by Cesare, Adam
This edition copyright © Adam Cesare, 2017
Cover by Fredrick Richardson
Editing for 2014 edition by Don D’Auria
Further proofreading and paperback layout by Scott Cole
Black T-Shirt Books logo by Chris Enterline
All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author.
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The Summer Job
Adam Cesare
Prologue
For the first time in twenty-six years, Hugh Mayland was winning the war against his wife.
The battle took a turn as they crested the ridge to look out over the town nestled in the woods. Hannah lifted her hands up to her mouth in awe of the beauty surrounding them, leaning back into her husband’s chest.
Not only had the trip to America been Hugh’s idea, but so had driving across Western Massachusetts instead of dipping down through Connecticut into New York.
This skirmish had been one of culture and landscapes: pastoral vistas versus urban/suburban sprawl. They’d started out in Boston, with the intent of staying for a few days before continuing down the coast and ending up on the beaches of Florida.
But Boston bored Hugh.
“It’s not London, it’s barely even Leeds,” he’d said.
“Maybe that’s not it. Maybe it’s your hatred of everything the slightest bit modern,” Hannah said, adding, “And young people.”
That last part rankled him, probably because it was true.
There wasn’t a moment that didn’t go by where Hugh wasn’t rolling his eyes at a college student. In Boston, there was no escaping them. The little pricks used their iPhones to cut through the subdued natural light of the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, take pictures of themselves sitting on John Harvard’s lap, tweet their thoughts on a local production of Beckett’s Endgame while it was still being performed.
They were a waste of years and money, and Hugh wanted to be away from them.
The ageist angle was not the way to approach this situation, though. He would have to convince her in another way.
“Look at the Fodors. They list McDonald’s under the cuisine section in every guide we’ve got. Every city in the world is now identical. Why even bother traveling?”
“I feel a proposition coming up,” Hannah said, moving the hair out of her eyes, looking girlish even if the hair was going gray in spots.
“Let’s see the parts of the country that humans haven’t fucked up yet.”
Gone were the days of proper English gentlemen, but Hugh still used profanity sparingly. If you didn’t hold back, why should anyone take your fucks seriously?
The war he waged with his wife wasn’t Hugh’s idea. Not that it was Hannah’s either. Some permutation of the struggle existed in every marriage. Theirs was not unique, but it was often one-sided.
It in no way diminished the love that he and Hannah felt for each other.
Hugh’s gruffness was always upended by Hannah’s patience and forethought, as if the natural ebb-and-flow of their life together mirrored the plot of those American sitcoms that Hugh detested so much. The studio audience laughed at Hugh’s failings, clapped when Hannah was proven right, and then let out a coo of acceptance as the couple reconciled.
After all these years, three grown children, two affairs (one apiece, each over a decade ago), Hugh could finally bask in the glory of victory.
And it was all thanks to a little town in Western Massachusetts, nestled in the hills of the Berkshires, a handful of miles east of where the Commonwealth backs into upstate New York. Mission, where there were so few people, but what people there were seemed exemplary.
“We’ve seen a handful of sunsets. How many were better than this, do you think?” Hannah asked. She was poking fun at Hugh’s propensity for listing his experiences. The best movie of the year, the best fish and chips he ever ate, his top five most re-readable books.
“There are none that can compare,” he said, pulling her close. He put his lips to the back of her neck, stopping right at the point that the downy hair brushed against them. Not really kissing, just waiting and breathing.
They watched the sunset together in silence, Hugh’s hands resting on Hannah’s hips as a chill set in, cutting through the heat of the day and making everything perfect.
The tops of the trees seemed to glow, with the sun dropping right into the valley on the horizon, like a coin into a slot. The sky did a magic show of purples, blues and different gradations of gold.
There was no way of telling, looking out over the woods and the few rooftops of the small town, what century they were in. Even in London’s most historic districts there were reminders of modernity: satellite dishes, electric billboards, etc.
If Hugh inhaled deeply, he could catch the chemical scent of their bug repellent, but he didn’t let that hint of modern comfort ruin the experience.
“What’s that?” Hannah asked, breaking Hugh out of his stupor.
She pointed to the treetops at the base of the next hill, a thin pillar of smoke snaking through the branches.
“Campers,” Hugh said, his jaw automatically beginning to set, his mood ruined by the possibility of boisterous Americans.
Hannah hugged his arm tighter, trying to wrest him back into the last rays of the sunset. There was no sun left, though. One moment it was day. The next it was night.
What Hannah did next surprised him. It seemed to surprise her as she was doing it. She kissed Hugh deeply, reaching up to kneed the back of his neck with her fingertips.
He stared at her, mouth agape and lips moist.
“Don’t let anything bring you away from this,” she said. It was as if she’d read his mind. Although he couldn’t remember her ever saying those exact words, it was not the first time that she’d ever dipped into his subconscious to extract a thorn.
“Nothing could,” he said, taking her hands away from his face and kissing her to reciprocate.
