Rusty Summer

by Mary McKinley

  “This is also our garage,” Dude says as we pull up to the gas station, which shares the parking lot with the motel. “Wait here—I’ll park and help you.”

  He drops us off with our stuff and parks in the station. He comes back and walks in with us. Bells on the door to the motel ring when we open it.

  “Ger?” Dude calls, tentatively.

  An old lady comes out of the back and gasps.

  “Ahhh!” She’s startled, and hollers as she grabs on to the counter. We do look pretty bad.

  “Good Lord! Are you okay? What did you all do?!” She looks at us over her glasses.

  “They’re fine. They hit a deer and wrecked their van. Dart and John are getting it now.”

  “Good heavens, kids! You’re lucky you’re okay! You could have been killed!”

  “Nah, Ger, not these deer.” Dude says, “You’re thinking of the big ones back east. These black tail deer here’re smaller. They’ll just wreck your car—and kill themselves.”

  “Oh, dear! You kids should be more careful!”

  I nod woefully. “I totally agree.”

  “Well, get in here and let’s get you mopped off. Here, take room twelve. Two queen-size beds.”

  We are carefully escorted to the room. Beau showers first because he’s quickest. Then me, then Leo. She takes The Bomb into the shower with her. I help dry Bommy off when they get out.

  Then we mop up the blood-stained floor and pile all the red-and-white towels in a heap.

  Finally, we are not sticky and covered with blood for the first time in hours. It’s heavenly.

  We look out the window when we hear a truck pull up into the parking lot outside. It’s the cousins, Dartanian and John.

  They have the deer’s head tied onto the hood of the truck. The rest of the deer is in the truck bed.

  I jump twenty feet when I see the head. Leonie gasps. Beau doesn’t even change expressions.

  “I figured they’d do that,” he says. He’s hunted before with his dad in Kansas.

  We stare out the window somberly.

  On the other hand the guys, Dart and John, are all excited. They get out of the truck and are talking to the old lady. They are covered in blood now too, but don’t seem to mind. They gesture back down the road and yammer over each other excitedly. They are speculating on getting another deep-freeze to store the meat. And the deer’s head is a trophy, apparently. They don’t feel bad at all.

  We look at each other. Who knew?

  Beau did.

  “People are like this in the country.... I’m glad it’s not going to waste.” He shrugs. “It’s chill.”

  I guess. I wish it was still bounding over hill and dale, myself. All my fault . . .

  I’m going to be guilt tripping for quite a while. I can tell.

  We head out to the truck, leaving The Bomb inside the room. The two cousins greet us.

  “Hey, thanks a lot, you guys! Greg said you don’t want anything?”

  We look at tow truck guy. We’ve been so out of it, we hadn’t even asked him his name.

  “Hi, Greg. By the way—thanks,” I say and then we all introduce ourselves.

  “So, yeah, have it. All. It’s fine,” Beau says, in answer to their question.

  That makes us all like best buddies and they are really happy to buy us dinner at the diner. They wash their hands at the motel but don’t even seem to notice their bloody flannel shirts.

  Squeamishly, I try not to look. We head over to the diner and sit down with them. Naturally, the diner is decorated with deer and elk heads. All of them eyeballing me balefully.

  I order everything well-done.

  The dudes of course all start to talk to Leonie. Which is only to be expected.

  She’s used to it. She’s gotten really good at being nice but not encouraging, not shutting anybody down in a way that makes them feel bad.

  It’s quite a skill.

  The cousins say the van looks totaled. My heart sinks when I hear that. We do not have a giant repairs budget. I didn’t include deer-murder in the itinerary when I planned this trip.

  Greg says that whoever wants to can go tow it with him but he’s going to wait till morning, since it’s in the ditch and not blocking anything.

  It’s funny how laid-back everything is when there is no population around. We say fine.

  The food is delicious.

  After dinner we make plans to go back for the van in the morning. Greg says he’ll call us when he’s heading out.

  We get back to the room and sleep like the dead as soon as our heads hit the pillows.

