Lost on the Water

by D. G. Driver

  “Are you sure no one has ever told you this?” Lamont asked one more time.

  “No!” I said, getting angry that everyone kept asking me that. “This is all news to me.”

  “Dude,” Brian said, “relax. We can’t help it your family is keeping secrets from you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I demanded to know.

  Lamont put a hand on my shoulder and looked me square in the eyes. “The boy that drowned that summer. His name was Robert Garrison. He was your mom’s older brother. If he’d lived, he would’ve been your uncle.”

  I caught my breath, and I’m pretty sure my heart stopped for a second. When everything you know suddenly changes, it seems like the earth shifts under your feet. I felt dizzy and drugged. The guys seemed really far away all of a sudden, even though they were close enough to touch. I heard my voice, but it sounded like it was coming from someone else.

  “I don’t have an uncle,” I think I said.

  “No, you don’t,” Chris said. His voice was still agitated, but it was a little softer than it had been. “He’s been dead for thirty-five years.”

  “My mom never mentioned… No one said anything… This can’t be true.”

  Someone handed me a soda and I took a long swig. I opened my eyes and felt a little surer of myself.

  “You’re all joking, right?”

  They all shook their heads. Lamont rested his arms on his knees and told me the story.

  “Everyone knows the details, because this is a small town. Your mom had a brother who was almost ten years older than her. He was fourteen that year, and it was his first chance to get to go on the campout. When he died, your grandma kind of lost her mind. After the funeral, she got in a car with your mom and took off for California and never came back.

  “Dr. Garrison, your grandpa, kept living here. He had his pharmacy, and his family had lived here since Civil War times. For whatever reason, they never divorced. I guess it wasn’t something they believed in. From what my mom tells me, he never even cheated on your grandma. And he sure could have.” Lamont took a swig of his soda then went on.

  “After a few years your grandpa started going to California once in a while to visit your grandma and your mom. Then, when your mom met your dad, your grandma suddenly came back to Smithville. After all those years, she moved back in with your grandpa, and they acted like a sweet, loving old couple that had never had a problem in their lives.”

  Jasper nodded. “That’s all true, man. Everybody liked them.”

  Some of what they were telling me matched what I knew but obviously not all of it. “You know,” I said, “my dad literally just told me about Grandma living in California two days ago. I never knew any of that before.”

  “Well, this is why,” Lamont said.

  “Why wouldn’t my mom have ever said she had a brother?”

  The guys all looked blank on that. Only Lamont ventured the guess, “Maybe she doesn’t remember him? Maybe your grandma never talked about him. It wouldn’t surprise me from what I heard about her.”

  I thought about that. Lamont was probably right. There were no family pictures at Grandma’s house that had a boy in them. All of them featured Mom as if she were an only child. My mom would have been really young when this happened, so she might not remember him. How bizarre to have a brother for four years and then forget about him.

  Brian, who had been wiggling his legs as though itching to jump up, finally blurted out, “But none of this is the interesting part.”

  “It’s pretty interesting to me,” I said.

  “Okay,” Brian said, “but you need to know about the boat.”

  “What about it?” My mind was whirling, and I wasn’t sure I wanted any more information. “Oh, that’s right, it’s haunted.”

  “It is!” Brian insisted. The others agreed. “See, your grandpa went a little bonkers too. When the boat was found by Mr. Taylor, you know, the guy that runs—”

  “The tackle shop.” I nodded as I now understood the vibe I got from him when I was asking about kayaks.

  “That’s right. He found the boat and called your grandpa, wanting to know if he should get rid of it. Your grandpa said he wanted to keep it.”

  “I would have chopped it up and burned it,” Chris said.

  Brian went on, “So, he keeps the boat, right? And every year, on the day of the campout, he puts the boat in the water. Empty.”

  All the boys said together the lines from a well-known local ghost tale, “And every year it floats to our island and washes up on the same beach.”

  I stood up. “Aw, come on! This is a story you’re all making up.”

  The guys stood up too. Lamont dashed to my side. “It’s not made up, Danny. It really isn’t. Ask anyone, they’ll tell you the same thing.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “So, you think the ghost of my uncle led me to this island tonight?”

  “Yeah!” they all said.

  “I don’t believe you,” I told them.

  “We’ll prove it,” Chris said. Then he started marching toward the forest. “Anyone with me?”

  Everyone in the group followed.

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “To get your boat,” Chris said.

  Jasper shouted, “Wait!” He ran back to his tent and grabbed a couple flashlights. He kept one and handed the other to Lamont. Then the five of us pushed into the woods.

  The two lights illuminated a well-worn dirt path between the trees. It was a much easier trek getting back to the boat than it had been coming from the other direction. Now that I knew that we were on an island, I didn’t worry as much about the wild animals, figuring there wouldn’t be as many, if any at all, on an island. I tried not to think about snakes and spiders, remembering that someone once told me there were no snakes in Hawaii. Those were islands, right?

  The other boys hiked confidently, with no worries at all, and I had to act just like them. These guys had traversed this path often, probably to find the stupid boat, if that story were true.

