Surface Tension

by Brent Runyon

  I carry the syrup and the carton of milk. Dad carries the pancakes and the coffee. Mom's got the glasses for milk and a small container of strawberries. Dad joked about putting peppermint stick ice cream on his pancakes. Actually, I'm not sure if he was joking.

  We all sit down on the lake-watching side of the picnic table. I start cutting up my pancakes so I can get as much syrup on them as possible. I'm ready for people to start saying “serene.”

  “What the fuck is that?”

  I look up expecting to see a sniper. Dad's looking out to the water, toward the Bells' dock. I don't see what he's looking at.

  Oh wait. I see it. There's a new flag flying at the end of the dock. A Confederate flag.

  Mom picks up her plate and stomps back into the cottage. Dad and I follow her with the rest of the food.

  She says, “The Sinister Minister has gone too far this time. Doesn't he know where he is? This is the North, not the South. Where does he think he is? He put a Confederate flag up at the end of his dock. It just makes me so mad to look at it. Who does he think he is? This isn't Alabama or Georgia.”

  My mom is really mad. I've never seen her this mad.

  She's stomping around the cottage, packing up our stuff and throwing it in the suitcases.

  She says, “I mean, the nerve. The nerve! He's just … he's just … I don't know. I do not know what he's thinking. That man is a terrible person.”

  My parents grew up in the sixties. They marched against the Vietnam War. They protested segregation, and now, all these years later, there's a flag up, promoting all the things they protested, right in their backyard.

  Dad is mad too. He's pacing around the cottage. Dad says, “That son of a bitch is going to have to take that damn thing down. That is not going to stand. That thing is going to have to come down.”

  Mom and Dad are in the car. They didn't want to come down to the beach to say good-bye to the lake. This has been the worst two weeks of my life. Everything bad has happened.

  I wish I could go back in time and change everything. I wish I could keep that stupid minister from moving into our neighborhood. Everything changed when he moved in.

  I wish I could go forward in time too. And be a few years older so Eliza wouldn't look at me like I'm a little kid. I wish I'd never gone up to her house.

  I limp down to the Richardsons' dock, stand in the sun, and look at the water. I love how it changes every day. Sometimes it's as smooth as glass, sometimes it looks like a mirror, and sometimes it's choppy as hell.

  Right now it's just a little wavy. The waves lap up against the dock, and the sound makes me relax a little. The water is so perfect.

  I close my eyes and listen to the waves lapping up against the dock and feel the warm wind coming from the south.

  I wish I could live here. I wish I could live here forever, just like this, except for without the Confederate flag.

  We're in the car and we're pulling away. The pine branches scrape against the kayak and Dad cringes. I look back over my shoulder at the Confederate flag blowing in the wind at the end of the Bells' dock.

  Dad says, “That thing better be gone by the time we get back next year. It better be gone or I don't know what I'll do.”

  15

  “Would you boys like some ice cream?” Dad sounds stupid. We all know he just wants to stop and get his peppermint stick.

  My best friend, Steve, is in the backseat with me. I've been telling him about this place ever since we were little, and he's finally going to get to see it for himself. I show him the Wirth mansion and the house where the famous guy from TV used to live. He takes out one of his earbuds but leaves the other one in.

  I say, “That farm stand has the best corn on the cob, and really good fresh strawberries too.”

  He just looks out the window and nods.

  I tell him about the luckystones and the old farm they turned into a winery. It's kind of cool having somebody from home come up here, but I'm not sure he's really getting it.

  Like when I pointed out the power station with the two smokestacks pumping all of that smoke out. I know it's pollution and everything, but it's kind of beautiful too in a weird way. He just said, “That's really bad.”

  But we're going to have an awesome time this year. This is the first time I've ever gotten to bring a friend with me. I told my parents I wasn't going to come unless I could bring Steve. They only agreed after they talked to his mom and found out about all the stuff that's been going on with him at school ever since his parents got divorced. They all agreed it would be good for both of us if he came up here. We pull down the gravel driveway and the tree scrapes the top of the car. Our cottage looks smaller and crappier than ever.

