From the River

By James Gaertner

This innovative and action-packed coming-of-age mystery is set in 1982, in the small fictitious town of Hopewell, Michigan. Three years after the death of his emotionally withdrawn father, nineteen-year-old Jake Burton is still attempting to understand who he was. As his life fails to gain traction after high school, Jake retreats to a secluded

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Nov 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781685152222

James Gaertner

Following a tour of duty in the military, James Gaertner graduated from Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. He worked for several years in the private business sector as a writer and editor, while periodically finding time to create travel and local interest articles, as well as celebrity interview pieces, for various regional publications. From the River is his first novel. He was inspired early on by the writings of Philip Roth, Joseph Heller, and Kurt Vonnegut, attracted to their books' offbeat and laughable characters, as well as their unique storylines that still managed to hit their mark. Growing up in a small town in Michigan and being an avid camper and a fledgling recreational canoeist in his Michigan years was invaluable in the writing of this novel. James currently lives in Arizona with his wife, Shirley, and when not writing, his greatest pleasures, other than the company of friends and family, are travel and reading.

Book preview

Chapter 1

W

hen I was nine, my mother told me about the two boys who were swallowed by the Grapevine River. Her story, clearly meant as cautionary, was short on details and punctuated throughout with warnings, but being nine, her message was nothing more than kindling to my innocent sense of adventure. The very next day, I went to the river for the first time.

One day I spotted an old broken fishing rod with a cork handle and a rusty maroon reel in the milkweeds on the riverbank. It took some tape, lubricating oil and some of my father's nylon fishing line, but I got it working, and even managed to catch a fish occasionally. Of course, I had to toss them back because they were evidence that I’d been at the river.

By July of that first summer, I was already a regular at the river, along with my beagle, Joey, filling lots of carefree summer afternoons together on Burden's Rock, the enormous rock tucked between the trees on the east riverbank. It was named for the two weathered words that had been gouged into the side of the rock long ago, perhaps a hundred years or so earlier.

While I’d read, or occasionally fish, Joey would lean against me, staring at the water, growling his frustration every time he’d see a turtle breaking the river's surface or a muskrat waddling along the opposite riverbank.

Except for a week at vacation bible school, I was on the loose for the entire summer while my parents worked; Dad at the transmission plant near Toledo, and my mother at her new job as a day waitress over in Lindley at the Coach & Carriage Inn.

They went to work five days a week, certain that while they were at work, I was at Aunt Jennie's house under the watchful eye of her son, Duane, who was seven years older than me. It turned out Duane was also considerably more given to the flesh than Aunt Jennie realized, and as good fortune would have it, Duane's out-of-control teenage hormones rendered him incapable of sustaining for more than a few seconds any thought that didn’t include teenage girls. Thanks to those hormones, keeping track of me was nowhere on his radar.

Very little happened at the river those first few summers, but that's not to say there was no excitement.

One time, when I was about fourteen or fifteen, there were some gunshots upriver, and a few minutes later a man, his back to me, came rowing slowly along the riverbank in a silver aluminum boat with a bright blue stripe that ran around it. Judging from the way he towered above the boat, he looked to be well over six feet tall.

I got down from the rock before he could see me and hid behind a thick old maple. At one point he was within ten feet of me and I got a good look at him when he turned around. One look at his face told me he was someone to be avoided.

He had an unusually thin face and deep-set eyes, and across his lap was a shotgun that looked a lot like my dad's old .410. This explained why he had the shotgun. Lots of guys practiced with their guns at a place less than a mile from my rock.

As he moved along, the man mumbled something to himself, almost angrily. When he looked over his shoulder and saw the West Bridge, he turned the small boat around and headed back upriver. Just out of my sight, he clunked around in the boat for a moment, then continued with his rowing. That's when I took off running up the riverbank.

He yelled out something like, Kid, stop! Git back here! and when I turned, he was looking right at me from the boat as it moved nearer the riverbank. Unsettled by the tone of his voice and the look on his face, I ran the rest of the way up the riverbank, then walked home as fast as I could, looking back several times along the way to make sure he wasn’t following me.

The only other thing of note happened one day when I was twelve and doing hard time at vacation bible school. A woman from Ohio drove her big white Buick convertible into town, with the top down, after getting into an argument with her husband. She stopped downtown at Van Marcke's Drug Store, a few blocks from the river, and bought a pack of Virginia Slims. As the story goes, she sat down at the soda fountain and started telling Mr. Van Marcke, in detail, about the argument, then about her life, but he got busy and, at some point, she wandered out the door. She then walked down to the West Bridge, smoked the last three cigarettes of her life, climbed up on the railing and jumped off in broad daylight.

That fall, Joey was run over, and the hurt felt like it would never go away. Because the river was tied to so many of my memories of him, my visits to the river became fewer. Eventually, other things filled more and more of my time, and by the time I started high school my visits to the river became rare. In the fall of my junior year, though, after Dad died, the river pulled me back again whenever the weather allowed.

Three years later, I still went to the river to take whatever it would give me.

* * *

It’d been another night of wrestling with one of those damn dreams about my father, so sleep was more a hope than a possibility. As always, the dream was disturbing, and I thought maybe the quiet of the river would help push back the emotional remnants it always left behind. With this in mind, as soon as I heard my mother leave for work, I got myself around and walked to the river.

As was my habit, before climbing up onto Burden's Rock, I took a few flat stones from my pocket and began skipping them across the surface of the river. After skipping several stones, I climbed onto the rock with my repaired copy of Cannery Row and proceeded with my reading of it for the third time. I’d only been reading for ten minutes or so when the silence was broken by a man's voice coming from upriver. It was only a word or two, and knowing the way sounds carried on the river, there was no telling how far away the voice's owner might be.

