Serpentine

by Napier, Barry

  Joe had gone so far as to tell Mackenzie what may potentially be happening to their parents but she had ignored him. She had responded by informing Joe that their parents were like the princes and princesses in Disney movies and that divorce was an ugly and stupid thing.

  Joe found her attitude towards this both naïve and irritating. It was one of the many reasons he thought his little sister might have a legitimate mental condition.

  The dirt road that had been called out in the directions—Kerr Lane—appeared as if by magic to the right. When Drew turned onto it, the car bucked a bit. Joe watched as his sister peered out to it all like a girl that had been sucked into a fairytale. All she had ever seen were the crowded streets and buildings of Manhattan (with the exception of their Disney vacation two years ago), so Drew was sure that driving down a dirt road must be surreal to her. Joe had seen similar wooded area during camp for the last two years, so he wasn’t all that impressed.

  Well, maybe not entirely impressed. While he’d never let either of his parents know his real thoughts, there was something sort of cool and ominous about the overhanging branches scraping at the roof of the car and how the woods seemed to go on forever.

  Maybe this is going to turn out alright, after all, Joe thought.

  Immediately after that thought, the car struck a small rut and he let out a surprised shout. His mom laughed at him but he saw that she was sitting rigid in her seat. She looked like she was strapped into a roller coaster rather than the same car the Evans family had owned for the last six years.

  Finally, after what felt like forever, Joe saw the house for the first time. The boyhood wonder in him loved it at once, but the anger-ridden teen hated it. It was marked by a simple wooden plank that was bolted into a pine tree, boasting a simple painted 31 to mark the address. His view cleared a bit when his dad pulled the car into the thin driveway. There was no gravel on the driveway—just dirt and fallen pine needles. Joe studied the house with a skeptical eye, trying to imagine himself living here for eight weeks.

  From the passenger seat, Amy Evans mother responded predictably. “Isn’t it charming?” she asked in a sugar-coated way that made Joe wonder if she was being genuine or making some underhanded jab at her husband.

  “What is this?” Joe said. “Some painting in an old woman’s house?”

  “Zip it,” Drew said, killing the engine.

  Slowly, the Evans family unloaded from the car. Mac wasted no time in running around the shaded yard, kicking up dust and pine needles. Meanwhile, Joe leaned defiantly against the side of the car, scrolling with this thumb on his iPhone. He could feel his dad’s eyes on him but was pretty sure the old man wouldn’t say anything to him. Joe knew his dad did not want to start an argument so soon after getting here. And he was right—his dad took his mom by the hand and they walked to the house, ignoring his defiance completely.

  With his parents turned away from him, Joe took a chance to check the place out. The house was actually very quaint but he still stood by his original thought; given the wooded lot and the cabin-like appearance of the house, it did look like something from a painting in an old woman’s house or a dentist’s office. Looking at it, Joe felt like he was actually standing in a painting. It didn’t seem real to him. He was used to the business of New York City, the buildings and the foot traffic, the honking and the chatter.

  This was like another world. There was a crispness to this place, a rich earthy smell that he had never experienced before. There was a trace of grilling meat in the air, wafting on the slight summer breeze from one of the other summer homes along the road.

  It’s not so bad, Joe thought. But I bet it’ll get boring really fast.

  He sighed and watched his parents heading for the porch. Joe wondered how long he’d be able to get away with being a smart-ass. He’d seen his dad go from chill to berserk in a few seconds but Joe didn’t think he’d do such a thing on vacation…would he?

  “When will the truck get here?” Mac asked, coming alongside her parents and taking her mother’s free hand. “I want my toys!”

  “In about two hours,” Drew said.

  “So that gives us plenty of time to check the place out,” Amy said, leading Mac towards the house.

  As they neared the front porch—complete with a porch swing that looked like it might collapse if a fly landed on it—Mac gasped. She clapped her hands together and started cheering. Joe was curious as to what had made her so happy, but then she pointed towards the back of the house and he saw it.

