Fantods1
04-02-2014, 04:43 PM
This is the first short story I've shared and probably the first I have been satisfied with.
Sunken Treasure
The last boat pushed off the shore carrying Henry and his father towards Button Island as a loud cracking firework showered overhead. The water held its flitting reflection shortly but was broken by a small crest. Henry’s father showed at the lake house only hours before the celebrations began and smelled of gasoline and cigarettes like a movie theater parking lot after a warm summer rain. He sauntered on Wild Turkey and held dominion over his brood. He was the ascendant magic man announcing his final trick.
On the water the boat lurched lazily and the cool rhythm swelled beneath their shoes. The sky hung heavy and pitch-black but for the fireworks; it seemed to start far away and held mountains and pines unseen, yet understood, in the distance. His father rowed steadily, propelling the pair forwards, drawn by clinking beers and hazy laughter.
“I’ll be around this week,” Henry’s father said, adding an urgency, a definite sense of place, breaking the mutual spell.
“Okay.”
“We can fish same as last summer if you want”
“We could”
They continued to the island and landed on the thin strip of sand between the water’s edge and the boulders guarding the grassy center. A campfire blazed in front of them as Henry helped his father drag the boat to safe ground.
Finishing the task, Henry ran off to the wooded western corner of the island where his friends from neighboring houses on the mainland played. He came upon the first bushes and pulled them from his face, smelling Christmas and dry leaves: he saw Tom and Liam Castor run past and quickly tailed them. Cowboys and Indians was the summer’s game and Henry gladly joined in; he, having entered the first round near its tail end, joined the other players when they reconvened at the Big Tree, reaching towards the fat moon high above, and arranged new teams. How Henry loved to be an Indian: he would fire arrows and creep stealthily about his shared room back home in quiet and gleeful anticipation.
Henry and Liam tore through the night, letting out raucous warcries with small hearts thumping like drums, as came into a new and unknown moonlit clearing. They stopped short and looked round; Liam was ahead of Henry and crouched down, motioning for Henry to follow suit. A faint rustling noise sounded from the pines ahead.
“A deer. Get your bow ready.”
“Yes Chief.”
But they shortly saw it was no prize buck, only little Tom Castor holding a rabbit in his left hand by the scruff of its ears. A tiny grey rabbit.
“Liam,” he whispered from across the meadow, “I got a bunny. Gottim with a rock.”
Then Henry’s arms felt strange and feverish, like they had been hollowed out and filled with hot water, as he cried, “Get him!” The warriors fell upon the bunny-wielding boy mercilessly. They whipped tight fists at his face and sides with a silent and righteous fury. Their parents hooted through the trees, thrilled at their own devices. Henry breathed like a stuck bull though he kept at it without pause. Abruptly they lay off him. The rabbit lay limp beside Tom; the two aggressors sat on their knees and fumed. The night was still new and they ran off again into the swallowing pines
All parties should be masquerades, he thought as his neighbors clamored about in starched reds, blues, and greens, I would only have to unmask long enough to take another sip. And he thought how he wished they would quiet down for a minute or a quick second and just listen, just listen to the lake lapping gracefully on the shore, to their children laughing and hollering from the woods.
He had caught the nine o’clock train that morning back to Brattle Falls and drove the wagon down to the Mason’s Liquor on Main where he took off his tattered sports coat in the piss-stained bathroom, scrawled over in pencil graffiti, and changed into his Cubs sweatshirt. He bought a handle of Wild Turkey, oh how he could swim and swim in it, and continued on his jaunt to the lake where his princess waited for him.
Climbing from his car the grasshoppers’ hum engulfed him and, paired with the sweetness of the needled ground beneath him, it seemed a kindness as the cottage’s door clacked behind his running children. He was shortly informed of the Button Island do and began gathering the necessary supplies.
In the garage he rustled up a milk crate, which he planned to fill with assorted drinks, for kids and adults alike, assuming someone would have a cooler and ice at the party. In the kitchen drawer beneath the landline, he found a carton of off-brand sparklers from the previous year’s Fourth of July, one corner rusty brown from water, which he pocketed.
Ray and his wife Clarissa had got the cottage six years ago and they had plans to pull their brood close, what with Meghan in college, and bring everyone back together summers. At the party he thought their plans were a success thus far. The fire burnt slow and the people did too: they move calmly as the night progressed and the kids began sleeping on madras-shorted laps. Fathers should hold theirs close, he thought. Already in deep, he was still at it with the whisky; his eyes trailed off on their own separate, loping paths and only joined clearly through great effort and concentration. Castor talks real slow, he thought, goddamned Ivy Leaguers all do. Sheila looks right though.
Clarissa saw him leering from across the fire and her mind proceeded to wander away from her conversation with Janet Eichmann as she saw Ray stand up tentatively, letting out terse laughter towards Hal Castor. Why does Ray ignore them all when they try and speak nice with him, she thought quickly. Clarissa loved to listen to everyone; she loved walking and books.
