Terminal Wake: Stories of a boy 1979-1991: Aviary Hill, #0

By Chris M. Vise

This book is a funeral for a time, place, family and one boy's childhood. Not all funerals are sad, some are celebrations. Terminal Wake is a fictional collection of twenty-three stories inspired from actual events from a boyhood in the rural American South between the end of the disco laden seventies to the beginning of the nineties. These are stories written with compassion and humor about love, betrayals, abuse, tragedies and spirits that go bump in the night.

 

They are written from the perspective of a boy, a different kind of boy that was considered gifted and he was gay in a place and era that was not always as accepting. The primary setting is Paulding County, Georgia on the outskirts of Atlanta before the sprawl captured it like kudzu. It was just as unique as the boy, filled with eccentric, outspoken, strange and sometimes dangerous characters in the rolling hills and forests between Pumpkinvine Creek and the red dirt roads. The dysfunctional family at the center of it may or may not resemble yours.

 

These are new stories not contained in my novel, Dweller On The Boundary. Many of the same characters from that book inhabit this one too with just as much high strangeness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chris M. Vise
• Release date: Apr 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224634958

Chris M. Vise

Chris M. Vise was born and raised in New Hope, Georgia. He has lived in Louisville, Kentucky and Atlanta since leaving the hill of his childhood, though it never left his heart. He currently lives in Georgia with his partner. Nature remains a large influence in his life whether it is a beach, a desert or a trail through the deep woods. Chess, photography and gardening are hobbies he enjoys to this day. Chris has appeared on radio stations from New York to Los Angeles during his broadcasting career. Dweller On The Boundary is his debut novel.   Other books by Chris M. Vise include his first novel Dweller On The Boundary, second novel Uncivil X and his third upcoming novel to be published in the summer of 2024.

Book preview

Cracks

1979

Age 6

Isaw cracks and I heard them too. The cracks began as small fractures and grew in width and length until the emptiness was more vast than what was whole. I did not understand them, but I noted their appearance. Sometimes the cracks came from the sky and my mother told me not to worry that it was thunder. Sometimes the cracks were closer to home and my mother cried.

Next week it is expected that the space station Skylab will crash into the Earth's atmosphere. Scientists at NASA say that it will burn up and small fragments may reach the surface, but they say that those fragments will land in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia; posing no threat to people, the announcer said on Z-93.

I ate my oatmeal and raisins at the concrete picnic table. My back was to the blinding sun shimmering off Lake Allatoona behind me. It was just making its way through the trees into our cove.

Will the space station crash here, I asked my mother sitting next to me.

No honey, don't worry. It's one of those things the news people talk to death about. They've moved on from that nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island. They'll talk about the space station until they find a new story.

Australia has threatened the United States for littering if it crashes there, a man with a deep voice said through the radio.

Woodsy Owl says 'give a hoot, don't pollute,' you know that momma? I made owl sounds. I liked owls. They were more funny than that big yellow bird on television that had a voice that sounded like it spoke through a pinched nose.

That's why we always pick up after ourselves, don't leave a mess and put the lid back on the trashcan, she said.

My mother turned the volume down and we continued eating. Across the table from us was yesterday's unfinished game of checkers. I wore a shirt with a golden anchor on it that was stitched over my heart and a hat with a sailboat in the center. My mother had taken to dressing me in nautical clothes. She loved the water and she loved me. I was a momma's boy, her creation and she designed me. I had no choice, but to love the water as much as she did.

Noah was my ten year old brother. His curly haired head slept in a tent next to our camper. He was a creature of the night that stayed up late and crawled from his cot to have breakfast by himself. He was to turn eleven in a couple of months and I was to join him at the same elementary school that fall. That was all we had in common as we were so different. He focused on a world that I did not see. At home, he looked at insects under a microscope and fidgeted with slides until past bedtime. At the lake, he talked about fish every second and stood on the banks late into the night reeling them in and then letting them go. It seemed silly to me. He saw by the stars and lived by the night songs of the crickets when the darkness made the world narrow and small.