I laid Steinbeck down next to me and leaned forward to look in that direction, but there was really no point in it. The big half-moon bend in the river and the full green trees that hung out far over the dark water made it impossible to see more than twenty or thirty yards upriver.

For someone to be on my river, though, this was a problem.

Another sound came from upriver, but I still couldn’t place it. I wasn’t even sure the voice and the sounds were coming from the river, at least until a moment later when I heard a sound nearby such as you’d hear from a rowboat when someone ships their oars. Maybe it was the memory of the tall man in the rowboat, but the hair on my arms and the back of my neck immediately stood on end.

It was only a minute or so later that the voice echoed off the river again, no longer yelling, and then another voice came out of nowhere. The second voice, another man's, was followed by the first one's laughter, and their voices joined. They were on the move and getting closer.

I grabbed my book and jumped down from the rock, then stepped back into the shadows of some low-hanging branches nearby. As I waited, I was certain I could hear my heart thumping.

A Great Blue Heron, standing on one leg in the shallows on the opposite side of the river, suddenly glanced upriver, then at me, before unfolding his huge wings. With slow, powerful beats of his wings, he took flight toward the West Bridge, skimming the surface of the river as he passed beneath it.

A moment later, a canoe, as red as a cardinal, emerged from behind the trees along the river. It was piloted by two sturdy-looking bearded men with dark hair, speaking gibberish to one another as they moved along at a casual pace.

It wasn’t right away, but as they drew nearer, the gibberish steadily became French, the language first spoken in the Great Lakes region nearly three hundred years ago. And, unlike the little French I remembered from my freshman year of high school, their French was so fluid that entire sentences flowed from them like one long, sweet word.

As they drew almost even with me, the man in the rear yelled Hup! as if to signal their break was over, and they sprang to life, each switching his paddle to the opposite side of the canoe and digging it hard into the murky water at exactly the same moment as the other's, as if they were some kind of perfect machine. Their canoe practically jumped forward with each stroke, and I found myself fascinated that two people could make a canoe lurch forward through the water this way.

For some reason, unclear even to me, I blurted out, Bon jour! in their direction, and immediately wondered what the hell was wrong with me. Before they could spot me, I stepped back farther into the shade, a victim of my embarrassment.

They both stopped paddling, and one of them, the one in the rear, snapped his head around, but only for a moment, and in the wrong direction. They laughed their French laughs and shrugged before getting back to their work, and as quickly as they came, they were gone, under the center of the West Bridge, and then the railroad bridge, and out of sight. Relieved, I climbed back up onto the large rock.

The sound of their last ‘Hup’ had barely faded when, from the west, a car approached the West Bridge, which spanned the Grapevine River maybe three hundred feet downriver from where I sat. The car slowly made its way onto the bridge, causing the ancient wooden beams beneath the bridge's paved surface to shudder and rattle as the car continued on its way. Halfway across the narrow bridge, the car stopped.

A woman, quite young, stepped from the car. Through the leaves I could see her from behind, off and on, as she walked slowly to the far railing in her high heels. There was something exciting in the way she walked.

When she reached the railing, she stood there with her back to me for a full minute, visible only from her waist down. She then turned and walked back to the car, and I saw her from the front for just a second before she was blocked from my view again by the branches overhead. I saw enough to know I’d never seen her before.

She got into her car and continued across the bridge, turning around on the Hopewell side of the river before going back over the bridge, headed west toward Lindley.

I’d seen this ritual, or something very much like it, maybe twenty times since I first started coming to the river. Even after seeing it so many times, I still had no idea what it was about.

It always played out the same. It was always a young woman, always stopping in the middle of the bridge and getting out of the car, walking to the far railing, and then, after a minute or so, getting back in the car, turning it around and heading back to the west. Always.

* * *

I grabbed a handful of leaves from a branch overhead and tossed them out into the water below, one at a time. Each of them was grabbed by the whirlpool, swirled in a few frantic circles and then released. Curiously, a single golden-yellow leaf was the first to escape the grasp of the whirlpool, followed soon by the remainder of leaves. They emerged in single file, as if in a parade, before shooting down the right side of the dingy green river and under the bridges, then into the dark shadows on the water beyond.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out another stone. Just as I was about to skip it across the river, I heard something breaking, something metallic, a short distance upriver, followed by a man's voice as he let out a short, Eee-yaaaah! This was immediately followed by a splashing sound. Then, from the same location, a man's deep voice yelled, Aw-w-w, damn it!

At almost the same moment, a flock of Canadian geese, a dozen or so in a wide V, started honking like crazy, gliding along the river from the south. The goose on this end was flying unusually wide of the formation. So wide, I was sure he was about to smack into the side of Burden's Rock. At the last minute he lifted up and soared past me, so close I was sure I felt his wingtip brush my arm. The entire flock settled gracefully on the river, just short of the bridge.

I looked upriver to search for the person who’d yelled, now thinking another canoe was approaching and had encountered some type of problem, but I couldn’t see anyone or anything.

I grabbed my book and jumped down from the rock, then ran up the path to the top of the riverbank. Once I reached the top, I ran to the south, looking down through the tangle of trees and brush along the river to see if I could spot anyone. I’d run maybe two hundred feet when I caught a glimpse of something blue near the water down below.

When I spotted what appeared to be the faint outline of a path, I ran down the embankment as fast as I could, giving no thought at all to the dew-covered patches of weeds on the steep embankment.

