Three Bird Summer (2 page)

I slammed the car door, and the sound echoed in the silence.

“Shhh! I’m sure she’s asleep by now,” Mom whispered.

We pulled our most essential bags from the car and headed up the steps to the cabin. A crowd of moths and june bugs was going nuts around the porch light, slamming against the bulb like hockey players hitting the boards. In the morning, we’d find fried ones scattered among the brown pine needles on the steps below.

Inside the cabin, Mom turned on a light, casting the kitchen in a yellow glow and turning the windows into impenetrable black squares. Two biscuits and a few slices of ham sat in a tin pie plate on top of the stove. Beside them was a small note written in my grandmother’s shaky hand, with a pencil beside it:

Thought you said you’d be here by dinner. Eat up.

“I told her we’d be on the late side!” Mom said, sounding exasperated. She took up the pencil and wrote
Sorry!
We both knew Grandma would wake up hours before us, still bothered by our delay.

“Tell her it’s because of your coffee habit,” I whispered.

“Shhh,” she said back.

“Explain how you needed five stops for caffeine and ten stops to pee,” I added. Because it was true. I was convinced we’d added two hours to our travel time pulling over at rest areas and gas stations.

“Adam, enough!” my mother whispered. “I’m sure she isn’t interested in the gory details. Anyway, it’s time for bed.”

Mom lingered in the kitchen while I hauled my duffel through the main part of the cabin, breathing in the familiar smell of wood paneling and fireplace cinders. Everything was in its usual place. There were the couches with their lumpy orange cushions, the handmade wooden tables, the bronze reading lamps. There was the Three Bird Lake banner — a large felt rectangle featuring an eagle, a loon, and a great blue heron — hanging over the fireplace as it had for decades. There were the faded books on the shelves, sharing space with collections of rocks, feathers, and pinecones. There were the curled sketches thumbtacked to the walls — crayon drawings my cousins and I had made when we were little, and a few pencil drawings by my grandmother of birds and plants.

Back in my small bedroom, the decor hadn’t been changed for decades, either. My bed had a scratchy wool blanket, red with a single black stripe. A small dresser stood against the wall, with an old framed mirror above it. Stuck into the mirror were black-and-white snapshots of my mother as a young girl, a 1961 postcard from Chicago, and a picture of me from kindergarten. Grandma kept a white lacy fabric on top of the dresser at all times, and when I used to tell my mom that it was too girly, she told me to hush and feel grateful that I had my own space at all. My cousins had always had to sleep on pull-out bunks in the main part of the cabin, listening to each other snore.

I dropped my duffel, and it hit the wooden floor with a thud.

“Shhh,” my mother said from the hall.

In past summers, that would have been the cue for Dad to tell her to relax. I sighed and pulled on my pajamas.

In the morning, I woke to the sounds of motorboats crossing the lake and the smell of bacon. Grandma made pancakes and bacon for breakfast every morning. It was one of her best traditions.

I got up and made my bed, knowing Mom and Grandma would tolerate nothing less. Then I walked into the living room. All along one side of the cabin, tall windows looked out toward the lake. This was the first thing anyone noticed stepping into the cabin — how it was almost like a giant screened porch. Today I could see patches of blue sky through the tree limbs, and sunlight skipping on Three Bird Lake below.

“Here’s Adam!” Mom said as I shuffled into the kitchen.

Grandma was leaning over the stove, plucking bacon from the griddle. She was wearing her usual cabin attire: an oxford shirt rolled up at the sleeves, khaki pants, and little white sneakers. At my mother’s words, she turned and looked up — at me and beyond me, it seemed. I looked over my shoulder to see if I was missing something.

“He’s grown, hasn’t he?” Mom said. “I think he finally has us beat.”

Grandma blinked and nodded. She came over and gave me a little kiss on the cheek, then returned to the stove. She jabbed at the remaining bacon with her fork like a bird pecking at worms.

“I see you didn’t eat the food I left out for you last night,” she said.

