The Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island Read online

  I distinctly remember a couple of things about Tony’s Bronco. 1) The inside of the cab smelled like cigarettes, mildew, stale beer, and sunbaked vinyl. It smelled like punk rock. To me, it smelled like the summer of 1986. And 2) the Bronco rattled like it was about to catastrophically fall apart. Every time Tony drove over a bump or crevice, it felt and sounded like the Bronco was going to explode, but it never did. Something magically held it together like divine intervention, or just pure luck—which is also a form of magic. And Tony kept on gripping that steering wheel tightly as if letting it go would lead to the end of us all. The Bronco must have been a beast to drive, but you wouldn’t have known that by Tony’s demeanor. He looked free as a bird behind that steering wheel. He oozed satisfaction while he played Let It Be by The Replacements on the cassette deck and drove us north on I-35, the cab filled with smoke and our hearts filled with joy.

  We asked our older teenaged chauffer all kinds of questions about the lake and the lake house and the campgrounds and his job at the marina and, of course, Victoria. Once we arrived at the mysteries of love and the opposite sex, our questions revealed our naivete. Many of the tidbits of information we had acquired from our moron acquaintances about girls were more like tropes of science fiction than reality and, after a while, Tony couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Where did you guys learn this shit?” he said, placing another cigarette between his teeth, then pressing the car lighter button. “None of you have been with a girl, have you?”

  He looked at me, then the rest of my friends in the rearview mirror. Our silence was our acknowledgment. When the car lighter popped up, he pulled it from the dash and lit his cigarette—the fiery orange center of the lighter singeing the end of his smoke—then quickly inserted it back.

  “Don’t you boys worry. I’ll tell you the truth about women this weekend.”

  “Great!” I said, looking out the window at the passing businesses and ranch homes along the access road of I-35. There was a lot more to marvel at along the interstate on the way to FM 306 than you would think. There was a junkyard, a classic car museum, and an oddball attraction with the tantalizing name of Snake Farm. But none of these things were as exciting as the prospect of learning about girls—the TRUTH about girls—from an older teenager that was as cool and bad ass as Tony. “We can’t be men without the knowledge. Right?”

  “Riiight,” Tony drawled, then chuckled. Smoke seeped out of his clenched teeth like a dragon’s exhalations.

  “How long til we get there?” Randy called out from the back of the Bronco. “I need to stretch my legs soon. It’s cramped back here.”

  “Oh, maybe twenty minutes. What are you guys going to do about food?” Tony said, turning to me. He leaned a bit closer and lowered his voice slightly as if to whisper a secret. “It doesn’t look like you brought any supplies with you.”

  “Supplies?”

  He straightened himself back up in his seat, then took a long drag from his cigarette. A huge plume of smoke erupted from his mouth and escaped the cab through the small triangular window in the driver side door.

  “What are you going to live on? Fresh air and lake water?”

  I was miffed. “Is there a grocery store near the lake house?” I said, a little worried now. None of my friends mentioned bringing food and drinks. That would’ve been the smart thing to do.

  “Nope, no grocery stores near the lake house.”

  “Oh. Man.”

  “But you can buy food at the marina, if you have money.”

  “I got lots of money!” I said, then plopped Bloody Billy’s backpack on my lap. I began to unzip it, but Tony interrupted me.

  “The only thing is, if you want to sneak up to the lake house, then it’s probably best you don’t go into the marina, just so no one sees you.”

  “That’s coooool,” I said, unzipping the backpack.

  “So, give me some cash and tell me what you want. I’ll buy it for you.”

  At this point, I pulled the backpack apart, exposing the bills inside. I lifted it slightly when Tony turned to me. Once he saw the money in the backpack, his eyes opened wide in astonishment.

  “Shit, little dude!” he said, the cigarette in his mouth twitching up and down. “That’s a lot of lawnmowing green.”