In a heartbeat, my feet slipped out from under me on the damp incline and, just like that, my feet were above my head as I began to tumble downward through the brush. I bounced hard off a good-sized tree with my shoulder before coming to a stop near the edge of the river, on my stomach, facing the river.

As I lifted my head, not five feet to my left, on all fours, was a black man in a blue denim jacket with a startled look on his face.

* * *

Chapter 2

T

he man, in his sixties I would guess, had short, mostly white hair, and was looking right at me, his eyes wide open.

A fishing pole rested in a forked stick jammed into the soft soil of the riverbank, with its line stretched out to a red and white bobber in the water. On the ground, a few feet from him, lay a dark brown fedora, the kind you’d see guys like Bogart wearing in those old 40's movies.

It seemed like several seconds passed as we sized each other up, taking stock of the situation, and then he spoke.

You all right, son? he asked, pulling his right leg, from the knee down, slowly out of the water and getting up on his knees.

Uh-huh. You?

I got to my knees and rubbed my shoulder for a moment. It’d taken a pretty good whack on the tree.

I believe I’m all right, he said, now smiling and motioning toward a broken folding lawn chair a few feet away. I was jist sittin’ there in my chair, and one of them damn birds come outta nowhere, flyin’ way over here so close I coulda grabbed him by the neck if I’da had some warnin’!

He wagged his finger upriver, indicating the path of the geese.

That dang thing scared the bejesus out of me. For a second there, I was lookin’ him right in the eye!

I couldn’t help smiling as I got to my feet. I walked over to help him.

Thank you, son, he said as I took him under his arm and helped him to his feet. You’ll have to excuse me. I don’t usually meet people when halfa me's in a river.

He looked down again and gave his wet pant leg a shake.

Once fully standing, he was taller than I first thought, and square shouldered. He was my height, give or take an inch.

He must be the joker in the bunch, I said. "I’m pretty sure he's the same one that almost flew into my head."

This got a little laugh out of him.

He wiped his right hand on his pants and extended it to me. Name's Lewis…Lewis Shields.

Sorry, I said, wiping the dirt from my hand before leaning in to shake his hand. Jake Burton. Good to meet you, Mr. Shields.

Jist plain Lewis is fine with me.

His hand was large and calloused and, despite his age, his grip was solid.

Mighty nice of you comin’ down here to help me, son, ‘course, I’m sorry you had to take the fast way down here, he said with a wink.

He rubbed his hip, then continued.

"Now, where on earth did you come from?"

I was down the river a ways, I said, brushing some of the dirt and moist dead leaves from my clothes, when I heard you down here yelling and thought maybe somebody was in trouble, so I came running down this way. I slipped on the riverbank up there and the next thing I knew I was down here. How the heck did you wind up in the water like that?

Well, the last thing I remember, I was fishin’ an’ all at once I seen somethin’ big an’ white come flashin’ towards me out of the corner of my eye, thisaway, he said, pointing to his left, an’ when I leaned back real quick to get outta its way, the leg on my old chair musta gave out on me. All at once, there I am, rollin’ into the water! Didn’t help none I was sittin’ a little too close to the river.

You gonna be okay?

He rubbed his hip again and flexed his leg at the knee to see if it worked okay.

I’m fine, he said. Jist gettin’ my complainin’ outta the way, that's all. Ain’t no fun complainin’ to myself.

I was kinda worried when I heard you hollering.

Well, it coulda been worse. If I’da rolled a couple feet more, every bit of me woulda been in that river.

He shook his head and grinned, putting his hand to his chest.

My heart's still beatin’ like a dang drum.

I picked his hat up from the ground and handed it to him. He gave it a brush with the cuff of his jacket's sleeve to remove some loose dirt from it, then dropped it onto his head with a slight tilt to the back, easy, like he could do it in his sleep.

Why don’t you come over here and catch your breath, I said, nodding toward the waist-high boulder just a few feet from me.

I took him under his elbow and helped him over to it, but he seemed to be moving just fine on his own.

Crazy damn bird, he mumbled.

When he got to the rock, he sort of half-leaned, half-sat on it. He lifted his leg and untied the shoestring on his wet shoe.

That was the strangest thing, I said. I’ve never seen geese come down here and land in the river before, let alone act like that.

Jist my damn luck.

He took his shoe off and shook the water out of it, and peeled off his white work sock, revealing the bright pink sole of his foot.

Ain’t them geese supposed to honk or somethin’?

They sorta did…right after you and your chair went over, I joked. You must’ve scared the hell out of ‘em!

I bet they never seen them a black man up close before.

Uh, that's not what I meant, I said, embarrassed. "I just meant when geese see any people, they’re usually shooting at ‘em."

I suppose that's so, he said with a chuckle, wringing the water out of his sock, over and over.

I see lots of them fly over—going north—going south when the lakes and ponds start to freeze up in Canada. I’m pretty sure this is one of their major flyways, and these, I said, pointing at the geese spread out on the river, are Canada Geese…probably stragglers. Most of ‘em were done migrating north through here a while back. You can tell they’re Canada Geese by the black coloring on their necks and the tops of their heads.

Do tell, son! Why, I ‘spect you must be the big goose expert in these parts, ain’t you?

Sorry, I said.

That's okay, son. I’m jist teasin’ you.

He wrung out his damp sock one last time, slapped it hard against the rock a couple times, rolled it up and then shoved it into his coat pocket.

I guess I had it coming.

I didn’t mean nothin’ by it, he said, smiling.

You got me good.

My face was still red.

He let out a laugh.

So, you fishin’ down here? he asked as he slipped his shoe back on his sockless foot.

I haven’t fished for a few years now.

Young man like you's prob’ly got no patience for fishin’.