  To the right of the house, snaking out from the back porch, was a thin dirt track bordered by stones. It wound down a slight hill where it then disappeared. Beyond this drop in the ground, Joe saw the lake glimmering through the trees. A small floating dock sat at the edge of the property on a tiny crescent of beach.

  “Is that ours?” Mac asked, jumping with excitement. Her little blonde curls bounced on her shoulder and she looked eerily like her mother as she smiled widely.

  “For the next two months, yes,” Drew said.

  “Awesome,” she yelled.

  Joe, finally joining them as they climbed the porch steps, said nothing. He looked out to the lake and the faintest trace of interest bloomed in his eyes. He noticed that his dad was looking and instantly wiped the interest from his face. They shared an awkward little glance that fell flat in the midst of Mac’s enthusiasm for the lake.

  Drew reached into his pocket and took out the key that the realtor had snail mailed him a week ago. He inserted it into the old brass lock on the front door and turned it. With that, the Evans family officially began their summer vacation.

  FOUR

  Joe knew that he had to tread carefully. Was he excited to be away from home, spending two months in the backwoods of Virginia? Surprisingly, yes. There was something cool about it that he couldn’t quite describe. Maybe it was the sense of isolation—knowing that the nearest stoplight or glass-covered multi-story building was hundreds of miles away. Whatever it was, something about the idea had appealed to him from the very first moment his dad had brought up the idea.

  But there was no way he was going to let his parents know this. As far as he was concerned, he was going to do everything he could to make this vacation miserable for them. It was bratty thing to do and he felt like such a clichéd teenager by doing it, but he thought it was his duty nonetheless. He’d miss most of the summer with his friends, and that was a legitimate complaint. But other than that…this might not be too bad.

  Unlike Mac, he was pretty sure knew the real purpose behind the vacation. Well, actually, there were two reasons behind it. The one that his dad was pushing very hard was that he had landed a great job scoring an independent film that was already getting great positive buzz. He was going to use these two months in the wilderness as inspiration to get the score done. He talked about it a lot, sometimes going so far as to ramble on and on about it even when it was clear that no one was listening. This, Joe knew, meant that it was something that his father was actually excited about. And excited was something that he rarely saw from his father.

  But then there was a second reason: there was something wrong with his parents. He’d heard them talking about divorce and had noticed how they didn’t talk as much as they used to. He wasn’t sure why his parents were getting a divorce. He didn’t think either of his parents had it in them to have an affair and he was pretty sure their finances weren’t at the root of it. In fact, from what he had gathered, his dad’s recent contract with for this film score had put them in a pretty great spot as far as money went.

  He supposed that could be the cause of the turmoil. He’d heard his dad talking about maybe moving to California where he’d be better connected and there would maybe be more opportunities for his work. And when he had mentioned it, his mother had shut him down. Joe knew they had tons of conversations in private, and he’d never heard an extended version of this argument—just a few muffled complaints from his roost on the stairs late at night.


  So maybe the one mention he’d heard about divorce wasn’t anything to be too worried about. Maybe, he hoped, this trip was to squash their feelings about a potential divorce. Joe certainly hoped that was the case. He liked his parents and although it pained him to admit it, they were really good together.

  Whatever the real reason for the divorce-talks might be, all Joe knew for sure was that it meant that he and Mac had a rough and awkward summer ahead of them if things didn’t go well between their folks.

  Joe thought it was selfish of them. But then again, he also knew that there was much about marriage and being an adult that he didn’t understand.

  For instance…if this trip to Clarkton Lake for the summer was indeed a thinly veiled attempt at his parents reconciling their differences, how did they plan to get any talking done with both of their kids around all of the time? If they had been dumb enough to bring their kids along while trying to patch things up, Joe thought they deserved a little hostility from their teenage son.