I rose by sun and my father leaving for work in the morning to build airplanes. What I saw of the world was that it was big as the open sky over the water. The sky and the water were mirrors and whatever I could dream seemed possible between them. They made movies about outer space and aliens and that space station was falling - that was big. I liked the daylight, the brightness that was in my mother's blue eyes and mine too. The world was fresh in the morning even on the rainy days when I had puddles to splash through. There was no limit to what I thought over bowls of my favorite lime sherbet.

Don't go out too far, Chrisser Michael, my mother called from behind me. My real name was Christopher Michael Rhodes, all the other people except my mother called me Chris. I'll come out and swim with you in a little bit.

Okay, momma, I yelled back and stared at the flat lake. The boats and wind had not made the water choppy yet.

My mother was off for the summer. She was to start a new job the same day I began first grade. She said that a change was coming. I thought she meant the end of summer or a rainbow after a storm. I did not care what came, I cared about now and swimming. School was as far away as that space station up there and my brother in his tent.

This was our time alone, but separate as two books next to each other on a bookshelf. We could be together and not be together. We knew each other was there, but we did not have to speak. It was that way and never any other. Perhaps I never left her body or was not born and was a creation of her imagination. I was a character in her mind, but then I was finding that I was a character in my own life that got in trouble, cried when I was stung by yellowjackets and could have a world that was not about her. I was leaving her story and beginning mine, our stories were parallel. She wrote paragraphs of my story and I wrote sentences in some of hers. I could escape her blue eyes that were like mine, but the strings sewn between our hearts were as strong as her rope around my waist. The crack between us on the shelf was narrow and invisible to her, but I felt it.

I was not allowed to swim across the cove or behind the boat and I played near the shore. I liked to skip rocks and play with my plastic sharks I got in Daytona Beach.

Noah had said to me, sharks live in the ocean you dumbo.

My sharks liked fresh water. They swam in the lake and the bathtub. They liked plastic too. Their favorite food was eating my plastic green army men.

Momma told me my sharks were different and could swim anywhere they liked, I had replied.

Everything with you is different, he had said and walked off.

The sharks ate my plastic boats that morning and my mother sat by the fire circle in a chaise lounge reading The Cement Garden.

Every week day was the same at the lake. I swam in the morning, played, napped in the hammock, swam again, had dinner and a boat ride with my family at sunset for dessert.

We went on a boat ride to Red Top Mountain and the dam, where the lake became wider and deeper. The sun folded itself up into the surrounding hills, swaths of clouds and the remaining light reflected back in the water. The water came alive as the daylight faded with Neapolitan ice cream colored currents. The lake was a cracked open eye behind our boat by the waves and wake.

We watched the last of the light as we idled in the water. The water was deep here at over one hundred and forty-five feet. At other places in the lake we climbed down the rear ladder and swam, but not here. There were too many boats passing and that water, which was the deepest and darkest, was scary.

My father attached the boat's light wand to the rear and turned on the red and blue light on the nose. I called that light The Rudolph Light.

There's an old town below us, my father said.

Really? Is that true momma, Noah asked.

My mother shrugged her shoulders and said, I think so.

You see that dam boys?  My father pointed and our eyes followed his finger toward the concrete dam that looked like a fortress. Before they built that and flooded all this, there was a town called Allatoona.

Is that why the lake is called Allatoona? I asked and tightened the strap on my life vest.

Yep. What's below us is actually hills, fields, old roads and they say there are even a few of the houses down at the very bottom.

What about the people? Are they still down there?

Stupid, of course not. They'd drown. How could they live underwater? Noah looked down into the water and back at my father unsure of his own words.

Maybe they're different. They are part fish like Aquaman, I said.

That's not real. He's a comic book character.

Water began to splash against the side of the boat and then into it. My father had a scared look on his face and my mother seemed surprised.

Oh no, my father yelled.

What, what is it? Noah asked and stood up.

I was in the nose of the boat alone and my hand gripped the railing tighter.

More water splashed into the boat, a slapping noise came from the water and there was a thud against the side.

