Story: Summer Legs

A swim in the dark, still waters of a pond on a summer night

Hello Friend,
I wanted to take just a moment to thank you for being here. Whether you’re a new subscriber or an old friend, I appreciate you more than you know. Attention is a precious commodity. Thanks for sharing some of yours with me.

This is a story I wrote and published last summer. You might have missed it. I performed it live in front of a wonderful audience at my show at Waller’s Coffee in July last year and it felt inspired. For a few moments, it seemed we were all there together on that summer night standing at the edge of a dark mill pond contemplating whether to jump in. You can jump in too by putting on some headphones and listening to the immersive audio I produced to support the narration. I hope you enjoy it.

NOTE: Enjoy this story more by listening to the audio narration with headphones 🎧.

Kris liked being naked more than anyone I’ve ever known. I didn’t harbor elicit fantasies about her because she left no room for mystery there but more importantly, she was always Mark’s girl.

In the summer of our sixteenth year, there was a record heat wave. Most of our crew had jobs doing something to earn walkaround money, not because we needed it, but because our parents didn’t want us to sleep until noon and they hoped the work would incentivize us to aim for college so we wouldn’t be flipping hamburgers, mowing lawns, or directing traffic around road construction for the rest of our lives.

With few exceptions, we would meet up on the hill most evenings after our shifts were done and the sun was just finishing its punishing arch across the sky. I was usually the last one to arrive. I would park my VW Beetle on the shoulder of the gravel road and walk up the wooded trail in the darkness. The forest was a constellation of sleepy fireflies meandering up into the canopy above where actual stars glimmered in the winding seam of azure sky that the trail opened up.

I could always hear them long before I made it out of the woods and into the clearing. Someone was usually mid-story. I couldn’t make out the words, but I could tell by the rhythm, volume, and contributing chatter whether it was something stupid or funny from work or something dramatic from home. That charmed summer, it was usually the former. As I got closer, I could make out their silhouettes atop the hill. Mark with his arm around Kris, Jonah sitting cross-legged and sipping a beer, and the red-orange glow of Nicky’s cigarette. As I approached, their words came into focus and their bodies gained dimensionality -- the white flash of teeth when someone laughed, the high-contrast lettering on a t-shirt. When they saw me, there was the standard practice of busting my balls about the ritual dinner with my parents that made me late every evening.

Someone would hand me a beer or a shitty wine cooler if Nicky was the one to supply the evening’s refreshments. At least she was funny, hilarious in fact which was counter to her full-on goth appearance. Jonah was the serious one, ever the foil to Nicky’s general goofiness. Mark had been my best friend since first grade, and I was still adjusting to my demotion since he and Kris had become an item the year before. At least Kris was cool, better than cool in fact. She was this unusual combination of kind and wild, bordering on reckless. I never quite understood the engine propelling her inner gyroscope, but her pull was magnetic. None of us would have ever dreamed of shucking our clothes and swimming in the dark, still waters of the old mill pond if it weren’t for her. But after that first night, it became our thing that summer.

The pond was a short walk down the other side of the hill. One evening when there was no breeze and we were being sucked dry by mosquitos, she jumped up and took off running toward the pond. We followed. By the time we reached the reedy edge of the water, her cut-offs and tank top were laying in the grass, followed quickly by her bra and underwear. The vision of her slender body as pale as the moon reflected on the black water, she waded into made me want to become a writer. She plunged and disappeared. As the seconds ticked by and we scanned the rippling wake of her absence, I remember we were silenced. I remember not breathing until she broke the surface out in the middle of the pond and let out a cry like the piercing tone of a crystal glass resonating beneath a fingertip. The cry exploded into laughter, effervescent bubbles in champagne. We all followed, tumbling, splashing, and whooping into the water, the shocking cold tightening our skin into dimpled gooseflesh.  

Tonight, thirty years later, the pond looks the same. Everything else in this little town we all left years ago has changed, but the stacked stone ruins of the old mill and the still, dark water before it remain as they did in my memory. The moon is not full, but we have enough light to see. The heat is not what it was that summer and I sense I’m not the only one hedging. It’s much harder to shed adult clothes. The bending over, the balancing, the carefully folding and placing. What was a spontaneous act of defiance is now an orchestrated event initiated from an email Mark sent a year ago on the heels of the announcement of our high school reunion.

I try not to study my old friends too closely as they disrobe for fear of being reminded of my own aging body. I’m glad for the cover of darkness as I stand in my boxers. I’m also glad we agreed to leave our spouses behind. Except for Mark of course.

“No,” Kris yells from behind me. “You’ve gotta go all the way, man. Don’t make me come after you, pussy.”

“Yup,” I say. “I’m working up to it.”

I shed my boxers and quickly step down into the water. I’d forgotten how disturbing the mucky sludge of the pond bottom feels as it squishes between your toes. I plunge in just to get into deeper water. When I surface, I begin to tread water and watch as Jonah and Nicky make their way in. Jonah has a belly that seems incongruent with his dour nature. I wonder if it’s beer or food that he uses to escape. Nicky screams as she steps into the sludge, her boney arms flailing. If I squint, I can still see the pixie girl I used to know.

The three of us shiver and bob in the frigid water as we look to the shoreline where Mark lifts Kris from her chair. Even naked, he does this with the confidence that comes from years of loving practice. She clings to him as her legs, just a memory of what they once were, dangle as a doll’s legs. I feel my chest tighten and a lump rise in my throat as Mark wades carefully into the water with the woman he’s loved since he was fifteen. When Kris’s butt touches the water, she howls with throaty abandon, and her laughter bubbles over as it did all those years ago, echoing out across the pond and lifting us all in its buoyancy.

Share a Memory from Summers Past

Did this story make you remember a particular summer in your youth? If so, share it in the comments for the rest of us to enjoy.