It had rained earlier. The rough, broken rocks of the beach were stained dark greens and browns as the two men in bright jackets picked their way through them, eyes fixed on the ground. The July air was still humid, despite the rain and everything that was spoken between the two men had to be spoken above the roar of the big dam beyond the edge of the lake. The two men in bright jackets did little speaking though. It had been a long drive up into the north woods and fairly damp in the tent the night before. Driving up the radio had been good company, and when the last channel faded into static they simply rolled down the windows and let the heavy July air rip through the car like a sheet. It wasn’t a hostile silence, but a comfortable, shared silence of two people who have done most of their talking already. It had been this way for the two of them for quite some time. They had been friends intermittently since childhood, but the kind of friends who often pass years between seeing each other.
It was Frank’s friends cabin that they were staying at, on the large lake, whose father had built it shortly after the lake was made. He had anticipated a spike in development that never came, and had bequeathed it to his son twenty years later, after taking his own life. This was something that Frank knew little about, though as his friend shared in his father’s disposition towards silence and distance. It had been Frank’s idea to retreat to the cabin.
“Find something, Frank?” said Frank’s friend, who wore his large yellow jacket unzipped.
“Yeah,” Frank replied holding up a small oblong stone, “What do you think that is? Scales or something?”
The man in yellow looked at the stone, turning it slowly over in his hand and brushing dirt off it with his thick thumb. “Yeah, looks like scales or something,” he said.
“You think it was from a lizard?”
“Nah. Fish,” said the man in yellow, gesturing with his hand, “All this was under water back then.”
“The lake?” his companion said taking in the old growth that surrounded them.
“Nope, a big sea. The whole state was covered, maybe even the whole east coast.”
“Damn.”
The man in yellow shifted his weight slightly as he scanned the stones. His hip had been bothering him for the whole trip up but he wasn’t one to complain. He flipped a couple stones over and let them clatter off each other before selecting another for more careful inspection. Frank stood above him straining his eyes at a speck moving with some rapidity on the opposite side of the lake.
“Moose,” Frank said, pointing.
“Really?” the man in yellow said, not looking up.
“Yep. Full rack too.”
“Huh.”
The moose emerged from the lake and shook itself slightly. Smelling the two men on the wind, it turned its massive head towards them. For a minute the man in red and the ungainly animal stared into each other’s eyes across the deep lake. He dropped his hand to his side and gazed deeply as the bull slipped quietly into the wall of pines. In it’s absence he was left with an ancient feeling of emptiness that settled into the back of his throat. The moose was gone. Vanished. Even the ripples it made in the lake had dissipated.
The man in yellow slipped the fossil-rock into his pocket and muttering to himself wiped his hand before starting off down the beach again. The man in red was slow to follow.
“Getting towards supper,” he said, finally catching up to his companion.
“We’ll eat soon,” the man in yellow stooped down to examine another rock, before placing it in his pocket.
“Thanks for bringing me out here. It’s good to get out of town.”
“It’s good to have you here.”
“Jackie never did let me get out much with you when we were together.”
“Don’t talk about Jackie now, Frank,” the man in yellow looked up at him briefly, before returning his head to the rocks.
“No. No. It’s fine. I was just saying. She didn’t let me out much. It’s nice to be out.”
“It is nice to be out. Here take a look at this one.”
Frank took the rock from his friend and looked it over. There was a long conical impression that sunk diagonally into the muddy rock with flecks of small white circles around it. “Looks like barnacles,” Frank said.
“Yeah, and a nice shell in the middle too.”
“Yeah, yeah. She’s a beauty, Rick.”
“That’s why I like coming up here. They’re just lying around.”
“How old do you think these are?”
“Oh I don’t know. Devonian, Cambrian, something like a few hundred million years old,” Rick wiped his hands on his jeans and grunted as he stood back up. “I’ve got a map back at home that’d tell me.”
“You’re good at this.”
“Nah. I’m not that good. It’s just a hobby. Something I like doing.”
“Well I’ll have to be getting myself a hobby now too, I guess.”
Rick stopped for a second and looked back at Frank, who was looking in the direction of the dam and seemed a bit happier than he had just been. Rick’s windbreaker was heavy with rocks by this point and when he stepped across the stones they clacked together softly.
“Do you brush them, clean them, when you get them home?”
“Yeah. Mostly I just wash them. Keep them around the apartment.”
“Must be running out of space.”
“Yeah. At this point I am.”
“Good thing you don’t have a woman around to complain about all the rocks, then. That’s all she’d be doing, complaining.”
“Yeah, Frank. It’s a good thing,” Rick picked up a rock covered in little seashell fossils and tossed it aside. “I think it’s about time we ate.”
They opened up the back of Rick’s blue Subaru hatchback and sat on the bumper with their sandwiches and a bottle of water between them. The back of the car faced the bridge that went across the length of the dam. The grey steel and asphalt stuck out against the surrounding greenery. On the far side, a huge line of power cables cut a path up the side of the valley.
“Where do you think that power goes?” Frank asked between bites of bologna.
“Don’t know.”
“I wonder how much power they get out of that dam.”
“Probably a lot. They needed a lot of manpower to build it.”
“That’s true.”
“Flooded the whole valley.”
“You suppose anyone lived up here before then?”
“Frank, nobody even lives up here now.”
“Yeah. I guess that’s true.”
“Only person lives up here is in that little brick building over there to supervise the dam.”
“Now that’d be the job for you, Rick. You could spend all day looking for fossils up here. Just as long as the dam was running smooth.”
Rick and Frank shared a laugh before settling in to another silence. They watched as a pair of turkey vultures circled upwards into the slate grey sky. Rick had brought some juice for himself and sipped from the bottle. Frank finished his sandwich and pulled out a cigarette.
“Smoke?” he offered.
“Nah. Thanks.”
“Good for you,” Frank dipped his head and cupped a match. Rick sipped some more apple juice and winced as he re-adjusted his seating on the bumper of the car. The roar of the dam was calming. Rick swatted at a mosquito together they both gazed long at the dam and the man-made lake.
“In Tennessee, you know, they had dams that built up and flooded valleys where people were living,” Frank said, brushing ash from his windbreaker. “Whole towns went under.”
“Yeah. They cleared them out though. The folks knew the dams were being built.”
“But just imagine. Your whole life, underwater, gone, stuck at the bottom of some lake somewhere. Some completely different world.”
“People survived.”
“Yeah. I guess they did.”
“Everyone’s good at starting over if they have to.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean look at you. You’re starting over.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re alive. You’re still living.”
“That’s good, Rick.”
“I don’t know. I’m just saying. You had it. That’s good.”
“Yeah. That’s good.”
