Facing her now on the bench, James went to his knees and the canoe actually did rock. Amelia gripped the sides. James paused while mid-reach for the cooler.
The canoe stabilized.
They looked at each other. They laughed.
“Sorry,” James said. “That wasn’t very smart.”
“That was close.”
But was it? It was certainly enough to scare her.
“Sorry,” he said again.
“No. Don’t worry. I just imagined us drowning is all.”
Was that a dumb joke?
James felt dumb, too.
“Turkey sandwich?” he asked. “Chips? Water?”
“Sounds good. Sounds like a meal deal.”
Another dumb joke. Who would bring up a meal deal while surrounded by everything that was so much the opposite of a meal deal?
But James smiled. Then he pulled out two sandwiches wrapped in foil, two bottles of water, and two bags of plain chips. He handed Amelia hers. Then he rose, carefully, and got back on the bench.
“You got a problem with your hose?” James asked her.
Amelia laughed with her mouth full and coughed from it.
“You okay?”
“Yes,” she said, then swallowed. “And yes, I do have a problem with my hose. I totally forgot to buy a new one when I was in your store.”
“It’s not my store.”
James wished he hadn’t said it that way. He hadn’t decided yet if he wanted to tell Amelia that his dad owned the place. Did she already know?
“What’s wrong with the hose?” he asked her.
“It’s got holes in it.”
“Are you sure it isn’t the clamp?”
“What’s a clamp?”
A bird flew low to the water, many feet away. James looked at Amelia’s legs.
“The clamp that holds two hoses together. Is it two hoses?”
“It is, yeah.”
“Probably the clamp, then.” He took a bite of his sandwich. The bird rose high up again. Amelia’s skin looked so clean to him, so soft. “Did you see an actual hole in one of the hoses?”
“I think so.”
“Then it might not be the clamp. I can fix it either way.”
“You can?”
“Sure. Or I’ll show you how and you can do it. It’s simple, if you think about it. Fixing stuff. There are only so many parts to a thing, you know? So you just start figuring out which part is the broken part.”
“Okay.”
An eagle flew above them. Flew to the shoreline. Settled at the top of a tree.
“Oh man,” James said, setting his lunch on top of the cooler. “I bet we can see it up close.”
Even from as far as they were, Amelia thought she could make out a nest in the treetop. A big wicker basket harboring the bird.
“Let’s do it.”
James was already turning around.
“You ready?” he called to her.
“Ready.”
They paddled toward the trees, quickly. The eagle remained in the nest. It seemed to be watching them approach. When they were close enough, James pushed his oar against the water and the canoe turned slightly, gliding to a partial stop near the shoreline.
James turned to Amelia and placed a finger over his lips.
But Amelia had to say something.
“Holy shit,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen one…so close!”
This was good, James thought. An eagle could be as exciting as a speedboat.
“It’s incredible,” he said.
Amelia wished she had brought a camera. Then she decided it was okay that she didn’t have one. She could bring one next time. Then she realized she was already thinking of next time.
They studied the bird for a long time. Eventually it flew away, hunting, and Amelia followed its path, its trajectory, until something far beneath it caught her eye.
“What’s that?” she asked.
James looked, expecting to see another bird.
“What’s what?”
“That.” Amelia pointed it out with an oar.
“I don’t see anything.”
“It’s…a little bridge, maybe?”
James held a hand over his eyes and squinted where she was pointing.
“I don’t remember any bridge out here. And I still don’t see what you mean.”
“You see that dark evergreen there?”
“Which one?”
“It’s tall. Taller than the—”
“Yeah, I see it.”
“Okay, now go down to its base and to the left like…one…two…three trees.”
James did. He saw it.
“Oh wow. I have no idea. Oh wait. I do know what that is.”
“What?”
“It’s like a tiny stretch of road. Concrete. I think it’s for whoever maintains the lakes. Like a service drive.”
“Ah.”
James smiled.
“You wanna check it out, don’t you?”
Amelia shrugged. She didn’t want to say no to anything. Not today.
“Yeah, I mean. Why not?”
“Yeah,” James said. “Okay. So do I.”
They paddled toward the concrete patch of road almost buried in the trees at the shoreline.
5
“What did you do on some of your other first dates?” James called over his shoulder.
“What?”
“What were some of your other first dates like?”
“Nothing like this,” she called. “Movies. Dinner.”
Good, James thought.
“The movies is a bad first date,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Even if the movie is good.”
“Yeah.”
Amelia considered saying something clever like, You can learn a lot about somebody by sitting in the dark with them for two hours. But she didn’t say it because she didn’t really believe it.