She smiled. Her face was hard to make out in the sudden darkness, but the picture of it stuck there behind his eyelids, the impression of a familiar room after you’ve turned off the lights.
“In fact, why don’t we go say hello?” he asked her.
Now it was Hannah’s turn to look surprised.
“Who knows? Maybe they’ll be some charming young people.”
*
Hugh led Hannah through the woods, following the music and the glow of the fire until they reached the camp.
The site was lived-in. Not the impromptu clutter laid down by a group of weekend warriors, the kind of folks that pitch a tent, warm a can of baked beans over the fire and declare themselves campers.
No, this was more like a modernist Swiss Family Robinson.
There was music as they approached, under which Hugh could detect the steady hum of a generator. The music was rock, but not overly aggressive. The kind of thing that you might have heard pouring out of East End clubs a few decades ago, back when even the punks only wanted to get high and sleep together.
These campers were kids, but not the kind that had ruined Boston for Hugh. These were country folk and even their in-party mode was softened by the laconic, well-intentioned mood of the countryside.
At least that was what Hugh projected on them in the first few moments of watching. For a time Hugh and Hannah went unnoticed, observing a few can
did moments of young people at play.
They were young, but not teens, not all of them. Most were well into their twenties, unwinding after a hard day’s work, no doubt.
Their clothes were nondescript: no designer names, no vulgar images. The guys wore jeans and T-shirts, skirts and monochromatic tops for the girls.
Hugh and Hannah watched the group talk, joke, and drink. The two smokers among them were discreet, segregating themselves to the outskirts of the congregation.
Towering above the party, jacked up as high as it could get off the ground, was a caravan.
Or a trailer as the Yanks called them.
It hadn’t moved in a while. If the bald tires weren’t a dead giveaway, the old Airstream was surrounded on all sides by saplings and full-grown trees.
“Hey there,” a voice came from the left of the small rabble.
They’d been spotted.
“Don’t look like that,” the same voice called. “You got this look like we caught you peeking over the fence at our orgy.” The owner of the voice parted the crowd, older than the other partygoers by at least a decade. He was tall and heroin-skinny with a scraggly beard, a length and style right at the border between homeless and chic.
“We saw the fire,” Hugh said, stammering.
“Are you British? Is Smokey the Bear outsourcing now?” The kids laughed around the bearded stranger. His voice bounced around the forest around them, the music had been turned down. When did that happen?
For the first time since they’d been in the States, Hugh was aware of the difference in accent.
“We didn’t mean to intrude,” Hannah spoke up. There was an apparent embarrassment in her voice and a hint of something else that Hugh picked up on. Fear?
“I’m just kidding, y’all, meant no offense,” the tall man said. “My name’s Davey. I’m the den mother around here.” The kids offered this a light chuckle. “Join us. Please.”
And they did.
The Londoners had drinks in their hands so fast that Hugh could barely process the movement. Hannah lifted her cup to her mouth but didn’t drink. She pitched an eyebrow at Hugh, who offered her a slight shrug and drank deeply from his own red Solo cup.
Citrus and berry and vodka and apple and turpentine with an undercurrent of something licorice-y that didn’t fit at all. Gin? It was terrible. It was the kind of drink that a high school student would mix if they were given free rein to raid the liquor cabinet and refrigerator.
The music was back. Hugh couldn’t tell if it was louder than before, or just seemed so because they were at the heart of the party now, not off at the outskirts. It was louder and meaner, but something about that pleased Hugh.
Hannah took a draught of her own cup, leaning against Hugh for support, backing her ass into his hand. He gave it a quick pinch.
Hugh looked around. This wasn’t the stilted cocktail party the couple was used to attending. Davey was nowhere to be seen, but the young people seemed to double up, filling in the negative space and intensifying their dancing, carousing and joking. The kids weren’t mushing Hugh and Hannah together uncomfortably, but they didn’t keep their distance either.
Every so often a large kid with a beard would hoot and the crowd would part. He would then throw another armful of kindling on the fire. The flames flared up, sending a gush of smoke into the air and washing the citrus-hooch taste out of Hugh’s mouth.
They hadn’t learned anyone’s name, and Hugh didn’t particularly mind. Hannah was knocking her empty plastic cup against her lower teeth, a sophomoric clacking that Hugh couldn’t help but smile at. A mousey girl cut through the party and filled it from a plastic milk jug.
“Thank you,” Hannah said, but the girl just bowed and shot off in another direction, ready to refill someone else’s drink.
“I like it here,” Hannah said, laughing. Around them the chitchat and joking had discreetly morphed into dancing, a dance that pointed out the lone inequity of the party: the guys outnumbered the girls.
As the bonfire flared, the bearded kid dusted off his hands on his overalls and plucked the mousey drink girl from the crowd. He gently took the jug from her, returning the cap and placing it at the base of the tree. Then he took her tiny hands in his massive ones and twirled her around, the way a groomsman might dance with the flower girl at a wedding reception.
