All Things Different
Shawn Underhill
Copyright © 2012 by Shawn Underhill
All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Cover art by Ravven @ ravven.com
“In the little world in which children have their existence, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.”
~ Charles Dickens
August
2005
Sara Harper felt her heart leap in her chest. This was it—the most important part of the most important day of her life.
At least, it felt that way in the moment.
“Here we are,” she heard her mother say. The girl’s mouth dropped open. She meant to respond. But in her heart there was a hope and in her head there was a fear two weeks swollen, and now her breath was caught in her chest, her core trembling with butterflies, with a sound and pressure closing around her head as though she’d plunged suddenly underwater.
They were following a pickup truck along a winding back road. From the passenger seat of her mother’s car, Sara had been lost quietly in the passing scenery, trying to hold her nerves in check, when her mother’s voice jolted her back into the present. The red blink of brake lights drew her notice forward.
The truck was a sun-faded red fitted with metal racks that rattled in tune with the bumps in the road. The tailgate showed the weathered remnants of the CHEVROLET emblem, each door the faded company logo: THORNTON & SON CONSTRUCTION. But most notably about this truck was its cargo, consisting of the majority of the girls’ worldly belongings, packed carefully and fastened snugly with tie-down straps that waved in the wind.
Sara pushed her sunglasses up for a clearer view, watching wide-eyed as the truck turned from the paved road, moving out of the sun’s midday glare onto a shaded gravel driveway. Entering the cover of the trees she saw the August sun streaming through the leaves, scattering a million little blocks of light through the shadowy cool woods, yet inside her she felt no cool, no calm, nor any surrounding effect able to pass in against her nerves. This was their fourth move in less than three years.
“Please don’t panic, sweetie,” her mother said, her tone betraying her own nerves.
Sara heard nothing now. Beyond the truck awaited her new home, and the suspense rising in her for that first glimpse of the place had relegated her mother’s voice to little more than background music. Everything that was ever wrong was behind her now, left back in the distance and shrinking away smaller with each mile placed between then and this exhilarating new. All that really mattered now lay directly ahead.
In her anxiety she was fidgeting, and in her fidgeting she felt her seat belt becoming too constrictive. She unbuckled it with shaky hands fumbling beneath the shadows of the trees crawling up the windshield, the dark twisty shapes moving over the car’s packed interior, and once liberated she leaned and stretched freely, straining for a glimpse beyond the truck’s slow-moving bulk.
Now they were entering a pine grove where the ground was littered gold-brown with dead needles, the tree trunks wide and tall, and the light even with no glare beneath the dense green tops. Around them pine needles were falling—some flittering in through the car’s open windows, weightless in their descent—from high above where the heavy tops of the trees swayed in the wind.
Up ahead the driveway seemed to widen and the space between the trees gradually spread out. A green-tinted glare slanted between the trunks of the trees from where the sky was visible again through the thinning tree cover ahead. The green tint was the noon sun against the dark pine boughs; the glare was the reflection of the big lake.
As they rolled slowly into the brighter open area, the driveway skirted the pine trunks on the left, but now to their right a wide green lawn spread out before them with a good-sized house standing a touch off center. The house, made of pine logs stained a rich red-brown color, had a green metal roof, a fieldstone chimney, and a screened porch running the length of the front overlooking the beach and the lake. To the far right of the house, a dark wall of pine trees bordered the yard like very tall hedges.
Sara drew in a long breath. Gone was the hot smell of sunbaked pavement and the thick familiar odors of the city in summertime. Here the air was sweet with evergreen scent and cooled with a watery-clean freshness blowing in off the lake, which looked midnight blue before her with small whitecaps running along its sun-dazzled surface. She closed her eyes for just a moment, letting the clean air fill and lighten her, before opening them again to find, almost in disbelief, that the scene before her was even better than she’d imagined. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.
“Told you so,” her mother chimed. “Are you still nervous?”
“No,” the girl said, feeling a difference that she could not put to words. Her eyes were blinking back the beginnings of glad tears.
The old red truck continued on, moving left from center of the main drive to where the firm gravel gave way to less-packed soil, exposed pine roots and patchy grass; browned needles blanketed everything. On the driver’s side they passed closely by the lone trunk of a massive pine, and on the passenger side a detached garage flanked by a thick hedge of overgrown lilacs. Straight ahead the guest house, made also of pine logs, came into view. It was small in a cozy-looking way, situated nearer to the water than the main house on a slight peninsula of wispy grass and sand, nestled between the lilacs on its right and the green-brown shade of the ever-thickening woods to its left.
When the truck rolled to a stop before the little place, Sara’s mother parked to the left, switched off the engine, and leaned over close to her daughter. Face-to-face, it was like staring into a mirror out of her past. “Are you crying, sweetie?”
“A little.” The girl laughed softly. “Are you?”
“Trying not to.”
Sara wiped under her eyes. “It’s almost too good to be true.” Then she turned away, her shaky hand closing on the door latch.
“Wait,” her mother said.
