The Hearts of Men

by Nickolas Butler

  The Bel Aire has valiantly hung on through the years and Jonathan finds this slightly moving. What’s more, the proprietors know him, accept cash without question, and the rates are low enough to snag three rooms. (Trevor asked no questions about this multi-room setup: Jonathan snores like a grizzly bear [he is told]. And Trevor no doubt enjoys the privacy for purposes of telephoning Rachel.) One is for Trevor, and one for himself—and one, hopefully, for his lady friend, Deanna, a woman Jonathan met two years ago, almost to the day, when he took Trevor to camp, back in 1994.

  There had been the typical camp paperwork rigmarole of getting your kid signed up and registered. A lot of legalese in duplicate carbon copy and releases should young Trevor drown after spilling out of his canoe, say, or end up taking an errant arrow to the eye socket, contract the Hanta virus from an abundance of mouse droppings in his cabin, or perhaps fall upon a porcupine. Blah, blah, blah. Yes, yes, autograph every last damn form and then the long sentimental slog from mess hall and camp HQ to that year’s particular site and all the parents and all the Scouts, carrying bags with varying levels of wilderness practicality and inevitably stuffed with Starburst, Oreos, gummy bears, Swedish Fish, Skittles, and a hundred kinds of miniature chocolate bars, all guaranteed to melt into goop before the second day was through. Then, settle your kid into his new cabin—for gone now were the canvas tents of old—and hope like hell he was popular enough to attract a few decent roommates, or suffer the indignity of a sobbing preteen/teenage boy, a backpack strapped to swollen shoulders, simply in search of two or three other boys who will nonviolently suffer his company. Luckily, Trev always seemed to have friends.

  That moment, though, of establishing Trev into a cabin of other boys always reminded Jonathan so keenly of Bugler. Poor Bugler. His wet canvas tent maliciously collapsed upon its occupant. Or his wrecked eyeglasses. His bugle. The latrine . . .

  After Trevor had chosen a cot, stowed away his clothing, and unpacked his sleeping bag, Jonathan administered a hug goodbye, and then a “thank you” to Trev’s scoutmasters and the other chaperoning fathers before hustling back to the Stardust Supper Club & Lounge for a vodka martini, a nice steak, a baked potato, and perhaps an enchanting conversation with a wayward woman his own age or younger, before driving back to Eau Claire—or not—that evening.

  Which is how he met Deanna, who, ironically enough, was also in the area, dropping off her son at camp, though a different one, and had decided on a whim to visit the Stardust, a venerable supper club she, too, had perennially visited, as a girl, when her parents were en route to the family cottage outside the bustling tourist town of Hayward, Wisconsin, home to a giant muskellunge statue and the Lumberjack Olympics.

  Deanna, who looked eerily like Sarah: same hair color, eyes, height, weight, body. Her husband was a litigator in Milwaukee whom she suspected of cheating on her with his secretary, a much younger “chickee” with fake boobs, no stretch marks, no C-section scar, no children to watch . . .

  “So,” she asked him, “what about you? Where’s your better half?”

  He could be pretty sure that Sarah was at their home, no doubt beautifying the grounds, or perhaps simply sitting on their front stoop, as she liked to do, where she read her John Grisham books and sipped lemonade and talked easily to the neighbors as they passed by.

  “I want to hear more about you,” Jonathan said cannily, touching her forearm with his right index finger. “Care for another cocktail?”

  ONE GENERALLY HOPES, in taking a lover on the sly, there is an improvement in the bedroom department; otherwise, what’s the point? And while it would be incorrect to say that Deanna was a bad lover, or, for that matter, that Jonathan was himself some American Adonis, that first coupling at least was . . . awkward. Deanna had two torn medial collateral ligaments stemming from her days as a college volleyball player that were painful, so positioning herself on all fours was a no-no. Also, Sarah had delivered Trevor vaginally, and Jonathan was unprepared for Deanna’s C-section scar, which seemed to smile at him as he spread her legs and began to lick.

  “Yeah, I don’t like that, either,” she said with a sad chuckle. “No one ever seems to do it right.”

