VOICEOVER


This is…Bear Lake.

[music]

Episode One: One Day There Will Be No More Lakes


Kayleen, 16, 1989


On our last day of senior year, we have to give this dumb presentation on “our hopes for the future.”


Bronson Reed says he hopes for his arm to heal, that his Dad buys him a Gameboy for his birthday, and to better follow the example of Jesus Christ. Hyrum Bates says he also wants Bronson’s arm to heal and to follow the example of Jesus Christ. Jessica Meyer says she wants to raise a son who will be just like her father.
Oh: and to follow the example of Jesus Christ.


I fully don’t give a presentation. No one notices. I probably would have said to be left alone. And also for Jessica to give birth to the kid from The Omen.


I see Bronson Reed trying to talk to Tanya Harris  in the hallway. He does this leaning move against the locker so that she can’t get away.
Later Tanya does this whole bit for her friends about how Bronson Reed broke his arm trying to do a flip into the lake so I think she definitely doesn’t like him.
Tanya lives in the trailer park a mile down US-89. She works at the corndog stand at the park and wears this big leather jacket with an actual miniskirt and t-shirts that say things like “SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT DAY”.
Her shirt today says HEY LOSER: MY EYES ARE UP HERE.
She and three of her friends are working at the park for the summer, before everyone leaves for college or a job or most likely some sexless marriage with one of their fellow Mormons. Tanya isn’t Mormon, but her mom is famously a mess so she’s staying put.
It’s a good night at the park.
The air smells like funnel cake and it’s not too hot.
Most of the annoying younger kids are home in bed.
It’s the kind of night where I feel like, yeah, I could stay here forever.
My Dad and I own and operate a small amusement park on a pier over Bear Lake. He named it Monster Mania! because the name has pizzazz!
The rides are your standard carnival stuff:
There’s Ride the Monster! (the swings) and the Legacy of the Leviathan (the pendulum).
Our drop ride is Revenge of the Deep.
Dad gave up on naming the food.
Tanya calls the corndogs the Deadly Dogs but I think that’s just when she’s pissed off.


Kayleen is a Utah name.
It was supposed to give me pizzazz in a town that was 90% blonde Mormons with blowouts and baby-pink nails.
My Mom was Black, my dad a former Irish-Catholic, and I am on the whole pretty much socially incompetent.
The math has never been in my favor.


THE BEAR LAKE MONSTER, Like 200 years old, ∞


I was born when someone put their heart in a box.
The box sank into a lake, and from it grew flora and fauna and a wriggling, writhing, frothing sprog that became:
ME.
I remember blinking my eyes for the first time and seeing a bunch of blue and dirt and thinking so this is it huh.
Not in so many words.
I didn’t understand words back then.
I was a baby after all.
You can’t expect too much from a baby!!!!!!
But people -
(A monster is not a human but a monster is a person)
(He says indignantly)
I had dreams like you, you know.
But I was born too late and all the monsters had died.
Imagine being the only one of your kind.
Like ok
I bet you are the only brown-haired man named Brian from Milwaukee with a scar on his right ankle and a bum hip from a hockey injury.
But I am I know
the only sentient lake-monster with dreams and goals and three inch thick scales currently residing in one of the greater lakes of America.
In the second half of the 20th century, I am a relic of a sub-universe that no longer exists.
The dregs of mysticism in a plasticine post-Reagan world.
Anyway, you can call me the “Bear Lake Monster”. It’s fine. Everyone else does.


EMILY, 26, 1859


I was born  two months too early.
Impatient, they said. Too eager to come into the world.

My family owned a small farm near Horsely, in Gloucestershire.
I was a loud-voiced girl in thick boots
clutching pressed flowers in my hands
and weaving them wetly into my hair
making my brothers (all brothers) play Let’s Pretend
tracking mud into the house.

I went to school for a while before the schoolhouse sank.
Then it was home again to dream of princes and poisons.

One by one, my brothers married, dutifully and unremarkably.
I stayed at home and practiced being patient.

I turned twenty-six in June, 1859.
A June where the sky was always pink. 
Father met Sam coming up from the butcher’s.   
   
Sam (with his hair in his eyes)
tripped and dropped his bag all over the road.

And Father said, feeling sorry for this lost young man:
well why don’t you come to ours for dinner then?

And Sam said
Yes and thank you.

And whether or not I knew it:
My life had begun.


KAYLEEN


Tanya and I aren’t actually friends.