Sara faced her again, feeling like a jack-in-the-box ready to pop. Gently, she felt her mother brush a loose strand of hair from her face.
“Remember what we talked about?”
“I know, Mom.”
“Before we get out, let’s promise to make it work.”
“I’ll do my very best. I swear.”
“We’ll both do our best. Let’s pinky swear it.”
The girl offered her right pinky. Both laughed as they shook fingers. Then Sara’s hand found the door latch again, still shaking.
“Everything will be good now,” the girl said. “I can feel it.” And before her mother could respond, she sprang from the car to meet with their waiting host.
He was a big man, built solid, with a square-featured face and a strong jaw rough with salt-and-pepper stubble. As Sara looked at him, with his sunburned face and his half-squinted eyes beneath the dark, stern-seeming brow, she imagined how easily he could be mistaken at a glance as being hard or unkind as he waited leaning against his old truck, heavy arms folded over his chest, so that, had she not known him, she would have felt wary of a man his size. But approaching him now, her only sense of reserve was in resisting the urge to run and throw her arms around him.
“What do you think, kid?” the big man asked deeply. He was smiling ever so slightly.
“It’s so pretty here!” She bounced on her toes. “And the house is so cute!”
“Well, it’s not overly spacious. But all in all, you should—”
“No, it’s perfect for us,” the girl bubbled over him, “just perfect.”
The big man nodded gladly, first to the girl and then to her mother, Kate, who had just no
w caught up to the meeting. “Once you’re settled,” he directed at both, “make yourselves at home. I mean it. Use the beach and dock if you’d like, before summer’s over. There’s a few lawn chairs down by the water on your side, if you’d prefer. And there’s a gas grill, here,” he pointed. “Tank’s full.”
He paused, considering what else he ought to mention before the unpacking commenced. But before he could go on, the visibly anxious girl staring up at him with big, quick-batting eyes broke in with an urgent question.
“Well? Where is he?”
“He who?” the big man teased.
“Your son!”
“Oh, Jake,” he laughed low. His big shoulders shook and his dark eyes narrowed to a twinkle. “He’s off somewhere, I’m sure.”
“Off where?”
“I don’t know, dear. I’ve been with you all morning.”
Sara stared steadily at the big man’s kind face, waiting.
“If I had to guess, on a day like this I’d say he’s out in the boat or wandering in the woods. Something to that effect.”
“Oh,” the girl exhaled, only mildly set back before she brightened again. “When will he be home?”
“When his stomach’s empty, for sure.”
Sara tipped her head slightly in reaction, thoughtfully, but said nothing.
“Other than that, it’s hard to say with him. Jake’s sort of an independent character.”
Sara fidgeted all over. “I can’t wait to meet him.”
“Don’t you worry,” the big man assured her. “He’ll be around.”
1
I turned sixteen that year. That summer, though, I was still fifteen, and none too pleased with it.
By August my expectations were less than great: once the autumn chill set our world ablaze with colors the summer people would withdraw, leaving the lake towns as bare as the trees after the leaves had fallen, and come November, I would enter the ranks of New Hampshire’s proudly licensed drivers traversing the less crowded roads, never to be jostled within a school bus again.
We were a family of builders. My grandfather started it all decades back, so by the time I was born my old man had almost twenty years of contracting under his belt. He built quality stuff with one-off character, his specialty being new places with old-fashioned flair: log cabins, post-and-beam—anything stick-built, as well as the occasional old-barn restoration, all of which was quite popular with the big-money out-of-state crowd. By keeping them happy in their hunting cabins and waterfront vacation homes, my father acquired a reputation as the go-to guy in the area, and with it, secured us enough work to last several lifetimes. Naturally my plan was to carry on the tradition.
Apart from home my earliest memories are of jobsites—a boy’s paradise, exploring the worked-over ground of just-cleared lots, peering into just-dug cellar holes and climbing excavated dirt piles like mountains with the freshly tilled soil caked under my fingernails. I remember the cool, sometimes scratchy feel of concrete foundations against my palm on a warm day, and climbing on stacked lumber with the sweet smell of sawdust in my head, dragging boards, forever wanting to assist but being no real assistance, in the way more than anything but rarely treated as so. Hoop the plumber always had a joke for me, laughing with his odd tss-tss-tss laugh, and Frost the electrician gave me red and blue plastic wire caps to play with, which I kept in my pocket as highly important tools. Tommy the operator let me pretend-operate his excavator, and when I was learning to read, I remember sounding out his Shit Happens T-shirt one day, and how, through his laughter, he’d told me not to repeat it near my old man. Though I heard cursing constantly, I was strictly prohibited from joining in the fun—one of the few rules ever imposed on me.
There was a rhythm to the day-to-day routines that was ingrained in me early on, most memorably in the summer—packing food and drinks into iced coolers, my old man saying “C’mon, kid,” and the two of us rolling out early in the truck, the mornings cool and the days hot, and the simple freedom in passing most all of the days outside, except for rain. I remember wearing my own too-large tool belt that sagged my jeans, feeling my hammer through the metal loop holder with the feel of its wooden handle touching below my knee, and in the background as days blended together, hearing the steady drone of generators humming, the sharp buzz of saws, the snappy, rapid-fire pop-popping of compressed-air nail guns, and always my father’s deep, resonate voice presiding over all.
