Chris & Kevin — Part I: The Town That Lied To Itself

Reconciling future and present.

Childhood — Coach driver — Lake — Reunions —Hidden underneath

Chris and Kevin met each other for the first time for the second time at the dawn of their adult life.

They last saw each other the day before Kevin left for his tutelage under the famed Master Kruna, in distant Arnundees. They skipped rocks that day. Played tag. Chased butterflies with fishing nets stolen from the riverbed. Same as any other day. Running along the thoroughfare with the grave focus of warriors as they knocked over pastry carts, bumped into neighbors, tumbled into stacked barrels of ale and tea and rainwater, oblivious to their scrapes and scratches. They fought demons with wooden sticks. Stood back to back at the edge of the jetty, fending off invisible hordes as the town’s waterfall crashed down behind them.

Then they were each called for dinner; they went home and did not see each other again for thirteen years.

******

Kevin was bobbing and jostling in the back of a large buckboard down the rocky decent into Sellene. In his lap a notebook lay opened on a neglected charcoal sketch of the journey thus far, a wide snaking forest road, shrinking off into the whiteness of the page.

“Oh, would you look at that,” said the driver. He was a short stout man marked with a shining clearing on his pate. His voice — albeit gruff — was imbued with singsong wonder, as if in a constant state of awe. “Now you ain’t never tell me about that.”

“Hmm?” said Kevin.

The driver gestured with the reins to the left. Old stone homes down there, at the base of the vale. Clustered together like a tight-knit family beside a vast pool of water shimmering in the sun. “That lake,” he said. Birds painting ripples across the surface. Gees tiny in the distance. Quacking behind a veil of mist surrounding the waterfall’s landing, just barely visible. A flash of wing, a peeking beak. Their incomplete form hinting at something far purer than the truth of them.

Kevin shrugged. “It’s just a lake.”

“Just a lake.” The driver shook his head. “No such thing as just a lake.”

“How do you mean?”

The driver was silent. The back of his head bobbing with the clucking trot, the grinding wheels. Then he sighed. “Never you mind. This is it, now.”

The carriage ground to a halt. The horses neighed. Kevin glanced at his sketch and folded the book shut and stood up. He could see ghosts in the thoroughfare. Smell them. Sugared apples. Fresh water. Coffee so strong it smelled like plowed earth. He shouldered his bag and hopped down.

“So you figured it out yet?” asked the driver.

“Figured what?”

“What you’re gonna do.”

Kevin wrinkled his nose. “Well.”

“You got time.

“I know.”

“You don’t need to go rushin off into anything ‘fore you set in yourself.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s how you get -“

“Ass backwards in a ditch, yeah.” Kevin smiled. “I remember. I guess I’ll leave it up to Maya. See what she has to say. Then we’ll see.”

“Alright. You just take it easy. Make sure you look around.”

Kevin closed his eyes and gulped in a big breath. His shoulders slumped as he let it out. “Yeah.”

He dug into his bag, produced a clinking coin-sack tied shut with a string. “Thank you, Heroth.”

But the driver waved him off. He was already looking past him, surveying the town. His face set hard and his eyes away someplace. “I’m thinkin o’ stayin here a night or two,” he said. “Resupply, you know, for the road. Maybe take a look at that lake.”

“Well. I still owe you though.”

“Pay me when I’ll leave. A dinner’ll cheapen my fees. Maybe. If it’s good.”

“Oh if it’s the way I remember it you’re gonna be payin me.”

“Yeah we’ll see.”

“You know it. You’ll be gettin that dinner, Heroth,” and he backed away grinning into the town.

Heroth nodded but he was already gazing at the lake again. Someplace else. You could barely even see it from where he stood. Kevin turned and went on.

Old Babi greeted him from her rocking chair on her porch. He stopped by without climbing the steps. She asked him how he’s been. He said alright. He was going to say more but she immediately went on to tell him who left and who died, who are now couples and who are now strangers, who’s got grudges against who and why and whether they’re in the wrong or not and at the same breath she lamented that nothing ever changed. She herself was as withered and bony as the day he left except she couldn’t walk anymore. She asked about his studies and he smiled. She hadn’t heard about the war.

He asked her if Maya was back in town yet but she didn’t remember any Maya. She then told him that Chris would be thrilled to see him. How they used to play. How they drove her mad. Spoken with a spark that wasn’t there when she spoke of other things. Kevin smiled though he felt an aversion to the idea, as if it would be a regression into some old phantom world and as such would dissolve it. He politely declined her invitation for milk and went on.

Across the thoroughfare men in sweaty overalls stacked barrels into neat pyramids. Kevin squinted at them and excavated from under their muscles and beards the children they once were. They shouted his name and waved. When he asked they told him that Maya was long gone. Whether dead or away he couldn’t glean from them but they spoke of her fondly. They urged him to stop by for a drink tonight after he got settled and he said he would though he wanted nothing less. He went on.

He waved back to a few more familiar greeters and answered their calls but made no move towards them. He worried he’d bump into Chris because with him a simple wave won’t do, but Chris never showed.

When he got to his house by the river he knew at once it had been empty for years. The coat of dust on the porch. The clinging wind-chimes. The door slightly ajar as if the only resident was the wind.

The porch creaked under his boots and he reached for the knob but stopped. Lodged in the door’s threshold was a note, signed by Maya. He’d recognize her cursive anywhere. Curving gracefully from one letter to another in a continuous natural flow, as if she had simply breathed the words onto the page. He had dim memories of her teaching him to write. He never could quite mimic her print, but his trying trained him to draw. He swallowed and crushed the note in his hand. It expressed a lot of sentimentality which was of no use to him and ended with a vague promise to be there for him again. Then he held the crumpled ruin to his chest.

Shaking his head. He thought of Heroth and the meal he promised him and felt like a liar. He stood like this for a few minutes lost in incertitude then turned and lowered down on the steps and sat surveying the town.

Old stone homes. Chimneys exhaling smoke smelling of sweet dough. The blue skies above. Circling birds, crying out. Distant pines up on the cliffs. Surrounding the vale. Once it all felt like some indomitable maze, a secret around every corner. Now everything was small and slanted as if caught in a lie. Every passing cloud, every leaf twisting in the wind. Every blade of grass. Every corner of every wall, every chip in every beam, every dent in every stone. All of it complicit in some grand act of misdirection. The concealment of fire. Fire and blood. Laying beneath this pastoral visage, laying in wait. Patiently. Holding for the perfect moment to sprout.

Within minutes he was fast asleep against the rail.

Continue to part II → https://madwriter27.substack.com/p/chris-and-kevin-part-ii-lakeside