Pat is that water you’re drinking?
Yeah, haha. Get offa me!
He put the cap back on the water bottle leaned back in his chair, and stared into the overcast night sky. His posture was peaceful but the expression his face wore said otherwise. Sometimes he’d stare deep into those clouds and I would imagine him evaporating right up into them, floating into the distance, and falling down as rain some place far away from here.
Kolter looked up from the flames and began to chuckle.
Pat you know Mr. Watts still has those pictures of the playstation you made in CAD hanging in the hallway?
Huh, no. That’s kind of humbling in a creepy sort of way.
Yeah dude, Jordan broke in, I think Dave’s in love with you.
Haha shut the fuck up Jordan.
Headlights could be seen making their approach across the corn field that separated the cabin and the road. We all looked at the car roaring down the gravel. “Who’s this?” Pat said as he rose from his chair. Jordan laughed, “It’s the cops man!” Kolter whistled a police siren impression and then took another drag from his cigar. “Kolton you got anymore of those cigars?” Jason asked. Kolter reached into his coat pocket, “yeah dude”.
Pat came back to the circle of chairs that surrounded the fire with a piece of firewood he was carrying like a club. The headlights went right on passed the lane that led to the cabin and disappeared around the bend, into the night. He sat back down in his chair and stoked the fire with his the tip of his shoe before tossing the piece of wood on. “Hey Kolton,” Pat laughed, putting on the best impersonation of his father he could, “Kolton, you’ve sure been talking to Jesus a lot moving this old couch!” We all erupted into laughter.
The cabin set on skids and on a clear, quite night was in earshot of the river not more than forty yards away. Pat’s father had gotten a bunch of friends together in the early seventies and they put it on a roll-off and brought it down by the river. It used to be an old corn crib, but they put the works to it and fixed it up into a cabin. Screened in porch, deck, hell there were even fake bricks half way around the wooden stove. And the rest of them still set in moldy-card board boxes, thirty years later, in case anyone ever decides to finish the job.
Back in the seventies this place was party central. They’d talk someone into donating a hog and make big hell of a deal about, even the parents would come for the first hour or so. Cars would line both sides of the quarter mile lane, and what couldn’t fit there parked into a clearing in trees that was mowed regularly. Then later on the kegs would be tapped and when they went dry would be disposed of behind the cabin next to the cardboard boxes fill with bricks. Many of them were still there, and one Saturday Pat must have been feeling rather ambitious because he turned one into an end table for the cabin.
We were all feeling rather ambitious one week in early spring when we came down here to a cabin that had set empty for the better part of twenty years. The better part of a weekend was spent ripping up old carpet, burning old furniture, and lot of messing around. That was the Saturday Kolter became Kolton after several failed attempts to get the point across to Pat’s father that his name was Kolter, not Kolton.
“Aww fuck” Pat sighed with laughter, removing the cap from his water bottle and taking a long drink. He leaned forward and misted the fire with water from his mouth, and the flames erupted. “Water huh?” Jordan laughed. After a long pause Pat said, “Yeah it is, but it ferments when it hits my lips.”
He leaned forward and misted the fire again. And the faces around the camp fire were lit up with golden orange light. Just a bunch of kids trying way too hard, to grow up too damn fast.
Chapter Four :
Nestled above the stairway in the split level ranch home was what could best be described as an architect’s attempt at making use of empty space. There was a small sliding door made of oak veneered plywood that faced the dining room. It wasn’t very practical for a storage area and the newlywed couple didn’t need it anyway as half of the cupboards that lined the kitchen were empty as it was.
For Pat it was a hideout. He’d sneak in blankets, drawing supplies, books, his yellow cassette player his new aunt had given him. It had two headphone jacks so a friend could listen too. He only ever used one jack. He hadn’t made any friends in this town which was as new to him as the black and white sneakers on his feet his step-father had given him on his arrival. He and his mother had made the move up over his winter break from school. Pat spent hours nestled above those stairs. It irritated his mother but she never said anything about it. She had spent hours painting his bedroom which was, “bigger than any kid’s room on the block” as she had so generously put it.
Pat missed his old bedroom. He felt sheltered above those stairs, protected from the outside world. On occasion his stepfather would slide open the plywood door and set the newest member of the family on his lap. The pure bred wheaten terrier had been rescued from the animal shelter by his mother. Her hair color was wrong and therefore she was not suitable for breeding. They named her Peaches. She was as timid as Pat and they quickly became best friends; for Pat would soon find out that unlike other friends Peaches came along with them when they moved up the corporate ladder with his step father.
He never realized how much he was going to miss his bedroom until it was too late. On the rare occasions that he made it home to visit from college, he’d spend hours lying on his antique bed that set in the corner. It was made of walnut; his Grandmother had found it at an auction before he was born. It was his fathers before it was his. He’d lie there, often until he fell asleep, sometimes secretly hoping that when he woke up again he’d be back in high school.
When he finally did wake up he’d lie on his back staring at the floor joists that ran across the ceiling. He had a particular fondness for the lack of drop ceiling his bedroom possessed and would be disappointed when the carpenters came months later to put it in. After examining the joists he’d sit up at the edge of the bed and take in the smell of new carpet and paint that still permeated the air through his nostrils and then hold it briefly before releasing it through his mouth in the form of a sigh.
Walking slowly past the Pink Floyd poster that hung crooked on the wall in-between his bed and oak desk. The gray letters, WISH YOU WERE HERE contrasted against the white paper as two men who were actually the same man shook hands. One of them was on fire. The oak chair creaked as he slid it back from the desk. It was older than he was and the rusted metal plate stamped MT PLEASANT MENTAL INSTITUTION was still tacked on the underneath side of the seat. He sat there a long time with his hands resting on the edge of the desk. Leaning back in the chair with his head sunk, his chin nearly touched his chest.
The sound of the wooden drawer being pulled out from the desk cut through the silence of the room. He reached in and gently pulled out a leather bound book with the word
Guests emboldened in raised silver metallic calligraphy on the outside cover. The pages crackled as he turned them over. He ran his finger slowly back and forth over her name. He’d had a crush on her since he was a sophomore in high school. Three years later he hoped it wasn’t too late to make up for his incompetence. This constant fear of rejection that seemed to plague him, and leave him feeling just slightly less shitty than he thought he would feel if he got turned down. He sighed once more and put the guest manifest back into the drawer, pushing it in slowly.
His hands sat folded in his lap, eyes lost in the oak grain of the desk’s empty top. His trance was interrupted by two short knocks, the sound of the door as it made its way across the cream colored shag carpet. “Why ya hiding down here for?” his father asked in an attempting cheerful tone. “I dunno,” he replied looking over his shrugging shoulders. He wished he had an answer.
