The Summer Guest

by Justin Cronin

Shellie Wister was Kate’s fourth-grade teacher, something of a local character who kept a menagerie of rabbits and other small animals in her classroom and puttered through town in an old lemon-yellow VW Squareback with a faded peace sign in the window and teardrop crystals swaying from the rearview. She had moved up to the North Woods to live on a commune sometime in ’68 or ’69, about the same time I skipped town. The story went that she had been a society wife down in Boston who simply woke up one morning to realize her entire life was built on the murderous lie of warmongering capitalism. Though the commune was long since defunct, a rocket that had blown up on the pad, she still lived alone out in the country in a wood-heated cabin, raising goats and chickens and composing fierce letters to the local paper on everything from nuclear disarmament to the Nicaraguan Contras—letters that, despite their argumentative ferocity, always seemed to me unfailingly polite. Every few years she got herself arrested for chaining herself to a tree or some other good-natured nonsense meant to irritate the loggers, but the school board let her continue teaching despite these outbursts of Thoreauvian civil disobedience (required reading for draft dodgers, by the way), good teachers being about as rare in these parts as plastic surgeons. It was also pretty well accepted that Shellie was a lesbian, though in my opinion this was pure sour grapes: Shellie was a good-looking woman who simply didn’t need or want a man, and the ones who tried quickly found this out.

  Though she never said as much, I think Shellie thought the two of us shared a bond as criminals of conscience. I didn’t have the heart to tell her this wasn’t at all the case with me, and that Thoreau would have called me a coward to my face. And in any event, Kate absolutely adored her.

  “Well, that’s true,” I said. “Many people did.”

  “Your father. My grandfather.”

  “He was one, that’s right.”

  “Did you?”

  I sipped my cocoa and thought. I had been waiting to have this conversation for years. But now that it had finally come, I felt completely unprepared, like a kid taking an exam he’d studied too hard for. Everything I’d planned to say was suddenly forgotten.

  “I didn’t like it. Nobody likes war, except maybe generals. But on the whole I’d have to say no, I didn’t think it was wrong. If there hadn’t been a good reason to fight, they wouldn’t have asked me to go. That was how I thought of it.”

  “They didn’t ask you. They drafted you.”

  “That’s their way of asking, Kats. Like, when me or mom says, Kats, please pick up your room. It’s a request, but we mean business. It’s sort of the same thing.”

  “Quakers didn’t go. Mrs. Wister told us about them. She said they were . . .” Her brow wrinkled with the effort of a new word. “Con-scious objectors.”

  “The word is conscientious. And you’re right. But if Mrs. Wister told you about them, then she probably also told you that Quakers are pacifists. You know that word, pacifists?”

  Across the table, she nodded. “They don’t believe in war.”

  “That’s right. Any war. Or any kind of fighting at all. I don’t feel that way, and if they’d asked me, that’s what I would have said.”

  She frowned the way she had since she was small, her thoughts turned inward as she prowled the hallways of her argument, looking for an unlocked door.

  “You could have been killed.”

  “True, I might have. But probably not. And in any case, that makes no difference. It was complicated, Kats. Those were crazy days. The truth is, I wanted to go to Vietnam. Well, not wanted. I thought it was my duty to go. But my father asked me not to.”

  Her eyes flashed—a hunter with the quarry in her sights. “Asked asked, or pick-up-your-room asked?”

  “Well, I was a grown man by then, Kats. But yeah, that’s pretty much how it happened.”

  “So, the government told you to do one thing, and your father told you to do another.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you had to choose.”

  “Smart kid. You’ve got it exactly.”

  That frown again. She looked into her mug a moment like a diviner reading tea leaves. “Then you were one,” she said finally.

  “One what, Kats?”

  “Con . . . scientious objector.”

  Kate was nine when she said this to me. Nine years old, and she actually said this!

  “Mrs. Wister asked me something after class. To give you a message.”

  I had seen this coming too. “Okay, shoot.”

  “She wanted to know if you’d come to school someday. To talk about the draft. About being a draft invader.”

