Surface Tension

by Brent Runyon

  For Lillie, Walker, and Hope

  13

  My eyes are closed, but I know exactly where we are. We just left Purity Ice Cream, the only place we can get peppermint stick in the summer. Mom didn't want to stop, but Dad wouldn't listen to her. He's addicted to the stuff.

  Mom whispers, “Did we really have to stop for ice cream?” She thinks I'm still asleep.

  Dad says, “Give me a break. I've been looking forward to this for the last three hundred miles.”

  We turn right and head north up Route 89. It's only about a half hour now, but this part always seems like the longest part of the trip. The sounds of other cars and trucks are gone. Now it's just us and the old bumpy roads.

  We swerve past Cass Park and the public pool. The yacht club. The Hangar Theater.

  Now we're going up the hill, and the car has to work harder. Every turn I can picture it, even with my eyes closed. I feel like I can see every single mailbox and driveway and glimpse of the lake through the trees.

  Only another mile until we pass the Glenwood Pines, where they have the best cheeseburgers and also that old bowling arcade game. I almost want to ask if we can stop, but I don't. We're too close.

  The road tilts down and I can feel we're about to pass the Taughannock Falls Restaurant and State Park. The falls overlook is a cool place to go, but we can't stop there either.

  The trees are thinning out and the sunlight is shining onto my eyelids. The car is going faster. Dad's pushing it. He wants to get there as bad as I do. And Mom wants to get there more than anyone. I hear the car blinker, and I can't help it anymore.

  I open my eyes. The first view of the lake from high up on the hill. The smokestacks. The power station, like two fingers pointing to heaven. The way the road curves at the cornfield. The sign for fresh strawberries. The slow turn down toward the lake.

  I say, “Do you know where you packed my bathing suit?”

  “I think it's in the black suitcase, honey. Under the white T-shirts.”

  Dad turns off the book on tape because nobody is even listening to it anymore.

  We're so close. The mailbox that's shaped like the house it's in front of. The place where that famous guy used to live. The old house that nobody lives in and looks like it's haunted. My parents' favorite restaurant. The chimneys on the Wirth mansion. The place where the road dips and I lose my stomach. The house that looks like a tepee. The dairy farm and the old farmhouse. My favorite sign. The mailboxes all in a row right before the bridge and the creek. The right turn onto the dirt road.

  Everything looks exactly the same as when we left. All the cottages are still here. The Bells'. The Vizquels'. The Richardsons' big cottage at the end of the lake, and our little cottage right here on the left. We park under the pine tree in front of the garage.

  Here we are. We're back. It feels like it's been forever and no time at all.

  I jump out of the car, take my shoes off, and sprint down to the lake. I'm not supposed to go on the Richardsons' property, so I run straight ahead to the pine tree and then turn left and run past the woodpile. The grass is cool and slick under my feet. It must have rained today. It feels like running on sponge. I'm careful not to step on any of the old rotten apples or in the hole where the tree used to be. I'm faster than I was last year, I can feel it, but when I get to the stones, I have to slow down. The stones kill my feet, but I keep running all the way into the water. I'm up to my knees. God, it's cold. I yell because it's so cold and step back out onto the dry rocks again. It's so much colder than I thought it would be.

  I wait for the ache in my feet to go away and then run back to the cottage to get my bathing suit. I want to do everything all at once. Swim and skip stones and fish and go to the waterfall and cook marshmallows.

  Mom and Dad are still unpacking the car. Dad says something about me having to help unpack, but I just blow right by and run into the cottage. Where did she say my bathing suit was? Under the black T-shirts in the white suitcase, or under the white T-shirts in the black suitcase? I'm pretty sure it's in the black suitcase, because we don't have a white suitcase.

  I run back down to the beach, to where the good skipping stones are. I've got a system. I look for a stone that I can hook my index finger around. One that's smooth on both sides and thin, but not too thin.

