Dylan Nelson and his mother, Cynthia, lived close to Justin and his parents, in the worst section of Chester.
Cynthia Nelson was unusual for the neighborhood. She didn’t drink or take drugs in a place where most people did. She took care of her house, on a street where no one else did. She attended church on Sunday mornings, in a town where only the oldest unwelded residents still attended.
Chester boasted five church buildings housing three active church populations. One vacant building was long derelict and the other was being taken over by the fire department, which faced no shortage of chemical fires and arson and needed more space.
At thirty-six, Cynthia Nelson was the second-youngest person attending her church.
She liked Chester Congregational. It existed at the liberal end of the Protestant spectrum, where Cynthia was most comfortable. She would have liked an active youth program at her church, but demographics and apathy conspired against her.
There was precisely one youth in regular church attendance, and he shared her last name.
Once again, unlike most of Chester, with their untidy houses and their untidy drug habits, Cynthia Nelson persevered, persuading a bigger church an hour away to drive their minibus all the way to her church to pick up the one or, occasionally, two sad-sack kids who showed up on Sundays.
Dylan Nelson had no choice in the matter of his attendance. His mom brought him each week. The other sad sack was Justin Everly, whose attendance record was less consistent, but who came to hang out with Dylan, and whose parents didn’t know or care where he went on Sunday morning, or any other morning.
At Covenant Assembly, Dylan and Justin got to hang out once a week with kids their age in an hour-long discussion group.
Dylan and Justin found it hard to talk in the youth group. They were both shy and painfully aware that there were no designer labels on the clothes they wore, that neither was enrolled in AP calculus, and that no one else in the room gave a shit about anything that mattered to them. In addition to their glaring cultural and social lapses, both boys arrived each Sunday morning in a quasi-catatonic state, brought on by the rigors of their regular Saturday night computer club all-night lock-in, fueled by liters of cola and boxes of cheap pizza.
The other fifteen-year-olds in the youth program were in awe of the seniors who led the program. They were the older brothers and sisters. They were the kicker and the cheerleader and the debate star and the girl who sang the solo at the choir concerts at the high school they all attended.
Dylan and Justin attended another school. One that didn’t have a debate team.
When the discussions turned to raising money, Dylan and Justin noticed that glances fell their way. And that was to be expected. Everyone else in the group knew they were from Chester, that they were bussed to Covenant each Sunday.
On a Sunday morning in late spring, the seniors distributed a full-color brochure. One senior had been elected spokesperson, and she spoke eloquently about an annual canoe trip into the deep woods and twisting backwaters of northern Minnesota, sponsored by the church since before the ken of its eldest members. They apportioned space for six adults, six senior staffers, and twenty-four youths on the trip, which consisted of four nights and five days, with a long drive to get there and back, lengthy portages between lakes, lengthy paddles on said lakes, biting insects, accumulated layers of dirt, sunscreen, and insect repellent that required several post-trip showers to dislodge, heavy rain, warm sun, cold nights, curious bears, wet clothes, dull dehydrated meals, primitive latrines, and stubbed toes, all endured while hauling aluminum canoes and cadaver-proportioned canvas backpacks across the wilderness.
Justin and Dylan talked it over on the minibus ride back to Chester. Dylan was honest enough to out himself as a chronic homebody and chose not to head north. He also wasn’t sure if his mother could survive the anxiety of her beloved boy being so far away from home.
But in his bedroom, Justin looked at maps and photographs of the area. He learned that the lands close to the border were mostly protected, but that there were copper reserves nearby. The governor had declared the borderlands would not be mined, and a recent poll indicated that the people of the state agreed with the governor.
Justin also learned that, if he traveled there, he would be required to leave no trace. He now knew what a portage was. He kept reading long into the night.
On the following Sunday morning he received good news. The youth minister quietly took him aside. His state of poverty was no secret at the church. There had been several conversations during the week. Did he want to go on the trip? He did. Was money going to be a problem? He admitted that it would be.
The youth minister smiled at him.
Justin was handed a business-size envelope. Inside was a letter stating that a church endowment would cover his camping fees, his spending money, and any additional funds he needed for supplies. A packing list was enclosed, as was an official application form, with the money parts at the bottom of the page carefully inked out.
Justin smiled. He said thank you. He took the contents of the envelope home.
In the weeks that followed, he was supplied with a waterproof duffle bag. This was to house all that he was allowed to bring in the way of personal items. He needed few supplies. His everyday wardrobe was easily raggedy enough to pass serious camping muster. He could swim adequately. He even bought the expensive brand of sandals the packing list recommended.
His authentic facsimile of his father’s lethargic scrawl across the bottom of the permission slip was accepted without question.
On the third Sunday after the brochures were handed out, the youth group split into two factions: those going to the waters and those staying behind. Justin and twenty-three other youths were sequestered in a room with the youth leaders and the church adults who were also going. The adults were introduced; they were all parents of kids going on the trip. One was a dentist. His daughter was going.
