The Summer Guest

TWENTY-TWO

My nurse and her needles: all that day I waited for her. But it was noon, it was two, it was three o’clock, and still she did not come. I knew she wasn’t real, she was a trick the drugs had played; I knew this to be true, and still I longed for her, as one longs for sunshine after days and days of rain. Through the long hours Franny came and went, my dear friend Franny, and Hal, his strength almost pitiable, for it could accomplish nothing-everyone waiting, like me, for word to go.

Am I hungry? they inquire. Do I need help with the toilet? Is the blanket too warm, too tight? How’s the breathing, Harry, do you need the valve adjusted, the little valve right here?

I answer all their questions, complain plausibly of pain though I feel almost nothing, agree reasonably to this and that. The hours open and close. Then:

Harry?

Pure happiness fills me, traveling my body like a beam of light.

It’s you, I say. You’re here.

Seated, she leans forward at the waist; from a canvas bag at her feet she removes her yarn, her diamond-bright needles. She places the yarn in her wide lap: pure white yarn wound in a dense orb, like the insides of a baseball. A quick motion of the hands and she begins her work, pulling and tatting like a pianist at the keys, bringing forth a bolt of tightly woven fabric, white as snow, whiter even than that-a whiteness of absolute perfection. The sight is so beautiful I want to weep.

It’s a scarf, she says.

A scarf. The word seems too meager for what she has made.

Did I say that? She laughs, a gentle sound. I don’t know what it is.

I cannot see her face. Perhaps this is the drugs, or the way the light falls in the room: late afternoon light, cool and still as liquid. Perhaps my eyes are closed.

I feel my chest rise. How is Sam?

Sam?

You said you saw him. My tongue is heavy in my mouth. I wonder if I am speaking at all, or am somehow communicating these thoughts by mind alone. Before. In the hospital.

He’s fine, Harry. Everyone’s fine. Just waiting to see what you want to do.

I miss him.

Sam.

He’s a good boy. I wish he would cry more. Shouldn’t a baby cry more?

A salty wetness on my lips. Still I cannot open my eyes. I feel as if I am half inside a dream, a pleasant dream in which I am shutting all the windows of a house as the rain pours down outside. But the rain is snow, the snow is cloth, a long bolt of perfect white cloth, rolling onto the floor. A shroud, I think. A shroud to wrap my little boy in, who never cried much.

Do you believe you’ll see him, Harry?

I am nodding, full of belief. How could I have ever doubted this? Yes, yes I do. Lucy?

A pause. Her hand has found my own, resting on the sheet.

I’m going to die, Lucy.

I know, Harry.

I’m sorry.

Why are you sorry?

Because… I left you.

It’s all right, Harry. You didn’t know.

But I think I did. Isn’t that strange? I think I did know.

It’s not so strange. I’m glad it happened, Harry.

I’m glad too. I try to think of what else to say, but there is only this, this gladness. Then:

Do you remember, Lucy, that night on the porch? That strange night, when Joe came to find you. There was a woman who wanted to dance with me.

A woman?

Just some woman. She was nobody, really. And then I woke up and Joe was there, and you stepped from the bushes and hugged him. He must have had the wrong cabin.

That was quite a night, Harry.

I’m sorry I stayed away after that. It was childish.

But you came back, didn’t you. You came back, and everything was all right. Nothing would be here if you hadn’t come back.

A moment passes in silence, vaporous time swirling around us.

I planned to kill myself here, Lucy.

A pause. When was that, Harry?

With Meredith’s pills. Did you find them? I left them where I thought you would.

I think I did, Harry. A bottle of pills?

I tried once before, you know. With the car. After so much time, how wonderful finally to say these things. It is as if I have been carrying a heavy suitcase for years and years, only to discover I can simply put it down. It was the night before I found you on the dock.

When was this, Harry? You tried to crash your car?

I want to laugh. Crash the Jag! A thought so absurd, so impossible, I see at once how small, how meager my efforts.

Harry? Are you all right?

I’m sorry. It’s just… so funny. It was very odd, what happened. Almost an accident. I left it running in the garage. I sat for the longest time. The strangest thing. Lucy?

Again that pause. Is it Lucy next to me? But of course it is; it is my Lucy, come at last.

Yes, Harry?

I’m sorry, for Joe. It must have been hard for him, all these years. I wish I could have said that to him.

But now it’s she who’s laughing, a laugh that seems to come from everywhere and all around, and from the deepest caves of memory; my mother, still young, on a day we all went on a picnic and the dog got into the basket where she’d put the pie, a hound with a black nose whose name I no longer recall; Meredith, in the bar on the evening we met, laughing at something her friend had said to her, then lifting her eyes to find my own; a young girl tucking a strand of damp hair behind an ear as she tells me about the pancakes, and fresh raspberries from the farm up the road. All of these and more.

Oh, Harry, don’t you know? You helped him most of all.

How did I-?

