Seventeenth Summer (3 page)

In the Big Hole the wind barely wrinkled the water with waves. We moved slowly at first—Swede up in the bow and Jack and I sitting in the stern, until we had passed through the narrow space between the lighthouse and the breakwater. Already cars were parked along the Point with their headlight beams poking out into the thickening dusk. Almost everyone in Fond du Lac goes out for a drive in the evening and then stops for a while to look at the lake. Someone honked a horn and leaned out a car window to wave at us. “People do that just to be friendly,” said Jack. “I don’t know who it is.”

“Are you comfortable?” he asked. “If you get chilly say so and you can put my sweater on.” I just nodded. It was too lovely to talk. The boat rose and fell gently as it topped the waves. Swede was letting out the sail and the loose canvas flapped in the wind. Occasionally the greenish water slapped hard against the side of
the boat and sent spray over the edge. “Here,” said Jack. “We’ll put this canvas over your legs—no sense in your getting wet. You’re a good scout, do you know that? Lots of girls are scared to go out in boats.”

“I love it,” I told him. He was sitting almost on the point of the stem with his red and white basketball sweater tied around his neck by the sleeves and a light wind was ruffling his hair from behind.

I sighed and he said to me, “You’re not cold, are you? Remember, just say the word and the sweater’s yours. I really brought it along for you—I never get cold myself.” Leaning over, he put it around my shoulders and I remember thinking when he was so close how much he smelled like Ivory soap.

We were sailing in silence for a long time and way up in the sky, past the boathouses, was pasted a thin tissue-paper curve of moon. Swede had hung a lantern that swung in the darkness on his end of the boat and it licked red light over the tops of the waves. Just then he finished a cigarette and flipped it out over the water. We were far out by that time and the car lights were only star dots along the pier. It was very still. I looked back at Jack and he was sitting with his head thrown back, gazing at the sky. Far beyond him was only the darkness of the lake. The wind blew lightly, brushing through my hair. Jack moved forward suddenly and slipped up beside me on the narrow seat. “Angie Morrow,” he said quietly. “You look nice with the wind in your hair.”

And I remember just how he said it.

“That’s one thing about the lake at night,” he whispered. “No other place is so beautiful or so quiet. Sometimes Swede and I come out here and just drift for hours and don’t talk at all. We just sit and watch the sky and think. You should see the water when the moon’s out—I mean a big yellow summer moon. Swede mostly just thinks about girls when he’s out here, but I like to think about clouds and God and things.” He sat silent for a moment, watching the water. The sweater had slipped from my shoulders and he put his arm around me to hold it in place.

“I didn’t know,” I told him, “that boys thought much about
pretty
things. The fellows around McKnight’s never act like they think about anything much.”

“Most of them don’t, but some of them do. We talk together a lot about girls and life and things. It’s funny what some of those fellows think. Some of them have got big plans for what they want to do and who they want to marry and some of them never think at all.”

“I just want to read a lot and learn everything I can,” I told him. And then thinking that sounded rather dull I added, “I’d like to know about everything beautiful.”

Jack sat up suddenly and looked at me. “Do you?” he said. “Do you really think that, Angie? You know, all my life I’ve wanted to know about beautiful things—to be cultured. Maybe that sounds funny to you. I haven’t any background or anything. My mother and dad are swell, but I could never talk about a
family tree or my grandfather who had whole stables full of horses … see what I mean? I’ve got to find out about all that sort of thing—my father’s father was a farmer and my mother’s father had a meat market out in Rosendale. Do you know,” he said, “that until a couple of months ago I didn’t even know what side a salad plate goes on?”

I wanted to tell him then about the silver fish service my mother has with the mother-of-pearl handles and the big curved-blade serving knife to match that looks like a Turkish dagger. I thought he might like to know about it because it was different and beautiful, but I couldn’t think how to tell it so it didn’t sound like bragging so I just said, “Salad plates go on the left, Jack, with the forks.”