  I find a good one and stand sideways. I bring my arm back and whip it sidearm at the water. I snap my wrist so it's got extra rotation on it, and it flies over the water.

  The stone slaps down, arcs back up into the air, then back to the water. I get four skips, which is okay, but not great. I do another, and it goes crazy and ricochets hard off the Bells' dock. I love that sound, like hitting a baseball with a wooden bat.

  I pick up a perfect stone and whip it with everything I've got, but it just splashes. I can never get the perfect ones to skip.

  I skip another one that bends between the pilings on the Bells' dock.

  The next one skips a few times and then stops in the water like it hit something. I say out loud, “Hit a fish,” but no one is here to think that it's funny.

  I sling another perfect one and it catches the air wrong, turns sideways, and knifes into the lake. Damn, I can't do this anymore. What happened?

  I think I'm trying too hard or something. I look back and see Mom and Dad are standing behind me. Dad has his arms wrapped around Mom's waist. Gross.

  I stop skipping stones and go to work looking for a lucky -stone. A luckystone is just a normal stone with a hole in it that goes all the way through. I don't know why some have holes and other ones don't, but the ones with holes are rare, which is why they're lucky.

  Even more rare than a luckystone is a luckystone ring, which is a luckystone that has a hole big enough to put your finger through it. I've never seen one of those.

  My parents say this is the only place on earth that lucky -stone rings exist, but I don't know if that's really true. I bet I won't find one this summer.

  I've got so much to do. I've only got two weeks up here, and I feel like I'm already wasting it. I've got to perfect my rock skipping and toughen up my feet by running barefoot on the beach. I've got to swim underwater for at least thirty-five feet so I can get my swimming merit badge finally.

  I've got to read a book for summer reading. That's going to suck. I love reading, I just hate reading things that people want me to read. I've got to practice soccer and go to the waterfall. I've got to go fishing every day. Oh, and I've got to practice for the school TV auditions.

  This year, they're going to let a student read the morning announcements on camera for the whole school to watch, and I really want to be the guy who does it. When I grow up, I'm going to be a TV reporter for a big station in New York. Either that or I'm going to race Indy cars. Or I'm also thinking about being a Sherpa and climbing Mount Everest all the time. I don't know if my feet are big enough to be a mountain climber or an Indy car driver, though. I'm only a size 9, and most of my friends are already size 10 or bigger.

  But the TV auditions come first. I'm going to be like, This is Luke reporting from Sheldrake, New York, where everything is better than where you are. If you don't believe me, just check out the Richardsons' big white house.

  That's pretty good. I'm just going to have to keep on working on that. I could interview myself. That would be funny.

  Hi, Luke, thanks for being on the show.

  Thanks for having me.

  So, what do you think about the state of the world and the rest of the stuff that's happening?

  I pretty much think it all sucks pretty hard right about now.

  Great, thanks for being on the show.

  Thanks for having me.

  The sun is setting, and Mom and Dad want to watch the sunset. They ask me if I wan
t to come with them, but I say no. I don't feel like staring at the sunset for an hour while I could be doing other things.

  I lie down on the green plastic couch with the cigarette burn on the cushion and turn on the rifle lamp Mom got at that yard sale last year. The base is made out of a rifle stock, which is hilarious because Mom hates guns. She wouldn't even let me have sticks shaped like guns when I was little, but she loves that rifle lamp.

  The refrigerator rattles off, and it feels extra quiet in here. That refrigerator is so loud, but I only ever notice it when it goes off. It still has those alphabet magnets that used to hold up my drawings when I was little, but all the drawings are gone now. They're in some box probably. I don't think Mom throws anything like that out.

  I've always liked being here, but sometimes it takes a little while to get into the groove. I go over to the bookshelf and look at the books that are there. We always have the same six books here, and I always read all of them. We've got a book about stargazing, one about the Supreme Court, a mystery novel called Produce the Corpse, a Choose Your Own Adventure book, a Jackie Collins book, and a book of fairy tales with pictures from Disney movies.

