Teddy Lynch and Gage Mumford met in kindergarten in Manchester, Massachusetts. On the first Thursday, the class went outside to test their paper airplanes, and Teddy’s did an immediate loop into Gage’s eye. The teacher made the offender take the victim to the nurse, and when the boys discovered that Gage had not been blinded, it was their first triumph. By the following week they had a secret handshake.
That spring, when Teddy had his first loose tooth, he was nervous and asked Gage what to do with it. Neither of them had any idea, so when it finally fell out they decided to bury it in the grass at recess when Ms. Nash wasn’t looking. Gage spent the next four days trying to wiggle out one of his own teeth.
Teddy and Gage built forts in their rooms out of blankets, string, and cardboard. In third grade when they were constructing a particularly elaborate masterpiece, someone’s foot caught an edge and sent the whole thing to the ground. One of them gave the other an annoyed push, which was returned with a solid fist on the top of the head, then a kick to the kneecap, followed by more kicking and punching and pushing and pulling.
In the summer after fourth grade, Gage’s father had to send Teddy home after the two were found throwing water-balloons at strangers from the roof. This was promptly countered by Gage later having to write an apology to Teddy’s parents for spraying the hose through an open kitchen window.
Teddy’s family had a small go-cart, and one winter when they were twelve Teddy and Gage tied a rope to the back of it to see if they could pull each other on an old sledding saucer. The towing worked fine on a thin layer of snow until Teddy drove way too fast around the corner of the driveway, whipping Gage as he came flying around into the garage door, which broke his arm. That was the same year they discovered they could sit next to each other during tests and signal multiple-choice answers with their fingers.
After Gage’s uncle taught him how to surf, Gage taught Teddy, and they started going out to Long Beach whenever they could, taking turns on an old long-board supplied by the uncle. Once Teddy got his driver’s license, they went more often. Eventually the two obtained boards of their own, which were
promptly named Roxanne and Mustang Sally. Time spent in the water waiting for waves was filled with discussions of girls, the legitimacy of peeing in wetsuits, or the plausible existence of aliens. They placed bets on how long Teddy’s overweight cat would last in the wild, and they debated whether they would rather have arms in place of fingers or fingers in place of arms.
Teddy and Gage stole their first beers from their respective fathers, and they drank them in Teddy’s room with Jen Summinsby, Lily Greene and Rob Hooper. Everyone acted loose like they were supposed to and pretended to like the taste (mostly for the girls’ sake), but Teddy poured most of his second one down the sink, and Gage substituted his for one of the empty bottles. Both felt vaguely ill, though they each witnessed each other’s first kiss that night when Lily Greene suggested spin-the-bottle. After everyone had left, Teddy and Gage stole one of Teddy’s sister’s bras and took turns undoing the clasp, should the need for practical application ever arise.
Both Teddy and Gage managed to find girlfriends, and both Teddy and Gage managed to lose girlfriends, which of course was never their fault. Teddy grew to be taller, slightly broader, and pretty relaxed around girls; his hair was light brown, and his face was angular and energetic. Gage – though slightly more nervous – was much funnier and more entertaining; his hair was lighter, and he had a kind, usually-mischievous smile that was infectious. Together the two surfed on the weekends, hated the
SATs, and even scrounged some invites to a few parties. They played rock-paper-scissors to see who would buy their first pack of condoms.
When Teddy and Gage argued, it was usually over stupid things, which they both knew were stupid. If it ever amounted to anything, they would split ways when each was tired of dealing with the other’s argument, but it never lasted beyond the next day of surfing, even in bad waves.
Technically Teddy was raised as an Episcopalian, and Gage a Protestant, and although it came up every now and then, neither really knew what to make of God.
In the summer after senior year Teddy and Gage built some beds into the back of Gage’s Jeep and drove west to work on a ranch outside Buffalo, Wyoming. They got the job through a friend of Teddy’s father, and they did pretty good work when they weren’t experimenting with what else they could put through the wood-chipper. The majority of their combined wages, however, was generally squandered paying off the sizable costs of their other chance mishaps. Gage flipped his Jeep with Teddy in the passenger seat (although they persuaded their boss to alter the story for Mr. and Mrs. Mumford), and that wasn’t nearly as expensive as Teddy’s gasoline rocket idea, which set a portion of their cabin’s roof on fire and involved some lecturing from the police. They both agreed it had been worth it.
