Arno lay back holding his snare drum in both arms as Mandy drank a strawberry milkshake by the willow tree pond. Arno’s heart beat slow due to tranquilizers prescribed for his nerves. He listened as Mandy sucked the shake cup dry.

“That’s a thirsty sound,” he said. “Did you get it all?”

“Yeah, all I ever wanted,” Mandy said.

She threw the container across the grass and it landed in the pond.

“I gotta pick that up,” Arno said, as he watched the cup float, then sink.

“I don’t like all these grasshoppers jumping on me,” Mandy told him.

“But when you sit back and listen, they really have a rhythm,” Arno replied.

He shoved his snare drum in front of him and used the edges as a pivot as he rolled on his stomach and pushed himself up with his hands.

“They rub their legs together to make that sound,” he continued. He walked over to the edge of the pond and did a four-four beat on the batter head of his snare drum. “It’s the circle of life. The ducks eat em.”

“I still don’t like them on my face,” she told him. “Can you give me a lift?”

She offered both her bare arms, which showed Arno the folds of skin around her elbows and neck,

“I got the taste of strawberry in my mouth,” she said.

He found it hard to discern her chin as he grasped both her hands in his and she came to a squatting position. For a moment they both held each other, Arno standing listening to a transport truck engine brake down the big hill on the highway behind him, and Mandy half up and half down.

Arno thought this cannot go on forever, it’s our fourth date and she seems happy, though the sun is hot on the back of my neck. So he strengthened his willpower, kept things steady, despite the traffic distractions and her weight. They looked into each other’s eyes and Mandy asked, “Am I too heavy?”

“You are never too heavy,” he said, and eased her back down on the grass.

She smiled at him, her wide and fleshy knees closed together, then she rolled over on her stomach and pushed herself to a crawling position. She straightened her legs and lifted herself up just like Arno.

“See?” she told him. “I’m still pretty strong!”

 Arno smiled. “Yes you are sweetie.”

He scooped up his drum and the couple pushed their bodies up the side of the hill towards the parking lot and Arno’s truck with the two easy chairs in the back. Arno drove along the highway past the A&W and the defunct water slide, then along the Sunnybrae Road that wound round the lake.

“We’re gonna have a great band practice,” he told Mandy, pulling into a driveway up a steep slope to a partly log house his friend Cody had built around an old trailer he’d taken the back off. Cody leaned on his porch railing, over which hung various blankets and clothing items. “Just did laundry today,” said Cody, smiling in his striped, green pajamas. “Come on in.”

A guitar and amp sat in the middle of the main floor, where Leanne, Cody’s bony-hipped girlfriend, stood with long bare feet, her thin lips touching the top of a microphone.

“No feedback,” she announced, as Mandy read the label on a bag of potato chips and Arno went back to the truck for his bass drum and cymbal.

He smelled the air, fresh, like water on corn, a summer garden, Arno thought as the screeching of his friend’s electric guitar wailed through the open window. He set up his drums by that window as Cody poured rum and cokes for Leanne and Mandy and opened a beer for himself.

“What’ll you drink, Arno?”

“I can’t, cuz of my medication,” Arno pulled up Cody’s short home-made wooden stool and hit the drums with his sticks. He felt the rhythm of his heart and beat along until Cody came in with his version of Blue Suede Shoes. Arno looked outside, noticed Cody’s garden with tall corn stalks waving in the wind. He lifted his sticks and pointed them out the window.

“When’s that going to be ready?”

Leanne took a big gulp of her drink, she set the glass down on Arno’s snare, then said “Whoops, sorry,” and stuck it on the top of Cody’s wood stove made from a fifty-gallon gasoline drum.

“Don’t worry, that’s not lit,” she announced. “Corn’s in a few months.”

Arno noticed her white pants slashed with plenty of fashionable rips, a thin knee came through as she lifted her left leg with one hand. “Gotta balance,” she told everyone.

Cody shouldered his guitar and said, “Did someone speak of the corn?” Then he pounded out a few barre chords. “That’s Bad Moon Rising,” he told everyone.

Mandy asked, “What makes a bad moon?” as she moved back and forth in Cody’s rocking chair. Then she stood up and drank the rum and coke from the glass off the stove while peering out the window.