  I love that book. I remember when Mom used to read me that book before I went to sleep. I always liked the one about the sorcerer's apprentice, and also the one about Jack and the beanstalk. I like the illustrations—the old-time Disney cartoons. They're so much better than the new ones with the weird-shaped eyes and the long noses.

  I take the Disney book and sit in the chair next to the old brown phone that weighs fifteen pounds. I love this phone. It's so old-fashioned and heavy. I feel like I'm lifting weights every time I talk on it, but I don't get to talk on it that much, because it's a party line. I'd never even heard of a party line until we bought this cottage. Everyone in the neighborhood shares one telephone line, which means we share it with the Vizquels, the Bells, and the Richardsons. Sometimes I pick up the phone and someone else is already on there. Mom says if I pick up the phone and someone else is on, I shouldn't listen, but I do anyway. Nobody ever says anything interesting, though.

  I can hear some kids playing outside. I want to go out there and see what they're doing, but I can't because it's the Vizquels. They have two kids, a girl and a boy. The girl is about my age, and the boy is a little younger, but I've never played with them because of what happened with Dad's grill.

  When I was really young, like six or something, Dad bought one of those charcoal grills, and he used to cook out there all the time, and we would eat at our picnic table. It was really fun. I don't remember much about it, but I liked eating the hot dogs. When we left, Dad says, he put the grill in our garage, but when we came back, it was in Mr. Vizquel's yard. I don't know what happened, but Dad was really pissed. Anyway, they had a big argument about it, and that was the last time we ever spoke to them.

  Mom and Dad come back from their sunset watching. I shuck the corn we got from the farm stand, and Mom and Dad boil hot dogs on the stove inside. We sit at the picnic table and look out at the lake.

  The sun is down, but the light stays in the air, like it doesn't want to travel all the way to China tonight. Mom lights a candle inside a jar to help keep the bugs away, and we just sit here together looking out at the lake and watching the sky get so dark that it finally gets black.

  After dinner, we all go down to the lake and look at the stars. You can see every single star in the world here. It's not like at home, where you can see maybe a couple of stars and they're all spread out all over the place.

  Here all the stars are packed into the giant black space. There are thousands and thousands of them. There are stars inside constellations that I never even knew about.

  I look at the stars and think about the people who thought up the constellations. That was like thousands of years ago, and they must not have had anything else to do but sit outside and look up at the night sky and make up stories.

  I try and remember all the stories I know about the constellations. I can't really remember any of them. All I can remember is the names: Cassiopeia, Ursa Major, Draco, Pegasus, Scorpius.

  We all walk back to the cottage together, the three of us, right next to each other, like three ears of corn. This is my favorite place in the world.

  I'm starting to toughen up my feet. I run barefoot across the lawn and over the stones. I try not to slow down at all. I dive into the lake and hold my breath. I want to see how far I can swim underwater. I kick my legs and hold the air in for as long as I can, and when everything feels like it's going to burst, I come up for air. I didn't get very far, just to the second piling on Bells' dock. That's probably only fifteen feet or so. I'm going to have to keep working on that.

  Mom and Dad and I are hiking up the creek to the waterfall. The rocks are as big as bowling balls, but they also seem smaller than last year. Or maybe I'm taller. I can stand on one and then hop to the next. The creek is pretty dry right now, just enough water to keep our feet wet, not gushing like it was that one year. I hope this doesn't mean the waterfall is dry too.

  I wanted to go barefoot, but Mom made me put my shoes on in case there's broken glass in the creek bed. The stones are sharp here too, because they haven't been worn down by the lake yet. The walls of the creek are all shale, which is like a really thin rock you can break in your hand, but it's sharp as a razor when you break it.

  There's just a little stream of water going by, filtering into a little pool. We step closer and I hear a plop like somebody dropping a round stone into the water. I must have scared a frog.