  As we walked, they continued to prattle on and on about ghost stories. Not the one about my boat, but a whole bunch of other ones. Tennessee is an old state, so there’s lots of history and tales about dead people. I heard about the ghosts of the Cherokee Indians walking the Trail of Tears down in Chattanooga. Some cave down there with a waterfall inside it was known for having ghosts. They talked about the ghosts of different Civil War heroes and how blood from Rebel soldiers was still on the hardwood floors at a place called the Carnton Plantation in Franklin.

  Lamont reminded them of how many slave cabins and cemeteries were drowned when they dammed Old Hickory Lake, and that the spirits of those slaves struggled free of the mud and haunted Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage, which I learned was the name of the dead president’s house. Lamont added spookily that there were probably more cabins underwater in this lake too. The guys shared some collective oohs and pretended to shiver.

  Jasper said that he and his brother spent the night at a hotel up in Red Boiling Springs and did an honest-to-goodness ghost hunt, just like they do on TV. They stayed up all night and listened to the spirits of children talking through EVPs and watched for shadows in the corners.

  “It was freezing, and you know how they always say places that are haunted are super cold. I couldn’t sleep at all.”

  “Yeah,” Brian teased, “but that’s because they said some lady haunts the room we were in and watches people while they sleep.”

  “That’s creepy,” Jasper said, defending himself.

  “Depends,” Chris said. “Is she a hot ghost?”

  I had to ask. “How do they know the hotel is haunted?”

  “Lots and lots of deaths there,” Jasper said.

  “They don’t call it Red Boiling Springs for nothing,” Brian added.

  Lamont tapped me on the shoulder gently and said, “There used to be these hot mineral springs up there. People came from all over the country to soak in them,
thinking the hot water would heal them of illnesses. The hotel was built on top of them.”

  “And they’re red because of all the blood that spilled into them over the years,” Brian said as dramatically as possible.

  “Ooooooh,” Chris added, his hands flying in front of him like he was a blind ghost. I wished he would walk into a tree.

  They laughed and told some more stories. Ghosts everywhere. Oh, and a witch. There’s a famous witch story, too, from Adams, Tennessee. I didn’t know where that was in proximity to Center Hill Lake, but it was close enough to get them all excited about it. I’d never heard the story of the Bell Witch before, but I made a point to look it up later. They told me there were a couple movies based on the story. That sounded kind of cool, I guess. Like how the movie Amityville Horror was based on a real house.

  I tried to stay calm while they told story after story, each one more outrageous than the one before. Some sounded plausible if I actually believed in ghosts. Most of them sounded contrived, like people had been adding details to them over the years to make them sound crazier than they actually were. I didn’t talk at all, having nothing to add. Where I’m from there aren’t any ghost stories. Orange County, California, is not known for its haunted houses, except for the ride at Disneyland. It’s just not old enough or even close to being spooky enough. We didn’t go hiking through the woods at night to find haunted rowboats. If we wanted to get scared, we stayed at someone’s house and rented horror movies to watch on TV.

  Ultimately, I knew these Smithville boys were pulling my leg. I was sure of it. At some point they were going to do the big punch line, and oh, wouldn’t it be funny! Look at the gullible new guy! This was some rite of passage, maybe, to play a prank on the newbie. If I hadn’t been here, they’d have done the trick on Alex. Okay, not the same trick, because Alex knew this ghost story. But maybe they’d make him go look for the ghost or something stupid like that.

  What bothered me was how far they went with the story. A ghost story about a guy that sank on the way to the campout was fine. But did they have to include my family in it? Did they have to make up those lies? I thought that was pretty crappy of them. I wouldn’t play that kind of trick on someone, especially someone I didn’t know very well. I get why they did it. If they wanted to convince me that my rowboat was haunted, they had to make up a story to connect to it. I just thought they could have made up a story that didn’t include my grandparents losing their son and then losing their minds. Coming up with a story like that was rude.

  My muscles screamed at me, and my skin prickled with cold. All I wanted was to go back to the camp, curl up by that fire, and sleep. The exhaustion wore away my spirit to play along.

  “You know, I still don’t believe any of this,” I said through my heavy breathing. “I know you guys are just making this up ’cause I’m from out of town. I have this stupid, old boat, and you all made up this story to get me somehow.”

  “You think we’re lying?” Chris said. “Okay. Tell us, where did you find that piece of crap boat?”

  “My grandma’s backyard. It was behind her garage.”

  “Why would your grandma have a rowboat in her backyard, huh?” Chris challenged. “Seems kind of a weird thing for an old lady to have.”

  “It was probably my grandpa’s, for fishing or something,” I said weakly. I knew that couldn’t be true. Chris reminded me why.

  “That boat is way too small for your grandpa, and you know it. That boat was made for a kid.” He stopped, grabbed a flashlight from Jasper, and shined it right in my face. “I bet the boat was easy to find, easy to get to, right?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “And you didn’t have to do any repairs on it to get it to float, right?”

  “Not much.”

  “So, tell me, genius, why would an old lady have a kid’s rowboat in her backyard in relatively decent repair?”

