And the Creek Don't Rise

by R. M. Gilmore

  “Here’s a beer.” He pulled a cold beer can out of an old red cooler on the floorboard. “You sure you wanna go out to the lake? It’s hot enough for swimmin’ tonight. That’s for damn sure.”

  He talked fast, nervous. I was thankful he didn’t mention the other thing folks did at the lake after dark. I did my best to tell myself I wasn’t there to do that. Just swim. Just take off some clothes and swim. That’s it. Two old, drunk, mostly naked friends cooling off in a secluded lake under the cover of darkness. I was worried that I wasn’t worried at all.

  I’d never been in love before. I didn’t know what it felt like. I knew I’d never thought of Rusty as anything but a rotten, no-good turd until the night I ended up sitting shotgun in his truck on our way to swim naked in Blue Mountain Lake.

  Kissin’ & Sacrifices

  I didn’t have time to finish my road-beer before Rusty was slowing the truck down just off the muddy bank. Silver ripples of moonlight danced on the lake under a full moon hanging big and bright in the black sky like someone was backstage with a ball on a stick.

  Rusty left his headlights on long enough to find a stick to whack the water and scare away snakes. It sounds ridiculous to swim with snakes, but we all just mostly try to forget they’re out there until we see one. But drunk and all hyped up on hormones? What snakes?

  He kept the radio on, low enough to hardly hear over the sound of the katydids singing their long-awaited summer song.

  Rusty leaned against the grill of his truck and pulled boots off one by one, watching me from the corner of his eye, nearly glowing in the reflection of the moon. I pretended not to watch him tug his T-shirt from his jeans. Feet sunk into sandy soil, prickly grass poking between my toes. I almost didn’t pull my dress off, exposing my underthings, letting Rusty see them. He hadn’t seen my undies since I was seven and Granddaddy built us a mud pit to roll in like the pigs—maybe that’s why I saw Rusty as a short-snout swine. The flash of the two dimples above his butt ripped that hesitation right out from underneath me.

  He cleared his throat once and folded his jeans to lay on the hood and did everything he could to not look at my boobs.

  Heart doing somersaults in my chest, I ran into the water. The chill brought goosepimples up my arms. “Come on, shithead.” I splashed in his general direction.

  Rusty hollered when his nether region hit the water. I kicked water at him. He lost his footing and slipped neck deep into the lake. I cackled like an old drunk witch. Other than the sexual tension, it was a typical summer night on the lake.

  Me and Rusty splashed and laughed and sang along with Willie and drank beer under the big moon for what must’ve been an hour. Sticky heat, surely hotter than hell itself, melted away in the cool water.

  We’d made our way from the bank near the truck to a small cove just up the way. The area was small and only about chest high with rocks large enough to sit on. Perfect for two drunkards who had no business trying to swim in the dark.

  I perched on a rock, my top-half out of the water. Blonde hair, long enough to cover my boobs like a mermaid, did nothing of the sort, and clung together in twisted chunks on my back. Rusty squeezed on the rock beside me. It wasn’t a two-person rock.

  His arm pressed against mine, our legs floating together. I waited for him to pull my hair or shove me off the rock into the lake or pop my bra strap or some other stupid man-boy thing he was notorious for doing.

  “You doing okay?” I was pretty certain he hadn’t ever said those words to me.

  I nodded. “Fine.”

  “We can go back… if you want.” He was giving me an out I should have taken.

  “Do you?”

  He breathed. “No.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  Rusty breathed beside me, quiet and smelling like whiskey. “Lynn.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Would you marry me?”

  I laughed, one great bark. “Rusty Kemp, what in the… what?”

  He huffed. “Shut up, Lynnie. I mean, like, am I someone someone would marry.”

  Hurt peppered his voice and it stung me inside. “Oh.” Yes, actually, he was. Definitely. Would I marry him? “You’re a good man, Rusty. I’ll give you that one.”

  “Hmm.”

