Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [92]
“There it is,” he said. He pointed down.
This new ice was so smooth that it reminded me of the thick glass in the Shedd Aquarium, in Chicago. But instead of seeing a loggerhead turtle or a barracuda I looked through the ice and saw this abandoned car, this two-door Impala. It was wonderful to see—white-painted steel filtered by ice and lake water—and I wanted to laugh out of sheer happiness at the craziness of it. Dimly lit but still visible through the murk, it sat down there, its huge trunk and the sloping fins just a bit green in the algae-colored light. This is a joke, I thought, a practical joke meant to confuse the fish. I could see the car well enough to notice its radio antenna, and the windshield wipers halfway up the front window, and I could see the chrome of the front grille reflecting the dull light that ebbed down to it from where we were lying on our stomachs, ten feet above it.
“That is one unhappy automobile,” Stephanie said. “Did anyone get caught inside?”
“No,” I said, because no one had, and then my brother said, “Maybe.”
I looked at him quickly. As usual, he wasn’t looking back at me. “They aren’t sure yet,” he said. “They won’t be able to tell until they bring the tow truck out here and pull it up.”
Stephanie said, “Well, either they know or they don’t. Someone’s down there or not, right?”
Ben shook his head. “Maybe they don’t know. Maybe there’s a dead body in the backseat of that car. Or in the trunk.”
“Oh, no,” she said. She began to edge backward.
“I was just fooling you,” my brother said. “There’s nobody down there.”
“What?” She was behind the area where the ice was smooth, and she stood up.
“I was just teasing you,” Ben said. “The guy that was in the car got out. He got out through the window.”
“Why did you lie to me?” Stephanie asked. Her arms were crossed in front of her chest.
“I just wanted to give you a thrill,” he said. He stood up and walked over to where she was standing. He put his arm around her.
“I don’t mind normal,” she said. “Something could be normal and I’d like that, too.” She glanced at me. Then she whispered into my brother’s ear for about fifteen seconds, which is a long time if you’re watching. Ben nodded and bent forward and whispered something in return, but I swiveled and looked around the bay at all the houses on the shore, and the old amusement park in the distance. Lights were beginning to go on, and, as if that weren’t enough, it was snowing. As far as I was concerned, all those houses were guilty, both the houses and the people in them. The whole state of Michigan was guilty—all the adults, anyway—and I wanted to see them locked up.
“Wait here,” my brother said. He turned and went quickly off toward the shore of the bay.
“Where’s he going?” I asked.
“He’s going to get his car,” she said.
“What for?”
“He’s going to bring it out on the ice. Then he’s going to drive me home across the lake.”
“That’s really stupid!” I said. “That’s really one of the dumbest things I ever heard! You’ll go through the ice, just like that car down there did.”
“No, we won’t,” she said. “I know we won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Your brother understands this lake,” she said. “He knows where the pressure ridges are and everything. He just knows, Russell. You have to trust him. And he can always get off the ice if he thinks it’s not safe. He can always find a road.”
“Well, I’m not going with you,” I said. She nodded. I looked at her, and I wondered if she might be crazed with the bad judgment my parents had told me all teenagers had. Bad judgment of this kind was starting to interest me; it was a powerful antidote for boredom, which seemed worse.
“You don’t want to come?”
“No,” I said. “I’ll walk home.” I gazed up the hill, and in the distance I could see the lights of our house, a twenty-minute walk across the bay.
“Okay,” Stephanie said. “I didn’t think you’d want to come along.” We waited. “Russell, do you think your brother is interested in me?”
“I guess