  Steve and I walk down to the beach. He sees the Confederate flag first. I was hoping it would be gone.

  He says, “Is that yours?”

  “No,” I say, and start looking for skipping stones. I pick up the first flat stone I see and it comes out of my hand at exactly the right angle. It skips like a dream across the water and out toward the buoy. It must have skipped twenty times.

  I pick up another stone. This one is totally flat and smooth and thin, just like a playing card. I skip it, but it's too perfect and it just knifes into the water. I can never get a perfect stone to skip.

  Steve skips one and it's a beauty. It goes out and skips about a thousand times toward the minister's dock. I say, “Nice one.”

  I haven't seen the minister yet, but his dogs are here, roaming around the Richardsons' lawn looking for a spot to take a shit they haven't already used.

  I see Mr. Richardson in his cottage watching them through the living room window. He's holding something in his hand. It looks like a stick. I wonder if he's going to come out and start hitting those dogs. I squint to see if I can tell what it is Mr. Richardson is holding.

  Is that a rifle? It looks like it, the way he's holding it. It looks heavy and solid. I wonder if he's going to shoot the minister's dogs.

  The ugly brown dog squats right in the middle of Mr. Richardson's yard and starts taking a big shit. I look back at Mr. Richardson, but he's not standing in the window anymore. He's coming out of the house with that thing he's carrying. Jesus, is he going to shoot it?

  Mr. Richardson comes out of the house and points toward the dog with the thing in his hand. It's not a rifle, but I can't tell what it is because of the way he's holding it.

  The dog never sees it coming but yelps like a puppy and goes down. I didn't hear a gunshot, but there's a big red spot on the back leg of the dog. He shot it with a paintball gun. It's not blood, it's paint.

  The dog gets up and limps back across the yard toward the minister's house.

  Mr. Richardson watches the dog for a minute and then puts his paintball gun in the garage. He comes out with one of his antique lacrosse sticks.

  He walks right up to the pile of steaming shit in his yard and pokes at it. He picks up the shit with the lacrosse stick. He cradles it for a second, then throws across his body, and the dog shit flies about thirty-five feet and lands right on the minister's front step.

  I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud. I can tell by the way Mr. Richardson walks over to the hose and cleans off the lacrosse stick that this isn't the first time he's done this.

  I wish I had a camera. I would have loved to take a picture of Mr. Richardson flipping shit across the yard with an antique lacrosse stick. That's not something you see every day.

  Steve has been standing next to me this whole time and hasn't said anything. I look up at him to see what his reaction is to all of this. He lifts his eyebrows and twists his face in that way that he does when he's about to say something funny and then says, “Pretty sweet vacation spot, dude.”

  Steve and I are sitting at the picnic table whittling sticks into supersharp points, because we're going to have a campfire at some point and we'll use them to roast marshmallows on.

  Steve's talking about one of our friends back home. “
Derek is such a dick, dude.”

  “I know.”

  “Did I tell you? He was standing in the hallway on the last day of school, and my little sister was there. Did I tell you about that, dude?”

  “Wait, what happened?”

  “Derek was standing there like a dick, like he always does. And my little sister was helping me take my stuff out of my locker, and anyway, Jim, Mike, Dan, and I paid her two bucks to go up to Derek and tell him that she hates him.”

  Steve's little sister is only ten, and she's actually really cute and sweet, so I'm kind of surprised she did that.

  I say, “Really?”

  “Yeah, dude. It was hilarious.”

  “What did Derek do?”

  Steve laughs. “He just made that face.” He scrunches up his face and changes his voice so it's really obnoxious and says, “You guys are dicks.”

  I laugh, but it doesn't really seem all that funny to me. Steve is super sarcastic all the time, and usually that's what I like about him, but up here it doesn't quite fit.

  Sophie Vizquel walks past us to take a swim. Jesus, when did she grow up? She's always been pretty, but now she has this body that's like very grown-up.

