The Summer Guest Page 24

  End of story; or the beginning, if you like.

  All of which is just to say that these were the things on my mind that morning, as much a part of the feel of the day as Kate’s kiss, Joe’s drunk lawyers, and Harry Wainwright. For two hours I went out with a party from cabin two—a couple of guys who just wanted somebody to show them a good spot and then beat it—then into town for some screws and other things I needed to repair a set of steps by the dock. Lucy had made it clear that I was supposed to stay close to camp, to keep myself available for whenever Harry wanted to go, but I thought a short errand wouldn’t hurt, since Harry, even if he experienced some kind of miraculous recovery, would need a while to get ready. I would have asked Kate to come along for the ride, but she was off somewhere, shuttling the moose-canoers, and probably wouldn’t be back till nearly noon.

  What happened next I can’t explain. I was driving into town, mulling over what size screws I wanted and that maybe I should pick up a case of engine oil while I was at it, when I caught myself thinking about my father, and the day I learned he’d died. This in itself was odd, as right till then, driving the Jeep up the long hill into town, the wind and sun roiling around my face, I would have sworn I had no conscious recollections of that day at all. Standing by the canoes, I’d told Kate all that I remembered of him, or thought I had; so maybe finally talking about these things had cleared a space in my mind for other memories to flow in behind them. In any case, the things I suddenly remembered hit me so hard I actually tapped the brake, then found myself pulling the Jeep to a stop by the side of the road.

  We were living on base then, the three of us in a small, prefabricated house built of nothing much better than cardboard. It was summer, the air of the tidewater thick as clam chowder. I don’t think we had an air conditioner, because the house was always full of whirling fans—table fans, ceiling fans, fans on tall stands that rocked to and fro like the heads of robots—and that was where my memory began: with the feel of fan-pushed air on my face. I was in the kitchen, which was really just a kind of galley with a small extra space for a table and chairs. The fan, an old-fashioned model with metal blades and a cloth-covered cord, was positioned on a chair so that it pointed toward the stove, where my mother had been cooking dinner for the two of us. She had left me alone there when the doorbell rang—I was playing on the floor, pushing a toy dump truck around—and in her absence the fan had worked a kind of magnetic pull on me: I left my playing and went to stand before it, to watch its blur of blades and soak the skin of my face in the cooling relief of its man-made wind. My father flew jets, aircraft held aloft by forces as invisible to me as magic, but there were plenty of propeller-driven planes around, and one could not be a small boy growing up on the grounds of the Oceana Naval Air Station without grasping at least the basics of aeronautical propulsion. In my mind I connected the action of the whirling fan blades to my father’s mysterious and important job—a job that, I knew, scared my mother half out of her wits even as she told me constantly what a great, brave man he was—and the longer I waited alone in the kitchen for her return, the more I experienced both a deepening anxiety at her absence—there was a boiling pot on the stove, which I also dimly understood to be a danger—and a strong, almost mystical pull toward the blur of metal that floated before my face. It seemed to contain a strange and ancient power—the power of my father, of men and their machines—and I longed to touch it, a desire sharp as hunger. I had been warned against this a thousand times, as I had been warned against the stove, the electric outlets, strangers who might want to talk to me, and traffic on the street. The urge to obey such commands was strong, but in my mother’s lengthy absence I detected a quality of permission. For a long moment, two seconds or ten, I held my hand up in front of the fan to feel its wind more intimately, weighing my options. And then, from the hallway, the sound traveling unmuffled through the cardboard walls of our house, I heard my mother scream.

  Which was exactly when my defenses collapsed and I extended a single, outstretched finger toward the fan, through the metal cage that wrapped it, and into the whirling blades. I did it quickly, furtively—so quickly I didn’t realize for a moment what I’d done, though the pain was, I imagine, instantaneous. The sharp metal sliced off the end of my finger so neatly that it seemed to simply vanish, and then a jet of blood shot out from this open tube of flesh into the blades, splattering everything—my hand and face, my arm and shirt, even the wall and floor, with its vibrant, Martian-red confetti—and it was this fact, as much as the pain itself, that made me scream too.

