Bud Smith - F 250

Afterwards, she said, “I feel better now,” with her head on my chest.

“We’ll have to tell K.”

“Yes, we will.”

Apocalyptic fireworks were being loaded into cannons, prepared to explode all around us.

June stood from the bed, naked; took the dead flowers down from the window; opened up the suitcase; and delicately put them away … for a time.

June was on topwhen the front door opened. We were startled from our dream by K’s voice.

“Lucy, I’m home!”

We weren’t so brave anymore. June put the rest of her clothes on. I pulled my shirt over my head.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” she said. “Out the window.”

I shook my head, pointing at the floor. “Let me show you something.”

I moved the bed. Underneath, was a small door.

“Escape hatch,” I said.

“Hellllllo,” sang K Neon out in the living room.

We climbed down through the trap door just as K began to lightly knock on the locked bedroom door.

“June?”

The cellar was cool. Vintage vino was stacked on dusty racks.

“A lot of nice wine down here,” I said.

“A little birdie told me that you can open one with a shoelace,” June said. “We’re trapped now. Show me.”

“We’re not trapped,” I said. “See that over there? That’s a door.”

“To where?”

“Let’s find out.”

We walked down a long passageway made of stone and just barely illuminated by the sun on the other end. We came out, undetected, in the rocks beside the house.

I walked one way — down to the river. June walked the other way — back to her love.

I went off alone, hunting rocks …again. The mountains seemed like they were meant for that type of thing anyway. As I drove, massive stretches of jagged rock uncurled through dark forests, piles of leaves, broken limbs, puddles of standing water opaque with rotting debris. The animals watched from their perches in the shadows as I passed in the machine. They didn’t know what to make of me, and I wasn’t sure what to make of them.

It was another Saturday morning. I was just trying to find some sort of person to ask for directions. I was lost up there, trying to build a tomb.

At the foot of the steep dirt road, there was a paved, two-lane road that ran east and west. I headed west, farther away from the highway. I knew there was nothing back in that direction. When June drove us in, there’d been nothing. Now, I was eyeing my gas gauge with a small bit of concern. What was around here?

The change in altitude completely screwed up my hearing. I kept opening my jaw as far as it would go to try and make my ears pop. No luck.

The paved road was desolate and seemed to lead nowhere. I drove for ten minutes, thinking, “Is this really a road to nowhere? Does it end in a goddamn dead end? There’s probably one house on it, ten miles up. One lone house with a crooked mailbox; a sign on a dead elm tree at the foot of the gravel driveway that says, ‘DO NOT ENTER, I GOT A SHOTGUN — chicken wire, and a barking, gray dog.”

Then, up ahead, I saw a fork in the road. I headed to the right, and within another five minutes, I saw civilization appear before me. Small houses. Porches. A woman pulling weeds out of a flower bed in jeans and a green shirt. I stopped the truck, and the woman looked over at me.

“Yeah,” she said, “what is it? Don’t gawk too hard at me. My husband’ll show up. That’s no good for any of us.”

“I’m looking for…”

“For what,” she interrupted, wiping the dirt of her hands on a smock. “What are you looking for?”

I noticed a cat sitting on the wooden deck. It was eyeing me suspiciously too.

“A quarry,” I said. “For rocks.”

“For rocks?” She shook her head. “Nothing like that around here.”

She looked at my license plate.

“Jersey. Doesn’t surprise me. I went to Wildwood once. They charged me to go on the beach. Everywhere else in the world, beaches are free. Nothing free in Jersey, huh?”

She told me to just go and take the rocks. They were right there. Right there on the mountain for the taking. I felt so stupid. I’m from the ocean. There’s no mountains where I’m from. You have to buy them by the pound. I thanked her and drove off towards town.

“Town” was nothing but a tiny gas station, a general store, and a hardware store that looked like it was closed. I went to the door and knocked. Nobody was inside.

Finally, a guy walking by said, “What’re you doing?”

“Need to buy something.”

“It’s Saturday,” he said.

I got back into the truck, did a U-turn, and pulled into the gas station. The same guy was walking back the other way with his dog. He shook his head at me and my New Jersey license plates.

“Still Saturday, smartie.”

When I got back to the house, Feral was out on the rowboat, casting a line on the still water.

I said, “You catch anything?”

“Just boredom.”

“Try harder,” I said.

“You’re scaring the fish away,” he said. “Thought you said this was a sailboat?”

“Mast fell off. Now you gotta row.”

“This boat sucks.”

“Just don’t sink it, please.”

I went into the house. There was music coming from June Doom’s room. There was a light under K Neon’s door.

I stood in the hallway, trying to figure out which door I would choose.

K neon came into my roomand woke me with kisses down my neck. The springs in the bed sighed.

“I thought you said we shouldn’t do this,” I said, not exactly stopping her.

“I’m all alone,” she cooed. “I need someone. I don’t care who it is.” Her voice was playful, but I couldn’t tell how much of it was true. I guess anything you say is true. Jokes don’t hide anything.

“Can’t decide whether that sounds really free or really sad,” I said.

“Sad,” she said, breathing in my ear, “so sad. She won’t talk to me. If she won’t talk to me, the good times don’t come gushing. I wanna go out on a date right now.”

“This side of the world is closed until further notice.”

She took my hand and pulled me up out of the bed. We walked through the shadowy house. On the couch, I could hear Feral snoring underneath the amputated heads of the animals mounted on the walls. The wood paneling caused every sound and inference to be amplified. I thought I heard a noise in June’s room, but I hoped it was just the wind. There was no wind though.

Outside, we walked barefoot across the wet grass and the slimy leaves. She tried to hold my hand, but I wasn’t gonna go that far with it. I took it for two steps and nonchalantly released it. K is too smart to not notice, but she didn’t say anything.

She wanted to go out on the rowboat. I didn’t put up a fight. The stars were out, and there was a heavy mist on the lake. It seemed otherworldly, something that would only happen once in a person’s lifetime. It didn’t matter what the circumstances were.

The air was warm. The water was cool. A mist rose out of the lake and made a shroud for us at lake level. It hovered there around us, but we could still see the stars, magnificent and bright. We pushed out from the pier and paddled into the mist, vanishing from anyone looking from the house.

The bright moon reflected off K’s cat-frame glasses, making it look like she had the moon in both of her eyes. She looked smarter, more dangerous, with the glasses on. I liked that.

At the center of Tull lake, I stopped rowing. We drifted. K sat, with hands gripping both edges of the boat. Her mouth was open, and she was looking up at the stars.