I know that because when she does stuff like pretending to sniff Sharpies or flipping off the principal behind his back she doesn’t do it for me. She does it for her small audience of other punk-ish kids, most of whom live in the trailer park with her and most of whom are employed by my Dad.

I’m also like a hundred percent sure they smoke pot at work like
you can smell it
but I don’t wanna bust anyone to Dad so
it’s better for me to focus on park safety.

You might think 17 is too young for a co-Head Mechanic
but you’d be wrong.
I’ve spent 12 summers following my Dad while he twists every spoke and tightens every pneumatic valve.
I know the physics of each drop, the configuration of centrifugal force at the center of Revenge of the Deep.

Did you know that rollercoasters don’t even have engines? They basically just wind up and go. It’s all about getting enough potential energy.
People aren’t simple like that.

I’m not sure that’s legal, the school guidance counselor sighed when I told her that I liked working at the park, actually, that it gave me some structure.
She always wore these printed vests with horses on them.
The first Saturday after school ends Tanya comes in to work hungover.
Sorry man, she says, tearing off a pair of plastic sunglasses, a bunch of us were raging last night.
I’m in the Hub, the little hut that functions as our center of operations. It’s where we keep the security monitors, tools, and all my Dad’s knickknacks.
God, Tanya says, catching sight of herself in a blank TV monitor. I look like shit.
Her long, red-streaked hair is thrown up in a messy bun. 
There are bags under her eyes and her lips are swollen. 
She doesn’t look like shit.
I say:
You look like you.
She turns to squint at me, hands rubbing her eyes.
So you’re saying I always look like shit?
I’ve already found the wrench I need but I pretend I haven’t. No, you look fine.
Tanya snorts and starts messing with her hair.
Why didn’t you come out last night? A bunch of us went down to the lake. It was fun.
I can’t tell if she’s making fun of me or not.
The last time I went to a party was Jessica Meyer’s pool party, which Jessica only invited me to because of my Mom, and I was so nervous that I got diarrhea and my Dad had to come get me.
Don’t tell your Dad I went out last night, okay? says Tanya. I don’t want him to think I’m like, hungover.
I wouldn’t tell him anyway. The customers like Tanya. It’s even like, the less she tries the more they seem to like her.
I won’t, I say.
Our little secret, yeah? says Tanya, winking at me before yawning hugely and stepping back out into the sun.


THE MONSTER


There used to be more of us.
Men and women like animals like gods like creatures, who tended the world and shepherded the squalling smallnesses known as humans into creation.

I remember them, sometimes.
They would swim through the Earth to visit me, their grizzled hides adapted for magma and soot.
We had secret names, names only to be spoken in the ancient language of monsters.
To the layman - that’s you - we were Champlain, Loch Ness, Isshii, Mamlambo.
They didn’t get my whole deal.
I was born late, and born sad. My legs hadn’t formed well, so they were small and stumbling and couldn’t support my girthy-ass body.
The sprog will grow, Mamlambo said. I grew long, and wide, but never strong.
When I became obsessed with the glittering, rusted trinkets of the surface, they balked at me.
We are not here to consume, said Isshii.
But no one would tell me what we were here for, even as our numbers dwindled, even as our names passed into legend and our lakes dried up.
Why had I been born, if all the monsters were dying?
Why had I alone been cursed to muddle through the silty fog known as Existence?
Champlain said, you are a gift. The last of our kind.
NO PRESSURE, Daddy!
I buried myself in beaver-felted hats and ivory dice.
I learned of the world in colorful fits and starts, in the memories of the dead and the dreams of the living.
This is what I know:
All the dead go to the water.
They are washed away with the rain or dissolved into dirt-goop or drowned in a tidal wave.
Most water is just tiny molecules of dead persons.
Even what you drink.
Even your fancy bottled water is just dead cells.
Fi-jee I bet that’s made of people.
Aqua-fingers of friends you probably knew.
Poland Springy tissues and human membranes.
A glacial lake is just a soup of dead skin cells and tendrils of aching, fading memories.
I was born from a heart in a box, from molecules and veins and grief.

This is what I don’t know:
If there is a Soul.
Where it goes.


EMILY


When Sam came for dinner
I was in this awful dress, tottering around like a pony.

I was not about to throw away my sloppiness for anyone
but I’d brushed my hair back into a bun and when Sam arrived it was falling down and I was scrambling to put it back up.
So I first glimpsed him through a curtain of hair:
a pointy specter. 
This is Elder Crane, said my Father. He’s a priest!
An Elder, said Sam. But I’m flattered.
I managed to catch up my piles of hair into one fist so I could see him. 