“I can see the corn too,” she said.

“I picked the peas today,” Leanne told everyone. “Took me two and a half hours.”

“Care for some vodka, Arno?” Cody asked.

Arno said no, he needed to drive later he had to get Mandy home. Cody and he rolled through many wild times together but there appeared to be a recent difference in life paths. With Mandy and the medication, he must think outside of himself.

“Lotsa people drive drunk,” Cody said. “The key is to focus on the road.”

“Can I check your fridge out?” Mandy asked. “I’ve got a craving for mozzarella.”

“Sure, help yourself,” Cody said. “I know what you mean about cravings.”

He moved around the big room lighting a bunch of different coloured candles, then turned out the yellow standing light. “We gotta have atmosphere,” he said, lifting some blue jeans on over his pajama bottoms.

Candle smoke curled into the air as the little band started in on several songs. Leanne wound the mike cord around her shoulders, “It’s like a boa,” she stated, and shoved her pointy elbows forward in a dance. Cody’d been going out with Leanne three months now. Her squeaky voice felt kinda irritating to Arno but she knew the moves. He sniffed a perfume aroma, figured she must’ve been dabbling on patchouli. Mandy went to the open window and stuck her head out, “Do you guys get many bears up here?”  she said, “Because it smells like it.”

The band kept on playing. Mandy opened the fridge and took out a slice of garlic bread, closed the door, sat on the couch, and watched Arno do his drumming as she ate. He nodded in her direction, smiled and tried to keep a beat somewhat faster than his heart. The fridge door sprang open without warning as Mandy put up her hand in a little wave. The appliance’s glaring light filled the darkened room.

“Hey Cody, can you play The Rose,” Leanne asked as she slammed the fridge shut.

“I can use the brushes,” Arno said.

Cody nodded, tipped his head and emptied the rum bottle as Leanne sang the song in a flat acapella, moving her hands in the shape of a flower. After “The Rose” everyone retired to the couch to listen to the session tape, recorded on an ancient cassette Cody said he found in his mother’s basement. He sat with a small smile on his face, his hand on Leanne’s ripped pantleg. Leanne unbuttoned Cody’s pajama top.

“It’s past ten o clock,” said Mandy. “My brothers want me home by eleven.”

“Are you sixteen?” Leanne asked.

“Ha ha,” Mandy said, taking a gulp of her drink. “I’m going to take a flower arranging course this fall.” Her skin flickered under the candlelight, she pulled her hair to one side of her head, “I’m twenty-seven.”

Cody turned around on the couch and rocked back and forth as he gazed outside, Leanne steadied him with one hand on his back. Then Cody stood up, stepped sideways, tripped over the amp and fell into the drums. He lay there a moment. Arno bought him a cushion. “You can lay your head on that.”

“I don’t need no fricken cushion,” Cody said.

“Just take holda my arms,” Leanne bent over him. Her long hair reached down almost to the floor.

“Who’s your hairdresser, Leanne?” Mandy asked.

Cody flopped one arm in the air, then let it fall.

“I said I don’t need no fricken cushion,” Cody repeated, and attempted to roll over on his stomach. He banged into Leanne’s ankle, then grabbed her leg.

“Whoah!” Leanne yelled.

“I got you!” Cody laughed. “I got you.”

He pulled then pushed and Leanne staggered then toppled. Her hands hit the drums, which dropped onto the wall and the rest of Leanne fell onto Arno. She was light and bony, he could take it, but he couldn’t see anything, her hair was in the way. He reached his arm around her. “Sorry,” he said, and as he spoke, he breathed in a giant gout of patchouli. Everything seemed dark, but then Leanne’s nose came into view. She lay in his lap for a moment, then staggered up “Not your fault. Cody tripped me.”

Arno smelled something burning. “What’s that?” he said, then saw one of the candles had fallen over and the carpet was on fire. Leanne stomped the flames as Arno raised himself on his haunches in the dark. He reached for a saucepan he’d noticed earlier on a side table and doused everything with what seemed to be mostly water.

“That was the pea pan!” Leanne yelled.

