Jake Fades

by David Guy

  Josh at that time was the aforementioned tall gawky kid, twelve years old but looked fourteen or fifteen, all legs and arms, the wild red hair. He wasn’t a TV addict, but definitely liked it, would have used it to settle into any other place we’d gone. He liked to read—had a huge collection of comics—but not all day. He’d never eaten a lobster. Neither had I, actually. He sure as hell wasn’t interested in sunbathing nude. He wanted to do things, was full of jittery nervous energy.

  We’d made this apparently endless trip to paradise, and there not only wasn’t cable, there wasn’t anything. The top forty on the radio.

  We kept wandering around the cottage, looking for something. What I really needed was a stiff drink—Josh too, probably—but there wasn’t any booze. We settled down for the evening, Josh on a daybed out in the living room, me in the bedroom where Cheryl spent her glorious afternoons.

  I was starting to realize—perhaps hadn’t quite started—how much I was counting on that vacation to make amends. I’d totally fucked up my marriage—that was the way I felt at that point—put Josh through all kinds of hell (I’d been a basket case all winter, searching around frantically for another woman), but now I would emerge, after a brief slump (happens to even a superstar) as a great father. I was going to bypass the boring vacations from the past (which we had always loved) and take us to a famous resort, show Josh the time of his life.

  Suddenly it looked like a complete disaster.

  I don’t know how to describe what happened to me that night. At the time it seemed totally out of left field, one of the strangest things I ever went through. Now it seems the obvious consequence of all I’d experienced over the past eight months. It did concentrate a great deal of emotional reaction into one night, but it had to; I hadn’t slowed down enough before that.

  I’d been reading in bed and turned off the light—Josh had turned his off a few minutes before—when a tremendous anxiety rush came over me. It was very much physical—my heart started to pound, palms to sweat, my body simultaneously to flush and go cold, tremble. A doctor would probably have called it a panic attack. That was strange enough. But what was really strange were the thoughts that—at incredible speed—began to run through my head.

  What if something happened to me that night? What if I had a heart attack and died (the symptoms I felt at that moment seemed very much like a heart attack)? What would Josh do? My own father had died when I was a teenager, and I’d always feared putting Josh through that trauma, but the circumstances that night were especially horrific. We were in a remote place we knew nothing about; there was no phone; most of the houses around were unoccupied. What would he do in that house with a dead father? What if—this seemed even worse—I had a heart attack but was not yet dead, he had to go out on that dark gravel road and find help? We didn’t know anybody. We were in a state famous for being inhospitable. What if he went banging on doors and was greeted only by wizened old guys with shotguns who told him to go away, or took a shot at him?

  What if—my mind was racing—I did something to him? What if I went crazy and attacked him because he wasn’t wild about the vacation I’d taken so much trouble to put together? I was angry at his reaction so far, I had to admit (though it was exactly like my own). What if I beat him, tried to kill him? These thoughts seemed insane—I’d never laid a hand on my son—but insane was what I seemed to be at that moment, and you read such things in the paper every day. What if he fought me off and killed me? What would that be like to live with? How would he explain it to the police (if he could ever find any)?

  These thoughts took all of about ten seconds to run through my head, and were nothing compared to the images that accompanied them. They proliferated endlessly: I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, couldn’t stop it.

  I look back on the young man I was, younger than Josh was now (Dante thought he went through hell at midlife), and see someone facing a huge load of stress, literally bursting with it, with no idea how to handle it. The images his mind saw were extreme, but they had been trying to get his attention for eight months (while he was trying to get laid). He was facing fear, the same fear we all face, the fear that Josh was feeling right now: What is going to become of me, and those I love? His mind just created some unusual possibilities.

  Craving, aversion, and delusion, as the Buddha pointed out. This was aversion, big time. Or maybe delusion. Who gives a shit?

  The images went on for hours. One of the worst things was that I had no one to talk to. I certainly couldn’t talk to Josh. (“Son, I’ve been thinking about killing you.”) It was a dreadful night, not the greatest start to a vacation.

