Butternut Summer

by Mary McNear

  It was a gray day in early October, and Will, who had just slept through another detention, was leaving his schoolbooks in his locker. (He tried, whenever possible, not to take these books home, since studying occupied an even lower priority in his life than attending classes.) Usually, at the end of the day, he enjoyed this little ritual at his locker. Dump books in, slam door shut, spin combination lock—and get the hell out of there.

  On that day, though, even the sound of metal colliding with metal as he banged the locker door shut didn’t give him any real pleasure. Mainly, this was because he had nowhere to go. Jason, whose house he practically lived at, was on a father-son hunting trip, and going back to his own house this early in the day wasn’t even an option. The library was out too, as he’d already read the entire supply of automotive magazines for that month and had pretty much consumed all the aviation magazines as well. Besides, the librarian, a dried-out prune of a woman, was always nagging him, saying things like, “If you’re so curious about the way things work, why don’t you try going to your physics class sometimes?”

  But as he was hesitating at his locker that afternoon, he heard a burst of cheering from the gymnasium next door, and he decided on a whim to investigate its source. When he pushed open the gym’s swinging door and saw it was a girls’ varsity volleyball game, he almost went right back out again. All school sports were lame, as far as Will was concerned. But volleyball, he thought, was especially lame. Still, something made him stay. Maybe it was the thought, again, of going home. Or maybe it was just that on this gloomy October day, the gym, which was bright and warm and noisy, seemed strangely cheerful to him.

  In any case, he climbed up to the top of the bleachers, sat down, slumped against the back wall, and waited for boredom to set in. It never did. For one thing, the game was much better than he’d expected it to be—fast paced and suspenseful—and not at all like the clumsy coed volleyball he and his classmates were periodically forced to play in PE. Even more important, though, it was a girls’ volley ball game, and if there was one thing that interested Will besides cars, it was girls. And this team had some exceptional girls on it.

  There was Jenny Holmes, for instance, a junior whose blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty and year-round tan made her look more like a Southern California surfer girl than a midwestern volleyball player. And there was Hazel Bell, too, a pretty, dark-haired senior who was that rarest of high school combinations: an athlete and a bad girl. Because while Hazel could hit a mean spike shot, she could also drink a pint of Jack Daniel’s straight from the bottle. She had a very nice body, too, a body that Will was already intimately familiar with, given that drinking was only one of Hazel’s two favorite activities.

  As he was watching Jenny and Hazel, though, he noticed another player, number 17. He liked watching her, too, he decided. He liked the way she moved, with the easy grace of a natural athlete. He liked the way her strawberry-blond ponytail bounced up and down whenever she made a play. He liked the way her creamy white skin seemed to almost glow under the gym’s fluorescent lights. And he liked the way her body seemed to be both hard and athletic, and soft and feminine, at the same time. He liked, in fact, everything about number 17, whose name, he learned, was Daisy. Soon, he stopped watching Jenny and Hazel and all the other players and watched only her, which wasn’t a bad strategy. Even as a sophomore, she was already the best player on the team. Except that, after a while, he watched her even when she wasn’t playing. Even on those rare occasions when she sat on the bench.

  Will went to Daisy’s next game. And most of her home games after that. He never told any of his friends where he was going, and, once there, he was always careful to blend in with the crowd and leave as soon as the game was over. But he was there, week after week, game after game, and, as he sat there, watching Daisy play, he became aware of a feeling that was sometimes right below the surface of his consciousness, and, at other times, right on the surface of it. The feeling, he decided, was lust, pure and simple, and it was made all the more acute by the knowledge that where Daisy Keegan was concerned, it would most likely never be satisfied.

  It wasn’t because Will had any trouble with girls. He didn’t. Even then, they came as easily to him as the engines Jason’s father was already letting him tinker with at his garage. But a girl like Daisy? She wasn’t just in a different league than Will. She was in a different world.