A tall man, slim-hipped
some years older than me
with brown eyes
and hair like a sandy sheaf of parchment.
Hair that hung into his face like mine
and as he surveyed the room he brushed it back.
His smile was crooked and I was very aware of his teeth
(canine, too sharp for his
flat mouth
flat lips)

He reached out to shake my Mother’s hand
and then he looked at me and bowed.
Very polite.

I don’t remember what we ate.
Something too hot for a pink June.
Sam was not shy not exactly
but my Father did a lot of coaxing
You’re from America?
So how did you become a Priest? Sorry, an Elder?
Where is your family?
Emily, why are you so quiet tonight?
And I was.

I’d never heard of anything in Sam’s world.
He said he was born in New York City and never saw a farm until he was sixteen years old.
He said he’d joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and that it was a new faith but a Christian one.
He said he was an orphan.
He said he was here to recruit new followers to come join the Church in America.

I listened.
I watched his throat bob up and down as he spoke.
Look at me, I thought.
Look at me and see how much I did for you.
Look at my dress, it’s choking me.

Sam looked at the table
Mother and Father
His food
But never at me.
This man with the soft voice and pointed chin
who charmed my parents so quickly with his earnest worldliness.

I found him profoundly irritating.


KAYLEEN


It’s hot, even for June.
I’m sweating buckets under my coveralls, my hands slipping as I safety check the t-bars on Ride the Monster!

Jessica Meyer is here with Hyrum Bates, a Popsicle melting all over her pink nails.
Bronson Reed stops to talk to Tanya, who at this point has fully buried her head in her hands.

She’s a little trashy. Not to be rude, but…
I hear Jessica say it to Hyrum as they pass, and I reflect briefly on my own invisibility.                                                                                                                                                     
Is Tanya okay?
My Dad sidles up in his customary Hawaiian shirt and too-thick sunscreen, sweat visibly pouring down his face.

Yeah, I think she’s just tired. I check the last t-bar and my Dad grunts approvingly.

Looks good. You need a break? Go hang out with your friends? He gestures towards Hyrum and Jessica, about to board Revenge of the Deep.
One of the many fictions my Dad and I maintain is that I have friends. Like, yeah Dad, we all hang out after Primary at the Ward and on Fridays there’s an Ice Cream Social!! I shake my head.

In that case, he says, do you mind standing out by the Hub for a bit? People keep trying to jump off the pier into the lake.

I nod.

He wipes his forehead.
I’m going inside to do payroll.

I know he really means to take a nap but it’s so hot that I let it slide.

It’s quiet, at the tip of the pier.
The jumpers have either already left or are somewhere among the crowds of people in the lake below.

I unzip my coveralls and sit there for a while in my t-shirt and cargo shorts, enjoying the breeze.
Lake Monster or no, the lake is always packed over the summer.

A big sign on Main Street reads: Welcome to Bear Lake: The Caribbean of the Rockies!

That made my Mom laugh. It makes sense, she’d say, because it’s hot as hell and all the worst people here are white.

Mom always loved the fact that we had a local legend.
I bet he’s just resting, she used to say, and he’s going to pop out just when we least expect it.

And then she’d tickle my stomach or, when I was older, yank gently on my ponytail.

If I were a normal person, I’d be down in the lake right now, splashing my friends and planning our summers, gossiping about our boyfriends and their missions and what we would name our kids.

But people can smell sadness on you, like expired Old Spice. And at first it’s like - yeah, I can fix this. I can help this. I can douse this gross sad person in the hot shower of my surface-level affection, y’know?
But you’re never clean.
You don’t want to be.
I stand up and tie my coveralls around my waist.