  That almost sapped Jonathan of his desire, but there was the notion that if they’d come this far, it was already pretty much infidelity, and why not just go the distance. So they did it, missionary, which was about as fine as a bowl of vanilla pudding, though as she lay in his arms, he noticed for the first time her perfume, the skin of her throat, the way her feet rubbed at his calves, her ears and earrings, and there was something about her company that was . . . a comfort and took him away from the stresses at home. His throat felt thickened inside, he realized, his heart as jittery as a baby rabbit’s.

  In the two years since that first meeting, he and Deanna have slept together only a handful of times, chanced some desperate phone calls, the distance between them only fanning the flames of his desire. Perhaps, he supposes, because he is a man accustomed to getting more or less what he wants; Deanna is that dessert that has kept him waiting and waiting, tapping his shoes under the table until the sole wears out.

  “Here’s your key,” Jonathan says, handing Trevor a six-inch-long slab of oak painted baby blue with a key attached by way of a three-inch loop of steel.

  The kid laughs. “Is that a motel key in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

  Jonathan snickers, “Good one.”

  “Seriously, what’s up with the keys?”

  “You know these mom-and-pop places. Probably costs ’em an arm and leg to get the rooms rekeyed if one gets lost. Over the years, the owners get bitter, and the room keys get bigger and bigger. By the time you’re my age, that room key will be attached to a piece of driftwood or a canoe paddle. A spare tire maybe.”

  “I might call Rachel. That okay?”

  “Sure, just try to keep it under twenty minutes. Let’s not break the bank with our lovesick long-distance calls, huh?”

  “Okay,” says the kid, shutting his door.

  Jonathan enters his room. A queen-size bed, television resting on a set of drawers, a table and two chairs near the window, a nightstand, small closet, bathroom. The wall hangings are all prints depicting mountain men stalking their prey, in some cases cougars or grizzly bears, in other cases gangs of American Indians wielding bloody tomahawks. It reminds him of a night, several weeks ago, when Trevor complained about some friends teasing him, calling him a “White Indian,” a term here meaning “a lame white guy badly imitating Native American culture.” Jonathan had to laugh at that one; it was, after all, largely, sadly true.

  The Boy Scouts of America were never known for their subtlety, or, for that matter, their sensitivity. A Scout is: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. But not gay, for instance, or female or atheist, either, apparently. Jonathan was grimly pessimistic about the world, but not dogmatic. Scouting, as an organization, it seemed to Jonathan, was a dogged fraternity of paramilitary Young Republicans desperately clinging to some nineteenth-century notion of goodness in a modern world filled with intercontinental ballistic missiles, Jerry Springer, the Unabomber, and now, of all things, a cloned sheep named Dolly.

  He calls Deanna, who is staying in room 1 of the same motel. The phone rings five times before she picks up.

  “What took so long?” he says, annoyed at himself as soon as the words leave his lips.

  “Oh, I just stepped out of the shower.”

  “Did you?”

  “I did.”

  Flirting, Jonathan thinks. I’m—we’re—flirting.

  “Too bad,” he says.

  “Why?”

  “I was just about to get into the shower myself.”

  “Well then,” Deanna drawls. “It’s possible I missed a few spots.”

  “Hard-to-reach areas,” Jonathan says, nodding, licking his chapped lips.

  “Exactly. Care to visit my room?”

 
“Possibly.”

  “I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

  “Wouldn’t matter,” he says. “My penis is so hard right now I could use it as a battering ram.” He immediately regrets this. Also, it’s not quite as true as he’d like, not for the past five years or so.

  Silence, then, “Boy, you sure know how to seduce a girl, don’t you?” She giggles a little.

  “I’ll be right there,” he says.

  THEY LIE IN BED TOGETHER, watching Oprah on a battered TV set.

  “Nervous?” Deanna asks him.

  “About what?”

  “About me. About, you know, introducing me to your son, and vice versa.”

  Jonathan yawns. “Trevor? He’s so genteel, so proper. I wouldn’t worry. I’m just trying to prepare him for the real world. Right now he’s infatuated with his girl, this sixteen-year-old girl, and I keep trying to tell him not to take it so seriously.”

  “He’s in love,” Deanna says sweetly.

  “He is,” Jonathan agrees, “yes. Can I fix you a glass of brandy?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Jonathan. I’m afraid I might fall asleep. When’s dinner, anyway?”