  It was a world at their high school that Will knew almost nothing about, the world of students who studied, played team sports, and participated in extracurricular activities. They didn’t just have to be there, like Will; they actually seemed to want to be there, which for him was a complete mystery. Will hated high school. Hated the boredom, the routine, the sameness of it all. Hated being herded from one class to another, hated being constantly told what to do, hated all the stupid rules—the stupid rules he broke whenever he got the chance to break them. The only relief for him came in automotive class and on the weekends, when he and his friends would convince someone’s older brother to buy them beer, and then they’d drive to the Butternut Town Beach where they’d build a bonfire and have a party.

  Daisy never came to those parties. She never came to any parties, as far as Will could tell. He never saw her outside of school. And when he saw her inside of school, she was either playing volleyball or engaged in some similarly wholesome activity. She was studying in the library between classes, a tiny frown of concentration on her pretty forehead. Or selling tickets to a school dance. Or volunteering at a bake sale—croissants only—to raise money for the French club.

  He wanted to see more of her—he really did—but since he wasn’t about to join the French club, and Daisy, apparently, wasn’t about to get detention, he figured their paths would never cross. And, except for those volleyball games, they never did.

  Then volleyball season ended, and Will thought about Daisy less. When he graduated that spring and started working full-time at the garage, he thought about her even less. Until today. Today, when she walked into the service bay, and walked back into his life, bringing with her all the memories of those autumn afternoons five years ago.

  And here was the amazing thing. It was still there. That irresistible pull he’d felt toward her then. Only this time it was stronger, because now she was real. He thought now about the way she’d been that morning. Flustered, impatient, funny, though the funny part, of course, was largely unintentional. Still, she’d been adorable in an innocent, tomboyish way, and as sexy as hell . . .

  “Damn, Will, what do I have to do to get your attention?”

  Will jumped a little. Jason was standing right next to him.

  “What?” Will asked, a little embarrassed. He’d been completely lost in thought.

  “I said, ‘Can you service Mrs. Elliot’s Camry tomorrow?’”

  “Yeah, okay,” Will said, going back to work.

  But Jason didn’t move. “You’re thinking about that girl, aren’t you? Daisy?”

  “No, I’m not,” Will said, irritated that Jason, for the first time in his life, was being perceptive.

  “Yes, you are,” Jason said, grinning. “Too bad you’re not going to see her again anytime soon. Because if you’re as good a mechanic as you say you are, that fan belt could hold out for a long time.”

  “Oh, I’ll see her again,” Will said nonchalantly. “She’ll be back. If not today, then tomorrow.”

  Jason raised an amused eyebrow. “You’re pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?”

  Will shrugged.

  “What, you think she’s not going to be able to resist those big brown eyes of yours?”

  “No, I think she’s going to want her cell phone back,” Will said, gesturing at the shiny silver rectangular object Daisy had left lying on a nearby worktable, right next to a pile of greasy rags.

  When Jack drove out to the lake that afternoon, he missed the turnoff to Wayland’s cabin. But about fifty yards down the road from it, he was struck by a sudden sense of familiarity
, and he braked, threw the truck in reverse, and backed up to an overgrown dirt track that looked as if nature was trying, hard, to reclaim it. It was Wayland’s driveway, though, he decided, squinting down it. He’d driven down it a hundred times before. He turned into it and started to drive down it again now, but he stopped when he saw a mailbox, smashed in on one side and lying on the ground. Were kids still doing that? he wondered, getting out of the truck. Still leaning out of the windows of speeding cars and knocking over mailboxes with baseball bats? He’d done this himself before, during a rural adolescence spent on the edge of juvenile delinquency.

  Still, he thought, grabbing the mailbox, it seemed wrong to have done it to Wayland, especially when you considered all the bad luck he’d run into at the end of his life. Jack stood the mailbox up and tried to plant the post back into the ground. But when he let go of it, it tipped right over. The whole thing was rotted right through. He picked it up and tossed it into the woods. He wasn’t expecting a lot of mail here this summer, anyway.