And Ray walked down to the shore, twenty-five steps, and took another into the lake. People hollered around the fire and tapped their glasses saying, “This’ll be a good summer, I’ll bet” as Ray slid into the placid water. Some mornings he fished in the lake with Henry in the dewy first light, or in the streams leading to the body, and he liked to see if they could remain silent and feel the dinghy rock gently until, with a satisfying jolt and umph, they pulled up on a trout or some scum from the murky depths.
The water filled up his shirt, making it stick to his chest heavily; he slid under. Nothing. He was surrounded by an embryonic void till he let out his lungsful of air slowly while rising; as he lifted his head out of the water with and billowing, crescendoing laugh, which splayed and trickled across the surface of the lake, a red and green firework popped above the mainland. Ray found those on Button Island to be quiet and staring at him, frozen as a photograph. Clarissa sat on a stump and supported her head with a fragile hand on her cheek.
“I’ll need new shoes of course.”
In the morning he woke with a start: it was overcast, that he could feel in tired knees, deep in his bones, although the sun pierced through the cirrus uncomfortably bright for brief seconds only to be cut short by the prevailing winds push. In the rickety kitchen, Ray fixed orange juice and wondered where his family had got to; the stove clock read 11:15. They’ve hit the beach without me, he thought while opening the screen door to the porch overlooking the water. He then saw they hadn’t gone to the beach at all; he was left confused as he noticed the immense pressure in his skull, the jerkiness and knotty creaking in his neck.
He made way to the backyard to check if Clarissa’s car was in the driveway and he saw it was not. What’s more he saw three paper-ream boxes on the browning lawn. The sun beat hot.
In the boxes he found his two hatchets, a sweatshirt, some swim trunks and sandals, a collection of books and men’s interest magazines. All that heat and light keeping us alive.
A pair of pants and a shirt sat atop his and Clarissa’s dresser in their bedroom. He pulled his drawer out violently and heaved it onto the unmade bed. Empty. Now he took the signs; they all plinked with recognition in his breaking mind.
He took the whisky and left. He threw the boxes in the lake. He wore only his cigarette-burnt bathrobe: the clothes Clarissa laid out early that morning were the sole memory of his life in the cottage.
He wanted to tint his windows completely or get a baby shade for the whole car. It was oppressive; that great fire was his enemy. Eyes dry as hell and the sun just wouldn’t quit.
Sunken Treasure
The last boat pushed off the shore carrying Henry and his father towards Button Island as a loud cracking firework showered overhead. The water held its flitting reflection shortly but was broken by a small crest. Henry’s father showed at the lake house only hours before the celebrations began and smelled of gasoline and cigarettes like a movie theater parking lot after a warm summer rain. He sauntered on Wild Turkey and held dominion over his brood. He was the ascendant magic man announcing his final trick.
On the water the boat lurched lazily and the cool rhythm swelled beneath their shoes. The sky hung heavy and pitch-black but for the fireworks; it seemed to start far away and held mountains and pines unseen, yet understood, in the distance. His father rowed steadily, propelling the pair forwards, drawn by clinking beers and hazy laughter.
“I’ll be around this week,” Henry’s father said, adding an urgency, a definite sense of place, breaking the mutual spell.
“Okay.”
“We can fish same as last summer if you want”
“We could”
They continued to the island and landed on the thin strip of sand between the water’s edge and the boulders guarding the grassy center. A campfire blazed in front of them as Henry helped his father drag the boat to safe ground.
Finishing the task, Henry ran off to the wooded western corner of the island where his friends from neighboring houses on the mainland played. He came upon the first bushes and pulled them from his face, smelling Christmas and dry leaves: he saw Tom and Liam Castor run past and quickly tailed them. Cowboys and Indians was the summer’s game and Henry gladly joined in; he, having entered the first round near its tail end, joined the other players when they reconvened at the Big Tree, reaching towards the fat moon high above, and arranged new teams. How Henry loved to be an Indian: he would fire arrows and creep stealthily about his shared room back home in quiet and gleeful anticipation.
Henry and Liam tore through the night, letting out raucous warcries with small hearts thumping like drums, as came into a new and unknown moonlit clearing. They stopped short and looked round; Liam was ahead of Henry and crouched down, motioning for Henry to follow suit. A faint rustling noise sounded from the pines ahead.
“A deer. Get your bow ready.”
“Yes Chief.”
But they shortly saw it was no prize buck, only little Tom Castor holding a rabbit in his left hand by the scruff of its ears. A tiny grey rabbit.
“Liam,” he whispered from across the meadow, “I got a bunny. Gottim with a rock.”
