Seventeenth Summer

by Maureen Daly

  “Let Jack and me take them in—will you, Jack? It will take only about an hour …” I knew he would do anything I asked that night.

  “Really, Angie,” my mother protested, “if Jack has something else he’d rather do we can just let them go….”

  “No, let’s get them picked,” he said quickly. “I like to do things like that. There’s something about tonight that makes you feel good to be outside even if … well, even if it’s the end of summer.”

  Kitty brought my old heavy sweater from an upstairs closet and I carried up three clean bushel baskets from the basement. “Just pick the riper ones and don’t bother with those that are too small,” my mother said as we went out the back door.

  The garden lay very square in the moonlight edged with sharp sticks of hedge. I took one basket and Jack the other two, one in each hand—that would be enough for the scattered few tomatoes that were left. Most of the green leaves were dead and the knobby vines were already wet with night dew. We worked side by side, not talking at first, feeling about in the half-darkness for the tomatoes, and soon our hands were wet to the wrists and the rough wool of my sweater chafed. Even my fingers felt stiff. But somehow it was so natural to be working beside Jack that I didn’t want to stop, even for a moment.

  Little patches of spider web shone white and filmy in the moonlight, stretched from one sprawling vine to another. Once our hands touched among the cold leaves and my breath came short for a moment. Jack looked at me and laughed. “Funny girl, Angie,” he whispered. The tomatoes were cold to touch and the ripe, red ones looked black in the darkness and their skins were smooth and moist. There were green ones with tough stems that broke with a snap and sometimes a whole vine would pull out of the earth, trailing from my hands and sending a shower of cold drops onto the hard ground. Our ankles were wet with dew but my cheeks were tingling warm and Jack was humming a happy, jerky tune under his breath as he moved along the plants. Small, hard, green tomatoes with dried blossoms still stuck to them fell on the mud with soft little thuds. We didn’t speak at all but just tossed the tomatoes into the baskets, our arms moving in an unconscious rhythm, stopping now and then to blow on our fingers and to wipe the dew off our hands.

  I could feel it getting colder by minutes and the wind blew harder till the dew on the bare vines and little clods of earth began to turn white. There were storm circles round the moon and wisps of dark cloud brushed across it. Jack picked an over-ripe tomato and its tight skin burst between his fingers. He threw it over his shoulder into the darkness and a moment later it fell softly in the hedge. Above us the wind was wailing quietly and high up in the night the moon was racing with a cloud. The bare vines stretched like sinews in the pale light and Jack struck a match to see if we had missed any tomatoes, but the wind snuffed it out. He laughed to himself.

  One by one we carried the full, heavy baskets into the garage, the cold wire handles cutting into our hands. The soft blackness of the garage seemed very still after the sharp chill gusts outside—as if the wind were holding its breath. We set them side by side on the cement floor and when the third basket was in place—we covered the tomatoes carefully with newspaper to keep out the cold. Jack found some funnies in a corner and, striking a match, he began to read a sheet of Dick Tracy funnies, yellowed at the edges. The match sputtered and went out. In the darkness we tucked the newspapers in tightly and shoved the baskets into one corner.

  “Jack,” I said, “I won’t be able to see you tomorrow night at all. That last night will be sort of family night….”

  “That’s all right, Angie. I sort of figured that. I guess tonight’s the last then.” I nodded my head but somehow I didn’t feel sad anymore.

  Outside the wind was nosing around the garage windows and slipping in under the door. Jack kissed me and his hands were cold on my cheeks. This is how it should be, I thought. This is Jack. This is how it should be and his lips were warm on mine; soft and warm, and his cheek was cool and firm. It was only moments. A whole summer summed up in a few moments and then we went into the house by the back door.

  My mother had made hot cocoa and set two cups on the corner of the kitchen table. Our hands were muddy and we washed them together under the cold water of the kitchen sink. “Angie,” my mother laughed, “you should see yourself—you even have mud on your cheeks!” Jack was very busy with the soap and water but his own cheeks were flushed.

  We drank the cocoa steaming hot, talking and laughing at each other while our faces still tingled from the wind. Jack’s hand looked very brown against the white of the kitchen table. My mother sat with us, sewing buttons on a school dress of Kitty’s, and he said to her suddenly, “Mrs. Morrow would you mind awfully if Angie and I walked out to the lake for a little while?”

  “At this time of night, Jack? It’s after nine o’clock now.” Her tone was disapproving. “I hardly think it would be wise.”