“I had one date,” she said, paddling, steering, “where this guy took me to his parents’ ranch in Obega.”
“That sounds all right.”
“His parents were there.”
“Wow. You met his parents on the first date?”
“Yep. I did.”
James laughed. Amelia laughed. They were free about their laughter but there was something anxious about it, too.
“You see that tangle of brush just below the concrete?” she asked.
“I do, yeah.”
“What is it hiding?”
They were close enough now to see there was a tunnel under the concrete. The colors red and neon green, black and orange popped out at them.
Graffiti. A lot of it. Strange phrases that read like nonsense to them but must have meant something to someone else.
“Punks,” Amelia said and then wished she hadn’t. That was something her mom would’ve said. Why did it sound funny before it came out? Didn’t she know what funny was?
“What?”
She wasn’t going to repeat it.
“Closer,” she said instead. “Let’s get closer.”
“Yep.”
The water was darker along the shoreline, shadowed by the trees. Amelia wondered if it was deeper here, if the water that ran through the tunnel went really deep.
“I had the worst first date ever,” James said, still paddling.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. I asked a girl to go bowling and she said yes and my plan was to invite some friends, make a night of it. But nobody could go, nobody said yes, and so I ended up going bowling with a girl I really didn’t know at all.”
“You’re pretty good at that.”
James looked over his shoulder. Amelia
smiled.
“Well, I don’t ask a lot of girls out, if that’s what you mean.”
“I just meant that you’re pretty good at hanging out with somebody you don’t know.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah.”
Amelia smiled. James wanted to kiss her.
“Thanks,” he said. And he meant it. “So we went bowling and the girl was nice but also really shy and so I had a hard time talking to her. I asked her about things, but it wasn’t easy. Then it was her turn to bowl and she was walking up the lane and she slipped and fell and broke her arm.”
“Whoa!”
“At the elbow.”
“Oh man.”
“Yeah. It was terrible.”
They were close enough to the tunnel to see someone had painted a bloated, veined penis with googly eyes.
“Punks,” James said, and Amelia wished she had repeated it.
They were as close as they could go without entering the tunnel. So they stopped rowing. They drifted. They stared into the tunnel.
“Hey,” James said. “That might be another lake on the other side there.”
Amelia saw what he meant.
“And you’ve never been over there?”
“No. I don’t think the canoe would even fit through there.”
Amelia had a vision of the two of them stuck inside the tunnel. A bloated, veiny penis with googly eyes rising from the water.
“I bet we’ll fit,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“All right,” James said. “Let’s try it.”
6
Straightaway the canoe scraped against the concrete walls of the tunnel and James thought about his uncle Bob.
Shit. The paint.
The green paint. Chipping.
The canoe fit. But just.
It was so tight they couldn’t use their paddles. Couldn’t even lay the paddles across their knees. James laid his on the floor instead. Amelia did the same. They pushed their way through the tunnel with their fingers and palms.
They didn’t speak of not doing it. They didn’t speak of backing out.
Amelia was surprised when James pulled a flashlight from his backpack. It underscored how dark it was in here.
It felt like they were going to get stuck, over and over, too tight, the tunnel narrowing. But the tunnel didn’t narrow, and they didn’t get stuck. Just more of the scraping and chipping.
Halfway through they had to duck and two-thirds of the way they had to really duck, until their shoulders were between their knees.
“Like a coffin,” Amelia said. It sounded funnier in her head.
James was breathing hard. It wasn’t easy work.
“Look at this one,” he said, bent completely at the waist, shining the light on the wall, an inch from the side of the canoe.
It was a stick-figure woman with enormous tits. Something like milk was squirting out of them. A second stick-figure woman was on her knees, tongue out, to accept it.
“Wow,” Amelia said. “An artist tunnel. Horny vandals.”
James liked hearing her say that word.
Horny.
A foot from the drawing was the word pricks in pink.
They laughed. And their laughter echoed in the tunnel.
“Can we stop for a second?” James asked.
“Here?”
“Yeah. It’s killing me.”
“Yeah.”
James turned off the light. They both breathed hard. Amelia had a vision of him turning the light on again, under his face, monster lighting, revealing grotesque graffitied lips and eyebrows.
“I had another weird first date,” James said in the dark.
“Weirder than this?”
“There used to be a coffee shop in town called Rita’s. Remember Rita’s?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. I used to read books there all the time. I really got into Agatha Christie and—”
“Wait. Wait. Agatha Christie?”
“Yeah.”
“My grandmother reads Agatha Christie.”
“She’s great.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“I believe you. So what happened?”
