Underwater Breakup Turns Deadly Proposal

That was the summer Lester taught me what it is like to be sorry. I detected the flavor of hot canned peaches.

I was thirteen when Mom ferried me to Texas to ride with her cousin Lester in his rickety old campervan. She called it an opportunity to “unplug and reconnect with real life,” while she was taking a meditation course in Sedona, Dad (who hadn’t mentioned what job he was taking) was driving across the country. At that time, I didn’t know that the real reason was that they were separating.

Lester arrived at our driveway dressed in cracked aviators and a bolo tie in the shape of some steer skull. He spat at a bottle of something dark and asked, “You packed light?”

"Yeah," I said. I had a duffel bag with headphones, a sketchbook, and a tin of sardines that Mom had slipped in to eat.

"Good. No room for whiners."

He opened the door of the campervan, and a cloud of heat, sweat, and something sweet and putrefying blasted into me.

The van featured a blood-red moon over a rendition by Airbrush of a howling coyote and a bumper sticker imprinted HONK IF YOU LOVE MERLE. The interior had the odor of tobacco, vinyl, and the faint ghost of lemon-scented cleanser—what was left of that.

We traveled south on stretching, blistering roads reflected in the heat like snakes. At first, Lester didn’t say much. He chain-smoked and left tape cassettes of country music on Hank, Patsy, and Waylon. Once, I asked him why the radio didn’t work.

He said, “Got tired of the world yappin’ at me.”

In the cupholder, next to one of Lucky Strikes packs, there lay a crumpled photo of a woman with big hair and a broad, offhanded smile. I never asked about her yet.

Lester had rules. No complaining. No phones. Never open the icebox unless you are putting something in. No over-talking the music unless it was important. I didn’t know what was important until then.

We parked in dusty pull-outs or degraded campgrounds when we went out at night. He’d shut the headlights and drink something brown from a Mason jar while I stood on the roof and sketched the stars. I sketched in cacti, highway signs, old boots, and bottle caps. On a particular night, I sketched Lester hunched on the wheel, eyes glossy on the dashboard light.

The first sight of him sobbing was in some Texas non-place town of Dimebox. We had pulled over for gas, but the ice machine outside the convenience store was out of order.

"Course it is," he muttered. Then he just stood there, hand on the machine, eyes watering.

"You okay?" I asked.

He sniffed. "Just hot."

But that night, he sat on the bumper pondering the dark, a cassette spinning in his hand like a coin.

"Ever been in love, kid?"

"I’m thirteen."

"Doesn’t matter."

I had been thinking of Samantha Avery, who was sitting in front of me in math and had once lent me the use of her eraser. "Sort of."

He chuckled. "Sort of’s worse than nothing."

He told me about Doreen. She said her name like a hymn. She used to back up some mediocre country star. “Had a voice that could peel paint off a wall and thank it for that.”

He played his cassette labeled DOREEN—DENVER ‘89 to me. Her voice was heard through the speakers, husky and aching.

"She left me in Lubbock,” he said. “Let me know if I don’t kick the bottle and the gambling habit off, I’ll lose more than her. I laughed. Thought she was bluffing."

He turned to me, and I saw his face. Sorry, it was not some crusty older man’s but a kid’s scared.

"She wasn’t bluffin’."

After that, he told stories. Sometimes, they were funny: once sneaking out onstage with Merle Haggard’s band, drunk and shirtless. Sometimes they weren’t. Just how he sold his guitar to bail out his brother, who, anyway, skipped town.

He had a spiral notebook to which he committed half-illegible, crossed-out verses. I asked him why he did not record anything at all.

“That ship sailed when my liver went south.”

One day, near Pecos, the van overheated. Lester had kicked the bumper and swore like it was biblical.

"We’ll walk," he said. "Ain’t far to the diner."

It was 108 degrees out for three miles. My shirt stuck to me, and beneath our feet, the asphalt bulged.

We got to a diner with faded turquoise booths and a jukebox that played Loretta Lynn. He got two plates of meatloaf and extra peaches from a tin.

He said, “Best thing they got”.

The peaches were warm and swampy and stuck to my teeth. He ate it slowly, tasting something more ancient than fruit.

"Doreen loved these," he said. “They reminded her of summer”. They said so. I always thought that they smelled of rust.

I could watch him chewing with his eyes closed, and it hit me as if he was wishing it goodbye, even though he did not say it.

We arrived in Luckenbach later in the week. He said there was a music festival – some throwback thing where old-timers still strummed under the stars. Doreen could be there, he said. He’d got it from a relative of a too-close acquaintance.

"You gonna talk to her?" I asked.

“I only if I am not afraid to chicken out.”

I had never seen him nervous. He brushed his hair with a plastic pocket comb and donned a pair of denim shirts with no stains. We stopped near the music tent, where the dark woods enclosed the lanterned trees, and the fiddle entered the night.

We set ourselves in lawn chairs near the back. I drew the stage as Lester continued scanning the crowd.

Then—there she was. A woman with a red sundress in a red dress and silver-colored hair is tied in a scarf. Her laugh interrupted the music like a whip.

Lester froze. "That’s her."

He stood and walked two steps forward, and he stopped. I waited. He pivoted, went back to the chair, and sat down.

"What happened?"

He lit a cigarette. "She looks happy. I no longer get to touch that.

We heard the music in silence. He didn’t drink that night. He stared directly at the stage as if everything he’d lost would be there.

As we returned to the van, I asked him if he regretted not saying something.

He said, "Every damn day."

The following morning, he was quiet once more. We drove without music. Just engine rumble and wind brushing the mirrors. He dropped me off at the airport, punching me lightly on the shoulder.

"Keep drawing," he said. "You see more than most."

I never saw him again. Mom and Dad ended the divorce that fall. I got quieter. Drew more. I even started writing songs.

Two years later, a box appeared in our house when Lester passed on. There was Denver ‘89 cassette, a notebook – all full of lyrics, and a single can of peaches.

I played the tape, and I sketched Doreen’s face from memory. She looked like music sounded.

And that’s how I discovered what regret is like.

Hot. Syrupy. Just a little too late.