  He gathered up more hostility when he saw that the cabin only had two bedrooms. He stood in front of the door of the bedroom he and Mac had been assigned, staring hard at his little sister as she set her stuffed animals up on the bed along the right wall.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Joe said loudly, making sure his parents heard him.

  His mom came up behind him and gave him her best smile. “A problem?” she asked.

  “You didn’t tell me I was going to have to share a room with her,” he said coldly.

  “It’s your sister,” she said. “It’s two months. You’ll survive.”

  “This sucks,” Joe said.

  Mac turned to him, a pink and purple stuffed elephant in her arms. “I’m not thrilled about sharing a room with you, either,” she said. She stuck out her tongue to emphasize this point.

  “This sucks,” Joe said again and stomped away.

  He stormed through the cabin, using it as an excuse to check the place out. Truth be told, it was sort of awesome. The front door opened up on a large living area that was decked out with a huge flat screen TV that was mounted over a fireplace. The door to the master bedroom sat beyond the fireplace. Joe had only peeked in there and saw that it was huge. But he didn’t take the time to check the master bedroom out because he found it creepy to pay much attention to where his parents would be sleeping together.

  A wide hallway connected the living room and a kitchen that looked out onto a gorgeous view of the lake. The bedroom that he and Mac would be sharing for eight straight weeks sat along this hallway. When he passed it, he cast a scowling glance into the room where Mac and their mom were putting away Mac’s clothes. He hurried away and entered the kitchen, admiring the immaculately clean marble countertops.

  Joe stood at the kitchen table and looked through the picture window. He took in the sight of the lake and the endless trees that bordered it. He had said the lake looked like a big mud hole when they had arrived, but the fact of the matter was that he couldn’t wait to get his swimming trunks on and head down to that dock.

  I don’t know if I’m going to be able to fake this mad crap much longer, he thought as he looked down across the back yard and to the water beyond. Maybe I should just suck it up and actually enjoy it all. Maybe we could actually have a great vacation.

  It was a tempting thought. But if he didn’t have some sort of chip on his shoulder about being away from his friends for two months while his parents sorted out their stupid issues, who would? Again, that sense of stubborn teenage duty gave him a reassuring pat on the back.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  Joe jumped a little and turned to find his dad standing in the entrance to the kitchen. He was looking out to the same scenery as Joe. He wore a smile that was both sincere and tired at the same time.

  “This isn’t so bad,” Joe said softly. He didn’t care if his dad knew how he felt…not really. But there was no way he wanted Mac to hear.

  “Glad to hear it,” Drew said and stepped forward. He rustled his son’s hair and gave him a lazy one-armed hug as they stood together and looked out towards the lake.

  “I know you have questions about what you heard me and your mom talking about a few weeks ago,” Drew said. He spoke quietly and confidentially. It made Joe feel older, like someone that his father respected.

  “What?” Joe asked, feigning shock.

  “The stairs creak, kiddo. We know you come down to listen to Game of Thrones. And every now and then, we know when you’re there, listening to us talk.”

  Joe looked to the floor, mortified.

  “It’s okay,” his dad said. “So anyway…you have questions, yes?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “You’re a smart kid and I’m sure you want to know why. At some point, we’ll talk to you about it while we’re here.”

  Joe nodded. “Do you think you’re going to….you know. Are you going to get one?”

  “No,” Drew said. “My work has gotten unexpectedly huge all of a sudden and there’s a lot to deal with. More money, more duties, and different goals between us. Really, it’s a good problem to have but…well, it’s still a problem. But we’re hoping this trip will reveal some things for us”

  “Like what?”

  Drew only shrugged. It was a shrug that Joe had seen a lot over the last three or four years. It was his dad’s answer to just about everything. Joe had come to realize that it wasn’t an I don’t know shrug, but an I don’t want to talk about it anymore shrug.