  I see him. I see his little eyes sticking out of the water.

  Dad kneels down on the stones and cups both of his hands and inches them out over the water. His hands are so slow that the frog doesn't move, even though the hands are getting closer and closer to his head.

  Dad brings his hands together quick and cups the water underneath the frog, but the frog is slippery and strong and dives down deep to a safe place in the muck.

  “Damn.”

  We keep walking. A little dog on a backyard chain barks at us until we're out of sight, and the creek walls rise up around us as we walk deeper into the wild. The road noises fade out, and all I can hear is the grasshoppers buzzing in the grass and the breeze in the upper branches.

  This spot is my favorite right here, this little mossy spot where the water comes down the side of the gorge and drips like a leaky faucet. I reach up and pull a piece of shale out of the wall, and a huge clump higher up falls out too.

  The gorge walls grow higher around us and we're in the shade now. The walls are twenty feet high and growing with every step.

  Dad is a few steps in front of me, and he stops short and investigates something on the ground. He's blocking me, but I can tell it's something cool, because Mom is walking away from it with her hand covering her face. I can't see it yet, but I can smell something horrible. Dad has his shirt pulled up over his nose like a bandit.

  I walk up next to him. It's something dead, but I can't tell what it is. It's about as big as a fox, but it could be a cat. There's not any fur that I can see, only a swirling clump of maggots on the flesh where the fur should be.

  The maggots move like they're one creature, but I can see them individually. Eating through the body like it's an ice cream sundae.

  Mom and Dad start walking up the gorge. I'll catch up with them.

  I feel like I might throw up from the maggots and the smell of rotting flesh, but it's also really awesome. I pick up a stick and poke at it, just to see what happens. The maggots don't care; they just keep on eating.

  Mom yells at me to leave it alone, and I drop the stick and start walking after them up the gorge.

  Once we get far enough from the smell, Mom opens up the backpack and gives us each a rectangle of Hershey's chocolate. I put it on my tongue and let it melt.

  There must be a car in the gorge up ahead. I keep seeing pieces of it, rusted metal parts decaying in the middle of the creek bed, like they got washed
downstream. The walls of the gorge must be fifty feet high now, but there's a road up there somewhere. I wonder how the car got down here. Nobody could have driven it. Maybe it got washed down the waterfall.

  I imagine some old gangsters with tommy guns pushing it off the road and watching it slide down the gorge wall. I bet when we find the car, we'll find a dead body in the trunk with bullet holes in it.

  We walk up the creek bed, through the S turns, and I see the car in the weeds off to the right. I walk over to check it out.

  There are no doors or windows, and even the steering wheel is gone. The seats are just wire springs, and the trunk doesn't have bullet holes, it's just rusty. It's just a busted-up old skeleton of a car. It's not that exciting.

  Mom and Dad kept walking while I was stopped looking at the car. I hurry across the stones to catch up with them. I can just start to hear the waterfall now. I think I can hear the sound of water against stones.

  We turn the corner, but we're not there yet. The water is getting louder and I can almost feel it now. I can almost feel the mist and the spray, but I know I'm just imagining it.

  I can't wait to turn that next corner and see the waterfall again. My heart is jumping in my chest and I'm running across the rocks.

  I get to the last turn. I know that as soon as I get past these trees on the left, I'll be able to see it.

  I hop up onto a big boulder and look up at the waterfall. It's not like I remember it. There's not much water this year. In other years, the water would be rampaging down the center of the stones, but now it's just trickling.

  I move across the stones, cross the stream, and get up to where the water is bouncing off one of the bigger rocks. I take off my shoes and socks and wade into the shallow water. There's still enough water to dip my head under the falling water, and it feels like a cold, heavy shower on my head.

  Dad tells me to climb up the side of the waterfall so he can take my picture. I climb up and raise my arms above my head, like a gymnast after a really sweet dismount. Dad takes the picture.