  Jesus Christ almighty, I thought, and probably said so too, remembering all this in the parked Jeep on the side of the road. A logging truck roared past me, a hundred tons of naked trees stacked on its bed like corpses in a mass grave, detonating the air around me and making the Jeep rock like a toy in a tub. In the silent wash of its departure I held up and examined my right index finger, its end stublike and flattened, the nail stunted to the shape and size of a shirt button—a familiar sight, nothing I had ever given a second’s thought to, or not for years and years. I’d always thought I’d sliced it somehow on, or with, a bicycle; I’d even constructed a mental story as to how this had happened, riding my first two-wheeler and then, for no reason at all, reaching down and sticking my finger into the grinding gears of the chain ring. But this made no sense. Maybe it was something my mother had told me, though I quickly tossed this thought aside. It was, I understood, a tale my mind had told itself.

  I drove on into town. At the hardware store, still feeling a little dazed, I fished through the little file drawers of screws, filling a sack with the ones I needed—up here we pay by the pound, like fruit—slung a case of motor oil onto my shoulder, and took it all to the register in back, where the owner, Porter Dante, was sucking on an unlit cigar and paging through a hunting magazine.

  “How do, Porter.”

  He gave me a curt nod from the chin, the North Woods equivalent of a full body hug. “Jordan.”

  He weighed the screws, then wrote up the price on the bag with a carpenter’s pencil. On the wall above him, clipped to pegboard, was a new display of power tools: not the retail junk you see in Wal-Mart, but contractor’s grade, high-voltage Makitas, all cordless, with rechargeable battery packs thick as a grown man’s fist stuck on the handles.

  “Just got them in last week,” Porter said, obviously happy to catch me looking. He poked his pencil over his shoulder at the display. “Figuring a few people around here might appreciate the real stuff and save on the drive down to Farmington.”

  An assortment of drills and drivers of various sizes, a reciprocating saw, three different circular saws with dust collectors and carbide blades, assorted belt- and palm-sanders, even a gruesome-looking thing I guessed was a rebar cutter, though I couldn’t be sure: Porter had sunk some serious money into this little display. Positioning them above the register the way he’d done, where you could have a good long look at them while your wallet was out, was a bona fide bear trap for any man between the ages of sixteen and a hundred and probably a few women besides (Kate, for one). I thought about the hours I would be spending that very day shaken to pieces by Joe’s old drill, and the death-defying hassle of running a long extension cord up to the lodge and trying to keep it out of the water.

  I waved a finger at the board. “Say, Porter, if it’s not too much trouble, let me have a peek at that drill, will you?”

  A look of sly pleasure skittered across his face. “Which, now?”

  “The big drill, the eighteen volt.”

  He brought the drill down from its pegs and placed it in my hand. It was heavy as a handgun, the plastic of its grip smooth and a little rubbery. A dangling price tag told me it sold for $168.95—a hell of a lot for a drill. I felt like I was holding an atom-smasher.

  “Feel the weight of that baby,” Porter said proudly, talking around his cigar. “We’re talking all-metal gear transmission, dual ball bearings, a three-stage, thirteen-planetary gear syste
m.” He rapped the countertop with his knuckles. “That’s a tool.”

  I did my best to look like I didn’t care one way or the other. But the fact is, once you hold something like that in your hand, part of you marries it forever. “What’s a planetary gear system?”

  Porter shrugged. “How in hell should I know? Something good, according to the sales rep. Something you want. Nice fellow. Should be back on Tuesday, you want to talk to him about it.”

  I placed the drill on the counter, my heart breaking. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”

  “You sure now? I can take off five percent for you.”

  “That’s tempting, Porter. Since when did you dicker on anything?”