I’ve got the patience all right. I guess I just lost interest. I used to catch some bass and blue gill; sometimes even a carp.

"I will not eat no damn carp, that's for sure, he said as he tried to brush more of the damp river dirt from his clothes. Dirty damn fish! My daddy used to jist knock ‘em over the head with a big stick and throw ‘em back."

My own dad told me that once. He said they’re a dirty fish. I just throw ‘em back.

He shook his head.

Well, I s’pose fishin’ ain’t for everybody.

I don’t know. I guess I got older. Lost my pole. My father died. Things just changed.

I don’t know why I mentioned my father, but he picked up on it right away.

You lost your daddy? I’m sorry to hear that, son. That's a hard thing for a young man. I lost my own daddy when I was jist twelve.

You did?

A drunk driver run a light an’ hit him while he was on his way home from one of his jobs late one night. I can still remember hearin’ my momma screamin’ an’ cryin’ when the police come to our house. She liked to went crazy that night.

I’m sorry about your father, Lewis.

It happened a long time ago, he said. Nearly fifty years ago, an’ I’ll be damned if it don’t still seem like yesterday sometimes. I can even tell you the dress my momma was wearin’ that night. It was a dark blue dress with little pink an’ white flowers on it. I guess somethin’ like that don’t ever go away…not all the way leastways.

It's only been three years for me, but I know what you mean.

That's still plenty fresh, I reckon, he said, looking at me and sort of squinting. "What happened to your daddy?"

He had an accident.

Lewis paused a few seconds, waiting for more.

So, you jist come down here and sit?

I usually bring a book down here with me, but I don’t always read.

Readin's a good thing, he said. Always got a book goin’ myself. I’m partial to the Western books, but I like a good spy book every so often.

I read about four books every week, sometimes more, I said, matter-of-factly. A little of everything.

He let out a long whistle.

That sure is a lot of readin’, son. Why, if I was your age—what are you—maybe eighteen? I wouldn’t be hangin’ out at some old river, readin’. That's for damn sure.

I’m nineteen, and I like it down here. It's quiet, well, usually, I joked.

"I expect the quiet down here is a pretty good thing myself. ‘Course, I’m lots older than you. Us old folks, we’re s’posed to like the quiet."

You feeling any better?

I’m good, son. Nothin’ seems to be broke, ‘cept for my old chair, he said, looking at the twisted pile of aluminum tubing and turquoise nylon webbing lying at the river's edge.

Glad you’re okay. It didn’t sound so good when I first heard you down here.

Did you see them two men in that canoe a little bit ago? he asked.

Yeah, I think they were French—probably French Canadians.

That explains it then, he said, laughing. Couldn’t make out a word they was sayin’! Thought maybe there was somethin’ wrong with my ears.

Kinda took me by surprise, too.

They was so busy talkin’, he said, they run right over my line.

They were sure movin’, weren’t they?

I don’t know ‘bout that. When I seen ‘em, they was jist floatin’ along, takin’ it easy, talkin’ that French.

I couldn’t believe how fast they were flyin’ by the time they got to the bridge.

Well, quite a day all the way around, he said. Caught me a coupla fish, almost got hit in the head by a crazy ass goose, y’all come rollin’ down here at me like a bat outta hell, an’ a couple of Frenchies go by in a fancy red canoe!

I couldn’t help smiling.

Well, as I said, I’m glad you’re okay.

If it makes you feel any better, son, you’re the first person from town I seen down here since I moved here. I was thinkin’ maybe I had this river all to myself!

You know, all the times I’ve been down here, I’ve never seen anyone else down here, except a few years ago I saw a man come poking around in a little aluminum boat, and then today, you and the Canadians.

If it wasn’t for that damn goose, you wouldn’ta seen me, neither.

You always come down to this spot? I said.

I tried a couple other spots, but nowadays I most always come here. Three, four, sometimes five times a week, late spring into fall. Always get down here early in the mornin’, jist after the sun comes up. These fish, they love them a nice, juicy worm when the sun's comin’ up.

This explained why I never saw or heard him down at the river before. I’d never come to the river so early before.

What about you? You come to this spot, too, or you got your own place? he asked.

I thought about it for a moment.

If you’ve got a minute, I’ll show it to you.

Sure thing, he said. Looks like I’m done fishin’ today anyways without my chair. Jist take me a minute to get my things together.

Can I give you a hand?

Oh, no thanks, son, he said with a wave of his hand. I’m used to carryin’ it all. I feel outta balance if both hands ain’t full.

He picked up his fishing pole and reeled the line in, looped his hook through the hook keeper and locked the reel, then pulled his stringer out of the water with two nice bass still wriggling on it. He picked up his broken chair and tackle box with his other hand and trudged up the riverbank behind me, his water-drenched shoe squishing with every step.

I found my book along the way and led him to the path that went down to my rock.

Think I know where you’re goin’, he said quietly, lagging behind me a ways.

When we got to the bottom, he spoke again.

I come down here one time, jist once, a few years ago.

You’ve been down here?

Yes, I have, he said. I suppose it's a good place to be if a body wants to be alone, or do some thinkin’, jist not so good as my spot for fishin’, though. No sir, this spot jist ain’t for me.

How's that?

Well, for one thing, see that big ‘ol swirly over there? he said, pointing at the whirlpool a few feet out from Burden's Rock. You’d never find no self-respectin’ fish goin’ near one o’ them things!

He was right. I’d never pulled a fish out of the area near the whirlpool, though I’d tried for years.

His eyes drifted over to the big rock.

I’ll bet that's where you like to sit, ain’t it? he said. A man would natur’ly sit over there. That's what you call a ‘thinkin’ rock,’ right there.

