Cracked Slide

by Brandi Lynch

The sun was warm, easing the chill of the breeze as I walked along street after street, following my bus route to Crystal Lake. As I approached the fishing pier covered in gull droppings, I felt a thrill in my fourteen-year-old heart. Jacob sat on the wooden railing, seventeen, the breeze teasing his blond hair, the bright January sun creating an aura around him as it reflected off of his hooded white shirt. At that moment, I thought he was beautiful, sitting there in his worn-out jeans and his scuffed-up combat boots, staring across the water as he waited for me.

When I first came to Lakeland in December of 1995, there were two guys in the choir class that caught my attention. The first was Paul, who I fell hopelessly in love with. The second was Jacob. I found that I liked him instantly. He was the shy guy, always quietly smiling as if he knew something we didn't. We only lived four miles from each other, so we split the distance and met at Crystal Lake.

We left our designated meeting spot and headed back to the little community of duplexes where I lived. Stopping briefly by my house, I introduced him to my mom and step-dad, and then Jacob and I continued our stroll. We walked through the duplex community, through another community of houses separated from mine by a tall wooden fence, through the green empty golf course.

For miles we walked and never noticed it, talking about everything and nothing. We discussed school and how Jacob had quit choir because Ms. McLauren didn't like him, about music and my misplaced affection for Paul. Walking and talking and not seeing the precious hours flying by us. Passing the golf course community packed with the mobile homes of the elderly who flew south for the winter, passing Crystal Lake, we finally came to a stop at his house.

Jacob lived with his father in a townhouse in a community called Shady Grove. Dimly lit, it was as if the light refused to shine in the windows. There was a large empty whiskey bottle on the table, and Jacob explained that his father had had some friends over. He didn't like living with his father, but when I asked him why he didn't live with his mom, he said he didn't get along with his stepfather. Then, changing the subject, he said he wanted to play for me.

Rounding the couch, he pulled out a red electric guitar and started searching for his slide, this little glass tube thing that resembled the lid on a pump action hairspray bottle. It had a crack in it. Suddenly he became melancholy, and I asked if he couldn't play without it, hoping he would cheer up. As he sighed and plopped down on the couch, he said he could, picked up the guitar, and started to play.

I can't remember the words, but I remember what it was about. An accusation against God, he was begging to know why He had created him.

How that song made me feel!

I had to hold back my tears, knowing that Jacob truly felt that way, cold and alone, without purpose.

We walked back to my duplex together because Jacob didn't want me to walk alone, and my step-dad drove him home. Later when I got home, my mom yelled about how I wasn't going to go out with him, how he was rude and too old for me, and that I wasn't to see him the next day as we had planned.

I still to this day don't know why parents are so indecisive. After I had called Jacob and told him I couldn't meet him, the next day my mom asked if I wasn't supposed to meet him. I was infuriated, outraged that I had been lectured for no reason at all. By that time, it was too late to meet Jacob.

This moment, this one day of sun comes to me because it was my and Jacob's only meeting outside of school, just the two of us. We talked a lot on the phone and at lunch for a while, but this one time was our best. Afterwards, people separated us, anger and confusion, frustration divided us, and though we were still friends, that closeness was gone. And after I moved, I remembered that moment, the brightness of his shirt, his hair in the breeze, how he gazed out over the wind-tossed water of Crystal Lake.

On September 7, 1996, I got a letter from my friend Kristen. It was full of the usual meaningless stuff, but there was another piece of paper, small, yellow. In a manner almost like an afterthought, she added that Jacob had killed himself in August. Her reflection: "Wow."

Time passes, and I still think about Jacob sitting on that dock railing, looking out across the water, beautiful, seemingly serene. I think about how I thought he was beautiful in that moment, and how I never told him. That one day was the greatest time we ever had, and it flew by us without our noticing it. I think often how I never really said anything that I wanted to say to him, especially goodbye.

There is no grave to visit. Paul told me years later that Jacob's parents had him cremated and split the ashes. I remember the chill that I got from that news, the anger. I remember crying to myself that night, thinking that if I ever got to go back, that there was no place to visit him. But maybe there is ...

I want to go back to that dock at Crystal Lake. I want to take flowers there, lean them against the railing in the sunlight.

Copyright © Brandi Lynch 2005