Justin Cronin - The Summer Guest

Harry wasn’t using the walker, a good sign, and it seemed to me that he looked a little better than he had the night before. He moved slowly but not hesitantly, lifting and planting his feet with calm precision as he made his way down to us, like a skater testing the ice. In his old jeans and sweater and canvas fishing vest bulging with fly boxes, he might have been one more old guy out to bag himself a trout on a summer evening, if you didn’t look too closely-didn’t notice the unnatural slowness with which Hal and Frances seemed to move beside him, each of them cupping one of his elbows, or the box that hung from Harry’s shoulder: a gleaming cube about half the size of an automobile battery, with the sculpted curves and sterile whiteness of expensive respiratory prosthetics. A tube ran from the box to the back of Harry’s neck, reappearing as a necklace under his nose. As he approached, I heard the box making a kind of clicking noise, and beneath that, the tiny whistling of the oxygen, like a breeze through a cracked window. On his other shoulder he carried a wicker creel, a lovely old relic with brass eyelets and soft leather hinges the color of the creamed coffee. He moved down the lawn by inches. A mist of white whiskers frosted his chin and cheeks. When he reached us at the boat he studied it carefully.

“I see we’re ready,” he said.

“Yes, sir. The cushions should be comfortable, and keep you off the bottom so you’ll stay dry.”

He gave me a tight, businesslike nod and regarded the boat again. “Now, how I’m going to get in there I don’t think I know.”

“I thought Hal and I could lift you. If that’s all right.”

“Fair enough,” Harry said. He gave a short, wet cough to clear his throat. “I don’t weigh what I used to by a long shot.”

Frances took the respirator from his shoulder, and I positioned myself to one side and slightly behind him; he bent his knees, released a sigh, and in an instant all of Harry Wainwright filled my arms again, amazing me a second time with his lightness. He was right; there wasn’t much left. Hal and Kate took up positions on the far side of the boat, and together we lowered Harry Wainwright to the cushions.

He looked around cheerfully from his new position. “Like the gondolas of Venice,” Harry said. “Have you been there, Jordan?”

“No, sir, I can’t say I have.” I was pleased to hear him talk this way-to hear him talk about anything at all. “You know how much I have to do around here. I bet it’s nice, though.”

“You should go,” he said. “When all this is over, do yourself a favor and go. The Rialto, the Piazza San Marco, il Canale Grande.” He said the last with a startlingly elegant trill to his voice, then crinkled his brow when he saw my face. “Don’t look so surprised, Jordan.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “It means ‘big canal,’ right?”

He waved a finger in the air. “ Grand Canal, Jordan.”

Hal returned from the porch with Harry’s rod and laid it beside him. The respirator, clicking away, was tucked on the floor by his side, and Hal wrapped it in a garbage bag. “Pop, remember, you have to keep this thing dry. Jordan? It’s important.”

Frances bent her face close to Harry’s and brushed his hair into place with her fingers. “You do what Jordan tells you,” she said.

“This is what happens when you’re old and about to die,” Harry said. “Everybody treats you like a child. It’s the best part.”

Hal pulled me aside, lowering his voice to speak in confidence. “Get him back by sundown, okay? No matter what he says.” He glanced over my shoulder at his father, bobbing in the water. “He’s not as good as he seems. We’ve got the car packed and ready to go.”

“It’s all right, Hal. I’ll take good care of him. You have my word.”

“I want you to know, Jordan, how grateful we are to you. I don’t think I’ve told you this before. Harry truly thinks of you as one of us. You know that, but I wanted you to hear it from me.”

“I appreciate that.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I put my hand out, and we shook. “I’m glad to do it.”

I waded into the lake, where Kate and Lucy were holding the boat in two feet of water, and hoisted myself onto the rear seat, being mindful not to get the respirator wet. With Harry between my knees, it was a tight fit, but I thought we’d be able to manage, as long as Harry could bend forward at the waist to reach his rod. I pivoted to start the outboard-a neat trick, with so little room-when Harry stopped me.

“ Jordan, I was hoping we could row.”

I don’t know why this surprised me; of course that’s what he wanted. “It’ll take us an hour at least to get to the inlet.”

“Even so,” Harry said.

I glanced at Hal, who shrugged. I climbed back out of the boat and stepped back in amidships, easing myself onto the second seat. Kate went up to the shed to get a pair of oars and waded out to hand them to me. Harry and I were facing one another now.

“See?” Harry said. “It’s better this way. Now we can talk.” Kate was still holding the side of the boat, and he took her hand, folding her fingers under his. For a moment all I could hear was the sound of water lapping against the boat and the mechanical ticking of Harry’s respirator. His voice was moist and soft and far away. “It’s a crazy thing to want, isn’t it?”

“Not at all.” Kate smiled into his face. “I think it’s perfect. You should do what makes you happy, Harry.” She leaned over the boat and kissed his forehead. “For luck,” she said.

“Thank you.” Harry turned his eyes to look at Lucy, holding January at the water’s edge: Lucy, with a little girl in her arms. “Thank you, everyone.”

And so at last-all eyes upon us, the afternoon sun declining and evening coming on-we went.

Hickock was right: they were good boots. I wore them all two years, six months, three weeks, and six days I spent in the care of the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons, the first eight months at the Allenwood Federal Correctional Institute in the mountains of central Pennsylvania, the rest at the prison camp attached to the army psychiatric hospital at Fort Devens, just outside Boston. I was assigned to the laundry, and when a few months had passed and I had proved myself a model prisoner-silent, incurious, interested only in making my way through the small business of each day and on to the next-I got myself reassigned to an orderly detail, pushing carts of soggy food from room to room and cleaning out pans and breaking up fights over the channel changer and Ping-Pong table. It was easy time to do; it was all the time in the world, with a world of nothing in it.

I had been sentenced to thirty-six months. This in itself was a shock, but my lawyer assured me that the chances were small I’d have to do all of it, so long as I kept my nose clean. Draft resisters had become a political hot potato; almost certainly some kind of clemency was going to be granted now that the last troops had pulled out of Southeast Asia, and the fact that I had turned myself in (not quite true, but that was how we spun it, with a little help from Darryl Tanner) would count in my favor. Once this Watergate thing got really cooking, he joked, they’d be needing the cell space for half the Republican National Committee, most of the CIA, and every last asshole in the Nixon White House, right down to the wives. Twenty months max, he assured me. Probably a little less.

Of course, that wasn’t what happened, at least not soon enough for me. My lawyer’s earnest letters to the review board about my dying father (“a decorated hero of the Second World War”), the infant daughter I had barely held in my arms, my flawless record as a guest of the Federal Bureau of Prisons-all were met with stony silence. As I turned the corner on year two and looked down the long corridor of my remaining federal time, with no sign at all that I was going to get out ahead of schedule, I pulled my mind back from all thoughts of home like a turtle tucking his head into his shell. I figured I was in for the full bite, clemency or no. So when, with just six months to go, the block PO came to find me and announced that the word had come down, the troops were going home for Christmas, that I should pack my things and report to the watch commander’s office on the double because the hour of my liberty was at hand, I heard the sound of a string being pulled, and knew whose finger was upon it.