Rusty Summer (17 page)

After dinner we sit on the deck. It's still light outside, even though it's late evening. There are a couple of huge rough-hewn swings on the porch. We rock them gently. Leo and Shane sit in one. Beau and I eyeball her enviously as we sit in the other. They don't notice us.

They are talking together in a way that is so intimate it's almost embarrassing.

Sundown finally comes but then it doesn't really get any darker. About midnight we decide it's late and we're tired, even if it's still dusky daylight. We go to our respective bedrooms.

Inside our room, Leo hums to herself as she sits at an old-fashioned vanity desk with a mirror. She leans in and examines the skin around her eyes. Messes with her makeup.

I flop down on the other twin bed.

“Why are you putting on makeup to go to bed?” I ask her as The Bomb hops onto the bed as well. I reach over and pat the other bed, since she usually sleeps on Leo's, but she doesn't budge.

“No reason,” Leo says between hums.

Yeah, right.

I turn over and force myself to not think about anything and finally fall asleep.

Later that night, I wake up and she's gone from the room . . . and all unwillingly, I lie awake, fuming with jealousy.

Later still, the light outside growing bright again, she returns. I'm wide awake.

Having sneaked in, she tries quietly to undress. In the dim light I can see her face is flushed, her hair is wild, and her lips are all red and swollen—from
kissing!

“Aha!” I turn on the lamp and aim the beam at her face.

Leo jumps about twenty feet. She squints in the sudden searchlight.

“Quit it! Why are you awake?” she hisses at me.

“I couldn't sleep! How am I supposed to sleep with you running all over the country all night?”

“I didn't! I just sat on the swing for a while with Shane. I couldn't sleep and neither could he!”

“I bet!”

I glare at her and she scowls back.

“Nothing happened, if you must know!” Leo whispers crossly. “Wait—how is this your business, again?” She stink-eyes me and sticks out her chin in defiance.

“Maybe I don't think you should be running off—and making out—with strange men! That you just barely met, for gawd's sake! He could be dangerous!”

“Oh, right! That's exactly why you were awake—because you were worried!” Leo is dripping sarcasm. “You know you like him too!”

Busted.

“Whatever!” I say indignantly. I flip over in my bed with my back to her, which makes The Bomb resettle restlessly. We are silent. I can hear Lee thinking.

“I didn't . . . mean to like him, you know,” Leo says after a while. “It wasn't planned.”

I don't say anything. The silence sulks.

“He's just so cool . . . and like, better,” she says wonderingly after a while, as she tries—inadequately, of course—to describe the splendor that is Shane. “I always liked the wrong guy. You told me so, yourself. From like desperation, or whatever. But I'm not like that anymore. This time it's okay, Rylee. I never met anyone so . . . nice.”

I swear if she were talking about any other guy but Shane I
would
have been interested in hearing more about her old self, but as it is, I'm just pissed. From my invisible position facing the wall, I roll my eyes and make spazzoid faces, mocking her and mugging as she speaks—but inaudibly, because I realize I'm being infantile. She continues.

“I feel like I've known him forever. The way he talks is so cute and sweet. I think he's really cool.” Leonie sits, gazing at her reflection in the old-timey desk mirror, and presses her pulpy lips together. She smiles to herself in a truly infuriating way then ties back her hair and prepares to get into bed.

When she does, The Bomb jumps over onto her bed. Traitor dog.

Feeling stabby, I jam a pillow over my head to block them out and try, unsuccessfully, to doze back off.

 

After a silent breakfast (on my part—Leo was chipper as a freaking bird) the next morning, we load back into the plane like we're old pros. A place for everything and everything in its place. We pack our stuff tightly and settle in. The loud engine catches and revs.

We taxi down the water and turn, then, gathering speed, we
zoom.

Our next-to-last float plane trip. This one will end in Anchorage. Then, only one more lil' hop and we'll be in Kodiak.

