“The lake itself is an easy fix,” offered Greg, who actually seemed interested somewhat in the conversation. “It hasn't been draining properly. But, the old feed from the spring is still good.”
“And, I'm a licensed electrician,” he continued after a thoughtful pause, “so I could easily bring the place up to code myself if I had the money for materials. But, those aren't the worst problems. All the things you are suggesting take both money and time. All my money is going to hospitals and doctors, not to mention the funeral people. And as for time, I'm working two jobs right now just to keep my head above water. If it wasn't for Dad taking care of little Debbie, I wouldn't even be able to do that.”
“What about the cabins?” she said, ignoring his excuses. “Would it take much to get them in shape? Even as primitive cabins, you could rent them out for the weekend for a good price, I'd imagine. Could I possibly go see my old place? After I help with the dishes maybe? Don't even think about arguing with me about it.”
Greg was smiling, but he seemed more amused than actually enthusiastic about her ideas. He couldn't think about anything but his bills, and spending money for anything else was out of the question for him. Sitting at the table were the only three people on earth who shared the exact same feelings about Indian Foot Lake.
“It'll be getting dark,” Greg said. “If you would like to spend the night, we could drive over there after Mass tomorrow.”
Sylvia remembered that their home had only two bedrooms, but they had a once comfortable couch in the living room that had surely become lumpy over the years. It didn't matter. She was thrilled at the idea of spending more time with them and going to Sacred Heart Church in Herculaneum, the one where the priest had a droning voice that aggravated her father's tinnitus and put everyone else to sleep.
“I'd love to stay forever, but don't worry, I won't,” she laughed. “And, please call that awful Ms. Avery and take our lake off the market?” she pleaded.
The two men shared a look of understanding between them that they had much more explaining to do before their Sylvie got the whole picture of their situation. The three of them moved like clockwork together, clearing the table, washing the dishes, and putting them away. It was almost as if she had never left, like seventeen years had not passed between them.
Greg put little Debbie into the kitchen sink for her bath. Sylvia took over while he went to get the baby shampoo he had forgotten from the bedroom. She smiled at this beautiful baby, a little sad that she knew she could never know the joy of having a child of her own. Sylvia encouraged her to splash the water, and they were both laughing together when Greg came back into the kitchen.
“You're a natural, just like you are with horses,” he said meaning to give her a compliment. “So why haven't you snatched yourself a guy and started a family yet? Or, have you?” he probed, realizing that there very well could be someone in her life. She’d grown up to be very beautiful, he thought.
“Well, according to my friends, of whom there are very few from which to form a reliable opinion, I am too picky.”
“You still talk funny,” he teased.
She laughed, remembering their lengthy discussions over which of them had an accent and which spoke normal English.
“I would think that in a big city like St. Louis with over a million guys to choose from, you could find somebody,” he said jokingly.
“Actually, the city has about 319,000 people, but if you include the whole metropolitan area with the suburbs there are over two million. Wait, that does come to about a million men. So, I guess you're right. And, my friends are right. I am picky. But, to my defense I must say that I don't have a lot of time or opportunity to go traipsing all over the city trying to find Mr. Right.”
“Whoa, you're pretty good at spouting out statistics, there. Maybe you would be a good businesswoman,” he said. “Not that the lake is a good investment. I'm not saying that.”
“I'm sort of a librarian, in my other life,” she added, not wanting to get into a discussion about the lake until she had more time to gather information. “That's what I deal with every day—facts, numbers, statistics. I work with a lot with government documents, mostly old ones.”
“So your friends are all librarians, too?” he asked, realizing most of them were of the female persuasion, explaining why she might not meet many men. “What do you do besides work?”
“Pretty much they all work at the library or museum in one way or another,” she said, holding the baby lengthwise in a towel while he rinsed shampoo out of her fine blond curls. She had no comments about how she spent her time. What could she say? That she bought, collected, and dusted miniature horses. For the first time she could see the craziness of what her life had become.
“You do that like a pro,” he said. “How'd you know how to bathe a baby with no little brothers or sisters?”
“You didn't have any either,” she reminded him.
“My wife taught me how to take care of Debbie,” he said sadly, but not unwilling to talk about it. “She was too sick to hardly carry her most of the time. The diagnosis came right at the end of her pregnancy. They wanted to take the baby early and start chemotherapy, but she insisted that the baby have all the time she needed to develop. The doctors said that it wouldn't have made any difference in the outcome. Another month or two was nothing with the kind of kidney cancer she had. So, she would tell me what to do, then watch that I was doing everything right. All she could do was enjoy holding her in bed, so I liked to give her a freshly cleaned, soft and cuddly baby to hold. Debbie was only four months old when Rita died. It's been a little over a year since I closed up the lake, and it's been for sale for about nine months, since the day after the funeral. I couldn't think about anything else.”