She squeezes my hand, and at once I understand; the knowledge passes into me like a current, and the circle closes at last.

With me, Harry, she says, her voice a whisper, not even there, and I follow it into sleep. That was the present you gave us all. You brought him home with me.

The hour is late: I awaken in darkness, alone. A feeling of vivid consciousness courses through me. I can barely move-my body is the same, more wood than flesh-and yet my mind is suddenly, fiercely alive inside it. From the outer room, voices reach me like a drifting scent-Hal and Franny, talking together in low, worried tones of the hospital, the distance to doctors and machines to keep me alive-and beyond them, Lucy and Jordan, speaking to one another on the dock. Each word of their conversations is vivid to me, their voices all overlapping but somehow coherent, and as I listen my mind stretches outward to a far horizon of sound, so that not just these words but every noise for miles around is equal to every other: a girl in the kitchen humming as she scrubs a pot, the sighing expansion of the lake against the shoreline, each cylinder firing in a distant outboard and the swirling hum of its prop. Magnificent: my very atoms seem to trill with sound.

“Hal.”

A pause, then his boots on the planking and a blaze of afternoon sunlight through the open door: the day is not as far gone as I’d imagined.

“Look who’s up.” Hal eyes me appraisingly and takes a seat on the edge of the narrow bed. I lift myself on the pillow as he hands me a cup of water to drink.

“I was wondering when we’d hear from you. How are you feeling?”

The water is so tepid I can barely sense its presence in my mouth. A thin stream dribbles down my chin, which unnerves me; I don’t want Hal to know that I am leaving my body behind, that my strength is a force of will alone.

“Better, I think. Much better, actually.”

He draws a circle in front of his chest. “How’s the breathing?”

Obediently, I draw air into my lungs to show him. The urge to cough is intense, sharp as a lit match, yet somehow I manage to contain it.

“See that?” I clear my throat, my eyes filling. “Fit as a fiddle. Tell Jordan to get ready.”

His eyes darken skeptically. “Pop, Franny and I were just talking. After last night, we really think enough’s enough. What do you say let’s get you down to Farmington.”

“I know what you said. I heard every word.” I clear my thoughts to let the sounds come. “Listen, Hal. Can you hear that?”

He frowns in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Pop.”

“Just listen.” I close my eyes as the sounds fill me up. A wash of undifferentiated noise, and then it comes again: not humming, but singing. Her voice rises and falls on the notes, over the rush of water running from the tap.

“A girl, singing in the kitchen. It’s something old, the song. Something she shouldn’t know but does.”

I open my eyes to see Hal staring at me, a new kind of alarm written on his face. I do not want to be difficult, and yet the point must be made. I am not dying in the hospital.

“‘ St. Louis Blues’? No, ‘Sentimental Journey.’ ”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Pop. Let’s get you to the doctor, okay?”

“No.”

A moment passes under his gaze. I am weak, I am dying, there is nothing I can accomplish without his final permission. At the end it must always come to this, this acceptance of one’s fate, obedient as a dog. I have loved you, Hal, I think. You are my one boy. Let me do this.

At last he rises. “Christ, Franny’s going to have my head for this. All right, Pop. This is your show now. I’ll go tell Jordan to get ready.”

And then the day really is late. The hour lurches forward, halts, proceeds again-though almost imperceptibly, as if I am a chip of straw drifting on a vast, celestial tide. My mind opens to a feeling of perfect stillness and, above me, a sky unlocking stars. This thing with sound has left me; only the slow swish of the oars reaches my ears, a music of its own to match the rhythmic breathing of my boatman as he pulls us out from shore. This boy I’ve chosen: he is strong, good-hearted, he feels the earth in his blood. His face is darkened in shadow, like a hood. He will not fail me.

There is no time, I think. And then: there is only time. Snow from the train window, and the last breaths, and sleep. The needles never unworking. All time is time passed, it is a history of good-byes.

It is all I have left to wish for, the one thing I have ever truly wanted: to slip into that current.

TWENTY-THREE

We had been floating in the drain for two hours, Bill and I, when I thought it: today was the day I was going to die.

Bill had fallen backward off the dam; the drop was less than twenty feet on the upstream side, but the current took him fast: weighed down by his sodden waders, he was swept into the vortex that swirled around the open gate of the inlet. He would have gone straight through, but at the last second he managed to grab hold of the edge of the open gate and pull his body out of the worst of the current, pinning himself against the concrete wall of the tower.

This was how I found him when I got to the top of the dam, Pete and Mike and Carl Jr. huffing up behind me. Pete ran to the old army corps station to look for a life ring or rope, but of course there was none, nobody had manned the tower for thirty years since they’d pulled out the turbines; and in the next instant, as the four of us stood on the dam shouting useless encouragements like “you just hold on, help’s on the way,” I realized, with a thump in my gut, that doing the only thing I could think of, dumb as it was, was still better than watching the poor guy drown.