  When she gets far enough away so that she can't hear, Steve says, “Wow. You didn't tell me about her.”

  “Yeah, she's hot.”

  “Dude, she's fucking insanely hot. I'm going to go rub one out right now.”

  Steve gets up and goes into the cottage. Okay, gross.

  I sort of wish Sophie and I had talked or played together when we were kids so that it wouldn't be so awkward to talk to her now. I did that thing where I gave her fruit last year, but that seems so lame now.

  I don't know. I wonder if I should do that again. I go into the cottage, check to make sure Steve's still in the bathroom, and look in the fridge. Mom and Dad are usually good about buying a lot of fruit when we're here. Let's see, we've got a quart of strawberries. We've got some fresh raspberries too. Raspberries would be good.

  I take them over to her house while she's in the water and leave them on her front step and run back over to our cottage.

  I hope nobody saw me, especially Steve. He would think that was a Derek move.

  Steve and I are playing soccer in the Richardsons' yard. They've got this big old tree and a telephone pole about eight feet apart that they hang a clothesline from. It makes the perfect soccer goal.

  Steve and I take turns shooting and being goalie. He's a better goalie than I am because he's taller, but I'm a better shot, so it's a good matchup. He's really good at leaping to his left to get the balls I shoot up in that direction, so I keep trying to shoot the ball through the upper right corner, but I keep hooking it, so it just winds up in the center and he stops it easily.

  My problem is I'm not getting enough power on my kicks. This time I'm going to lean down and nail the shit out of the ball. Steve is up on his tiptoes, ready to leap.

  I lean over the ball and come up on it with all my weight and slam through the ball with the laces of my shoe. I nailed it, but oh shit. I hit it too high. It flies over Steve and the goal and right into the Richardsons' bedroom window.

  “Oh shit,” I say, and Steve turns and looks at me with his eyes wide open.

  I run over to the window and see if there's any broken glass there. Thank God, there's no broken glass, but the screen is popped out on one side. Oh well, no problem. I'll just slap that back in there.

  It doesn't want to go back in all the way, but that's okay. No one's going to notice. It's fine.

  My mom told me that Eliza and Mike got married over the winter when we weren't here. Plus, they had a baby, so I guess things are kind of busy up at their house. Damn, I was sort of hoping to hang out with Eliza more this summer.

  I also wish she'd invited me to the wedding, but who cares—it's not like we're really that good friends. Mrs. Richardson said it was a small wedding anyway, just family.

  I haven't seen pictures of the wedding, but I saw some pictures of the kid. Her name is Emma, and she's already five months old. Pretty cute, I guess, but all babies look alike to me.

  Mr. Richardson comes over to us when we're eating dinner at the picnic table. He looks pissed, but he always looks a little pissed.

  “Did one of you …” He pauses. “Did one of you kick something through my window?”

  Dad and Mom look at me and Steve, and Steve looks at me. Shit. Nobody says anything. I feel like everybody just pushed me out on a branch and started sawing.

  Fuck, I hate having to admit to shit. “What do you mean?” I say.

  “Someone kicked a ball or something through my window. Ripped up one of my copper screens.”

  Shit. Copper. That sounds expensive. Everyone already knows it was me who did it, so I might as well admit it. “Yeah, Mr. Richardson. I'm sorry. I didn't know that it had done any damage. I'm really sorry.”

  He stands there for a second and then turns around and walks back toward his cottage.

  I call after him, “Do you want me to see if I can fix it or something?”

  He turns around in the middle of his perfect lawn and says, “No, thank you, you've done enough.” We all watch him walk back to his cottage.

  Finally, Dad says, “I guess you guys should be more careful where you play, huh?”

  Steve says, “Is it just me or did he kind of freak out on you?”

  I say, “No, I messed up. I should have told him about it.”

  Mom nods. She always likes it when I learn my lesson.