Then Henry’s arms felt strange and feverish, like they had been hollowed out and filled with hot water, as he cried, “Get him!” The warriors fell upon the bunny-wielding boy mercilessly. They whipped tight fists at his face and sides with a silent and righteous fury. Their parents hooted through the trees, thrilled at their own devices. Henry breathed like a stuck bull though he kept at it without pause. Abruptly they lay off him. The rabbit lay limp beside Tom; the two aggressors sat on their knees and fumed. The night was still new and they ran off again into the swallowing pines
All parties should be masquerades, he thought as his neighbors clamored about in starched reds, blues, and greens, I would only have to unmask long enough to take another sip. And he thought how he wished they would quiet down for a minute or a quick second and just listen, just listen to the lake lapping gracefully on the shore, to their children laughing and hollering from the woods.
He had caught the nine o’clock train that morning back to Brattle Falls and drove the wagon down to the Mason’s Liquor on Main where he took off his tattered sports coat in the piss-stained bathroom, scrawled over in pencil graffiti, and changed into his Cubs sweatshirt. He bought a handle of Wild Turkey, oh how he could swim and swim in it, and continued on his jaunt to the lake where his princess waited for him.
Climbing from his car the grasshoppers’ hum engulfed him and, paired with the sweetness of the needled ground beneath him, it seemed a kindness as the cottage’s door clacked behind his running children. He was shortly informed of the Button Island do and began gathering the necessary supplies.
In the garage he rustled up a milk crate, which he planned to fill with assorted drinks, for kids and adults alike, assuming someone would have a cooler and ice at the party. In the kitchen drawer beneath the landline, he found a carton of off-brand sparklers from the previous year’s Fourth of July, one corner rusty brown from water, which he pocketed.
Ray and his wife Clarissa had got the cottage six years ago and they had plans to pull their brood close, what with Meghan in college, and bring everyone back together summers. At the party he thought their plans were a success thus far. The fire burnt slow and the people did too: they move calmly as the night progressed and the kids began sleeping on madras-shorted laps. Fathers should hold theirs close, he thought. Already in deep, he was still at it with the whisky; his eyes trailed off on their own separate, loping paths and only joined clearly through great effort and concentration. Castor talks real slow, he thought, goddamned Ivy Leaguers all do. Sheila looks right though.
Clarissa saw him leering from across the fire and her mind proceeded to wander away from her conversation with Janet Eichmann as she saw Ray stand up tentatively, letting out terse laughter towards Hal Castor. Why does Ray ignore them all when they try and speak nice with him, she thought quickly. Clarissa loved to listen to everyone; she loved walking and books.
And Ray walked down to the shore, twenty-five steps, and took another into the lake. People hollered around the fire and tapped their glasses saying, “This’ll be a good summer, I’ll bet” as Ray slid into the placid water. Some mornings he fished in the lake with Henry in the dewy first light, or in the streams leading to the body, and he liked to see if they could remain silent and feel the dinghy rock gently until, with a satisfying jolt and umph, they pulled up on a trout or some scum from the murky depths.
The water filled up his shirt, making it stick to his chest heavily; he slid under. Nothing. He was surrounded by an embryonic void till he let out his lungsful of air slowly while rising; as he lifted his head out of the water with and billowing, crescendoing laugh, which splayed and trickled across the surface of the lake, a red and green firework popped above the mainland. Ray found those on Button Island to be quiet and staring at him, frozen as a photograph. Clarissa sat on a stump and supported her head with a fragile hand on her cheek.
“I’ll need new shoes of course.”
In the morning he woke with a start: it was overcast, that he could feel in tired knees, deep in his bones, although the sun pierced through the cirrus uncomfortably bright for brief seconds only to be cut short by the prevailing winds push. In the rickety kitchen, Ray fixed orange juice and wondered where his family had got to; the stove clock read 11:15. They’ve hit the beach without me, he thought while opening the screen door to the porch overlooking the water. He then saw they hadn’t gone to the beach at all; he was left confused as he noticed the immense pressure in his skull, the jerkiness and knotty creaking in his neck.
He made way to the backyard to check if Clarissa’s car was in the driveway and he saw it was not. What’s more he saw three paper-ream boxes on the browning lawn. The sun beat hot.
In the boxes he found his two hatchets, a sweatshirt, some swim trunks and sandals, a collection of books and men’s interest magazines. All that heat and light keeping us alive.
A pair of pants and a shirt sat atop his and Clarissa’s dresser in their bedroom. He pulled his drawer out violently and heaved it onto the unmade bed. Empty. Now he took the signs; they all plinked with recognition in his breaking mind.
He took the whisky and left. He threw the boxes in the lake. He wore only his cigarette-burnt bathrobe: the clothes Clarissa laid out early that morning were the sole memory of his life in the cottage.
He wanted to tint his windows completely or get a baby shade for the whole car. It was oppressive; that great fire was his enemy. Eyes dry as hell and the sun just wouldn’t quit.