  He got back in his truck then and kept driving, but he had to stop again almost immediately to clear a fallen tree branch blocking his way. The driveway, it turned out, was littered with branches that needed to be moved, and by the time Jack had reached the final bend in it, his T-shirt was yoked with sweat, and his arms were covered with scratches. Still, he didn’t mind. He wasn’t afraid of physical work; there was something familiar about it, reassuring even. What wasn’t reassuring was his first sight of the cabin.

  “Oh hell,” he muttered, as it came into view. He braked and slid out of his truck without bothering to turn off the engine or close the driver’s-side door. He started to walk up to the cabin, then stopped, not wanting to go any closer. He rubbed the sweat out of his eyes, hoping it would improve the view. It didn’t. The cabin looked . . . the cabin looked like a teardown. He blew out a long breath. He was good with his hands; he knew how to fix things and build things. There were a lot of things, in fact, he knew how to do. But he wasn’t sure if salvaging this cabin was one of them.

  He squared his shoulders, though, and walked up to the cabin’s front porch, or what was left of its front porch, which, admittedly, wasn’t much. Most of it had simply fallen away. But someone had built a set of makeshift cinder-block steps that led up to the front door, and Jack climbed them now, craning his neck to look into one of the windows that flanked the door. But he couldn’t see anything through it. It was cracked and streaked with dirt. He tried the front door; it was locked. He frowned. There’d never been any mention of a key. Then again, details had never been Wayland’s strong suit.

  As it turned out, though, Jack didn’t need a key. One good shove with his shoulder and the door gave way. He started to go inside, then stopped. The airless cabin felt like a blast furnace in this heat. He opened the front door wider and forced himself to go inside, opening windows as he went. Several of them were stuck, but a couple of them opened, and so did the back door, which faced out onto the remains of a small deck. There, he thought, maybe that’ll get a cross breeze going.

  He stood then, for a moment, in the open back door, looking down toward the lake, which was only partially obscured by tall grasses and overgrown weeds. Here, at least, was one view that couldn’t be spoiled: Butternut Lake, the crown jewel of Butternut, Minnesota, twelve miles long and, in some places, one hundred and twenty feet deep. It was one of the clearest, cleanest lakes in Minnesota, and it was ringed with tall pines, magnificent maples, and oaks and birches. Today, Jack thought, it was at its best, smooth and sparkling in the afternoon sunlight, and so blue it almost hurt his eyes to look at it.

  It was still early in the season, and only one motorboat puttered lazily over the water on the far side of the bay. As Jack watched it, the heaviness and the stillness of the day weighing down on him, he got that feeling he sometimes got in the summer—that time itself was slowing down and that it might, eventually, stop altogether.

  It reminded him of an afternoon, more than twenty years ago, when he’d gotten that same feeling. Wayland, who’d worked with him at the mill in town, had invited him to come out here. It had been a day like today, though not so hot, maybe, but still, drowsy and heavy and slow. And he and Wayland had sat out on this deck, which was new then and still smelled like freshly cut pine, and they’d talked and talked, and drank and drank, though maybe, in retrospect, there’d been a little less talking, and a little more drinking.

  But Jack remembered now that he’d left the engine running in his pickup, and he went back outside to turn it off. When he came into the cabin again, he forced himself to go through it, slowly and methodically this time. He flicked the light switches on and off. Nothing. He turned on the water in the kitchen tap. There was silence, then an ominous gurgling sound, and finally, the faucet spit out something that looked like coffee. He waited until it ran clear, or as close to clear as it was going to get, and then he stuck his head under it, looking for some relief from the heat. But the tepid water didn’t give him much. He turned off the tap, looked around for something to dry his face with, and settled for his T-shirt.

