Smith's Monthly #10

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  “You knew my father?” I must have shouted it at him because the two daiquiri customers looked over at the bar and then went back to whispering.

  “Of course,” the vagrant said, his voice barely carrying over the soft music. “We worked every night together for thirty years. For the last fifteen of those we skied the graveyard of souls. That is, until your father died.”

  My head was spinning. “What was my dad’s name? Where did he work?”

  The vagrant sighed. “Carl Hodges and he worked at the Lane Lumber Mill. You see, I never had a son and I wanted to show someone what we used to do. But your dad said you’d never be a skier. He said he’d tried to show you every summer, but you’d never let yourself believe, just like some don’t let themselves believe that a plane can stay in the air.”

  Some of the strange things my dad had said while getting ready those early summer mornings came flowing back.

  “The surface of that lake, Benny, is no different than the surface of life.”

  “Benny, to do anything, you must first believe you can do it.”

  Then I remembered even more of his words.

  “Don’t fight the surface, Benny. Move along it. Feel it. Always remember there is more than one surface.”

  My dad’s voice echoed in my head as the vagrant said, “I think I’ll be going now.”

  “Wait,” I found myself saying.

  The vagrant looked up at me and I could tell the hope and some of the life was gone from his eyes. I struggled for a question to ask. Anything. I didn’t believe the water-skiing bit, but he obviously had known my dad. For some reason I wanted to hold on to that. Besides, he had found me.

  “How did you know where I was?”

  “That was easy. Your dad told me. It’s not important, really. I was being foolish.”

  “I’ve only been here seven months. My dad has been dead for ten years. So I don’t think that’s exactly possible. Why don’t you just tell me what you really came here for?”

  The vagrant closed his eyes and sighed. “When you look out those windows, you see buildings and lights. Am I right?”

  I nodded and motioned for him to go on.

  “When I look out there I see a graveyard of souls. Oh, the people all still walk, talk, eat, and sleep. But a surprisingly large number of them are dead. People who haven’t taken a chance or done something really new in years. And who never will. They are content to sit and watch life, without ever touching. They are dead souls whose bodies haven’t stopped yet.”

  Again I motioned for him to go on, even though my anger was slowly returning.

  “Twenty years ago your dad and I were both dead. Oh, we worked and we ate and we did all the things we were supposed to do. But, in reality, we weren’t alive. Then one night, when you were still fairly young, your father came back from his vacation and started talking about that special morning run. He described it over and over and we began pretending on the really boring nights that we were skiing over the city, on the surface of the dead souls. We’d describe it to each other, the colors, the feelings, while one steered and the other skied.”

  The vagrant laughed and looked up at me. “And you know, one night we found that we really were skiing. We had found the surface of the dead souls and enough motion to stay on top of it.”

  “Motion?” I asked.

  “The power we used wasn’t an engine, but more our belief that we were alive and could see the surface and ski it without falling into it and being lost. After that we skied every night until your dad died.”

  I shook my head, finally having enough again. “Come on, you really don’t expect me to buy all this shit?”

  “Your father was right,” the vagrant said. “At this moment you are as dead as most of the souls of this city. You are afraid to believe in anything beyond the shallow surface of your own reality. I was wrong to come, to think that you might be able to ski with me.”

  The vagrant stood, turned, and walked down the hall toward the elevators. I wanted to shout out for him to stop, but somehow I was frozen by his words until the elevator doors closed behind him.

  TWO

  “THIS IS STUPID, you know?” Carla said. She carefully picked her way down the dew-slick path that led to the dock through the tall pine trees.

  The morning air was crisp, almost too cold for a July day, even though the temperature would reach the eighties by noon. But it smelled wonderful. Clean and crisp, with that hint of pine filling up everything.

  Carla wore her down ski parka, tight Levis and tennis shoes. Her long blonde hair was pulled back tight and it was the first time in the four months we had been going out that I had seen her without make-up.

  “I warned you I wanted to do this every morning,” I said. “And it won’t take long, I promise.”

  Carla didn’t answer. She reached and crossed the narrow beach, dropped the life jacket on the wooden dock and stood there shivering, hands jammed in her coat pockets, staring out over the smooth water.

  The sun wasn’t quite above the ridge of mountains and the lake was as glassy as any mirror. Clouds of mist hugged the blue-black surface and in the distance a bird broke the morning silence with a sharp, echoing call.

  Everything was exactly as I had remembered it when Dad and I skied. Only this time I carried the ski and Carla did the bitching.

  I jumped down into the boat, dropped the engine into the water and fired it up, just like Dad used to do. So powerful was the silence of the mountain morning that it dampened even the sound of the engine.

  I made sure the yellow ski rope was hooked up right, then tossed the coil up on the dock and got out. “I’m going to jump start off the dock, so do exactly what you did yesterday afternoon. Okay?”

  Carla nodded and got in the boat without a word.

  She’d been all fun yesterday when the sun was hot and she could lie on the dock in her bikini. She had found it exciting to learn how to drive a boat. She even wanted to learn to ski because it looked like so much fun. But she hated it at this moment.