I think it's coming, my father yelled and looked down into the water. Oh, it's got me. Help.

Noah jumped across the boat to my father. My grip increased to two hands on the railing. Noah peered over the side of the boat and then something came out of the water. It was white, long, shiny and flexible. It had my father.

Whoooowahh, whoooowahh, he yelled and attacked my brother. It was one of our ski belts that he was shaking into the air.

Noah's hands went to his face and my father rubbed the squiggly ski belt all over his body. He was petrified for a few seconds before he realized that my father had played another one of his jokes on us.

Daddy, Noah screamed.

My mother laughed and said, he got you.

Did you pee on yourself Noah? I asked and wiped my bangs from my eyes.

No, of course not.

I think you did, my father said.

Few boats were on the water at night. The surface was slick like hard candy. My father went faster at night and the wind from our movement made it colder. I did not like riding at night. I got down in the floor of the nose and felt the hard as concrete water beating and bumping underneath. I was certain it was a monster or the underwater people trying to sink us. The stars, there were so many, streaked by like snow sliding across the big sky. I closed my eyes and could still see them. We flew by the falling space station and across the universe at warp speed.

I knew we were coming back to our cove by the sound and the nose of the boat coming down from the air and settling back into the water. The sound of the boat changed pitch from high to low and water splashed on the sides that sounded like water shooting out of the end of a water hose.

The Rudolph Light pointed at our campsite and we had safely landed.

My parents and I sat around the campfire and my brother bounced by toting a kerosene lantern. He was going fishing for carp. I caught sight of him as the firelight brushed across him and he vanished into a black curtain. I curled up with a blanket in a webbed lounge chair. Sparks were whisked upward to dance with the lightning bugs. The crickets, that my brother had not caught for bait, sang. They were so loud that they seemed to have crawled inside my ears with the pops and cracks of the fire. Their song rose and fell in undulations from every direction and I felt their vibrations. My heart slowed, I breathed in the night and closed my eyes. I felt nothing until my mother's arms slid underneath my legs and neck. My eyes opened and she was over me.

Sweet dreams, Chrisser Michael, she said.

My eyes closed again and I floated. I was in the water with plastic sharks. I was in the air with sparks, lightning bugs and the moon with a space station silhouetted against it.

I had a bed in the camper to myself that I shared with my brother until this year. My parents slept in a bed behind a curtain on the opposite end. I only slept together with my brother in hotels otherwise we had our own rooms at home and different worlds. That was a crack that I felt. He no longer kicked me in bed and no longer stole all the blankets to wrap himself in a cocoon. He wiggled like the worms he stabbed with hooks.

I awoke. The light was dim and silver, the color of the carp my brother caught. My mother was asleep and my father had left for work.

The air stuck to my bare skin like tape. The water and sky were indistinguishable from each other, small waves rolled onto the red bank and sucked at my toes. I was in the water to my ankles and I was not supposed to be there without someone watching me.

Morning at the lake smelled like last night's fire, oatmeal with raisins, coconut sun cream and my mother's coffee. I only smelled the fire.

When I heard the voice, I never heard it aloud. I felt the voice come from the water. It felt at times like it was in my ears with the crickets. Sometimes the voice was a feeling like a rope around my waist that tried to pull me deeper, further from shore and my mother.

The first time I felt the voice was in Daytona. My mother and I sat on the hotel balcony at night looking  at the dark water that went forever. The more I looked at the water the more the voice vibrated and wanted to pull me off the balcony and into it. It tugged me at the waist and I was scared. I told my mother and she said not to worry that she would protect me from the deep water.

I bent at the knees and ran my hand over the soft lake water. I wanted to go deeper and I did. I went up to my knees. Small bream and minnows watched me like I was bait. There was a tug on the invisible rope around my waist and I stepped forward causing a spume of underwater mud clouds to rise. Small ripples rolled by and something jumped in the middle of the cove. Waves licked the banks and slapped the underside of the boat making a sound that was similar to horse hoofs clip clopping on bricks.

The voice and my mother were in a tug of war over me. The voice of the deep water called.