He told them that there were two possible locations on the lakes to put in. One was at the outfitters. The other was further away, at Selkirk Lake. The dentist had been there before, with his older son, and he preferred Selkirk. The campers and their canoes and their supplies would have to be driven there. It wasn’t so convenient. but he thought it was worth it.
Then he told them that the aluminum canoes were old and heavy. But they were inexpensive to rent and indestructible. The outfitters now offered new Kevlar canoes instead. Much lighter. Much easier to carry. But they were more expensive. And they needed to be treated more carefully.
He paused and smiled at his daughter, who smiled back. Another parent spoke up and told everyone that the dentist, Marty, had generously offered to pay the difference between the aluminum and the Kevlar boats.
The rest of the adults and the leaders began to clap and cheer. The youth campers joined in. As the clapping and cheering grew louder, Marty’s face grew redder.
They began the drive north long before daylight. Breakfast had been picked up by two parents on their way to the church parking lot; lunch was also on the church, consumed en route at a chain sandwich shop. Later in the afternoon, they stopped at a roadside stand and sampled freshly prepared beef jerky that stained their hands red and instantly downgraded Justin’s previous appreciation of the emaciated convenience-store version.
Dylan’s mom had driven Justin to the church in the darkness. She had hugged him before she said her goodbyes in the church parking lot.
“I wish Dylan was going with you,” she told him.
“Really, Mrs. Nelson?” he had asked her with a grin.
She hesitated. “No, Justin,” she finally replied. “Not really.”
His own parents were still asleep when he left. He had explained where he was going the night before. They had looked puzzled, but not especially worried or unhappy.
The minivans made good time as they headed north.
When they reached Duluth, the adults found a coffee shop while the youths and their lead
ers stopped at a funky resale shop where everyone purchased flannel shirts in a series of unflatteringly large sizes, and no one had to shell out more than five dollars.
The next stage of the drive was slower, as highway became one lane, which became bumpy dirt track that rose and fell, stirring up red dust for the last thirty miles, cruelly punishing the suspensions on the late-model vehicles.
At the outfitters, they were oriented in a hurry. They watched a video on leaving no trace, on burying their unused food, on banging two metal pans together loudly when a large bear was visiting their campsite. Their square hulking Duluth packs were already packed with food and tents and cooking supplies and tarps and ropes and sleeping bags and first aid kits and eating utensils. All they had to do was find a corner of the packs to insert their small personal duffels.
After everyone had selected the appropriate sizes of paddles and life jackets, they were escorted out to the canoes.
The owner of the outfitters was an Englishman. He had bad teeth, which showed when he smiled and introduced himself.
There were yellow canoes that looked new and green canoes that didn’t. The owner asked for a volunteer. Several hands went up. He grinned a little nastily and selected the smallest girl.
The owner stood beside a green canoe and explained that the older canoes were to be gradually superseded by the bright new yellow Kevlar models that were every bit as resilient and a good deal lighter. He asked his tiny volunteer if she could pick up the green canoe. She did. He picked one up too. He asked her if she could lift it onto her shoulders. She hesitated. In a fluid motion he flipped his up and over effortlessly. She gamely tried to follow his lead but faltered at the halfway mark. Two parents were quickly at her side, and they spotted her the rest of the way.
The Englishman flipped his canoe back down to the ground. His volunteer was again assisted by the adults.
The owner walked over to the yellow canoes. Once again, he picked it up and flipped it onto his shoulders. He smiled encouragingly at his volunteer. She took a deep breath and tensed. She was slower and less fluid, but she did it. All by herself. She got a huge cheer, to which she responded with a smile.
They both stood poised with the canoes resting and balanced on their respective shoulders. His boat was motionless; hers wobbled back and forth slightly.
“One … two … THREE!”
They both flipped their canoes back to the ground, simultaneously, and the crowd went wild.
The owner smiled and shook his volunteer’s hand before he silently departed.
They carried the featherlight, yellow marvels to the trailers attached to the dust-covered trucks bearing the outfitters logo on the front doors. They loaded the Duluth packs and the paddles and the life jackets into the back of the trucks.
The first day’s paddle was an hour and a half across Selkirk Lake, with a stiff and welcome wind behind them, to an assigned campsite, where the group would camp together for the first and only night.
The next day, the adventure would begin in earnest. The first real portage was two hundred rods, followed by a long paddle into wind blowing straight across the aptly if unimaginatively named Big Lake.
They would meet up at the end of the week, to shower luxuriantly at the outfitters, to trade lies, then begin the journey home, pausing once for a last night away from home, suctioning down copious pizzas on a church floor, on one of the hills overlooking the lights of downtown Duluth.
From the start of the trip, Justin was in heaven, and no amount of dirt and diarrhea, bugs and blisters, sunburn and summer storm showers, could bring him back down to earth.
