The Summer Guest

by Justin Cronin

  “It just breaks my heart to see him like this,” she said. “You know, with everything else that’s gone on, it’s easy to forget that he’s just a human being, afraid to die like the rest of us.”

  “You think he’s just trying to take his mind off it?”

  “Some. Sure.” She pushed her bangs off her forehead, glazed with sweat in the afternoon heat. “He’s a proud man. You didn’t know him as a young man, but I did. One thing he was, was proud.”

  The way she said this, an awful sadness stitched to her voice, made me think she’d said more than she wanted to. “Luce—”

  She held up a hand. “That’s all, Jordan. I’m happy it’s you he picked. He could have picked anyone, you know.”

  “I’m still not sure why me.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way. But I don’t think it’s anything you did. I think it probably has more to do with who you are.”

  “That’s what Kate said.”

  “Did she? Well, I think she’s right, Jordan. What you have to understand is that this is a gift he’s giving everyone, not just you. There’s a lot of history here. That’s why we can’t refuse.”

  She paused, let her eyes drift from my face back to the cabin, and then turned to give me a shining, distant smile—a smile that came straight from the past.

  “Well. I’ve said too much as it is. If you don’t mind my butting my nose in a little, you should know that I think my daughter has some pretty strong feelings for you. And I approve.”

  “Thank you, Lucy. That means a lot.”

  “And Joe does too. I don’t think I have to ask you how you feel?”

  For a long, long moment we looked at one another. And then—I swear this is true—I knew. Somehow, I knew. Lucy had loved Harry once. It didn’t make sense, but it also did; it explained absolutely everything. Lucy had loved him once, maybe loved him still.

  Behind us Harry’s cabin door creaked open on its hinges; we turned our heads and watched Hal emerge, squinting in the sunlight. He clomped down to the dock and stood beside Lucy, rocking on his handsome old boots.

  “Afternoon.” He smoothed out his ponytail and then held a hand over his eyes against the glare streaming off the lake. “Day’s almost gone.”

  “There’s time yet,” I said.

  “I almost wish there weren’t. The news is, he wants to go.”

  I looked at Lucy, whose face told me nothing—where had she gone, I wondered, what memory?—then back quickly to Hal.

  “You’re sure about this?”

  “Am I sure?” He gave a tired laugh. “Hell, Jordan, if it were up to me we’d already be in Portland. Or back in New York. Christ, we never would have left in the first place.” He shook his head and turned on his heels to go. “Get your stuff, Jordan. My father’s coming out.”

  It was after five by the time we got him ready. After Hal’s announcement, I went to get the gear, which I had waiting in the office: an extra fly rod (Harry would have his own), my vest, a knapsack of miscellaneous tack and tools. Earlier in the day Lucy had made a picnic lunch and left it in the big cooler in the kitchen; I didn’t know if Harry had eaten or how long we’d be on the water, so I packed this too, tucking it in the wheelbarrow beside the floatable cushions I’d taken from the shed to make a kind of bed for Harry in the bottom of the boat. Other things: a blanket, a couple of heavy sweaters, a flashlight the size of a billy club that I could also use to brain a fish if that’s what Harry wanted. I put it all in the wheelbarrow, then had one last thought and returned to the office and opened the desk drawer where Joe kept the Scotch. I looked at the bottle and gave it a shake. Only four fingers were left, and I poured half of that into a thermos, mixed it with some reheated coffee left over from lunch and a couple of spoonfuls of sugar, and topped it off with a swirl of heavy cream. It would get cold, I knew, when the sun went down.

  The day had given me the chance to make a plan, and what I had in mind for Harry was simple enough. Harry couldn’t stand, which meant we’d have to fish from the boat; because he wanted to fish the surface, the best place to lie would be the shallows on the far side of the lake where the river fed into it. There was a chance we’d get something, but not much of one. All the big insect hatches were over, and anyone who fly-fishes will tell you that casting blind on still waters may be a pleasant way to kill a couple of hours, but is as close as you get to a complete waste of time. Time, of course, was exactly what Harry didn’t have.

