Falls Lake at sundown.

Once upon a time, mama saw the giant with big green eyes and asked at the behest of her husband to at least spare the children. It was only later that the true drama happened and I walked into a snails’ nest of heckuvalotuv trouble.
Michael and I dug the grave on the occasion of his thirteenth birthday, under the treefort 836 yds. in the woods behind my parent’s house and roughly 416 yds. behind his. Roughly 8 ft. by 4 ft., we spent all late afternoon opening the ground and building the mound beside. I paused on the hour to vomit and Michael would berate me in the best way he knew how, with his limited language, speech impediment and drawl. I did the best I could to understand exactly what he was saying. At times, I even mistook his unkind words for the kindlier variety.
It was that afternoon while BMXing down by Falls Lake that we came across her. Fresh out of the water and on the rocks lying there, we hid in the fallen trees for over an hour before ever making an approach.
Mom called us at lunch and her voice rang through the valley and down to the lake, but since we were known to tarry outside of earshot regularly she did not worry at our absence that afternoon at the lunch table, Saranwrapped, the sandwiches were put in the frigidaire for our imminent arrival.
Cookie, Michael’s mom and my mom’s best friend, had relinquished custody of us boys,for the afternoon to my mother. We swam early and played our jump or swim, marco polo, sharks and minnows- the best we could with just the two of us after my brother left.
Later on the bikes we struck out down the path by the Allen house where Ricky was layed up with cancer at 35. (That man once helped us roof our garage, as he was a roofer – his whole family was – before he opened the vintage Ford truck parts store. He could drive the nail in one swipe, accosting it while it was still in the air and driving it right through the tarpaper and plywood.) Down to the lake we rode, bunnyhopping the new craters created by the three weeks of rain. Michael had taken his step-dad Scotty’s 12 gauge and a half box of buck shot, three beer cans from the curb garbage, and two full ones stuffed into the cargo pockets of his surplus army fatigues.
Down to the lake we rode with cargo in tow, me in front, Michael in back. Arriving, we decided the 5 minute trip enough to merit consuming the beers, which we did in short order, throwing the empty cans, as well as the empties we brought with us into the lake. Michael loaded the shotgun with shells and we took turns shooting at the cans as they slowly drifted out toward the channel. Finally, by pure stroke of luck, I made the first hit and for the first time in my life I heard and understood (differently than I would later come to understand the term) “fallen soldier” – except Michael added “Yankee” in between the two words.
After the shells were expended, or the cans had drifted too far out for feasible aim and accuracy, Michael strapped the gun back around his shoulders and we headed down the makeshift path toward the north point where we liked to skip the rocks made smooth by the channel moving through. That is where we saw her first. First in the water and then coming onto the shore and lying down. we hid behind the dead trees that were exposed from the summer drought. She didn’t know we were there. She thought she was alone. Naked, laying on the channel stone.
Michael had the idea to make a scare and I agreed. We could surely outrun on bikes. We could make it back to Dude Ranch Road before she could even fully arise and make a chase. He started and I hid my eyes and readied for the great escape – Huffy handlebars in hand. I watched as he approached, barefoot like a samurai, not making a sound. Once upon her I could not stand it anymore and I took off in a random direction. Knowing the woods like I did, I would make it back home and to fried bologna sandwiches in no time. Three hundred yards away I heard the impact , and then the bang, and I was stopped immediately. I turned to look back and Michael stood with the shotgun in one arm and his other in the air. I thought we were out of shells.
Shrieking he called me a ‘pussy” and told me if I had any balls I would come back and help him take the body back with us. Of course, this is the moment in which I should have run – far from that place and back to sandwiches and pool and mom and garage and basketball goal and Huck Finn – but of course that is not the way it went down. I went back and we place the body across the two bikes and between the two of us and we pushed it out of the woods and to the treefort. I went home and got two shovels and a pickaxe from the leanto behind the garage. We dug until 6:30 and Michael went his way and I went mine.
I went to the pool and straight in with my cutoff courduroy Levis. I wanted to wash it all away. I knew her. I had secretly spied her on my own before. I had delicate fancies during prepubescence about her. I wanted to wash it all from my hands, and the blood drippings from my shorts. I wanted to deny all evil. Destroy all monsters. Make my mother proud. It would all come to be sooner or later anyway – and the opposite.
That was the summer before Michael was incarcerated at the Dillon school. The summer before Cookie died after hitting the split rail fence at 55 MPH, the wood coming through the engine block, firewall and her heart. The summer before I fell in love the first time. The summer before I first hailed a cab. The summer before my first guitar and the last summer of piano lessons. The summer in which Michael and I stopped being friends, his family moving away after the death of his mother. The summer I learned my first lesson.
If I could make it all different now, if it really did happen, I surely would. Michael is okay now the last I heard through the grapevine. I am not sure that I am. Though the dream won’t stop, I am working on it. If the cure comes soon, maybe we can all live happily ever after.