Sure enough, dozens of raw, hand-picked garden peas rolled along the soaking carpet in the semi-darkness, then stopped.

Leanne grabbed the saucepan from Arno’s hands, knelt down and started picking them up.

All this time, the tape of the music rolled, playing Leanne’s acapella version of “The Rose.”

“Could someone turn that crap off?” Leanne yelled again.

Arno grabbed the ancient cassette and tried to yank it out of the machine. The recorder dropped to the floor, leaving Arno holding a long length of still unravelling tape.

“At least the music stopped,” he said.

Cody shuffled to the couch, heaved himself to a sitting position, and grabbed a pack of matches from between the two purple pillows that Mandy sat on. He lit one of the matches, then held the lit flame close to one of his eyebrows.

“What we should have,” he said. “Is a foursome.”

“I gotta take Mandy home,” Arno told him. “Are you ready to go Mandy?”
“Yeah,” she said, stood and brushed a few peas from her dress. She looked down at Cody. “Where’s the light switch?  I don’t wanna trip.”

Arno wondered how the little vegetables got all the way over to her. He picked up his snare drum and flicked on the standing lamp.

“You’re my my best friend, Arno,” Cody said, holding his head in his hands. “Aren’t you my best friend?”

“Yes, we’re best friends,” Arno told him.

“Then please, please, please turn that light off.”

“Yeah, as soon as we get out of here,” Arno replied.

Just as Mandy was halfway across the room, Leanne stood up with her pea saucepan and flicked the switch.

“I’m like a bat, I crave the dark,” she said, and banged the saucepan down on top of the wood stove. Cody saw her teeth flash against the candle flame. “I’m gonna be hanging upside down tomorrow morning.”

“Can you get me a hunk of cheese honey?” Cody asked.

Arno grabbed his bass drum and asked his own question. “Mandy, can you take the cymbal?”

“It’s been a fun evening,” he told Cody, and stepped outside to smell the night air.

In the truck, Mandy said “Like you told your friend, that was kinda fun,” and Arno asked “What part?” as he drove along the curving mountain road.

“Listening to you play” she told him.

They motored up to Mandy’s place, a one-story rancher just past the gravel pit a few miles out of town. A big screen TV flashed behind the big picture window. As Arno pulled up, a man in a cowboy hat and a leather vest stepped out the front door, holding what Arno figured was a pit bull at the end of a rope. The man squatted down and let the dog go. It charged towards Arno’s truck. Mandy rolled down the window.

“Hey, Pokey, it’s me.” She looked at Arno. “That’s my brother Maurice. He was in the armed forces.”

Arno rolled down his window as Maurice came up alongside. “Hello,” Arno said.

His heart still beat fairly slowly. At this point, he felt happy he was on medication. Maurice’s face had a lot of lines on it. Arno figured he must be a much older brother.

“Have you folks been drinking?” Maurice asked.

His voice sounded worn, like that of the late country western singer, Johnny Cash.

“I’m not drunk,” said Mandy. She stepped down from the truck and put her arms around Pokey. “Hey big fella. Did you miss me?”

“I don’t drink at all,” Arno said. “On account of my health.”

Maurice kept a steady gaze. Arno breathed his way, to show his sincerity. Mandy stroked Pokey’s ears.

Maurice nodded. “Okay, bro. Have a good evening.”

“Bye, Mandy,” Arno said, and she stood and waved as he rolled his windows up.

Arno drove through town towards the willow tree pond where Mandy and he lingered earlier that day. He parked in the lower lot, grabbed one of the chairs and a flashlight from the back of his truck and limped down towards the water. Grasshoppers made their stridulating noises, the night hummed with their sound. Mosquitoes buzzed too, closer to the pond, but Arno didn’t mind. Mosquitoes never seemed to bite him much.

He set his deck chair by the edge of the water, took off his shoes and socks and pulled off his pants. He figured his long blue boxers were appropriate for night wading. He turned on the flashlight and stepped in. A few feet out, he stuck his arm under and felt around. It took a few minutes for him to find and throw the milk shake container to shore. The one Mandy had tossed in the pond in that afternoon, just before he held her weight, as he helped her rise to her feet again.