The seagulls were cawing. 

            Thick air verged on sticky. My skin was clammy and ready for a dip in the lake, which even on the 4th of July couldn’t be warmer than 66 degrees. A big body of water that far north is just as stubborn as the people who live around it.

            I rolled out of the hammock and stretched, taking the lake in. It was calm, with ripples of waves forming from charter boats who had already been at it since 6 AM. Far past the horizon was Wisconsin. Back in the day we listened to WKROCK out of Manitowoc, a scratchier sound but better music. 

            Meredith came outside and gave me a side hug. “Good morning.”

            “Morning. Larry still out?”

            “Like a corpse. Surprised you’re up.” 

            “Every day, like clockwork. Where’s Dad?”

            She nodded to the beach. “In his chair. Go catch up. I set out drinks and snacks.” 

            “Thanks, Meredith,” I said, holding her gaze. “Really, for everything.”

            Neither of us felt like crying that early, so I walked down the stairs.

            It was a short boardwalk to the beach, no more than twenty feet. The beach itself used to be fifty yards deep, from dock to shoreline. When I fancied myself an athlete in high school, I did beach workouts on vacations, running 40 yard dashes to and from the water. The thought of the workouts made me shudder. I couldn’t tell the beach length from the deck, but it damn sure wasn’t fifty yards. 

            Foamy surf washed over chunks of driftwood, halfway between lake and sand, the sun shining into deep crevices in the twisted wood. Where did that piece of wood come from? When? Remnants of a dock stuck out of the water like a sunken ship’s mast. 

            Dad sat in a cushioned wooden chair at the end of the walkway. A large umbrella was open above him and there was an empty chair waiting for me. A small table nestled between the chairs held a carafe of water and a coffee pot, with glasses and mugs. Fruit and croissants were lined up on a plate. He ate a grape and watched the lake. 

            “Hey, Dad.”

            He looked up from wherever he’d been. He’d grown older, but it was a good thing. His face had filled out. Touring takes its toll. Lake life has a way of reversing the effects. His beard was short and gray, matching his long gray hair.

            His steel drum eyes pierced the world more than ever. There was weariness within them, a traveler reaching the end of a long journey. Also, gratitude and contentment. Regret flashed on his brow when he saw me. And love.

            He went to get up and I said no. He flipped me off and stood, wrapping his arms around me. My arms didn’t know what to do, hung limp at my sides, until he squeezed. I squeezed back. Tears welled. We separated and sat down. 

            “It’s good to see you. Been a while.”

            “It has. I’m really sorry about that.”

            “It was bound to happen. We’re the same person. Can’t do anything about it now. Let’s just enjoy the time we have left.” 

            Don’t know what you were expecting. That work for you?

            Reunions come in all shapes and sizes. 

“The beach is a lot smaller. What happened?” 

            “The waves erode it and there’s no source to supply sand. Mother Nature, that glorious beast. Plus, the water’s high as hell this year.” 

            The shore to the right curved outward for miles towards the sand dunes and the state park. The shore stretched south to the left, curving inward to Stearns Park, the city beach that roped us in years prior. At the far end, a breakwall doglegged out into the water, ending with a massive white lighthouse, an icon of the beach skyline. It was still early, 7:35, but the beach was well on its way to a crowded house. Tiny bodies strolled along the breakwall, no doubt marveling at the beauty of their surroundings. Maybe that was when you became a local: when you began taking beauty for granted, when the marveling stopped. 

            I poured a cup of coffee and crossed a leg over my knee. The lake sighed. 

            “I was thinking on the way in last night, about Ludington, about relocating and finding a home. What makes someone a local, do you think?”

            The rhythm of our conversations never took long to pick back up. Old friends and family just get us.

            He chewed on another grape, pondering. “Several factors, I’m thinking. One is time. How long have you been there? How many years does it require to earn that status? Towns don’t just give the local title away to folks.”

            “And you have to be recognizable in some way, right? Not that you’re infamous, famous, or in between, but you’ve put the effort in to say hello to grocery store clerks, and bartenders, and the family with their kid and dog at the park.”

            “There’s a routine to it. Whether you’re active or a recluse, you have a story. And people know it or are curious enough to want to know more. There’s that. And the other thing is you have to know the area. There’s always more to learn, but when someone visits, you should be able to recommend how they can best enjoy your town.”

            “And be proud about it.”

            “I’d damn sure like to think so, or why in the hell are you living there? But, you know, people are from every walk of life and now that I’m saying that criteria out loud, I don’t think you need to be proud of where you live. You need to own it.”

            We drank our coffee while the world spun. 

            “That answer your question?” he asked after some time.

            “It’s a start. We’re both going to think about it and have other ideas.”

            “True.”

            Sunrays peaked over the rooftop. Two houses down towards the lighthouse, a teenager in a life vest pushed a kayak into the lake.

“Thank you for the hunt. I needed it, more than you know. Can I trouble you for one final story?”

He steepled fingers at his chin. A smile poked through. 

“All I told Mary was that the boy needs to heal, but I’m not sure he’s ready. What can I say? She ran with it.”

“I’m healing.”

He refilled his coffee cup and poured milk into it, stirring it with a wooden stick. “What story do you want to hear?”

            I didn’t know. Being back with him was enough. “Tell me your favorite one about music.” 

            His voice raised. “You want me to tell just one? You know me better than that. That’s like picking my favorite movie of all time. You’d have to do it by genre. Or decade.”

            “Whatever comes to mind.”