  He finished inspecting the kitchen. There was a refrigerator and a stove, both disconnected, both covered with an ancient layer of grime. And that was about it. That and some old pots and pans, and some chipped crockery in the cupboards, and a box of macaroni on a dusty shelf in the pantry. Jack turned and left the little kitchen before he got too discouraged, but the living room wasn’t much better. It held a couch with the stuffing poking through, a scuffed coffee table, and a lamp whose shade had an ominous burn mark on it. The corners of the room were full of dust bunnies and festooned with spider’s webs as intricate as May Day streamers.

  Jack remembered now there were also two bedrooms, and he went to find them. The smaller one was empty, except for an old box spring, but the larger one was the only room in the cabin that looked as if someone had put any care or thought into it. It had a bed with a patchwork quilt spread neatly over it, a doily-covered bedside table, and a rocking chair in one corner. There was a little framed needlepoint hanging on the wall, too. “God Bless this House,” it said. Strange, Jack thought. Wayland hadn’t seemed like the religious type to him, and there certainly wasn’t much to bless about this house, but still, you never knew about people. They could surprise you.

  He left that bedroom, and, after poking his head into a small but apparently serviceable bathroom, he made his way back to the living room. He had some idea about bringing the rest of the gear in from his truck now, but he didn’t. Instead, he went and lay down on the lumpy couch and stared up at the ceiling. Noticing a chink of blue sky between one of the rafters, Jack sighed. He’d actually brought some camping gear with him—a sleeping bag and a few lanterns. But now he was wishing he’d thought to bring a tent, too. It would have offered better protection from the elements than this cabin. Oh, well. What difference did it make, really. He closed his eyes. He hadn’t come back for this godforsaken place, anyway. He’d come back for Caroline . . .

  Caroline. He’d told himself he was prepared to see her again today. But he’d been wrong. He hadn’t been prepared at all. Because the moment he’d seen her, all his preparations had gone straight out the window. Maybe it was because she’d been so angry, much angrier than he’d expected her to be. Had he ever seen her that angry before? he wondered. But then he realized he had, a couple of times, when they were still married, and he’d stayed out all night drinking, playing poker, and . . . but he pushed the thought of the other women out of his mind. He would concentrate on the present, not the past. He wouldn’t think about the past any more than was absolutely necessary. He couldn’t; it was too dangerous for him.

  So instead he pictured Caroline as she’d been today, angry, yes, but beautiful, too, beautiful in a wholly unexpected way. And he almost winced, remembering that, as a young man, he’d believed that as a woman aged she got less attractive, as if she were a carton of milk with an expiration date stamped on her. How wrong he’d bee
n, how stupid. Not to mention shallow. Because in the years since he’d last seen her, Caroline hadn’t gotten less attractive, she’d gotten more attractive. There had been some changes, of course. There were some tiny lines now around her eyes and mouth that hadn’t been there before. But they didn’t make her any less desirable. And the other changes, the changes that were harder to put his finger on, made her more desirable. Her face, for instance, seemed just slightly softer and fuller now than it had been before. And her strawberry-blond hair, her gift to their daughter, Daisy, was just a shade darker, her blue eyes just a shade brighter. He wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, but whatever it was about her that had changed, she was lovelier now than she’d ever been before. And it was killing him.

  He thought about getting up now, and starting his life here, such as it was—bringing his gear in from the truck, making a run to the grocery store, maybe even stopping in at the hardware store to get some of the stuff he was going to need to get started on this place. But he didn’t move. Didn’t open his eyes, either. Instead, Jack was paralyzed by a new fear. He’d been afraid to see Caroline again, but he hadn’t been afraid of failing, not in the long run. Now he wasn’t so sure. It was possible he’d underestimated the depth of her dislike—no, her hatred—for him. And the way he and Daisy had set it all up might not have been the best idea they’d ever had.

  Poor Daisy. She must be getting an earful from her mom now. He’d make a point, the next time he spoke to Caroline—and there would be a next time—to shoulder more of the blame. To shoulder all of the blame, if he possibly could. Because the last thing he wanted was to somehow interfere in Daisy and Caroline’s relationship. He knew they were close. They’d had to be; for all those years, they were the only family either of them had had.