Sky Clipper


I don’t know why the ducks even liked the lake at MacDougal Park. Nobody in Silas cared about it. To call the lake blue gives the wrong impression; this was not a place of tranquility or natural beauty. The water was blue all right, but the bright synthetic blue of paint. Also like paint, the water lay thick, heavy. When a strong wind blew, one begrudging ripple might hunch across the surface, but it never got far before giving up. The lake was so round as to be too round. Some folks in town called it the Blue Hole, or, more commonly, the Hole. Even people-made things should look and feel more earthly than the Hole. But the ducks stuck to that blighted lake, and so did John Boyer.

All of MacDougal Park was supposed to be “refurbished and restored,” but the lake was priority number one for Boyer, the town maintenance guy tasked to oversee the project.

When I showed up for the first day of my sentence—two hundred hours of community service—Spencer Carr, a fifteen-year-old Shady Oaks kid, had already been there a week or so. At 9:00 a.m., he lay kicked back on the lake’s shore in polo shirt, boat shorts, and flip-flops, smoking a cigarette while Boyer, in his green janitor outfit, stood with shovel in hand delivering some monologue. Seeing the two of them there in the interminable sun, I wanted to die.

Me and my old man lived on this side of Silas, known as the shitty side, at the Crest View Trailer Park, but even though I was only a ten-minute walk from MacDougal Park, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen the Hole in hard daylight. No way could I do this, not all summer. But according to the asshole judge, it was “either clean the lake or bend over in Boys State,” which he pointed out gleefully was “the first step to a life in prison.” So, I shielded my eyes and trudged toward the Hole.

When he saw me coming, John Boyer winced. But he put his shoulders back, tried to stand tall, and smiled at me in a conspiratorial way.

“Ashton Pratt?” he said.

Spencer Carr looked at me and laughed. At what, I couldn’t tell.

“Ash,” I said.

Boyer considered my black t-shirt, baggy black pants, black boots, and long black hair.

“Did you bring anything to work in?” he asked.

I didn’t know how to answer.

“I got a couple of these city work uniforms in the car,” he said.

Spencer laughed again. “You don’t have to wear that shit.”

I stared past Boyer and said, “I don’t want to wear it.”

“Okay, that’s cool.” Boyer’s nice-guy smile suffered at its edges. “I just didn’t want you to have to get your good clothes dirty.”

“Whatever,” I said. “They’re already dirty.”

Boyer might have been thirty or he might have been fifty—just some old dude. He was bald on the top of his head but sported a long, depressing ponytail and John Lennon glasses on a face pocked by ancient acne scars. A pushover.

I pulled out the crumpled cigarette I’d snaked off my old man and lit up. Boyer started to say something but didn’t. I blew a cloud of smoke over his head.

“The Hole smells like shit,” Spencer said. He stretched his tan legs and took another drag on his cigarette.

Boyer sighed. I could tell sighing was kind of his thing. He placed his dirty hands atop the shovel handle and considered the lake. “It’s a complicated chemical process. I’m trying to figure it all out and put the proper corrective measures in place.”

“Corrective measures.” Spencer cupped his balls. He flicked his cigarette into the lake at some ducks.

Boyer wobbled. “Spencer. Please. Our task is to fix this lake.” He reached his shovel and tried to bring the cigarette back to shore but he missed. The butt didn’t sink so much as become absorbed by the goopy blue lagoon.

John Boyer looked at me looking at the lake. “The former, and soon-to-be, beautiful MacDougal Lake,” he announced.

Good fucking luck, I thought.

Boyer said, “You know what year they built this lake?”

I imagined a bunch of assholes trying to nail water together. One night at the Hole, not long before, I huffed a can of Dust-It, passed out, pissed and shit my pants, and woke a sick mess to discover some fucker had stolen my wallet. There wasn’t even money in it, only the last picture I had of my mom and me, taken at some department store in Jeff City when I was little and she was still alive. Pretty much the last thing in the world I cared about.

“1938,” Boyer said, still talking. “Part of a big WPA project. When that kind of stuff mattered.”

Whatever and whatever. I reckoned I had 199.9 hours left of my sentence. Mosquitoes buzzed near my ears. I slapped at them but missed.

Boyer hoisted the shovel to his shoulder. “Well, fellas, I’m going to mosey over to the truck. I have some mosquito repellant I made, nontoxic, and I’ll grab more trash bags and get Ashton some work gloves.”

“Ash,” I said.

Boyer shook his head. “Ash. Sorry, man.” He started over the small hill between the lake and the parking lot. “You guys need anything else? Some waters?”

“Cigarettes,” Spencer said.

