Too Much of a Good Thing

by J. J. Murray

  They disappear before I can make a sound.

  “After you level and brace the dock, fellas,” I hear Joe’s voice say.

  The boys, as expected, say, “Aww.”

  “I’ll be down in a few minutes,” Joe says from somewhere in the house. Where is he?

  The boys troop by us across the deck and down the stairs to the dock.

  “Sound sure does carry here,” I say.

  “Especially at night,” Elle says. “You can hear people whispering across the lake.”

  Kind of like living in an apartment, only Canadian style.

  “Joe told us about your husband,” Elle says. “Seems like God can’t stand being away from His best people. I’m glad Kaz has a little edge to him. You’ll see. Kaz has a temper. If he can’t anchor right away, he’ll fume. If he loses a big one, he’ll shout. Kaz is just bad enough for God to keep him down here with me so I can purify him. You’ll like it up here, Shawna, I promise you. And if your kids are like Joe’s, you won’t see them much. You’ll hear them, but you won’t see them.”

  The boys are already in the water, splashing around and shouting, their shouts echoing into the woods behind me. Toni comes downstairs in a cute, colorful one-piece.

  “Toni?” Elle asks.

  “Yes, ma’am?” Toni asks.

  “Toni, I highly recommend you wear a long T-shirt,” Elle says. “The bugs are bad here, and they will eat you alive.”

  Toni holds up a bottle of Cutter. “I have this.”

  Elle squints. So that’s where Joe learned to squint. “That Cutter will keep some of the smaller bugs away but not the horseflies.”

  “I’ll be okay,” Toni says.

  When a child cries for a razor, I think, you give her that razor. I pull Toni to me and apply liberal amounts of Cutter and sunblock.

  “If the bugs get too bad, you come back in,” I say.

  “Okay,” Toni says.

  Joe drops by wearing a T-shirt and a swimsuit that almost reaches his shins. Smart man. He kisses me on the lips in front of Elle. He didn’t do that down in Atlanta. I wanted him to, but ... I kiss him on the cheek.

  “We’ll have that dock fixed for you, Mom.” He looks out to the dock, blinking. “Um, why isn’t Toni wearing a T-shirt?”

  “She’ll be back for one any time now,” Elle says. “She’s too pretty a target for—”

  “YOW!” Toni yells, and I even hear the echo from the woods behind me.

  “Here she comes,” Elle says.

  Toni doesn’t even look at me as she storms past us, returning a minute later wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, a towel wrapped around her legs. She stomps down to the dock swatting at bugs flying around her head.

  “Stubborn, that one,” Elle says. “She could be a Murphy.”

  Joe leans down and whispers in my ear, “You need anything?”

  I pucker up. He kisses me again. “Try not to get sunburned.”

  Joe opens the screen door. “I freckle.”

  “Well,” I say, “try not to get too many freckles.”

  I watch Joe go to the shed—and is that an outhouse in the woods? I have to see if they have indoor plumbing, quick! Joe walks by with a large wooden toolbox, some boards, and a saw.

  “Let me give you the tour,” Elle says, rising. “You’ve already seen our dining room. We’ll bring in some more chairs or put a card table out there for the younger kids, especially if James and his family get up here. Like our ceiling fan?”

  “It’s nice.”

  “We’ve been using it a lot this week because of the heat.”

  Where is this heat she keeps talking about?

  I look at pieces of driftwood nailed to the boards in between the screens, a large cache of fishing poles and tackle boxes stacked and piled under a map of the lake. Before we can take two steps into the kitchen, Toni screams again.

  She bangs through the screened porch door, her legs dripping wet. “Something bit me.” She points to a spot on her leg. “Something in the water bit me.”

  Elle cackles. “Oh, that. It’s just a little rock bass defending its nest. Completely harmless.”

  I look at Toni’s leg, and I don’t see any teeth marks.

  “But it bit me, Mama.”

  “Oh, now,” Elle says. “It couldn’t be more than twelve inches long. Joe and the boys will probably net it and take it across the lake.”

  “When?” Toni asks before I can ask the same question.

  “Soon,” Elle says.

  “Well ... okay.” Toni trips down to the dock again.

