A Different Kind of Summer

Muttering his annoyance, Sam kept clearing away vegetation. “Out in the weather like this? Didn’t we leave it in the garage?”

“Someone must have brought it down to use.”

“Sarah!”

“Well—”

“Sarah for sure, and some guy. She’d get excited, oh my, such a romantic outing, and then she’d forget all about it.” Sam knocked on the hull. “What do you think?”

“It looks fairly solid, considering. Not past repair.”

Sam lifted one side and peered underneath. “The paddles are here.” He pulled one out. It had a rounded, beaver-tail design and only reached to his chest, just right for when he was a child. A daddy longlegs ran off the weathered wood and fell into the grass. “I’m going to have to talk to that girl.”

“Talking’s never been that useful.” From birth Sarah had been impervious to her brothers’ view of things. The canoe had been a regular source of conflict. Sarah would insist on going with them whenever they took it out on the river, but then she’d free any minnows or crayfish they caught and refuse to do her share of the paddling because it interfered with being the Lady of Shalott.

David thought Sam would want to spend a few days cleaning the canoe, patching it, maybe giving the cedar a fresh coat of marine varnish and the canvas some waterproof paint—or at least stick on some duct tape here and there—but he was already pushing it into the water.

“Are you going to help?”

“You’re doing fine, Sam.”

“You can pull it in, then.”

“The sweaty stuff’s up to you. I have to be at work in an hour.” But something got to him while he watched his brother struggle with the heavy craft. The squish of river mud or the smell of the water, he didn’t know. He kicked off his shoes and tugged off his socks, then stooped to roll up his pant legs. By then the canoe was floating. Sam knelt in the stern, his paddle hard against the riverbed.

“You’re going to get wet.”

David had already noticed that. He took a giant step from the muddy shore, one foot slipping as he heaved himself into the canoe. It rocked and he nearly tipped them both into the river.

“Idiot!” Half laughing, Sam grabbed David’s belt and pulled him down. “Never stand, remember?”

“Oh, right. It’s a gondola you stand up in.”

They didn’t have life jackets. David always used one in his own canoe, but as close as they were to the river, his parents had never owned any. The Bretton kids had grown up with the feeling that danger didn’t lurk anywhere. They were never told to be careful, never watched, never scolded for taking risks. Looking back, David thought they must have been just plain lucky.

“Better stay close to shore,” he said.

Sam ignored him. With his paddle acting as rudder he was in control of where they went, and he steered them to the middle of the river. David didn’t push the point. There was a brittleness about Sam, as if he’d be glad of a chance to push back. It was enough to feel muscles pulling, hear the dip of the paddles and know his brother was safe at home. A kayak passed them and a mother mallard led a line of fluff balls away from them into the reeds, but other than that they were alone.

Here and there dampness seeped through the canvas. “Have we got anything to bail with, Sam? If we need to, I mean?”

“Nope.”

“I don’t want much of this river in here with us.”

Sam didn’t answer. Maybe he’d forgotten about the variety of unpleasant things that were dumped into the Red. The water could cause a rash were it touched skin, or cramps in anyone unfortunate enough to ingest it.

“Is this your leave instead of August? We should tell Sarah to come now if she can.”

“Don’t bother.”

“But you’ll want to see her.”

“Not really.”

David wasn’t sure what to make of his brother’s tone. He didn’t sound angry, but he wasn’t joking around, either.

“Sam.”

“What?”

“Don’t be like that.”

“Like what?”

“It’s just a canoe.”

“It’s not just a canoe. It’s our canoe.”

They were out of the slow-moving loop. The farther they went the harder the paddle back would be and he’d arrive at work sweaty after all. Unless the steady seeping became leaking and they sank. Swimming to shore through this brown soup would be one way of solving the sweaty problem.

“It’s good you came home early, Sam. Mom and Dad missed you.”

“They’re all right, aren’t they? Sarah’s not driving them crazy?”

“Sarah’s not the problem, not for Mom and Dad, anyway.”

“So there is a problem? I thought there was.”

“It’s nothing serious. Dad’s bothered about the big 7-0.” It wasn’t the age, his father had told him, not the nearly three-quarters of a century behind him. Feeling like a wise old man was fine. The problem was he wanted to keep on being one for another three-quarters of a century.

The canoe had slowed. David looked over his shoulder. Sam wasn’t moving. He stared at the riverbank, his face unguarded, exhaustion in every line.

“Sam?”

“I thought it would be…like it usually is. Greener.”

“The trees are stressed. One year there’s flooding, the next it’s dry. We’ve had thaws in January. It’s not what they need.” David angled his paddle, pushing away from the current as best he could from the bow. “You all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” Sam began to turn the canoe around.

TO CHRIS, nice clothes meant matching. He came to breakfast wearing blue jeans and a blue T-shirt, and when it was time to leave he added a blue baseball cap. Although he seemed a little wound up about what he might learn at the museum, Gwyn thought he was happy to be going.

She set the pace, fast enough for them to reach the stop before the bus, but slow enough to accommodate Chris’s frequent pausing and squatting to watch ants drag dead bugs across the cement, bumblebees bounce from clover flower to clover flower and caterpillars invite almost certain death on the slow crawl from boulevard to nearby lawn.

“Caterpillars are sort of like snakes,” he said.

Gwyn took his hand and hurried across the road just before the light changed. “How are caterpillars like snakes?”