Steeple
I wasn't at the lake last weekend, so I wrote a story about it.
[The lake referenced is loosely based on this one]
Steeple
Jacob had been minding his business, so he took offense when the church steeple floated by. It interrupted his morning unwelcomely. It was going to scare away all the fish.
Jacob set the fishing pole on the dock and got up, swinging his wet feet around so he could stand. The maneuver was getting more difficult as the years passed, but he could still manage it.
His feet made squishy smacking sounds as he walked along the L of the dock, the part that ran parallel to the shore. He watched the steeple float by, moved by the invisible current of man-made nature. The lake was actually just a river, barricaded by two old dams. While it looked placid, the water was actually moving south, slowly. The church steeple was moving with it.
It was not a large structure, just the highest point of a little old church. The cross remained, though, rotting. From his vantage point, Jacob couldn’t tell how far down in the water it went.
He took his keys and wallet out of his pocket and set them on the dock. He took off his shirt, folded it, and set it next to them. Getting in the water was harder now, too, but he could still manage it.
The water only came to his waist. He knew precisely where the drop off was, though. He was going to have to swim to catch the floating structure.
The chunk of church was slow. The power company wasn’t letting much water through the lower dam. It was easy to catch.
He negotiated his body around the object, accidentally grabbing ahold of the cross, which set them, man and structure, on a lugubrious spin. He got his hands repositioned on more solid wood, stopped the momentum, and started kicking toward shore.
Things were easier when he could touch the bottom of the lake again. He floated the cross toward the beach. Once it was no longer floating, Jacob gave it an extra push for safety and sat next to it.
He had inadvertently run the steeple aground next to a rotting fish carcass. He reached over to grab the corpse, slimy and smelly. It was largely intact, but not entirely. A dog must have gotten to it.
Jacob imagined some child shrieking and grabbing the dog’s collar, dragging it back. It would be a great trauma to the child, but the child would learn not to be afraid of the rotting things from the lake. It just took time. The child would forever be more cautious when walking barefoot along the beach. Maybe the child would decide walking along the beach was not for them. Maybe the child would start wearing shoes to the beach. Maybe the child would take the dock route to get into the water. Maybe the child would never get in the water again.
He threw the carcass back, so it could rot in peace underwater, not next to the chunk of church.
Jacob sat in the wet sand with his feet in the water. As the water came in rhythmically, the waves just reached his crotch before retreating, leaving mini rivers in the ground, sand falling on top of itself to follow the water away. Then new water came back.
He contemplated the steeple. This was the largest structure he had seen the lake excavate. He had seen windows, pieces of siding, a mailbox, once. Never something this substantial. He’d have to look at the map on the wall when he got back to the house. He’d need to identify where the church had been before the flooding.
You’d think the church would have been taken down first, before the water came. It seemed like someone would want to preserve some of it, at least the cross that was now a moldy, desiccated homage to nothing. It just seemed careless.
When the water rhythmically swatting his underside got annoying, he slowly raised himself up and walked to the dock. There used to be little wooden stairs to get from the sand to the dock, but that was many years ago, so he had to lift himself up. It was an awkward movement, accompanied by more back strain than it used to, but he could still manage it. He gathered his shirt, put his wallet and keys in his wet pocket, reeled in the fishing line, and walked back up to the house, watching his bare feet carefully, alert to snakes and dog shit.
He went to the back bedroom to find the map. It seemed ancient, but it wasn’t. The power company had distributed it before flooding the town, kind of a dick move if you asked Jacob. But it came in handy. The church was clearly marked. The corner of 2nd and Water Streets. Well, that’s not funny, Jacob thought, but he laughed anyway.
He went to the kitchen, where he had left his phone. He checked the time. 11:23. He had the whole day left. He plugged the charging cable into the phone. He had forgotten to plug it in when he went fishing this morning.
From the front window, he could see the steeple, its cross at a diagonal just high enough to be visible past the little cliff between the grass and the sand. The cliff used to be much more imposing, a steep wall strengthened by big flat rocks from the lake. The barrier had aged, and without its protection, the cliff had become more of a slope, earth moving in tiny rivers into the water.
The snorkeling gear was in a bedroom that was not the bedroom with the map. That was stupid, but it was what someone had decided at some point in the past.
He returned to the dock and unmoored his little aluminum row boat.
His landing site was upstream, on a small, forested island jutting up from the lake. The island was for locals, not tourists. The various still existing communities around the lake were drinking towns. Drinkers with houses nearby and drinkers who were visiting from college and drinkers who were friends of the college drinkers drank on the island. Tourists did not. They thought it was because the locals were dirty and low class, but it was really because the town under the water was too close. You couldn’t get too close to the town under the water unless you had some roots in the lake. The lake wouldn’t allow it.
You needed to have held a rotting fish in your hands to get close enough to access the drinking island.
Jacob wasn’t there to drink though, and it was too early in the day anyway. The drinkers were still sleeping, so he had the island to himself.
He rowed himself into the small alcove where he had driven a piece of rebar into the ground. He tied up the boat, took his snorkel and mask and stepped onto shore.
The island was always a few degrees cooler than the mainland. It was also wetter, greener, softer.
