Bud Smith - F 250

“Sure.”

“I know, I know, the lake is a little small for it. Used to live on the ocean in Virginia Beach, but that fell through.” He scowled, rubbing his fingers together as if signifying “too much money.” “Now I’m lucky if I get to rip around on my speedboat twice a year. Gotta wait till my bitch-ass wife is out of town with the kids.”

I looked all around. There were pictures of his kids everywhere. Everywhere. All the walls. All the tables.

He took a massive hit from the bong, sucking in all the smoke. A world record. He exhaled it all and, without missing a beat, said, “JESUS! I didn’t bother you with the boat, did I?! I’m so stupid! I must have woken you up in the middle of the night, and you came over to rag me out! I’M SO OBLIVIOUS!”

“Kinda,” I admitted.

“Dude, I am so frickin’ sorry! I feel like such an inconsiderate neighbor! What the hell is my problem? Seriously, I want you to kick me in the head as hard as you can.”

“That’s alright.”

“No! Kick my head like a football!”

I politely declined again. He said it was a wise choice. He said his head was equipped with the most serious and sinister metal plate that money could buy. He knew. He was in the medical rep business after all.

“I was in a very serious accident,” Ron said, “a couple years ago. Never been the same since. A riding lawn mower crashed down on my head in a Home Depot.”

“Oh, wow — hey, so, I want to talk to you about something kinda important.”

“Shoot, what is it, amigo?”

He lit the bong again, taking another colossal rip. It hurt my lungs to watch.

“I was just out on the lake in my rowboat…” I began.

“Beautiful night. Love that mist! And above, the stars out in full regalia,” he said, nodding. “Go on.”

“So, you were zooming around and you kinda hit my rowboat and…”

“What! Are you fucking with me?!” He was wide-eyed. “I hit your boat! How inconsiderate of me! Dude, I apologize! I was so smashed, man. You gotta understand: my wife keeps me on a very tight leash. She thinks I got brain damage or something and…”

“Yeah, that’s not the worst part,” I said.

“Listen, I’m gonna make this better,” he said, putting the bong away. “I’m gonna get you a new rowboat. Fuck that! A regular boat. Little outboard engine. You’ll love it. You’ll thank me one day.”

“I think you killed my friend…”

He didn’t say a word. He just stared at me. Then he looked over his shoulder, like maybe I said that to someone who was sitting behind him. There was just a wall behind him … with some photos of little, blonde, angelic children.

“We were in the boat when you hit it.”

“Holy shit,” he said. “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit.”

That’s all he kept saying. When I suggested that we call the cops and get some divers out here to look for the body before the fish ate too much of it, he just kept muttering, “Holy shit. Holy shit. I should have listened to Harpie,” he said. He was nearly catatonic. “The speedboat was a bad idea.”

He went to the window and looked out at Tull lake. The mist was just clearing off the water. Little pieces of the rowboat floated on the surface.

“There’s your boat,” he said, punching the sliding glass door lightly. Thud. “Your friend … was with you?”

“She swam one way. I swam the other. You were doing laps at top speed, almost killed me. I went way under.”

“Oh.” He started to squint. “Your friend … is she a hot blonde in a thong with all kinds of leaves and stuff stuck in her hair?”

“What?”

I went to the window. K had just stood up about a hundred feet away on the banks of the lake.

I went out onto the deck and yelled.

“Help,” she said weakly.

Ron got a towel to wrap around her. I ran down, hugged her, and started pulling leaves out of her hair.

“My glasses,” she said.

They were gone, thrown into the lake. They sank.

“You’ve been sitting here like this? Didn’t you hear me calling your name?”

“Yeah,” she muttered. She was disorientated, shivering slightly. Her skin was all goose bumps.

“Did you get hit?” I asked, feeling the back of her head for a lump, dried blood, any signs of damage.

“I hit my head on something. I couldn’t see where I was going,” she said.

She really was blind without her glasses. She’d gotten to the shore after the mad swim, narrowly dodging the boat herself, and didn’t know which way to go. There’d been no lights, and even if there had been, the world was a blur to K without her glasses. She’d passed out in a pile of leaves, too proud to yell for help. This annoyed me.

“I was right over there. I could have come and found you if you’d yelled.”

“I was…”

“What?”

“Embarrassed.”

“Oh, Christ.” I hugged her. “Next time, yell for help. Everybody needs help sometimes, K.”

Ron took her into the house. She drank a cup of hot tea. We sat in silence in the kitchen for a long time. Eventually, Ron put on the TV in the other room for some noise. It was cartoons. Then K went and took a long hot shower.

“She seems really weird,” Ron said. “She gonna be okay?”

“I think so.”

When K came out of the shower, Ron gave her a strange emerald dress to wear.

“Everything my wife has is like that,” he explained apologetically. “She loves emeralds.”

We were both just ecstatic for our own reasons that K wasn’t dead at the bottom of the lake.

“Eat some Honey Nut Cheerios or something,” Ron said.

K sat at the table, staring at the table cloth, finally looked up, and said, “Let’s go.”

Speedboat had a soft brain.The longer I was around him, the clearer that became. One eye would drift when he talked to you. A slight dribble of drool was always on the cusp of rolling over his bottom lip.

He insisted on taking us back to the stone cabin after we’d found K.

“Come on. Hop in Blondie, and I’ll zoom you over there, ‘cross the lake.”

K looked horrified at the idea of getting into that speedboat. Maybe she’d never get in a boat again. I didn’t blame her. The boat was named Blondie for two reasons.

“I think Debra Harry in 1977 was the hottest chick ever in the history of Earth,” Ron said, “and my favorite movie is Fistful of Dollars. That’s Clint Eastwood’s name in that: Blondie.”

“You named it after two different people?” K asked.

He nodded like a drunken child — all grins while drumming his fingers across his globe shaped belly.

Seeing K’s fear, he said, “Let’s take my truck.”

He had a brand new, black, 2004 Ford F-350 Super Duty with dually tires and massive chrome pipes.

“Look at this truck,” I said, impressed. “It could easily crush my F-250.”

We climbed inside his monster truck with much effort.

“What do you use this for?” I asked.

“Just driving,” he shrugged.

He was a man of many toys. He was an overgrown child surrounded by playthings that served no real purpose other than entertainment.

After Ron cranked the engine, it rumbled and music exploded out of the speakers at top volume. Ozzy Osbourne. “Crazy Train.”

“THIS IS MY FAVORITE SONG,” he shouted.

K yelled in the back seat for him to shut it off.

He hit the advance button on the CD player, lowering the volume slightly. The next song was also “Crazy Train.”

“My friend Terry made me this CD. It’s all ‘Crazy Train,’ man! My favorite song!”

Just to test it, I hit the advance button. The next track really was “Crazy Train”.