“We were just so tired, Ma,” my mom explained.

I sat down at the table, and Mom slid me a glass of juice. “It looks like a beautiful day,” she said, fingering one of the gold hoop earrings she still had on from yesterday.

I nodded.

“Are you going to paddle around the lake by yourself this summer?” Grandma asked me. It was a question she asked me and my cousins every year. Not “How are you?” or “How was your school year?” or “What do you feel like doing most this summer?” Just a question that seemed designed to provoke and, in my case, humiliate.

“We’ll see,” I said. In other summers, it wouldn’t have been easy to make a solo voyage. My cousins were all boys: Max, Rocky, Toad, and Stu — the sons of my dad’s brother, Uncle John. They were older than me and much more aggressive. Whenever they were visiting the cabin, I was lucky if I even got a chance to steer the canoe, much less be alone in it. Not that I really minded. Solo canoeing had never been high on my list of summer priorities.

Grandma flipped a pancake on the stove. “How many of these do you eat now?” she asked me.

“Let’s say five,” I said.

She nodded approvingly. Sometimes I thought she’d be better off with a bear cub than a grandson. Maybe she even wished I was Toad, who’d gotten his nickname as a toddler when he ate a dead housefly off the windowsill and who still ate like an amphibian — all cheeks and tongue.

When she’d finished serving me and Mom, Grandma finally sat down with her own pancake. She didn’t show much interest in eating it, though; instead, she wrapped her knobby fingers around her mug and sipped her coffee slowly, like medicine. Grandma had a tough face — tan and leathery from so much time in the sun, and scoured with wrinkles that made her look like she was always frowning. Her white hair was cut short like a boy’s, and it lay flat against her head in hard angles. She wore silver glasses — always the same shape and style. They were dull now, but her eyes still glinted behind them when she was in the right mood.

“Did your mother tell you about our newest neighbors?” she asked, gazing slyly at me.

“A new family or something?” I said.

“They have a girl your age!” she said.

“Girls my age are . . .” I hesitated.

Mom listened with obvious interest.

I stuffed the last bite of pancake in my mouth and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Probably starting to look interesting, I’d say,” Grandma teased.

I slid off the bench and dumped my dishes in the sink. “I’m going to go down to the dock.”

I pushed open the screen door and let it close with a bang, cringing as I heard Mom and Grandma chuckling behind me. Is this what I had to look forward to all summer? Even having my cousins around putting centipedes under my pillow would be better than being the sole object of Mom’s and Grandma’s attention.

I hopped down the wooden steps of the deck and followed the worn path that curved around the cabin and down to the lake. The smell of dry pine needles tickled my nose. When I reached the shore, I walked out the length of the dock and stood at its end, taking everything in.

Three Bird Lake was a long oval — more than two miles from end to end and just over a mile across. Small houses dotted the shoreline for most of its perimeter. When my mom was growing up, this had been a summer cabin community with plenty of untouched wooded land. Now most of the neighbors lived here year-round in real houses with grassy lawns. Only Grandma’s property was crowded with pines and birches like a genuine northern forest. Lucky for us, she had more than a thousand feet of shoreline and more than a hundred acres of woods. If you stuck to her property, you could still feel like you were someplace wild, even if the other people on the lake owned Jet Skis and plastic flamingos.

The end of the dock was my favorite place on Grandma’s property. I spent hours here doing nothing at all. Grandma teased me about it sometimes. “World’s best dock-sitter” she sometimes called me. “The neighbors probably think you’re a statue, there to scare off the gulls.” But I didn’t care. I loved the big sky and the big lake rolling out at my feet.

A cool breeze crossed the water. It felt like the great North was barreling through me with my every breath. Here’s what slipped away: schedules, bus rides, the stale smell of the school cafeteria, algebraic equations, Mom and Dad’s phone arguments, girl talk, and Grandma’s interrogations. Here’s what I got in exchange: water sloshing slowly and steadily against the dock like the heartbeat of a great whale. A pair of black-and-white loons swimming into view. Fresh air and a lake that, right then, felt like it was all mine.

