“Mr. Walker?” Wickens said as Dad made his way to the door. “How’s your ankle?”
“Oh, you know, it smarts a bit,” Dad said. “I’m sorry to hear about your trouble. That young man.”
Wickens nodded. “Tragic,” he said. “Just tragic. Can’t ever remember something like that happening up here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “How’s your daughter doing?”
There was a glint in Wickens’s eye, like maybe I’d crossed some line, daring to ask a question about her.
“She’s good,” he said. “She’s going to be just fine. May’s a strong girl. So you’re Mr. Walker’s son, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m staying with Dad a few days, helping him out till his ankle gets a bit stronger.”
“He’s taken over cabin three,” Dad said. “Making himself right at home.”
“What I was wondering,” Timmy Wickens said to Dad, “Charlene and I, that’s my wife,” he looked at me when he said it, “we were wondering could you join us for dinner tonight? The two of you.”
I looked at Dad.
“I know it’s short notice and all,” Timmy said, “but we’d be much obliged if the two of you joined us for dinner. Our misfortune kind of turned your life upside down, too, and we’d like to make it right.”
Dad appeared stunned. “Zachary, are we, are we doing something tonight?”
I shrugged. “Not that I know of.”
Dad’s eyes widened. “I, I guess, I don’t think we’ve got anything on for tonight.”
Wickens smiled. “That’s great, then. Why don’t you stroll up around six-thirty or so?”
“That sounds great, Timmy,” Dad said. “Isn’t that great, son?”
I nodded. “Sounds terrific.”
“Settled then,” said Wickens, turning and heading back out the door.
Once I had it closed behind him, Dad and I stared at each other for several seconds without speaking.
“Sarah,” I finally said, “would tell me, in social situations like this, that we should take some kind of hostess gift.”
“Okay,” Dad said. “Got any ideas?”
“I was thinking, a case of Alpo. We give the dogs something to eat, maybe they won’t eat us.”
10
IT WAS TIME to set other problems aside temporarily and start tackling the chores at Denny’s Cabins. Helping out around the place was, after all, the initial reason for my decision to hang in, although other things that threatened to keep me here longer seemed to be growing exponentially.
“This is dump day,” Dad informed me.
“Shit,” I said. “I forgot to get you a card.”
“Do you want to help, or do you just want to be a smartass?” Dad asked. It was, I had to admit, a tough question. I believed it was possible, with some effort, to do both. I had been pissed at him ever since Timmy Wickens’s visit for not being creative enough to come up with an excuse to get us out of dinner with people we were trying to find a way to evict.
“You could have said something,” he said accusingly.
“He was inviting you,” I said. “I was just an afterthought.”
We bickered about that for a while, got nowhere, finally decided to move on. “Tell me what needs to be done around here,” I said, which had brought us to the exciting news that it was dump day.
But there was more. “Once you do a run to the dump, there’s grass to cut, fish guts to bury, we need to make sure we’ve got worms, there’s-”
“See if we’ve got worms?”
“Night crawlers, bait, for crying out loud. I keep ’em in a fridge out in the shed.”
I sighed. “And the fish guts?”
“You’ve seen the bucket under the fish-cleaning table down by the docks?”
Who could forget?
“Well, they won’t let us put raw fish guts in the municipal dump, so we have to deal with them ourselves.”
“I’m guessing they won’t flush.”
“You have to take them out to the woods and bury them.”
“Are you kidding?”
“There’s already a hole dug out there. There’s a big board over it. Take the guts up, dump it in the hole, throw some dirt in over it, put the board back over.”
I nodded tiredly. “Okay, you stay here, I’ll get these things done.”
“You know how to drive a garden tractor?” Dad asked. “ ’Cause the grounds are really looking a bit unkempt. I would have done it yesterday if it hadn’t been for all this other shit happening.”
“I think I can figure it out.”
“Because it’s a bit special, this tractor, because-”
“Dad. I can figure it out.”
Dad held up his hands. “Okay, okay, you’re the expert, I don’t know a goddamn thing.”
“Whatever,” I said, heading out the door.
“Yeah, whatever!” Dad shouted as the door slammed shut. I was tempted to go back, say “Good comeback!” but decided someone had to be the mature one. An hour ago, I was a genius and a hero, coming up with the plan to talk to a lawyer about evicting the Wickenses, but now I was an idiot again.
I decided to tackle the garbage run first, loading half a dozen plastic cans jammed with green garbage bags filled to bursting into the back of Dad’s Ford pickup. Leonard Colebert strolled over, hands parked in his front pockets so as to reduce the risk of being asked to lift something.
“So, this is garbage day?” he asked, smiling. I decided Leonard was probably undeserving of a smartass response-although that could change-so I merely nodded. “That was a good time last night,” he said, referring to the party at Dad’s cabin. “I didn’t get a chance to tell you even a fraction of what’s involved in the diaper business, or all the plan for my big resort.”
“Well, it was pretty busy,” I said, loading a can into the back of the truck and making sure the lid was secure.
“You mind if I tag along with you?” he said, one hand already on the passenger door. I couldn’t think of a way to say no, so I motioned for him to hop in.
“I rode with your dad to the dump one day,” he said. “You pass right by the property I’m getting to build my resort on. I’ll show you.”
Oh boy.
When we were on the highway, Leonard said, “God, I love it up here. I could go anywhere, you know, Club Med, you name some fancy place, I could afford it. But there’s nothing like being up here.”
“There a Mrs. Colebert?” I asked.
“Not at the moment, but you never know, that could change,” Leonard said, puffing out his chest. “I’ve had my share of ladies over the years, that’s for sure. But never really found the right one.”
There had to be a girl somewhere, I figured, who wanted to listen to diaper talk all day.
The road took a slight bend to the right when Leonard shouted, “Here! Here’s the spot! Slow down.”
I pulled over onto the shoulder and brought the truck to a halt, leaving it running in drive with my foot planted on the brake. Leonard was pointing into dense forest. The lake was probably no more than a couple hundred yards away, but you couldn’t see it.
“Okay, this is where you’d drive in, there’d be a big sign here, maybe something like ‘Colebert Lodge,’ I don’t know, and a huge neon fish jumping out of the water, a line coming out of its mouth. Can you picture it? It’d be super vivid, like a Vegas sign, but tasteful, you know?”
“Right,” I said.
“It’d be bright in the daytime, but at night, it would light up the sky, you know? There’s nothing like that around