  He frowned. “Since I got into the tool business.” He leaned over the counter and looked at the floor. “The oil’s yours?”

  He rang me up, recorded the bill on the camp account, and handed me the bag of screws. “I’ll tell you something I heard. You know my sister-in-law, works over for the county recorder? She tells me some pretty interesting paperwork came across her desk the other day. Very interesting. Wondering if you might know anything about it.”

  “I’m just the handyman, Porter. Nobody tells me a blessed thing.”

  “From what she tells me, looks like you have a new boss. Maybe you should ask around.”

  I did my best to meet his gaze in a way that would seem agreeable, while also putting the matter to rest. “You know bosses, Porter. They’re all the same.”

  “Not according to my sister-in-law. She tells me Harry Wainwright bought the place. The great Harry Wainwright. Liza’s so dumb she thinks a taco’s something Indians live in, but even she knew who that was. Spent a bundle, too.”

  “Sounds like you know more about it than I do.”

  He looked at me skeptically. “Don’t get me wrong, Jordan. I like Harry fine, and his boy too. Been in here from time to time over the years. Wouldn’t know he was such a muckety-muck from the way he acts. But even so, a family like that. Up here. Makes people wonder what he’s got up his sleeve. This isn’t the Hamptons, some chichi place like that. People would like to keep it that way.”

  “Like I said, Porter, nobody tells me anything. But for what it’s worth, I don’t think you have to fret.”

  “Maybe so, and maybe not.” He removed the cigar and frowned, taking a moment to regard the damp stump he held between thumb and forefinger. “I read an article in Time about this place in Colorado—what’s it, Aspen? Nice town until the movie stars found it. Now regular folks are living in trailers and a hammer costs twenty dollars.”

  I plastered a grin on my face. “Sounds like you’d make out fine, Porter.”

  “I’m just saying people around here would have reason to be concerned.” Porter closed the register drawer with a cling. “So all this is on my mind this morning and what do I see? Joe Crosby passing through town with a nice-looking Beemer trailing behind. They stopped up the corner for coffee, so I had myself a good look. A more suspicious man than I am would have thought they were developers for sure.”

  It took me a moment to figure out just what he was talking about. “Hate to disappoint you, Porter, but what you saw were clients. Joe was taking them up to the old Zisko Dam.”

  I couldn’t tell if he believed me or not. For a couple of seconds, neither of us spoke. I felt like a man trying to smuggle something through customs.

  “God’s honest truth, Porter. Just a bunch of lawyers on vacation. They got so drunk last night Joe will probably have to save half of them from drowning. You can ask him if you like.”

  Porter considered this a moment more. “Aw, hell, Jordan,” he said finally, and looked like he might smile. “I don’t mean to be giving you any third degree.” He leaned over the counter a little and lowered his voice. “Tell you what. I can go ten percent on that drill for you, you keep it under your hat.”

  “Throw in an extra battery?”

  “Comes with two. What are you building, an ark?”

  “You never know. But two should do it. Toss in some bits and you’ve sold yourself a drill.”

  I left the store, put it all in the Jeep, and headed home. Porter didn’t have the whole story, or even half of it, but in his own way he had a point, and I felt the first inkling of a brand-new worry. For eight years I had lived a life as anonymous and consequence-free as you could ever wish for, a life of one chore strung after another, receding to a far horizon that seemed to recede with every forward move I made. It was a life I truly liked, or thought I had. I was free to do as I wished, to think what I wished, and if you described a day of my life, told me what the weather was and how I’d spent my time, then asked me what year that was, I wouldn’t have had the slightest clue. It was entirely possible that this was what death felt like, death being, in the end, not so bad, or all that unfamiliar. I felt, driving home, that for the first time in many years, maybe ever, I was coming truly alive, and here’s the thing: the problem of being alive is that it makes you frightened.