  I trundled all my supplies down to the dock, where everyone was waiting: Hal, holding January on his hip, Lucy, and Kate, who scrambled up the path to help with the gear. Joe was still nowhere to be seen; I heard Hal ask Lucy if she’d heard anything, and she said no, she’d been trying to raise him on the radio all day. Probably he’d left it somewhere out of reach, she said, or had forgotten to turn it on.

  Kate had just returned from town with a load of toilet paper and other sundries and was waiting for the newlyweds, to show them some of the cabins.

  “Your first customers,” she said, nudging me with her elbow as we unloaded the wheelbarrow. “I bet they book for at least a week.”

  “They seemed to like the place.”

  “They were sweet. But they liked you, is what they liked.”

  And then the door swung open, and Harry came out. Hal handed his daughter off to Lucy and trotted up the dock to the porch, and with Frances hovering nearby, helped him down onto the lawn. I pulled the skiff around to shore, where Kate and I nosed it up onto the grass. From the wheelbarrow I took the cushions and laid them out between the middle and rear seats and covered the edge of the bench with the blanket, so Harry could lean against it without too much pain. This wouldn’t leave much room for me, but that was the idea; sitting on the rear bench with my knees apart, Harry’s back and shoulders tucked between them, I could help him with his fly rod and maneuver the boat too.

  Harry wasn’t using the walker, a good sign, and it seemed to me that he looked a little better than he had the night before. He moved slowly but not hesitantly, lifting and planting his feet with calm precision as he made his way down to us, like a skater testing the ice. In his old jeans and sweater and canvas fishing vest bulging with fly boxes, he might have been one more old guy out to bag himself a trout on a summer evening, if you didn’t look too closely—didn’t notice the unnatural slowness with which Hal and Frances seemed to move beside him, each of them cupping one of his elbows, or the box that hung from Harry’s shoulder: a gleaming cube about half the size of an automobile battery, with the sculpted curves and sterile whiteness of expensive respiratory prosthetics. A tube ran from the box to the back of Harry’s neck, reappearing as a necklace under his nose. As he approached, I heard the box making a kind of clicking noise, and beneath that, the tiny whistling of the oxygen, like a breeze through a cracked window. On his other shoulder he carried a wicker creel, a lovely old relic with brass eyelets and soft leather hinges the color of the creamed coffee. He moved down the lawn by inches. A mist of white whiskers frosted his chin and cheeks. When he reached us at the boat he studied it carefully.

  “I see we’re ready,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. The cushions should be comfortable, and keep you off the bottom so you’ll stay dry.”

  He gave me a tight, businesslike nod and regarded the boat again. “Now, how I’m going to get in there I don’t think I know.”

  “I thought Hal and I could lift you. If that’s all right.”

  “Fair enough,” Harry said. He gave a short, wet cough to clear his throat. “I don’t weigh what I used to by a long shot.”

  Frances took the respirator from his shoulder, and I positioned myself to one side and slightly behind him; he bent his knees, released a sigh, and in an instant all of Harry Wainwright filled my arms again, amazing me a second time with his lightness. He was right; there wasn’t much left. Hal and Kate took up positions on the far side of the boat, and together we lowered Harry Wainwright to the cushions.

  He looke
d around cheerfully from his new position. “Like the gondolas of Venice,” Harry said. “Have you been there, Jordan?”

  “No, sir, I can’t say I have.” I was pleased to hear him talk this way—to hear him talk about anything at all. “You know how much I have to do around here. I bet it’s nice, though.”

  “You should go,” he said. “When all this is over, do yourself a favor and go. The Rialto, the Piazza San Marco, il Canale Grande.” He said the last with a startlingly elegant trill to his voice, then crinkled his brow when he saw my face. “Don’t look so surprised, Jordan.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “It means ‘big canal,’ right?”

