Larkspur Cove

by Lisa Wingate

  A wave of willpower rose up in me, fanned by rumbles of thunder bouncing off the hills and bluffs of Chinquapin Peaks. If I had to pick the car up by hand and loosen those bolt-looking things with my teeth, I was changing the tire and getting out of there. By the time I managed to accomplish it, assuming I could, the workday would be pretty well shot, but at least I’d still be alive to tell about it. If I was lucky, I could call into the office before closing and explain what had happened or, best-case scenario, make it to my final client appointment before going home. I pictured myself – after delivering some stern parental admonitions about not taking the cell phone cord out of my car anymore – telling Dustin the story of my wild and harrowing afternoon, and I felt an odd prick of anticipation. Since our move to Moses Lake, all Dustin wanted was to be left alone, and all I wanted was to rebuild the bonds that had been twisted and crushed during a painful family disintegration.

  Flooded with newfound resolve, I threw a packet of wrenches, a long, S-shaped piece of metal I couldn’t identify, and what looked like a jack onto the gravel, then called up a valuable piece of information from some long-past e-mail forward for women – if you’re ever stranded with a flat tire, remember that the owner’s manual in the glove box has instructions for using your jack. That tidbit had been somewhere in the middle of a list of Twenty-five Things That Might Save Your Life. I couldn’t remember any of the remaining twenty-five, but I did find my owner’s manual in the glove box, and it did have instructions for using the jack, including the long S-shaped piece of metal, otherwise known as a jack handle. After spending some time reading the instructions, gathering materials, and wrestling the spare tire from the hidden compartment in the trunk, I began the process.

  Unfortunately, someone with much more strength than I possessed had attached the enormous bolts, properly referred to as lug nuts. Try as I might, even after hooking the wrench onto the bolts and standing on the handle while clinging to the trunk lid, I couldn’t loosen anything. Since step one was to Slightly loosen the lug nuts, the next step, Placement of the jack, seemed impossibly out of reach. So far, not one more vehicle had passed the entire time I’d been marooned. Somehow, I had to find another way out of my predicament.

  I was gazing hopelessly up and down the road and trying to come up with a next course of action when the cell phone warbled. Scrambling to the driver’s seat, I grabbed the phone and answered.

  Megan was on the other end, her voice like angel song at the moment. If anyone could handle whatever arrangements were necessary to bring in the cavalry, it was my sweet sister, Megan, the queen-of-all-things-in-the-right-place.

  I couldn’t tell whether Megan heard me answer or not.“… ello? Andrea? … ere are you? Are you anywhere near home?”

  “Megan? I’m here! I’m here! Can you hear me?”

  Megan continued talking on the other end. “… isten, Andrea, hopefully you’re getting this. You need to leave work, okay? Dustin just called. He’s in some kind … trouble. Something about the lake patrol catching them climbing the Scissortail. They’re taking the kids to the store there below the dam. The Waterbird. Dustin says they can’t leave without an adult … pick them up. I’m headed in that direction, but I was all the way in Dallas, delivering some mortgage papers … be a while … fore I can get there. I’ll call Mom and Dad, and see if … back from Round Rock yet. Dustin said he … get you on your cell. He …”

  The phone beeped and went dead, and I stood by the car with my heart pounding and a lump swelling in my throat, the pressure growing and growing until I was breathless, the world turning impossibly fast. Bits of Megan’s message swirled through my head like scraps of tissue paper caught in a tornado.

  Dustin’s in trouble …

  They’re at the store …

  They can’t leave without an adult …

  I’ll call Mom and Dad …

  Mom and Dad …

  Mom …

  Dad …

  Anxiety tightened my chest, gripping like a fist. Run, just run, a voice whispered in my ear. Leave the car here and run.

  It was crazy. I was miles from the nearest house, and even farther from a main road. I could be walking for hours, and in the meantime, my son, my fourteen-year-old child, was in the hands of some stranger, in a place that, even though it was familiar to me from childhood days on the lake, was largely foreign to Dustin. Everything in Moses Lake was foreign to him. The lake house had been rented out for years. We hadn’t vacationed at the lake since he was young.