Yeah, I guess you could call it that, I said, surprised.

Another car rattled its way slowly across the old bridge, and Lewis glanced over at it.

Some day that ol’ bridge is gonna fall right into the river, he said.

I think it sounds worse than it is. It's just old.

I s’pose so. Our daddy used to take us kids into the country at least once every summer. Used to see lotsa bridges like this one, all over the place. I reckon this is the last one around here.

So, you live around here, Lewis?

Right on the edge of town. Jist a nice little walk from here. How ‘bout you?

I live a couple blocks from here. Most afternoons I work down at Kady's Hardware.

I know that place, he said. I went there when I first come to town.

I’ve only been working there for the last year. It's just me and the owner and one other guy. The owner tells me I’m the low man on the totem pole.

That's sure as hell one small totem pole, son, he said with a laugh.

How long ago’d you move here?

Let's see, he said, looking up. I been here over four years now.

So…what do you think of the place?

It's a quiet little town, jist like I was hopin’ it’d be.

Quiet. That's a nice way to put it, I said. This friend of mine says it has rigor mortis.

He laughed.

Don’t you be too hard on your town, son. It could prob’ly use a little polish around the edges, but it suits me jist fine.

One of the fish on his stringer took to struggling.

He looked up the riverbank towards the top and said, Well, I best be gettin’ home and cleanin’ these fish ‘fore they go bad.

I’d offer you a ride home, but I walked here, too.

That's okay. I’m jist a ten-minute walk from here. I bought me that little house over on the pond, on that little dirt road, he said, pointing in the general direction.

You won’t believe this, but I can see your house from my bedroom window.

I wanted that house the first time I seen it, he said, ignoring my comment. When I seen it, I said to myself, ‘That's the place I been lookin’ for.’

You gonna fry up some fish for lunch? I asked as we trudged up the riverbank.

Mercy no! I’ll eat ‘em tomorrow night. I love fish, but my mother used to tell us only poor people eat the same food three days in a row.

He stopped and put his hand to his hip and winced.

Ah!

You sure you’re okay? I asked.

Mmmm-hmm. Jist banged myself up a little on that damn chair. I’ll be fine.

You sure? You look as if you might’ve hurt yourself.

Jist a little sore, an’ wet, that's all, he said, looking down at his wet pant leg and shaking his head.

We reached the top of the riverbank and made our way to the side of the street above. At the top, we both turned to the south, walking along the side of River Street. We talked for the next two blocks, taking our time, until I stopped at my street.

This is as far as I go, I said.

Well, it was very nice meetin’ you, Jake, he said, holding out his hand. Maybe I’ll see you down here again some time.

Good meeting you, too, Lewis, I said as we shook hands again.

You take care, son, and let me know if you got any more information about them geese!

I couldn’t help smiling. The old guy definitely had some rascal in him.

You, too, Lewis.

I’m thinkin’ I might need to start wearin’ one o’ them danged football helmets down here.

He started to walk away with his fishing gear and his fish and broken chair, and then he stopped and turned back toward me.

Like I said…I’m down here early lotsa mornin's. If you like, you’re welcome to stop by and visit, or you can come out to my house any time. I don’t get much company.

I thanked him for the invitation and he gave a little wave over his shoulder and headed down the street. He appeared to have a slight limp.

I can see that limp! I yelled, teasing him.

Mind your own damn business! he said, laughing.

Most of the time, when I first met people I didn’t know what to make of them. That wasn’t the case with Lewis. He was good company, easy to be with right from the start.

That night, after a few hours of reading, my conversation with Lewis still replayed in my head. As I waited for sleep to sneak up on me, I struggled to place what it was about him that wouldn’t let go of me.

* * *

Chapter 3

A

bout this job of mine at the hardware store. It consisted mostly of a lot of shelf stocking and errand running, with a little tending to customers thrown in, along with a minute or two on the register every so often. Each day felt a lot like the day before, and each day left me feeling as though I’d handed over another piece of myself and not accomplished a single thing. There was probably some guy working in a Shanghai noodle factory who felt like I did.

No matter, it had its upside. Mainly, the short work hours allowed me to stay up as late as I wanted, reading and sleeping in until most people were thinking about what they were having for lunch.

That's why it wasn’t until well after ten before I finally started moving around the next morning. I was hoping to get up early enough to find Lewis down at the river again, but when I finally got there and looked for him, he was nowhere to be found.

Rather than go home, I walked to Burden's Rock. Once there, my heron friend was waiting for me again, standing in the shallow water on the opposite side of the river, balanced on his good leg. He looked right at me and greeted me with his deep call.

Ever since he first showed up at the river nearly three weeks earlier, he’d stayed well downriver from me. Over the last few days, though, he’d begun to edge his way down the riverbank, hopping closer and closer to me on his good foot. Occasionally, he’d start to lower his other leg, but only for a moment, then he’d pull it up again.

He’d stand motionless, staring into the shallow water, then suddenly uncurl his neck and pluck a small fish from the water. After tossing his head back, he’d swallow the fish and look over at me.

A car door slammed from above and behind me along the street, and I turned my head for a moment to see where the sound came from. When I looked back toward the river, the heron was in full flight, inches off the water, his thin legs, good and bad, trailing behind him. With his long neck curled tightly, he flew under the bridges before making a graceful ascent.

I heard someone walking down the path behind me and turned to get a better look.

Jake! You down here? I heard a familiar voice holler out.

Through the brush and trees I was able to make out the bright green plaid shirt and then the unmistakable pair of khakis. Only Chris Messinger would wear khakis to the river.

Yeah! Come on down! I yelled back and climbed down from the rock.