I stepped back and retreated to the bank.

Christopher Michael Rhodes, what are you doing down there, my mother yelled.

The runaway space station, Skylab, plummeted into the Indian Ocean yesterday. Most of the station, the size of a three bedroom house, burned up in the Earth's atmosphere, but pieces did rain from the sky and land in Australia. No one on the ground was injured, the radio news anchor said.

Static crackled on the radio and my mother turned it off. A bruise the color of the evening sky was on her arm.

Must be a storm coming to cause the interference, she said.

After breakfast I went out to swim with a raft. I went out far enough so that I could not touch the muddy bottom of the lake. I did not like touching the bottom, it was cold and squishy like something dead. The water was the sweetest and warmest thing I knew next to my mother. It was as much home to me as my wooded hill in New Hope. I wanted to go deeper. The thought came to me as the crickets sat in my ears and chirped. The thought, unlike water in the ears would not drain. It resided inside me. It called me deeper. I thought maybe it was the people from the flooded town that wanted me to join them.

I laid on my back atop the raft. The morning sun was scorching and the sunshine sprinkled itself across the water like blinking stars. I thought about my dogs and my cats at home. Paw Paw Avis fed them while we were away. He checked our mail and brought it to us. He came after work on Tuesday to visit. We sat at the picnic table while I finished a slice of watermelon. He talked more when my grandmother was not with him and seemed to smile like he was a boy too.

A voice in the water called to me, come deeper.

I opened my eyes, but I was sun blind. The glare off the water disoriented me and I squinted against it like when the scary parts of a movie came.

Come out, the voice said again.

I rolled over onto my stomach and scanned the surface of the water. There was a tug at the end of my raft by my feet. I jerked upright, lost my balance and fell into the water. The warm water swallowed me and I swallowed it. I spit and wiped my eyes. The raft was within reach and I grabbed it. I pulled myself up and I saw the voice.

I didn't mean to scare you, my mother said. You looked like you were about to fall asleep, so I swam out to check on you.

You told me not to go too far, I said.

That's right.

But momma you just told me to go deeper, I said.

She looked puzzled and said, no, you must be hearing things.

How could I hear things?

Chrisser, I did not say anything. I swam out here, touched the raft and you fell off.

But you did.

Okay, hang on tight and I'm going to pull you back to shore. It's getting close to lunchtime.

After lunch I laid in the hammock and watched my brother fish.

I saw the lightning crack the sky and then the thunder broke through the July afternoon heat. The ground shook. A storm sat on the opposite shore of the lake behind Allatoona Landing. It came from the direction of our house that was thirty minutes away. A gust of wind blew across the water and my stick straight brown hair turned blonde by the summer sun stood on its end. Chill bumps raised on my tanned arms. I tied my beach towel that was a Joker playing card around my neck like a cape.

Get away from the water and come inside, my mother shouted at us.

My mother and I colored together in my coloring books as the rain smothered the world outside. Noah fiddled with the radio.

Can fish talk, I asked my mother.

They can, my brother said. They tell me to catch them.

My mother looked at Noah and then back to me and said, no, that's only in cartoons and tuna commercials.

Then who is talking to me in the water, I asked.

What do you mean honey?

I heard something calling me out into the deep water.

Don't be silly. Maybe it was your brother playing tricks on you like your daddy plays jokes.

I kept my eyes fixed on her and said, he was sleeping when I heard it.

Okay, then I was the one talking to you this morning in the water. You're getting it mixed up somehow.

Maybe it was her. She was the voice I heard when I woke up every morning, almost all day and the last voice I heard at night telling me to have sweet dreams.

Am I dreaming and don't know?

She bit her lower lip and said, hmm, I suppose you could be. It's not something you should worry about. Stay out of the deep water like I've told you.

That night in the camper I heard my parents talking.

I think Chris is developing an imaginary friend, my mother said to my father.

A what? My father seemed annoyed, especially when the conversation was about me.

Oh, he's been telling me that someone is talking to him and telling him to go into the deep water.

He better not be doing that. Aren't you watching him?