“I wish I'd known,” Sylvia said sadly and sincerely, “I would have tried to help somehow.”
“I appreciate that, Sylvie,” he gulped back tearfully. “I believe you would have. You always were such an amazing girl.” He regained his composure, shaking off emotions he didn't want to expose.
“Wow! You could have fooled me,” she teased, trying to break the tension. “I sure never knew you liked me at all.”
“You knew I liked you.”
“Okay, I did,” she blushed. “But, we were little kids then. I didn't grow up expecting to hold you to your promise to marry me when we were old enough. We were like eight, right?”
“You were eight, I was thirteen—old enough for a country boy to get serious. Then when you left... Well, let's just say that Nippy wasn't the only one with a broken heart.”
“No. You can't mean that,” Sylvia pondered aloud. “You were eighteen by the time I left, and I remember you hardly noticed me anymore. I had turned into a thirteen-year-old pest, remember? I had no idea...” Then she noticed his tight-lipped face holding back laughter, and she smacked him with the baby's towel lying on the counter since Debbie was by now in her jammies.
Mr. Devine walked in to join the fun and offered to put little Debbie to bed.
“Are you guys going to keep calling her a snack cake when she goes to school?” Sylvia asked. That could be embarrassing, you know?”
The two men looked confused.
“Little Debbie,” she stated. “Don't tell me you've never heard of Little Debbie Snack Cakes?”
“Yeah,” said Greg, finally. “I never thought of it. We didn't put it together, Dad. You know, the little packaged cakes in the store?”
He still didn't make the connection.
“He probably doesn't buy stuff like that,” Greg explained. “Well, we will work on calling her just plain Debbie before the time comes.”
“You two have a lot of talking to do,” Mr. Devine said. “Let me rock her to sleep. I don't mind, and she's the only one who seems to like the old country ballads—at least the way I sing them.”
“That’s probably the truth,” Greg conceded, handing the baby to him along with her nighttime bottle.
When Greg and
Sylvia got themselves seated comfortably on the sofa, he on one end and she on the other, they resumed catching up on each other's lives.
“So, I'm surprised you became an electrician,” Sylvia inquired. “I would have thought you'd be doing something with horses.”
“I could say the same about you,” he added.
“I really only had one horse in my life, although I love horses in general,” she said, deciding not to tell him about her horse-hoarding obsession. “When my mother sent me away to school, it just seemed easier to accept that my life had changed forever. As years went on, I began to think of my earlier years as somehow fictional. It was like I had a pleasant dream to think about sometimes, but going back was just impossible. I think you, your dad, and especially Nippy, were all just in an imaginary world. I never even considered coming here to check on you, for any reason. I surely never thought that anyone would care to see me again. I went away to college, and that was hard. My mother died just before my high school graduation, and my father the day before I graduated from eighth grade. So, I don't look forward to receiving diplomas. I didn't even attend my undergraduate ceremony. There was no one to celebrate with me.”
“I remember when your father died,” Greg said. “We were expecting you in just a few days. I went over to the cabin to see if anything needed fixing before your arrival. I told Nippy you'd be coming soon, and crazy as it seems, his ears perked up when I said your name. Then my dad found out from the Krafts what happened. It was quite a blow to us, so unexpected. We couldn't come to the funeral, but we sent a card. That was about all we could manage. The truck was broken down, we had no proper clothes to wear. We figured you'd understand.”
“I never saw your card until my mother died, and I went through her things. It made me think of you and this place. It seemed so remote by that time. And, I wanted to come back earlier, too,” Sylvia explained. “I begged my mother, but she was adamant. I tried to convince her that we needed to go through our stuff, that we needed to have some closure, and all kinds of excuses to persuade her, but she would not hear any of it. I think she knew I would never want to leave if I came back here. Maybe it would have been painful for her to face the memories within those walls as well. She had a tough exterior, but she loved my dad dearly. She really did.”
“I assume she sold the clubhouse back to the Krafts, of course I never knew any details,” Greg continued. “When I bought it, I was surprised that all the land across Z Highway was included in the package. All the cabins were on the deed. The other occupants, including the ones in your old cabin must have been leasing.”
“Someone else lived in my old cabin? That's creepy to think about. All our belongings, even my old toys and our clothes were there,” she stiffened to say.
“I had assumed you, or someone hired by your mother, must have come and moved everything without our knowing. I never have been inside since the last time you were there,” he answered, beginning to have questions himself. “I saw a man in a van drive up your road several times, but I never saw anyone with him. It wasn't strange then, because I assumed I had just not been around when the family was with him. I never saw him down at the lake, not even to get a sandwich or do a little fishing. I never saw any kids coming or going from there—no one ever.”