  He waved a finger in the air. “Grand Canal, Jordan.”

  Hal returned from the porch with Harry’s rod and laid it beside him. The respirator, clicking away, was tucked on the floor by his side, and Hal wrapped it in a garbage bag. “Pop, remember, you have to keep this thing dry. Jordan? It’s important.”

  Frances bent her face close to Harry’s and brushed his hair into place with her fingers. “You do what Jordan tells you,” she said.

  “This is what happens when you’re old and about to die,” Harry said. “Everybody treats you like a child. It’s the best part.”

  Hal pulled me aside, lowering his voice to speak in confidence. “Get him back by sundown, okay? No matter what he says.” He glanced over my shoulder at his father, bobbing in the water. “He’s not as good as he seems. We’ve got the car packed and ready to go.”

  “It’s all right, Hal. I’ll take good care of him. You have my word.”

  “I want you to know, Jordan, how grateful we are to you. I don’t think I’ve told you this before. Harry truly thinks of you as one of us. You know that, but I wanted you to hear it from me.”

  “I appreciate that.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I put my hand out, and we shook. “I’m glad to do it.”

  I waded into the lake, where Kate and Lucy were holding the boat in two feet of water, and hoisted myself onto the rear seat, being mindful not to get the respirator wet. With Harry between my knees, it was a tight fit, but I thought we’d be able to manage, as long as Harry could bend forward at the waist to reach his rod. I pivoted to start the outboard—a neat trick, with so little room—when Harry stopped me.

  “Jordan, I was hoping we could row.”

  I don’t know why this surprised me; of course that’s what he wanted. “It’ll take us an hour at least to get to the inlet.”

  “Even so,” Harry said.

  I glanced at Hal, who shrugged. I climbed back out of the boat and stepped back in amidships, easing myself onto the second seat. Kate went up to the shed to get a pair of oars and waded out to hand them to me. Harry and I were facing one another now.

  “See?” Harry said. “It’s better this way. Now we can talk.” Kate was still holding the side of the boat, and he took her hand, folding her fingers under his. For a moment all I could hear was the sound of water lapping against the boat and the mechanical ticking of Harry’s respirator. His voice was moist and soft and far away. “It’s a crazy thing to want, isn’t it?”

  “Not at all.” Kate smiled into his face. “I think it’s perfect. You should do what makes you happy, Harry.” She leaned over the boat and kissed his forehead. “For luck,” she said.

  “Thank you.” Harry turned his eyes to look at Lucy, holding January at the water’s edge: Lucy, with a little girl in her arms. “Thank you, everyone.”

  And so at last—all eyes upon us, the afternoon sun declining and evening coming on—we went.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Joe

  H ickock was right: they were good boots. I wore them all two years, six months, three weeks, and six days I spent in the care of the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons, the first eight months at the Allenwood Federal Correctional Institute in the mountains of central Pennsylvania, the rest at the prison camp attached to the army psychiatric hospital at Fort Devens, just outside Boston. I was assigned to the laundry, and when a few months had passed and I had proved myself a model prisoner—silent, incurious, interested only in making my way through the small business of each day and on to the next—I got myself reassigned to an orderly detail, pushing carts of soggy food from room to room and cleaning out pans and breaking up fights over the channel changer and Ping-Pong table. It was easy time to do; it was all the time in the world, with a world of nothing in it.

  I had been sentenced to thirty-six months. This in itself was a shock, but my lawyer assured me that the chances were small I’d have to do all of it, so long as I kept my nose clean. Draft resisters had become a political hot potato; almost certainly some kind of clemency was going to be granted now that the last troops had pulled out of Southeast Asia, and the fact that I had turned myself in (not quite true, but that was how we spun it, with a little help from Darryl Tanner) would count in my favor. Once this Watergate thing got really cooking, he joked, they’d be needing the cell space for half the Republican National Committee, most of the CIA, and every last asshole in the Nixon White House, right down to the wives. Twenty months max, he assured me. Probably a little less.