I sat down and dropped my feet in the water. It was cold for the middle of June, but I’d get used to it in a few days. Minnows darted at my toes, casting busy black shadows on the sand below.

I heard voices across the water. Grandma’s dock was the one place on her property where you were aware of having neighbors. On land, the woods wrapped us in dense cover, but out here, you could see a few nearby docks and the edges of the neighbors’ lawns. Now a girl about my age and a boy maybe a couple of years older were standing on the nearest dock, loading a small rowboat with gear. The famous neighbor. Grandma hadn’t said anything about a brother, so I figured this was her boyfriend. Maybe that would put an end to Grandma’s teasing. Both kids were tall, blond, and tan. Typical Minnesotans. They were probably ace tennis players and competitive Nordic skiers. Not dock-sitters, at least.

I stared across the water at the loons and pretended not to notice the kids. Loons were more interesting anyway. Their heads were glossy and black, with a band of vertical black-and-white stripes around their necks that looked like something they’d stolen from a zebra. Their eyes were red. Across their backs, dozens of small white squares aligned in near-perfect rows.

The two loons drifted closer to me, then abruptly dove underwater. A moment later, I heard the sound of oars clunking against the oarlocks of a boat and looked up to see the two kids rowing into talking range.

“Hey,” said the girl. Her long hair was pulled back in a smooth ponytail, and she wore a faded T-shirt from someplace called Camp Watson. “Are you Mrs. Stegner’s grandson?”

“Yeah,” I said.

The boy was looking at me coolly. I turned my attention to my foot and started picking idly at my big toenail. There were certain boys at my school who turned into total jerks whenever girls were around, and I sensed he was one of them.

“What’s the matter? Too much toe jam?” the boy asked.

I pulled my hand away and shrugged. “It’s nothing,” I mumbled.

“We’re going fishing,” the girl said. “Want to come?”

The boy’s eyes traveled over the inside of the boat, which was already stuffed full with tackle boxes, cushions, and a white plastic pail. “Where’s he going to sit — your lap?”

“Very funny, Tyler. There’s plenty of room if you slide those worms under your butt,” she told him.

Tyler made a face at her.

“That’s OK,” I said quickly. “I promised my grandmother I’d help her out with some things around the cabin.”

“No problem,” the girl said. “I’m Alice, by the way. And this is my cousin Tyler.”

I nodded. Cousin. So much for my defense against Grandma’s teasing.

“You got a name?” Tyler asked when I didn’t say anything.

“Uh, yeah. Adam,” I said.

He smirked. “Nice.”

“See you around!” Alice said, giving Tyler a look.

“Later, Uh-Yeah Adam,” said Tyler, whipping his blond hair out of his eyes. He picked up the oars and gave them a strong pull.

I watched them row across the water. A girl on the lake was bad. A girl with an obnoxious cousin was even worse. I couldn’t help feeling like my favorite place on earth had just been invaded by enemy forces.

LATE IN THE MORNING,
I found Mom in the kitchen, her nose buried in the refrigerator. She had been cleaning. The house smelled like Murphy Oil Soap, and the surfaces had an unnaturally shiny glow.

“We need to go to town for food,” Mom said, closing the refrigerator door with a hard shove. “There’s nothing in here but eggs and a very old ham. I’m not even sure she’s gone shopping since Uncle Martin brought her up last month.” Uncle Martin was Mom’s brother. He lived in the Twin Cities and came up to the cabin for occasional weekend visits.

I glanced out the window at Grandma’s station wagon, covered with pine needles. It didn’t look like it had been moved in a long time.

“Maybe she doesn’t feel like driving anymore,” I said.

“Maybe she shouldn’t be driving anyway,” Mom said quietly, more irritated than concerned. “Come on, let’s go to the store so we have something for lunch.”

I made a face. “I’d rather stay here.”

“I need you to come,” my mom said. “I can’t keep track of what you like and don’t like these days.”