He sipped from his mug, squinting at something on the horizon.
            “I have it.” He locked in his stage look. He swam through the present and the past. “Every song I’ve ever written has a story to it. That’s where I go when I play. To when I wrote it. Or we, really, because so many were with Paul. And the journey the song has been through. Who it knows. Where it’s been played. So that every time I play it, it’s the same song, but it’s also the next version of itself, played for the first time for people. It will never be fair to mail it in. That makes it new to me. That’s what I’m thinking. What are the songs that remind me of people in my life? For instance, I remember dancing around the kitchen with your grandma Carradine to Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers’ ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love?’ We’d hold wooden spoons as microphones and sing our hearts out.”

            “Really?” Crinkle-eyed tears melted my face. 

            “Oh, hell yeah. My old man’s back was jacked up from years in the army. He laid on his stomach on this big pillow in the living room, watching John Wayne movies, wondering what in the hell we were getting up to while cooking dinner.” 

            “What was your song for him?”

            His voice had picked up a rasp that fit his older look. He drank from a water glass covered in condensation. “He was a Bing Crosby guy. And Dinah Shore. The Big Bopper. The Isley Brothers. And Frank Sinatra. Mom didn’t have a voice, but she did have rhythm. Dad could sing. He didn’t like to do it in front of people, so the trick was leaving him alone with Frank and waiting for him to sing. He couldn’t help himself. He crooned the hell out of ‘New York, New York’ and ‘The Way You Look Tonight.’ My favorite for him was ‘The Best is Yet to Come.’ He sang it to Mom, dancing and dipping her. I wish you would’ve gotten to know him. I never got to tell him how much I loved him, especially in the moments like that.”

            A kid in a kayak paddled through tiny waves. “I’m sure he knew it.” 

            “I like to think so, but you never know. And then there’s your mother, God bless her heart.” 

            Our laughs harmonized. “I love Mom, but she’s a trip.”

            “She is. And for many years she was my trip. And what a long, strange trip it was. Musically, we connected over Stevie Wonder, Led Zeppelin, Bowie. Modern Love. She loved Bowie. Named her dog after him. That was before we were dating. My song for her has to be ‘Midnight Train to Georgia.’”

            “Gladys Knight.” 

            “And the Pips. She couldn’t sing but she’d belt it out. I don’t think she paid attention to the lyrics. She was more caught up in the melody and the arrangement. I talked to her I don’t know how long ago. Time’s been a bit weird these last few years. And she was listening to Glady Knight.”

            “I remember her playing it. What about Paul and Larry?”

            “Those two assholes are easy.” 

            I sunk into the chair and tried to slow time. How could I record this moment and time travel back to relive it? 

            “Paul is a rocker, but damn it you wouldn’t know when you hear what he listens to. Which, if I’m being honest, far too often people attribute hard rock with only listening to screaming metal and songs so loud they melt your face off like Raiders of the Lost Ark. There’s so much good music in this world, in many different genres. You can learn just as much from an 80s pop record as the Stones. Paul knew that. He was heavy into Prince and Madonna and The Cure. The Police. He dug Sting. Big Beatles guy, too. And The Eagles. His song though? ‘Life in a Northern Town.’” 

            “Who’s that?”

            The look he gave me was some cousin of judgment.

            “The Dream Academy.”

            “The Dream Academy!”

            “Said it made him feel like home. Once we hit the road, that was his go-to when homesickness struck. Larry, he was Chuck Berry, Roy Orbison singing for the lonely, Bob Dylan, The Band, Springsteen, Kiss. He’s the one who got us into hip hop. I listened to some – Run DMC, LL Cool J – but when he joined, he’d throw on Dr. Dre and Snoop and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Digable Planets. Arrested Development. If we don’t make friends, we don’t learn about new music. That’s how I heard Wu-Tang Clan. ‘C.R.E.A.M.’ Larry with his legs up and eyes closed, fingers drumming on his belly.”

            Musicians are just people like you or me. They put their pants on one leg at a time. Of course, when they do, some of them make gold records. I had the pleasure of riding twenty hours with one of them, never thinking about his status. Did growing up with a famous dad make me ungrateful? Unaware? Desensitized?

            “Deacon?”

            “Deacon’s simple. Van Halen. He loves them. He was more David Lee Roth than Hagar. You wouldn’t think it when you saw him listening to music, but there’s a party going on inside that man. How he contains it no one will know. There’s a nuclear reactor in his chest. ‘Runnin’ With the Devil’ was his tune. He got a kick out of ‘Hot for Teacher’ because he had a night of drinks with one of his high school teachers after graduation, but ‘Runnin’ with The Devil’ was the only song I ever heard him sing.”

            “And I bet he sounded great.”

            “There’s another life where Deacon fronts a world class band. I’d like to watch that movie.”

            Meredith stepped onto the upper deck and waved. I waved back. Dad was too busy talking to notice. 

            “Meredith. You heard her story. She’s ‘I’ve Had the Time Of My Life’ mixed with ‘Time After Time’ and ‘Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” I hear those songs and think of her. She’s had my heart for forty-two years. It makes me wonder though, what song she thinks about for me. I’ll have to ask her. Not a bad question there, Fender.”

            I thought of Laramie and the Carpenters. What type of music did Amanda listen to, I wondered. I snapped a photo of the beach and lake. 

            “What about me? What’s my song?”

            He held his hand to his cheek like a Roman statue. At what age do we grow contemplative? “You’re Tom Petty. ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream.’ Hit cruise control and rubbed my eyes. How many times did you think of that lyric?”

            God he was good. I was proud to call him Dad. 

            “More than you’ll ever know.” 

            “Hey, guys.” Meredith called. Her voice carried like a bird song. “Let’s get moving so we can catch the start of the parade.” 

            Dad clamped his hands on the chair to help himself stand. “You heard her. That was fun. Thanks for the guide down memory lane.” 

            He didn’t want it, but I grabbed his hand and helped him up. The kayaker was a dot on the lake.

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