I unclipped the ring of keys from my belt and handed them to Mike. “There’s a radio under the passenger seat. You ever use one?”

“Not since the army.”

“You know how to find the emergency channel?”

“Channel 9?”

“Attaboy. You don’t raise anyone, I want you to take the main highway back to town. The sheriff’s office is three blocks on your left, next to the post office. You remember the way back to the truck?”

His face went blank. “Sort of.”

“Sort of. Okay, take Carl with you, then.”

Mike let his eyes fall over Carl, his big belly hanging over his pants buckle. “I think I’d be quicker on my own, Joe.”

Carl stiffened. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“No offense, buddy, but you’re not exactly built for speed.”

“None taken, you Mick runt. At least I paid attention to the path.”

“Enough,” I barked, cutting in. Couldn’t these guys ever get along? “You’re both going because I need this done. Is that understood?” They nodded, chastened like schoolboys; neither one, I could tell, was used to being given orders. “Good. Now, straight over the ridge, stay on the main path. There are a couple of forks, but follow the orange blaze and you’ll be fine. If you’ve walked more than thirty minutes, you’ve missed a turn, so backtrack until you pick up the orange blaze again. Pete, you stay put, I may need you. Now, the two of you, go.”

Away they scampered up the hill, Mike at a brisk jog, Carl bringing up the rear, one hand pulling up his sagging pants from behind. I watched them go, then removed my shoes and vest, took my wallet out of my back pocket and handed it to Pete, moved to the edge of the dam, gave one last look to gauge the drop, and stepped off.

I hit hard but entered cleanly, my knees bent and together, my toes pointed like a ballerina’s. The current was fierce, a blast of cold force that wrapped around me like a fist and pushed me under; I sank and sank, waiting to feel the loosening grip of its hold and watching the bubbles rising around my face, and just when I thought that I had somehow miscalculated and was headed straight for the bottom, the current released me and I felt myself rising toward the surface. Three hard pulls and I broke into the light, but then the current whipped me around again. In a flash I saw Pete, standing above me on the dam, then Bill, holding fast to the open gate, the eddying current twisting me like a top, so that it was all I could do to keep my head above water and hope that, like Bill, I could manage to grab hold of something before I was sucked clean through. I hit the tower dead-on, grabbing the edge with both hands, scrabbling the worn concrete below the surface for purchase; something sharp bit into the soft meat of my palm-a piece of old rebar jutting from the side, rusty and sharp as a corkscrew-and I had never been so glad for anything in my life. Gripping the bar, I pulled my body backward against the pounding water rushing in, easing myself free of the opening, then twisted around so that I could wedge myself against the wall of the tower next to Bill.

“I don’t want to seem ungrateful,” Bill said over the roar. “But what the fuck did you do that for?”

“I’m here to rescue you.”

He laughed, choking on the water that was slapping our faces. “Swell. Now we’re both cooked.”

Pete was waving to us from the top of the dam. “Are you all right!?” I pulled an arm out of the current to give him a thumbs-up.

“Oh, fuck him,” Bill said.

“How do you feel?”

“Not so hot.” His face was dead white, and I saw that his eyes weren’t quite moving together. His speech might have been a little off too: with all the noise from all the water, it was hard to tell. I was figuring him for a small stroke, though it could have been a lot of things.

“Don’t know what happened. I blacked out, next thing I knew here I was.”

“Guess you’ll have to be cutting back on the Pall Malls.”

“There’s a fucking idea. I could go for one right now.” He managed a smile. “Okay, pardner, what next?”

Before I’d jumped, I’d hoped that the two of us might manage to pull ourselves around to the other side of the tower, where the current would be milder, and make a swim toward shore. But I realized now how hopeless that was. The whirlpool was too strong, the sides of the tower were slick as a mirror, worn smooth by years and years of pounding, and in any case, Bill wasn’t going anywhere. He was barely holding on where he was, and from the color of his face, I seriously wondered how long he’d stay conscious. The cold would help awhile, but then it wouldn’t. Fifty-five degrees, tops: general lore said a couple of hours at the most, assuming you could keep yourself moving, which we couldn’t: the two of us were pinned to the tower like a couple of donkey tails, icy water pouring over our bones. Already I could feel it eating away at my edges. So, an hour, but maybe not even that: if Bill passed out, or let go of the bar even for a second, that would be the end of it.

“What’s next is, we sit tight and enjoy the scenery. I sent Mike and Carl to fetch the cavalry.”

“Carl? Mike I understand, but what you send that old lard-ass for?”

I paused to squirt a mouthful of water. “They’ll make it fine. All we have to do is stay put. Think we can get you out of those waders?”

Which proved tricky: With Bill’s left hand all but useless, he couldn’t keep hold of the bar and reach down to his boots at the same time. For a while he tried kicking them off, then scraping his heels against the side of the tower, but he couldn’t get any traction in the fast-moving water. And they were far below my reach.

“Just great. This is how they’ll find me, pants around my knees.”

