The Return to the Lakehouse by Adam Kluger

The meme had been replaying again and again in Booger’s mind. 

“They are eating the cats, eating the dogs, eating the pets in Springfield.” 

It was about 50 days away from a quite consequential presidential election. 

Bugowski was pushing 60 and he was just as big a mess as he always was.

“Have you read the secret life of plants?” Rooster asked Booger as they unloaded the cooler full of Pabst Blue Ribbon, Poland Spring with  lime (the most carbonated of all seltzers) and all the other boxes, bags and items for another guy’s weekend. “The plants communicate through chemical emissions, I read an excerpt…not surprising given their predominant place on the planet and the way they all live together harmoniously…beautifully, really.” 

“Booooogerrrr!” 

The old friends smiled. 

They talked about the critters that had resided at the lake. Golden eagles, loons, owls, and on one occasion a deer had made it from one island to another by swimming the lake. There must have been a good reason for the deer to do what it did. Survival, probably. 

Booger admired Rooster. A good man. A man of intelligence and action. He was always moving things down the road by way of example. He put the grill together for a sumptuous dinner he had prepared for the guys of sliced lamb and chicken. Rooster was a finance guy and the past year had been stressful. But the endgame would be a good one, hopefully. Rooster jumped into the lake. He shed his towel and was off doing the crawl. 

Booger took a cup of freshly brewed coffee and grabbed a dew-covered wooden chair to survey the rest of the lake. Rooster was the type of leader who led by example, delegated tasks to others and kept things moving. Smart. Energetic. Compassionate. The best type of leader Booger thought to himself. Rooster planned ahead and was proactive. He took over guys weekend duties from Moose.  

Moose was asleep in the next room in Booger’s cabin. You could tell by the unselfconscious noises that came out of the room intermittently. 

It was still early but for Booger it had been getting later and later. Old age was surrounding him suddenly like the caretaker of the island’s three young cats. The cats were not a welcome sight to Booger who hoped to avoid the furry trio —who somehow knew that— and did not give a fuck. They crawled on tables, onto chairs, in and out of the small shacks. On top of Booger himself, who was bummed out, but tried to go with the flow, cat allergies be damned. 

One of the cats, the orange and white one, had killed a mouse and now proudly displayed the dead  rodent to all assembled at the dinner table area. 

“Look what the cat dragged in” 

“ Why don’t they eat the mouse?”

“They are proud of their kill and want to show it off and play with it.” 

“ Gross.” 

Booger was hating the cats. The three cats who had taken over guys weekend. 

Booger took the Claritin and it seemed to be working — it was brought to the  island by a late-arriving Dr. Nick. Another kind and intelligent soul who cared deeply about his patients and family and friends.

 “It’s great to see you Booger” 

“ Always great to see you Nicko.”

Rooster and Dr. Nick had been friends since high-school. Booger met them both during college but they all shared mutual friendships that also bonded them together since high school. 

Earlier that morning the three of them played golf,  badly,  but enjoyed the beauty of Belgrade Lakes, the 77th rated golf course in America.  They were unhurried and appreciative of the time to goof around together. “Nice shot, Booger!” 

“Where’d it end up?, I lost track of it?” “To the right of the green near that lone pine tree.”

“Nice.”

“Rooster is so stressed out- he’s playing terribly,” Nicko confided to Booger. 

The three friends offered each other encouragement again and again and soon it was time to head back to the lake-house, jump in the lake to cool off and then dry off in the sun, eat their gourmet sandwiches from the country store named ‘Days’, and then nap. 

Moose was one of Booger’s best friends and he was conducting a senior sales meeting in his adjacent room. His leadership on the call impressed Booger who slid onto his cot in the adjoining room and closed his eyes.  

Moose pushed the action agenda along on his zoom call and his colleagues (really his team of subordinates) weighed in on multi-million dollar deals involving various manufactured items. 

 “ I agree, but I’m thinking that putting aside twenty-five thousand units in fulfillment at the going rate should solve the shortfall, George what’s going on with the shipment to Crawfordsville?”

And so it went as Booger, settled into his comfortable cot/bed in the next room, proud of his friend of over 45 years. Moose worked hard and had his shit together but he still found time to give Booger shit about silly stuff like leaving his empty Diet Pepsi can on the community table outside. But instead of words, Moose made the noise of a wild animal to tease Booger on his forgetfulness. Which made Booger laugh out loud again and again. 

Booger, a writer, magazine editor, and long-suffering small business owner did things his own way for better or worse and his old friends at guy’s weekend considered him well-meaning and flawed. They knew him better than most. 

Each friend pulled Booger to the side and inquired about the usual stuff. 

