Bud Smith - F 250

“Randy Rhodes invented that,” he said, “that finger tap shredding method.”

I looked at K in the rearview mirror. She looked seasick: white as a ghost.

Ron grinned wider after his offering of insight but sensed our unease and turned the CD player down lower. Now, it was just the sound of the engine rumbling. Ron eased us down a little dirt road at the base of his driveway.

“We’ll have to go all the way around the mountain,” Ron said. He was high, and then he was low. I began to sense a deep sadness in him. I put my head against the headrest and tried to close my eyes.

“You own that cabin now?”

“No,” I said, “I’m just here for a couple weeks doing some work.”

“Like what?”

“Stone work. I’m building a crypt.”

“A crypt? Whoa.” He was visibly interested. “I’m fat as hell,” he said as he grabbed his gut. “I gotta do something to get rid of this lard. You need any help?”

“Help? Really? It won’t be much money.”

“For free. I’ll work for free.”

I didn’t say anything. I just let it sit. Sure. If he wanted to come over and mix cement and lug around stones, that was completely up to him.

We went down the mountain. Twisty, winding roads. At the main drag, he made a left. At the fork in the road, he hung right. I recognized where we were then.

He turned onto our dirt road, went back up the mountain, and pulled up to the stone cabin.

“Man, that road is way outta the way,” I noted.

“That’s why I wanted to use the speedboat,” he said.

K got out of the truck and practically ran into the house.

I dove down endlesslyinto the lake looking for K’s glasses. It was hopeless. I dove down all afternoon. It seemed like the thing I had to do.

There I was again, diving for pennies in the neighborhood pool with Seth — whoever gets the most pocket change wins. (Except he was dead now.) There I was again, picking up pebbles off the bottom of the coral reef swimming pool at the crackerjack waterfall mansion, while the girls rescuing rabbits out of the lawn. (The bunnies were at the animal shelter.) There I was, kicking my feet as I descended down into the darkness of Tull lake, looking for something on the bottom — glimmering just for me.

The lake was piss warm, but as I went down, it got immediately cooler. I swam down with eyes wide and unblinking.

K was going back down the mountain soon. She was taking June with her. Things hadn’t worked out between the three of us. June decided she didn’t know what she wanted, who she wanted. She was jealous. She didn’t want me to kiss K. She wanted me to herself. She wanted K to herself. K just sat there dumbly, her head in her girlfriend’s lap, squinting blindly, as she said, “I want Trish to drive me to the nearest bus station.”

“Us,” June said.

So I swam down, again, near the center of the lake. It had to be close to where we were when the rowboat flipped us out. The closest I’d come was a Coca-Cola bottle stuck in the mud.

I went back up and floated again. The blue sky ripped by. I noticed the lack of a water tower, the lack of power lines, the lack of planes zipping by overhead. I floated on my stomach, being very still, as I waited for the water to become clear.

Finally, I could almost see the bottom. It was meditative. Every once in a while, a fish would float by without a care in the world. I thought about how it would feel to be a fish and be scooped up by human hands, beaten on a rock, and then eaten.

I thought I saw something down there in the mud. So I swam down and groped around with my hands.

Her glasses.

I swam to the pier holding them. Feral and Trish had just pulled up in the van. I could see June, standing on the porch as she talked to Feral. I saw him nodding. I watched June point at the van. He was telling her it was no problem. He’d give them a ride to the bus station. That was the end of it.

I ran, dripping wet, across the pier. When I got to the porch, K was coming outside with her bag.

“Hey,” I said.

“What,” K sighed icily.

“I have something for you.”

“Well, I don’t want it.”

“You sure?” I asked, holding up her glasses. She squinted.

June came walking out too.

“You found them?!” June was surprised.

I handed them to K, and she stuck them on her face. I watched the tension and misery leave her body as her vision returned.

“At the bottom of the lake?” June inquired.

“At the bottom of the lake,” I said.

June looked thoroughly impressed.

“Like magic,” she said. And like magic, they decided to stay with me there.

Speedboat worked hard for half an hourlugging boulders for Seth’s tomb. Then he said, “I could really go for some Gatorade.” He tapped Feral on the shoulder. “Come on, let’s go on a Gatorade run.”

The two of them walked to the dock, conspiring. They hopped in Blondie and zoomed across the still face of the pink water, sending a small tidal wave into our meager dock.

I sat down in the pine needles, looking at the base of the wall. It was a ten by ten foundation. Seth’s ashes would sit in there one day. I wanted the work to come out perfect, but I’d never done anything perfect in my life.

June walked out of the house and sat down next to me in the pine needles.

“I think it was real nice what you did for K.”

“I like her. I don’t want her to leave. She’d take you with her.”

June put her hand over mine.

“I’m not going back to Rhode Island,” she said, “I’m transferring to Austin.”

“Texas, huh?”

“Yeah, I don’t really feel so good on the East Coast. Not that it’s bad here…”

“It’s all just temporary anyway,” I said as I threw a rock. It bounced off the crypt and back at us, landing in the pine needles at our feet.

“Where’d your helpers go?”

“They went across the water. Needed something from the house.”

“Coke?” she asked, as if channeling Madame Woo-the Dead.

“Probably.”

“Feral’s been talking about it a lot. How it was a mistake to come up here, ‘cause there was nobody holding.”

“What am I gonna do, right,” I said. “People live their own lives.”

“You think that still, even after your friend died?”

“I can barely live my own life,” I said. “Who am I to tell people what they can’t do?”

“I don’t believe you when you say that.”

“Who knows what anybody really means.”

“You should be in college. You’re smart.”

“I’ve never been inside one … for any reason.”

“Why does it bother you?”

“It doesn’t.”

“Then you should go.”

“I don’t have the money, and I don’t know what it’s even good for.”

“I’m gonna be sixty thousand dollars in debt,” June said.

“Then what?”

“I’ll rob a bank. Do you wanna be my getaway driver?”

“What’s it pay?” I joked.

“I’ll pay your college tuition. That’s the deal. Come with me to Austin. You can be my roommate.”

“We’re not allowed to share a room…”

“Karen’s orders.” June got quiet. “We just broke up. It was for the best. One of us loved too much. One of us loved too little.”

I didn’t say anything.

“She didn’t seem to care,” June said. “That made it worse.”

“Many of the things floating in the ether just seem to make it worse.”

“No matter.”

The speedboat started to come across the lake. Feral was driving and laying on the horn. Ron was swinging his orange t-shirt over his head.