DICEY BROWN MAGAZINE

May 11, 2008

Clinton Lake Blues

by Jared Ward

We all noticed as the sun began sliding towards the horizon.  Trees grew denser, and Clinton Lake, once reflecting the Kansas sky, deepened to a dull brown of stones and shadows.  The heron, blending into the rushes even at midday, was swallowed by the far shoreline.

A rock skipped four times.

Music played through the windows of the car, a box of wine resting on the hood.  We sang along, eyes closed, plastic cups raised to the sky.  Everyone was sweating.

We had driven about twenty miles, a rambling drive that never took us far from town.  The inlet appeared as the road ended, blocked by three wooden posts and a sign forbidding vehicles.  The wheels crunched to a stop on the gravel.

At the water’s edge, we skipped rocks, counting.  Cheap wine greased conversation wheels, familiar subjects surfacing.  A blue heron landed in a flurry of feathers, cleaning itself with sharp jabs of its beak.  Gradually it settled, disappearing in tall grass.

I strained to see its outline as I listened to them.  Gabe and Jimi were arguing over which was the best song on Beggar’s Banquet.  They were always arguing.  Only blood kept them from being brothers.  Sometimes I caught myself laughing at their inside jokes, heard their catch-phrases coming from myself, and I felt like an imposter.  But they would laugh and the feeling would pass.

“Sympathy for the Devil?  Have you even listened to the album?”  Gabe was shaking his head, pushing his thick black glasses up his sweating nose.  “ It’s Jig-Saw Puzzle, hands down.”

Jmi closed his eyes, doubling over like he had he had been punched in the gut.  “No... what?  That’s retarded, I wish Mick were here right now.”

I smiled as I listened to them.  Gabe yelling no, laughing at the same time.  Jimi raining abuse.  No one ever won. 
 
I-90 stretched forever.  Butte lay half-an-hour behind, due west, and the summer sun cooked the Montana plain.  On this stretch, four weeks before the night that mattered, I chewed Red Man and spit into plastic bottles, filling them up, dumping them out.  Jimi chewed sunflower seeds and spit the shells into an empty liter of bottled water, slowly filling it to the top.

Somewhere around Bozeman, she came up.  I watched Jimi, his mouth twitching and blue eyes staring beyond the road.  The words wove around the truth, accidentally bumping it, quickly backing away.

I laughed. “So, she said she likes you?”

“Right.”

 “Asked you to come to California?”

“Right.”

I nodded as if piecing together a puzzle.  “Yeah, those are some pretty mixed signals.”

Jimi dragged on his cigarette, then laughed as he exhaled.  I-90 had no end in sight.

On the four weeks later night he met her as planned.  They embraced, had a few drinks, and slipped away from the crowd.  A moment rehearsed over hundreds of miles and mirrors.

In August, Kansas nights paste shirts to skin, crickets sing, and stars pinhole the sky.  But sometimes nothing matters.  That night nothing shimmered but the light in her hair and eyes.  Words, loosened by drinks and stars, were spoken.

But then, no one could have known.

 “Jimi, I’m sorry…”  The rest blurred.  Suddenly the night felt hot, the crickets loud, and the stars stabbed his eyes.  What followed didn’t matter.  Embarrassed cheeks burned crimson, the well of words dried up as silence settled in.

The next day he found Gabe and me.  We’d been there before.  Different time, same place.  Gotten used to sweeping broken things under the rug.  Nothing got clean, just forgotten, walked on day after day until no one noticed.

Three vicodin and fifteen beers later, we put him to bed.  Gabe took his shoes off, I covered him with a blanket.   

As darkness approached, the box ran dry. 

“Gone?”  I asked.

Gabe was trying to shake the last drops into his cup.

“Damn,” said Jimi.

Gabe gave up and shrugged.  “Let’s hit the bar.”

We all agreed that seemed the only logical choice, and piled into the car, empty wine box and all.  I searched the far bank one last time and finally picked out the heron in shadows.  Gabe drove, and we tore down the dirt road, hit the blacktop and punched the gas until the needle struck one hundred.