“Why I am in summer school.
“I was accepted to Stanford University, which is the best and hardest-to-get-into school west of the Mississippi. All I need now is a high school diploma, and I’m out of this crappy town for good. It doesn’t matter what grade I get in this class as long as I pass and, Mr. Cafferty, you have no choice but to pass me as long as I show up and do all the assignments. I was supposed to be doing an internship at an engineering firm in California this summer. My best friend, Liz, is there already, doing her own internship at a newspaper. We were supposed to be roommates. But our principal refused to let me do the work for this class anywhere but here, as he says I have to give these speeches in front of an audience; otherwise it’s a violation of school curriculum.”
Here, she caught a glimpse of the very man at the door, turning away.
“Our principal, Fred Campbell, is an idiot,” she said in a heightened voice, though he couldn’t hear.
“So here I am, stuck in front of you losers, and there you are, forced to listen to my speeches, which I promise you, will all be made up as I go along.
“Why I am in summer school. I am in summer school because my mom died. She had cancer in her cervix—that’s the opening into the uterus at the top of the vagina. First she had a hysterectomy. That didn’t work. They did treatments where they stuck a needle up there and burned the area with radiation. That didn’t work either. The cancer metastasized to her lungs. She had polyps, sores inside her lungs that produced fluid, and this fluid would fill up her lungs. She’d start to drown without even being in water. Every week I’d take her to the hospital to have a long needle stuck into her back, through the tissue, into her lungs. They’d suck the fluid out and she’d be able to breathe again for a few days before her lungs started to fill up again.
“They gave her chemotherapy, which is where they hooked her up to an IV and fed poison into her bloodstream. This made her much sicker than the cancer did. I wiped up her vomit and bathed her when she was too weak to bathe herself. She was not the type of mom who liked her daughter to see her naked, but she had no choice. Her hair fell out and her mouth was so full of sores she couldn’t eat. She lost her beauty, her happiness, her sense of humor, and I had no choice but to sit by her side and watch. And she lost her dignity. There were times I was holding her like a helpless baby, and I could see in her eyes that she was ashamed. I think that was the worst part. No, actually. In doping her up to ease her pain, we robbed her of the chance to say good-bye. That was the worst part. And after she died, everyone gathered around to tell me it was good that she was dead, because she was in heaven now—people who didn’t really know her or me and hadn’t seen the hell she had gone through.”
Abby looked at the clock on the wall. The speech had to be at least five minutes long.
“Here’s a little story that took place not long before she died: my mom wasn’t vain, but she did like having nice fingernails. She’d go to Boise to get them done. They’d put these extensions on so they were medium-length and very hard—you’d never guess they were fake—and they’d paint them a nice color, sometimes two colors. Even when she was really sick and we were staying in Salt Lake, we’d still go get them done. It made her happy.
“Now, the chemicals they use in chemotherapy attack any cell that’s breeding quickly, whether it’s a cancer cell or one of your own. That’s why your hair falls out. But it has other effects, too. You get mouth sores. Constipation, too, because the chemicals attack the cells in your intestines that push stuff through.
“One night, my mom had really bad constipation. She was waking up again and again and calling out for me like a frightened little girl. I’d come in and help her—carry her, basically, because she could hardly walk—onto the toilet. Then I’d wait outside the door and listen to her cry out in pain. Then she’d give up, and I’d carry her back to bed. Then, near morning, she actually got something out and was finally able to sleep.
“The next day, I kept smelling something. I thought she had had an accident in bed, but I couldn’t find anything. I looked all through her blankets and I got her up to search the cracks in the easy chair, but there was nothing.
“Finally I found it. It was her fingernails. They were filthy, encrusted. And I realized what she had finally done the night before—she had reached in with her pretty fingernails to pull the shit out.
“It took a long time soaking her hands and working on her fingernails with Q-Tips to get them clean. My dad showed up, and he and my grandparents kept giving me these sweet looks, like I was giving her a manicure out of kindness or boredom.”