  “I’m sure she didn’t get bitten, Shawna,” Elle says. “Bumped, probably, that’s all.”

  I hope and pray they have a shower or bathtub! I am not taking a bath down there if Jaws Jr. is there.

  59

  Joe

  Dad and I put away the tools after the boys and I had shored up the dock. It seems we do it every year, almost as if you can’t truly have an Aylen summer without some kind of dock repair. We look out at the boys launching themselves off the end of the dock, Toni and Rose exploring along the shoreline, most likely looking for crayfish and frogs.

  “So, how are you?” Dad asks.

  “Tired, but happy to be here,” I say.

  “It’s strange not to see Cheryl up here with you.”

  I nod. “Yeah. There’s still so much of her here.”

  “We framed a few of her watercolors. They’re hanging upstairs.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You look like you could use a long nap. I’ll take the kids down to the beach for you. The bugs are pretty thick down there this year. Think Toni will go with us?”

  “She might.” Then I shake my head. “It might be better if Shawna or Mom asked Toni, though.”

  He nods. “I’ll get your mother to ask. She can still make anyone do anything and like it, no matter how horrible it is.”

  He leaves me alone in the old shed, and I see more Murphy memories. Huge tin containers rest on shelves: Tritzels hearth-baked toasted pretzels, oven-fresh saltines by Keebler, Yuban and Maxwell House coffee cans, Cadet Pretzels. Paints, stains, varnish, hot-pipe black enamel, oars, winches, shovels, axes, boat batteries, creosote, instant-patch roof repair, ropes, wires, tools, kerosene cans, bait buckets, a hand scythe. The Murphys have been completely self-sufficient since, well, since time began, I suppose. During Y2K my parents had laughed. “The only computer in the house,” Dad had said, “is the one in your mother’s brain.” They didn’t worry a bit.

  Wandering through the screen porch to the kitchen, I hear Mom giving Shawna the tour. Murphy’s Unlimited is not a big house, but the stories about each room take some time to tell. This kitchen is practically an entire novel to tell. Ah, the Findlay Oval cookstove, still blacked and reliable. It’s a pain to maintain, but it never fails us. Four kerosene lamps at the ready fill an entire top shelf. I open the fridge. Mom has stocked it with lots of bottled water. Nice touch, Mom. The well water, while pure, has been known to give visitors the runs. Mom boils any water she cooks with for at least half an hour when guests are around, just in case.

  I move down the hallway to the Murphy Fishing Hall of Fame, really a series of tracings of some of the bigger fish we’ve caught, from a couple trout Dad landed in the 1950s all the way up to Rose’s mammoth bass two summers ago. I touch Cheryl’s first fish, caught at the dam almost seventeen years ago. That was something. She had the fish on before she knew it. She just reeled it in, and there it was ...

  Boy, we are running out of space. We’ll need at least three more spaces for Shawna and her kids.

  I step into the bathroom, as modern as any, I suppose. Full shower and tub, toilet, wide sink, lots of storage for towels, sheets, and quilts. The same old sign hangs over the toilet: A fisherman with his “dame” in the back of the boat, him saying, “You gotta what?” I see a little needlepoint saying and smile. “If it’s brown, flush it down; if it’s yellow, let it mellow.” Shawna’s kids are going to forget. I usuall
y do for the first few days. I sigh. One bathroom for nine people, though. The boys would use the outhouse, but ... Hmm. We may have to label this the girls’ bathroom.

  I step into Grandpa Joe and Grandma Jenn’s room, where I’ll be staying, Shawna right above me. I see a knothole in the ceiling. I could probably wave at her toes. There is so much of my grandparents in here: a hamper, a walker, walking sticks, lots of hats, a plaque congratulating them on fifty years of marriage. I pick up an octagonal cookie tin, a poem on the lid:

  SOME HAE MEAT,

  AND CANNA EAT,

  AND SOME WAD EAT

  THAT WANT IT,

  BUT WE HAE MEAT

  AND WE CAN EAT,

  AND SAE THE LORD

  BE THANKIT.