“Sorry,” Boyer said. “I quit them sticks twenty years ago. The day my mom died of cancer.”

“Big fucking whoop,” Spencer muttered. I didn’t know if Boyer could hear, but he probably did.

“I’ll get us some waters,” Boyer said. “Going to be another scorcher today.” He turned and disappeared over the hill.

Spencer was not one of the scabby town kids. We both went to Silas High School but had never said a single word to one another. He was a freshman and I was a sophomore, and he lived on the other side of Silas in a newer development called Shady Oaks. Spencer was famous because once in middle school he put two hits of acid in Ms. Winslow’s coffee and she almost died.

“What’s your hand supposed to mean?” he said.

“What do you mean my hand?”

“Them tattoos on your fingers.”

“FUCT.” Just what it says.

“Who did that to you?”

“Nobody.” I did it myself with a home kit. One letter needled into the top of each finger, the black ink already fading.

Spencer grinned. “What’d you do to get put out here?”

“I don’t know.”

The ducks on the lake seemed like an extended family: four big ducks and two tiny ducklings. Following each other round and round as the water parted thickly before them. I guess no one told them how terrible it was out here.

“I put a dead dog in some asshole’s car.” Spencer laughed. “All propped up like it was driving. With sunglasses and a scarf. Fucking hilarious. The judge gave me forty hours of this shit with John Boner, but it was worth it.”

Horseshit. I got two hundred hours just for messing with an empty house.

Spencer yawned, lit a new cigarette, and lifted his leg to fart loudly. “Basically, I just chill all day while John Boy pulls his pud. I’m bored off my ass, though. Now that you’re here we can really start fucking with him.”


The rest of that first day, like Spencer, I just sat on the yellow grass by the lake’s trash-strewn bank. Mosquitoes churned around us in great clouds. We slapped at the air and watched Boyer work, his attention focused on a rotted, caving woodshed on the lake’s far shore. He had lumber and tools and was trying to rebuild it. Boyer kept glancing over at us and the untouched pile of trash bags, gloves, sun hats, and mosquito flower spray he’d brought from the truck.

“He’s all about to cry,” Spencer said.

I think maybe he was.

“He looks like some kind of chick in that big floppy hat,” Spencer said. “Like my grandma or something.”

I had no more cigarettes, no nothing. Spencer seemed to have a bottomless pack of cigarettes, but he wasn’t sharing and I wasn’t asking. It was over 100 degrees outside with 100 percent humidity. Sweat oozed from me, soaking my clothes. Bright red mosquito bites swelled on my arms, and I itched them bloody.

The ducks floated back and forth. Now and then they’d lift a wing and try to clean themselves, their undersides blue like the lake. The babies were little trembling blobs of down with orange beaks sticking out. I wondered if the ducks were migrating somewhere, and if so, why they couldn’t get on with it. Surely there was a more desirable body of water somewhere on this godforsaken planet.

“Look at them stupid little shits out there,” Spencer said.

Late in the afternoon, Boyer trudged up and sat by Spencer and me. He had some bottles of water and asked if we wanted one. Neither of us answered. He opened a bottle and took a long drink. Then he too stared at the lake, the ducks. We sat in silence for an eternity.

“I don’t know,” Boyer said finally.


Coming down rutted Crest View, past the rows of sinking trailers, their chained dogs, downed satellite dishes, gaping appliances, and abandoned toys, I could see my old man before he could see me. He squatted on a bucket before the van, staring at a rust-choked piece he’d removed from the engine. The van hadn’t run in years, but most days he was out here in his overalls lost in one of its parts.

I was up the shaky metal steps and almost through our open door before he saw me and said, “Did you take my cigarettes?”

“No.”

“Where you been?”

“Cleaning the lake like the judge told me.”

“You still ain’t done with that?”

“Dad. Today was the first day.”

He stared past me toward Eldon Avenue’s wobbly traffic, grimy pick-ups and sagging sedans crisscrossing in coughs and rumbles. His arms and hands were smudged black with grease, his face smeared too. In the next trailer, our neighbors listened on their TV to wailing sirens.

“Sorry,” he said.

I went inside to make a sandwich, but the peanut butter jar in the cabinet had been scraped empty.


The next morning when I got to the Hole, Boyer had backed his battered green Silas Parks and Recreation truck to the shore. He was way too awake, smiling. “Ash, help me out a sec, will you? I want to show you something cool.”

In the truck bed sat a huge wooden boat. It featured side-by-side seats for two people and bicycle pedals that could be operated from each seat. The boat’s body had been freshly painted: clouds feathered in whites and grays floated on a sky-blue background. A calligraphic name adorned both sides: The Sky Clipper.