At the close of each day, he sat with his back wedged against a tree. His feet were bare and his sandals were drying in the heat of the late afternoon sun. They always tried to reach a campsite early in the day; dragging the canoes up from the edge of the water and leaving them in plain view was the most effective way to stake a claim. Putting up the tents in daylight was preferable. Later they would make a fire and cook their dinner. Night descended rapidly. In the darkness, the breeze died, and a blanket of insects fell on them.
Justin had bought a map of the waters from the outfitters, which he kept folded inside a sealed plastic bag with a small pack of colored pencils. Most of the campers had brought along paperback books to read. Their phones were all safely locked up in the minivans, since cell service evaporated half an hour away from the outfitters.
Carefully, he retraced the day’s route, the portages they had encountered, and the campsite they had chosen. As near as possible, he tried to draw an accurate line across the lakes they had crossed. If he could, he would wander from the sites into the close woods, looking for a walking trail. If he found one, he would draw that on the map too.
By the end of the trip, his map was falling apart. But he was able to pick up several more from the outfitters before he left, and these he worked on at home in the weeks following the trip, painstakingly copying all the information, adding notes to himself on lakes that looked interesting but that had been too remote for his group to reach. His maps began to overflow with too much information, so Justin purchased several cheap notebooks. In these he began to map out future trips.
This was Justin’s Everly’s finest summer ever.
COLIN
She was standing at Colin’s front door forty-three minutes later, smiling. “You do recognize me, then?”
“Yes,” was his honest reply.
“Good.” Her smile remained.
“I don’t remember your name,” he was forced to admit.
“That’s hardly surprising,” she allowed. “It was sixteen years ago.”
There was a very long pause.
“And I was different then.” Her smile faltered. “You could invite me in.”
He did, and she sat down at his kitchen table without being asked. She moved his coffee cup to one side. She glanced out the window. Nothing in her actions gave any indication that she was nervous, or even that she was in a place she had never been before.
He watched her as she made herself completely at home.
This was his house. He was certain that she had never been here before. Colin was aware that he should be concerned.
She wore gym shoes with no socks he could see and khaki shorts that were shorter and tighter than anything Ruby had worn. Her navy-blue T-shirt looked old and comfortable. Her legs and arms were long and dark. Her hair was cut very short, and her eyes were a deep brown behind her glasses. Although, like Colin, she looked close to fifty-five, she gave off an unmistakable vibe that proclaimed her fifty-five to be a much younger fifty-five than his. She was tall, close to his height, and fit, her muscles gathered together in a series of sinewy knots.
He sat down on one of the other three chairs, one he could barely remember having sat on before.
She placed her phone on the kitchen table. Colin noted that hers was the very latest model whereas his was a five-year-old relic that he usually kept inside his pocket.
She looked him in the eye. “I said I was sorry for your loss, and I meant it.”
“Thank you. What is it you want with me?”
“I know you have about a year left.” It wasn’t a question.
“A little more than that.” And for a second, he wondered how she could know.
“That’s good,” she said. “I thought we could date.” Her sudden smile was unexpected and a little wild.
He hadn’t expected her proposition. “Now?”
“Why not?” Her smile had settled down. She had very white teeth. It was a pleasant smile.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to date.”
She pretended to be surprised. “Are you making fun of me?”
“I’m serious.”
“You don’t have a whole lot of time left to get ready,” she observed brightly.
She had a point.
“Maybe I don’t want to date anyone. Or maybe I don’t want to date you.” Did he sound peevish?
“That
would be a shame. I thought you used to find me pretty.”
“You were pretty.” That sounded terrible. “You still are pretty.”
“Well, thank you. What else did you think about me?”
“You were the best student I ever had.”
“What else?”
“There wasn’t anything else.”
“Oh yes, there was.” She waited for him.
“I felt sorry for you,” was what he finally said.
As hard as he tried, Colin couldn’t come up with her name. She had registered in one of his summer computer classes. He didn’t remember which year. She had been noticeably more attractive than his students generally were. She had been very pretty, and was even more so. She had been younger then. She looked much younger now. She had not looked healthy then. In fact, she had looked seriously ill.
And he had felt sorry for her.
Yet the woman now sitting at his kitchen table was a picture of robust good health.
“You should probably tell me your name,” he told her.
“It’s Angie,” she said. “I had hoped you would remember.”
He said he was sorry.
She picked up her phone and wiped at the screen with the loose cotton material of her shirt. “When I took your class, I didn’t know anything about computers. I enjoyed the class. Most of your students were determined to be unteachable, and you were patient. I also thought you were adorable.”
“Thank you,” he said stiffly. “I’m certain I was both.”
“I’ve learned a lot about computers since.”
Colin wasn’t at all sure where this conversation was going. “Good for you,” he said. He was trying to buy time.
“I play a lot of Trench Warfare,” she said. “I’m a Field Marshall.”
“How much did you have to spend to get to that level?”
She shook her head and smiled at him. “I’ve spent nothing.”
Colin couldn’t help but be impressed. “Well done,” he said.
“You and your son created the game.”
“I helped a little.”
Conclusion Page 5