THE MONSTER


My beaver hats turned into arsenic-laced powders turned into smoking, acrid rolls of film turned into lavender oil and burnt bread and mercury
Lipstick tubes tumbled from pleather purses into storm drains into my gaping maw
Piss and shit and porn magazines
The slick of body lotion and the soapy piney crunch of deodorant.
That was when I saw my kind for the last time: in the age of Jane Fonda workout videos.
It was Champlain, their body oozing with sores, their skin raw and mottled.
Hey, you look like shit, I said.
They only said: listen, young one. I have a warning for you.
I set aside the Hustler I’d been thumbing through.
Can you make it quick, I told Champlain. I’m edging.
I’ll try, they sighed, and began, bowing their infinitely wizened head:
Onccccce upon a time,
There was no America
there was the Mesozoic land
rocks and buttes and moss and the rivers.
I said, cool.
Lisssssten, said Champlain,.
the rivers ran wild in those days
thick like arteries through the heart of the world.
We coalesced from the juice of river-blood,
Thundering monsters with hearts as big as mountains.
We knew so much, they said, so much that has been lost.
I was like: okay.
Champlain shook their giant wizened head and said again:
Lissssssten.
Then the people came on bridges of ice, fleshy star-shapes with soft mouths.
We loved them for their fragility and for many years they loved us back.

Champlain smiles almost indulgently at the Hustler, and I feel an urge to destroy it and myself.

That’sssss when you came to us,
young one: the last mystery of our age.
You came with the machines and ships, a sail for every scale, a cog for every tooth.
And do you know what happened next?
I shake my head, quiet and ashamed.
Thissssssss, Champlain said:

There were star-people who carved the heart out of the world, even though we loved them still.
Star-people who turned on their own kind, who gnawed and bit and slavered though we loved them still.
A new word, a new world, a new weapon: America.
A slurred word, a filthy word, like sweet rot on a log.
They forced it down our throats until it choked us.
Metal into earth, a fish-hook jammed into flesh.
A shroud on a corpse, a lemon peel split over a rock.

And then there were no more star-people, no more incandescent ones, only the memory of how we had loved.
One day, they said, there will be no more lakes.
Champlain’s bruised lips peeled back, exposing a mouth jammed with broken fangs.
A monster is not a person, young one. Remember that.
And they lumbered away, shedding reams of skin at every inch.


EMILY


Much to my displeasure
Sam became a fixture at our table.
Say hello to Sam, Emily!
Sit Sam at the table, Emily.
Bring more bread, Emily.
Sam needs to eat more, doesn’t he?
Don’t you think so?

Sam answered questions upon questions with a hoarse throat.
When he laughed it was with a mouth wide open and both eyes closed.

My policy on Sam’s reappearances was to treat them as an annoyance
so I said nothing and neither did he.

Sam’s ears reddened easily.
Sam’s lip curled when he talked about his childhood.
My Father asked him once if he could speak with God and Sam laughed at that.
Even my Mother, whispering,
that it was all a little radical,
wasn’t it?
Religions shouldn’t be so young.
I said: weren’t they all young once?
Sam had tanned forearms.
He rarely laughed, but he’d drum his fingers on the table with pleasure when someone told a joke.
He wouldn’t look at me.
I abandoned the dresses.
He wouldn’t look at me.
He always offered to wash up
and my parents insisted no, we have Emily for that

I could hear them rattling on in the next room while I scrubbed
my fingers raw and stubby compared to Sam’s
which were long and sure.
My Father telling Sam
What a Man of the World he is!
Emily she stays at home
We couldn’t send her away if we tried

One of those times I must have let something soapy slip through my fingers because there was a crash on the floor and ruined porcelain everywhere and a cut on my finger

And.I cursed and busied myself trying to clean it up

I was bent over the stone floor when I saw his feet.

I looked up and there he was.
Warm and dark-eyed and stooped.
Um.
he said.
Um. May I help?
No, I said,
Leave me be -
and in my haste to stand  I slipped on the suds and found myself careening to the ground
landing with a SPLAT amongst the broken china.
Sam took me in:
furious, sweaty, twenty pounds of hair and a scowl. 
And he started to smile.
So I smiled back because that was what you did.
And then he smiled more.
So I did the same and then without meaning to we were both laughing crookedly there in the kitchen
He extended a hand and I took it
his long fingers twining through mine

He brought me to my feet.
He dropped my hand.
He looked me dead in the eyes
and I wondered what the inside of his mouth would taste like.
He caught his breath and swallowed. Then he went back to the candles and smoke and my parents and I went out the back porch and breathed the night

in and out and in and out.

NARRATOR

Bear Lake was created and written by Zoe Maltby, and directed by Liz Power. 
With performances by Gabrielle Laurendine, Suzy Weller, and Joseph Huffman.
Produced and sound designed by Gabe Lozada, with original music by Ronan Delisle and additional music by Gabe Lozada.
You can follow the show on Instagram and Twitter at BEAR LAKE PODCAST
And you can support us by visiting bear lake podcast dot com to make a donation.
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