On the Lake

On the Lake



There’s nobody out there. Never has been. Can’t see the other side, there’s only empty blue, water meeting sky. My feet bring me just so far on the jetty; truth be told, I never wander farther out than the wood planks reaching over the water. I stand and watch. I long since learned that I’m no eagle. No way to see a mile out into the midst of that unwelcome blue. I don’t have ears that can hear an invisible gasp for air — one particular gasp for air. I ain’t got no story standing close to the unending lake. Where no one goes any more.

The cedar forest is still dense like when it happened. Nobody’s built a house close to the water — living here is still like the wilderness my grandpa knew. Treachery in those calm waters, everybody said. For generations, mind you. I wasn’t much older than a young boy when they finally explained the accident, using words like undercurrent and sudden wind turbulence. Mighty confusing words for a country boy who never knew his Pa.

Nobody can see the other side of that lake. Any rowboats disappear fast in the blue against blue that never changes. Not much wind for sailing. It’s easy to go missing on the lake. If we’d had binoculars to look at the horizon, maybe someone would have seen what happened to Pa. But we’re not city folk with contraptions of all sorts. We’re simple, respectful people that don’t question destiny.

Almost every day of my life, I come here on the jetty. Never figured out why. Kate’s ten years older than me, the sweetest sister I could have, keen on seeing after her baby brother. Pa left Ma the grocery store beyond the gravel road leading to our house. Kate took on sewing jobs to stay home and help with my education, see that I didn't go where I shouldn’t. But she had her own miseries and left me to mine.

One day when I was ‘bout twelve, I got to helping Ma in the store putting cans and jars and boxes away in the room back behind the counter. I heard Mrs. Marley talking about city people wondering why nobody goes out on the lake.

“Your Jacob was the last person to go out there. How many years ago was it now, Hilda, that we lost him in those deep blue waters?”

“Don’t speak to me about those waters. He played with the devil himself all those years, taking his boat out there and bringing fish back with him. I always told him he was crazy.”

I never talked to Ma about that conversation. I told Kate though, asked her if Mrs. Marley’s words were true. It was Kate that spoke those complicated words I didn’t really understand, repeating bits of things she’d overheard at the time.

“Davy, people don’t talk about unhappiness here in the country. City folks’ll talk your ears off about their problems being big as a mountain. Here there’s no good talking about what you can’t change.”

“But don’t you miss him?”

“Don’t think about that much. Can’t change the past, now can I?”




I never set foot near the water. The jetty still looks like a fancy boardwalk you see in picture books, built of polished two-by-four wooden planks set up on stilts, that starts where the loose gravel wanders downward towards the water's edge. They say Pa helped build it. Some project for a summer camp for city folk that never got done; they say he done jinxed it dying out there like he did a week after it was built.

No, I never did touch that water. Fear’s a strange thing, like bats flying at night. Once Kate told me when I was a child I screamed like a devil going blue in the face if you put me in the bathtub. Ma’s house near the lake don’t got nothing like a modern shower. Nowadays I’ll step in one real quick if I really gotta get all wet to get cleaned up. Nobody could make me learn to swim. I don't set foot in no boat. Won’t catch me out in a rainstorm though I don’t cower under the blankets any more; today whiskey helps me calm the water shakes. I drink it straight.

Somehow I always knew that my Pa went and got himself drowned in that lake. But still, I come here everyday looking out over it, wishing for eagle eyes, wishing I could spot the waters where those two frantic arms was splashing for life, before making the silence silent again.




I ain’t got no recollections of my Pa. I was just three when he disappeared. There’s a picture of him and Ma taken before the front porch of our house. People say I got his good looks now that I’m older, but it don’t do me any good with the ladies. I’m festered on the inside and they knows it somehow. Don’t want another ma bossing me around, so I keep to myself.

When I was a teenager I discovered all the rusting tools in the shed back side of the garden. Ma couldn’t never bring herself to throw ‘em out nor give ‘em away. Said they were Pa’s. I learned to build cabinets and chairs and such, no problems. I guess I inherited his sense of working with your hands. Building stuff calms me, even though life don’t make me complain like having a belly ache.

Making things with my hands brought lots of folks to that shed back side of ma’s garden. For years, I used Pa’s tools and my hands and I sold that wood furniture. Earned good money too. Then when I turned forty, Ma left me in charge of the grocery store. They tell me I’m fair with the prices and giving out credit. I dunno, guess they’re right ‘bout that.