Maybe a month after Dad's funeral, Chris started coming around to the house almost nightly after dinner. He’d pull up in his old Volkswagen after dinner and we’d ride around town, up and down the same streets over and over, or sometimes we’d go to Lindley or McKinley.

Sometimes he’d coax me into singing along with him if a good song came on the radio, and other times he’d joke around, but mostly we talked. Well, mostly, he talked.

It was him, more than my ex-girlfriend Bibi, or even my mom, who got me through those first few months. He didn’t know it, but he’d rescued me from myself too many times to count.

Especially early on, when Chris spoke, I was like a sponge. It was almost always interesting when he’d talk because it seemed that between his big-city education, both formal and informal, and the trips and vacations that his family routinely took, he’d picked up an incredible amount of obscure, but fascinating information. Things that never seem to come up in a place like Hopewell. No matter what we did, though, it seemed it was always his personal mission to do whatever it took to entertain and distract me enough to keep me from slipping back into that dark place of mine.

Only once had I ever confessed to Chris the confusion and pain regarding my father's death. In his most serious tone, he’d said, I don’t know what to tell you, Slick. The show must go on. When you feel it comin’ on, you just do the best you can and don’t give in to it.

It wasn’t as prophetic as I expected, but I knew what he meant, and I thought back to it often after that day.

Another thing. My parents named me Michael Jacob Burton when I came into the world, and everybody used to call me Mikey when I was little, and then Mike when I got into junior high. That all changed not long after Chris hit town.

Once he found out my middle name was Jacob, Chris informed me he was going to be calling me Jake. He has never called me Mike. No matter who he talked to, he’d refer to me as Jake, and in less than two years he’d convinced practically everyone, from classmates to teachers, that I preferred to go by that name.

When someone new would call me ‘Jake’, I’d just smile in the knowledge that he’d made another convert. It took him a year and a half, but he finally even convinced my mom to start calling me Jake.

My other good friend, George Hubble, or Hub as everyone called him, couldn’t understand why I didn’t push back against it or tell Chris I didn’t like it. Finally, I had to admit to Hub that I didn’t mind it, because in a class with only sixty-eight boys, somehow there were ten Michaels. Nobody would miss one fewer, and when Chris told me I seemed like a Jake, I had no problem with being the only Jake in town.

Chris never really said why he did it, but I was sure it was just to see if he could pull it off, or maybe because he just thought it was funny.

The funny thing about it, for all the effort he put into getting people to call me Jake, most of the time Chris called me ‘Slick’ and ‘Ace.’ He had a few other names when we were goofing, just the two of us, and at first I didn’t say much when he’d do it, but eventually I learned to give it right back to him.

The only other person who ever came to the river was Hub. Like Chris, he’d come to Burden's Rock when he didn’t know where else to look for me.

After we graduated last year, Hub started working lots of hours at his father's little machine shop just outside of town, where they made parts that had something to do with the heaters in Ford trucks. His father told him several years ago that if he stuck with it, the business would be his someday, so Hub worked his butt off for him.

He’d had the same girlfriend, Sheri Haggerty, from the class behind ours since our sophomore year. Hub and I were pretty close until just before my father died, which was about the same time he started going with Sheri and spending more time at his dad's shop.

I didn’t see much of Hub after we graduated, but I think we both understood. I missed seeing more of him, but we were the kind of friends who knew we could count on each other, no matter what. As a bonus, like everyone else, he got along great with Chris.

Chris, meanwhile, went away to Merriman College, maybe two hours northwest of Hopewell. In his first year at Merriman, I’d only seen him half a dozen times and maybe talked with him on the phone that same amount. He rarely came home on weekends, but when he did, he always made the same pitch to get me to come up to see him at Merriman.

As Chris started to walk down the path toward me, one of his expensive loafers must’ve gotten off the path, and he slipped on the grassy slope of the riverbank. Before he completely lost his balance and fell, he reached overhead and grabbed a low-hanging tree branch just in time to catch himself, but not before glancing off the ground with one knee. He let fly with a loud, Well, shit!

As soon as he gathered himself, he mumbled another profanity and made his way to the big rock.

Damn it all, Cooter! Would you look at my pants! he said, acting all serious and pointing to a damp green stain on one of the knees of his perfectly creased chinos.

Chauncey, anything that happens to those pants is an improvement.

Exactly the kind of comment I’d expect from you fashion-­impaired tractor jockeys in this backward little town, he said, grinning.

This was his favorite way of giving me a hard time. Always giving me shit about Hopewell.

Well lookity who's heah, visitin’ us po country folk! I said. I ain’t bin propahly in-sulted since the last time you come to town with them dang big city ways of yer’n!

He let go with a laugh and a big, Yeee-ha! It meant ‘small town’ when he said it, which was fairly often. He had several of these names and expressions for Hopewell when we’d talk.

Chris and his family had moved to Hopewell from Illinois, some exclusive suburb north of Chicago named Cranston. It must’ve been a good-sized town, though, because he still struggled from time to time with the whole small-town thing.

When they first moved to town, I remember hearing speculation about his family and why they’d moved to Hopewell. Out-of-towners with their brand-new Cadillacs and expensive clothes, and trips to Europe every summer; they stood out to most locals like the big red ass on one of those zoo monkeys.

It was probably their lifestyle, along with his father's unmistakable Chicago accent, that caused one townswoman to suggest to my mother that Chris's dad might be some kind of Mafia figure in hiding. This was the level of mistrust reserved for most outsiders in our town.

Knowing Chris, though, it's likely he’d have found it all pretty damn funny.

I had a feeling you might be down here when you weren’t home.

I just got here a few minutes ago.