  The mistake was such a treat I decided to let it go by. Draft invader—why hadn’t anybody thought of this before?

  “I don’t really have much to say about it, Kats. Do you want me to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Four years cleaning fish and feeling homesick. It’s not really a very good story. It was pretty smelly, actually.”

  “And you came back because I was going to be born.”

  I nodded. “Yup. I missed your mom, and your grandpa was getting sick and needed me to look after things here, and the whole thing had begun to look pretty stupid. But it was mostly for you.”

  “Tell me again about sleeping on the floor.”

  This was the part of the story she knew and loved the best—the part in which she was the main character.

  “Well, let’s see. You were born a bit early. About a month. And after you were born, Mom was pretty weak, and had to stay in bed for a while. So I slept on the floor by your crib to watch over you.”

  She got out of her chair and climbed onto my lap. “How small was I?”

  She knew all of this already, of course, had heard it a hundred times. “The smallest person I’d ever seen, Kats. Five pounds and something.” I showed her with my hands. “But not too small. Just the right size for a girl baby.”

  “Tell me about the snow.”

  “Who said anything about snow?”

  “Daddy!”

  “Okay, okay, the snow. A couple of days after you were born there was a big snowstorm—”

  “How big?”

  “Well, pretty big. Huge, in fact. Four, five feet at least. Snow like you’ve never seen in your life. And then it got cold, as cold as I’ve ever felt. Ten, fifteen below zero. It was so cold that if you sneezed it would turn to ice as it came out your nose.”

  “Daddy, gross!”

  “I’m just saying it was cold. And with all that snow and cold the power went out, and there was too much snow even for the plow, so there was no way anybody was going anywhere for a while, it was just the bunch of us all holed up together, me and your granddad, and your mom still weak and you so tiny.”

  “And you kept me warm.”

  “That’s right. When it got really cold at night I wrapped a blanket around the two of us and held you tight by the fire, and that was how I did it. It was when I knew how glad I was to be home. It was like you were saying to me, Daddy, you’re back now, and this is your job, keeping me warm. Just like now. Kats?”

  “What?”

  “You want me to tell this story to your class?”

  She considered this a moment, then shook her head against my chest. “I guess not.”

  “That’s what I was thinking too. But you don’t have to tell Mrs. Wister. I’ll tell her myself.”

  Which I did: when school resumed the next day, I instructed Kate not to take the bus home and drove into town to get her instead. Waiting by my truck in the pickup line I told Shellie Wister that Kats and I had talked things over and decided that four years gutting mackerel in New Brunswick and two more pushing a broom and boiling bedsheets in a VA psychiatric hospital weren’t anything anybody else’s children would actually be interested in. Our family story would stay just that: something for us, and not for the public record.

  “I’m sorry to hear it, Joe. Anything I can say to change your mind?”

  We were standing by
the open door of the truck, our conversation blanketed by the roar of buses and yelling kids and general end-of-the-school-day chaos. Kate had wandered up the salted sidewalk to spend a last minute with her friends; though the air was still cold, the sun was bright as a heat lamp, a shining gift after two solid days under a dome of falling snow. Kate had removed her parka and tied it around herself, the empty arms dangling at her waist. Like most of her friends she was wearing an enormous purple backpack with the name of some singing group on it—New Kids off the Tracks or whatever it was—a Christmas present I had driven nearly two hours down to a Bradlees in Waterville to find. What in blazes did she keep in that thing? When she glanced in my direction I lifted my eyebrows to tell her to move it along.

  “It’s not that I don’t appreciate the offer, Shellie. I just don’t have anything interesting to say about it. You’d probably be bored.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short, Joe. The kids could really learn something from you.”

  “All they’d learn from me is how to pack fish. I’m really not the best person to ask about this stuff.”