  The next morning we stand at the side of our deceased van and mourn.

  The early morning light is good for that. It’s very still. There isn’t even any birdsong.

  My wee van is messed up.

  I remember my dad saying about something once: “This damn thing is FUBAR.”

  The van’s not quite that bad. I can still recognize it . . . barely.

  There is blood all over the road and all over the van. It’s almost arty—swirls like those spin-n-pour pictures you make at the fair—immense fingerprint-looking loops and whorls. Everywhere. It’s dried brown now.

  Greg is nice and professional. We follow his instructions to help get the van out of the ditch, which, luckily, isn’t that deep, and then he gets the chain on so he can winch it up. So now we are muddy.

  On the way back we sit and puzzle.

  “The van is going to take a while, guys.” Greg breaks it to us gently. “There are a lot of parts I have to order.” He glances over at me. I’m in the front seat with him and Leo and Beau are in the tiny backseat of the cab. I look back and we three stare at each other.

  I turn around and gaze distractedly out the window. We drive on, in silence.

  My gasp is so loud it startles even me.

  “How much?” I say, through my face-palm.

  It’s later that same day, mid-afternoon, and Greg has just hung up the phone. We are sitting at his oil-smelling desk, in the oil-smelling office of his oil-smelling garage.

  I speak into my oil-smelling hands.

  “Omg! Just for parts?”

  “Sorry.” Greg has a kind face. “That’s just what they cost me. . . . Also, I won’t charge labor.”

  “Dude, that is so nice. Seriously. Thanks.” Still, hugely, incomprehensively expensive!

  “My pleasure.”

  He says this last part looking up, as I hear Leonie come in the office behind me. He smiles.

  Hmmm—I wonder if she has anything to do with this. Call me Kreskin, as the uncles say, but guys are always falling over themselves and each other, offering to do things for her.

  “How long will it take for the parts to get here?” I ask quickly, before he can go gaga.

  He stops beaming dreamily at Lee and looks at me like he just remembered where he is.

  “Oh . . . uh—about two weeks, they said.”

  “Oh, no!” I groan so loud they both look at me. “Graduation!” I say to Leo. “We’ll barely be in Kodiak if we wait two weeks!”

  Leo looks anguished. She crumples onto the chair beside me.

  “No! We can’t miss it! We have to walk!”

  I realize she means for our diplomas, not all the way to Alaska.

  “I know! After everything we’ve all been through? No way do we not walk!”

  We sit, stricken.

  I have to think. Think-think-think . . .

  “Don’t you guys have like UPS or FedEx or something, to get things here faster?”

  “Not so as you’d notice. Everything takes a while, getting out here.” Greg grimaces.

  Think-think-think . . .

  “Do you have any ideas, Greg? A friend who could loan us a van or something? Yeah, no, that is crazy. Or anyone who could take us?” I beg desperately, as I watch him shrug. He shakes his head.

  “Lemme think about it.”

  When we get back to our room, Leo decides it’s time for exercises. She
starts doing sit-ups as Beau and I flop on the queen beds, which we’ve once again pushed together.

  The Bomb sits beside Leo, trying to lick her face as she puffs, growing pink with effort.

  We lounge in moody silence as we watch Leo work. She switches to push-ups.

  After a few minutes, Beau goes outside to call his mom and Matt. I’m not calling my mom yet. She’d just freak. Plenty of time for that. If I can’t solve this myself, I’ll call her tomorrow.

  I see Beau outside talking on the phone. He blabs on and on. Leo grunts with exertion.

  Beau comes back in. He has a triumphant air about him.

  “Mom said she’d pay for the repairs. She said have him call and she’ll give him a card number.”

  “Omg, Beau—that is so nice of her. But it’s not just the money; it’s also the time involved.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Beau now looks dispirited. “I forgot.... She can’t do much about that, I guess.”

  We sit, feeling miserable. Leo switches to jumping jacks. I watch absently.

  Her flailing arms look like flagpoles. Her boobs hardly jiggle.

