Summer Shock

At the lake, my mother and father unpack the car, and I follow the chalky gravel drive to the water. My mother doesn’t yell at me to be careful. After so much time here, I know the lake well.

As I walk closer, waves form and break on the shore, foaming like confetti to welcome me. It bubbles and punctures the sand.

I’ve heard the locals call it summer shock. During their shoreline walks at sunrise and sunset, stepping mindfully over fish heads, or examining the remains from afar. It happens when the early summer heat causes the water to warm too quickly. The oxygen is extracted and the fish become stressed and suffocate.

My mother plugs her nose and peers out to where I am standing. She says something to my father, and he walks to her. He cups his hand over his eyes, his trusty pair of binoculars, and tries to capture me through the freshwater rot warping the air. I smile and wave amid the bony carcasses of lake life that couldn’t breathe through the shock, couldn’t swim far enough to escape it. They don’t wave back.

The cabin hasn’t been open since last summer when it was sealed up quickly and without care. Limescale coats the sink piled with dirty dishes. The glass carafe is permanently etched with stagnant coffee, dark as mud. Beds are unmade and dampened.

My mother gathers tiny game pieces and a pile of bent cards from the table and drops them into a cardboard box. She shakes open a garbage bag and looks around the kitchen, unsure whether to keep the scene forever intact or to discard it completely. She drops it to the floor and tells my father she’s too tired to cook. He suggests dinner in town.

At the diner, our arrival is announced by the bell above the door. A collective somber gaze is directed toward us. Faces of the locals show surprise at my parents’ return. They will talk about this for days. She was not watching, they will say. Those poor people, they will whisper.

“Lots of dead fish on the shore,” my father says to the young waitress who sways back and forth impatiently as he skims the menu.

An old man turns his stool away from the counter and sucks coffee tannins from the tips of his mustache. “You folks putting the place up for sale?”

“Not today,” my father says. He looks at my mother, and she pushes her untouched club sandwich away. I am relieved. My father smiles wide at the man, but the unavoidable quiver appears on his lips.

Back at the cabin, the fiery sun falls below the trees while the barn swallows skim the surface of the desolate water. Inside, my mother walks past my father who sleeps upright in the living room chair. The screen door slams hard. No sleeping babes will wake up.

She walks across the sand toward the shore. The bones, some delicate as strands of hair, bend and flatten under her feet while the stronger skeletal pieces pierce her skin. She spends time with the stronger bones, the jagged ones, pressing her soles hard into them, leaving bloody sand prints in her path.

She dives in and sand churns under her stomach as it grazes the bottom. I follow closely as she swims toward open water. She extends her arms and wades gracefully at the surface. Her fingers stroke the water the same way she used to run them through my hair. Her hands close around it, but water escapes through tiny gaps of her hands and down into the depth that holds lost things.

Erin Dawkins (she/her) is a Michigan-based writer. Her work has been published in Flash Fiction Magazine,Sky Island Journal, Blood + Honey, Mouthful of Salt, The Orange Rose, and Rivener Literary. Read more at https://www.erindawkins.com/.

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