Abby looked up at the clock again and said, “So that is why I am in summer school. The end.”
WHEN THE SUN moved past its crest in the sky, Coop nudged Maria. She quickly lifted her pole. “I got one,” she said.
“That was me. You’ve been asleep for an hour. Your bait’s long since washed away.”
“I think this creek’s been fished dry,” she said, reeling in her line. “I don’t know how you stay awake.”
“Hope, my dear—pure and simple.”
They slowly broke down their poles, sorted their sinkers and hooks, folded their chairs, and brushed off the seeds that had settled on their clothes. “I didn’t tell you this before, Coop, because I didn’t want you marrying me for the wrong reasons, but as a member of the Shoshone Tribe I’m allowed to fish certain protected stretches of the Salmon River.”
Coop froze.
“And as my husband, well . . .”
“God damn,” he said. They packed up the car. “How long were you gonna wait to tell me that?”
“About this long.”
“Well, I think that calls for a trip upstate, soon as I get back from this Kansas run.”
“Take it slow, old man,” Maria replied. “We got time.”
THE KITCHEN PHONE, if pulled to the farthest length of its cord, reached the front porch. Enrique often brought it here on these long summer afternoons to keep from waking Jay with his laughter.
“Check and see if they have penny loafers at Payless,” Miriam said. “If they don’t I’ll bring you a pair.”
“Penny loafers? That’s, like, geeky.”
“Yeah, but it’s good geeky. It’s mod. But don’t put pennies in. Only nickels.”
“Mod?”
A car pulled into Enrique’s mother’s spot. It wasn’t his mother’s car; it was a Cadillac.
“Miriam, I gotta go. Call me tomorrow.”
Lina emerged from the passenger side and walked to the foot of the stairs, an imploring look in her eye. “Enrique, sweetheart, I thought we could all go to Sizzler together. Do you think that would be all right?”
Enrique looked again at the car. The only other time he had seen Mr. Hall was when he had been made frantic by Jay’s stumbling into the house covered in blood and dirt. Now he got a good look at this plain, bald white man in a brown suit. When the man smiled shyly, his forehead broke out in wrinkles. Enrique suddenly remembered the little village inside, gathering dust on his bookshelf—Mr. Hall’s things. Enrique had never returned them as planned, at first because he liked them too much, later because it no longer seemed important. He had inadvertently signed a contract to be nice to this man. Mr. Hall had won after all.
Then someone in the backseat moved from behind Mr. Hall to look out the window. Abby.
Her eyes had changed. They were patient, adult, ready for the worst. But as they turned in their deep pockets toward Enrique, one side of her mouth lifted in a detached smile. Enrique didn’t smile—he couldn’t—he felt he might cry. Abby’s smile sweetened, and she was rocked a little by laughter, as though Enrique was a joke she had forgotten, and to see him was a friendly reminder of the old life where she could be amused by such things. Then she drew herself up in her seat, her smile dimmed, and she squinted as if to see him better. It seemed to Enrique that they had a whole conversation in those few seconds. What had he said?
He looked back to
Mr. Hall, then to his mother. They were all waiting for him.
“Okay.”
“Maybe . . .” Lina hesitated. “See if Jay’s awake.”
Enrique understood: Jay would be more likely to come along if Enrique asked him.
He went into the house and quietly eased Jay’s door open. Jay’s long body intertwined with the sheet, and his gaping mouth emitted a long, rattling breath. His brow was knitted, and his cheek rested against his hand. Something coiled around one finger of this hand. Enrique stepped in to look closer. It was hair—brown hair much longer than Jay’s, which had been twisted into a string and wrapped around his finger. Enrique retreated and eased the door closed.
He paused in the kitchen and looked out the window. In the car, the three waited quietly. He felt a stirring of his old hatred of Mr. Hall. He didn’t want to do this, especially without Jay, but he had said yes.