  “How much weight have you lost now, Leonie?”

  “I-don’t-know! I-don’t-have-a-scale! But-I-bet-another-pound-at-least!” She beams as she hops.

  Her teeth are starting to look too big for her face. Even her nose looks skinny and stretched taut.

  Remind me again how this is considered beautiful?

  The next morning we wake up worried. We get up and get ready to leave, if possible.

  Which it’s not. Not possible.

  Greg has located parts and ordered them, but they are all, indeed, “a week to ten days” away.

  We are so stuck.

  We try to make the best of a boring situation. We get to know Gerry, the lady who works at the motel/diner. She’s in like her fifties or something, with wire-rimmed glasses and frizzy gray hair in a little ponytail. She’s the aunt of the cousins and of Greg. It seems like everyone is related in this one-horse town.

  We help her clean and carry stuff for a while. To pass the time. We tell her our plans. She nods like they seem sensible. She tsk-tsks about my dad. She says she’ll put her thinking cap on as far as finding an alternate mode of transpo.

  We sit in the diner and drink soda pop. We blow straw wrappers at each other till Ger looks at us over her glasses and we pick them up. We play games on Beau’s phone. We take Bommy on the longest walk ever and then feed her. When we come back, Leo practices their dances.

  It’s so cute; she has a hat she wears just for this, and has trained The Bomb to jump and howl when she takes it off and holds it over Bommy’s head, then they both dance and The Bomb accompanies/howls whatever Leonie is singing.

  Beau and I applaud wildly. We are enchanted. We yell for an encore.

  And they have one! And it’s beautiful and funny and crazy good.

  Leo sounds exactly like Joni Mitchell when she sings this song, “Woodstock.” Google it. When it gets to the amazing and achingly beautiful part—about who we are and what we are about, where we come from and where we long to belong again—Leo makes this little gesture with her fingers and Bommy yowls perfectly during the place where Joni yodels in the original, and I swear it gives me goose bumps!

  We just look at them for a second after they finish.

  “When did you guys learn that?” I ask, in amazement.

  “I dunno; I heard it ’cuz you’ve been playing those old war songs. It’s just something we’ve been working on for a while,” Leo says offhandedly.

  “Do it again,” Beau pleads.

  So they do.

  We are in the parking lot, sitting on some cinderblocks that demarcate its border. I look up and Greg is standing, stupefied, in the doorway of the garage office, watching Leonie and The Bomb.

  That night, after we are all in the beds watching TV, we hear a knock on the door. It’s Gerry.

  “I have an idea.”

  We bolt up from our lounging. Beau turns off the TV. We look at her expectantly.

  “Greg’s brother, Shane, has a plane.”

  “In Spain?” I say, inane. Because I cannot help myself. “That’s insane!”

  “Can we borrow it? Wait—Rust, do you know how to drive a plane?” Leo asks seriously.

  Beau and Gerry look at us like we’re not helping.

  “Where is he?” Beau asks Gerry.

  “He’s just down the road, about thirty miles. He moors it on the lake. I’m thinking he could fly you three to Kodiak, in fits and starts. You’ll probably have to barnstorm from lake to lake.”

  I absorb this.

  “How much would that be?” I ask cautiously.

  Gerry looks slightly offended. She shrugs casually.

  “I bet he’d do it for gas money.”

  We three refugees look at each other. This could be great.

  We don’t have much choice.

  “Yeah, I’d thought of Shane too,” says Greg when I tell him what Gerry said the next morning.

  I glance at him, perplexed. “Why didn’t you say something then?”

  “I was going to, in a few days.”

  His voice is so wistful. I stare at him covertly.

  Yup—another hapless victim of the lethal Leonie. He sighs heavily.

  “I just thought you guys had been through enough and it might be nice for you to—you know—relax and chill here for a few days,” he explains, rather unconvincingly.

  “Did you even order parts?” I ask, in sudden suspicion.

  “Yeah! No, totally, I want you guys to get to Alaska. It seems so important to her—y’all, I mean.”

