2010 Wyoming Writers Contest Winner - FREE VERSE

Kuester’s Lake

by Tiffany L. Rehbein 

Remember when Jimmy Ruffato and me took that old Scout out to the lake thinking we would pull up those old Army supply boxes out of the muck from the bottom of that old dam? Jimmy always had the Crown and we had one tape of David Allan Coe that never got old and we drove with all the windows down and the back window was broken out of the tailgate. Dusty White said his boot heels kicked it out one night when Suz Lockhorn was back for a visit, but I know he’s lying ‘cause Suz ain’t been back since Jimmy bought that damn Scout. She’s been kissing other girls in the big city – Missoula, they say – where the tree huggers and earth lovers and hippies live and smoke dope and boys kiss other boys. And Dusty ain’t been laid in years. And Jimmy and me, we cruised down Highway 200 with those windows down and that bottle of Crown and I found three dented cans of Old Milwaukee Light rolling around and we opened those and we pretended that the skunk smell didn’t bother us and we drove right up to the edge of that damn lake.

But the Crown was gone and those dented cans were empty and I wondered, ‘Why in hell would the Army of the United-fuckin’-States of America ever drop supply boxes into this man-made sink-hole of infected waters?’

           Jimmy?

           (I asked you)

           Buddy?

           (You weren’t there)

It was 1:03 and you were gone and I turned my car around and edged back over those old washboards that used to make our Old Mils foam and make our hands sticky and I headed back toward town where there was no Happy Hour.