My gut clenches with nerves at the thought. I have no idea what I'm going to say to my dad.

Maybe, “Hey, Dad, 'member me? Your kid? So, yeah, what's up with this last ten years or so?”

I focus when Shane speaks. Or rather shouts over the plane's engine.

“Look down there, at the water!” he directs us, banking the plane so we don't have much choice. “Another fishing bear! Its cub too!”

We look down and see a bear blob and a cub blob. We can see salmon blood shining red even from this distance. They're just hammin' on those salmon.

“I'd get us closer, but I don't want to buzz them! The binoculars are under the seat!” Shane hollers.

We take quick turns looking and saying, “wow,” as he slowly soars above, circling at a respectful distance.

We fly on. Even the drone of the engine becomes unnoticeable after a while. The Bomb now looks out the window just like she's riding in a car.

The sun is out, and we can see huge mountains in the distance. I think my dad has hunted in those mountains; I can remember him spinning this bedtime yarn, “The Great White Hunter (him) & The Dall Sheep,” when we were really little. It all had to do with him “bagging” a bighorn ram in the Wrangell Mountains near Mount McKinley. When I was little I thought it was a “doll” sheep he shot.

My mom hated that story. She is
so
not a hunter!

I remember her saying, “don't scare them right before bed,” but we weren't scared.

Instead, for some reason we were riveted when my dad would describe how, after he shot the ram, it tumbled “ass over teakettle” all the way down the side of the rock face. I could imagine the weird scene in my mind: a giant curl-horn ram, made of white terry cloth or fake fur, as befits a doll, holding a teakettle and somersaulting, flabbergasted, down the side of the huge mountain and into a huge bag my dad is holding open, at the bottom.

“That's Denali!” Shane yells, using the Native word for Mount McKinley.

Apparently Alaskans want to change the name back, but Congress won't, or something.

People in Alaska just call it Denali anyway.

Rugged individualists.

As we fly over frothing coastal shoreline, I feel my nerves constricting again. I'm not even sure what I'm doing here. What
am
I going to say to my dad, for real?

Why am I even bothering, anyway? To save our relationship? Dad and me? Really?

What relationship exactly? It's been years since we've even spoken! He doesn't know me anymore. I was a grade-school kid when he left.

I sigh profoundly, and stare out the window in growing woe.

 

Anchorage is the biggest city we've landed in so far. I can see it coming as we turn and circle, preparing to land. The squawk box that tells Shane things in squawk drawl springs to life and starts to garble more instructions involving the elusive “niner.”

The landing in Anchorage is splashier than the other ones. We are beside the international airport, so this is the busiest float plane airport I've seen.

As is usual for us now, we taxi up to the dock, where the plane gently bumps against the truck tires they use to pad the deck edge. We moor there and get our stuff. Shane turns to us.

“We'll stay at a place down the road a little called The Puffin Inn. They let pets stay there.”

We load in the shuttle and ride along like school kids in the back of the bus.

The rooms at the inn are fine, but we can't shove the beds together like we have been. They're bolted to the floor.

Same arrangement again: Leo and me, one room, Beau and Shane, the other.

And again, later that night Leo disappears. This time I get up and decide that Bommy needs a walk. It's not like they're hard to find. They're sitting on the lawn chairs in the courtyard.

At least Shane is. Leo is sitting on his lap. They are totally making out. It bayonets me.

I stop before they see me so I can spy on them. Big sloppy kisses! Mwah! Mwah!

I want to scream and throw a tantrum. I hold The Bomb back. I don't know why I'm torturing myself . . . but it really hurts . . . a new kind of pain.

I turn and silently return to the bedroom. When Leo comes in I pretend to be asleep and don't give her a hard time. She quietly gets into her bed. I lie on my back, listening till her breathing becomes slow and regular.

I feel tears flow and flood my ears.

 

The next morning I get up and actually do take The Bomb for a walk. I'm always up first.

This time is different.