You and this damn river.

Good to see you again, Chris, I said as we had as we shook hands.

Good to see you, too, Slick. How you been?

Dazed and confused, man. Dazed and confused.

This was my expected response whenever he asked this question.

Care to step into my office? I said, nodding toward Burden's Rock.

I climbed up onto the rock and he followed.

Sorry about the pants.

No big deal. I’ve got a closet full of them.

I wouldn’t brag about it, I said, and he gave me his fake scowl.

With his dark brown hair and dark eyes and even a slight beard shadow, Chris looked older than any of the guys I grew up with. With the contrast to my blondish-brown hair, we were a pair of opposites, in more ways than one.

Chris was popular almost from day one, and me, I was always the guy standing in the background in every picture. Still, after a while, it was entertaining watching him work his way into every clique in school, bullshitting his way along, routinely making jokes at his own expense, but never acting like he was a big deal. He was hard not to like.

Meanwhile, he excelled in every class I shared with him. He seemed to have it all.

He was about six foot two, maybe an inch taller than me, and he had a special sort of easygoing confidence in the way he carried himself. He was built similarly to me, a little broader through the shoulders, perhaps, with solid features and an easy smile.

He was almost a year older than me, too.

Another thing. His shirt collar normally covered most of it, but he had a jigsaw scar on the right side of his neck. A longer, thicker scar ran down the center of his chest, and I felt bad for him when I saw how he always did his best in Phys Ed to casually keep it concealed from everyone in the locker room.

The mother of one of my classmates worked in the principal's office, and supposedly she learned he had some kind of health issue when he was younger and was held back for a year by his parents. Whatever it was, he seemed to be fine by the time he got to Hopewell.

Seriously, I can’t believe you still come down here.

I still say it's the best place in town.

Zis behavior hass me deeply conzerned, he said, doing his best Sigmund Freud as he stroked his imaginary beard.

Then that's at least two of us, Doc.

Go ahead, laugh it off, he said, but there's no way I tell people I’ve got this good friend who hangs out at a river by himself. It just doesn’t, you know, shine the best light on either of us.

He was having a good time poking me with his sharp verbal stick again, but it was okay. It was worth it to hear him say he still considered me a good friend after a year of no doubt being around a much better class of people. It was good to have him back in town.

So, how long you home for?

My old man wanted me to come home so he could do one of his bullshit golf deals tomorrow. I’m heading back to Merriman first thing Sunday morning.

Golf?

Yeah, you know, business crap. He's dragging me down to Toledo to some country club to play golf with one of his doctor clients and his fifteen-year-old son.

What's so bad about that?

I don’t know. I don’t really like being his accomplice on these little business outings. You know…it's all about the sale. My old man says schmoozing is like shooting the jelly into the donut. I figure his sales pitch is the jelly.

Then the customer must be…

The unsuspecting donut, he said flatly.

C’mon. Maybe he just wants to play some golf with you; you know, maybe spend some time with you.

He gushed out a small laugh.

He just needs me to keep the doctor's kid occupied so he doesn’t get in the way and put the kibosh on his sales pitch.

So, if you don’t like it, why don’t you just say no when he asks you?

Hey, I may not like it, but I’m not stupid, Ace! He pays me really well.

I couldn’t help laughing.

"Wait! Let me get this straight. He pays you to play golf? You’re kidding me, right?"

The last time he slipped $100 to me.

I’ll bet that's the closest you’ve ever come to a job, isn’t it?

Even he had to smile at this, since it was apparently true.

From what little he’d told me, his father sold medical supplies and his sales area stretched across southeastern Michigan and northwestern Ohio. Judging by the way they lived, he must’ve shot his jelly into a lot of donuts.

As for Chris, he could pretty much pass for a Michigan guy. The one word he’d brought with him from Chicago was ‘dupek,’ which as far as I could tell was a word they used in Chicago for ‘asshole’. In rural Michigan, ‘asshole’ was the established terminology.

I’m just saying, it's not so much fun.

Yeah, well, poor guy, I said. I really feel bad for you having to go play golf at a fancy country club like that.

It's not the way you’re imagining it.

No, I mean it. He’ll probably even force you to go to an expensive restaurant afterward, too.

No, he said, expressionless, but yeah, we are having steaks at the country club after the golf.

Just another spoiled-ass city boy.

Seriously. Can you imagine me golfing?

Well, you’ve got the wardrobe for it.

Any comment about his clothes, which were a major contrast to the jeans and t-shirts most Hopewell guys wore in the summer, was guaranteed to get a rise out of him.

Hey, hey, hey! Careful with the insults there, Cletus. I come back here just to try dragging you out of Corn Town for a little while, and this is how you treat me?

You’re joking.

You don’t really think I’d drive all the way back here just to play an awkward round of bad golf with some pimply adolescent, do you?

But the money—

Well, of course, he said, straight-faced, there's the golf bribery money.

And the country club dinner.

The steaks were a little chewy the last time, but still—

I shook my head.

So, where are you taking me, anyhow?

I need to pick up some papers from my old man's lawyer over in Wilmington, and I was hoping I could drag you along, he said. Whadaya say?

I need to be back for work by 2:30.

Not a problem. I’ll have you back in plenty of time. Just one more thing before we go.

What's that?

Stone, he said, turning to me and holding out his hand like a surgeon asking for a scalpel.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a flat gray stone and dropped it into his open hand.

He knew that whenever I walked down to the river, I always collected a few throwing stones along the way and shoved them into my pocket. We both stood up and he gave the stone a nice side-arm toss into the river, watching it until its last skip.

Without even turning around to look at me, he said, So, seriously, Ace. Do you come down here a lot?