  One of the problematic aspects of that cottage for us (again, Cheryl loved its remoteness) was that you had to get in a car to do anything at all. In North Carolina the beach was right out the door, the fishing pier a hundred yards away.

  The vaunted miniature golf course wasn’t as good as the one in North Carolina. The go-cart track was fun, but after a half-hour (the minimum) you’d had enough for the summer (if not for the rest of your life).

  The morning we went out in a canoe—had to do something, bored out of our minds—was too windy, and we had trouble getting around. Josh actually had more experience in canoes than I, kept telling me how to maneuver. We almost went over a couple of times. We finally made it back to the dock a half hour late, had to pay for an extra half-day.

  We drove the car around the national park, and it was breathtaking; I kept exclaiming at it. Josh glanced out the window now and then. Finally he said, in one of the memorable quotes from the summer, “Dad, I’ve had about all the beauty I can take.”

  The movie theater with its nightly changes was our saving grace, but that only killed a couple of hours. (A couple of times I almost said, “Want to go in and watch it again?”) The restaurants were great, and we were good at eating, though our foray into the world of lobsters was a total failure. A diagram came with the dinner—“What kind of dinner comes with a diagram?” Josh said. “What is it, a model airplane?”—but we had a huge amount of trouble dismembering the creature and finding the meat. It was one of those dinners where you worked so hard that you were hungry again when you finished. “I don’t actually like this dish all that much,” Josh said, an opinion with which I concurred. “Why don’t these people just drink a cup of butter?” The nights weren’t going too well after that first shaky one. I closed my eyes expecting to see those visions, and did, but not as intensely as at first. I was sleeping about half of what I usually did.

  On the fourth day, we went to do the one thing we hadn’t tried. Rent bikes.

  The thing I will always remember about Jake, the first time we saw him, was that he took one look at Josh and beamed all over. This was a kid whose legs and arms were utterly unpredictable, whose face was spotted with freckles and the beginnings of acne—he was way ahead of himself—whose hair looked like an unmade bed, but Jake saw him as a perfect specimen of humanity, as if Jesus Christ had walked in to rent a bike. He didn’t treat him like a kid, spoke to us like a couple of men.

  “What are you guys up to?” he asked. He sat behind the counter eating lunch, a pasta salad.

  “Renting bikes, I guess,” Josh said. “That’s what he says.” He jerked a thumb at me.

  “Sounds good to me,” Jake said.

  “We thought we’d try a couple of the dirt bikes,” I said.

  “Josh has been wanting to.”

  “Of course he has,” Jake said.

  “Take them up and ride through the park.”

  “Sounds very good to me.”

  That became the most memorable quotation of the summer. Jake used it for almost everything we said. We spent the whole next year using it ourselves, in all kinds of circumstances.

  From the back another guy came out, a short, wiry, dark man, dressed in a cycling get-up. “I’ll take care of them, Jake,” he said. “You’re eating.”

  “I can eat any time.”

  “It’s okay. I’m
free. I got it.”

  Josh and Jake were looking at each other, Jake grinning all over, as if at some huge joke.

  “Sounds very good to me,” he said.

  The young man, who turned out to be one of the owners, took us out and got us set up. He was extremely efficient, and the bikes were beautiful, brand new. He got a map, sketched out a route to the park. He actually walked us over and pointed at the road where the route began. These weren’t canoes, and it wasn’t windy. I saw no way this could go wrong.

  Five minutes later we were peddling up an extraordinarily steep hill, trying to shift into lower and lower gears, cars whizzing all around.

  I should have noticed—it was right there in front of me—that the owner was an incredible bike jock, had legs of steel, and even he said it was “a little steep at first.” Josh had started off in front, wildly enthusiastic, but now was wobbling all over the place, trying hard to shift. My legs were stronger; I was gaining on him.

  “This is no good,” he said. “Are you sure this is the road?”