As I leave the room, I see Shane walking toward the dining room, where they have free coffee and breakfast. He sees me and stops, and then gestures for us to come with him.

So we do. We walk over to him. He smells good. He pats The Bomb.

“Did you get a husky because of the U?” U Dub's team (and students) are the Washington Huskies. Even though their actual mascots have all been malamutes, they're all still “Huskies.” Purple and gold! Bow down to Washington! Go Dawgs!

“Not exactly.”

I tell him the story of how Leonie stole The Bomb. He listens and his eyes are bright. He smiles in enchantment.

“Good for her! That just makes me like her even more. I mean, she's just amazing, isn't she?”

“Yeah,” I agree sourly, “hella amazing.”

We leave The Bomb outside on her leash and get food from the dining room, like muffins and honey packs so it's good to go. We fill his steel thermos with coffee. We load up and head back outside. We unclip Bommy's leash and she frisks along with us.

Without anything being said, we are going for a walk.

It's easy to get out of town in Alaska; towns are little and the interior is
big.
We head down the road together till Shane cuts across the clean, yellow-striped blacktop and up a bank. I follow him and climb to a field, which looks like the most remote area in the outback you ever imagined. But it's only a little way from town, barely a mile. We walk till we come to a huge glacier rock and Shane gestures.

“Look, I packed our picnic table!”

I can't help laughing. The sun is shining and the boulder looks inviting.

We climb up on the sun-warmed rock and gaze across the sun-dried tundra. So unencumbered!!

We proceed to have a tea party (but with coffee). We spread out our spread. I give The Bomb a scone with jelly. She's down with the delicious flavor of buttered strawberry!

Shane is easy to talk to (as well as look at). He knows all the historical features of the terrain, which I find very interesting.

He smacks the mammoth rock on which we loll.

“Imagine an Ice Age so intense that this massive monster comes sliding from those mountains, way over there, and over thousands of years ends up clear down here, before the ice it's moving on melts. I find that awe-inspiring . . . the scale of
time,
” he says wonderingly. He holds his arms out to the outback as if in congratulation.

I know the feeling. We zone out gently in the vast wilderness.

I find myself relating to him. I tell him the deal with my dad. How mystified I am . . . and pissed.

He can't make heads or tails of it either. He shakes his head in baffled interest. It feels good to have someone new to tell. He doesn't have much to add, sadly. The one idea he gave me was fairly Zen.

“Expect nothing.”

I look at him in confusion, and he shrugs solemnly.

“No disappointment that way,” he explains. “Anything will be more than you expect.”

“What, like he won't be glad to see me?” I am annoyed by the notion, even if it's just hypothetical.

“Or that you might not even find him in Kodiak. Maybe he's off on a walkabout.” Omg, Shane is
so
cool. I've never met anyone—besides myself and the movies—that has ever spoken of a walkabout.

“I doubt that,” I say grumpily. Not likely.

I can't imagine the dad I remember being on a magical mystery tour to find himself.

We relax as we look out into the beautiful day. The field we are in is vast and the wind is mild. The clouds are mare's tails, high and thin. I can see different distant mountain ranges. It seems like anywhere you look in Alaska you can see different distant mountain ranges.

We continue to chill and chat.

“Just let him
be
. . . you know?” Shane smiles. “Whatever dad you find, he is the way he is. Accept that now . . . with kindness.” We stare at the sky. Then he looks at me. His lashes cast shadows.

“Besides, he must be a cool guy if you're his daughter.” He shades his eyes and nods at me.

I feel like this . . . sinkhole . . . of love has just chasmed in my gut. Omg. What IS this thing?

“Thanks,” I say. And as though I was just having a conversation with a regular person (instead of a Greek god), I admit, “I don't know if he is, anymore . . . I don't really know much about him, except he's not around.”

I don't say that in a pitiful way. I'm not even feeling sad, but Shane looks down quietly.

“I feel lucky that my dad has always been around. I need to tell him so. He's a great guy.”