It was a lonesome day and Francis, who worked nights, decided to go to Bare-Ass beach to swim and sun-bathe. He made some calls, but, predictably, everyone was at work. So he put a towel, sunscreen, sandals, and bathing trunks in a grocery sack and drove to the park. A chain of small lakes was hidden amidst wooded hills, probably the remnants of a glacial moraine, and the links of the city golf course were wrapped around the thickets and groves enclosing the water. The flat, blue skyline of the city hovered over the green landscape, shimmering in the heat. Tall, ornate thunder clouds reached up into the humid air, dark at their bases but gleaming white high overhead.
Francis knew that kids who wanted to play a half-dozen holes for free sometimes snuck onto the course around the 12th tee and, so, there were paths through the glade of trees lining the fairway near that place. Francis parked his old car on the shoulder of the lane running along the park boundary. Carrying the paper sack, he followed a path through the woods to the tall-grass rough along the green, undulating fairway. The shaded brush under the trees was peppered with lost golf balls. A few birds sang in the green gloom and insects hummed in the air.
A foursome of middle-aged ladies in white culottes were playing at the hole and a solitary man grunting under the weight of his golf clubs, hiking the course, was behind them. Francis strolled across the fairway. The women were clustered around their golf-carts at the hole by the green beyond the dog-leg. The solitary man found his ball and hit it in Francis’ direction. The humidity and warmth played tricks with sound. The crack of the club-head against the golf ball sounded muffled, as if underwater, but the cries of the women at the green two-hundred yards away resounded crisp and clear in the air.
Beyond the fairway, rounded knolls concealed the lakes, natural-looking now, but probably water-filled gravel pits from long ago when the blue-grey range of skyscrapers had been built. Francis followed a broad path through the woods to the hilltop, a place where kids had lit bonfires and trampled down the grass to make a dank clearing around a burn-pit. The trail, then, dropped to the small lakes cradled in the hills.
From the hillside, Francis saw that some people were floating on air-mattresses off Hidden Beach. The sandy shore on the nearby pond was empty. This was Bare-Ass Beach.
When he reached the water, Francis removed his tennis shoes and socks, took off the rest of his clothes, and, then, since no one was around, put on his swimming trunks. Since the beach was deserted at least as far as he could see, there was no reason to be naked. Kids said that perverts hid in the brush around Bare-Ass Beach spying on the bathers and, of course, there was always the risk that a patrol of cops might ambush you. A sign posted next to the water read “No Lifeguard on-duty. Swim at your own RISK!” Francis lathered his chest, shoulders, and upper arms with sunscreen, spread his towel on the sand, and rested on his back near the edge of the water. It was still except for the water rippling against the sand.
The warmth and humidity made him weary and, after a half-hour, he fell asleep. The sound of a radio woke him. Pillars of cloud stood above the green banks of brush and trees. The radio seemed very near by, buzzing at him from within the woods. The sound was tinny: Top 40 pop songs, now and then, interrupted by a DJ with a shrill, insistent voice. The DJ said that he was “your friend to the end” and that it was a fine day to be out and about although there was some risk of “thunder-bummers.” Because the radio meant that another bather or bathers were at the beach, hidden somewhere in the green shadows, Francis peeled off his bathing trunks.
The music continued and, then, the announcer’s voice, an irritating, over-inflected rant, sounded once more. Francis sat up and looked around, scanning the edge of the water, the fibrous reeds filling in the shallows, the expanse of mud across the water where a couple of pale dead fish were rotting, the dirty-looking sand skirt along the lake-side littered with fast-food sacks and a couple of beer cans strewn on the grass. No doubt the eyes of concealed perverts were surveying him, but he saw nothing. The brush blurred for a moment with motion and, then, a deer emerged from the gloom, sniffing at the air before darting away. The radio continued to play, breaking the calm.
Where was the sound coming from? Francis stood up and walked a few yards down the sandy, trampled beach. Perhaps, if he changed his position, the person with the radio would come into sight. But no one was around. The water was empty, lit by scales of sunbeam, and the forest enclosing the lake seemed deserted.
The DJ said that it was a perfect day except for “a few thunderbummers.” The radio must have been a small transistor device. The DJ’s voice was loud enough and clear but the music that he played was muted and sounded indistinct and Francis had trouble identifying the tunes.
Francis slid into his sandals and decided to explore the fringe of the woods. Someone was breaking the peace at Bare-Ass Beach and Francis wanted to see who it was. The trees around the lake interlocked at their tops and it was dim in woods. The air smelled musty like a wet basement. Ankle-deep plants lapped up against the brown tree-trunks. The plants had greasy green leaves, three to a stem, and they brushed up against Francis’ ankles and calves. He explored the moist-looking dim corridors between the trees. The sound of the radio was like a will-o-wisp. It led him here and there in the woods, but never allowed him to come close enough to glimpse the person with the device. At last, Francis concluded that the sound of the radio was some kind of aural mirage, perhaps, music coming from one of the other lakes, maybe Hidden Beach, and somehow amplified and transmitted by the lens of humidity hovering over the earth. It was futile to look for the source of the sound. Sometimes, killers concealed themselves in the dark forest around the lakes and, Francis thought, that he would probably stumble across a corpse decaying the leaf-litter and knee-high brush. The idea was unsettling and, so, he decided to give up his search and return to the beach. But, for a moment, he was confused by the trees and the rustling green shadows and forged ahead in the wrong direction. Some big, mossy boulders rested in the lea of a hill. He had gone the wrong way. Francis turned around and waded back through the greasy-looking green ivy, but again found himself blocked by a fallen tree ahead of him; some fat yellow spiders were dangling from webs under the dead tree. Suddenly, a surge of panic made him run and he charged through the brush, tripping over a root and falling face first in the ivy. He rested there a moment, naked and panting. Then, he got to his feet, changed direction and a couple minutes later was back by his towel and grocery bag on the beach.
In the few minutes that he was lost, the sound of the radio ceased. It was now completely still as if the air itself were holding its breath. A grey shadow fell across the little lake and, very far way, thunder said something.
No one was around and, so, Francis put on his bathing trunks again. The shadow lifted and it was oppressively hot. Francis felt his feet and ankles tingling. On another lake, a loon cackled at him malevolently. The loon’s cry sounded close at hand. It was some sort of audio illusion.
Francis was assigned the factory shift that began at eleven p.m. It was best to go home and get some rest before work. His feet and ankles felt warm and his skin seemed slightly abraded. As he was crossing the golf course on the way to his car, lightning flashed and a hard rain fell.