Boyer said, “Take that side there and help me lift this thing out.”

It weighed ten thousand pounds, but we heaved the boat from the truck and set it by the lake. The ducks observed the operation, their black eyes glistening in the morning light.

Just then, the horrible revving of a car engine came suddenly closer. A shiny red convertible topped the rise and raced toward us, music blasting from bass-heavy speakers. It was Spencer, toothy face and windblown hair. Boyer and I had to press against the truck as Spencer braked to a grinding stop, gouging deep skid marks in the grass. He leered at us, bobbing his head and upraised hands, singing, “That’s right, that’s right, that’s right, motherfuckers.”

John Boyer bolted toward the convertible. Spencer tried to shrink away, but Boyer grabbed him hard by his polo shirt, lifted him from the car seat, and pinned him against the seat top so that Spencer was held prone, his legs and arms splayed in weak protest. They were practically the same size, but Boyer totally owned Spencer’s ass. I couldn’t believe it.

“Fuck you, faggot,” Spencer spat. “Take your hands off me.”

Boyer stuck his red face inches from Spencer’s and screamed louder than I’ve ever heard anybody scream. Not words. A sustained guttural shriek that split the sky.

When he stopped howling, the silence was deafening too, hovering over the three of us at the edge of this lake at the edge of this field at the edge of this town. Clouds tumbled silent somersaults across the long Missouri sky.

Finally, Boyer released him, and Spencer collapsed in a quivering pile of boy across the car’s leather seats.

“Your ass is grass.” Spencer trembled.

Your ass is grass,” Boyer screamed. He moved again toward Spencer, who cowered, bleated. “One call to Judge Dickinson and you’re in Moulder County lockdown, Spencer Carr. You got that? I already talked to the judge this morning. You don’t know how close you are, son. To any-goddamn-thing.”

Spencer backed his car slowly from the lake. Boyer followed him over the hill to the parking lot, and I was left alone at the Hole. Out on the too-blue water the ducks stretched their wings and necks, the little ones lazily trailing the big ones like they had all day.

I put on a pair of Boyer’s work gloves, grabbed one of the large industrial trash bags, and began to clean one tiny portion of the lake.

Boyer hiked back over the hill. Spencer trailed him with head hung. They stopped and watched me pick up trash, but I didn’t want to make eye contact with either of them. Spencer plopped down far from the shore and brooded. Boyer pushed The Sky Clipper into the water, climbed aboard, and tried to pedal toward the middle of the lake. The boat did pretty good out there, but Boyer turned in slow circles without getting anywhere. While I cleaned, Spencer kept shaking his head, sniffing, muttering something about a “sky crapper.” Boyer circled round and round while the ducks, curious, kept a close distance.

I filled bag after bag with garbage. Decades of inscrutable shit had been discarded at the Hole: baby bottles, pill bottles, textbooks, tires, stiff, bloody rags, hamster cages, bicycle chains, fast food bags. In my mind, I catalogued secret histories. I found a crumpled note that said, “I miss you. Will you b with me? Circle yes or no,” and “no” had been circled. I put the paper in my pocket. I kept other things too: a guitar pick with the words “Cheap Trick” written over it; a bag of marbles that looked like small planets; a silver ring with a skull on it; a working calculator. But I couldn’t find my wallet or the picture of Mom.

Spencer started picking up trash too. A couple days in, he just got off his ass and began to work. I more than doubled what he did, but together we filled dozens of garbage bags, tossing them in the back of the truck. He even bummed me a couple good cigarettes. But it was hot as hell out there in MacDougal Park and getting hotter, a mosquito feast, the sun a mean nail overhead. I chafed and itched and sweated through my heavy black clothes. My pale skin cooked red. Boyer brought me one of his big straw hats. I put it on and immediately the wide brim’s shade cooled my face. Who knew?

“Thanks,” I muttered.

His mosquito repellant worked too. Boyer tried giving Spencer both, but he—even with the weird, whitish burn around his ears and lips—told Boyer to go put on perfume and be a cross-dresser by himself.

While we pulled endless trash detail, Boyer worked on the old shed, which turned out to be a boat storage and pump-house facility. He stripped rotted planks of wood, reframed and sealed the building. A perfect place for kids to hang out and do drugs.


When I got up on my sixteenth birthday, my old man was still passed out on the pullout couch in the front room. I didn’t want to wake him, although even asleep he looked tormented. The same year mom died, the Cargill’s factory where he and pretty much everyone in Silas worked, closed and something inside him broke.