  “You know what I mean.” He’d never asked me what I’d thought of him before. Probably because I’d always made it clear I mostly hated him. But I didn’t. Not really. Not inside where it counted. A wise man once said, can’t truly hate someone you didn’t love first. “You’re a hard worker. I think you’d be a good provider.” I grinned at the time he put on Mama’s girdle and strutted around the house like a hooker in a whorehouse. “You’re funny.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  I listened to him breathe for a solid few minutes. I knew Rusty well enough to know when he sat still, just breathing slow and soft, he was thinking. Sometimes he was just thinking about what was for dinner, but that night sitting on that rock with me, he was thinking about his future. It rolled off him, steam from hot skin on a cold night.

  “Rusty?”

  “Yeah?”

  I waited long enough to finish my thought that he turned to look at the side of my head and watched me say, “I wish you weren’t so mean to me.”

  “I was a kid, Lynn,” he said, his voice desperate.

  “You’re a man now, Rusty.”

  “Yeah.” He turned on the rock to face me, taking up too much space on the one-person seat. Clenched cheeks clung to the rough surface for dear life. “I ain’t mean to you like that anymore. I’m just teasing. And you’re mean to me. I tried to say something nice about your hair tonight and you told me to shut up.”

  I looked up at the moon. “What else was I supposed to say?”

  “Thank you. Just say thank you.”

  Our voices had grown louder and echoed back at us. “Well… I don’t know how to be with you any other way,” I said hushed.

  “I ain’t expecting you to.”

  “What are you expecting?” I turned to look him in the eye. His face just inches from mine.

  “Nothing. Sure as hell not this.” He waved his hand through the dark. Moonlight gleamed off his blue eyes.

  I looked away before truth spilled out of my mouth. “Garret told me….”

  He got quiet, still. “Yeah?”

  “Yup.”

  “Is that why you’re out here with me?”

  “Mostly.”

  He sighed. “Fuck.” Water splashed between us when he kicked his foot. “Damn it, Garret,” he mumbled.

  “It’s fine.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Someone had to have the balls to say it.”

  “I have balls,” he shouted, and his echo said it three more times.

  “Not enough to tell me you love me.” I swallowed the word, but it bobbed in the back of my throat, threatening to spill out.

  I turned to look at him. His mouth hung open. No words escaped. Tan skin was muted in the moonlight, but his eyes sparkled. Bright white and ocean blue.

  One breath. Two. “I gotta take a leak.” He waded out of the lake and ran over to a tall tree that stood just in front of a set of head-high bushes. He turned his back to me.

  “Just piss in the lake like the fish do, Rusty.” My voice echoed through the tight inlet. Our echoes made me nervous, like someone was gonna come out of the woods and catch me naked in the lake watching Rusty let loose a six-pack onto a tree.

  I could hear his pee hit the ground and tried not to laugh when he said, “I ain’t pissing in there while you’re in there.”

  “Since when?” Whether the emergency piss break was necessary or not, he’d successfully avoided the subject. I slid off the rock and let cool water cover my chest.

  From the corner of my eye, I watch
ed the top of his butt cheeks peek out from the waistband of his skivvies, two divots overtop. I wondered how I’d feel about him when morning came, when I wasn’t drunk.

  I tried hard not to judge my feelings by the fact that Rusty had, until that day, made me want to kick him in the knee. I also tried to pretend Rusty hadn’t known me since I was in kindergarten. And, if I’m being honest, I tried to pretend I wasn’t admiring the way the moon landed on the muscles of his broad back.

  His loud splashing and hollering snapped me out of my thoughts. He opened the lid of the cooler that bobbed beside us on its tether, and tossed me another beer.

  “I can’t drink anymore more, Rusty,” I said while I popped the top open and chugged it down.

  “Yeah, bet you can’t.” He chuckled and rustled a hand over wet hair, sending drops of water to my pink cheeks. That nervous gesture of his used to drive me insane, to the point I couldn’t even look at him. Under that moon, I couldn’t get enough.

  “Catch, bitch.” I tossed my empty can at him. He caught it and shoved it into the cooler.