Before I knew little else, I knew awe and pride, and through my early years I was convinced that my father was more animal than man. To make me laugh sometimes, while watching Home Improvement my old man would grunt like Tim Allen each time the Tool Man grunted on the show. That, along with his habit of scratching his big back against the corner of the stone hearth, like a bear scratching against the rough bark of a tree, first planted in me the idea of his otherness. At work, though—always watching him like a hawk—the impression became reality before my eyes.
I remember standing below on the subfloor of a newly framed house, looking up with the sun bright in my eyes and my father’s shadow long and dark before me, wishing I could be up there with him and knowing well why I could not. I remember taking in his every movement without understanding the strange little flutter in my gut from seeing him move among the high peaks of those skeleton-looking rafters as naturally as another man strolling on a sidewalk, and how he did it always so effortlessly and without display of fear.
Even as I aged and grew my father’s status remained far out of reach. He could handle anything, build anything, lift anything, fix anything, understood all I did not and always had the answers. He was constant and steady, as solid as granite in my eyes and just as lasting, and I never thought anything could change that—I never thought anything could change him, as I understood him. But that was before I was old enough to understand what fear, the little flutter in my gut, really was.
Looking back on it all now, I understand that even in my childish awe a subtle fear for him had always been present, a little deeper down, blunted by his tough exterior, his strong voice, those arms with biceps bigger round than my two small hands could wrap, and the wide V-shaped back that I’d run and jump on and hang from as he carried me like a feather.
Though his eyes that were half shut by a lifetime of squinting out sun and sweat never aged, by the time I was fifteen, the lines around his eyes were deepening into creases that no longer faded with the changing of his expression. The whiskers on his chin had been gradually lightening through his forties, but by that year, nearing fifty, his hair, which had always been dark, was following fast, first at his sideburns and then climbing and spreading until finally, that summer when Sara entered into the picture, his head was all silvery salt mixing with the dark.
Before Sara, the only forces that held any sway over our life together were the seasons. We were summer people, holdovers in the summer towns that slept all winter, dormant in the cold. The windblown lake lay frozen-over and gray in the snow squalls, shining white-blue under clear skies and reflecting fire beneath late-afternoon sunsets, its only signs of life the dotted ice-fishing shanties. Across from empty beaches the little rental cottages sat coldly vacant, the rows of vendors all closed along the deserted boardwalk, windows boarded, no blinking lights, no smoke rising from grills, and no blending of their smells swirling in the lake breeze. Then it was only snow-banks lining the narrowed streets, dirty except after fresh storms, and the cleared pavement cracked with frost lying hard and gray in cold hope of spring.
Beyond the beaches there were houses in the hills overlooking the lake. Many of the finest sat empty through the dead season, the unplowed drives gated and locked, with no lights to glow in the dark hills on summer nights, no colored towels blowing dry over porch railings to show life in the day.
Out and away from the beaches were the older properties—the places inherited more often than bought—scattered off the quieter back roads, the long gravel driveways marked by mailboxes spread far and wide be
tween. In the summer all was deep green and shady beneath the trees, the floor of the woods brown with the prior year’s leaves. Along the roadsides there were jagged walls of ledge with patchy moss, the ledge shining wet-dark with running spring water that would later freeze and form massive icicles come winter, like carved ice sculptures, when all else was covered in snow.
We lived and worked among the summer people, but we were not the type that migrated with the changing of the seasons. When the towns emptied out for year, we stayed on, stacking our seasoned cordwood through the fall, hauling it in through the winter by the armload from the porch while, from overhead, from the chimney, smelling the sweet smoke of apple wood, the heavier hot-burning oaks, and the snappy birch, their smoky fragrance lingering as we piled the split wood in the hearth nook.
Through the dead season we shoveled and plowed the snow, cursing it but always loving the way it clung to the pines in the after-storm calms, the feel of its soft, crunchy packing underfoot, knowing afterwards, inside, after stomping it from our boots there would be the most comforting dry heat, and through the windows a growing brightness as the cloud cover thinned and the sun’s rays broke through in a blindness on the fresh white blanket over the land.
Winter mornings, when I was very young, I remember the smell of old-fashioned coffee from a percolator, grounds spilling over, sitting ready steaming on the big Glenwood cook stove; and later, after the day, during the evenings there would be many different hot meals prepared—stews and soups slow-cooking and their smells mixing with the smell of the hot iron stove. Through the nights there would be the firelight flickering through the stove vents and, upstairs in bed with my door left open, I could faintly see the glow dancing on the walls, while hearing the wind blowing outside and the house creaking, the coyotes howling on their night hunts, and the wood crackling in the stove downstairs and the tick-ticking of the hot iron. By morning the heat and smells would be faded, the house cool, and the pine floors would be sharply cold on bare feet.
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