  Dustin didn’t know anything about the lake patrol, or the rules of the water, or the fact that there was no telling what sort of people you could run into on the lake. Dustin only knew the life in our comfortable Houston neighborhood, his private school and our church just around the corner. All of that was a world away now. Houston, that neighborhood, the church, that life, the family we used to be, might as well have been the other side of the moon.

  He wasn’t prepared for this life any more than I was.

  Mom and Dad. Megan called Mom and Dad… .

  I felt sick. No matter how this played out, my parents would show up at the lake house, and Dustin’s mishap, whatever it was, would become the springboard into a Pandora’s box of all things left unsaid in the wake of the divorce. My parents didn’t want Dustin and me living in their lake house any more than we wanted to be there. We were an embarrassment, an inconvenience, a burden, a mixed-up mess they couldn’t sort out by putting the proper notations in their appointment books.

  Whatever had happened today – nothing involving lake patrol and being detained at the local convenience store could be all that serious – my parents would make certain we talked it to death until we’d dipped our feet into all the ugly undertows. They’d mark this as a harbinger of things to come, proof that, in addition to letting my own life go down the tubes, I’d dragged my son along with me. Dustin was a hapless victim of a father with morals no deeper than topsoil and a mother who wasn’t strong enough to keep a home together. What hope was there for him now?

  I pictured him sitting in the little store by the bridge, apparently under supervision of the lake patrol, and another thought crossed my mind, sobering the whirl of family conflict.

  What was Dustin doing out on the lake, and who was he with? With the lake house rented out for so many years, we no longer had friends in the neighborhood, and Dustin had a pile of summer reading and a workbook to do for the advanced-placement English class he’d be starting in school this fall. Moving to town less than six weeks before the beginning of the school year, he was behind the eight ball. He was supposed to be home reading, not running around with … I didn’t even know who he was with … out on the lake.

  Emotion swelled in my throat again – thick, painful – making the July afternoon even hotter and muggier than it already was. What if this was a harbinger of things to come? Only the beginning of a complete teenage meltdown? I couldn’t be home policing Dustin, and at the same time out working to support the two of us, so that we could eventually afford a house. Our own house. Again.

  What good was a job, or a house, or anything else if Dustin didn’t come through this change in our lives intact?

  The inside of my nose prickled and my eyes blurred as I hurried to the back of the car to search for something I could use to try to hammer the nuts loose. My head was far enough into the trunk that I didn’t hear the rattle of an approaching vehicle until brakes squealed out a loud complaint. I jerked upright, my heart bounding into my throat as an advancing cloud of dust rose over the hill. Leaning down, I grabbed the lug wrench, thinking of my brief encounter with the creepy man in the gray Ford. The hood of a truck nosed into view, and I squinted to see who was inside. My hopes inched upward as I glimpsed a work vehicle with toolboxes built into the bed. A moment later, the big tow bar on the back end swung into view. A wrecker! I ran into the road and began waving wildly.

  Thank you. The words in my mind, the feeling that a prayer had just been answered was
a knee-jerk reflex, an old habit formed by repeat motion and muscle memory. Those words weren’t aimed at anyone anymore. By luck, good fortune, a simple twist of cell phone signals, I’d been saved from what could have been a bad situation.

  Letting out a gigantic sigh of relief, I slipped the tire iron behind my back as the Rowdy Ray’s Tow and Tire Service vehicle squealed to a stop beside my car. “You call for Rowdy Ray?” Rowdy asked, spitting a plug out his window before leaning across to talk to me from the passenger side. “You sure wasn’t easy to find, I’ll tell ya. What’re you doin’ way out here, anyway? You lost or somethin’?”

  Even a fish wouldn’t get into trouble

  if he kept his mouth shut.

