Duct tape

DUCT TAPE

It was me and the twins. From now on it would be just me, and the twins Henry and Emma. They, a sunny Spring and a wet Fall. We needed an escape for the afternoon. Anderson island sat only ten minutes away by ferry. We sat on the steaming asphalt waiting for an hour to board as the twins punched each other to see who could punch softest, both losing, they would keep losing. I looked out through the wavering heat and saw him.

He sat staring out at the salt, an old growth tree stump of a man at the age of thirty. He wore a dusky beard of dying lichen. He had a constant, tepid grin, as if his smile was beaten from him years ago. He was a fast and long friend of fury. He stared out at the world as if there was nothing to see. His hands were black and oily, each knuckle and wrist wrapped in duct tape and creosote. He often licked the drippings from his nose with his tongue.

The ferry was smaller than most, it creaked, moaned, and popped, listed to one side as we launched. Out on the bay wind blew hard and took us off course, we sailed past an empty prison, I saw him again as he stood at the bow of the boat. The waves slapped about his brow and chin, bouncing off his crusted Carhart overalls. Salt colonized in his beard . Crustaceans nestled in the creases of his blackened boots.

When the ferry landed on the small island, he walked out alone, past the campers and minivans, topped with bicycles and kayaks. He disappeared down a pockmarked gravel road. We drove out through the dark old growth forest and boulders hanging out over the road. The one traffic light on the island had been shot out and languished like a broken Christmas ornament surrounded by the tinsel of old kid’s tennis shoes dangling to rot in the breeze. We stopped at the island market. They sold plastic wrapped food, kerosene, Tannerite, water toys and gossip rags. I bought white bread, bologna, Green River soda, Cheetos, mustard, and mayo and stepped outfront . The kids stayed inside arguing over red ropes or chocolate.

The bulletin board outside was covered in tattered fliers for garage sales, farm fresh eggs and missing children. Children of every age. All along and across the side of the building. I could hear the hum of a chainsaw and gunfire. The ripple of a ricochet’s throw. Come for a day, stay for a lifetime.

We drove to Florence lake. A ten-foot rubber ducky floated lost in the center. Henry and Emma tried to swim to it but stopped to hang on a waterlogged stump. I made the sandwiches, spreading the mayo and mustard with a little plastic knife, thick and sharp. . The Green River soda was cold as I drank it in the heat, this hot spot I’m in. The kids swam in hungry. Their wet fingers stepped on the clouds of white bread and crushed them against the slippery rubber mat of meat and cheese. They devoured the sandwiches and then covered the slime of their fingers in Cheetos. We played Yahtzee and fourcard, bright orange stained everything. Before long they started getting texts from the neighborhood about sleepovers and pool parties. Who is a father to contend with the laughter of innocence.

The sun began to wilt and we got ready to leave, the wind stopped, and the sky filled with bugs and hiss. The melody of an ice cream truck jingle bounced around in the limbs of the forest

I saw him, the man, again, sitting by the lake, on an island, in the middle of an ocean sound, alone at a picnic table in a park, he turned to stare at me, and smiled. His eyes locked with mine. I checked the car for the twins. I’d thought of leaving them, I’d joked about leaving them, a distance existed between us, a break, a void , but I could feel them, and I left.