I could see how exhausted he was. “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “I might be able to pull the boots off if I could use both feet. Pull yourself in and let me try to get behind you.”

The trick was reaching one hand around him to grab the bar on the other side. But the instant I let go, the current twisted me back toward the opening. A dozen times the same thing happened, no matter what I did.

“Fuck.” I was out of breath from exertion, my teeth chattering like somebody tapping out a code. “It isn’t going to work.”

“No, it will,” Bill said. “I’ll let go, so the current pulls me toward you, then you can get your arm around me. Use my weight for leverage.”

It was chancy, but I saw how it could work. One thing for certain; the waders had to go. Sooner or later, somebody would come to help, and with his waders bunched around his feet, Bill couldn’t maneuver at all, even to grab hold of a towrope.

“We’ll have to time it right. Let go on my mark. One…”

He nodded tersely. “Two…”

“Three-”

Bill released the bar, and I let my left hand drop; as I spun out from the wall, pivoting on my right hand, Bill crashed into me in a backward hug, and for an instant, as we tangled together, I thought I was going to lose my grip and send us down the drain for sure. But then I felt the pressure of his weight twisting us upstream, and I thought: bingo. With a stab of my left hand I found the bar again and I hauled us both, face-first, back against the tower, Bill wedged into the narrow space between me and the wall.

I took a gulp of air. “This should do it, I think. Hang on.”

I wrapped my feet around his boots. A couple of hard yanks and off they came, bubbling to the surface a second later, two bodiless legs spinning in the vortex. I watched them go shooting down the drain.

“Better?”

I could no longer see his face, but I felt him nod. His energy was gone. We’d been in the water at least twenty minutes, Bill a little more; I couldn’t look at my watch to make sure, but I could tell from the light that it was past seven. I knew my hands were sliced to ribbons on the rebar, though the pain was vague, and I was glad that the cold had spared me at least this. I dipped my face to take a sip of iron-tasting water that made my fillings hum.

“Okay, then,” I said, and felt a shadow on my neck that meant the sun had slipped behind the mountains. “Now we wait.”

But thirty minutes stretched to sixty, then ninety. I knew that Mike and Carl had gotten lost, either on the trail or driving back to town. Apart from a yell every once in a while from Pete, followed by my terse reply, no one spoke. Held in my arms, Bill seemed to doze, and for a few minutes I did, too, my hands somehow holding fast to the bar; I opened my eyes to see that the first stars were out, pinpricks of light in an otherwise vast and featureless sky, and it suddenly seemed curious to me, curious in a way I cannot express, the simple fact of stars. I knew I was cold, my body temperature was starting to fall, but somehow this understanding seemed to have no importance, no relationship to physical fact. I was so cold it almost felt like being warm.

“Joe?”

“Right here.”

“Nobody’s coming, are they?”

The right thing to say was, of course they are, just hold on a little longer. But the cold had softened my resolve, and there seemed no reason to lie. “Something must have happened. I thought they’d be back by now.”

“Joe, I don’t think I can stay awake much longer. I’m all fucked up here.”

“That makes two of us. I can’t even feel my hands anymore.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Bill’s voice had an empty sound, like something was missing inside it. He let a moment go by. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said then, “but I’m going to let go of the bar.”

“Not a good idea. I can’t hold on without your help.”

“Joe, listen. It’s not your fault. I shouldn’t have been horsing around up on the dam like that. I’m deadweight, but I know you, you could hold this thing all night if you had to. Just let me go.”

I stiffened my hold on the bar to make my point. “It’s not going to happen.”

“Sure it is, buddy, sure it is. You’ve got a family to think of. What’s your girl’s name? Kate? Do the right thing, Joe. Think of Kate and let me go.”

The cold or the late hour or just the hopeless mess I’d made of things; think of Kate, he said, and so I did. Kats, my mind said, wherever you are, your old man’s in a bit of a jam here. You’re one smart cookie. You’re my Kats. What the hell do I do now?

It was a kind of prayer, I suppose, this sending the mind outward, and what came back to me was a memory of our trip together that spring, to California-we’d rented a car after all, to drive up from LA to San Francisco on the coast highway-and a moment, purely happy, when we’d stopped at a turnout near San Clemente to stretch our legs and look at the view. Beside the roadway there was a little picnic area, with weathered tables and rusty trash cans, everything wind-blasted and not a tree in sight, just sea-smoothed rocks and banks of ice plant reclining like steps to the water; we took a table and sat, drinking bottled water and passing back and forth a little baggie of yogurt-covered peanuts that Kate had bought that morning at a health-food shop in Santa Barbara. All of it: the place itself, so beautiful and barren; the ache in my back and eyes from hours on the road; the taste of water and the peanuts, the yogurt sweet as cake icing over the hard saltiness of their interior; and the feeling of the two of us sitting there without speaking, without needing to. It was as if something opened inside me, a kind of boundless love. I hadn’t been back to California for twenty years, not since the day I’d stepped from the restaurant in Santa Monica and begun my journey home, and I suddenly thought it would be all right if she knew, that it had always been all right-that the time had come at last to tell her the real story, about that year.