  – Anonymous

  (Left by Burt Lacey, docksider

  and retired school principal)

  Chapter 4

  Mart McClendon

  It wasn’t any surprise that the bunch I’d rounded up at the Scissortail and towed back across the lake were teenage boys, mostly. Six boys and one girl who looked like she was sorry she’d gone along for the boat ride. I knew the girl, Cassandra. Her mom cleaned rooms in the lodge at the Eagle’s Nest Resort, and her daddy did handyman work at the cabins and canoe rental just down from Lakeshore Community Church.

  Cassandra’s dad, Larry, was the last parent I called, but he was there quicker than a sneeze through a screen door when he heard his little girl was in trouble. Larry stood there turning fireplug red, listening to the story of how I’d rounded the bend to the Scissortail and found two boneheads in swim trunks climbing the rocks, while the group in the speedboat, including Cassandra, cheered from underneath.

  “Everyone was having a real big time,” I told Larry. “And they would’ve, right up until someone landed in the hospital. When they saw me coming, they beat it out of there in a hurry. They made a run for it across the lake, but they skimmed a little nest of trotlines by the Big Boulders and sucked the rope into the engine. By the time I got over there, the kids were on shore. They tried to tell me the boat wasn’t theirs – that two guys had just pulled up in it, jumped out, and made a run for the woods.”

  Larry’s eyes went wide and shot fire at his daughter. At that point, I almost hated to tell him the rest of it, but I did. “There were a couple twelve-packs of Budweiser involved, and at first they didn’t want to admit that was theirs, either.” You had to laugh sometimes at what people came up with – especially kids. It was the kind of story my brothers and I would’ve tried back in the day. We probably would’ve done the same thing those kids did, and tried to look innocent while grocery sacks full of brewski sank slowly under the water.

  My mama would’ve looked about like Larry did right now, and I probably would’ve been as dumbstruck as poor Cassandra. That face said she wanted to be anywhere but here.

  In a booth by the wall, the ringleader – a tall, stringy kid – shook bleached blond hair out of his eyes and dropped his mouth open like he couldn’t believe I’d told the parents there was alcohol at the scene. The other four boys ducked their heads, and Cassandra darted a wide-eyed look toward her father and me.

  Cassandra’s daddy didn’t want to hear any more of the story. He let his little girl know she was grounded for the rest of her life, and then he followed her out the door, telling me he had to go pick up some canoers before the storm hit. He’d be back to talk to me later.

  I helped myself to a cup of Sheila’s coffee and watched puffy white thunderheads tower up in the east while we waited for the rest of the parents. The ringleader’s dad showed up next. The man actually went down to look at the boat before coming into the store. By the time he made it up to the Waterbird, his kid was ready with some whipped-up tears and a string of excuses. Mostly, the boy wanted to make sure this wouldn’t keep him from getting his driver’s license the month after next. Seemed there was a new Beemer waiting for him. Dad was a lawyer, and right then, he seemed more interested in the legal end of things.

  “Was there any property damage? Any injuries?” He asked, darting a quick glance around the room and checking the other kids lined up in the booths. No doubt he smelled a potential lawsuit.

  “Nothing damaged but the boat,” I told him. “Your son doesn’t have his boater’s education certificate, so he’s not legal to operate the boat on his own. That thing isn’t a kid’s toy, and the Scissortail’s not a playpen. We’ve had seven diving injuries, five wrecked watercraft, and two drowning deaths there this year alone.”

  I looked at the two who’d been climbing the rocks – a kid with some kind of symbol shaved into a buzz haircut, and a dark-headed boy who said he was fourteen but looked about twelve. Tyler and Dustin, in the order they were sitting. Tyler lounged back in his chair and shot me a glare like, What’re you lookin’ at, dude?

  Back in the day, if I’d looked at a grownup like that, my mama would’ve smacked that smirk off my face and used it to pepper my backside. When we got caught misbehaving, we at least knew enough to be scared of the consequences.