  I eyeball him outright this time.

  “Dude,” I say, and then stop. What exactly do I say? Be careful? Don’t fall for her? RUN?

  “Does she have a boyfriend?” Greg looks agonized as he waits for the answer.

  Amazing. She is like a witch!

  “No,” I sigh. Here we go again....

  Greg is ecstatic.

  “We’re leaving,” I remind him.

  “I know, I know.” He is grinning in delight.

  I just shake my head.

  Because I am awesome, I get Leo to ride in the front seat, between Greg and me. I figure whatever; he’ll get over her after she’s gone. Beau and The Bomb are in the backseat.

  And you never saw anyone drive so slowly! He said he was watching for deer, but whatever.

  He was really worshipping the lovely Leo. Luxuriating in her proximity.

  Who was so oblivious! Lee’s just babbling away, telling us all this crap about this and that, no clue that here’s another one just sitting there expiring of love for her. Or at least lust.

  I look back and catch Beau’s eye and he rolls both of them. I snicker.

  We roll on.

  Again, “Beautiful British Columbia” means just that. Untouched in spots; completely unspoiled.

  The forest is vast and lost and grand and dense. We grow hypnotized.

  Few cars pass as we drive. I’ve never felt so remote. Well, Kodiak, I guess, but this seems to go on forever, this evergreen city . . . this conifer-opolis.

  I amuse myself making up terms for tree towns as we flee the far west outback of Canada. And eventually we come to the place. The clouds have cleared and the sun is starting to break through. Sure enough, there is a sparkling lake and a little plane on floats, just sitting there, floating. Greg, still going like two miles an hour, pulls up and parks.

  “Here we are!” he sings out. He turns so his leg touches Leo’s. He smiles.

  Imperceptibly, she moves her leg away, but beams at him.

  Greg visibly deflates. Unconsciously, his shoulders sag.

  “Yay, here we are!” Leo says to him brightly. “Thanks so much for doing this for us!”

  “Yep” is all Greg has to say. We pile out. Bommy pees.

  There are a couple of cabins dotting the lake. The one we parked by is right beside the plane.

  “Shane?!”
Greg yells. “SHANE!!”At the same moment, the sun bursts out, and laughing, Shane steps from the shade into the sunbeam. The sun catches his honey blond hair and it gleams. The blue water and green pines frame him.

  I gasp like I’m falling.

  Do you believe in love at first sight?

  I do, now.

  He is tall and lanky, with ropey muscles on his tan forearms where his shirt sleeves are rolled up. His dark eyes sparkle when he sees his brother. They hug and pound each other on the back for a second.

  “Hey, little bro! I didn’t think you’d be here for another few hours!”

  “Hey, bro! Long time no see! Well, the weather looked good, so I thought better do it now. Besides, these guys are in a hurry. They have a graduation to attend!”

  Shane looks at us then. I am standing in front of Leo. He looks right at me.

  His eyes are dark brown. His skin is tan. I’m having trouble trying to breathe normally.

  “Shane, I’d like you to meet Rylee.”

  He smiles at me. I melt. I am melting. Help me, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up—

  “Hi, Rylee.” His throaty voice runs its fingers through my name.

  I actually shiver. I feel my heart thumping in a new and foreign way. Wobbling around flapping, more like. “Hi, Shane,” I gurgle. Though in my mind it comes out all high-pitched and strangled, I actually sound pretty normal. For someone just hit by a lightning bolt.

  “And this is Beau.”

  Beau beams. They shake hands.

  “Hi, Beau.” He smiles at us and then . . . of course . . .

  His eyes land on Leo. And light up.

  Of course they do. But here’s what’s different:

  Hers do too.

  They stand there looking at each other for a long second. Long enough, though.

  “Shane, this is Leonie.” Greg’s voice grates a little.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  After a fluttery instant, Leo offers her hand.

  After a gob-smacked second, Shane takes it.

  They finally remember to let go hands after another gaze-soaked spell. Beau clears his throat.