  I was just on the edge of town when I pulled the Jeep over in front of the post office and our one pay phone—the same one Hal had used the night before to tell us they were coming, though that now felt like it had been years and years ago. It was Sunday, a little before twelve, an hour earlier in Houston. I made the call collect.

  “Mama, it’s me.”

  “Jordan?” My mother’s voice was bright and pleased; we hadn’t talked in at least a month. “Listen, Estella’s on the other line. Let me get rid of her and I’ll be right back.”

  “If it’s a bad time, we can talk later.”

  “No, no. I’m glad to hear from you.” She paused. “Is everything all right?”

  “Fit as a fiddle.”

  “Good to hear it. It’s about a hundred and five degrees here, by the way. Just a minute, okay?”

  The line went numb as she put me on hold. Estella was my mother’s literary agent. About four years ago—just about the time she and my stepfather had moved to Houston so Vince could take an administrative job with the Harris County Parks Department—my mother, always a reader, had gotten it into her head to write romance novels, a task for which she had demonstrated such remarkable proficiency that she now had a three-year, six-book contract. My mother was the most levelheaded person in the world, really, a churchgoing Southern girl who drank her whiskey neat and read a passage from the Bible every night in bed, and I couldn’t quite resolve my image of the woman who had raised me with the woman who now churned out novels with titles like Summer Love and Belle of the Ball at the superhuman rate of one every six months. She traveled constantly to trade shows and book fairs and got fan mail by the sack-load; on the back of her books was a glossy color author pic, in which she was wearing of all things a double-stranded pearl choker and a mink stole (both of which she had assured me were as phony as a magician’s mustache).

  The line clicked free. “I’m back, honey.”

  “How’s Estella?”

  “Fine. Making me money, like she’s supposed to. She’s having trouble with her dogs.”

  Estella, I knew, had lots of dogs. “How are you doing?” I said. “What’s Vince up to?”

  “Oh, you know Vince. He just went out to the store to buy a new deep-fat fryer. His latest thing is learning to make cannolis.”

  Though born and raised in Bangor, my stepfather was quite serious about his Italian roots, and was always involved in some new culinary project: canning his own tomatoes for sauce, making his own sausages and ravioli, taking trips down to Boston to the North End to hunt up weird things like squid ink pasta or flayed rabbit haunches. Where he shopped for such things in Houston, I had no idea.

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “It’s a mess is what it is. Flour and grease all over the place. The first fryer just about exploded. I’m worried about his cholesterol too.” She paused. “But I’m thinking maybe you didn’t call to talk about Vince’s cholesterol?”

  “What makes you say that?”


  “Oh, your voice, I guess. Something about it. I’m your mother, Jordan. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “There’s really nothing.” I looked at my finger, its strange blunted tip; its tiny, orphaned nail. “I just bought a new drill.”

  “You men and your toys. If Vince were here I’m sure he’d love to talk about it. You really called to tell me about your drill?”

  I thought a moment. “I might be in love too.”

  “You see?” I could hear the smile in her voice. “There was something. There’s a nice surprise. I’m happy to hear it. Is she nice? Does she love you back, this person?”

  “I think so. I’m hoping so. I’m a bit out of practice. It’s Kate.”

  “Kate. I’m sorry. I know about Kate, don’t I?”

  “Joe’s daughter.”

  The phone seemed to go dead a second. “Jordan, isn’t she, excuse me, about thirteen? Do I need to fly up there right now?”

  “That was years ago, Mama. She’s going to medical school. Will go, I mean.”

  “How about that,” I heard my mother say. “Kate with the pigtails? She’s really a doctor, all grown up?”

  I nodded to myself. “It surprised me too.”

  “Well, that’s the thing about it,” my mother said. “It always sneaks up on you that way.”

  “Was it a surprise with Daddy?”

  “Daddy.” Her voice seemed to catch and hold on this strange word. “Your daddy, you mean?”

  “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  “Well, that was a long time ago, Jordan. But yes, it was. You know the story. Do you want me to tell it?”