Trying the Knot

by Todd Erickson

  “Take good care of her,” Kate whispered. Her fingers remained clutched around her future father in-law’s forearm, and he gave Kate a peck on the cheek. The doctor gently peeled her hand from his arm and set it on Ben’s unsuspecting leg. Then he was out the door in an emergency medical flash.

  Kate remained paralyzed on the floor gazing blankly ahead. The crowd had almost resumed an air of normalcy as her oblivious father prepared to make yet another toast. The guests collectively yawned and turned to face an undaunted Chief Hesse.

  With his glass upraised, he scanned the room for Kate and began, “To my daughter, who’ll always be a Hesse first and foremost.” Ben helped Kate onto her feet, and when the Chief spotted her, he continued nonplussed, “On the eve of your big, special day of days – here’s hoping they never get this special, err, I mean expensive ever again. Ha!”

  He chuckled jovially but was dismayed to discover he was the only one laughing; nearly everyone appeared distressed and out of sorts.

  “Abominable,” Ginny said under her breath. She vowed then and there to retire within a year, and never host anymore hillbilly hoedowns for the rest of her life.

  Kate wrapped her arms around herself, rocked back and forth, and searched around for a familiar face to focus on. Everything seemed to grow more and more distant and inaccessible as she felt herself becoming small and far away. A gentle hand touched her on the shoulder and reeled her in from the remote sorrow that alienated her even from herself. Kate turned with tears in her eyes to see it was Father Tim standing beside her. He was the only one in the room, and he held out his arms. The kindly priest offered his support, and she found herself weeping uncontrollably as he held her close. The priest cradled her reassuringly while issuing soothing words of comfort. Kate’s wounded sobs filled the bar area and Ginny attempted to guide her into the kitchen where she could break down without an audience, but Kate resisted.

  “Katie, honey, just tell us what you need,” Ginny said. “Anything, sweetie, anything at all.” Ginny draped a blanket over Kate’s shoulder and caressed her cheek with the back of her hand. The bride’s forehead felt cold and clammy, but sweat dripped from her tousled dark hair. To a passing waitress, the restaurant owner barked, “Where the hell is the water I asked for? And go get Nick Paull.”

  “Hubby took that crazy Tammy Wynette out to the back parking lot to cool off,” said the scrawny waitress, but she dutifully retrieved the water and agreed to fetch Nick.

  Suddenly sobered by the magnitude of the crisis, Chelsea grabbed hold of Ben’s hand and said, “Looks like it’s once again time for Prince Valium to sweep Kate off her feet.”

  “I— I have to leave. I’ll just walk,” Kate sputtered, seemingly in shock.

  “You’re doing no such thing,” Ginny said, unsure if Kate was aware of what she was saying.

  “Take me to her,” Kate pleaded.

  “The hospital sounds like a good idea,” Father Tim said. He rubbed Kate’s back with one hand and held onto her shoulder with the other. He attempted to guide her out the door, but she stood motionless.

  “Nick’s on his way, he’ll be here any second,” Ginny reassured.

  Shivering, Kate insisted, “No, I have to go now.”

  Without warning, the priest felt Kate grow heavy as if she were about to faint, and he motioned at Ben to help support her. “Please, please, please, won’t somebody just take me there before it’s too late?” Kate begged, nearly whimpering. “Please, oh please.”

  Maybe, Chelsea thought, this time Kate was beyond Valium, and she would require a rubber room in order to regain a semblance of self-control. Chelsea commanded impatiently, “I’ll take you there myself. Ben, you bring Nick as soon as you find him. Mother, walk with Kate, okay, while I pull up outside the main entrance.”

  “No,” Kate winced and tried to hold back the tears.

  Chelsea grabbed her arm and said forcefully, “We’re taking you away; you’re going to the hospital.”

  With General Norris finally having dispensed orders, her obliging troops fell in line and marched away obediently. Their mission was to race the bride to Portnorth Hospital before she suffered a complete nervous breakdown.

  chapter twelve

  As the silver Saab veered recklessly down Main Street, Tristana conversed with such rapt fixation on Alexa that she paid little attention to the road sprawled before her. Due to the clouds rolling in off the lake, everything appeared gray and washed out. In the backseat, Jack slid nauseous across the slippery leather interior. Tristana found it refreshing to be in the company of people who were too young to remember a time past when she was still Nanette before she had transformed into Tristana.

