Free The Floatplane Notebooks by Clyde Edgerton

stories Rhonda hadn’t heard, and some I’d never heard either. It was great fun, joyous even—though this was all in the face of Meredith and Mark leaving—and as we zipped along through South Carolina we were all feeling relaxed and happy, and Thatcher told the story about the truck in the pond.

THATCHER
    I was going bass fishing. I heard them when I got down to the graveyard. They had the ski rope hooked to the back bumper of the truck. Mark was in the water about fifteen feet from shore, wearing a orange life vest, holding on to a handle at the end of the rope. Meredith was behind the steering wheel in the truck, up on the dam, holding his arm high out the window, racing the engine. He dropped his arm, popped the clutch, and that old truck started out—along the car path across the dam part there at the deep end of the pond. The back end of the truck swerved, and up comes Mark, skiing. I couldn’t imagine it all going so smooth, so I just decided I’d watch through the wisteria vine.
    Meredith drives the truck into the pond on Mark’s second or third time skiing. He was looking out the window, back over his shoulder at Mark, gas pedal on the floorboard it sounded like, when the truck left the car path. He looked back ahead to see where he was going, slammed on brakes—too late. The truck slid—all four wheels locked, sending up dust—nose first, down toward the water, splashed in and floated away from the bank like some kind of odd boat—like the floatplane. The engine choked off. Mark skied right past the truck and straight into the dam. At first I was just going to stand there and watch. I mean, I can see the sunlight reflecting off the chrome around the windshield, and everything all of a sudden real quiet. Meredith is sitting in the cab with the window down, his elbow on the window sill, not moving—like he had just pulled into a gas station. Then he said something, and looked down in the floorboard. I was too far away to hear.
    Great big bubbles start to belch up around the truck. It starts sinking, tilting forward fast.
    I come out from behind the vine. “Get out, Meredith!” I say. “It’s sinking! Get out!”
    Water is halfway up the door. I start running down the bank as fast as I can, getting shed of my shoes and pants. I dive in and start swimming as fast as I can with my head out, watching. He opens the door. Water swirls through the crack, pushing the door back against him. Water is up to the window bottom.
    â€œCome out through the window!” I yell.
    He turns his face and chest upward, and starts sliding out through the open window with his hands on top of the cab. Then the water covers up his head. The cab is almost out of sight—you can only see the flat top, at water level. Meredith’s hands sort of grabbed across the top of the cab at the same time water moved over it, kind of like a wave running over a sandy beach. I had
finally
got there. I grabbed at him,found an elbow. He surfaces, hits me in the chin with the top of his head, and scrambles up onto the top of the truck, which was about a foot under water. He kneeled on his hands and knees as the cab sunk on down, and said, right in my face, “I had to wait.” His hair was flat and shiny, water dripping from his nose. “Did you see how I waited?” He stood on the cab, waved his arms to keep his balance, fell backwards into the water and then swam to shore. I swam behind him.
    We sat on the bank, breathing hard.
    â€œI didn’t think you’d ever get out of there,” Mark said.
    â€œWhat took you so long?” I said.
    He looked at me. “What?”
    â€œWhat took you so long?”
    Then he slapped me across the side of my head with his open hand. Little Meredith. It stung and made me deaf in that ear for a minute. He stood and started walking toward home.
    I stood up and followed him, grabbed him and turned him around. I