Teddy and Gage went to separate colleges. Teddy studied marine biology. Gage studied architectural engineering. After graduation Teddy joined the army for two years and Gage worked in New York. While stationed on his first tour, Teddy would call home to his family, but the first time he was shot at, his next call was to Gage, and when a stray bullet finally tore through Teddy’s upper arm, he called Gage again.
“They’re sendin’ me home. I got shot.”
“Where?”
“Shoulder.”
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
Pause.
“You shudda ducked.”
“I know.”
Gage was promoted at his architect job in New York. Teddy worked next on a research boat, tagging and monitoring whales off of Antarctica. Gage envied Teddy’s adventure and Teddy envied Gage’s decent income.
After Teddy’s return they both moved to Boston for work. They met Anna who was fun and beautiful, and they both knew it, and they both knew that the other one knew it. Anna and Gage hit it off though, and they never spoke about it until things got serious. When Gage brought it up, Teddy accepted it because it was time to accept it and because he wanted them to
be happy, which they were. He knew Gage would have done the same, and in turn Gage knew how lucky he was to have Anna, except for one year when he forgot their anniversary, and Anna cried, and Teddy punched him straight in the face. The following spring, Teddy was Gage’s best man.
For his engagement present, Teddy took the four of them skydiving (himself, his girlfriend at the time, Gage, and Anna). He and Gage both tried to act calm throughout the experience, but when they opened the door of the small plane, Teddy nearly vomited, and Gage peed in his pants a little.
Teddy and Gage surfed on Cape Cod and skied in New Hampshire on the weekends.
Gage was Teddy’s best man when he married a great girl named Charlotte from California.
When Mr. Lynch had an aneurism and passed away, Gage stood with Teddy at the funeral, and they both cried. Gage also sat with Anna and Charlotte when Teddy gave his recipient’s speech for the Hoffstat Prize for post-graduate research from the Museum of Natural History in New York.
Gage eventually moved south of Boston to Duxbury, and Teddy did the same ten months later, though they continued to work in the city. Teddy was the godfather to Gage’s first son, who was named Samuel after Gage’s father. As a result of a lost golfing wager, Teddy was the clown for Sam’s fourth birthday.
When things weren’t too busy, Teddy and Gage continued to surf in the summers and brought their families skiing in the winters. They were not as young as they used to be, but they still enjoyed it and spent hours discussing politics or how much they hated jellyfish. On a chairlift one time, Teddy said that Charlotte couldn’t become pregnant.
On each other’s birthdays, Teddy and Gage began a tradition of placing bizarre or embarrassing objects on each other’s lawns. Among many notable examples was Teddy’s thirty-ninth birthday when he looked out his bedroom window to see a fifteen-foot inflatable replica of Clifford the Big Red Dog. On Gage’s forty-sixth birthday, he woke up and found an assortment of barnyard animals (a horse, a goat, a pig, two farm geese, and six chickens) all wandering around inside a pen, which had been constructed strategically to block the driveway. Anna and Charlotte thoroughly enjoyed this tradition, especially when it meant watching their husbands get Clifford’s head out of the tree or shovel fresh horse manure.
Gage and Anna had two more children, both girls.
Gage was diagnosed with brain cancer at age fifty-four and told Teddy over the phone directly after his doctor broke the news. The two spoke about Super Bowl plans for the following weekend and the recent visiting habits of Gage’s in-laws.
When Teddy and Gage surfed for the last time, they both knew that’s what it was. It was early fall, and they drove out to
Cape Cod one day with no waves. They more or less paddled out and sat together, and they both enjoyed it.
Teddy and Charlotte helped look after Gage’s three kids, especially when Anna went to see him in the hospital.
When Gage Mumford died at age fifty-eight, his mother, Anna, and many others watched Teddy spread his ashes over the waves at Long Beach in Manchester, just as it said in the will. They also designated a gravestone to be placed in Rosedale Cemetery, and Anna asked Teddy if he could write the inscription.
But he couldn’t. Mrs. Mumford suggested a few words from the Bible in the Book of John, but Teddy pictured them engraved on the rectangular, grey stone, and he cried. In the end, the names and dates were written on the headstone, alone.
The Ecker Short Story Prize honors a short story written by a Harvard freshman.