RIPPLES
ISSUE SEVEN: April, 2021
RIPPLES
As a child I tubed behind my dad’s seventeen-foot ski boat on Lake Burton in Northern Georgia. Lake Burton was a beautiful mountain lake, but it was isolated and therefore eerie like beautiful and isolated things often are.
It was usually Mom and Dad, little brother, Grandpa and me. As long as the tube stayed inside the wake, and my dad was early in his drinking, I could lounge on the tube and watch the scenery slide by.
When a turning point in his drinking arrived. He’d stick out his tongue and a devious grin would cross his face.
That’s when I was in trouble.
When my mom’s cheerful demeanor turned grim, and my Grandpa’s steely facade showed cracks of amusement, I knew to squeeze the tube’s handles until my knuckles whitened.
My dad’s first move was to turn without notice and send me sailing over the wake onto the flat water beyond, where every ripple is amplified, clinging to the tube.
If I survived, he drove in circles to create waves in the middle.
When the waves churned to a worrisome size, he righted course, and accelerated through them. The waves sent me soaring, sometimes turning full flips before slapping back down onto the water. I’d hold on as long as I could, but inevitably fly off after losing my grip or the will to continue.
Left alone to tread water, as the sound of the outboard faded away, before anyone noticed I’d fallen off, was when I always felt most worried. Thinking about what lake monster lurked beneath, rising from darkness toward the light where I softly kicked to upend me. Wondering if the boat would disappear into the distance and never return.
WILSON KOEWING is a writer from South Carolina, USA. His work is forthcoming in X-R-A-Y, Maudlin House, Autofocus and Gargoyle.