  I swayed with the movement of the lake. Rusty was quiet, leaning against a rock, mostly underwater, watching the moon dance on the surface. I laid back, letting the water lift my body flush with the surface. The moon, so damn big in the black sky, called to me as I floated weightless on top of Blue Mountain Lake.

  To Lynnie on her 20th birthday. Rusty’s words played over in my head. If Garret hadn’t said anything, would Rusty have gotten the guts to? Would I have eventually figured it out on my own? If it weren’t for Garret, would I have thought twice about Rusty? Five million questions and the only answer was the simplest. My life was about to turn ass up.

  Rusty’s arms slid under me and he picked me up like a bride over the threshold. I screamed. “You put me down.” I kicked my legs, laughing too hard to break free.

  His arms, strong from manual labor, only held me tighter. “You gotta kiss me first,” he said, so quiet I damn near didn’t even hear him.

  Rusty had always played stupid childish games like that when we were growing up. I never paid him mind. I never actually thought for a minute he meant any of it. He’d pretend to be a gentleman, even charming sometimes, but he’d always follow it up by pulling my hair or puttin’ a frog in my bed. Then, drunk in the middle of the lake in my undies, I finally figured it out. The simplest answer. Strange what happens to a girl’s sensibility when a good lookin’ southern boy falls in love with her.

  “You’ll put me down?” I asked.

  He breathed, watching my face for any sign of bullshit. “You really askin’?” he asked just before I kissed him.

  It wasn’t a long, deep movie-style kiss. Just a small innocent type, but it made butterflies burst to life in my stomach. His mouth was soft and beer-flavored. Underneath the beer and lake water, the whiskey was still there. Water dripped from his hair onto my cheek. It fell across my face like an escaped tear. I had no reason to be crying. I was fairly certain I was in love with Rusty Kemp, and the promise of what could be filled my heart.

  He pulled his head back and smiled so big I thought his cheeks were gonna fall right off. “I can’t believe you did it,” he said, all lit up like a boy at Christmas. “I been waitin’ a long time for that, Lynnie Russell.” That first kiss would be with me until the day I died. “You asked; I’m tellin’. I love you. I do. Ain’t never been a day I didn’t,” he said, breathless.

  I stared at him. I couldn’t believe he’d actually said it out loud. Three words that would change my world.

  I was twenty years old officially. I was drunk and half-naked in a lake under a perfectly round moon, sprawled across the arms of someone I had thought was a jackass, still did. But I’d be damned if I didn’t want to ever stop kissing Rusty Kemp. Maybe mama was right. Maybe I had really just loved him all along.

  His chest pressed against me with each breath. Water droplets reflected a dozen moons across his shoulders. I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck. He pulled me closer, beyond the sweet stench of alcohol, into the deep woodsy scent of him. I knew that smell. My living room smelled like it most days. It was familiar, and safe, and unexpected.

  Rusty’s scruffy cheek pressed against mine. If I’d been sober, it would have been weird. Too awkward to get around. I thanked the whiskey gods for letting my stupid head shut up long enough my heart had a moment to speak.

  “Why’d you make it so hard to love you, shithead?” I slapped his shoulder.

  He shrugged. “Probably because I’m the biggest fool you’ve ever met.” His grin curved crystalline eyes into half-moons.

  I should’ve been highly uncomfortable cradled in Rusty’s arms, watching moonlight glimmer in his eyes. I should’ve been closing down Maldoon’s with Garret and Hattie, puking out the window of her daddy’s truck down highway 10. I should’ve been a lot of things. Had it been fate? Was it that big ol’ moon? The whiskey and beer and piney sweat?

  I took a deep breath. “Is this even gonna work? Like… us?” Chewing on my cheek, I almost bit a hole right through it. What if it didn’t and our lives were never the same? What if it did and they were better than I’d ever imagined?

  He watched my mouth for a solid few seconds before answering. “Divine Providence and the creek don’t rise.” His voice rumbled deep in his chest.