  As always, Tristana was unimpressed with the quiet little town they cruised from one end to the other in mere minutes, so she decided to raise hell in order to liven things up. As they pulled slowly into the car wash, she eyed the jacked-up, monster truck parked alongside a purple Chevy Nova. An Alpha-male and two identical bald rogues, clad in authentic army-issued camouflage leaned against the truck emitting one-hundred-percent pure testosterone. She inspected them as if they were a rare species indigenous to Northern Michigan.

  “Busch Beer! Git ‘asted,” cried the burly one with the premature middle-aged paunch. He raised his bandaged hand in the air and called out, “Burn ‘em, git ripped!”

  “Fuckin-A!” yelled the bald twins.

  Completely fascinated, Tristana asked, “What language are they speaking?”

  “Oh shit, it’s the Czerwinski boys,” Jack said, and he ducked as low as the little car allowed. “Don’t stop.”

  “Why not?” Tristana asked, bringing the Saab to a rolling halt. “Are they actual Gulf War veterans?”

  “More like Gulf War inspired. The Czerwinski boys are back from boot camp to kick Jack’s scrawny white ass,” Alexa informed.

  “What for?”

  “Killing their sister,” Alexa said. The bluntness of the remark made Jack grunt with unease. “Last year, on Devil’s Night, as a testament to their ferocity, they slaughtered a slew of feral cats and strung their carcasses in trees all over town.”

  “Positively grizzly,” Tristana said. “Who is the fat-ass between the bookends?”

  “That’s Rocky,” Alexa said. “He was supposed to graduate six years ago. One of his girlfriends is only a senior. He knocks the crap out of her every lunch hour before he porks her in the parking lot.”

  Tristana shuddered. “He looks rabid. Is this all they have to do?”

  “Mostly. Rocky snags fish in his spare time, which is pretty much all the time. The Czerwinski jerks are in the army,” Alexa said. Then she reached back between the two front seats and pried Jack’s gum from his mouth because he would not stop chomping on it. “They’re probably handing out directions to a party at some hick’s hunting camp.”

  “There you go, Tristana, real rednecks,” Jack said, and he impatiently added, “Dude, lets get out of here, now!”

  “This place is even more frightening than I remember,” Tristana said. She drove slowly as if mesmerized. “They don’t appear civilized even in their own natural habitat.”

  Rocky and his two delinquent protégés spotted Tristana. The leader of the pack twirled the end of his mustache and ran his fingers through what looked like a wiry mass of pubic hair crowning his head. He wore a Black Sabbath T-shirt and baggy, cargo-style acid-washed jeans.

  “In high school, the twins used to ride trains on passed out drunk girls,” Alexa said sadly.

  “Gnarly sick fucks,” Tristana said, but she felt compelled to put her car in park and watch the stallion swagger toward them.

  “This winner knocked up his girlfriend’s kid sister,” Jack said. He laughed and added, “His girlfriend is a Derry cow now, but she was once Queen of Porknorth.”

  “Are you on a first name basis with everyone in this town?” Tristana asked. Appalled, she locked the doors as the stallion inched his way closer.

  Jack crouched low
er until he was practically lying across the floor. He begged Tristana to drive away, but she ignored his pleas.

  “This place is still hell on earth.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Jack said. “At least we know our neighbors.”

  “And their family histories for the past three generations,” Alexa added.

  “It’s because you’re all cousins,” Tristana said bemused, and she added, “Anyway, is it really such a comfort?”

  Rocky’s unlaced high-top sneakers carried him toward the curious other worldly looking car, but he halted abruptly when he noticed the driver wore a nose ring, had blood red lips, dark eyeliner, and long curly, dyed hair. It was as if he stumbled across a demon incarnate in the night.

  “Friggin’ vampire,” he called out and spat on the car hood. He turned to his identical buddies and said, “Get a load of the lezzies in the Jap car.”

  The Czerwinski twins jumped up and down, gleefully chanting, “Dykes! Dykes! We like to fight dykes.”

