Rusty Summer (19 page)

I remember my dad saying that sometimes. More than ever, it seems like a lifetime ago.

I try to sound more confident than I feel. We dial into Beau's phone, which is just chock full of reception, I notice with fresh irritation at my dad's feeble-ass excuses, and get our bearings. We are on Lilly Lake. I vaguely remember where my grandma lives. We see we are actually about five miles away from her address and start to load our backpacks onto our backs.

We set off in the right direction. We pace ourselves for the trudge.

I wish my heart was lighter. I wish my backpack was lighter too. We had to consolidate.

Two vehicles, both trucks, pass us as we walk, one right after the other, about an hour after we start. Neither stop, which was fine. They both had a muddy and rowdy vibe. All the trucks look raggedy-ass. Probably full of dead deer heads.

“Rylee, you keep walking slower and slower.” Leonie is right behind me. “I'm going to give you a flat, by accident!”

I try to speed up. I don't need a flat on top of everything else.

I already feel kind of derailed.

The road we're walking along has long weedy dirt and gravel driveways leading to modest houses by the lake. Also a lot of willow trees. The houses cluster the lake in groups, for company.

We walk along an unpopulated stretch and watch the addresses.

 

“Rusty, I think this is it.” Beau is ahead of us and is reading a mailbox. “It says
Winters.
”

Again, I am gob-smacked. I stare at the mailbox like it's a natural wonder or something. It's the only one, as opposed to a bank of mailboxes, like we've been seeing.

No neighbors nearby. There are a bunch of willows weeping where the winding driveway disappears.

The road less traveled . . .

“Let's roll,” says Beau. He grabs my hand for a sec and smiles into my eyes. “We can do this.”

So we do. We walk down the drive.

I can see a cabin. It's right beside the lake. There is a rowboat moored on the dock. I hear a bunch of big dogs barking but I don't see any.

The door to the cabin is open. So is the door to the station wagon in front of the cabin.

An old lady comes out of the house to the car. Well, she's sort of old.

She stops in her tracks and stares at us.

“GramMer . . . ?” I say tentatively. She looks the same as I remember her.

I remember my grandma from the last time I saw her, years ago. She used to come down to the “Lower 48,” as Alaskans call the continental US, and stay involved with us but after my mom and dad's divorce and then Uncle Riley, she never came down at all. I haven't seen her since I was a kid.

I remember her, though. I thought she was fascinating. She wore jewel colors, and makeup. She also dyed her hair black and swore—a lot. She wore earrings. She had interesting theories. She taught me Beatles songs. She told me stories about olden times in the '60s.

I thought she was very bad when I was little. Because of the swearing. (And I thought I was too, because I totally enjoyed it. I thought she was just great.)

 

GramMer stands looking at me, then she says, “Jesus!” in a way that's kind of like a prayer, and kind of like a punch line.

Then she says, “Rylee Marie!” and walks up to me. She hugs me. Hard. A couple of times.

“Girl! What are you doing here?” She scoops my hair back from my face.

“Dad won't answer my calls. It's almost graduation.”

GramMer looks up to the sky. She sighs and looks at me, kind of sadly. She shakes her head ruefully.

“Well, I told him this day would come.”

I see Beau and Leo exchange looks.

“GramMer, these are my friends, Leonie and Beau. They are helping me.”

“Hi there. And who's this?” GramMer puts her hand out to Bommy.

“That's The Bomb,” Leo tells her.

“Are you a bomb?” GramMer asks Bommy, in a doggy voice. Bommy wags and licks her hand to say yup. We all stand still.

“Well, come in. Your dad and . . . your dad will be back in a while.”

“Where is he?”

“Off buying a gun.”

Sounds ominous, doesn't it? But it's not, up here. I'm sure it's like my dad's seven-hundredth gun this year. I remember the full gun cabinets of yesteryear when he lived at home. GramMer leads the way through the kitchen door.

“Come inside.”

We walk into her yellow kitchen. The walls are paneled in dark wood, but everything else in the room is yellow—curtains, Formica tabletop, old-school chrome chairs with yellow sparkly vinyl seats, old-fashioned rooster and chicken salt and pepper shakers on the table with an old-timey yellow shaded lamp. Even the pictures on the wall are all yellow. Van De Camp's baked beans labels cover the wall behind the stove like wallpaper. It's cool.

We fan out into the living room after she gives us something to drink. We take our ice tea and almost fall over the bear rug on the sunken floor. It's gigantic—the whole head and everything, with snarling yellow teeth. I remember it from my last (only) visit.

Leonie reaches down and touches the coarse fur of its snout. She grimaces.

“Yick.”

GramMer comes in and sits down. Puts her feet on the coffee table. She's wearing black jeans, and rude-boy boots like The Clash. I eye her in secret admiration. Pretty cool for an old lady!

“Tell me about how you got here.”

So we do. She is amused by the guys wanting the deer, though she is sorry we hit it. She says Shane sounds great. We say he is.

About an hour later we hear a truck pull up and cut the engine in the driveway. A door slams.

“I expect that'll be your dad,” GramMer says. She takes a deep breath.

We look to the door. It opens....

 

A little girl runs in. Shiny black hair. Maybe four years old.

“We're home!” she yells before she sees us.

She runs to GramMer and holds up her arms. GramMer picks her up. Turns to me.

The little girl looks at me shyly. Some kid GramMer babysits, maybe? I smile at her.

“Rylee . . . this is Raven. Raven, this is Rylee.”

Immediately following this information, my dad walks in. He looks both the same and strangely different.