“And another thing I want to do is to go to an opera someday. I’d like to have a big black cape and a cane and a folding silk hat and I’d come in the door and slap those old white gloves in the hat and walk right down the aisle. I don’t know much about music,” he said. “I don’t even like it a lot but I could learn.”

I wanted to tell
him
something too. There were so many things I had always thought about to myself and never wanted to tell anyone before. I almost told him about how I used to lie in bed at night and imagine that I was married to Nelson Eddy just so I could pretend he took me places—night clubs and dances and things. “You know, Jack,” I ventured, “once last winter when I went down to Chicago to see my sister Lorraine—the one that was sitting in the living room with curlers in her
hair when you called for me—we went to see a play. It was called
Kiss the Boys Good-bye
. it wasn’t a good play or anything. I mean, it wasn’t like Shakespeare but it was a big hit and had a run on Broadway. A lot of it I didn’t understand very well—I think it wasn’t nice.”

“We read
The Merchant of Venice
in English class,” Jack answered. “Parts of that I didn’t understand very well either—maybe that’s because it’s too nice.” He laughed a little. His arm was on my shoulder and I relaxed and leaned back. He leaned over closer saying, “That’s right. Just sit comfortable. Lean way back if you want.” We were drifting then and Swede was sitting with his head resting on the side of the boat, half asleep. It was darker by that time and the moon was half hidden, cushioned in cloud. The boat rose and fell gently with the waves. “All I know is that I just want to be happy and turn out good, that’s all,” Jack mused, half to himself. Somehow it made me shiver a little.

For a long time no one spoke, I remember. Once Swede raised himself on his elbow and looked toward shore and then put his head down again. We were far out, drifting slowly, and the silence over the water seemed soft and thick. It was then I got that queer feeling. Maybe you won’t understand what I mean. You see, I was just sitting there thinking of nothing in particular when suddenly I felt a warm tingling and then an almost guilty feeling—almost as if I were doing something I shouldn’t. And I remember the wind blowing very cool on my
cheeks. No one had even moved or said a word. I could see the glow of Swede’s cigarette in the stern of the boat. It was then I felt that strange urge to turn my head and look at Jack to see what he was thinking, and an odd fear that if I did he might be looking at me. I could feel my thoughts loud in my brain as if they were hoarse whispers. A panicky, excited pulsing started in my throat. My cheeks were hot. I knew Jack was looking at me and I turned my head just a little so I could see his face. His arm tightened suddenly around my shoulders and a warm, contented feeling went through me like when you drink hot milk.

Jack straightened just then and said quietly, “I think I’ll light my pipe,” and reached into his back pocket. I was strangely hurt he should want to move just at that moment, so I pulled the sweater tighter round my shoulders and sat up very straight, away from him. Jack filled his pipe, cupped in the hollow of his hands, pressing down the tobacco with his thumb, and then hunched over to light it. The first match guttered out. The wind snuffed out the second before he even got it near his pipe. He turned in the seat, pulled up his knees, and bent almost double with his shoulders pulled up to shelter it from the wind. The third match went out. “I’ll tell you what, Angie,” he said. “Give me that piece of canvas from round your legs. You hold it over my head and keep the wind out and I’ll light my pipe.” I unfolded the canvas and he ducked under. A moment later he pulled his head out
explaining, “That doesn’t seem to work either. I can’t hold the canvas off my face and keep the match lit at the same time. I’ll tell you what. You put your head under, too, and strike the match and I’ll light my pipe and keep the canvas up. Two heads ought to be able to hold it.”

So we put the canvas over our heads and it seemed suddenly quiet and hushed, in out of the wind. The first match I struck broke and its head flipped off onto the bottom of the boat. “Try again,” Jack said. He shifted toward me. It was very dark under the canvas. The second match flared.

