Page 61 of It Happened on the Lake

Now, though, it was a different story.

He jammed his Seattle Supersonics cap onto his head and headed downstairs from his bedroom in the loft to the living room, where the TV was tuned intoHogan’s Heroes, one of his dad’s favorite shows. These days, Rand saw nothing funny about war or POW camps, but he didn’t bother to change the channel as he was heading out.

Over the conversation on the tube, Rand heard his father’s voice, carrying from the back of the house. He stopped in the dining area and stared into the kitchen where the fluorescent lights overhead flickered on Gerald Watkins seated at the table. His back to the living room, he was talking on the phone, the cord stretched taut from its base attached to the wall between the cupboard and sliding door.

“. . . I know, I know, but he’ll be out in less than eighteen months now,” Gerald was saying, receiver to his ear, a beer on the table near an unruly stack of bills and his open checkbook. A cigarette was burning unattended in a glass ashtray. A pause. Then, “Jesus Christ, Barb, sure, it’s a hellhole. Don’t I know it? But hey, it’s his duty. If he plays his cards right, he could get Uncle Sam to pay for his college when he’s out or train him to be a pilot or whatever while he’s in . . . Listen . . . I know, I know . . .” His voice was getting louder. Terser. As it always did these days when Gerald was on the phone to his ex-wife, Rand’s mother.

Barbara May Smith Watkins Eldridge.

“Fine. Fine. Hold on a sec. I’ll get him on the line.” But before he could call for Rand, he said into the phone. “Yeah, yeah, I said, ‘I know.’ Didn’t I already say that it’s a fu—damned hellhole?”

Along pause.

“He’ll be okay . . . what?” He was getting mad now. His voice even tighter. His face red. He took a long swallow from the beer can, then crushed it. “How many times do I have to say, ‘I know,’ Barb, but shit—”

Rand had heard enough. Intent on leaving through the front door, he’d backed up a step when his father’s voice stopped him short. “That’s great, Barb, just fu—effin’ great!Youtalk to him about it. I’ll get him on the line.” He placed a hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver, “Hey, son—”

“Got it.” Rand crossed the kitchen and snagged the receiver from his father’s hand.

Gerald glowered. “How long you been there?”

Long enough.“Hey, Mom,” Rand said, putting the receiver to his ear.

“You been listening in?” his father demanded before taking a long swallow of beer.

Rand turned his back and ignored Gerald as he heard his mother’s voice on the other end of the line. She wasn’t quite sobbing, but her voice sounded wet. “Hi, honey,” she said. “I just want to say that I’m sorry I didn’t come over earlier to say goodbye.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” she said brokenly. “I should be there. And . . . and I could stop by later.” He imagined her on the other end of the line, wearing her signature shade of pink lipstick, her newly blond hair teased into a perfect “flip,” as she called it, the upturned ends at her shoulders.

“You don’t have to. I’m heading out for a while anyway. See some friends, you know.”

“But, really. As soon as Kent is back with the car, I could come over. It would be late, but I’m coming!”

“Mom, please, don’t worry about it. Okay? I’ll be back stateside before you know it.” He didn’t know if he could convince her. Once she got an idea in her head, it took a pickax to dislodge it. “I’ll be fine.”

“But it’s dangerous! And I—I—I love you.” Her voice broke, and she was sniffling now, and Rand’s own throat tightened as he shifted from one foot to the other. He noticed, in the faint reflection of the back door, his old man stub out the forgotten Marlboro and light a fresh one, his face in the flicker of his match appearing older than his thirty-eight years. For a split second Rand wondered if this was how he himself would look, tired and angry at midlife? After all, how many times had Rand heard that he was the “spittin’ image” of his father except his eyes were a couple of shades lighter than his father’s deep brown?

“I love you, too, Mom,” he said and saw his father scowl in the ghostly reflection, Gerald’s visage blurred by smoke. Admitting you loved someone out loud was not on Gerald Watkins’s play list. He didn’t believe in it; instead he believed in being stalwart and strong without any emotion. “Just get the goddamned job done. Whatever it takes.” That was his mantra.

Dad was angry these days, angrier than usual, and he was pissed about politics again, upset that Martin Luther King had been assassinated, and only two months later RFK gunned down and killed in California. Gerald Watkins let it be known that the country was going down the tube—the race riots and antiwar protests that even included the Democratic National Convention were proof of it. But as much as Gerald despised the war in Indochina, he was conflicted because he truly believed being a patriot to America and serving one’s country was every man’s duty. He’d served in the armed services and, by God, his son would, too.

“I’ll write you—at least once a week if not more often,” Mom was saying.

Rand turned his attention away from his father’s angry reflection just as he heard another voice, a deeper one that was muffled. Her husband. Kent Eldridge. His stepfather must’ve arrived home. Great. Rand had no use for him. A local dentist whom Rand considered sadistic was the man Barb had “traded up” for with his thriving practice and steady hours. Her voice was muted now, and Rand guessed she’d placed her hand over the receiver. Still, he heard that she and Kent were arguing, then suddenly her voice was clear again. And rushed. “Okay, sweetheart, you take care of yourself. Be safe. I’ll talk to you soon.” And then she hung up.

He dropped the receiver into its cradle. “I’m going out,” he announced to his father as Gerald shoved back his chair.

“Where?” Gerald asked, then frowned, drawing hard on his cigarette, obviously deciding it didn’t matter where his son was heading. Soon Rand would be shipping out to a war-torn country halfway around the world.

“With friends.” Rand was already out of the kitchen and striding across the living room with its orange shag carpet and BarcaLounger situated squarely in front of the TV where Bob Crane was playing a wisecracking POW.

“When will you be back?” His father called as Rand snagged his army jacket from a peg near the door, then stepped onto the front porch.

“What does it matter?” He pulled the door shut behind him.

Outside the night was cold and crisp, a hint of snow in the air. He ran to his Jeep, a ’58 Willys that was his pride in high school and was now parked in the drive. Now—well, he still loved it, though not with quite the same ardor.

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