The Slide: A Novel by Kyle Beachy Page B

cooler should go over there. Then you’re supposed to bring three bottles for free.”
    I set the cooler down in the corner and uncoiled the power cord. I crouched and looked for an outlet. There was grime amassed in the joint where the wall met the floor, dirt thoroughly integrated into the structure itself. The kid stood in the middle of the kitchen, wide-eyed and quiet.
    I told him the cooler would work without power, but if he wanted the water cold, it would have to be plugged in. His hair was blondish and eye-length, typical boy. He squinted and pinched tight the left half of his mouth while slowly lifting his weight onto his toes, lowering, then lifting again.
    “Hey. Dad’s got an orange extension cord in the shed.”
    I stood and wiped hands on my shorts. I thought of my father’s old workbench in the garage, the two towers of miniature drawers standing side by side, finger-sliding drawers full with variously sized instruments of boyhood wonder. The kid looked at me.
    “That cord sounds like just the thing,” I said.
    As he disappeared through a back door, I turned to make my way back to the van for bottles. In the living room I stopped to watch a cartoon with a frenzy of flashing lights and flying dinosaurs zooming madly across the screen, clashing with bright stars of impact, pure magnetic chaos. Enthralling. The dinosaurs wore earpieces and spoke into wrist communicators. One of them had an English accent, one was brown and clearly voiced by a black man, and they kept repeating each other’s names so we all knew what to yell when our parents took us shopping.
    I turned to find a silhouette of a figure filling the front door. At first I was so absorbed into the realm of cartoon I had a hard time believing the figure was real. Then he stepped work boots into the living room, great heavy booming tired steps.
    “Hell is this.”
    “Pine Ridge Water. Mr. Worpley? I’ve got you guys signed up for the Summer Special.”
    I held out a hand he did not take. Instead, he exhaled deeply and shook his head.
    “You got the wrong place, kid.”
    “It’s free, Dad.” The boy had reappeared behind me, holding a bundled extension cord. “That’s what’s special about it.”
    The father moved into his home. He flicked his bright orange cap onto the sofa and passed me without a look. The reek of sustained toil, a more permanent and pungent version of the smell I showered away each evening.
    “Calling something free don’t mean a single solitary thing. Ask this guy here in green,” he said. “Ask him if it’s really free. Ask him what kind of fools go around handing out free water. Go on. I’m sure he’ll explain everything.”
    I remained frozen. And when the kid didn’t answer or even look at me, the father stepped into the kitchen. After a moment, the kid turned and followed. I did not.
    “But remember how Mom made me drink a glass every night before bed? Even if I thought it made me get up and have to pee, she would go like, here, and push it into my face.”
    “That’s right. And now you sleep all night and take your pee in the morning. Instead of waking me up in the middle of the night.”
    I found myself closer to the front door. The young boy stood with cord in hand, staring at either the floor or the clothing on the floor. I heard the father in the kitchen and once again wiped my brow with a shirtsleeve.
    “But they got an ad in the paper says free. They got a Summer Special.”
    I was standing at the door, one hand on the screen.
    “Someone says free, Ian, don’t you believe it. Got that? No such thing.” The kid went silent. The father appeared in the doorway and pointed at me. “I think it’s time you removed yourself from my house.”
    Then I was outside, motion, scrambling into the driver’s seat. I felt the van struggle to life and pulled away. I opened a sixteen-ounce sport-top bottle and drained it in one long sip. It wasn’t until I was back on the highway that I thought of the