  “Wait-a-sec, that’s Jack Hesse in there!” yelled their fearless leader.

  The twins scrambled closer and screamed crazily, “We’re gonna pulverize you, Jackass!”

  Alexa quickly lowered her window, propped herself out of the car and forcefully stuck out her middle finger. Her wild eyes glimmered as she screamed, “Fuck you, Mother Fuckers!” Tristana tore off and squealed the tires as they fled the human explosives, on which Alexa had just tossed a match. The back end of the Saab narrowly escaped a soaring 40-ounce beer bottle, and shards of brown glass shattered against the deserted pavement.

  “You gangsta bitches going to get us killed,” Jack said as he rolled around in the backseat.

  “Only if you’re lucky,” Alexa said.

  “I’d call 9-1-1,” Tristana said, holding up her brick sized DynaTAC cell phone. “But I can’t imagine there’s any reception up here.” Jack stabilized himself in the cramped quarters, and he sighed with relief upon realizing there was no monster truck in pursuit.

  “Christ on a stick, this place makes me sick,” Alexa yelled out the open window. She longed to do something more interesting than ride up and down the same tired old streets. In the rearview window, she caught a glimpse of Jack swiping his strategically dripped hair off his forehead. She insisted, “You’re preening again.”

  He ignored her and suggested, “Hey, let’s do something wild and crazy.”

  “Let’s get into a skirmish with the law,” Tristana agreed, “like the Dukes of Hazard County, where crazy high-jinx ensue with each twist and turn of the dirt road.”

  Tristana opened the console between them and she pulled out a one hitter and a lighter. Tristana put the pipe to her lips and took a deep drag after raising the windows and shutting the sunroof. Heady plumes of smoke filled the car. She passed the pipe back to Jack after Alexa shook her head in disbelief, and muttered, “My God, I’m hanging out with Bonnie and Clyde.”

  “Then suggest a fun and legal alternative,” Tristana said, taking the pipe while losing her patience.

  “We could go swimming.”

  “Isn’t it rather cold?”

  “Um, yeah,” Jack concurred, but Alexa decided the chilly air would make the water feel warmer. A consensus of one was all she needed to get her way.

  “Too bad it’s not winter, we’d take you ice fishing,” Jack said, leaning between the front seats in order to get a closer look at to the intriguing Goth chick.

  “Who’re you kidding, Jackal?” Alexa asked as she elbowed him to get in the backseat. “Every time we do any serious ice fishing, moron here brings his skis and slides like a madman all over the frozen lake.”

  “Well, fishing is boring.”

  Alexa explained, “It requires a Zen-like patience for maximum enjoyment.”

  “Yet one more fun-filled Northern Michigan out-of-door experience I’ve missed out on,” Tristana lamented. She took the pipe from Jack, and double-checked to make sure it was cashed. “I bet you guys still kill whatever you eat, like deer and rabbit and stuff.”

  After a brief silence, Alexa mumbled directions to the beach of her choice, and Tristana parked the Saab next to a wooded area.

  “Do we really have to trek through this forest to get to the lake?” Tristana asked, fearing for the well being of whatever wildlife they should encounter.

  “It’s just pine trees,” Alexa said, and she jumped from the passenger seat.

  At the risk of looking paranoid, the driver rolled up the windows and locked the door. She found herself falling in line behind the two teenagers who led the way along the path through the woods. The evening sky was sporadically overcast, and the tree-lined trail was eerily dark. Tristana made sure Jack remained close beside her by leading him by the hand. He grumbled about the unqualified lunacy of swimming in the cold pouring rain, but it was neither cold nor pouring as the lukewarm air pelted them with occasional raindrops.

  “Awe, are you taking the long way on purpose?” Jack whined.

  “Why do you always insist on being a monumental pain in my ass?” Alexa asked. Tristana burst out laughing, and Alexa let a tree branch snap back at them. “Quit your bitching.”

  They continued marching along the black, pine needle strewn path while Jack complained about the frigid cold and the painful lacerations on his bare feet. With her shoes flung over her shoulder, Alexa hummed unaffectedly and paid no attention to her annoying cousin.