  I zipped the backpack shut and set it back down between my feet on the floorboard. It also pleased me that I now attained a level of cool that Tony realized he hadn’t reached. He knew a lot more about girls than I did, but I had a load of cash that he could only have dreamed about. Touché, as the French say.

  Brian leaned in from the back seat. “We ganked it actually.”

  “Shhh!” I hissed, then took a deep breath. “More like, found it.”

  “If you call taking it from the Thousand Oaks Gang finding it.” Brian leaned back into his seat, flopping his arms in his lap. He looked to Miguel to chime in.

  “We... uh, appropriated the money from a malevolent assemblage to a benevolent collective.”

  “Yeah, what he said,” I told Tony, then wiping my hands together as if dusting them. “Appropria-ma-tated.”

  Miguel and Brian snickered at my mispronunciation, but it didn’t hurt my feelings. I was still feeling powerfully proud.

  “I won’t ask any questions—for now. So, it seems you got the bread to buy food. I’ll stop at the marina.”

  Soon enough, we exited I-35 for FM 306 and headed west toward Canyon Lake. In about fifteen minutes or so, we arrived at Canyon Lake Marina while the curtain of night slowly descended around the lake. Tony parked his Bronco in a dark gravel area past the parking lot, partially surrounded by shrubs and cedar trees, then killed the engine.

  “You guys stay here. I’ll be back,” he said, then jumped out, slamming the door behind him.

  We all turned and watched Tony cross the wooden pier to the marina, then disappear inside the store. It was painfully quiet now that the Bronco was slumbering. There was no one around or any cars in the parking lot. The night sky was ink brush black, still, and clear, speckled with stars and the occasional flashing lights of airplanes or satellites. The only signs of life were the fluorescent glow inside the marina store and several illuminated specks on anchored sailboats dotted across the bay like fireflies bobbing across a field of shimmering black ripples.

  With four middle-schoolers stowed away in a Bronco, it wouldn’t be quiet for long.

  “What do you think our parents would do if they found out we were here?” Miguel quizzed us.

  I shushed him. “Keep it down.”

  “Why? No one’s around.”

  “Still,” I insisted.

  “They won’t find out,” Randy whispered. “We have a solid alibi.”

  “Solid as a rock,” Brian sang, imitating the chorus of the R&B hit song by Ashford & Simpson. We all giggled.

  “Why’d you show Tony the money?” Randy said, climbing into the back seat from the trunk area and plopping in between Brian and Miguel. He elbowed them for more room.

  “I don’t know. Just seemed right. He is helping us, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know what made me do it. I just did. Sorry.”

  “It’s OK,” Randy said. He endearingly shoved the back of my head, which surprised me.

  “Hey!” I said. “Why’d you do that?”

  “I don’t know. Just seemed right,” he replied.

  “Jerk.”

  “He’s coming,” Brian said.

  We watched Tony cross the pier back to dry land, then walk over to the Bronco, his feet crunching on gravel. In his arms were two brown grocery bags full of food. He hopped back in the Bronco, giving one bag to me and the other to Randy in the back seat.

  “Got you covered for at least a day and a half,” he said, then started the slumbering Bronco. “Easy street.”

  He put the Bronco in reverse and slowly backed it into the parking lot from the dark, gravel area.

  “Did anybody ask questions?” I said, setting
the grocery bag filled with junk food in my lap, while I fastened my seatbelt.

  “Nope,” he said, putting the Bronco in drive and pulling out onto the farm road. “No one was inside. My dad must be out in the bay helping an anchored sailboat or something. Not unusual.”

  “Ah,” I replied. “Coooool.”

  Tony drove the Bronco a short way up the dark farm road, then turned left onto a gravel one that took us into the wooded area surrounding the lake. The cab of the Bronco rattled as he maneuvered along the prehistoric drive. We could see glimpses of boat lights flashing between the trees and the surface of the lake reflecting the moon’s soft glow. In front of us, it was dark and all we could see were two shafts of headlight beams stabbing forward, occasional tree trunks appearing then disappearing again into darkness. We soon arrived at a gate where Tony parked the Bronco, then got out. Leaving his door open, I watched him walk over to the metal gate and, just like he said before, unwrap a chain securing it to a metal pole. But there wasn’t a padlock on the chain. After unwrapping it, he pushed the gate open, and hopped back in.

