Justin Cronin - The Summer Guest

Oh, Harry, don’t you know? You helped him most of all.

How did I-?

She squeezes my hand, and at once I understand; the knowledge passes into me like a current, and the circle closes at last.

With me, Harry, she says, her voice a whisper, not even there, and I follow it into sleep. That was the present you gave us all. You brought him home with me.

The hour is late: I awaken in darkness, alone. A feeling of vivid consciousness courses through me. I can barely move-my body is the same, more wood than flesh-and yet my mind is suddenly, fiercely alive inside it. From the outer room, voices reach me like a drifting scent-Hal and Franny, talking together in low, worried tones of the hospital, the distance to doctors and machines to keep me alive-and beyond them, Lucy and Jordan, speaking to one another on the dock. Each word of their conversations is vivid to me, their voices all overlapping but somehow coherent, and as I listen my mind stretches outward to a far horizon of sound, so that not just these words but every noise for miles around is equal to every other: a girl in the kitchen humming as she scrubs a pot, the sighing expansion of the lake against the shoreline, each cylinder firing in a distant outboard and the swirling hum of its prop. Magnificent: my very atoms seem to trill with sound.

“Hal.”

A pause, then his boots on the planking and a blaze of afternoon sunlight through the open door: the day is not as far gone as I’d imagined.

“Look who’s up.” Hal eyes me appraisingly and takes a seat on the edge of the narrow bed. I lift myself on the pillow as he hands me a cup of water to drink.

“I was wondering when we’d hear from you. How are you feeling?”

The water is so tepid I can barely sense its presence in my mouth. A thin stream dribbles down my chin, which unnerves me; I don’t want Hal to know that I am leaving my body behind, that my strength is a force of will alone.

“Better, I think. Much better, actually.”

He draws a circle in front of his chest. “How’s the breathing?”

Obediently, I draw air into my lungs to show him. The urge to cough is intense, sharp as a lit match, yet somehow I manage to contain it.

“See that?” I clear my throat, my eyes filling. “Fit as a fiddle. Tell Jordan to get ready.”

His eyes darken skeptically. “Pop, Franny and I were just talking. After last night, we really think enough’s enough. What do you say let’s get you down to Farmington.”

“I know what you said. I heard every word.” I clear my thoughts to let the sounds come. “Listen, Hal. Can you hear that?”

He frowns in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Pop.”

“Just listen.” I close my eyes as the sounds fill me up. A wash of undifferentiated noise, and then it comes again: not humming, but singing. Her voice rises and falls on the notes, over the rush of water running from the tap.

“A girl, singing in the kitchen. It’s something old, the song. Something she shouldn’t know but does.”

I open my eyes to see Hal staring at me, a new kind of alarm written on his face. I do not want to be difficult, and yet the point must be made. I am not dying in the hospital.

“‘ St. Louis Blues’? No, ‘Sentimental Journey.’ ”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Pop. Let’s get you to the doctor, okay?”

“No.”

A moment passes under his gaze. I am weak, I am dying, there is nothing I can accomplish without his final permission. At the end it must always come to this, this acceptance of one’s fate, obedient as a dog. I have loved you, Hal, I think. You are my one boy. Let me do this.

At last he rises. “Christ, Franny’s going to have my head for this. All right, Pop. This is your show now. I’ll go tell Jordan to get ready.”

And then the day really is late. The hour lurches forward, halts, proceeds again-though almost imperceptibly, as if I am a chip of straw drifting on a vast, celestial tide. My mind opens to a feeling of perfect stillness and, above me, a sky unlocking stars. This thing with sound has left me; only the slow swish of the oars reaches my ears, a music of its own to match the rhythmic breathing of my boatman as he pulls us out from shore. This boy I’ve chosen: he is strong, good-hearted, he feels the earth in his blood. His face is darkened in shadow, like a hood. He will not fail me.

There is no time, I think. And then: there is only time. Snow from the train window, and the last breaths, and sleep. The needles never unworking. All time is time passed, it is a history of good-byes.

It is all I have left to wish for, the one thing I have ever truly wanted: to slip into that current.

We had been floating in the drain for two hours, Bill and I, when I thought it: today was the day I was going to die.

Bill had fallen backward off the dam; the drop was less than twenty feet on the upstream side, but the current took him fast: weighed down by his sodden waders, he was swept into the vortex that swirled around the open gate of the inlet. He would have gone straight through, but at the last second he managed to grab hold of the edge of the open gate and pull his body out of the worst of the current, pinning himself against the concrete wall of the tower.

This was how I found him when I got to the top of the dam, Pete and Mike and Carl Jr. huffing up behind me. Pete ran to the old army corps station to look for a life ring or rope, but of course there was none, nobody had manned the tower for thirty years since they’d pulled out the turbines; and in the next instant, as the four of us stood on the dam shouting useless encouragements like “you just hold on, help’s on the way,” I realized, with a thump in my gut, that doing the only thing I could think of, dumb as it was, was still better than watching the poor guy drown.

I unclipped the ring of keys from my belt and handed them to Mike. “There’s a radio under the passenger seat. You ever use one?”

“Not since the army.”

“You know how to find the emergency channel?”

“Channel 9?”

“Attaboy. You don’t raise anyone, I want you to take the main highway back to town. The sheriff’s office is three blocks on your left, next to the post office. You remember the way back to the truck?”

His face went blank. “Sort of.”

“Sort of. Okay, take Carl with you, then.”

Mike let his eyes fall over Carl, his big belly hanging over his pants buckle. “I think I’d be quicker on my own, Joe.”

Carl stiffened. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“No offense, buddy, but you’re not exactly built for speed.”

“None taken, you Mick runt. At least I paid attention to the path.”

“Enough,” I barked, cutting in. Couldn’t these guys ever get along? “You’re both going because I need this done. Is that understood?” They nodded, chastened like schoolboys; neither one, I could tell, was used to being given orders. “Good. Now, straight over the ridge, stay on the main path. There are a couple of forks, but follow the orange blaze and you’ll be fine. If you’ve walked more than thirty minutes, you’ve missed a turn, so backtrack until you pick up the orange blaze again. Pete, you stay put, I may need you. Now, the two of you, go.”

Away they scampered up the hill, Mike at a brisk jog, Carl bringing up the rear, one hand pulling up his sagging pants from behind. I watched them go, then removed my shoes and vest, took my wallet out of my back pocket and handed it to Pete, moved to the edge of the dam, gave one last look to gauge the drop, and stepped off.

I hit hard but entered cleanly, my knees bent and together, my toes pointed like a ballerina’s. The current was fierce, a blast of cold force that wrapped around me like a fist and pushed me under; I sank and sank, waiting to feel the loosening grip of its hold and watching the bubbles rising around my face, and just when I thought that I had somehow miscalculated and was headed straight for the bottom, the current released me and I felt myself rising toward the surface. Three hard pulls and I broke into the light, but then the current whipped me around again. In a flash I saw Pete, standing above me on the dam, then Bill, holding fast to the open gate, the eddying current twisting me like a top, so that it was all I could do to keep my head above water and hope that, like Bill, I could manage to grab hold of something before I was sucked clean through. I hit the tower dead-on, grabbing the edge with both hands, scrabbling the worn concrete below the surface for purchase; something sharp bit into the soft meat of my palm-a piece of old rebar jutting from the side, rusty and sharp as a corkscrew-and I had never been so glad for anything in my life. Gripping the bar, I pulled my body backward against the pounding water rushing in, easing myself free of the opening, then twisted around so that I could wedge myself against the wall of the tower next to Bill.