  They rarely threw away anything they thought could be useful. The room has five lamps, none of the shades matching, and a million hangers they couldn’t bear to part with crammed onto an old water pipe. Old jackets, an easy chair that has been easy on the back for eighty years, two chests containing handmade quilts, and a card table in the corner nailed to the floor, Grandpa’s Underwood portable typewriter on top. I touch the lone tie on Grandpa’s tie rack. “Blest be the tie that binds,” I say.

  I step over to Grandpa’s miscellaneous shelves. The first shelf contains a bullhorn, the rearview mirror for a boat, and a Coleman G.I. Pocket Stove with its original handbook. I flip through the handbook and read, “The G.I. Pocket Stove meant hot food for thousands of tired Yanks during the war ... burns any kind of gasoline—white or leaded! Boils a quart of water in eight minutes.” And I’ll bet it still works. Things worked back then. The second shelf houses various batteries, an unused Zebco 33 Classic reel, a soldering iron, a thousand yards of eight-pound test line, Electrolux four-ply filter bags, and a stack of used mailing envelopes from as far back as 1956—to be reused if necessary, of course. I remember when Grandma reused “tinfoil” at least three or four times before discarding it. And sometimes, when all the stamps on an envelope weren’t cancelled, she would steam off the “clean” ones. The top shelf contains some Flents sun-guards for sunbathers, which, according to the package, “should not be worn while swimming.” Yeah, these two were packrats, all right, two wonderful people prepared for anything and everything.

  I walk into the great room, three ceiling fans whirring above two ancient couches, several cloth folding chairs, and Mom’s latest thousand-piece puzzle displayed on a card table. The huge stone fireplace, pieced together by hand over fifty years ago, is the focal point of this room. Birch logs and pinecones fill the mantel, deer antlers above holding felt hats, fishing hats, and an old metal anchor. In the corner of the room is a display of Grandpa’s “old stuff”—his Peg-Board of ancient tools. I’ll bet every last one of these tools still works. Above a series of old family pictures, Dad has hung an old-fashioned hand-painted sign:

  “I PRAY TO HEAVEN TO BESTOW

  THE BEST OF BLESSINGS ON

  THIS HOUSE

  AND ALL THAT SHALL HEREAFTER INHABIT IT

  MAY NONE BUT HONEST AND WISE MEN

  EVER RULE UNDER THIS ROOF”

  —WRITTEN FOR THE WHITE HOUSE

  BY JOHN ADAMS, ITS FIRST OCCUPANT

  I stand in front of the picture windows that seem to hold up the front of the house. These picture windows are Mom and Dad’s wide-screen TV. They can watch flowing water, the boats, the sunrises and sunsets, and the critters. And the “program” never repeats. There are no reruns up here of any kind. No TV, radio only at night, no car horns, no phones ringing incessantly. And the only news that really matters filters down through the woods to them by word of mouth, so they learn only what’s worth learning, not the onslaught of death and mayhem and chaos that has become the news in the United States.

  “Hey, stranger.”

  I feel hot breath on my neck. I don’t turn. “Who’s that?”

  “Your woman,” Shawna whispers. “Where are the kids?”

  “At the beach, I think. Where’s Mom?”

  “Taking a nap.”

  Hmm. We may get a few minutes alone. “Settled in?”

  “Not yet. I have a few things to show you upstairs.”

  I turn.

  She beckons me with a finger.

  We go upstairs.

  60

  Shawna

  Though I want to have this man hold me close, I have far too many questions about my sleeping quarters than I was willing to ask Elle. I lead him up the stairs, each creaking a different note, and stop him at the top.

  “What are you going to show me?” he whispers.

  I point to a stack of hangers on the set of bunk beds we’re not using. “Explain those.”

  “Oh, those.” He starts to speak and stops.

  I don’t think I’m going to like this explanation.

  “Whenever my parents are away for any length of time, they put hangers on all the beds to keep the critters from nesting.”

  I knew I wouldn’t like his explanation. “Critters?”

  “Um, yeah. What else do you want—”

  “What kind of critters?” I interrupt.

  “Um, squirrels, mice.”

  “You’re kidding. Up here? Inside?”

  He nods.

  I look at where we will be sleeping. “There weren’t any hangers on those beds.”

  He takes me in his arms. “Because Mom took the hangers off just before you got here.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  He walks around, looking at the floor carefully. “I don’t see any droppings.”