Paradoxically, in order to make his feet move, to walk outside and get into the car, he had to not diminish the importance of the event. He had to not trick himself into thinking it was just another meal out with his mother and a nice chance to catch up with Abby. To make his feet move, Enrique had to go in the opposite direction, to explode the event’s importance by imagining a future time, after he had gone away on that Greyhound bus and returned, when he was a grown-up and his mom and Mr. Hall were old. He imagined a lake house in the mountains, and three little children wearing inflatable water wings on their dimpled arms running up the grassy slope from the dock to the porch, where Enrique sat with his feet up. The oldest child, a girl, carried a shiny, dripping, dangling treasure in her hands: a weed, necklace, or tentacled thing—Enrique couldn’t make it out for the flashes of sunlight from the lake. The children all had matching noses, long and narrow like Abby’s—and they called out as they ran, “Lookit! Lookit! Look what we found, Uncle Enrique!”
Uncle Enrique. How’s that, Mrs. Cuddlebone?
CONNIE LEFT THE Mennonite charity shop where she volunteered on her days off and drove to the mini-mart to pick up a few things for dinner. She had quit First Church of the Nazarene and joined the Mennonites. People had always assumed she was one, from the way she dressed, and now she considered this a sign she should have been one all along. There were signs everywhere now.
Mennonite services contained nothing vain. Simple hymns were sung in four-part harmony without even the aid of a piano. The preacher drew his teachings straight from the Bible. There was no mention of Ronald Reagan or Oral Roberts or Jim Bakker. The tithes went to feed the poor. The men dressed in the clothes from a simpler time and many sported Abraham Lincoln beards, and the women covered their heads.
Connie had been self-conscious about her uncovered head, but was too shy with her new friends to ask where they had bought their white bonnets. Then one day at the store, one of the older ladies had placed a neat pile, starched and folded, into her hand. “For you,” she said simply. Since then, Eula had never seen Connie Anderson bare-headed.
She pulled into the mini-mart parking lot, got out of her car, and stood for a moment, contemplating the rich blue sky. There were two jet-trails: the newer was like a line drawn in chalk, the older like the smudge left when that line was erased. The Air Force base at Mountain Home was not far away, although to drive there took three hours. A canyon lay in-between that was not yet bridged.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a woman’s voice. “Pardon me, ma’am. My mother’s sick and can’t leave the house. Could you maybe spare a dollar or two so I can buy her something to eat?”
Connie began to walk toward the store. “I can’t spare a dollar or two to feed a mother who passed on twenty years ago, Wanda Cooper.”
Wanda fell back.
Connie hesitated and turned. The girl’s arms emerged like sticks from her T-shirt, and there were red sores on her hands, which she now balled in order to hide them from Connie’s view. “I was in school with your sister Katherine when it happened. I’m sorry.”
Wanda turned away.
“I could buy you some groceries, though.”
Wanda’s lips disappeared into her mouth, where she chewed on them.
Connie adjusted a hairpin and headed toward the store. Then she turned to Wanda again. “Come on, Miss Cooper. I won’t take no for an answer.”
THE SUN GREW red, the jets returned to their base, and the sky absorbed their trails. Farmers lifted dikes, and water charged through pipes to again be chopped by the sprinklers and tossed over the mint. The last of the pleasure boats left Lake Overlook, and its foamy green surface was still.
Jay rolled out of bed and carefully returned Liz’s hair to the folded paper he kept hidden in his sock drawer. He dressed and drove across the fruited plain to the dairy. The first group of fifty cows lumbered up onto the milking parlor, and Jay attached that first cup and began his night dreaming of the Corvette—not of Liz, but of the Corvette. The tube glowed white in the dimness, went dark with a few bubbles, then white again as the milk flowed to its new steel home. Apart from a quick pass through hot pasteurization pipes, it would be a cold journey from here to the throats of Idaho’s youth.