  “This place smells like raw sewage or something equally disgusting,” Tristana said as she held both her and Jack’s hand over her nose. The fishy stench of the lake overpowered the pine-fresh scent emanating from the conifers, and wet sandy earthiness permeated the air. The aromas intermingled, and Alexa scarfed them up like a drug.

  Spotting sand ahead, Alexa bolted from the near darkness and ran toward the sparkling lake. With typical abandon, she yanked off her T-shirt and kicked away her cutoff shorts. Stunned by the sheer force of Alexa’s physicality, Tristana abruptly stopped to admire the younger girl’s equine beauty.

  Alexa was the perfect combination of strength and attractiveness. Standing in only a bra and underwear, the moonlight illuminated her glorious spinning body. The bluish haze of dusk accentuated each muscle, tendon and curve. Her dark hair hung half out of a barrette and spilled wildly onto her broad shoulders. Alexa looked so deceptively androgynous it was easy to overlook her perfect breasts, which spilled from her bra.

  “Christ, they’re only a couple of tits,” she said disgusted when she caught Jack ogling her. He and Tristana were shocked from their trance-like fixation on her heaving chest. Her full breasts were bound too tightly in a bra she had worn a year too many. They were suddenly reminded she could bind and gag both of them in seconds.

  “This is the closest he’s come to seeing anyone naked,” Alexa pointed out.

  “Shut up,” Jack hissed.

  “That would be incest, you perverted virgin,” Alexa taunted. She knew exactly how far he had experimented sexually because they had tried it out together, and she knew he was a virgin for he drew the line at penetration.

  “Go to hell.”

  “Such hostility—

  “All right, enough already out of both of you,” Tristana shouted over the increasing volume of their petty attacks. “We’re not here to fight, we’re here to swim, remember?”

  Without a second thought, Alexa tossed her bra at them and dived into the lake. Admiringly, Tristana watched Alexa deftly swim away from shore, and then she gazed up at the endless sky. She studied the heavenly clouds, awestruck beyond words. As she caught an occasional raindrop in her mouth, she said, “I haven’t breathed this amount of fresh air in such a long time, I can’t even remember how long it’s been.”

  “Not much longer. See those storm clouds?” asked Jack, pointing over the lake. “It’s going to downpour.”

  Searching the pink and purple heavens, Tristana said with wonderment, “I hope we get to see those flashes of light in the night sky that look as if they’
re coming from God’s own lighthouse.”

  Jack rolled his eyes, “The Northern Lights?”

  Having grown tired of his constant negativity and sullen disposition, Tristana asked, “Yes, the Aurora Borealis? Don’t you think I know what they’re called? Your soul lacks poetry, Jack.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I wish we had a few doses.”

  “Doses of what?”

  Alexa called out from sandbar, “Acid, dork. You know, LSD.”

  Jack hurled a stone into motionless Lake Huron, and then he started to undress. Unnoticed by Tristana, he stood in tattered flannel boxer shorts and a T-shirt, which exposed his pallid legs and knobby knees. He tiptoed ankle deep into the water and shivered as the wind tugged at his greasy hair. As he gracefully skipped rocks over the invitingly still surface, shadows from the setting sun bounced off the dark, velvety water. As it became dark, the lake looked as if it were covered with a million carelessly strewn diamonds.

  “Hey, wuss,” Alexa called to Jack from the sandbar. “Take off your shirt and flash us that concave chest you like to carve on.

  “Shut up.”

  “Don’t start,” Tristana warned. Sitting in the sand, she removed her black fishnet pantyhose.

  “Come in, it’s wonderful!”

  “It’s kinda like cold,” Jack said. He watched Tristana sit on the shore and light a clove cigarette, and he whispered, “It’s going to start pouring any second.”

  “What a baby!” Alexa shouted, floating on her back. To her rapt audience, she hollered, “We should’ve stolen a bottle of booze from the lounge or from one of my mom’s strategic, house-cleaning hiding spots.” She laughed struggling to keep from sinking into the murky stillness.

  Still pelting rocks, Jack suggested, “Maybe Tristana could buy for us.” Hopefully, he looked over his shoulder to the older girl and, he did not see his last skipping rock peg Alexa square in the head. The lone swimmer quickly disappeared into the dark expanse of the endless lake.

  “I think you hit her,” Tristana said concerned.