  I turned my head away from the light and mumbled, “Maybe one of you put it there as a setup.”

  “Yeah,” Chris said. “That totally makes sense. We knew you were coming from California and would run into us at the pizza place and would want to go on our trip with us. We knew you wouldn’t be able to rent a kayak, so we planted a rowboat in your grandma’s yard for you to find by accident. Sounds just like something we would do.”

  He slammed the flashlight at Jasper’s chest and went on ahead, knowing the path so well he didn’t need the light to guide him. Jasper and Brian followed him. Lamont stayed back with me and put an arm around my shoulder. It felt really good, and I stifled a sigh.

  “I know it’s a lot to hear,” he said, “but we’re not lying to you. I’m sorry your family didn’t tell you before.”

  I shrugged his arm off, not appreciating that he was pushing this prank even further. “Whatever,” I said, and walked on ahead.

  We didn’t speak again until we emerged from the trees and saw the boat. Brian and Jasper dashed right over to it while Chris and Lamont hung back.

  “Creepy,” Brian said. “It’s even in the same place.”

  “It didn’t drift here on its own,” I reminded them. “I was rowing it, and I pulled it to shore.”

  “But you pulled it to the exact same place it always shows up,” Jasper said. “Weird.”

  “If you say so.” I reached into the boat and grabbed the pillowcase with my sweats in it. Quickly I put on the sweats over my clothes and felt instantly better as warmth took over. My skin itched from the sunburn, but at least it wasn’t chilled anymore.

  “Here’s my idea,” Chris said. “Let’s carry the boat to the other side of the island, let it go, and see if it comes back here by morning. That’ll prove the story’s true.”

  “Cool!” Brian said.

  “It’s kind of heavy,” Jasper whined. “I don’t really want to carry it.”

  Lamont turned to me. “What do you think, Danny?”

  “I’d rather not,” I said.

  “Aw, come on!” all but Jasper implored.

  “No!” I shouted. “I don’t care about your stupid ghost story!”

  “Then what did we walk all the way here for?” Chris asked.

  I tugged at the hem of my sweatshirt. “To get these and the boat.”

  Jasper asked, “What do you need the boat for? You going somewhere?”

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “Someone still needs to go find Alex.”

  Again with the stares from them. A third head had burst from my neck, I guess.

  “Why?” Brian asked.

  “We already told you he was fine,” Chris said.

  “You don’t know that,” I said back. “He might be lost. He wasn’t on a boat that mysteriously finds its way to the same place every time it’s in the water.” I took a long breath and said, “I don’t know Alex very well, but I don’t believe for a second that he would just give up on this trip. Even if for some reason he’d gone back to shore, I think he would’ve gotten his dad or someone to help him get back here.”

  I couldn’t see their faces very well, but I registered a little bit of shame that they didn’t think of that themselves.

  “I only looked at his map for a minute earlier, but doesn’t the lake narrow after this island? It’s not as wide, right?”

  Lamont nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “So, maybe he passed the island by mistake and is up ahead. He may have seen one of those peninsulas that jut out into the lake and landed on it, thinking it was the island. Or maybe he’s on a different island. There’s more than one, right?” The guys nodded. “I want to go look for him.”

  “In that boat?” Lamont asked.

  “It’s small,” I confessed, “but I can fit another small person in it if something is wrong with Alex’s kayak.” Then I smiled sheepishly at them. “Besides, I don’t have to worry about getting lost, because my boat will find its way back here, right?”

  Was that some hesitation, some doubt, before they all agreed with me? I think it was.

 
; Leaving my shoes on, I stepped into the cold lake water and began to push my boat off the bank, daring them to stop me. But they all just stood there, frozen.

  Lamont said, “I don’t think this is a good idea. You don’t have any idea where you’re going.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “But I figure there are boats around the island with parents on them. I’ll run into one of them and get some extra help. Maybe you guys could go out on your kayaks and talk to some parents too.” I looked at Chris. “If Alex has wimped out, like you said, they’ll know, and you can go back to camp with no worries.”

  I stepped into the boat and settled on the seat. Jasper came forward and handed me a flashlight. I nodded my thanks at him. Carefully, I stuck the end in the elastic band that kept my sleeping bag rolled tight and tilted the bag so the flashlight could be a headlight for my boat. Digging into the ground with one oar, I pushed away from the bank and then turned away from the guys.

  “Be careful!” Lamont called out. “If we don’t see you in three hours, we’ll send up the flares.”

  “Okay,” I said over my shoulder. “I’ll look for them.”

  Chris shouted, “You’re still an idiot!”

  “I know,” I shouted back.

  Without another word, I left my astonished new friends and rowed into the pitch-black darkness of the lake. For a second, I marveled that none of these strapping young men offered to take the boat out instead of me. Where was the chivalry the South was so famous for? Then I remembered. Duh. They still thought I was a guy. Why would it even occur to them that I shouldn’t do this mission myself? I might be the new kid and not know my way around, but I was a boy to them, and a boy could handle it.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I could handle this.