I pulled on my crusted clothes that now smelled brackish, spoiled, goaty. I drifted past Eldon Avenue’s shuttered store fronts and gas stations while the sun rose over Silas like a blistered sore. I couldn’t figure out if I was early or the world was late; if the world was to be made or the world was done. When I reached the lake, Spencer was alone on the shore. His eyes were bloodshot and wobbly. I knew the look. With shaky hands, he sucked on a cigarette and asked if I wanted one.

“Sure,” I said.

Across the dawn-gold water, the ducks were gathered together, still, heads tucked into wings. I don’t know whether it was the morning light or exhaustion or whatever but I realized something I’d been trying to know—the ducks were like stained glass, the sunlight seeming to come through them, infuse them, or else from them, each radiating its own sun. How vivid and varied were their colors, their panels and patterns, each crested duck unique yet blended with the other ducks.

Spencer picked up a baseball-sized rock. He tested the rock’s weight, studied the distance. I wished I’d grabbed him; how could I not? I was frozen open like in a dream—knowing what comes next.

I tried to say, don’t but couldn’t speak.

A smile flashed in the white burn of his lips, and Spencer hurled the rock.

It arced skyward, hung, descended; perfect, pinpoint. With a terrible splash, the rock struck one of the baby ducks, and both disappeared under water.

“Bang,” Spencer cried, arms shooting straight up. Just like that, where six ducks had been, now five. The remaining ducks flapped on tumultuous water, thrown and startled, looking, looking, looking everywhere, unable to grasp the empty space between them.

And then, the gone duckling resurfaced, but barely, on its side in the water. It tried to right itself with feeble flaps and kicks but could not. The others circled, reaching anxiously with hooked bills to lift the tiny one back atop the water, into the world.

Laughing uproariously, Spencer picked up another rock.

With a sudden fist I nailed Spencer’s head—a thick, numb crack. He crumpled to the ground, and I dropped on top him, punching and punching. He tried briefly to push me from him, but that would never happen. Far from mind I felt the weight of each terrible blow and the giving of him below, the going away.

At some point, hands pulled me from him. It was John Boyer. His face distant, mouth making shapes.


An ambulance came for Spencer Carr and the cops came for me. A whole bunch of cops, weirdly happy to be there. I wouldn’t say anything to anybody. They read me my rights, put me in handcuffs, pushed me around. Off to the side, Boyer talked to some of them, and they made notes in their books. They shoved me in the backseat of one of the cop cars.

Right before they shut the door on me, I yelled to Boyer, “The duck!”

His eyes met mine through the window’s wire cage, and he looked to the lake where the ducks orbited the small, still blob of feathers. The car took me away.

At the police station, I got booked, fingerprinted, questioned. Assault, second offense, whatever, whatever. The whole time I could hear cops laughing in adjacent rooms. I guess all kinds of hilarious things were happening in the world.

One asked who I wanted to call and I said nobody. When they put me in the cell and finally left me alone, I noticed my hands: bloody and swollen, stupid. That’s when I started smashing my head against the wall.


Sometime later, I was in a hospital room. And Boyer was there. But at first he wasn’t Boyer; he was the room, breathing and beeping, thin curtains, unknowable activity down a hallway or across a sea. Then he was telling me he was glad to see me. The first thing I did was ask if he ever took off his city janitor uniform. He laughed for a long time and said luckily they gave him two. I asked if Spencer was okay, and he said yes, that kid’s made of rubber. I fell asleep, woke and fell asleep again. At some point I saw my old man. He was crying, and then he fell asleep too.

Later, when my head had stopped throbbing, I saw a nurse and told her I couldn’t pay for any of this, and she said they knew that. They were getting me out of there. Boyer came back and I was discharged. At first, I figured he was supposed to pick me up and take me back to jail. But then we were outside in cascading sunlight and close, welcome heat and he asked if I was hungry.

“No,” I said. “I’m alright.”

“It’s on me,” he said.

“Whatever.”

He took me to Jolene’s, a diner I hadn’t been to in ages. I don’t think I’ve ever been so hungry. He kept ordering food and I kept eating: steak, eggs over easy, bacon, sausage, hash browns, buttery toast, tomato, asparagus, pancakes, cherry pie, peanut butter pie. Around us people talked quietly, chewed, sipped sodas and coffee. Couples, families, friends, work crews. I could hear cooks in the kitchen making food, their dishes and soft clatter. The activity stilled me. Even with my bandages and hospital bracelet, the waitress kept coming back to our table smiling at me as she refilled our drinks and asked what else we wanted.

Boyer asked what I did to get community service.

I thought about it for a minute and then I said, “I busted up this house.”

“Where?”

“Over at Shady Oaks.”

