ACROSS THE CHANNEL by T. Sean Steele
Hans gets back to the cabin after an evening run, finds the twins down on the dock, tilting their plates and spilling hot dogs and beans into the lake.
“What are you doing?” says Hans. “People swim in that lake.”
“No, they don’t,” says a twin. “It smells like gasoline.”
“We were done eating,” says the other.
“That’s a whole hot dog floating there.”
“We hated them. They were cold.”
Hans explains that hot dogs are the dinner menu for this trip, that his aunt (the twins’ mother) only allowed him to bring the boys to the cabin under the assumption that he would be able to provide for their basic needs, and that if they won’t eat dinner he’s going to have to take them home so they don’t starve to death.
“So take us home,” says a twin. “There’s nothing to do here, except for the carnival.”
“You can’t throw food away in the lake,” says Hans. “It’s disgusting.”
“The lake’s already disgusting,” says the other. “It smells like gasoline.”
A third, a fourth soggy hot dog bun drifts out from under the dock and Hans understands the boys have been dumping each dinner since they arrived earlier in the week. A heat rises in his chest.
“How are you not starving?” he says. “What have you been eating?”
“There’s a carnival,” they say. “Across the channel. The man with long fingers gives us free candy. Cotton candy.”
“You keep saying there’s a carnival but I don’t think there is,” says Hans. “We’re the only people for miles.” He pauses. “How have you been getting to the channel? You’re not supposed to go anywhere without me.”
“You sleep all day,” says a twin, the other walking to a tin rowboat banked on the shore. “We get bored.”
“That’s not true,” says Hans. “I was just on a run.”
For a second Hans thinks he hears cymbals and horns jangling out from across the lake, but it’s caught up by a wind whistling between the pines and gone before he can think much of it. The twins blink, look at each other.
“Maybe you dreamt you were on a run. Anyway, we’re sorry about all the food,” sings the twin who sits in the boat while the other pushes it into the water. “What we’ll do is, we’ll go out and collect the mess we made.”
The sun falls behind the trees and the green lake fades to an inky black.
“It’s too dark,” says Hans. “Come back.”
“We won’t get lost,” they say from the lake. “We’ll go out as far as the furthermost piece of food, then work our way back.”
“There’s no carnival, you guys,” says Hans. “I feel like I’m being manipulated, here. Please come back.”
But the boys are gone and Hans is alone on the dock. He squints at where the channel ought to be in the darkness, trying to make out some sort of festive carnival lights, but sees nothing. He hollers for the boys to come back, but all he hears in response is the echo of his own voice growing softer and higher as it moves across the lake, until it sounds like a woman’s voice calling back to him. A cold wind whips up off the water into his face.
In the morning Hans wakes up on the dock to the sound of the rowboat scraping against the pebbled shore. A twin sits alone in the boat, feet squished among the sopping remains of hot dogs and buns.
“I got all the food.”
Hans asks where he was all night and the boy says he went to the carnival because he was hungry. The man with long fingers was there, and gave him cotton candy. Hans calls him a liar but the boy pulls out his pockets, revealing a sticky mess of webbed sugar.
“The man said the carnival could use a kid like me,” says the boy. “He asked if I wanted to travel with them. I almost wanted to – it’s good candy. I started to say yes but then I swear I heard my ma calling out for me over the lake. So I came back.”
“It’s good you came back,” says Hans. “But what about your brother?”
“Who?” says the boy.
“Across The Channel” is T. Sean Steele’s first short story to be published in a national literary magazine.