  Mostly, the lawyer-dad couldn’t believe his kid had the nerve to muck up his workday. He was more interested in telling the kid how much his time was worth per hour than in figuring out why his kid took the boat for a joyride, or where the two twelve-packs of Bud came from. The man nodded along to everything I said, like he was trying to wheel me forward and get this thing over with. “Well, I don’t understand what those ropes … those – what did you call them … trot lines? – were doing out in the lake, where boats can run over them.”

  “Jug lines and trotlines aren’t illegal on the lake. They have to be tagged by the owner, and there’s a limit on the number of hooks per line and total hooks per person, but the placement of the lines was legal enough. Part of the responsibly of operating a boat is being aware of potential obstacles.”

  I didn’t bother telling him that the lines tangled in his motor weren’t tagged. Later today I’d try to catch up with old Len Barnes and tell him one more time to properly tag his lines. The trouble was that, even when you tried to talk slow, Len only understood about half of what you said.

  “So, nobody hurt?” Any minute now, the lawyer would whip out an affidavit and want me to sign it. “No injuries?”

  “They’re lucky,” I said, and then I let him know that I was willing to cut a deal, of a sort. In general, my policy on juvenile offenders was that I’d rather work with the parents than ticket the kid. Once I wrote a citation for something like Minor In Possession of Alcohol, the whole thing moved into juvenile court.

  “I’ve got Max, here, for unlawfully operating the boat, evading arrest, and minor in possession of alcohol. There’s a Corps of Engineers water safety course starting two weeks from today. You sign him up, and I won’t ticket him.”

  The kid’s mouth dropped open like he couldn’t believe what was happening to him. “Football camp starts next week.” He gave me a look that said, Whatever, dude. My daddy’s here now. You can’t do anything to me.

  I just handed Dad my card and a brochure for the course and said, “Think it over and let me know by five p.m. tomorrow.”

  “We didn’t do anything,” the kid whined. “I know how to drive the stupid boat. I’m less than two flippin’ months away from getting my driver’s license. Big flippin’ deal that I didn’t take the boater course yet.”

  Dad shot him a down-the-nose bewildered look that said he couldn’t figure how this kid he’d bought all the nice toys for could go sour. “Get in the car.”

  While his dad was busy tucking away my card and the brochure, Max flashed a grin at his friends and headed for the door.

  Pop Dorsey slapped a hand on the counter.“Son, you better show your daddy some more respect before you land in a heap of trouble.” Until then, Pop had kept quiet and stayed out of things.

  “Daddy …” Sheila gasped under her breath. She gave me an apologetic look.

  I just shook my head and watched Max go. Kids like him made me glad I didn’t have kids.

  The
rest of the parents showed up one by one, and we repeated the excuse-making and the begging and the smart-aleck looks and the thing about the water safety class. By the time I finally got down to the last kid – Dustin, the scrawny one in the corner – I’d pretty much run dry on diplomacy. Dealing with the public was the worst part of my job. Out in the Big Bend country, you could drive all day and never see another human soul. If it was deer season, we had some hunters, and in the winter a few snowbirds or families on vacation, and some hikers in the mountains, but mostly the job was you, the wildlife, the ranchers, and a lot of wide-open space.

  But there were worse things than having to deal with the public all day – like having to deal with your own demons. It’s pretty much a given that it’s easier to sort out other people’s issues than your own.

  In the far booth, Dustin looked like he didn’t want anyone in his business. Pressed into the corner so tight there wasn’t an inch between him and the wall, he sagged over the table like a potted plant left out in the sun too long. Pop Dorsey wheeled by and asked him if he wanted something to drink, and the kid just shook his head and drooped lower, picking at a crack in the Formica. Considering that he’d been sitting there for nearly two hours, waiting for a responsible adult to show up for him, he was probably thirsty.

  “You sure someone’s coming for you?” I asked. I’d stood over their shoulders while each of the kids called Mom or Dad for a ride. Dustin took two or three tries at it before he got hold of anybody. Then he had to beg the person to come after him. Looked like his mom and dad were too busy for him, too.