  Of course, that wasn’t what happened, at least not soon enough for me. My lawyer’s earnest letters to the review board about my dying father (“a decorated hero of the Second World War”), the infant daughter I had barely held in my arms, my flawless record as a guest of the Federal Bureau of Prisons—all were met with stony silence. As I turned the corner on year two and looked down the long corridor of my remaining federal time, with no sign at all that I was going to get out ahead of schedule, I pulled my mind back from all thoughts of home like a turtle tucking his head into his shell. I figured I was in for the full bite, clemency or no. So when, with just six months to go, the block PO came to find me and announced that the word had come down, the troops were going home for Christmas, that I should pack my things and report to the watch commander’s office on the double because the hour of my liberty was at hand, I heard the sound of a string being pulled, and knew whose finger was upon it.

  Kate, the camp itself, my final days with my father, good days of talk when at last we spoke of my mother and made our peace—it was Harry Wainwright who gave all these things to me. Many times I’ve thought I hated him for it, as any man might who feels the power of another over his life. And I’ve hated myself for this as much as I’ve hated Harry, who did nothing wrong but love a place and the people in it, so deeply that he would want to die only there. So there’s that, too: my envy of him. Not for his money, which I have never cared about; nor Kate, who might have been Harry’s the day she was made but became my own on those nights of cold and snow; or even Lucy, who thought I had given her up. None of these. I envied him the fact that it was always his, who loved it, more than it had ever been mine, who would have left it if he could.

  Five o’clock, the day ticking away: back at camp, I knew, Harry had either gotten his wish, or not. My goal was to keep the lawyers on the water until six or so—enough time, I calculated, to let things run their course at home and give everybody their money’s worth. Bill and Pete had been circling each other all day like a pair of alley cats itching for a scrap, but I doubted they had anything serious in mind: these were lawyers, after all, pure paper tigers who could beat you to death with their diplomas but hadn’t thrown an actual punch since seventh grade, and a few hours in the Maine woods wasn’t going to change that. Whatever Bill knew or thought he knew—and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel for the poor son of a bitch, who, beneath all the bluster, seemed as lost as Corduroy the Bear—it would all come out in the wash, no question. But when it did, this would happen over a long table with glasses of water nobody touched and a court stenographer tapping away in a corner, and I would be long gone, not even a memory.

  At least the fish were being cooperative. After the morning’s struggles, the wind had settled down to an easy breeze, and even Pete seemed to have gotten the hang of things, hauling the Atl
antics and brookies in like a pro. I sat on the shore with nothing to do but watch; I even treated myself to a few casts when one or the other of them broke for beer or a sandwich and handed me his rod. Not a bad day, I thought, under the circumstances. Not a bad day at all.

  Which only goes to show that you should never tempt fate like this, not when you’re miles from the nearest highway with two men who are sleeping with the same woman. It started with a shout, a hundred yards below me; I turned into the sun to see two figures, backlighted in shadow, squaring off in an awkward posture of bent elbows and tucked chins that I recognized at once: men who didn’t know how to fight, getting ready to give it a go.

  Carl Jr., seated beside me on the rocks, rolled his eyes. “Now what? Those two, they’re like a couple of kids in grade school.”

  But by the time we got there—Marathon Mike joined us, splashing up from the shallows—enough time had passed that the momentum toward an actual fight seemed to have abated, and it looked like we were going to get off easy, not with fists but words. Bill was bent at the waist, taking big gulps of air, his hands riding his hips; I thought for a moment he was about to be sick. Pete didn’t look a whole lot better; he was drunker than the rest of them, for starters, was working on a bad sunburn, and hadn’t had a bite of lunch, taking it from his flask instead. He was standing in a few inches of water, his rod lying half in the sand, where the reel was sure to gum up good, and his face was twisted up like he was about to cry.