Sometimes, unless it's cold.

Pitiful, he said. Just plain pitiful.

I like to come down here to think, and, you know, sort of weigh my options.

He rolled his eyes.

Now that's what I call the motherlode of bullshit, he said.

Seriously. I’m working on it.

He shook his head as he gave me a sideways glance.

Something tells me you’re just saying what you think I want to hear, Ace, so I’m not gonna push you on it anymore. Whatever you decide to do, I’m good with it.

"I do think about it, but, right now, nothing's jumping out at me."

Well, if I can talk you into temporarily taking a break from your riverside musings, how would you like to get away from here for a couple of days?

What’ve you got in mind? I said, but I knew where he was headed with this.

Why don’t you come up to Merriman next weekend? It’ll be good for both of us, and it’ll be fun!

I’ll check my schedule, I said.

C’mon, Ace, he said. You’ve been putting me off since last fall. Whadaya say? It’ll be fun!

I don’t know, man.

I can see this is going to take some work, he said with false exasperation. C’mon. Let's get going. I’ve got a surprise for you.

* * *

Chapter 4

U

p the riverbank we went, with Chris leading the way. When we reached the top, I looked up and down the street for his old red Volkswagen, a present from his parents for his sixteenth birthday. It was nowhere to be found. Instead, parked along the street near the head of the path was a gleaming, dark blue two-door BMW.

Where's Adolf? I asked.

He's gone. This is Kurt, his replacement, he said, gesturing to the car. I just gave him his name this morning, on the way down from Merriman.

I let out a whistle.

"A new car? When did you get this?"

The old man dropped it off last week, and it's not really new. It's an ‘81. A year old, he said as we climbed in.

I made a fake throat-clearing sound as I touched the tan leather seat. Yeah, right. Did I mention I’m still driving Blue Boy?

It was Chris who came up with the name ‘Blue Boy’ for my clean, deep blue ‘74 Nova, which, when I first got him, made every turn of his ignition key feel like an adventure at a roulette wheel.

Hey, he still looks like new, Ace.

Yeah, a few more years and I can start taking him around to those old classic car shows.

So, what's with the BMW?

My old man told me he bought the car for my mother two weeks ago, but he said she didn’t like it. When I asked her about it, she acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about.

Must be nice, I said, ribbing him.

I didn’t ask for it.

I know, but there's no way I’d turn down a car like this if it was me.

You wouldn’t?

Are you kidding? Of course I wouldn’t!

Well, I don’t know, he said. I was fine with Adolf.

Sounds like your dad's just proud that you’re doing well in school and wanted to do something for you.

Trust me, he said with a shrug. "There's a motive behind it somewhere. There's always a string attached."

In a moment we were clattering our way across the old bridge, headed the back way to Wilmington as the gentle opening guitar licks of Led Zeppelin's Going to California blared perfectly from the BMW's deluxe stereo.

Now, what were we talking about back there? he said, nodding behind us.

Something about golf.

Nice try, he said, smiling. We were talking about you coming up to see me at Merriman next weekend.

How about two weekends from now?

Sorry, Ace. I’ll be studying for finals that weekend. It's got to be next weekend.

Okay, if it’ll get you off my ass about it, I’ll do it, I said.

Cool, he said. Next weekend it is. And trust me, I wouldn’t have you come up if I thought you wouldn’t have a good time. I know you’re not crazy about being around strangers, but you’ll be fine—you’ll see.

He knew me pretty well. Then again, my job at Kady's had helped me that way. I was better than I used to be. Of course, I already knew most of the people who walked into Kady's, so they weren’t really strangers.

So, what else is going on? How's your mom doing?

She's okay I guess.

What's that mean?

She had this talk with me last night. I don’t know why, but she even got on me about dating again.

Sounds like she was just having a bad day.

I don’t know. Ever since Dad, she has these moments every so often.

He shrugged and smiled.

You should’ve asked her if she’d feel better if you started dating the Canary again. I’ll bet she’d never bring the subject up again.

‘Canary’ was one of Chris's more generous nicknames for Bibi Shingler, the surprisingly attractive girl I went with, off and on, mostly off, for a year and a half, and he really didn’t like her. He said she was pretty in her own way and was usually the loudest person in the room, but never really said anything, hence the ‘Canary’ name.

Bibi and I saw each other exclusively, or so I thought, but it turned out that was only half true. All told, she broke up with me three times, and each time she already had my replacement lined up, barely taking enough time to slap on a fresh coat of that bright red lipstick that was her trademark. And even though Hub told me this was the standard way she did business, I failed to see it coming—every time—which didn’t say much for the accuracy of my understanding of the situation.

I never saw Bibi around town anymore, which was fine with me, but Hub's girlfriend was close friends with Bibi and he called me a while back and mentioned that Bibi was engaged to some guy from Wilmington. Hub said she really keeps the guy hopping, so, lucky me. She found herself another sap.

"You are aware that the only reason any girls ever come into the hardware store is to get out of the rain, aren’t you? It's a hardware store."

"Yeah, that is a problem, he said with a shrug. Anyhow, about your mother, I wouldn’t give much thought to what she said to you. It's just what mothers do. I’ve gotten the same speech from my own mother."

You have?

For sure! he said. Just remember, if the day comes, keep all girlfriend information away from your mother, no matter what.

Because of Bibi's inability to censor things before they escaped her bright red lips, I didn’t need to be reminded of this. I had no choice but to keep Bibi, and anything about her, at arm's length from my mother.

Well, I’m in no rush to jump into anything.

I can’t believe you, Slick! You sound like you’ve already thrown in the towel.

"It's