  As if timed perfectly to help get his father out of an uncomfortable conversation, a loud horn honked from the front of the house. It sounded strange to Joe, hearing such a loud horn blast without the usual mix of congested traffic and towering buildings to all sides.

  “That must be the U-Haul,” Drew said. “Lend me a hand, would you?”

  “Sure, Dad,” Joe said.

  He started walking away before his dad could say anything else. It was just as well; Joe didn’t feel like talking about it right now, either. They had all summer to obsess over their family’s problems. What was the point in unpacking them all right now?

  They walked outside where two men were already at the back of the U-Haul, pulling out the ramp. For the next forty minutes, Joe helped his dad haul in the few boxes of things they had packed for the summer. It was just hot enough to work up a sweat and the shade of the trees in the yard provided some additional comfort.

  As they finished up, watching the truck pull back out into the dusty road, Joe realized that the forty minutes they had spent unloading the truck was the most uninterrupted time he had spent with his dad in several months.

  He looked out to the lake and felt his father standing beside him. Without a gesture or a single word shared, Joe felt close to him. It was a guy thing, Joe thought—the ability to communicate a job well done in absolute silence.

  A smile touched his lips. It was an unfamiliar feeling, but he welcomed it past the false wall he had placed around the feelings for his family.

  Maybe, Joe thought. Maybe this summer won’t be so bad after all.

  FIVE

  Wayne had grown up in rural Virginia and had long ago grown accustomed to the music of long country summers. Near the lake, that music consisted of the distant insect-like hum of speed boats on the water, the ghostly noise of children laughing from deeper down the lanes where the summer rentals were packed in, and the rustling sounds of the forest.

  But as of late, especially since he had become good friends with Al, there was another noise that defined his summers. It was the distinct clink of a horseshoe striking the post after he’d thrown it. The exasperated sigh coming from Al made the clink that much sweeter.

  Currently, Wayne was enjoying that sound as he rang up his fifth ringer of the afternoon. He raised up his hands in victory (one clasping a lukewarm can of beer) to celebrate his third win of the day.

  “It doesn’t seem right,” Al said from his post. “You seem to get better the
more you drink.”

  “It’s like that with bowling, too,” Wayne said. “It’s always been that way.”

  “Remind me to never go bowling with you, then.”

  “Losing hurts, huh?”

  “Shut up.”

  Wayne and Al had settled into a routine over the last five years. When Wayne’s wife had walked out on him right around that same time, he had become something of a staple at Al’s house. Kathy, Al’s wife, had taken it in stride, understanding that Wayne needed a friend in his time of pain. But Wayne had quickly taken to the bottle, something he had done earlier in his life and had easily run back to within a month of his wife leaving.

  Because Kathy was too kind-hearted to say anything and Al didn’t have many friends since retiring two years before, she hadn’t made too much of a fuss about Wayne hanging around so much. For the most part, Wayne did a good job of recognizing boundaries. But when summer came, he tended to drink more than usual and there were plenty of days where Wayne and Al were in their own little world. The boundaries he usually recognized became only blurred lines that could be easily pushed. Wayne was well aware of this and he wondered just how long Kathy was going to put up with him.

  Most days, it wasn’t so bad. Wayne and Al were usually either playing horseshoes in the pit behind Al’s house or sitting on Wayne’s porch watching the vacationer’s amble up and down the road. On occasion, they’d take Al’s little speed boat out to one of the nearby coves to catch fish and gossip like old women.

  Wayne was well aware that Kathy often kept a close eye on him. He didn’t know if she simply didn’t care for him or if she worried that his influence would rub off on Al. He didn’t blame her; he knew that Al and Kathy had a strong marriage and had always been close. To Kathy, he was really just like the neighborhood kid that came by far too often to ask if Al could come out and play. He caught glimpses of her spying on them through the kitchen window or around the corner of the house while she was in the back yard, tending to her little vegetable garden. But he’d never mentioned this to Al. No sense in causing drama about it.