Hugh could see the blemish now, the large jagged scar running up the mousey girl’s left arm, so prominent that it looked like it had been built up with dark wax. The girl so innocent and beautiful immediately became an object of pity and (if he was being honest with himself) disgust.
The bearded boy twirled her around, eyes off the scar, oblivious to it.
Around them the dancing was less saccharine, the guys with their hands in girls’ back pockets, most doubling up in an attempt to offset the lack of female partners. Light, flirtatious kisses were traded, with deeper more adult ones creeping up along the shadows, behind the trees.
Hannah rubbed Hugh’s palms and he looked down to find his feet moving without him. He was dancing, the citrus-smoke burn in his nostrils like an alcoholic lozenge. Hannah guided his hands up and down, grinding like a woman born two decades later.
Her mouth was moist and sour. Her tongue darted along his teeth and a millisecond later was gone. “Hannah,” he said, wishing he could double his arms around her, constrict her like a snake in a loving embrace.
He looked up and the spell was broken. They were being watched. It wasn’t obvious, but the kids were sending too many sideways glances their way, some of them flat-out staring.
Hannah followed Hugh’s eye line and noticed it too, separating from where she was pressed against him, looking embarrassed that she’d been caught dancing with and loving her husband in public.
The eyes sobered Hugh. This wasn’t their place. This wasn’t their time.
“Let’s ask them to point us back in the direction of town,” Hugh said, “It’s late.”
Hannah gave his hand a short squeeze that let him know she was on board.
Taking a step towards the rest of the partygoers, Hugh’s world drunkenly rocked and tipped. The music was noticeably louder than before.
He made his way towards the bearded young man. The boy had taken a rest from tending the flames and had retired against a tree stump, the mousey girl on his knee like a sexually aware ventriloquist’s doll.
In Hugh’s imagination her scar pulsed and throbbed like an artery. He had to will himself to stop looking at it.
“Excuse me,” Hugh said, his own voice coming out too loud, cutting through the song.
The bearded boy looked up.
“Could you tell us how to get back to Mission? To the hotel?”
The boy stared back at Hugh. The young girl on his lap was pushing her fingers into his beard, making curly Qs of hair around her fingers. In the firelight their pale skin looked orange.
Her scar looked black.
“You head south, which is the path in between those two clotheslines. Leads to a break in the woods that faces the post office, one block up from the hotel. You keep on that trial and you can’t miss it. The trail disappears after a while. But by then you should see lights.”
The directions didn’t come from the bearded boy, who still hadn’t done anything except stare up at Hugh and creep his hand farther up the mousey girl’s thigh. The voice came from behind them, Davey had reappeared.
Hugh and Hannah weren’t the stars of the show anymore. All attention was on Davey. Behind him, the door to the trailer was open, a sliver of electric light peeking out.
The music had gone low enough that Hugh could hear the pop and crackle of the fire, the up and down of his own breathing.
“I don’t know that you should leave yet. If you wait an hour or so and some of the kids can walk you back, make sure you don’t get lost. Stay and dance a bit more. You were doing all right, chap.”
Davey wavered above them, close enough that if he fell down, he’d land on top o
f them. The lids of his eyes looked heavy, like either he’d just woken up from a nap or he was drunker than either Hugh or Hannah.
The tall man breathed in deep, giving a nod and closing his eyes at the same time, looking about ready to pass out. The motion was too subtle for a secret communiqué, surely.
The music was back up, sparks buffeted Hugh’s jacket as another log was thrown on the fire, and Hannah gripped his hand tighter.
She wasn’t the only one touching him now, though, Hugh looked down to see the mousey girl’s small fingers trying to work their way between him and his wife’s hands.
“Stay and dance with me,” the mouse said up to Hugh. She placed a small hand on Hannah’s hip and pushed his wife towards the bearded boy.
Hugh looked up for help, for Davey, who was the only other adult present, but he was gone.
There wasn’t just dancing, but singing now. It was a low hum of voices, the kind of sing along where no one seems to know the words, just the tune.
The small girl in the knit white dress and the scar had almost succeeded in unknotting Hugh and Hannah’s fingers when the bearded boy grabbed Hannah by the wrist and gave a swift tug, separating husband and wife.
Something was going on here. They were somehow being taken advantage of, but what does one do in a situation like this? Hugh could feel the dismay climbing up his spine, encroaching upon the polite smile he’d plastered to his face.
The bearded boy had his arm around Hannah’s waist, was twirling her around the same way he had the young girl. Hannah’s feet moved in time, keeping up with the dance, but her pained, blank expression told Hugh a different story. She was trying to calculate a way out, same as he was.
“We’ve really got to get going,” he said to the mousey girl in the white dress as she swung herself back and forth, a fist made around each of Hugh’s thumbs.
She could have been holding his hands, but she was playing up her size, showing just how big his thumbs looked in her tiny grip. This close, Hugh could see through her Lolita act, could see the dark lines under her eyes, the kind that told him she was at least in her twenties. She’d had time to earn that scar.