  Jonathan fills a plastic motel cup with Korbel, parts the curtains with two fingers, and looks out at the pool. One of the owners, a woman about the age of Jonathan’s own mother, is right now guiding a large net gracefully through the pool, collecting pine needles and leaves. She is wearing a rainbow-colored tank top, longish yellow boy shorts, and a pair of extremely purple flip-flops. Occasionally she peers at his window. He offers a guilty wave back.

  “Jonathan?”

  “Sorry—five o’clock. We’re to meet Bu— ah, my friend Nelson in the bar at five. It’s a bit of a drive for him, and he doesn’t dine out much, apparently.” The drudgery of it: to be cooped up at a Boy Scout camp as an almost fifty-year-old man. Jonathan can’t imagine. Might as well be a monastery; and, at least at a monastery there are no children, just dozens of world-weary men who want to be quiet, be left alone to read, chant, eat bland food, and tend their bee colonies, brew beer . . . Not so bad, really, come to think of it . . . No bills, no responsibilities, three squares, a bed . . .

  “Your friend Nelson, he’s really a Boy Scout camp director?”

  “Yep.”

  “Is he married?”

  Jonathan shakes his head. “Never married. He came back from Vietnam pretty rattled. Spent about a decade living out west, working on ranches, guiding rafts down the Grand Canyon, doing some monkeywrenching, and then the old director died, Wilbur Whiteside. Bu—Nelson was sort of his protégé.”

  “Does he have some kind of nickname? You keep correcting yourself.”

  “Well, we used to call him ‘Bugler,’ but now . . . you know. Well, he’s a grown man. I don’t suppose he’d appreciate that.”

  “No,” she says, “I wouldn’t think so.” She has rolled onto her stomach, and peers at him over her shoulder.

  “What?” he asks.

  “There’s still time, you know . . .”

  He dives back on top of her, mindful of her knees, the positioning of her legs. Once unsure of this new lover, he has come to revel in his hard-won understanding of her limitations, her preferences—delights in accommodating her, rising to the challenge of learning someone new.

  20

  AT FOUR THIRTY JONATHAN KNOCKS ON TREVOR’S door. The boy comes to the door holding the telephone base in one hand, the handset linked by a spiral umbilical cord pressed tight to his ear. He is dressed already, his hair parted and wet. Jonathan sits on the bed, picks up a hardcover book with a black-and-white jacket, an old school bus overgrown by a Northwoods jungle and buried in snow. Into the Wild, it’s called. He has no idea where the boy even finds these books, where or how he buys them. This whole world Trevor dwells in, where true love is still a reality, where people say NO! to drugs (instead of, you know, THANK YOU!), where mothers and fathers love one another, and Boy Scout camp is something to be excited about.

  “. . . I gotta go, baby. Yeah. I’m sorry. My dad’s here and we’re . . . Oh, okay.” Trevor turns to Jonathan and says, “Rachel says, ‘Hello, Mr. Quick!’”

  “Hello, Rachel,” Jonathan says, deadpan.

  Trevor turns his back to his father, lowers his voice in both volume and tone, and whispers, “I miss you so much, baby. I love you. Okay. I love you, too. I’ll write you every day. Okay. I love you. Bye.” And finally he hangs up, letting out a deep, tortured sigh of teenage melancholy.

  “Well,” says Jonathan helpfully, “everything copacetic?”

  “I miss her, Dad.”

  “Ah. You’ll get over it,” Jonathan says. “Anyway, you look about ready to go.”

  The kid nods. He’s frowning, actually frowning at the floor, water welling against his eyes.

  “Christ,” Jonathan mumbles. He stands, wraps his arms around this teenager, not quite six feet tall, but close enough. His baby, this Goliath with armpit hair, a smattering of soft whiskers, body odor, a small constellation of whiteheads on his chin, size thirteen feet, and a bleeding-itself-raw-heart for Rachel Gunderson. He pats this oaf on the back and says, “Come on, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  “Okay,” the boy mutters, still clinging to him.

  “You need my handkerchief?”

  “No,” the boy sniffs.

  DEANNA IS STANDING BESIDE THE VAN ALREADY, looking, Jonathan thinks, beautiful. White Capri pants, a white jacket, a tastefully cut pink tank top, and white sandals. She seems to favor gold in jewelry, he notes—a difference from Sarah, who, thankfully (to his way of thinking), has never worn much jewelry of any kind, really, with the exception of the narrow silver band and tiny diamond he bought from a rock shop when they were first engaged, all those years ago.