Chapter 25
There was no fanfare on the morning in the spring of 2001 when technicians opened a valve on a structure floating at the center of Lake Nyos’s glassy surface, and a white plume shot a hundred feet in the air. No ribbon-cutting. The president of Cameroon stayed in the capital, and the villagers kept their distance. A small group of scientists on the lakeshore cheered, but that was all.
Gene had been right. The Lake Witch had been a massive bubble of carbon dioxide that gathered under Lake Nyos, overturned it, and rolled down the surrounding slopes, suffocating everything that breathed. Now engineers had guided a pipe into the depths and attached it to this floating structure. Through the pipe, carbon dioxide would escape continually, preventing another disaster.
By this time Gene worked for layaway in the vast second-floor warehouse at ShopKo, a discount department store. It was a sunless job that suited him. If a customer wanted to get something out of layaway—if, for example, a woman wanted to use her Christmas money to buy, at last, the fake leather coat with silver studs and tassels she had found on sale months ago—she would go to the layaway counter with her receipt. One of the girls would look up the woman’s record in the logbook and call a number out to Gene over the loudspeaker. Gene would find the woman’s box and send it down the conveyor belt. Conversely, if a man found that, after his hours were cut at the sugar factory, he could no longer afford that $200 Weedwhacker, he could come to layaway, get a refund, and Gene would send down his box to be re-shelved in Lawn and Garden. But the purchases outnumbered the returns three to one. All in all, Gene helped the poor people of Eula by keeping their things safe until they could afford to buy them, and he did it without having to look them in the eye. Using a numbering system of his own invention, he never lost a box. The girls at the layaway desk liked to call him Genius instead of Gene. They had brought in a cake on his birthday.
Gene lived in a little apartment above a lawyer’s office in downtown Eula, where he had cable TV. On the science channel there was a show completely devoted to modern inventions, engineering, and problem-solving. This was how he learned the fate of Lake Nyos. He had been making dinner and missed the beginning, but now he sat on the couch, turned up the volume, and pulled a cat into his lap. Dinner could wait.
A simple solution, the type Gene could have come up with: they stuck a pipe into the lake and eased the pressure, the way a doctor lances a boil. Never again would the surface of Lake Nyos be still; no one else would die. The resulting fountain was pretty. If they wanted, they could view it as a memorial to the dead. They, to Gene, meant everyone in the world beside himself and his cats. They were, after all, fond of that sort of thing.
Acknowledgments
I wrote this novel with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
For their hospitality I
would like to thank the Blue Mountain Center, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Patten family of Sedgwick, Maine.
I am deeply grateful to my agent, Mitchell Waters, my editor, Rakesh Satyal, and those who read my manuscript and offered their criticism: Jonathan Strong, Jason Tougaw, Casandra McIntyre, David McConnell, and Peter Cameron. And I am especially indebted to Michael Lowenthal for guidance and support at every stage of this novel’s creation.
Finally, to my darling Tristan le Masson Bangard: Thanks for everything.
About the Author
VESTAL McINTYRE’s story collection, You Are Not the One, won a Lambda Literary Award and earned him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
www.vestalmcintyre.com
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Praise for Lake Overturn
“Set in the age of Dallas and Haley’s comet, McIntyre’s striking first novel follows an ensemble cast in Eula, Idaho. . . . McIntyre establishes the idiosyncratic cultures of their minds—their tics and imaginative flights, the bargains they strike with themselves. An author is lucky to bring one character so vividly to life: the gifted McIntyre . . . has done it for all of his.”
—New York Times Book Review (Editor’s Choice)
“In Lake Overturn, McIntyre has created a vast, intricate lattice of relationships, reminiscent of the novels of Richard Russo. . . . McIntyre is an honest enough artist that he even makes one admire his more unlikable characters. . . . Here is an author capable of handling even the most noxious elements when he stirs his American backwater.”
—Washington Post
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