“You know, it’s nice here,” she said, looking out over the water.

“That’s just what I was thinking.”

“A little far away, though.” A breeze had kicked up, tousling her hair. “I know you went to a lot of trouble to bring me out here. But I’ve been thinking, maybe it would be better if I stayed closer to home.”

“It’s your life, Kats. You don’t need to worry about your mother and me. Besides, we’re gone all winter.” By this time, I hadn’t actually sold the camp, not technically-agreements made, paperwork still churning through the system-so I had told her nothing about this.

“Yeah, well…” She shrugged. “It’s not really Mom I’m thinking about.”

“Is it a boy?”

“God, Dad.” She gave an annoyed laugh. “No, it’s not a boy. It’s just… I don’t know, everything. Mom, you, all of it. My whole stupid life.”

“I just want you to be happy, Kats.”

She sighed heavily. “I know you do. But what does that mean, Dad? Sometimes I wish I was like, I don’t know, those other kids, Mary Prossert or Susan Jude. I think Mary’s, what, cutting hair now? And Susan’s probably still with that dork boyfriend of hers, always tearing through the woods on his ATV. They don’t have to worry about their organic final, or med school, or California, or any of it.”

“You’re a smart kid, kiddo. Comes with the territory. You’ll figure it out.”

She frowned miserably, looking at the table. “Sometimes I don’t feel so smart.”

“Well, you’re doing better than I am. I never feel smart.”

She laughed a little at that, and I was glad I’d eased her out of the worst of it. “But you’re happy.”

“Mostly,” I agreed. “Not always. Happiness may be overrated, Kats. I do know I’m happy I’m your dad.”

She lifted her face to look at me. “Well, that’s my point.”

“How’s that your point?” But as I said it, I understood, and my heart cracked like an egg.

Not a boy: me. She didn’t want to leave me.

“It’s okay,” I said, and unwound my legs from the picnic table to stand. Everything was suddenly swimming. I cleared my throat and held out the keys to the rental. “You feel like driving?”

She took the keys and looked at them strangely. “They’ve gotten lost,” she said in a distant voice. “They’re like children, lost in the woods.”

“Kats? Who’s lost?”

“You don’t have much time, Daddy,” she said. I felt myself rising, lifting away. “You’re cold. You should go through the dam.”

Go through the dam.

My head snapped back, my eyes flew open: I beheld the night sky and stars, and remembered where I was. A memory that had become a dream, or something else: an answer.

Go through the dam.

“Joe, listen-”

“We’ll do it together,” I said quickly. “Listen to me, I know this’ll work. We can go through the drain to the other side.”

“Joe, that’s crazy. We’ll fucking drown. I don’t think I can swim at all.”

“You won’t have to.” It was all coming clear. Sixty feet down, another hundred or so through the empty turbine tube. The tower would be tight, and there was a hard turn somewhere at the bottom, but the pressure would yank us through. If we didn’t get stuck somewhere or beaten to death against the sides of the tube, we’d shoot out the other side like rifle bullets, into the deep pool at the dam’s base.

“I’ll hold on to you. It’s just fifty yards. I know what I’m talking about.”

I twisted my neck to look for Pete, sitting on the edge of the dam.

“Pete, go down below! We’re going through the drain!”

He cupped an ear. “What?”

“The outlet!” I did my best to wave him in the right direction, hoping he could see me in the dark. “Just go! We’ll be coming out there!”

Pete rose to his feet, then headed at a trot across the catwalk to the trailhead. I braced the soles of my feet against the wall of the tower to push off. Our best chance to negotiate the turn at the bottom was a clean entry, straight through the gate and down the drain.

“Joe, this is suicide.”

“Maybe. But it’s the best idea I’ve got.”

He managed a laugh. “You’re one brave son of a bitch, you know that?”

I wanted to laugh too. I would have, if I weren’t so afraid. A crazy anticipation whirled inside me, half wild desire, half raw terror. It made me feel weirdly alive. I shifted my feet against the tower, tensing the muscles, preparing to spring.

“I’ll tell you a story about that later, if you want. Ready?”

I didn’t wait for his answer. I released the bar, wrapped my arms tight around his waist, and pushed away hard. We didn’t make it a yard before the whirlpool took us, a thousand pressing hands; I had just enough time to fill my lungs with air and think how stupid this was, how truly, truly stupid, we were going to drown for sure, before we hit the gate, rolled headfirst, and plunged into the darkness.

TWENTY-FOUR

A night of waiting: after Harry and Jordan had set out, I returned to the lodge; there was still dinner to think of, and guests to feed. I found Patty in the kitchen, crying as usual, and I surprised myself by speaking to her curtly, then softened with guilt, gave her a motherly hug, and sent her home for the night. A little teenage heartbreak wasn’t what was bothering me; I still hadn’t heard from Joe. Usually he returned by six, making him, by the time we were sending out dessert-the apple pies I’d baked that morning-at least two hours overdue.