  I pinched my lips together to keep my smile from getting out of control. Knowing it was bad luck—Granddaddy Higgins had carved that saying into the hawthorn tree out in front of their house the year they built it. We’d spent every summer out there taking naps under it, snickering at Nana’s stories about wood spirits. It was the cleverest thing Rusty Kemp had ever said in his whole life.

  All the things I wanted to say were stuck on the tip of my tongue. Once said could never be unheard. I swallowed, licked my lips. He watched, a sly grin tugged the corner of his mouth. The sweet stink of whiskey filled the narrow space between us.

  Brows pulled tight at the center, he lifted his head. His eyes shifted, focused on a thick, dark section of woods. “What the hell is that?” He stared into the shadows on the other side of a ring of tall bushes just off the bank.

  We’d floated far enough that I couldn’t see the truck anymore, just dark dense woods.

  “What?”

  “Are those…” he leaned closer to the sound “…ladies talkin’ over there?” His voice was low, but his slur was undeniable. He always sounded more redneck the drunker he got.

  I cranked my neck to look and wiggled until he got the hint and carefully put me down, holding my waist until my feet touched solid ground. His focus was on the woods, but his hand never left my back. We stood still and quiet for long enough to hear more than just our breath and the sound of water slapping wet skin.

  It wasn’t exactly abnormal for that time of year. Blue Mountain Lake was a popular party spot. But to hear a bunch of women out there in the wee hours of the morning, all talking at once, was too much to resist for two drunks desperately trying not to sleep together.

  After a few more minutes of looking and listening, curiosity won out. We hauled our drunk asses out of the cold water and sloshed through the dirt. Prickly grass stuck to wet feet. The voices grew louder the closer I got, but they were still garbled turkeys from where we stood.

  “I think they’re singin’ a song.”

  “Probably soused and lettin’ loose,” I whispered.

  “Nah, that ain’t no drunkard’s tune I ever heard before.”

  “That’s not surprising, Rusty. You haven’t heard of a lot of things.” He ignored my jab and moved closer.

  My mouth gaped. “Damn it, Rusty,” I grumbled and followed him. “I’m kind of in my skivvies here,” I hissed.

  We crouched behind a row of bushes on the far side of the cove. Yellow flames tickled the trees surrounding a clearing a dozen yards away. Four elongated shadows danced across the
trunks. Rusty poked his head up above mine for a better look and ducked down quickly.

  Eyes wide, he whispered, “They’re wearing some kinda black gowns.”

  “Gowns?”

  I didn’t trust Rusty as far as I could throw him, and peeked over the top of the bushes to see for myself. They weren’t gowns. Not any kind of gown I’d ever seen, anyhow. Black, yes, but these had hoods and long pointed sleeves. They weren’t gowns, they were robes. Not what someone would be wearing out there in that sticky summer heat. Or any time in a place like Havana. Maybe Halloween.

  “They’re like robes, or cloaks, or somethin’,” I whispered as quiet as I could without looking away.

  Crouched behind a spiny bush, water-blurred eyes a butt hair above the top, I hid. If they’d have looked, they probably would’ve seen me no matter how stealthy I thought I was at the time.

  One of the robed women pulled a hefty chicken from a makeshift coop sitting by the fire. A taller woman slid a shiny blade from its sheath. The chicken squawked once, but it was over before it started. The red-haired woman ran her knife around the chicken’s neck, nearly chopping the damn thing clean off. My eyes went wide. I slammed a hand over my mouth to stop myself from squealing like a girl.

  Something cold and wet touched my back. I jumped almost out of my panties.

  “What’re they up to?” Rusty whispered, so quiet I almost didn’t hear him, his hand pressed against my back.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know,” I said hushed. “Killin’ a chicken.”

  “A chicken?”

  Rusty and I peeked cautiously over the top of the hedge. The chicken’s head was gone, blood poured from the stump, hanging by its feet. The chicken woman held a bowl—or some odd thing—in her other hand catching every drop. The other women kept on with their singing. At first, I thought maybe they were speaking English, just really fast. Closer, I could tell it wasn’t any language I had ever heard before.