  “Of course it’s the road. He pointed to it. The park’s up ahead. We’ve just got to ride.”

  “I can’t fucking ride.” He got off and started to walk.

  “Don’t walk out here. It’s dangerous. Shift to a lower gear.”

  “I can’t.”

  “I thought you knew how to ride these things.”

  “I said I wanted to know.”

  “Just try it. This is your chance.”

  I rode past him. It was as if this were my last opportunity. If I couldn’t make this day fun, the whole vacation was ruined. I was a failure as a father. He had to like it.

  I had ridden another hundred yards when I noticed Josh had crossed the road and was heading back down.

  It seemed to take forever to get across the road and ride down after him. By the time I did he was almost to the bottom and wasn’t stopping, pedaling like crazy. I couldn’t let him out of my sight.

  The bike shop was in what used to be a house, and Jake—having finished lunch—had come out on the porch. He stood with that beaming smile on his face. Josh rode right in front of him—I had picked up speed, was almost there—when Josh got off the bike, threw it down, and started to scream, picking it up and throwing it down again, picking it up and throwing it down.

  “This is not my fucking bike, this is not my fucking trip, this is not my fucking vacation, this is not what I fucking wanted to do,” on and on, delivering his opinion on nearly everything that had happened in the past four days, and finally got down to, “not my fucking divorce, not my fucking father, not my fucking fucked-up life.” His face was roughly the color of his hair, and his voice almost screeched, tears pouring from his eyes.

  The owner came out beside Jake and would have jumped down, but Jake put an arm out to stop him. I wouldn’t say Jake’s expression hadn’t changed—he looked concerned—but he was definitely still smiling, that broad smile that never seemed to fade. Because he didn’t do anything, I didn’t either.

  We all stood staring for a moment, waiting for the dust to settle.

  “Other than that, how’d you like the bike?” Jake said.

  “Not too fucking much. It wouldn’t fucking shift.”

  I had not heard Josh use that particular word to such an extent. I’d hardly heard him use it at all.

  “It probably won’t fucking shift at this point,” Jake said.

  The owner, furious and perplexed, stared at Jake.

  “You just stand there while he wrecks the bike?” he said.

  “I can fix it,” Jake said.

  “Not if he’s bent something. Not if it’s bent beyond repair.”

  “I can fix it, Harold,” Jake said. “Believe me.”

  “I’ll pay for the damages,” I said.

  “You’re damn straight,” Harold said. “A damaged bike is never the same. You ought to pay for the bike.”

  Jake had stepped off the porch, picked the bike up from the ground, looked at it.

  “Nothing’s new forever,” he said. He was looking at the pedal and gears, trying to turn them. “Why did you send them up that hill, Harold?”

  “It’s the best ride,” Harold said. “The most scenic entrance to the park.”

  “Scenic?” Josh said, wiping his face.

  “Once you get up the hill,” Harold said. “It’s the best way in. I said the hill was steep.”

  “It’s not the best for someone on the bike for the first time,” Jake said. “Who hasn’t learned to shift down, gotten a little used to it.”

  “It’s the route I recommend,” Harold said. “The best way to the park.”

  “You might reconsider,” Jake said. He was still fiddling with the bike. “I can fix this,” he said.

  “Good,” Josh said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

  I was rather shaken at that point, staring at my son.

  “What exactly did you mean?” Harold asked.

  “You boys had lunch?” Jake said, looking at Josh.

  Josh shook his head.

  “We were going to eat at that place in the park,” I said. “The one with popovers.”

  “This place next door has good calzones,” Jake said. “You hungry?” Still looking at Josh.

  “Kind of,” Josh said.

  “Works up an appetite, doesn’t it son?” Harold said. “Wrecking a bike.”

  That Harold was quite a wit.

  “Let’s go over there,” Jake said. “Let’s pretend this rental never happened.”

  “Never happened?” Harold said.

  “I’m on my lunch hour,” Jake said. “I’ll be back.”

  I left my bike in front of the bewildered-looking Harold.