The last empty dessert dishes were coming in when Hal entered the kitchen. I knew he hadn’t eaten and had kept a plate of swordfish warm for him.

“Any sign of them?” I asked.

He sat at the table and shook his head. “Not a peep. And it’s gotten awfully dark out there.”

I put the plate in front of him. He picked at it politely, though I could tell he wasn’t hungry. I shooed Claire from the room, dried my hands on a dish towel, and sat across from him.

“You should eat.”

Hal put his fork aside. “Yeah, I know.”

I covered his hand with mine. “They’ll be okay, Hal. Jordan knows what he’s doing. Probably they just got into some fish. I bet they’re having a high old time out there, just like your dad wanted.”

Hal said nothing. We both knew how late it was. With no moon up, the lake would be dark as an inkwell.

“Joe back yet?”

I shook my head. “No, and to tell you the truth, I’m a little worried about him, too. It’s not like him to be out this late.”

“So there we are.”

I nodded. “There we are.”

I cleared away his plate and excused myself to go check the radio. This was pointless, I knew; I’d long since given up any hope of raising him, but I felt I had to do something. I sat at the console and set the dial.

“Station tango-yankee-juliet-two-zero-one-seven, this is Crosby Camp, looking for Joe Crosby. Over.” I released the button and waited. The night was clear and reception should have been good. For a moment I heard nothing but the empty hiss of the open channel. Then:

“Lucy, that you?”

I jolted upright in my chair. But the voice wasn’t Joe’s. I wanted to cry with disappointment.

“Hey, Porter. Just looking for Joe. He took a party down to Zisko Dam this morning, and I haven’t been able to raise him. He’s way overdue. Over.”

For a moment the line was clogged with static. I adjusted the squelch, recapturing Porter’s voice in midreply.

“… truck about an hour ago. Over.”

A truck, I thought hopefully: he was talking about Joe’s truck. “Say again, Porter. Over.”

“Said a rescue truck went tearing out of here an hour ago. Headed south on County 21, could be toward the dam. Over.”

What happened next seemed to happen all at once: I dropped the mike, ran outside to the car, stopped, thought to go back in and call Darryl Tanner, then to go find Kate. A rescue truck, headed toward the dam. It could be anything, I told myself, could have nothing to do with Joe, or if it did, it didn’t have to be Joe himself, but someone else in his group-one of the lawyers with their fat cigars and diets of whiskey and butter.

It could be, but it wasn’t. It was Joe. All day long I’d been thinking of Harry, and it was Joe.

Kate stepped out of the darkness toward me. “Mom?”

She was looking at the car keys in my hand. I was so flustered I’d completely forgotten where I’d thought to go. The dam? The hospital?

“Honey, your father-”

“I know, where the hell is he? Because I really think we need to put together some kind of search team for Harry and Jordan. Hal’s down at the docks getting a boat ready. I thought I’d take one too, so we can cover more area.”

I didn’t know what to say, how to explain. All I had was a snippet of Porter’s voice on the radio.

“Kate, your father… on the radio…”

“Mom, are you okay? Because I actually wanted to tell you something else.” She took a step closer, into the glow of the porch light. “Don’t be mad, but I went to talk to Harry this afternoon. I knew you wouldn’t go, because of Daddy. I sort of… well, I sort of pretended I was you.”

I was lost, completely at sea. “You did what?”

“I told you not to be mad. I didn’t mean to. It’s just kind of how things worked out.” She took me by the elbow. “He really loves you, Mom. That’s what he told me. I just thought you should know.”

“Oh, Kate, what have you done?”

Then the trees were full of light, flashing red and white, so much whirling light we both looked up, amazed. I heard the engine and looked down the drive just as Darryl Tanner’s police cruiser made the last turn and his headlights hit us dead-on.

“What’s he doing here?” Kate said.

The cruiser rolled to a stop. I stood stock-still, listening to the tick of its engine. I thought, Joe is dead, drowned in the river. Darryl has come to tell me my husband has died.

But then the passenger door opened and Joe climbed out. The breath I was holding came out of my chest in a rush. He was barefoot, and as he stepped forward I saw in the glare of the headlights that he was dressed in an ill-fitting sheriff’s uniform. A towel lay around his neck.

“Joe, my God, what happened?”

He put his arms around me and held me, hard. His hair was damp and cool between my fingers. Behind us, Darryl climbed out of the cruiser and stood with his hat in his hands.

“Joe, what is it?”

“I’m all right,” he said. “I’m all right, I’m all right.”

Still he held on. No one moved or spoke. When at last he pulled away, I saw his eyes were different, full of something-not fear or sorrow or even relief, but Joe himself. They were simply full of Joe.

“Tell me,” I whispered.

He looked past my shoulder to Kate, standing behind us, and then returned his eyes to me.