  She let her eyes hold mine another moment. She was wearing a bunchy sweater of raw gray wool, the kind that looks homemade and in Shellie’s case almost certainly was. (No doubt she’d woven the wool, too.) A bright purple scarf circled her throat; she smelled a little of wood smoke, and beneath that, almost imperceptibly, a wispy hint of lilacs. I knew what she was doing with her eyes—she was a teacher, teaching—and bless her heart, I thought, thank God above for the Shellie Wisters of the world; though I also wanted very badly to shoehorn Kate from her friends and hit the road without having to explain any more than I already had. Shellie was clutching a clipboard across her chest, and as she stood before me, her dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully, letting the silence do what talk could not, I felt the conversation slip from its course and snap into a fresh line like a tacking sail.

  “A lot of us think your father was a great man, you know. He helped a lot of people.”

  I had to laugh. “Pissed a few off too.”

  “True, he did. But what’s the saying? Real courage is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking. Doing the unpopular thing because it’s what you believe, and the heck with everybody. It’s a hard message to teach, especially these days, with that actor in the White House. All of a sudden it’s like Vietnam never happened, like we never learned a thing. It’s worse than disgraceful. It’s a crime. That’s what I’m trying to teach these kids, Joe. To think for themselves. That’s what you could tell them about.”

  Somewhere in this Shellie had placed her hand on my sleeve—not quite holding it, but not just touching it, either. The gesture was unknowable, nothing I could break her gaze to consider, a sensation that would remain at the periphery as long as her hand remained in its mysterious contact with my sleeve. Somehow, it made me feel just as I did whenever I read one of her letters in the paper: like I was in the presence of an actual grown-up. The outhouse, the chickens and goats, the clacking loom in her smoky cabin: in the touch of her hand I felt the firm existence of these things, their patient purposefulness and calm utility, the way they expressed a solid life that was far more real, in its way, than the hodgepodge or random impulses that generally pass for adulthood. And here she was, this woman who might have been the second truly charismatic person I had ever met—my father being the first—suggesting I might have something to teach anyone. She had no idea how wrong she was about me, but for a second, just one, I knew what I would have told the class. Most of us spend our entire lives trying to learn what it means to be brave. What we hope is that simply trying will count for something.

  “Well, I don’t want to take too much of your time, Joe. I’m sure you have places to be.” She released my sleeve, and just like that, the spell was broken. “Tell Lucy I said hi, won’t you? And thank her again for her help with the bake sale. Those cinnamon buns of hers are always the first to sell out.”

  I couldn’t have said how long the two of us had been standing there. Kate was nowhere to be seen. Then the crowds parted and I found her by the bus line, talking to a boy I didn’t recognize, a sandy-haired kid in jeans and a flannel shirt holding a hockey stick he kept flicking on the pavement, the two of them standing together on the path in a nervous, happy way that could only mean one thing. Boys, I thought, and felt the word drop like a bomb to my stomach. Just a day ago she had crawled into my lap to hear a story of her babyhood. She might have actually put her thumb in her mouth. It wouldn’t be long now until her life was full of boys.

  “Joe?”

  “Right. Sorry.” I shook my head and returned my eyes to Shellie, suddenly embarrassed. “Took a bit of a trip there, I guess. Cinnamon rolls. Thanks to Lucy. Got it.”

  “It’s okay, Joe.”

  “No, no, I’ll tell her, first thing.”

  Her face lifted in a reassuring smile. “I meant about Nicky Pryor. The boy talking to Kate? Forgive me, but I saw you look. You probably know his parents, Cash and Suzie.”

  I looked again. “Jesus. That’s Cash’s kid, with the hockey stick? He looks so . . .”

  She allowed herself a gentle laugh. “Mature is the word you’re looking for. But he’s a nice boy.”

  “I was going to say menacing.”

  “Maybe a little of that too.”

  Her eyes found mine again. What a pity, I thought, that Shellie had no children of her own. Though of course that wasn’t right. She did have them; my Kate was one.

  “I know it seems to happen fast, Joe. But believe me, they’re still just children. Just barely, but they are. Maybe trying to be a little more. Certainly they’d like to be a little more. But it’s still . . . oh, I don’t know. Just a game. Like dress-ups, when they were small.”

  “What you’re saying is, I’ve got time yet.”