“The newer, better Silas.”

“I guess.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“I don’t know. One day I was just over there. I always used to play at that creek. My mom took me.”

“Bear Creek.”

“You know it?”

“We played there too. Giant crawdads.”

Remembering, I smiled. “I caught them big bastards.”

“You have to be patient to not get pinched.”

“I liked to build them pools in the rocks. But they didn’t need that—they had the whole creek. So, I always let them go. I just liked to look at them.”

“They’re like living spaceships,” Boyer said.

“Time machines,” I said.

Boyer sipped his coffee. “So why the house?”

“I don’t know.” Around us, Jolene’s murmured. I leaned closer to Boyer. “It was a new one, finished but empty. They left the back door unlocked. I slipped in and started hanging out. Reading, smoking cigarettes, writing on the walls. Sometimes I slept there. Felt like a huge hidden cavern. Different rooms for different moods. Nobody bothering me. But of course, one day I woke up to a big moving truck in the driveway. I snuck out back and hid in the woods while workers carried in furniture and tons of stuff. A family pulled up—mom, dad, two little kids. Super happy. All day I watched them looking around, making big plans. But at night they left again. So. I tried the backdoor and this time it was locked. I got real mad about it. Grabbed a rock and broke the window in the door. I went inside and started searching through all their stuff. The dude had golf clubs. Right there in the living room. I took the big club and just started destroying everything in the house.”

We both got quiet for a minute. For something to do, I ate another piece of toast. I imagined everyone was watching me, but I don’t think they were.

“How’d you get caught?”

“I’m an idiot. They got security cameras all over that hood. Nobody looks like me.”

The waitress came with the check and Boyer gave her money. She said she hoped to see me soon.

“I talked to the police about you and Spencer,” Boyer said. “Judge Dickinson. I told them I witnessed the whole thing. That Spencer started the fight and you acted in self-defense. They’re willing to drop the assault charges against you. But you have to stay all summer and finish fixing the lake.”

I didn’t know what to say. Beside the fact that lake could never be fixed, it was an unbelievable break. Outside, Boyer asked if I wanted a ride home.

“No,” I said. “Thanks.”

“You want to come over to my place and have a beer or something?”


Boyer’s house was not far from our trailer. I knew the place because it had colored flags strung across the porch. Kids always ripped those flags down. I did a couple times too. But always more flags appeared. I asked Boyer what their deal was and he said they were Buddhist prayer flags. The five colors—blue, white, red, green, yellow—represent health and harmony, the elements in balance. I asked where screaming at people fit into all that and Boyer laughed. He said, “It’s hard to be a human being.”

While Boyer stepped away, I looked around—books, pictures and paintings, antiques, records. The place was old but well kept. In the living room, he had several guitars, amps, and a full fucking drum kit; I’d never seen that. I couldn’t believe nobody’d stolen it. Above the fireplace was a black and white photograph in a silver frame: MacDougal Lake a long time ago. A young couple in a pedal boat smiled like they had all day. The woman held a round baby, one eye open and one closed. Behind the family, people in boats paddled the lake. On the far shore, the boathouse.

Boyer brought two cans of beer. “Just one,” he said, and then raised his. “Cheers.”

“Cheers,” I said. Soft warmth spread through me. Sunlight streamed in the window. Boyer beamed.

“Let me show you something,” he said.

In his backyard, Boyer had a plastic pool filled with water. Bandaged and floating, doubled in size, was the brown and yellow duckling. “We’ll be able to put him back in a few days,” Boyer said.

“The other ones are still there?”

“They are. Waiting. I told them.” I thought that was the best thing I’d ever heard.

The duck kicked toward me with wet, bottomless black eyes.

“You have a band?” I asked.

“Used to,” Boyer laughed. “Kind of hard getting along with folks. You want to jam?”

“I don’t know how.” In the living room, Boyer gave me a guitar and took one for himself. He turned the amps up and the room hummed. He showed me a chord shape, strummed a pick across the strings.

“Now you,” he said.

I thought about telling him about my mom, about her picture lost to the Hole, about my dad, about how he’d forgotten my birthday. But it didn’t really matter if Boyer knew. This was pretty damn good. And when I strummed A, holy shit, I lifted.


Justin David Stone grew up in rural southern Missouri but lives now with his wife and daughter in El Paso, Texas, a community he cherishes. He holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas El Paso Bilingual Creative Writing Program and a BA in film/video production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He has taught creative writing and first-year writing at UTEP. Presently, he teaches high school language arts. His short fiction has appeared in Eclectica Magazine and storySouth. He can be found on Twitter @rusticus_est and through his website justindavidstone.com.