“Where’s Harry?” he said.

TWENTY-FIVE

For a time I simply rowed. Harry didn’t ask me where we were going; I’d mentioned the river mouth and that was enough, and in any event it was the obvious place, as clear to Harry as it was to me. So, in silence, I pulled on the oars; the wind had died, the lake was glassy calm, but the boat was heavy and not meant for rowing, so it was hard, involving work, getting Harry where he needed to go. I thought about Kate, whom I loved, and Joe and Lucy, whom I also loved, and about my father, his spirit soaring in the stars above and his body gone under the sea; I thought about the sounds the trees make in December when there’s no one around for miles, and about my mother’s voice on the phone when she told me of that sad day when she was just a girl; I thought how time passes, and how love is just another word for time. I thought all these things and rowed, rowed, rowed, feeling the sweat cool on my shoulders and brow as I watched the camp disappear over the stern when we rounded the point; and soon Harry, silent since our departure, tipped his old head forward and slept.

It was dusk by the time we reached the inlet. I pulled the oars in, letting the boat drift, and watched the lake bottom to see where the drop-off was. Above us to the north, the river entered the lake, forming a shallow delta where the current spread like the fingers of a hand; about a hundred feet from shore, the bottom dropped in a sheer wall from five feet to more than twenty. Close in, the water was the color of weak tea, and just as clear; when we reached the edge, I’d know. Trout might hold on either side, and our best chance would come at nightfall or just after, when the air cooled and some fish might rise to feed on the surface.

I positioned the boat just above the drop-off on the shallow side. Harry was still sleeping, his chin resting on his chest. A shock of white hair fell over his forehead; his body was slack and calm. We nosed into the current and I set the anchor. The shadow of the mountains to the west lay long across the lake water, drinking up the last of the light.

Harry lifted his head and blinked at me. “We’re there?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He scootched up a little on the cushions, wiped a bead of moisture from his chin, and gave a squinty look around. “Marvelous,” he said.

“It’s the best time, isn’t it?”

Harry slid a hand into his vest and removed an envelope. I guessed that it contained the deed to the camp, or a letter more or less explaining that fact. He held it out to me.

“This is for you, Jordan.”

I took the envelope and examined it. The paper was heavy and felt like cream in my hands. The upper-left-hand corner bore the name of a New York law firm-Sally’s, I guessed-etched into the paper in a curvy script, like the writing in a hymnal. I imagined the great office from which it had come: the deep carpeting, the heavy wood furniture, the smell of cigar smoke in its silent boardrooms long after everyone had gone for the night. It was just paper, but it felt like a letter from the very heart of the world. I decided not to open it, and placed it in the picnic basket that Lucy had prepared for us, in with the sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper and the thermos of spiked coffee and the bag of peanut butter cookies.

Harry frowned. “You’re not going to look?”

“There’s no need,” I said. “You’ve always been very generous. You don’t have to give me anything, really. It’s a pleasure just to be out here on a night like this.”

“Hal told you.”

I nodded. “We talked. I guess you could say yes, he told me.”

“Well, I thought he might,” Harry said. He took two deep breaths, exhaling through his mouth. His lips were dry and cracked, and he licked them with a slow, heavy tongue. “Oh, Hal’s all right. I don’t think he meant to spoil anything. Do you accept it?”

“The camp?” I said. “Yes. Of course.” I stopped. “It’s my home.”

Harry smiled weakly. “Then that’s all I need to hear. We don’t have to say anything more about it. It makes me happy that you’ll be here, looking after things. I’m very sentimental about this place, Jordan.”

A shiver snaked through his body, running the length of him like an electric current from toes to jaw. I took the blanket from the pile of gear in the bow, and without quite standing, I laid it across him, tucking it under his arms.

“My father brought me to a place like this when I was nine,” Harry said. “I hate to tell you how long ago that was. He was a great man. Hard, in his way, but there was kindness in him. I remember him whenever I’m here.” He paused and shook with a tight, dry cough. “The real problem isn’t the dying, so much. It’s being sick before you die. I can barely fucking move, Jordan. There’s no justice in it.”

The light was almost gone; full-on dark was maybe thirty minutes away, but the sun had dipped below the mountain ridge, etching the jagged line of its peaks into the deepening sky. The water around us was fantastically still.

“I’ve got some dinner packed here,” I told him. “You never know when we might have some risers. You should keep your strength up.”

Harry eyed the basket, then shook his head. “You know what I’d really like, Jordan?” A smile crept over his face. “A cigarette. I’m dying of lung cancer, and all I want is a cigarette. I haven’t smoked for thirty years, not since that surgeon general thing.”

“It couldn’t hurt now, I guess. I don’t have one, though.”

“It’s just as well. Franny would smell it,” he said. “Franny would smell it, and there’d be hell to pay.”

“I have some whiskey, if you want. I mixed it in with the coffee.”