  I was somewhat bewildered myself. Josh and Jake walked ahead of me. They were roughly the same height, with rather different body shapes. The odd feeling, which I couldn’t get over, was that they were old friends, rough contemporaries, this fifty-five-year-old round bald man and my gawky, awkward, wild-haired son. I was tagging along. Perfectly welcome, of course.

  The other thing that struck me was that Jake seemed in charge. He seemed in charge of any situation he was in.

  The pizza place had also once been a house, had a counter where you ordered and a large dining area in front of it, like an enclosed porch. The owners were apparently obsessed with the Grateful Dead, whose pictures lined the walls. The place was empty at that hour, a little before noon.

  “You like Italian sausage?” Jake asked.

  “Sure,” Josh said.

  “That’s what I recommend. How about your old man?”

  “I better have it plain.” I wasn’t the least bit hungry.

  “Couple of Cokes?” Jake asked.

  “I think I’ll have a beer,” I said.

  “Good idea,” Jake said.

  We walked to a table with our drinks. Jake wasn’t having anything.

  He stuck out a hand as we sat down. “Jake Weinstein,” he said.

  “Henry Wilder,” I said. “And Josh.”

  The two of them shook hands. We all sat down.

  “You’re on vacation?” Jake asked.

  “Hasn’t been the best trip of our lives,” I said.

  We told him about our late arrival, about the house, our trips to miniature golf and the go-cart track, our disaster with the lobsters, the outing on the lake.

  “He doesn’t know how to paddle,” Josh said. “He’s stronger, so he needs to be in back. But he can’t do it.”

  “You can’t teach him?” Jake asked.

  “Not so far.”

  “Then you need to be in back.”

  It had actually been my first time in a canoe. Josh had used one at summer camp.

  By that time our food had arrived. I’d been a little suspicious, what with the photos, but the calzones were great.

  “This probably isn’t the best time to ride to the park,” Jake said. “There’s a lot of traffic, a lot of people once you get there. That a
lso wasn’t the best way to send you. Nice entrance, but hard to get to.”

  “I’m sorry I fucked up the bike,” Josh said.

  What had happened to my son’s vocabulary?

  “I can fix it,” Jake said. “Tomorrow’s my day off. I take a ride in the morning. What do you say we meet at eight and I show you some things. A better entrance, some good trails to ride. How to shift gears.”

  “That might help,” Josh said.

  “Harold means well. He just doesn’t understand.”

  “We appreciate this,” I said. It was the first thing that had gone right that week.

  “So I’ll see you guys at eight.”

  “That is a little early,” Josh said.

  “That’s when it happens,” Jake said.

  “All right.”

  “I’ll see you guys in the morning,” Jake said.

  He got up to walk out, came back after a few steps.

  “There’s something around here called a lobster roll,” he said. “Lots of places have it. They get the meat out and serve it on some kind of bun. It’s overpriced, but avoids all the hassle. You don’t need a diagram.”

  “I’ll try it,” Josh said.

  Jake walked out. We both stared.

  “I’ve never met anybody like that guy,” Josh said.

  “Me neither.”

  “Where does a guy like that come from?”

  We had to get up at the crack of dawn after a late movie, but I didn’t hear a word of complaint from Josh, who’d been complaining about everything. The town was deserted except for a diner down the street from the bike shop where all the locals gathered and blueberry pancakes flew off the griddle at a terrific rate.

  Harold was behind the counter at the bike shop, looking worried. Jake took us on the street and rode us up and down, showed us about the gears.

  “The whole thing is not waiting too long to downshift, especially on a hill. You don’t want to do it too early, but if you wait too long you can’t do it at all.”

  After that we went for a ride, following Jake. He took a back entrance to the park, not as nice as the one Harold suggested—which we did finally come to—but much more accessible. The park had roads for cars but also carriage paths that had been created years before by some Rockefeller and were perfect for dirt bikes, complicated to navigate, but Jake knew them inside and out.