  I remembered how she felt.

  I unhooked the lines holding the boat and nudged it away from the dock. “Head down the lake and watch for my signals.”

  Carla nodded and kicked the boat quickly in and out of gear so that it drifted slowly away from the dock as I had taught her.

  As Dad had taught me.

  I pulled off my sweater and put on the life jacket, then dipped the ski in the water, laid it flat on the dock, and stepped into the cold shoe.

  I’d been waiting for this moment since Edward Craig had disappeared into the elevator of the bar in February. I’d tried to find him in the lobby, but no one down there had seen him.

  And for the past five months I had looked for him in records and in shelters and everywhere.

  I found out very little.

  The day my father died Edward had quit his job and simply disappeared. No one had seen or heard from him since.

  I had no better luck.

  I grabbed the slowly uncoiling ski rope, made sure the handles were untangled, and moved to the edge of the dock.

  “Get ready!” I shouted to Carla. She sat up on the back of the driver’s seat and nodded, her hand poised on the throttle.

  I watched and waited as the drifting boat gradually pulled the rope closer and closer to the right amount of slack. The cool morning air gave me goose-bumps.

  The fear that I wouldn’t make the jump right twisted my stomach.

  The anticipation of cutting back and forth across that smooth surface, scattering the morning mists with my body, doing what very few others had ever done, made me feel alive.

  More alive than I had felt in years.

  Was that what my dad and Edward Craig had meant?

  The rope was at the right length.

  It was time to start finding out.

  It was time to really start living.

  “Hit it!” I shouted, and stepped out on the smooth surface of the water.

&nbs
p; THREE

  EDWARD CRAIG WAS waiting on the dock as Carla swung the boat in close enough for me to drop off.

  I had pushed the run a little too long.

  My arms ached, my legs were made of rubber, and my face stung from the cold wind.

  But I was alive.

  I had tried to memorize every detail of the run, every sensation, every thought.

  By the time I motioned for Carla to turn around and head back up the lake toward the dock, I understood a lot more of what Dad and Edward Craig had been talking about.

  But I was still surprised to see him standing there.

  He was dressed exactly the same as he had been the night five months earlier. And he looked just as out of place on the dock at five in the morning as he did in the plush bar at two a.m.

  He nodded to me as I sank slowly into the water beside the dock.

  I pulled off the ski, stood on the sandy bottom, and handed the ski up to him. “You have this knack for finding me. How’d you know I was here?”

  He laid the ski carefully on the dock and then smiled as I waded the last few yards to shore. He handed me a towel without a word and then we both watched as fifty yards off shore Carla finished winding in the rope and putting it on the back seat.

  “Well?” I said.

  His soft laugh seemed to carry up into the pine trees. “I hoped you might have heard some of what I said. This was the week your father always took his vacation. And this was the place he always skied. I took a chance you might come back here to try to discover for yourself. Nothing more. You ski very well, I might add.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “It seems you hit it on the nose.”

  Again I felt angry at him. Who was he to spoil my perfect morning? Who was he to read me so easily?

  Carla swung the boat in a little too fast toward the dock and it took both Edward and me to stop it from hitting hard. Carla looked Edward over with obvious distaste as she jumped out of the boat.

  “Are we done?” she asked me.

  I nodded.

  “Good. I’m going back to bed. Excuse me.”

  She brushed past Edward and crossed the beach toward the path to the cabin.

  “She doesn’t ski, I take it,” Edward said.

  I laughed. “Not hardly.”

  “What does she do, then?”

  I watched as she climbed the path and disappeared in among the trees. “She works for a dentist. Beyond that I’m not really sure.”

  Edward nodded, took the bow rope from its hook and expertly tied the boat to the dock.

  FOUR

  CARLA WAS FRIENDLIER after a few more hours sleep and after I told her that Edward was an eccentric millionaire who didn’t talk about his money.

  Edward spent the morning telling me of his times with my dad at the plant and in the bars. Not once did he mention skiing or the graveyard of souls.

  I cooked us a huge lunch of trout I had caught the night before, then Carla headed off to sun on the dock while Edward and I moved out to chairs in the shade of the pines.

  It wasn’t until we were both settled that I finally broke the silence about skiing. “So explain to me again exactly how you and my dad started skiing the graveyard of souls.”

  He laughed and went back over exactly what he had told me the first night in the bar. It had started with my dad coming back from vacation and explaining to Edward what it was like to really feel alive and had progressed to them skiing the surface of the dead souls of the people who inhabit the city.

  “So did you actually leave the plant?”

  Edward shook his head. “Not really. We would sit in the break room. We’d take short runs because while we were skiing our bodies would be frozen, like statues.”

  He laughed. “Got kind of embarrassing the few times someone walked in while we were skiing.”

  I shook my head in an effort to try to clear it. “You mean there was actually a physical effect involved?”