I built myself a cabin deep in the woods over on the other side of the lake right about then. I needed a place to call my own. I even installed one of those modern showers with fancy sprays. I don’t stay under the water a long time, but sometimes when my shoulders get stiff after chopping wood, the hot massage part helps. A man’s gotta have some pleasures.

But that house I built, there ain’t no bathtub. Kate comes and complains that she can’t soak off the country dirt – I tell her she gotta go stay with Ma who’ll be happy to have the company. She prefers my company, though. Sometimes I stay for a weekend and we talk about the store and the gardens, but Kate won’t stay with her. Something wrong with ‘em. They can’t stand side by side without bickering like magpies.

Always had a dog to talk to when I’m home. Men folk here only talk about smart things, but sometimes I just gotta jabber about the way maple whittles like pancake syrup or the smell of cedar. This dog’s a bastard collie/sheep dog that curls up next to my back at night. Call him Spencer. We go roaming together, collecting trees for the patio.

I got myself interested in those bonsai trees when I was younger. I looked at books one day in the city library when I learned landscaping for my garden. Ma always likes those rock gardens and I built a hill outside the front of my house and she’s happy with those rocks. Rocks and these miniature trees are a passion that keeps me a homebody. And the garden’s rose bushes. Must have forty or fifty varieties, all blooming well. Occasionally I take small pots of ‘em to the store and sell them. People knows my roses is good quality.

Now that I’m sixty, I still like making a cabinet or a chair, picture frames too for Kate and her kids. That generation don’t come to the country any more, ‘cause I don’t have TV or internet computer things — too modern for me. Don’t know many people beyond Ma’s grocery store that has modern machines. All I need is a good book and listening to the sounds of the night quiet down to silence.

Ma’s real old now, but don’t want nobody staying home with her. Kate don’t offer to keep her company no more – she comes up from the city regular like, every two weekends. They still fight like alley cats in a china store. Ma and me, we’re her only family. Her three kids are grown up now; her man left her years ago for another woman. Younger, prettier, not that Kate ain’t still pretty as a robin’s egg. But I don’t know much about these things. Easier living alone, I guess. Quieter, too.

Kate won’t go to the lake with me. Never did want to. I never pressed her none about it. Each got his ways. Don’t say nothing but I know she thinks it’s wrong to go there and wait. Won’t call it strange or nothing, and she won’t talk about Pa. She knew him thirteen years before he died out there. Don’t know whether she misses him. I miss him real bad, but can you miss something you never had?

It calms me to wait out at the lake. I don’t tell her that, though. Some people say the same thing about fishing in a river. Don’t know about that, I never set foot in no boat. Pa and all. I never did touch the water. I guess it gives me the willies. He died out there and no one ever found him in the silt deep under the water. Course back then they didn’t send down scuba divers to find bodies the fish ate for breakfast. Killing yourself was easier ‘cause people accepted the inevitable. Why do I need to know if he killed himself or it was an accident? He’s gone, ain’t he? But I do.

Sometimes that blueness out there calls to me real loud. Nothing like mythology and supernatural stuff; it’s Pa’s resting place and I wonder whether I’ll end up in an empty place like it. Don’t think about things like God and eternity. I lead a good life, I’m polite and well respected. Used to go with Ma to the church in the other town, Clear Water, down the big paved asphalt road, wider than two oxes side by side. Today she’s too old, her legs don’t do so much walking no more. So I don’t worry ‘bout things like hell and damnation. Philosophy’s for other folks. Too complicated for me. Ain’t no story-telling in it.

Me, I got a dull story. I was born one day. Pa died before I went to school like we all did, learned what I needed to build me a house and pay for the food I eat. I keep the books at the store real good and I pay Uncle Sam what he wants. Imagine me taking care of the family grocery store. It’ll be a nice nest-egg for when I’m real old and can’t do for myself no more. I got Spencer. I got my trees, my roses. What else is there?

I go to the lake every day, like I always done. Something restful about all that water where you can’t see tomorrow on the other side of the lake. Something like prayers in church.

If Pa were still here, I bet he’d say I learned my lessons well. I already outlived him and I figure I’m gonna be here a while longer. The lake and me wait for my time to come. Maybe then I’ll find some courage and sail out to the middle; then I’ll learn what happened to Pa. It’s still full of water, the sky’s still blue.
I been watching the lake longer than Pa did.

I guess a bit of respect for its blue mysteries is what keeps me going.


[2009.14.3…a]
1990 words

Honorable Mention in "The Elementalist Contest"  for May, 2009.