  “I know it’s late,” he added hastily, “But I just happened to think that if the frost comes there might be water in the boat and if it froze in there it wouldn’t be good!” Then as if to add strength to his statement he said, “In fact, I know there’s water in it.”

  My mother bent over to snap off a white thread with her teeth and for a moment I thought she was smiling. “All right,” she said quietly, “but don’t be long. Angie, pull that old sweater of mine that’s hanging by the back door on over your own. I’d hate to have you going to school with a cold.”

  I looked at Jack and he looked quickly at me and then I took the cocoa cups to rinse them at the sink while Jack got the old sweater for me. “We really won’t be long, Mom,” I told her.

  He opened the back door for me and I noticed that in the little hollows where the garage eaves trough dripped the water was covered with a thin scum of ice. The storm circles were dark around the moon and the garden lay very square in the cold light. Our breath rose in vague, misty clouds above our heads.

  “Come on,” he said happily. “Let’s run part of the way, Angie. I’m so glad you could go.”

  We turned off our street and as we hit the park road the wind swept in from the lake, clean and cold, and breathing the fresh air made my mind feel sharp and clear. I was laughing as we ran. This is how it should be, I thought. The wind sent tears to my eyes and brushed clean through my hair.

  The sailboat was rocking against the pier, its mast sticking up like a slim finger, and the white sail was rolled up tightly like a canvas cocoon. Jack pulled in the rope and brought the boat close up to the dock, stepping in. The water was like ink. “Angie,” he called against the wind, “will you see if you can find a can lying around so I can bail this water out? There’s about three inches in here.”

  Along the pier I searched and among the rocks that lined the road, kicking among the stones. Waves from the lake itself were crashing madly over the breakwater at the mouth of the harbor, loud as the wind, and the air was damp. Suddenly I ran across an old coffee can, wedged between two stones, half full of old rain water, and I pulled it out.

  “Here, Jack, will this do?” I held it up and then realized he couldn’t see it in the darkness.

  “Toss it over, will you,” he called and I went to the edge of the pier and pitched the can toward the boat. Jack reached out to catch it but missed and it chattered splashily onto the floor.

  “This is just swell,” he said, bending the can between the palms of his hands so it would scoop up the water better. I sat on a rock and hunched up my knees to protect myself from the wind while I watched him. He stood with feet apart on the crossbars of the boat and ladled the water out over the side. The sound of the can made a rhythmic scoop-scoop that was pleasant and friendly among the wild lake noises.

  “Warm enough, honey?” Jack called.

  “This is wonderful,” I called back. And it was. Just being there with him in the night and the freshness of the wind was enough. The boat rocked as Jack moved back and forth, setting the mast waving gently. It was a little boat and bobbed with ev
ery movement, and the water slapped loudly against its sides, sending spray spitting high. It splashed wet against my legs and the wind was cold, playing with my hair and tunneling up my skirts.

  A car went past on the road, the headlights nosing aside the darkness. “Almost through!” Jack shouted and I waved back. He bent again to scoop up the water, pouring it over the side of the boat into the darker water around him.

  My hands were cold so I slid them up my sleeves and waited. My thoughts went back over the summer and suddenly it seemed inevitable that we should be here at the lake, Jack and I, where we had started. It was like a song that began and ended with the same refrain. Behind it all was the quiet music of the lake. That first night when the water had been calm and the small, bright reflections of the stars had almost tinkled on the ripples; and the afternoons when the lake was wash-water blue in the sunlight; and now tonight, it was dark and bottomless, crashing against the breakwater and rocking restlessly in the harbor. I felt an almost motherly affection for the little sailboat that had spent the summer tethered to this same dock on its short rope, patient as the waves that licked against its sides. The darkness of the sky, the sound of the water—all of it blended into memories of the summer as vivid as the present. But this night wind was chill and sharp with frost.

  Just then Jack called, “Pull up that rope, will you, Angie? I’m finished here.” I took the rope in both bands and drew the sailboat tight to the pier and he jumped onto the dock beside me.

  “There,” he said. “Let her freeze.” He squeezed my arm. “I think Ã11 leave this can right here in case someone else wants to bail out.” He let it clatter to the rocks. On the end of the break-water the tall white lighthouse was turning its beacon, slashing through the darkness with long, sharp-edged blades of light, cutting over the tops of the waves. The night was so void of human sounds that the wind was suddenly a roar in my ears. Jack was standing very close to me.