Jacob walked through the path in the woods, which was unmarked and undetectable. It was a path created by the bare feet of people who weren’t being careful where they walked. It had many branches if you knew where to look and the town under the water wanted you to know about them. Jacob’s destination lay at the end of one branch that went off to the right.
If you looked hard enough from the tiny beach, you could sometimes see where the water changed color. It became a darker blue than the surrounding blue. When the rest of the water turned green, that patch remained dark blue. When ice covered the lake, the dark lake blue remained, insisting upon being recognized through the white.
It was a hot day and the water was clear, or at least clearer than normal. Still, he couldn’t see the dark blue spot. The town under the water might be napping. That was fine.
He waded out into the water. He strapped on the snorkel. The drop-off was much closer to the shore on the island than by the house, so he was swimming very soon. He didn’t bother looking down yet, keeping his head above water, poor form, as he breast-stroked.
When he had gone far enough, he put the snorkel in his mouth and, floating face down, looked at the town under the lake.
It didn’t look like a town. It was difficult to identify streets or buildings under the slime and plant growth. If it liked you enough, though, it would guide you.
Water and 2nd, he told the town.
That’s not funny, the town replied.
Sorry. I didn’t build you.
He waited, but not too long, before a perch swam up to his mask. It looked judgmental, as if to tell him he needed to lose weight. It turned and swam away, and Jacob followed.
The perch waited while Jacob looked at the church. He immediately saw the problem. Someone had taken a motor boat where it didn’t belong and the prop had fallen off. He saw the prop clearly where it had landed after smashing into the church. He could see the break where the top of the steeple had snapped off, weakened by rot to the point that it could not withstand even a minor assault.
Looks like that hurt, he told the town.
Not too bad. I didn’t like that thing anyway.
Do you want it back?
No. Keep it.
When Jacob got back to the dock, he was hungry. The steeple had disrupted his fishing, so he had nothing to eat. He went back to the kitchen and opened the fridge. An unopened package of string cheese was the only thing other than condiments. That would work.
While he picked at the top of the cylinder of cheese, he wondered what his obligation was. The town under the water didn’t want the steeple back. There wasn’t any useful wood on it. No one in the above-water towns would want it. The historical society had turned down more intact objects in the past.
He’d have to sleep on it. He looked at his phone. 3:23. He took a nap on the couch. He looked at his phone, 4:45. He was still hungry.
He grabbed his keys and walked to his car, parked on the woods-side of the house, and went to the bar for fried fish and beer. He sat on the deck overlooking the lake. It was a solidly-built deck, recently repaired. From his table, he could see the dark blue spot on the water. He ate fish and drank beer until the blue from the town under the water matched the blue of the sky and slowly became imperceptible.
The next morning, he went to make some coffee. He looked out the kitchen window. The steeple was gone. Shit.
He ran to the dock, not watching his bare feet, and jumped down to the beach. He could see an indentation in the wet sand where he had grounded the steeple. But no steeple. He ran back to the house, grabbed the snorkel gear he had left on the kitchen table, and ran back to the dock, stepping on a pile of fresh dog shit. He ignored the dog shit on his foot as he ran to the row boat. His back hurt.
He skipped the island, letting the boat float when he reached the dark blue spot. He jumped in the water, holding the boat with his left hand and pulling on the snorkel with his right. He stuck his head underwater.
What gives? You said you didn’t want it!
I didn’t take it, the town under the water said.
So who did?
Are you serious? How would I know?
The perch from yesterday appeared, as if it had been cloaked, directly in front of his mask. It slapped the mask with its tail three times. The perch said, Are you drunk?
Jacob ignored it, resurfacing and resting his arms on the row boat. He took off the snorkel and dropped it in the boat.
He took a deep breath, let go of the boat, and shot in the direction of Water and 2nd, his back hurting less than it should.
The church was in the same wounded condition as yesterday. No steeple to be found. He swam through the gaping hole on the church’s roof, where a steeple once was.
An old woman sat on one of the rotting pews, her head bent in prayer. She faintly radiated blue.
As he swam toward her, she looked up at him.
“You don’t have to keep coming here, you know,” she said. “This isn’t a place anymore.”
He swam down and sat next to her. “I know.”
“My son worked for the power company.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Twenty years or so. He would have been there longer, but he had a heart attack.”
“I’m sorry.”
She turned to look at him. “Stop drinking.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you pray?”
“No.”
“Okay. You should do something, though.”
“I fish.”
“Yes, that works. You know, don’t worry about that steeple. I thought you might like it, but it isn’t important.”
“I’m sorry I lost it.”
“Someone else took it. It’s okay.”
“I wish I could do something for you, all of you.”
“Why? You should do something for yourself. We aren’t here.”
“Yeah.”
“Aren’t you running out of breath? Go home. We aren’t here.”
When Jacob got back to the dock, it was getting close to noon. He needed to eat real food, so he drove into town to shop for groceries.
He parked next to a Lexus with an Illinois license plate. As he got out of the car, he saw the rotting cross in the back seat of the fancy-ish car. He momentarily thought about smashing the window and reclaiming what was the lake’s. He stopped. If the historical society didn’t want it, why not let the tourist keep it?
He bought some perch at the store. That would work.