  “Hello,” says Deanna, shuffling toward Trevor in her sandals. “It is such a pleasure to meet you. In fact, I feel like I already know you. Your dad gloats about you constantly, and now I see why. You’re handsome, like him.”

  Trevor shakes her hand politely, blushing so completely Jonathan is concerned there may not be enough blood to go around. Maybe this will be a piece of cake, Jonathan thinks. Maybe the kid is more cosmopolitan than I give him credit for.

  IT’S A SUNDAY NIGHT IN LATE JULY, and the bar of the supper club is quiet, though hardly abandoned. The old pine floors, the knotty pine wall paneling, the taxidermy, the gleaming brass beer taps at the bar, the neon backlit liquor bottles—it all glows a buttery gold, the ceiling low and warm, and walking toward the bar, Deanna subtly at his arm, Trevor walking on ahead of them, Jonathan feels the timelessness of this place. It is known that Al Capone and John Dillinger once haunted many such Wisconsin establishments. A person could imagine that: a dozen men in pin-striped suits, each packing two or three pistols, and deployed across the bar, tommy guns, wads of dough, whiskey flowing freely as the jazz pushing the cigarette smoke in spirals and dips through the heavy air of the place.

  The three of them at the bar now and Deanna orders rosé. The bartender shakes his head in the negative, slinging a towel over one shoulder, inventories, “Chardonnay, pinot grigio, champagne.”

  Deanna claps her hands excitedly. “Oh, champagne, then.”

  “And for you, sir?”

  “Vodka martini, real dry, with a twist of lemon, up.”

  “Very well. And you?” The bartender raises an eyebrow at Trevor.

  “I’ll just have a Coke,” the kid says.

  “You got it,” says the barkeep, pivoting down below the bar in search of the champagne.

  “Or, no—wait a minute,” Trevor yelps, leaning over the rail. His voice has just cracked something awful. Jonathan winces.

  The bartender turns back to them, rises up. “Yeah?”

  “Maybe a strawberry daiquiri, actually. Please.”

  “A strawberry daiquiri?” the bartender squints.

  “Yep,” says Trevor.

  Jonathan leans in close to his son’s ear. “You don’t want may
be a beer or a glass of wine or a gin and tonic or a screwdriver—you’d probably really like a screwdriver . . .”

  Deanna slaps Jonathan on the arm. “Let him order what he wants.” Then, placing a hand lightly on the boy’s shoulder: “I think it’s a perfect choice. Light, refreshing, easy to drink.”

  “Thanks,” he mumbles.

  Moments later the drinks arrive and are divvied up. Jonathan raises his glass. “A toast. To another summer.”

  “Another summer,” Deanna and Trevor repeat, clinking their glasses.

  “Where’s Nelson, Dad?”

  “I dunno, Trev. Like I said, he doesn’t get out much.”

  “Do you suppose he’ll come in full uniform?” Deanna asks, chortling, covering her mouth with a hand.

  Jonathan begins to echo her laughter only to stop short. He remembers the latrine and the nickel; thinks of Vietnam, of this man, who has spent his entire life in one uniform or another, living up to impossible codes and laws, mottoes and slogans that can only be seen as outdated, arcane, antique.

  “How’s that daiquiri, guy?” Jonathan asks, swiveling over to this son of his, and away from any gloomy, guilty thoughts.

  The kid, sucking away at his punch bowl glass with a steady PSI eagerness, nods his head, cheeks flushed.

  “I’m going to have to carry you home, aren’t I?”

  “Dad . . .”

  FIVE O’CLOCK SHARP they watch Nelson bang through the front door dressed quite nattily in a three-piece linen suit with shoes the color of some exotic tropical wood and matching the skin of his face, neck, forehead, and hands. He seems to bowl methodically forward with the grit and determination of a man whose body has suffered through the insults and injuries of war. He’s not tall, not an inch over five-five, but his suit coat, though tailored, seems distressed, clings to a formidable set of forearms, biceps, and a perfectly wide chest. He’s built like an aged fullback. Above his lip, a perfectly well-kempt mustache, waxed at the corners, much like old Whiteside’s, Jonathan realizes. He walks directly toward Deanna.