  Oh, lovely.

  “And you probably won’t see any.” He holds me again. “If there are any mice around here, they’re hanging around under the kitchen. It’s why the toaster is upside down.”

  This is not comforting at all. “The toaster is upside down?”

  “Just in case. It wouldn’t be pleasant to have fur on your toast.”

  More loveliness. I’m not even having toast now.

  Joe nuzzles my neck. “What else do you want to show me?”

  I point above him to what looks like a hole in the roof.

  “Oh, that. It’s so the bats can get back out.”

  Surely he didn’t just say ... “The what?”

  “We have bats up here.”

  “You ... do?”

  “They only come out at night to chase bugs. There used to be a mesh screen there, you know, for ventilation during the summer.”

  “Used to be?”

  He sighs. “One summer Mom kept smelling this odor ...”

  I don’t like the way this story is beginning.

  “A bat had, um, gotten stuck in the screen and expired.”

  Peachy. “So you just let them fly in and out whenever they want to?”

  “They don’t come in that often, Shawna.”

  One time is enough for me.

  “Dad doesn’t like them much, so if you see one, call him. He’ll get an old tennis racket and come up here swinging away. He has a nice backhand.” Joe laughs. “His serve needs some work, though.”

  “Joe, this isn’t funny!”

  “Shawna, the only reason a bat would come in is to look for mosquitoes. There are millions of mosquitoes outside for them to—”

  “You have a hole in your roof over me and my children. Won’t the mosquitoes descend on us for a feast?”

  “Not if you use Cutter.”

  I do not want to smell like Cutter for six days. “Joe, I want you to put the screen back up. I won’t have bats or mosquitoes swooping down on my children.”

  “I’ll put it back up.” He then tries to swoop in on me for a kiss, but I’m not having it.

  “So do it,” I say.

  “Now? C’mon, Shawna, the kids aren’t around, Mom’s sleeping ...”

  I cross my arms and frown.

  He puts up that screen, adding twenty more staples than necessary with his staple gun because I asked him to. By the time he’s finished, the kids have returned from
the beach, the girls stomping up the stairs.

  “Mama,” Toni says. “I caught twenty tadpoles, and we built them a castle for them to swim in, then we let them swim out.” I try not to stare, but the child’s hair is a soggy, sandy mess.

  “One of the tadpoles didn’t make it,” Rose says.

  “Yeah,” Toni says, “so we had to have a funeral for Bobby.”

  “Bobby? Who’s Bobby?” I ask.

  Rose lowers her voice. “The tadpole. Toni named it.”

  I look at Toni, and she seems genuinely sad. “Toni, Bobby’s up in frog heaven right now.”

  “Frogs have a heaven, too?” Toni asks.

  Joe slides by me with his ladder, nods to us, and leaves.

  “Sure they do, honey.” And I hope frog heaven is light-years away from people heaven. “Why don’t you all get freshened up for dinner?”

  Dinner smells delicious and fills the house from the foundation to the rafters. Sound carries in this house, and so do tasty aromas.

  My first Aylen Lake fish fry isn’t at all what I had expected. Elle stuffs and bakes the larger bass, pan-frying the rest, most of which still have bones in them. We spend most of the meal picking out bones and piling them on paper plates in the center of the table. It tastes wonderful, but you have to work at it. We eat baked potatoes, peach Jell-O filled with fresh peaches, corn with real butter, and yeast rolls. It is a feast. For dessert, we chow down on butter tarts and maple-walnut ice cream (which takes some getting used to) with maple cookies.

  “As soon as you’re finished eating, we’re going on a scavenger hunt,” Kaz says.

  Joe’s kids smile.

  “What exactly is a scavenger hunt?” Junior asks.

  “You’ll see,” Kaz says.

  While Joe and I help Elle with the dishes, Kaz takes the kids down the path to collect an odd series of items: an American penny pre-1960, a Canadian coin pre-1950, one toothpick, one page of a newspaper, a mussel shell, a crayfish, a piece of driftwood, and a piece of fallen birch bark.

  “It’s mainly so the people around here can get to know your kids, or, in Joe’s case, so they can see his kids again,” Elle says.