?’

  ‘Not so much as a horsefly,’ Leonard says. ‘They know. The animals are always the first to know. And the first to get the hell away, to flee the real danger. Telling us something, but do we ever listen?’

  Megan looks at Ray pointedly.

  ‘See anything else?’ Ray asks. ‘Anything weird?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘White lights. Black shadows moving too fast. Something hit the truck a little while ago, then vanished before we could put a light on it.’

  Leonard looks back over his shoulder. ‘Moonlight does funny things out here. Wait till you try and fall asleep. Hear the sounds.’

  ‘What sounds?’ Megan says.

  ‘Whispers. Quiet music like horns underwater. It’s no big deal. Just the stuff of nature we’re not used to. You get used to it.’

  After another hundred steps or so, at the base of a fully mature cottonwood, they enter another clearing, this one only the size of a two-car garage. Three tiki torches add some light, enough for Ray to see the brown parachute tent, which looks like something from the future, a Mars habitat with capacity for four, wit
h iridescent window screens, a door tall enough for them not to have to duck through, and two coolers beside the plastic welcome mat. Ray fixes on it, heart aching over his father’s extraordinary attention to detail, adding new touches every summer, the pride he took in revealing some new gadget or accoutrement each day of the vacation. As kids they teased him, rolled their eyes at his showmanship. But after being away for so long, Ray finally understands. His father did it because he was a soldier, has always been a gear freak, yes, and it satisfied some internal need for order. But it was also maybe the best way the old man knew to articulate his love for his family.

  ‘Water, beer, juice, soda and fresh coconut meat’s in the blue cooler,’ Leonard says, running the beam of his Maglite over the iceboxes. ‘Fruit, muffins, protein bars, live aloe and first-aid kit are in the yellow one.’

  Leonard unfastens the tent door and holds it open for them like a bellboy. Megan wipes her feet, and Ray follows her inside.

  A lantern hanging from the ceiling casts soft white light over a double-bed-sized air mattress raised up on some kind of bamboo frame. The floor mat is also bamboo, and they leave their shoes beside a cotton hamper with bamboo dowels for hanging towels, clothes, swimsuits. On one side of the bed is a small foldable nightstand of military canvas, an atomic clock, and somewhere a fan is humming with a soothing whisper effect. There are no sleeping bags, only fine cotton sheets and one fleece blanket folded back sharp as a trouser cuff, and two pillows encased in matching plum cotton.

  ‘I think I saw this hotel in a magazine,’ Megan says.

  ‘Mercer style,’ Leonard grumbles. ‘You’d think all these years the old man’s been away he’d have lost his touch, maybe tried to do this on the quick and easy. But it’s like the opposite.’ He faces Ray, shaking his head, marveling. ‘It’s like he’s been saving it up, Ray. Planning and scheming for decades, preparing for our return. He’s outdone himself this time. It’s a little spooky.’

  ‘It’s just Dad being Dad,’ Ray says.

  ‘Or Colonel Kurtz.’ Leonard chuckles. ‘Wait’ll you see the inside of the Airstream. That’s a hundred thousand dollar rig, before he turned it into his own little space station.’

  ‘I need something cold,’ Megan says, slipping out of the tent.

  Ray studies his brother. ‘What’s with all the gear, Len?’

  ‘Dad’s a hardware fanatic. A survivalist, you know —’

  ‘No. Your gear. The tent? That truck? Lawn chairs – seriously, what are you trying to pull with that stuff?’

  ‘I’ve had it for years. What’s your problem? Hey, did you bang this girl yet? She looks like she could —’

  Megan returns with two cartons of coconut water, handing one to Ray. She also has a fresh pear in hand, ice-cold and dripping from the cooler. She presses the fruit to her forehead and her mouth falls open in relief.

  ‘Well, I guess I’ll leave you two kiddos to it,’ Leonard says, winking at Ray. ‘See you in the morning. If you’re still here. Brunch is served at nine. Big announcement will follow, I imagine.’

  ‘How is he?’ Ray says, solemnly. ‘How’s Mom taking all this?’