“Well, this girl was reading Agatha Christie, too, and she’d come talk to me about it. Which book was my favorite. That kind of thing.”
“Sounds like a good start.”
“I guess. And then she asked me out.”
“Where?”
The echoes of their voices were sharp, high-pitched. Their breathing sounded like the breathing of four people, not two.
“She asked me if I wanted to hang out that night, after the coffee shop closed. That’s all she said. And I said okay. But then she walked back to her table and it all felt really weird, you know? Because she was reading at her table and I was reading at mine and here we were, supposed to go on this date I guess, but we weren’t talking to each other at all. You know? I wanted to leave the coffee shop but I felt bad about it, like I’d be standing her up or something. So I read eighty more pages of the book than I had planned. And the whole time she’s reading hers across the coffee shop. And the second they closed she walked right up to me and said, ‘Ready?’ And I said yeah. She said we should go to her place and watch a movie.”
“Wow,” Amelia said. “Was she wearing a hospital bracelet?”
“What?”
“What happened next?”
“We went to her house. We went into the basement. We sat on opposite ends of the couch.”
“She had a sitting-close-to-you problem?”
James laughed.
“Yes she did! And she says, ‘Have you ever seen The Woodsman?’ And let me ask you, Amelia, have you ever seen The Woodsman?”
“Oh boy. You did not watch that movie on a first date.”
“We did,” James said. “We did.”
Amelia laughed. Then she laughed again.
“Ready?” James asked. “I think I’m rested.”
“Yep.”
They planted their palms against the slick walls and pushed forward again. The scraping and chipping returned immediately.
Ahead, sunlight. But no view. Not yet.
They pushed. Amelia felt sweat dripping down the sides of her breasts, the sides of her belly.
They were able to sit up a little more again. Halfway.
“Almost there,” James called.
The canoe got stuck.
Felt like it wasn’t going to move.
“Shit,” James said.
“Shit.”
“Let’s just do it. Let’s give it a really hard push.”
“Are you worried about scratching the canoe? Are you worried about the paint?”
“Yes.”
“What are we gonna do about it?”
“I’ll get some paint from my dad’s store.”
“Your dad’s store?”
“Shit.”
“What?”
“I just didn’t want to tell you that my dad owns the hardware store I work at.”
“Why didn’t you want to tell me that?”
“You didn’t know?”
“No. But that’s great.”
“I was worried you’d think that was my future.”
“Really?”
Of course, that meant he was thinking about a future with her. She didn’t know how that made her feel.
“Are you ready?” James asked.
Amelia was glad for the subject change. They both were.
“Ready.”
They flattened their hands against the walls. A new sound announ
ced itself: bent metal. The phrase sounded like a band to Amelia.
Bent Metal.
James grunted and shoved as hard as he could.
Water sloshed against the tip of the canoe. It sounded fresh, cold, new.
They gave it one more hard push and, with a deafening squawk, the canoe broke free.
Cool air washed over them and they fell back onto their benches, leaning back, as the canoe slid out of the tunnel on its own, propelled by their final thrust.
Neither went for their paddles as the canoe slowly drifted out onto the surface of a third lake.
“Holy shit,” Amelia said.
“Yeah,” James said. “Holy shit.”
7
The third lake felt inhabited. Or like it once was. Or maybe it was just that whoever used the service drive came here often enough to leave some energy behind.
“Deliverance,” Amelia said. But that was silly. They weren’t in the backwoods of Tennessee. And besides, that’s what everybody said when they were in a canoe and felt a little weird about their surroundings.
The shoreline was crowded with tall pines that rose from dark-green shrubs.
The water was murky, as if the mud from the lake floor had come up to see who had cleared the tunnel.
“I can’t believe my uncle never told me about this,” James said.
But Amelia thought she understood. Given the grandeur and beauty of the first two lakes, there was no reason to ever visit this third one. It was an afterthought. The clogged gutter of an otherwise beautiful home.
And there was a smell to it, too. Not quite garbage, but like personal belongings no longer needed. Amelia had smelled something like it at estate sales with her mom and dad.
“That’s it,” Amelia said.
“What’s it?” They were paddling again, going farther from the tunnel, getting closer to the middle of the new lake.
“It feels like we’re seeing something we shouldn’t be seeing. Something private.”
James cocked his head to the sky.
“Do you smell that?” he asked.
“I think so,” she said. But she wondered what he thought it was. “What do you smell?”
“Old age!” He turned around and smiled at her.
Amelia smiled, too. She thought of the first lake. Should they go back to it?
A House at the Bottom of a Lake Page 2