  “Hell’s bells, Joe.” She laughed again, this time with pleasure. “I’d say it just to cheer you up.”

  In rubber waders, boots, and fly vests, a two-mile walk over even pretty flat terrain can feel like ten, and by the time I got my lawyers to the dam, the bunch of them were a sorry sight, breathing hard as horses and drenched with yeasty-smelling sweat. On the way, Bill had stopped twice more to pee—the poor guy couldn’t go half an hour without muttering an apology and taking a trip to the weeds—and though the rest of them were decent about it, waiting by the side of the trail in what passed for respectful silence, I could tell this generosity was motivated less by friendship or goodwill than their own sympathetic pangs of worry. Prostate, I’d figured, though now I was also thinking type 2 diabetes, which my father had toward the end. Either way, I thought Bill would tell me which it was before the day was through. The sun was blasting through the trees when we reached the gate, and as I fumbled with the padlock, I gave them the lay of the land.

  “The dam’s about a hundred yards down this incline. Maybe another two hundred yards across, and there’s a catwalk but no handrails, so be careful. The Army Corps of Engineers keeps a watch station, but nobody’s been in it for years. On the other side of the catwalk a trail loops down to the old turbine outlet at the base of the dam. The water’s rough and tricky to wade, but you can fish from the rocks if you like.”

  Bill nodded. “Okay, I’ll bite. How rough is rough?”

  We could all hear it plainly now, a sound you might mistake as wind in the trees as you hiked up the path, but not this close: the muscular pounding of a thousand gallons of ice-cold water pouring out the vacant turbine channel each and every second. Where we stood you could smell it, too, all that cold water mixing with the air of the valley, like icy breath falling out a freezer.

  “It sounds worse than it is. If you’re careful and stay clear of the outlet, you should be fine.”

  We made our way down the last of the path. Where it cleared the trees the ground and sky opened like jaws, giving us a broad view of the two lakes and the dam between them, a wall of white concrete you couldn’t look straight into when the sun hit it. The dro
p on the downstream side was eighty feet; below it, water roiled in a frigid roar of boiling whitecaps, then fanned out in a broadening spillway before emptying, another thousand yards below, into the Lower Zisko. You could fish any part of it, and on any given day it could all be good, but the upper end, where the water was trickiest, was generally best; all that moving cold water churned up the small feeding fish that the landlocks loved, drawing them closer to the surface. The control station stood on our side of the dam, empty as always. A second gate, also unlocked, guarded the entrance to the catwalk, with a large sign of warning: NO TRESPASSING. DANGEROUS WATERS. NO SWIMMING. DO NOT CROSS THE DAM.

  Pete stopped at the gate. “I don’t know about this. Is it safe? This doesn’t look legal. The sign says no trespassing.”

  They all paused, lawyers thinking about the law and maybe that eighty-foot drop to boot, but then Bill stepped forward and swung the gate wide. “Joe, anybody ever drown out here?”

  It had happened, I knew, but not for years. I saw where he was going and thought I’d play along. “All the time,” I said.

  “Good.” He winked at me, then smirked in Pete’s direction. “See? We’ll make a man of you yet, youngster.”

  Pete folded his arms across his chest. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you go fuck yourself?”

  Bill snorted and stepped through the gate. “What is this, fourth grade? Don’t be such a pussy, son.”

  It all seemed like a jolly joke, but by the time we got to the other side, I could tell something was wrong with Pete. His face had gone the white of chalk, and he was breathing in shallow little puffs. I sent the other three ahead to wait while he sat on a big piece of limestone, his rod across his knees.

  “It’s the heights. I can’t stand heights.” He looked back the way we’d come and grimaced like he’d seen his death. “Jesus. Is there another way back?”

  “Afraid not, unless you call a helicopter.”

  Pete put his head in his hands, letting himself take a moment just to breathe; his hands were shaking, and for a second, I actually felt sorry for him. Bill, Mike, and Carl Jr. had already made their way down the embankment to the base of the dam and were looking the water over. In a large party, there was always one, and Pete was the one.