“How’s the divorce” “Wow, that many years already” “ The kid?” “Straight A’s” “Great!, the business?” “Hanging in there, couple of decent clients, couple more in pipeline hopefully.” “Good, Booger,” said Harps, “it takes a lot of courage to go out on your own and try to make a go of it.” 

Was Booger now a cautionary tale amongst his more successful friends? They were both in the same field, Harps was at a huge company, in the C suite, and they both understood the stress of dealing with customers, deadlines and deliverables. 

Harps was also in charge of the music at guy’s weekend and gratefully he stuck to the Dead early in the weekend instead of going heavy on Dylan. 

One of Rooster’s law school buddies was a new addition to the guy’s weekend. Nice guy. Eager to fit in and share his knowledge of a number of topics from politics to music to brands of whisky. The latter being of far more interest to the men at the lake house.

Sitting next to the edge of the water, Booger listened to the loons and appreciated the expansive lake with slow waves ebbing and moving in time with gusts of wind creating ripples on the surface. 

The lake pulled the fears away. 

Booger was surrounded by brothers who knew. They had their own problems and they had wisdom and problems and small tragedies of their own. But they weren’t afraid. They got up in Booger’s face and were unafraid to ask him stuff that was deeply personal. They wanted to know and Booger confessed his failings, cautious optimism and gratitude. 

“Jets look good Moose, this might be their year.”

“No way, Boog, Rodgers is too old and injury-prone”

“ Don’t you think the Jets and Knicks are the most overrated teams in sports?, “ asked the new guy, (from Boston), trying hard to find ways into most of the conversations when he could. He was a top lawyer who suddenly bolted from the dinner table for a phone call about his dog having run away from his family home, but he had put a tracking device on the dog’s collar, so the dog was easily tracked down via GPS.

He was tracking the dog. The dog that had run away. By it’s collar. 

“Everything ok?” 

“Yeah, almost 50 times out of 50 this dog comes back home- this one time was one of the rare exceptions” 

Booger thought that maybe the dog had been planning his escape for a while but given what little Booger really knew of dogs all he could offer was.

“GPS… wow, that’s amazing” 

Fishing was on the agenda for the following day. Lures were purchased at the general store across the lake that required a short canoe trip to a waiting car. 

Typically, Booger would bring a book to the weekend. Hemingway, Fante, Bukowski, etc and this weekend it was Jack Kerouac’s, On The Road. Kerouac had attended Booger’s high school briefly and had written a couple of pretty good books. “On The Road,”  was his most famous and Booger was eager to revisit the reasons why the book was so resonant for so many. It read like a travel diary and the hitchhiking part kept things moving. The cover blurb described On The Road as “one of the most powerful and important novels of our time…” 

30 pages in, Booger was enjoying the story-telling. Kerouac was looking for something about America. Life. Youth. He liked the way his words came out and he dug the way people spoke and life’s little stories…

“ A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.” (On The Road) 

Kerouac found something and shared it and it hit the jackpot. 

Booger scribbled his own notes that would end up being a tiny part of this very short story you are reading right now (flash fiction, really) as Rooster commandeered the fishing boat to the dock. 

The highlight of the boat trip was watching Moose looking at his laptop and yelling in delight as his high-school aged son, sacked the other team’s QB again and again and again. “Yessss!! “Yesss!!”  “Yesss!!! Way to go E!!!” All the dads in the boat beamed for Moose. Booger thought of his own son, who was a senior in high-school as well. A terrific student. Athletic. Funny. Talented. Kind. Booger felt like he and the kid’s mom had won the lottery and for that he was extremely grateful. 

Booger and Moose were that age once too—way back when —and they were both pretty good soccer goalies for their respective high-school teams. Booger smiled thinking about that time when they were both playing soccer against other schools at the same time—in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx with it’s broken glass on the ground and dust. Golden days. 

“Can you grab the wine, Boog?” 

“Alright Captain.” 

It had cooled down across the island and throughout Maine. The trees were starting to show off their ruby reds, burnt orange and vibrant yellow leaves. It was time to join the others. More guys were expected later in the day.

“Hey Booger!” 

“Hey Nicko, the coffee’s ready” 

“Nice, how did the claritin work?”

Amazing. Thanks so much for bringing that” 

“My pleasure, Boogerloo.” 

Kluger, Adam

Images by the author.

1. ginger cat in a wicker chair beside a table with a plastic cup on. The cat faces away from the camera
2. A copy of ‘On the road’ by Jack Kerouac resting on a bed by a window.
3. A sunset image of a lake with the far bank in darkness

Banner Image – a lake with a landing stage from Pixabay.com