My hand shook a little and Jack held it to steady it as he brought it over the pipe, drawing in deeply till the tobacco glowed, then puffing out the smoke. He took the pipe from his mouth, blew out the match, and dropped the burnt end to the bottom of the boat. I could see the glowing bowl of the pipe in his hand. Neither of us moved. And I remember wondering why it was so silent, so very silent, and why I didn’t seem to be even breathing. I knew then that we were both thinking the same thing. I sensed the very warmth of his nearness.

It was only a moment, a long, silent moment, and then suddenly I pulled the canvas off my head and it brushed my hair forward over my face. I pushed it back and against my cheek the night air was damp and cool.

Swede was sitting up straight. “Hey, you,” he said to Jack, “what were you doing with your heads under that canvas?”

“Lighting my pipe,” Jack answered.

Swede smiled and winked. “Yeh?” he said, knowingly. “That’s a new name for it.”

I tucked the canvas tightly in around my legs, looking out over the lake, and said nothing. Jack was leaning back, slowly puffing at his pipe, watching me and not saying anything. After a long while he leaned over and knocked the ashes from his pipe into the water. Then looking at me, he said quietly, “We might as well have, you know.”

About half-past nine it began to get rough. The wind changed and the lake grew dark and choppy. “We’d better turn her around,” Jack called. The wind whipped the words out of his mouth and he waved his arms and pointed toward shore. Swede nodded and pulled at the ropes. The sail billowed out and swooped down toward the waves as the boat swung around to face the lighthouse. Little waves lipped over the sides and sloshed under the crossboards on the bottom. “Don’t get scared,” Jack said, “it’s a little rough but Swede can hold it.” I pulled the canvas tighter around my legs and the wind blew my hair around my face. Off in the north thunder rumbled and sharp lightning slit the sky. It took us almost an hour to reach shore in the shifting wind and there were only a few cars parked along the drive when we swung into the Big Hole.

“If you kids want to start home before the rain it’s all right with me,” yelled Swede against the wind. “I’ll put the boat up and see that everything’s covered. It looks like we’re going to have a
real rain, but you two have just about time to make it home.”

“Thanks,” said Jack. “I’ll stop round to see you on the route tomorrow. Put my sweater on again, Angie. It’s still chilly,” and he pulled it down over my head. “Come on, we’ll take the park road home.”

“Good night, Swede,” I called back. “Thank you, and I’m very glad I met you. I hope I see you again sometime.” Swede was running down the sail and it was flapping wetly in the wind. The waves were dashing against the boat and he didn’t hear me.

“Don’t worry, Angie,” Jack said. “You’ll see him again.”

My dog Kinkee ran out to meet us as we came up the walk, giving her tail a brief wag for me and then nosing around Jack’s trouser cuff with a low growl. Kinkee is a chow and doesn’t like strangers. “Go ’way,” I told her. “It’s all right. Maybe, Jack, she thinks you’re a strange man who followed me home.” It wasn’t really funny but we both laughed.

“You know,” said Jack, “when I was younger I used to think that if a chow licked you that black stuff on their tongues would come off.” We were by the front steps now. My mother had heard the thunder and set the two potted ferns from the living room out on the steps to catch the rain. There was one lamp lit on the corner table in the living room and the light shone out onto the walk. The trees on the lawn were bending in the wind and the air was full of the damp, fishy smell of
water that always blows in from Lake Winnebago just before a storm.

“Here’s your sweater, Jack,” I said and pulled it off over my head. His hand touched mine as he took it and I kept my fingers there for a moment, thrilled by my own daring.

“I’m afraid I have to go too now,” he said but I waited. He had flung his sweater around his shoulders and tied the sleeves in a knot and then we both just stood without saying anything. You can’t ask a boy, “When will I see you again?” or “Will I
ever
see you again?” I had meant to find out from my sisters what fellows usually say when they leave. I thought maybe I should tell him I had liked the boat or that it had been a pleasant sail or something, but all those words seemed silly. Already the first drops of rain were spotting the cement sidewalk dark.