  “Be there in a jiffy,” he said, as he drove through the gate and parked on the other side. He jumped back out and repeated the fake security scheme, then got back into the Bronco. “The lake house is just up there.”

  He drove the Bronco up a short gravel drive, then over a clearing of wild grass, parking behind the old Meyer lake house. Its dark silhouette loomed large.

  “We’re here,” he said, killing the engine. “Shangri-La.”

  He grabbed a flash light from the glove box—although he didn’t turn it on—and we followed him with all our stuff (backpacks, grocery bags, and all) along a path to the side of the house. On the side door was a padlock but it was not locked. He lifted it from the rusty metal latch and easily opened the door, hanging the padlock on the latch hasp. Inside, he turned on the flashlight and directed Randy and I to the kitchen.

  “Set the bags in there,” he said, lighting our way with a flash of his light. Randy and I did as he asked, stomping through the dark house and quickly setting the bags on the first counter we could find, then came back to the group.

  We all stood in a large open area in the middle of the lake house—the ancient floor boards underneath us creaking—and could see out into the bay through an array of grimy windows on the other side of the room. Tony turned the flashlight off.

  “I recommend not using the flash light much at night in here. You don’t want to bring unwanted attention to yourself. I have a camping lantern in the Bronco along with a few other things you might need. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  While he fetched the lantern, the four of us stepped over to the wall of windows and peered outside. The phosphorescent lake had a magical quality that mesmerized us.

  “Coooool,” I said.

  My friends agreed. The lake’s incantation was interrupted by the stomping feet of our chauffeur. In one hand glowed a camping lantern, its light much more subdued compared to the bright beam of the flashlight. He gripped a bottle of beer in the other hand. We met him back in the middle of the room.

  He lifted the lantern closer to his face—its soft glow casting eerie shadows under his brow and nose, a lit cigarette between his clinched teeth. “Which one of you ass bandits knows a scary ghost story?”

  11.

  We setup camp on the floor in the middle of the house, then played games (Uno, Black jack) and told stories (some scary, mostly funny) late into the night. Tony brought in a couple of sleeping bags that he kept under the backseat in his Bronco for him and Victoria, and said we could use them that night. But if he decided to bring Victoria with him the next night, then we’d have to give up the sleeping bags, which made perfect sense to us. We set the lantern on the floor and gathered around it—the five of us, two unfurled sleeping bags, our backpacks, and all our groceries. We dumped the food and drinks out on the floor like pirate booty, all our supplies spread out for the taking: mostly junk food and soda. Then we played the game Rock-paper-scissors to see who would get the privilege of sleeping in the sleeping bags. Randy and Brian won. Miguel and I got the consolation prize: the hard wood floor. Tony would eventually be going home, but said he would come back the next day on a motor boat with more supplies. He had work early in the morning and didn’t want his parents knowing he was over here.

  We quickly learned why Tony asked if we knew any ghost stories—the old lake house was an ideal setting for scary tales to be told. The house seemed ancient with its pier and beam construction, creaky wood floors, drafty spider-webbed rafters, and grimy windows. Except for what we brought with us inside, the lake house was completely empty apart from some old hinges, knobs, and tools randomly strewn about on the floor in various rooms. With every gust of wind or invisible shift of the earth, the lake house creaked, squeaked, and cracked its disapproval, sometimes even rumbling like an acidic, upset stomach. The house smelled of dried wood, mildew, mold, and death. Maybe there was a dead rat or possum under the floorboards—having slowly died, then rotted alone in the silty bed below the house—but we never cared to look, preferring to just ignore the smell the best we could.

