By Kit Cross
I’m putting the finishing touches on Sam’s coffin. A couple more berry box nails and a coat of stain and it’ll be done. Sam is-or rather was—my best friend. He was 19 when he died—a pretty good life for a dog I think. So, there‘s just me now. I’ve closed the cabins up, the summer people have gone and there’s a bite in the air these days. It puts me in mind of the summer we lost Max, round about this time.
I remember that day like it was yesterday. The smell of barbecued ribs wafted in the door. Kingfishers screeched from over near the swamp, and the long golden fingers of the sun fell across an empty beach, dipping lower and lower into the lake. We were losing the summer and we knew it.
Some of us hunkered down in busted old cafeteria chairs at the far end of the pavilion next to an odd looking pinball machine that would flash violently trying to breathe, only to die again. The balls in the machine were long gone but the carcass made a pretty good blind for a kid who didn’t want to be found by occasional roving packs of inebriated parents in search of missing teenagers.
Summer people. The words slid off your tongue like an orange Popsicle. Summer people showed up on the May 24th weekend and disappeared at the first sign of frost in the fall. Joe’s folks owned a trailer on the spit of land that bordered one side of the cove. We were best friends all summer but come Labour Day, watching them tack bits of lumber and old pallets across the trailer windows to protect against the coming snow and wrapping the water pipes in rags and hay, you’d remember you were being left behind for a long cold winter.
I kind of had the hots for Joe. Either that or indigestion—it was all very confusing. He had beautiful hair, clear down to the middle of his shoulders. My dad had made my two brothers cut theirs and I thought they looked geeky. But Joe was beautiful. When I was 10, Joe was my fishing buddy and my best friend. Now he was 15 and I was 14 and everything was-- confusing. Sitting across the table from him, slouched in a chair with my ball cap pulled down low and smoking a cigarette, I was praying for a quick sunset so he wouldn’t see me staring.
The door on the other side of the dance floor banged open and that little twerp Angela tumbled in with some of her jellybean friends. We were listening to the third repeat of ‘Rockin’ Robin’ before we realized they must have dumped a whole pocketful of quarters in the jukebox. The room filled with gales of little girl laughter, as they bolted out the door. Almost ran smack into Andy, as he rushed in.
“Anyone here know Max Coglin?”
“Yeah, I know him.”
I knew him all right. Max was this kid I used to race against at track meets. His brother Mike would shout encouraging things like “C'mon Max! You’re getting beat by a girl!” I never really thought much about Max at the time, but one day after a race, I caught him off to one side, eyeing me with complete hatred.
“Seen him?”
“Not tonight.”
“We were diving off the raft and Max went down.” There was a pause and he shifted his weight uncomfortably. “I figure he swam under and came up on Pearson’s dock just to freak us out.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Dead silence fell across the table and the smoke froze in the air. Joe looked at me and everyone at the table was out the door before I remembered I left a cigarette burning in the ashtray.
Joe and I sprinted over to Pearson’s. Max wasn't there but old man Pearson’s 14 foot fishing boat was tied up on his dock. People didn’t lock their stuff up here. I pulled the bowline free and Joe choked the engine. Once--twice on the pull cord...we could see the old man looking up from his front porch and hear him shouting.
“Hey, you kids!”
Three! The engine sputtered to life and we pulled away from the dock, into darkness towards the raft. Old man Pearson stood on the bank waving his arms.
Word passed quickly round the cove. People spilled onto cottage lawns, peering into the night whispering together and calling over to each other. You could hear their voices bounce clear across the water right to the other side of the bay, my brother said later.
By the time Joe and I got to the raft and lashed the boat to a cleat, a couple of the other guys had swum out from shore. They surfaced, looking worried and tired. We dove. I remember thinking as I went under the first time,
“If this is a joke, Max, and we get back in, and you’re sitting in the pavilion laughing at us, I’ll kill you.”
We came up empty twice. On the third time I held my nose and jumped straight down. If he had hit his head on the ladder, he’d have gone straight down, kind of like a sack of potatoes…..and he’d have been under 20 minutes by now. I can still feel the water closing over my face on the third time down. People say time slows down underwater, but when my foot tangled in a piece of cloth in the weed bed, time stopped dead. I spun downward and came face to face with Max's wide-open lifeless eyes.
I must have broken a record getting to the top. Joe hauled me onto the dock, coughing and spluttering. I dimly remember a police diver falling backwards over the side of the raft where I came out. When they pulled up Max's body, he was well dead. Water bled down the folds of his blue lips, and out of the pale corners of his eyes. Death tears. Someone threw Joe and me a blanket and for the first time I realized I was shivering.
“Colder than a witch’s tit,” Joe said.
Huddled on the raft next to him, with Max’s dead body in my head, I could feel my legs turning into jelly. I think I must have passed out.
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I’m pretty certain I have some turpentine around here somewhere to clean my brush. Funny how silly old memories stick with you—that must have been 40-50 years ago. I haven’t thought about Max for ages. Or Joe for that matter. Wonder if Max would have liked Sam?
Looks like there might be a frost overnight. I think I need to get some rags and some hay around the cabin pipes before the sun goes down…...