  Leonard looks up at the tent’s ceiling, distracted by a white moth fluttering its way toward the lantern, battering itself in a frenzy. Is he surprised? Ray wonders. Does he know what’s happening out here? Leonard scratches his bare chest and then meets his brother’s gaze.

  ‘You heard the Hungarian creep. He’s dying. Mom too. They’re both dying and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. Everything is beyond – well. I’ve outstayed my welcome. ‘Nighty-night.’

  With that, Leonard makes his exit.

  Mom too? Did he just hear that? Ray can’t absorb any more bad news today. He seals the tent door and turns to Megan.

  ‘So… one bed,’ he says.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I’ll sleep on the floor. Just spare me one of those pillows.’

  ‘Stop it. Come here.’

  He takes a couple tentative steps. She takes a deep bite of the pear and then sets it on the nightstand.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘I’m fine. I’ll be fine down here.’

  Megan touches his face, her fingertips cold from the pear. She kisses him once on the mouth, then looks up, gazing into his eyes.

  ‘How will we ever fall asleep?’ she says. ‘After all that.’

  Ray can’t think of an answer, and she doesn’t wait for one.

  Watching him with an unreadable expression, Megan crosses her wrists at her waist and pulls her T-shirt inside out and drops it. He doesn’t think it’s lust or longing, or even duty. It’s more serene, a matter decided long ago. She unfastens her shorts and lets them fall to her ankles and he is trying very hard not to stare at the silken black front of her panties and her pale white skin behind them. The black bra seems to drape itself across the nightstand. She pulls him down, until they are both lying back on the surprisingly firm air mattress, legs hanging over the side.

  The sheets are cool. She pushes a pillow under his head.

  ‘Megan…’

  Her hair falls over his chin, his eyes. She kisses him again. Stares into his eyes for a moment, then slides down, pushing his shirt up. She lingers over his navel, kissing, pushing her hair to one side. Her hands are hot, dry.

  He watches the lantern, where the surprise moth has fastened on the cage of light. He can’t find his way into it, a way to hang on. She is giving too much, and he worries there is pity in it. He slides from under her and pushes himself to his feet. She rolls onto her back and looks up, eyes low and studying. Waiting.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ he says, though this is not precisely what he means. ‘Everything is out of control. I don’t want you to feel like…’

  Megan rolls onto her stomach in reply, or as though he commanded it. Her middle back dips and her shoulders rise as she clutches a pillow under her throat. With one hand she reaches behind and pushes her underwear down, first one side and then the other, leaving them in a place halfway, the band of black silk stretched across the soft of her knees. The heart-shaped pad above the twin contours of her bottom is porcelain-white, beaded with sweat. The backs of her thighs furred in patterns that seem unnatural and also too natural, vestiges of a previous animal life.

  Her hips slide against the mattress, forward and back. She is explaining something about herself. Or about him.

  ‘We were inseparable for eight days and eight nights, though we had done nothing more than kiss and hold hands.’ She looks over her shoulder, not at him, but in his direction. The wind coming through the screen smells of sage. She rolls onto her back again and stretches her arms above her head. ‘But we were so tired of not feeling what two people are supposed to feel.’

  Ray’s legs are empty. The day has taken it all from him. He feels the tent rolling forward as if on a platform. He kneels on the bamboo mat, one hand under her hip, the other flat on her belly.

  ‘And on the ninth night we let go,’ he finishes. His mouth is closest and he begins that way. She is salted. He buries himself. He buries everything in her skin and hair and warm breath, until he is blind and no longer knows where he is, how she came to be here with him, or why he exists at all.

  Night Swim

  On every vacation he can remember, Ray never seemed to be able to sleep past dawn, when the first light is still its deepest blue. He has never known whether it is the excitement of being some place foreign and all the new sensory input, or the fact that so many vacation days entail lots of walking, swimming and drinking beer in the sun. Something always drags him to sleep earlier than usual and rouses him that much sooner, a rediscovered thing in him wanting to make the most of the next day which, on any vacation, is one of a very limited number.