light standards, flyers for the fall fair, which kicked off with a parade four days from now, on Saturday. And some other posters, taped just above or below the ones for the fall fair, headlined “Keep the Parade Straight!”
I didn’t know what that meant, exactly. Perhaps, other years, it had taken a roundabout, serpentine route through Braynor that had somehow made the fall fair parade a less than spectacular entertainment. I didn’t bother to read the rest of the poster to find out. I was on a mission.
Once inside Henry’s, I grabbed a cart with two front wheels so badly aligned and balanced I wondered briefly whether Braynor was built on a fault line. Working without a list, I made my way through the store, picking up a head of romaine, some croutons, a bag of hamburger buns without sesame seeds, God forbid.
I was coming around the end of the aisle when I nearly ran the cart into a thin, white-coated man who at first I thought had escaped from some laboratory, but the absence of a pocket full of pens and the presence of blood splotches identified him as someone who had recently been behind the meat counter. Then I noticed the name “Charles” stitched to his jacket, and the clipboard in his hand.
He peered at me over his wire glasses.
“Hello,” he said.
I nodded.
“Charles Henry,” he said, offering a hand. I didn’t have a chance to check it for blood before I took it. “Manager, Henry’s Grocery. I don’t believe I know you.”
I thought, why would he? But then, in a small town, I guess if you’re the local grocer you get to know all the local faces.
“No,” I said. “I’m just staying at my father’s place.”
Henry’s face was screwed up like he was detecting a bad smell, but since I couldn’t smell anything, I figured that was his normal expression. “That doesn’t mean you can’t sign the petition,” he said. “It’s open to anyone.”
“I’m sorry?” I said.
He shoved the clipboard at me. “To keep the parade family-friendly,” he said. “Just sign down there. We’re getting a lot of names, but we need more if we’re going to be able to get the mayor to back down.”
I smiled politely and waved my hands in front of me. “I don’t really know much about all that, but thanks, and good luck, okay?”
As I tried to wheel the cart around him he said, “Don’t you believe in decency?”
I honestly thought it was a bit overrated, but had a hunch this was the wrong time to say so. “Listen, really, good luck, but I’m really a bit pressed here,” I said, and got the cart around him, feeling his glare all the way down the aisle.
When I returned to the pickup with the groceries, I knew Dad wanted to look in the bags, see whether I got the order right, so I put them right behind my seat where he couldn’t reach them. I saw him glance back there a couple of times, the anxiety plainly visible on his face, but with his ankle so sore, he couldn’t shift around very far.
“Met Mr. Henry,” I said, turning the key and pulling the transmission down into drive.
“Oh,” said Dad, still pissed over our earlier argument.
“His face always look like that?”
Dad didn’t respond, and we didn’t talk the rest of the way back.
A small crowd gathered when we came down the hill and to a stop behind Dad’s cabin. At a glance, it looked like most everyone I’d seen earlier. The older couple, the well-dressed heavyset guy, and Bob Spooner.
They gathered around Dad’s side, opened the door for him, helped him out. Spooner saw the crutches behind the seats, grabbed them, assisted Dad in getting them under his arms. “Come on, Arlen, let’s get you inside.”
I got out the driver’s door, not rushing. Everyone else wanted to help. They seemed to have a genuine affection for Dad, particularly Bob and the older couple. This, I was learning, was not your typical fishing camp where the guests were strangers. This was some kind of family.
I brought in the groceries and my new clothes and the bear repellent, glancing over my shoulder into the woods as I approached the cabin. It was dusk, and the trees were losing their distinctness and blending together into a single shadow against the darkening sky. I stopped a moment and listened, hearing nothing but a light breeze blowing through the pines. Now, with daylight fading, it was hard to tell where, exactly, the body had been. It was long gone now, taken away shortly after May Wickens fell into her father’s arms, and the entire incident, in many ways, seemed part of the distant past. Almost as if it had never happened.
Dad was inviting everyone to come back in an hour. Bob Spooner said he did, indeed, have a stringerful of pickerel hanging off the dock that he could clean up before then, and the others were making offers of what they could bring. Before they could head back to their respective cabins and get ready, Dad wanted to introduce me formally to everyone, even if I’d already made their acquaintance.
“Bob I know,” I said, shaking his hand again. Then Dad introduced me to Hank and Betty Wrigley, the older couple, who came from Pennsylvania every fall to rent cabin 4 for three weeks, and finally, the plump guy decked out in Eddie Bauer, who pressed his sweaty palm into mine and shook it for at least three seconds longer than he should have. Everything about him screamed “sales.”
“I’m Leonard Colebert, and I’m in diapers!” He beamed.
The others either shook their heads or rolled their eyes, or both. I guessed that they’d heard this one before.
“No kidding?” I said.
“That’s right. I own Colebert Enterprises, makers of diapers for infants, toddlers, bedwetters, adults, you name it. If you can’t hold it, we will.” He laughed.
I found myself discreetly wiping the sweat from his hand on the backside of my jeans. I wondered if I was starting to develop a phobia about handshaking.
“Well,” I said. “You been coming here long?”
He shook his head. “Only a couple years. Not as long as Hank and Betty here, certainly not as long as Bob. Bob, how long you been coming up here?”
“Thirty, thirty-two years,” Bob said evenly. “Right back to when Denny himself had it. Didn’t have running water or toilets in the cabins back then, but then Denny sold the place around 1980, and Lyall Langdon bought it, did a bit of upgrading, and he was the one sold the place to your dad. But they’ve always hung on to the name Denny’s Cabins. Everyone knows it by that, and it’s a name with a certain recognition factor.”
“And you?” Leonard said to Hank and Betty Wrigley.
Betty, quietly, said, “Well, I guess nearly twenty years. We used to come up for a week every summer, but once Hank and I were both retired, we made it three weeks.”
“What sort of work did you retire from?” I asked, already weary of Leonard leading the conversation.
Betty said, “I was a nurse, and Hank here was in construction.”
Hank nodded. “I had my own crew. We built houses, mostly.”
“Me,” said Leonard, “I don’t think I’ll ever retire. I just love it too much. Love it love it love it. But I like to get away from it all, too, you know. I could afford to stay anywhere, but I like it here.”
Dad shot Leonard a look that said “Asshole.”
Bob Spooner said to Dad, “You want to give Orville, and, you know, a call, see if they want to come out.”
Dad waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll see.” He changed the subject. “Hey, we picked up some cans of anti- bear spray. Anybody wants to borrow a can, let me know.”
Bob smiled. “I keep my Smith and Wesson in my tackle box. Maybe I’m gonna have to start carrying it with me everywhere I go.”
Terrific, I thought. We could all get guns and wander around the place packing heat.
Everyone agreed to meet back at Dad’s place within the hour, and once Dad was settled inside, Bob motioned for me to join him.
“It’s a good thing you’re here, your dad really needs you right now,” he said. Bob was a tall guy, an inch or two over six feet, and even though he was twenty or more years older than I, I had to work to match his stride.
“Yeah, well, he’s not always the best at making one feel welcome,” I said.
“He does like things just so,” Bob conceded. “But he’s really improved this place since buying it from Langdon. Langdon, he fixed the place up when he first bought the camp, but in those last few years he had it, he let it run