  And then I made my mind say it to myself, pinning down the squirm of thoughts till they admitted precisely and finally, “This is the last night.” And it was just as it should be. It was right that Jack should have on his basketball sweater and that his lips should be warm and moist and his cold hand rough against my cheek. Over and over again, mixed with wind and the night darkness and the damp, fishy smell of the lake, it was as it should be. This must last for a long time, I thought. I must remember and remember. Every moment of it. This is forever.

  Jack’s voice was low and husky and his hand was shaking a little. “Angie,” he whispered, “I know that you don’t want your family to know but I want you to have this. You know why … I want you to have it,” and he slipped off his class ring and laid it in the palm of my hand.

  I held it a moment and it was still warm from the warmth of his finger, and his hand closed over mine so tightly that my own fingers hurt. And then all so suddenly it was time to go home. For the last time, it was time to go home.

  And we walked side by side with the wind behind us and a gray cloud over the moon. And the puddles in the road were skimmed white with the first frost of fall. I was somehow afraid to put it on and I had no pocket in my sweater. There was nowhere to put it. So I walked all the way home with the class ring clutched in my hand.

  The next day meant nothing for I didn’t see Jack at all. And the next evening I spent with my family sitting in our living room, talking quietly but not thinking about anything. And then, so quickly, it was morning and we were up in the early gray-pinkness of it getting ready to drive to the station. Kitty had begged to be allowed to go down to the train with us but she was sleeping so peacefully, her braids on the pillow, that my mother whispered, “Don’t wake her, Angie. We’ll be there and back before she knows we’ve even gone.”

  In the kitchen we had coffee together and the sunlight had just begun to color the sky. “It’s going to be a beautiful day,” my father said thoughtfully. “It seems a shame to get you up so early, Angeline, but this train will get you to Chicago before noon and that’s what Lorraine wanted. It’s good to travel in the clean of the morning anyway.”

  That station yard was achingly empty with vacant baggage wagons pulled to one side and a solitary taxi cab waiting, with its motor still running. There was an early morning lonesomeness about everything and none of us said much. I kept watching for Jack for I knew he would come. He hadn’t said so, but I knew he would.

  He drove up in the black bakery truck and I knew from the sound of the car door as it slammed that it was he. “Just thought I’d like to say good-bye,” he told my mother and father, and they smiled. Looking at him then I thought of dozens and dozens of things I had meant to say to him and hadn’t remembered until now. Little words were eager on my lips but my mother and father stood close beside us, looking down the shining curve of track, waiting for the train to break through the gray mist of morning. Someday I will tell him, I promised myself. After everything else is over.

  The sound of the train came riding toward us and its great wheels churned into the station, hissing out steam, and the conductor stepped off onto the platform, waving a lantern, blacked out now in the light of the morning.

  “I guess this is for you, Angie,” my father said and he kissed me.

  “You take care of yourself, dear,” my mother whispered, softly. “You will write and let us know everything, won’t you?” and she kissed my hair.

  Jack stood, silent. “’Bye, Jack,” I said to him.

  “Good-bye, Angie. Be good,” he answered and for only a moment his hand was on mine.

  “Lorraine will meet you at the station in Chicago,” my mother called after me. “She promised she would be there on time, so, Angie dear, you won’t have to worry about anything at all.”

  No, I thought, I won’t have to worry about anything, and I looked back out of the train window to wave to them and saw Jack in the half-light of morning, standing with his hands jammed in his pockets and his basketball sweater knotted loosely around his neck. I won’t have to worry about anything at all.

  Quiet, sleeping houses and gray clapboard taverns slid by the window, lined along the track. I could feel the chug-chug of the train beneath me as the wheels turned. The drab edges of the town straggled past, shabby, sad-eyed houses and sagging sheds, trailing bits of worn rail fence around them. Fond du Lac gathered her shoddy outskirts in about her. Bushes in the fields were russet-leaved, catching the glow of the first light of morning and the treetops rocked with the waking birds. And slowly, slowly out of the grayness, morning was coming.

  And I saw it all glide past me, lopped off by fenceposts, and I felt myself ache inside with a quiet sadness. And now I knew suddenly that it could come and could come forever, slipping by in the breath of a moment, and yet never again would there ever be anything quite as wonderful as that seventeenth summer!

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  contents

  june

  july

  august