“If it wasn't dark outside,” Sylvia said, “I'd want to go there right now.”
“Me, too,” he said. They both looked at each other knowing what they were both thinking.
Without a word, Greg went to the cupboard and came back with two flashlights, one a lantern style and the other a hand-held smaller one. She rose from the couch, and they went out the door toward his 1995 Ford F250 pick-up truck. Then quickly, Greg rushed back into the house to whisper into his dad's room that they were leaving and he should keep an ear open for little Debbie.
“We won't be gone long,” he assured his dad in a low voice, coming out of the bedroom hallway. Then to Sylvia standing at the door, he whispered, “He probably thinks we're going on a date.”
“It is a date,” she teased. “A date with destiny.”
“You're still that same crazy-talkin' girl I used to know,” he smiled as they walked to his truck, and it really did seem like a date after all. And off they drove in search of Sylvia’s old cabin.
# # #
The Dark Lake Road
Trust was something that did not come easily to Sylvia. She had never experienced anyone untrustworthy in her life, but she had always had a very independent spirit. It went against her grain to rely on others. Perhaps because she was an only child, she did not need the company of people, although she enjoyed being with others, was good at cooperating with others, and cared easily for others. Right now it made her very nervous that she had to trust in the driving abilities of a dear friend whom she hardly knew.
The night was moonless and dark as pitch. Yes, she knew pitch, because her father had used it to repair the roof on the very clubhouse they were attempting to approach. Dark alleys in St. Louis scared her, and she avoided them. But there was no dark like country dark. All she could see was the few feet ahead of them afforded by the beams from Greg's headlights.
“Maybe this wasn't a good idea,” she said with jerking words as the pick-up truck bumped over ruts in the road unused for almost the entire seventeen years since she'd been there. “How can you see? I can't see anything. We're going to crash into something or fall into a hole, Greg.”
“I know this road, Sylvie,” he assured her. “It's been a long time, but just like riding a bicycle, I haven't forgotten how to get there. Don't worry. It's only a little farther. I can actually see it, almost.”
The headlights illuminated weeds that almost reached the hood of the truck. She could not see a road at all, but Greg assured her it lay solidly beneath them. She remembered when Mr. Devine came over to help her dad repair some depressions in the road that had put a hole in one of his tires. That rut had surely re-emerged over the years, and they would surely would hit it. The thought of being stranded out here, of having to hike back to the Devine house terrified her. She explained her concerns to Greg.
“First of all,” he said, “this truck is made for this kind of terrain. I wouldn't own a truck that could not make it over all the hills and valleys around here. I use it for hunting. Secondly, I told you I know every crook and cranny in this road. It doesn't matter how long it's been since I've been here. The road didn't move, and I could not ever forget how to maneuver it. I've come here too many times since I was driving over here when I was thirteen years old in my dad's truck. And on top of all that, thirdly, I would never expect you to walk through these woods in the dark, even with a big boy scout like myself. I would carry you.”
“What? Carry me? You've got to be kidding,” she laughed, feeling a bit more confident in his chauffeuring skills.
“I'm kidding,” he said, smiling as they pulled up to the carport next to the clubhouse. She hadn't really noticed they had arrived until Greg pulled on the brake and put the gears into park. The screened porch wasn't even visible as she peered out the side window. But, it was there. She believed it was because he had stopped.
He left the engine running and the headlights on so that he could run up to the door and turn on the porch light. The switch was inside the screened in porch, and the door had long ago fallen to the wayside. From her vantage point, Sylvia could now see the dilapidated entrance to what was once her beloved cabin.
“I was wondering how we would get in with no keys, but that doesn't seem to be a problem,” he said coming back to the truck to turn off the engine and collect Sylvia.
“Do you think it's safe to go in?” she asked.
“If you don't want to, you don't have to, Sylvie. I'd really like to check it out, though. You can wait here for me.”
“No,” she said with determination. “I'm coming in.”
They walked slowly onto the porch, which seemed very dirty, but stable. Then she advanced to the living area entrance. That door was
intact and locked, but Greg hit it a few times with his fist, and it flew open before them. He turned on the camp lantern, which offered a very bright halogen light, and then they could see easily inside. It was a disaster. Everything had been trashed. Clothes were strewn across the floor, drawers had been emptied and were topsy-turvy everywhere. Even the refrigerator door was hanging open. She saw empty food cans on the kitchen table, dishes in the sink, and several varmints scampering across the floor in there.
Indian Foot Lake Love Story Page 3