  Miguel was the first to tell a scary story, opting for his father’s favorite Chupacabra tale, the one he had told me before but the others hadn’t heard yet, where his neighbors mistook a rabid stray dog for the mythical Mexican beast, and asked his father to catch it. Since he was in the military, the neighbors assumed he was qualified to catch a rabid animal, even though he wasn’t more qualified to do it than any of them. He reluctantly accepted the job and was bit by the dog on the arm, requiring him to get twenty rabies shots in his stomach.

  “Boy! Was he mad at the neighbors for making him catch that dog!” Miguel said, flopping his thin arms across his gut while belly laughing, the shadows from his skinny limbs dancing on the drafty ceiling and cob-webbed rafters. “It was hilarious!”

  “That’s a classic,” I said, patting Miguel on the shoulder for a story well-told—even though I had heard it a million times, it never got old—then turned to Tony. “How long has this house been empty?”

  “The Meyer lake house? Shit. A long time,” he said, taking a swig from his beer, then sucking a deep drag from his cigarette. He blew large rings of smoke, the shimmying circles drifting up to the rafters, then disintegrating on impact. We gawked at this parlor trick, even though the smell was hard to take. None of us liked the smell of cigarette smoke or being around smokers, particularly Randy and me. Our fathers and my step-dad were all heavy smokers—two packs-a-day kind of guys. We’d inhaled enough second-hand smoke in our young lives that we’d probably develop lung cancer as grandpas (still a way to go for that). Tony continued. “Maybe twenty years.”

  “Twenty years!” we all said in unison. It seemed inconceivable that such a cool place would be uninhabited for so long.

  “Maybe longer. Ever since I can remember. My dad once told me that the Meyer family were pretty wealthy in the olden days and that they had made a bunch of oil money in the 1890s or something like that. They were like Texan Rockefellers or some shit,” he said, then guzzled the last of his beer, wiping his mouth with his forearm. He burped prolifically, which of course made the rest of us bust out laughing. Tony grinned. “But then, the shit hit the fan.”

  “What happened?” Randy said, sitting up. We loved these type of stories; most boys do from my experience.

  “Yeah?” Miguel added. “What happened?”

  We all leaned in to hear Tony’s story. Brian offered me a hunk of beef jerky, which I willingly accepted, then gnawed on it.

  “Well, you see, the top of the food chain in the Meyer family back then—in the oil money days—was Griffin and Mary Meyer. They made a shit ton of money, then they built this vacation lake house out here on Canyon Lake, looking for quieter times during the hot summer months. And not only did they have a shit ton of money, but they had a shit ton of kids, too. Nine of ‘em to be exact.”

  “Nine kids?!”
I said, astonished. “They must have been doing it like rabbits!”

  “I guess you could say that,” Tony said, chuckling. “Anyway, all the kids grew to love this place as you can imagine, growing up here in their summer months. So, when Griffin and Mary finally both kicked the bucket, which I heard happened within hours of each other, those nine bastards fought tooth and nail over this lake house—”

  Tony stopped, interrupted by a sound outside. He turned his head to get a better listen, raising an index finger to his lips. Then we all heard the bird song: Hoo huh hoo, hoo huh hoo. A smirk spread across his face.

  “That’s an owl!” he whispered, speaking quietly.

  We could barely contain our excitement, but Tony did his best to keep us quiet, pressing the air down with both hands, a sterner indication to hush. We all listened as time went by—what felt like twenty or thirty excruciating seconds—when the owl sang again: Hoo huh hoo. It was a marvelous avian chant.

  “Pretty cool, huh?” he whispered some more. “He’s probably stalking a mouse or something.”

  “So coooool,” I said, and my friends agreed.

  “As I was saying,” Tony said, leaning back on his elbows, his legs splayed out in front of him, not interested in the owl anymore. “Those kids have been fighting over this lake house ever since. At least that’s what I’ve been told. Family business can get messy, especially with a bunch of assholes in your family.”