  Jesus, that was kind of harsh, though. I mean, I know I fucked up his screen, but I did apologize too. It doesn't seem so bad that he couldn't have at least accepted my apology.

  It's a full moon. We're sitting on the beach, trying to look at the stars, but all my parents can look at is the Confederate flag flapping in the breeze. Dad is really pissed about it all over again. He can't let it go. I can let it go because I don't care that much, but he and Mom can't take their eyes off it.

  Dad keeps swearing under his breath, and Mom has this real tense look on her face. Nobody is having any fun. Steve is listening to music, which isn't what you're supposed to do out here. We can all hear the bass through his headphones. This sucks.

  I say, “If it bothers you so much, why don't you just go and take it down?”

  Dad looks over at me and says, “Yeah, you're right.” He stands up and walks onto the dock and all the way down to the flag. This isn't like him. This isn't something he would do, but he's doing it.

  He unwraps the rope, lowers the flag, unhooks it from the rope, and folds it neatly on the dock. Mom says, “Oh no.”

  Dad walks back down the dock toward us with a satisfaction I've never seen. He's smiling, and his crooked teeth catch the light from the moon.

  Steve takes off his headphones and says, “What's going on?”

  I say, “I'll explain it to you later.”

  Dad sits back down and I say, “Awesome.”

  Mom says, “Don't encourage him.” Dad says, “I'll write him a letter tomorrow and explain why I took it down.”

  It's back up. I woke up this morning feeling pretty good about what Dad did last night, because I thought it was over, but it's not over. The stupid flag is back up, just like nothing ever happened. And what's worse, now there is a sign on the minister's dock, in red paint that's still wet, that says No Tres Passing. He's a fucking idiot. He wrote “trespassing” like it was two words. The French translation would be “No Very Passing.”

  The four of us are sitting at the picnic table. Mom and Dad and Steve are drinking coffee, and Mom heated up one of those frozen coffee cakes. I don't like coffee, but I like coffee cake. No one's talking and Steve has his headphones on. Mom and Dad are just staring out at the lake.

  I hear a dog whimper like someone kicked it. And then the sound of a sliding glass door opening. The minister is coming out of his house. Oh shit, he's walking right toward us. His piece-of-shit dogs are following him, like they're
his gang and he's coming for a fight.

  Mom and Dad and Steve and I all stand up, shoulder to shoulder, like we're ready to fight too. Dad moves over in front of Mom. I can't believe this is happening.

  The minister comes to about six feet from us and stands there with his hands on his hips. He looks like a polar bear in a black suit. I thought he would come closer. He says, “Don't appreciate y'all trespassing on my property.”

  Dad says, “Yeah, well, we don't appreciate your flag.”

  “My flag is my business, and this is my beach.”

  Mom says, “No, it's a right-of-way. It's in our deed.”

  “It's my beach. It's my property, and I don't appreciate y'all trespassing. Y'all don't cease and desist, I'm going to call the police.”

  Dad says, “You can't do that.”

  “Watch me.” He turns around and starts walking back to his house.

  Mom calls after him, “You should take down that flag!”

  He turns and yells back, “I'm from West Virginia!”

  Steve and I are sitting on the couch. He's trying to get cell phone reception so he can call his girlfriend. Mom and Dad are pacing around the cottage. She says, “Doesn't he know that West Virginia wasn't even part of the Confederacy? Virginia was, but West Virginia split off precisely because they didn't want to be part of the secession.” That's exactly like her. She never misses a chance for a teaching moment.

  I say, “I don't think he cares.”

  “Well, he should care.”

  Dad is angry too. He's stomping back and forth, acting like he's a tough guy and he might at any moment go over there and beat up the minister. We all know he won't do that. He says, “I'm tempted to …” He bites his lip, like he can't believe the amount of anger that's inside of him. “I'm tempted to write him a letter.”

  I laugh out loud and everyone looks at me like I just farted in front of the queen of England. “Sorry,” I say, but it is kind of funny how mad they both are and how the only solution they can come up with is to write him a letter.