by Kasi Blake
* * *
I pushed open the door to the Singletary Rod & Gun club’s main hall, moving from the darkness of night to the bright light of the open room. Twelve long tables were on the edges of the space, and the band had set up on the stage before the dance floor. Jason spotted me and waved, coming down off the stage to greet me. “Morgan, I am so glad you could make it.”
“Thank you for inviting me,” I smiled.
His eyes moved down my outfit for a minute. I had worn a laced black top, black jeans, and low black leather boots. His eyes warmed with appreciation. “You look great,” he murmured.
There was movement behind him, and in a moment I was being introduced to band-mates, girlfriends, and others who had come to hear them play. I knew I would barely be able to remember the collection of faces and names, but smiled and nodded before taking my place at the table.
The music started, and my toe tapped in appreciation. They were quite good, with the lead singer’s voice rivaling Adele with its rich, powerful sound. They played a rich selection of songs, from “I Saw Her Standing There” to “Barracuda” to “My Own Worst Enemy.” The audience filled the dance floor, and I joined the girlfriends as they danced, becoming lost in the music.
During one of the slower Pink Floyd tunes I turned to the dark-haired man alongside me. Bob seemed to be in his mid-thirties, with a closely cropped beard. “So, how do you know them again?”
“I’m a drummer, and I play sometimes with the lead singer and the rhythm guitarist,” he explained, leaning forward. “I work with several other area bands as well. It keeps my skills expanding.”
“I can imagine,” I offered. “Did you grow up around here?”
“Right here in Sutton. Been here all my life.”
“I’m looking into the drowning at Lake Singletary, back in the sixties,” I explained. “As a favor for a friend.”
“Oh, sure,” he nodded. “My older sister went to school with Sam’s younger sister. That affected him quite a lot, from what they say. Turned him nearly into a hermit. In fact –” He looked up, his eyes scanning the room. “There he is, over in the back corner. He fishes here sometimes.” He lifted a hand in a wave.
Sam glanced up, his eyes sharpened for a moment as he met my gaze, and then his shoulders slumped and he nodded. He picked up his Bud and made his way across the darkened room, taking a seat next to the drummer.
His voice was low. “Bob,” he greeted.
Bob turned to me. “Morgan, I would like you to meet –”
Sam’s voice was gruff. “We’ve met already,” he snapped. Bob looked up in surprise, and Sam modulated his tone. “She was asking about Eileen’s drowning. I don’t much like to talk about it.”
Bob’s brow creased in concern. “Sam, I’m sorry –”
Sam sighed and looked up, waving away Bob’s concern. “No, no, I am the one who should apologize, for both tonight and for that dinner at Tony’s. I’m not good at talking about that night. Haven’t for many years.” He took a pull on his beer. “But now John is dead, and the more I talk with my friends here at the club, the more I think poor old Popovich had nothing to do with it. John didn’t deserve to die like that.”
I leant forward. “What did happen that night on Lake Singletary?”
He ran a nail down the label of his bottle, scraping at it. “We were all fairly drunk,” he mused. “Cheap pink wine, as I recall. Eileen was laughing and whirling in circles along the shore. She was a real, honest woman, like a Laura Ingalls Wilder novel come to life, with her dress drifting around her.” His eyes became misty. “She had this joy in her heart, this way of speaking … I could listen to her for hours.”
“You cared for her,” I murmured.
He half-smiled at that. “I’m sure we all did,” he agreed. “She had a light about her, one you knew was rare in this world.”
“How did the group end up in the canoes?”
He took another drink of his beer. “She wanted to feel the ‘wind in her hair,’ she said. She ran down to where the canoes were tied up and jumped into one. It nearly went over right there on shore. John was by her side in an instant, taking the paddle from her and telling her to just sit in the bow. I think he figured he could keep her out of trouble that way. Richard was after them in a flash, calling out that he was the better paddler. There was only one canoe left, so Charles and I piled into that one.”
His lips pressed together in a line. “I had to paddle, of course,” he added with a trace of pique. “Charles just sprawled in the bow, staring up at the clouds and complaining that he couldn’t see any stars.”
“Then what happened?”
He looked down. “We had often tried to find the furthest spot one could get from shore, as a lark. I think we guessed it was about seven hundred feet, if you rowed toward the northern end and sat right in the center of the bulbous area there. And so we went, laughing and singing, calling out after each other, and the fog rolled in. It was a dark night and we could barely see the shoreline. It really was as if we were in our own world that night.”
He sighed. “I caught up with them, and she was laughing in delight, standing up in the bow, teasing John and Richard without mercy. One moment she would claim she wanted to go over to Richard’s canoe, and the next she insisted she’d rather stay with John. She was challenging them to prove who was the stronger man. The two of them were shouting out tales of climbing up Purgatory’s rock face, of hitting home runs in baseball games, all the things young men do to prove their worth. I remember how her face shone with delight, how she was a goddess, standing there on the bow of the boat, having the men compete for her attentions.”
His gaze became distant. “I’m not exactly sure what happened. One moment John and Richard were shouting out their triumphs, both of them staring up into her luminous eyes, and then Charles had grabbed a hold of John’s canoe. I think he wanted his turn, or to get them to shut up, I never did know. He gave the canoe a shake, her hands went up in the air, and she was over the side before I could blink. John stood in a panic, and the whole canoe went over in a barnyard chaos of splashing and yelling.”
I leant forward. “So Charles started the chain of events?”
“I don’t think it was intentional,” he stated quickly. “The guy was soused to the gills; he barely knew what he was doing. By the time we quieted down and realized Eileen hadn’t come up again, we sobered up pretty quickly. We swam all around the area, diving as deeply as we could. But we couldn’t find her.”
His eyes shadowed. “I can’t help but feel it was my fault. I was at the helm of my boat. I should have kept further away from Eileen’s canoe. If I hadn’t given Charles that opportunity, she would be alive today. She might have become a world-class actress.”
There was a warm hand on my shoulder and I glanced up, surprised. Jason stood there, nodding to the men in front of me. I realized with a start that the band had taken a break; a laptop was playing filler music at a lower volume.
Jason’s voice was rich with compassion. “You can’t blame yourself for something another person does,” he offered. “One never knows what life’s twists and turns would be like. We tend to assume life would follow a perfect path if only X hadn’t happened. But it seems likely that she would have fallen over, given the drunken state you were all in, with or without a shake of the canoe.”
Sam let out a long breath. “She was dancing to music only she could hear,” he agreed at last. “Weaving and spinning. I imagine you’re right. She was teetering on that precipice.”
Jason’s eyes came to hold mine. “Any flap of a butterfly’s wings would have sent her over, beyond the reach of a saving hand.”
The throaty growl of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Pride and Joy” intro filled the room, my boots clicked onto the dance floor, and Jason’s fingers slid along my waist beneath my shirt. The touch of his fingertips against my bare skin turned me to liquid silver. I gasped, looking up into his eyes, and his smoky gaze told me he was intimately
aware of exactly what he was doing to me. He spun me in a circle, pulling my hips in to meet his, and I was lost.