“Jesus Henry!” he yelps.

We all get up and stand looking at each other.

The little girl holds her arms to go to my dad.

“That's my daddy,” she informs us.

He holds his arms out to take her as he stares into my poleaxed face. His eyes are the size of a giant squid's.

I hear their eyes are the size of dinner plates.

Time stretches out and then boings back abruptly. Right up in my grill.

 

Now if this were TV, the next thing would be me waking up (in full makeup) with a cold rag on my head, going, “wha' happened?” Right?

That's why TV is stupid.

What happened was we all stood staring like freaking deer in the headlights for a long,
long
time, or maybe just a second, and then I turned around silently and walked out the door.

I don't know where I thought I would go, but it seemed like if I could get away for a time-out it would be better for everyone.

The guys appear beside me as I head up the driveway. The Bomb runs ahead as I storm away.

“Rylee, slow down!”

“FORGET this—Forget HIM! Forget this whole freaking bunch of nut jobs and crackers! Holy shit! What the hell, you guys?! Her daddy!” I say, mimicking her piping voice, my own shaking with fury.

Whatever! My teeth are clenched in fists of rage—you know what I mean!

“Rye, it's not her fault . . . Rylee . . . Slow down, dude. Where are we even going to go?” appeals Beau.

Good old Captain Sensible.

“Away!! I don't know! You guys! This is crazy! I didn't expect this! I thought something was up, but I never ever, ever expected this!! What an asshole! He has a whole new family? Or did he just adopt a new kid to replace the old ones that he misplaced—the ones he lost somewhere?!” I start to cry as I speak, and that hurts worse. To give in. I can feel everything starting to swell—my nose, my eyes, my throbbing heart. Why am I here? Why did I even bother?

I slow down but I can't stop.

We head back up the road as I weep. Where we are going is anyone's guess.

A big old station wagon pulls up beside us. Amazing—the first non-truck in all of Alaska!

GramMer is alone in it. She leans over and opens the passenger side door.

“Get in. I don't blame you one bit.”

 

“My bad, Rylee.” (Does your grandma say, “my bad”? Mine does.) The car picks up speed.

“Dad's bad,” I snarl wetly.

“He's sick, honey. There is a lot to tell you. I should have already. Dad's not the same guy he used to be. You have to know that first.”

“Oh, well, no big! I don't know who that was either!” I stare viciously out the window. GramMer nods. She drives us into town. It's a short drive. Kodiak is tiny and remote.

Instead of drama, we just start shopping.

GramMer gives us each part of a list and we find the things for her. It feels good to do something mundane. I find everything I'm supposed to.

We shop for a long time. Search for pickled okra.

I want to call my mom suddenly. She has no idea. Paul either.

I don't want to be the one to tell them, though. Besides, I have no info—what am I going to say? Hey, Mom, there's a little kid up here who thinks Dad is her dad too! How wacky is that?! Maybe she's delusional—a little crazy kid.

I know she's not.

It's all on Dad this time.

When we pull up at her house GramMer keeps the engine running.

“Beau and Leonie, would you take Bommy and the groceries inside? Put the cold stuff in the fridge but don't worry about putting everything away. I want to talk to Rylee for a while. Tell her dad—his name is Ovid—that she and I are going for a drive in the midnight sun.”

“Ah-vid?” Leo asks quizzically.

“Yeah,” says GramMer. “O-v-i-d: O as in
off, Ah-
vid. He was a Roman poet, in antiquity.”

“Ohhh,” says Leo (but what she means is “oh, so that's where Rusty gets it. Super boring!”).

They all get out with the bags, and my grandmother and I drive out into the weirdly light night.

 

“Do you know how your mom and dad met?”

“Yeah. She was his nurse.”

“That's right, when he got injured, back in the '90s.”

“And he said, ‘that's the woman I'm going to marry' when he saw her the first time!” I say acidly. “And
that
went really well! What an excellent fortune teller!”

“He was sincere, honey. He loved your mom.”

“She loved him too!” I squall. “She won't even go out on dates now! He broke her heart!”

GramMer nods.

“Yeah, I know that's true . . . I wish she would.”

“Well, she won't! She can't! She's
married!!
” (Did I mention that? Yeah! Saint T. still thinks of herself as married; her church doesn't recognize divorce!)

GramMer sighs in a way that reminds me of Paul and turns the car uphill. We are going to Pillar Mountain. We start up the switchbacks.

From the top of the mountain you feel like you can fly. The view includes other smaller islands. Swift seabirds swoop near us and screech. I unroll the window and the shrieks get louder.

“Can you see Russia from here, GramMer?”

“Yeah . . . I'm thinking that qualifies me for office,” she says acerbically. “Goddamn GOP—I mean it, Rylee.” She says when I look over in amusement, “I want my state back. It used to be the place you went to get away from society, not march in lockstep with a bunch of right-wing-nuts!”

I grin. GramMer has “issues with the government,” is how my mom puts it. She thinks W and Cheney, among others, are war criminals. She says
they
were the weapons of mass destruction. She's furious they “squandered us.” She says Mary Tillman is her “goddamn personal hero” and “a goddamn national treasure” for exposing the “Halliburton” admin's “cynical” invasion (search: Pat Tillman). She is pissed for eternity about the “black hole” that was “Murka's” policy in Iraq, which led to the “endless bullshit that is—still—our policy over there!” is how she puts it. She gets way cranked on the subject.

We get out of the car, and my grandma gets a big-ass rifle from under a sleeping bag out of the back.