  “Sure was,” Edward said. “I suppose you were too young to remember the night your dad was sent home with what they thought was a gas poisoning?”

  I vaguely remembered it. “Something about a leak that got into the lunch room and a few people were hurt.”

  Edward laughed. “We were skiing and old man Bridges came in and saw us. By the time we got back, they had your dad’s body out on the floor giving him mouth to mouth and they were about to start on me, too. Gave your dad quite a start, let me tell you.”

  Edward’s eyes glazed as he drifted back along the memory, smiling.

  I gave him a moment, then asked my next question. “So what exactly did you ski on?”

  Edward shrugged. “Just an old piece of pine your dad cut one night. Whichever one of us was skiing would put the board under our feet. Made us keep a mental picture of a ski and made the skiing seem easier.”

  I shook my head and looked around at the pine trees and the rough lake beyond, ruffled by a slight wind and a lot of boats crossing back and forth.

  I couldn’t believe all this. Here was a guy making a great case for the fact that my dad was an A-1 looney. And I was letting him, even helping him. It wasn’t right for someone to make Dad sound so nutty.

  “I have to be going, now,” Edward said, and stood. “Got some things to do and I can see you need time to think about all this.”

  “Are you coming back?” I tried to keep my voice even and hold back the feeling of panic that was growing in my stomach. I wanted to be mad at this guy, not have him stick around. Yet I couldn’t stand the thought of him going away for good like Dad had done.

  “You planning on skiing tomorrow morning?”

  I nodded.

  “From the looks of it, you might need some help.”

  I glanced in the direction of the beach where Carla was sun bathing. “You’re right about that. You want to drive the boat?”

  Edward laughed. “I’d love to steer for you. But only if you’ll promise me one thing. Tomorrow, while you’re skiing, look down.”

  “Into the water?” I asked. “It’s like a mirror.”

  “I know,” he said, “Just look. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  He turned and ambled past the cabin and toward the road.

  FIVE

  EDWARD WAS WAITING on the dock as I picked my way down the dew-wet path at shortly before five a.m. Carla was still tucked under the blankets and had made it very clear she wanted no part of skiing before the sun came up.

  Again this morning the lake was like a picture off a postcard, glassy smooth, with little wisps of clouds hovering along the surface. The air was crisp and cold and smelled of wet sand and pine.

  Edward was dressed exactly as before.

  “Morning,” he said.

  I nodded, laid the ski down, and looked out over the lake. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Edward sighed. “Yes, incredibly so.”

  We both stood for a moment gazing around at the pine-covered mountains reflected off the misty surface of the lake. Again this morning I could feel my heart pounding as I slowly came alive. The smell of the pines seemed sharper than any smell before.

  The crisp taste of the air seemed more fresh than anything I had tasted.

  The cold of the morning felt good against my face. I had never been alive all those years working in bars. I had experienced nothing sitting in front of my television. Was that what Dad and Edward Craig had meant? Part of me said it was. But I knew there was something more. Something I was missing.

  I turned to Edward. “Would you like to go first?”

  He laughed. “I’m afraid I never learned how to ski on water. But I can drive a boat. Are you ready?”

  I nodded, pulled off my coat and put on the life jacket. Edward eased himself down into the boat, found the way to drop the engine in the water, and then tossed me the yellow rope.

  I told him how to start the boat, then untied it from the dock and gave it a little shove. I was ready, with the ski on, poised at the end of the dock b
y the time he had the boat warmed up and in position.

  He wore the biggest grin I had seen in years when I gave him the thumbs up sign and yelled, “Hit it!”

  My jump off the dock onto the surface of the lake was smooth, even though my stomach clamped up in fear that I would go headfirst into the water.

  I gave the boat time to get completely up to speed before I made my first cut to the right out onto the mirror-smooth water. Edward’s smile never left his face as I cut back and forth, loosening up the tight muscles, letting the bite of the cold air and the spray numb my face.

  It felt as if I was skiing over velvet, almost flying.

  After a long minute, I finally let myself really look down into the water.

  I had been thinking about what I might see since Edward had made me promise to look. And I had come up with no expectations. At this point I was willing to try to understand anything.

  But there was nothing there.

  No magic.

  No sights.

  Nothing.

  Oh, I could see myself, blurred only slightly in the dark surface. And I could see the sky and the mountains above me.

  But there was nothing else.

  I held my position to the right of the boat and looked up at Edward.

  He pointed down, indicating clearly that I should keep looking. So I went back to staring at myself in the reflection of the water as the surface slid past my ski too fast for me to focus on it.

  Maybe it wasn’t the surface Edward wanted me to see.

  Maybe it was something down in the water.

  I tried to stare beyond and behind my reflection, down into the black depths.

  And as I did, blurred images formed.

  I wanted to shout to Edward that I saw something, but I didn’t.

  Instead I kept staring as faint lights and dark shapes came into view. As I struggled to bring them into focus, buildings and streets and lights formed below me.

  I was flying over them at a height far above the Penthouse Bar. Yet close enough to see the details.