Of course I am. He never leaves my sight except when he goes to the pump at the top of the hill to fetch water. I think he's getting bored here by not having any friends to play with like he does at home, so he's invented one.

Noah is here.

Yeah, but if you haven't noticed Noah is outgrowing Chris and they are starting to become interested in different things. Noah is fishing all the time and Chris swims, plays checkers at the picnic table, plays with his toy sharks and colors.

Tell Noah to give him more attention.

That isn't going to work, the age difference is too much now. I suppose I'll just see if he keeps talking about hearing a voice in the water.

Well, has he said he talks back to this voice in the water?

No and I haven't seen him talking to anybody. It's probably just a phase.

On weekends we spent more time in the boat. My parents took turns skiing and my brother and I were lookouts for when they fell. They pulled us too in a tractor tire inner tube and a heavy plastic board we could stand on that was the width of two surf boards.

My mother drove the boat as often as my father. I preferred her as the spotter when I was in the water. I trusted her eyes more than I trusted my father's. She never took her eyes off me and yelled for the boat to turn around as soon as I let go or fell.

Today my brother sat in the nose of the boat and my father was in the rear to spot for me. We were in the deep water of the main channel. I wore a bright orange life vest and was a good swimmer. The deep water scared me. Swimming in the deep water from the boat to the board was the worst part. The water was always warm in the shallow cove I swam in at the campsite. In the channel the water was dark and deep with unpredictable cold pockets. I hated when my toes dipped down far enough to enter one. I thought a dead person from the underwater town had grabbed me. I jerked my legs up and dog paddled the rest of the way. Panting with my mouth just above the water I followed the ski rope out to the board that was only sometimes visible in the choppy water.

I laid on the board and held onto the handle attached to it. I was hesitant to stand on it that Saturday. The wake of the boats made the water rough. The water sloshed over the nose of the board. I could not keep my eyes open for more than a second and my mouth filled as soon as I opened it.

I listened to instructions when they came from my mother. I heard the words in my head that she said to me every time I was in the water behind the boat.

Just let go of the rope, she had said. We'll see you. Stay where you are, don't swim off and we will circle back and pick you up right away. Just let go and stay calm.

I could not see or breathe and my hands hurt. My grip slipped and my last three fingers strained. I saw my brother and father talking and my mother behind the controls. I saw water and all I heard was water splashing past my ears like I was inside a washing machine.

I let go.

The momentum carried me for a bit in a veil of water over my head. The sky was blue and white the same as the water. I stopped moving and the boat did not.

I tread water and waited for the boat to turn as I bobbed up and down. I caught glimpses of the boat going away in the water. It never took this long for the boat to stop before. I saw the back of my father's head.

A large cabin cruiser plowed by and the waves broke my direction. I went up the first wave and down into the trough then back up again and through the next wave. More water went up my nose and in my mouth than air and I was down in the trough again. The water was filled with the waves making cracks and the cold water up welled from below to swallow me. I was in a cold pocket. Every person from the underwater town was underneath me and climbing up my body. I remembered the instructions not to swim away and wait for the boat, that it would come back. My legs cramped in the cold and I tried to pull them up like anchors to float on the surface, but I could not. My legs dangled and the underwater people had me.

A stream of bubbles surfaced next to me. I felt the voice of the deep water say, go under.

It was water in all directions. The shore was too far away. If I swam for it a boat would run over me. There was a channel marker closer than anything else near. I closed my eyes between the waves and was about to swim for it when I heard the bow of the boat crashing through the water in my direction. My brother was at the silver rails of the nose looking for me. His shaggy hair flopped from the wind and the wake.

There he is, Noah yelled and pointed at me.

The boat stopped and my father said over the side, swim around to the back.

The boat rocked side to side in the wake of other boats. I had to be careful not to go under it or get hit in the head when boat traffic was heavy. I dragged myself through the water to the ladder. I grabbed hold and my father pulled me up the rest of the way.

My mother said to my father, you were supposed to be keeping a close eye on him.

My father held up his hands like he held up the world.

You take over the boat, she said, came over and put