I removed the thermos from the basket and poured the coffee into two aluminum mugs. I handed one to Harry and guided his finger through the handle. The coffee was bitter and old, but with the Scotch and the cream and sugar it was at least drinkable, and its warmth filled my chest. I wondered how long it would be before someone came to find us.

“It’s good,” Harry said. He took another sip, struggling to swallow. “But I don’t think I can drink. You go ahead, though.”

“I brought some nymphs and streamers along. It might be worthwhile, drifting something in the current.”

“Not just yet,” Harry said. “Something may rise.” He gave me a wink. “We may get lucky yet.”

“There’s always a chance.”

“I hope that’s true,” Harry said. “I believe it’s true. How many times have we fished together, Jordan?”

I sipped my coffee and tried to count. “A lot. Thirty or forty, anyway.”

“Was it your father who taught you?”

“My father died when I was small.”

“Of course,” Harry said. “Forgive me, Jordan. I knew that. He was a pilot, wasn’t he?”

I nodded. “I had a stepfather, though. I learned a lot from him. And from Joe.”

“There’s no one better,” Harry said. “You know, I don’t think I can fish, Jordan. I thought I might feel up to it, but I was wrong.” A deeper exhaustion suddenly came into his face; it was like nothing I had ever seen, or wanted to. He breathed deeply, holding each gulp of air in his chest as if to keep it there as long as he could; as if it weren’t just oxygen, but something marvelous-a beautiful memory of air. He closed his eyes and let his head rock forward. I thought he was going to sleep, but then he looked up, letting his eyes rove across the lake before lighting them on me again.

“ Jordan, I have something to ask you. Would you help me into the lake?”

“You want to fish from shore, you mean?”

We looked at one another, and then I understood.

“Dying hurts, Jordan, but that’s not the reason. Pain is nothing, really. I’m afraid I won’t die here. They’ll take me back, and I couldn’t stand that.”

I sat and thought awhile. I didn’t doubt that it was sincerely what he wanted, but in the end, I knew what I was going to say.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Wainwright. I just can’t. I more or less told Hal I wouldn’t, too.”

Harry nodded, considering. “Well. You’re perfectly right. I hope you can forgive me for asking.”

“It’s not something to forgive,” I said. “I would if I could. It’s just not something I’m capable of. I’m truly sorry.” And I was, too. “Hal expects me to bring you back. Franny too.”

“I could climb out of the boat on my own,” he said. “It wouldn’t be easy, but I could manage it somehow.”

I nodded. “You could,” I said.

“What would you do then?”

I tossed the rest of my coffee over the side. “I’d have to say I’d probably go in after you, Mr. Wainwright. Then we’d both be wet and cold, and the fish would be spooked. No use wrecking our evening like that.”

He smiled then, and so did I, and I realized that the moment I had feared was now behind me. The lake had turned a deep black-blue, the same color as the sky, and all around and above us the stars were poking through the twilight, their pinpoints of light doubled in the lake’s still surface. Harry’s shivering had returned, but I didn’t think it was the falling temperature that was doing it. I poured myself another cup of coffee and sipped it slowly. Harry’s arms and neck grew loose, and for a while I watched him, his thin chest rising and falling under the blanket. When the coffee was gone I rose from the bench, negotiated my way across the boat, and wedged myself in behind him. Straddling his back, I crept my weight forward until he was leaning against me. It was cold, and I had begun to shiver too; I wished I’d thought to put on my sweater before I’d moved, but there was no way to get it now. I wrapped my arms around him. We are adrift in the heavens, I thought.

Sometime later, Harry awoke. “Franny?201D

“It’s Jordan,” I said. “I came behind you, to keep you warm.”

“Oh,” he said. “Not Franny?”

“No, sir,” I said. “She’s back on shore, waiting for you.”

“Lucy?”

“Her too. Everyone,” I said.

Once again, he slept. Night fell, and fell some more. It was time to head home, I knew. Harry’s head lay against my chest, a ghostly halo of white, and I thought, touching his hair, what dreams are these? What last sweet dreams of life on earth?

And then it happened; all around us, suddenly, a great swarm, as if the stars had freed themselves from gravity’s pull and ascended from the waters. A hatch. And everywhere, breaking the stillness, the sound of trout rising, the bright splash of their tails as they slapped the water to feed on the insects that spun on the surface. The rods lay on the benches before us, out of reach, forgotten. It didn’t matter. We floated among them. I closed my eyes and listened until the splashing faded, feeling only pure happiness that I had been there to witness it.

And then, sometime later, I saw the light, then heard the motor that churned behind it. It blinked around the point, tangled in the trees, rounded the corner again; it raked across us, making me blink against its brightness. Hal and Franny. The light split-a second boat, I realized, Joe and Lucy running beside them-and then peeled off again: Kate. They floated toward us in the darkness.

“ Jordan?” I felt Harry stir. “ Jordan, should we go to them?”

I watched the lights come on. “Whenever you’re ready, Harry.”