The Banks of Certain Rivers

by Harrison, Jon

“You could sell, or”—he looks at me—“you could exchange part of your property for a share in the partnership.”

  “Leland. Come on.”

  “I know you don’t want to mess with the orchard. I know what it means to you, and I know what it means to your wife’s family, okay? You forget I knew Dick Olsson a little bit myself. But I know it can’t be making much money for you. I know you’re probably just breaking even on the leases.”

  He’s right, and I hope my expression isn’t giving it away.

  “If you joined in, there wouldn’t be any major construction on the Olsson Dunes. It would mostly be golf course and open space. As natural as we can keep it.”

  “What about the Little Jib River?”

  “The river stays untouched, just a pathway on the northern side and a footbridge to the golf course. Your house stays, the farmhouse stays. That place on the beach, though….”

  “You’d take it down?”

  “It’s barely standing up on its own, Neil.”

  He’s right about that, too.

  “What about Alan?” I ask. “Are you going to offer him the same sort of deal?”

  “Alan Massie is a stubborn man.” I raise my eyebrows, and Leland lifts his hand. “Wait a second, I know you guys are good friends. His property doesn’t have the same sort of value to the project. But I’ll talk to him. For now, though, I’d appreciate you keeping this discussion between you and—”

  My landline rings, cutting Leland off.

  “You need to pick that up?”

  “Doubtful,” I say, reaching over to turn up the volume on the machine so we can hear it. A beep fills the house, followed by a man’s voice.

  “You sound pretty tough there on your message, Mister Teacher,” the voice says. “Maybe you need an ass whipping yourself. You are pathetic son of a bitch, you hear me?”

  Click.

  Leland looks shocked.

  “Are you...does that kind of talk trouble you? That’s illegal, harassing someone like that on the phone, you know.”

  “It troubles me less than the prospect of losing my job.”

  “You need to tell the police about that call.”

  I shake my head. “I’ll tell them about it when they come to charge me for assault.”

  Leland rises and takes his coffee cup to the sink. “Think over what I just told you. The character of the orchard will stay. Your house will stay. You’ll get some money in the short term, and you’ll make more in the long term. You’re thinking about it, I can tell.”

  I say nothing, and get to my feet to walk him to the door. “I’ll check in with you later,” I say, and I can feel my heart beating in my chest.

  “All right. Don’t get too shaken up about everything. You’re going to come through this just fine. I know it.”

  “Thanks, Leland.”

  “I’ll see you.”

  I close the door behind him, and turn back into my house. I haven’t taken a step before there’s another knock at my door. It’s Leland again.

  “Let me in,” he says in a low voice. “Close the door.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You’ve got some company.”

  Leland follows me to the guest room and we peek out the window; behind Leland’s truck are a pair of news vans with colorful graphics on their sides and satellite dishes on their roofs.

  “Who the fuck are those guys?” I say softly.

  “It’s a Detroit station,” Leland says. We’re whispering as if the guys in the van could hear us. “The first one, anyway. I don’t know who the other guys are. Why would they make the drive up here? You want me to say something to them?”

  “No, just…go around them, I guess.”

  “All right.”

  Leland heads out again while I stay in the guest room. I watch him beeline for his truck, his head ducking through the rain. The headlights come on, and he swings wide through my yard and past the van. After he goes, two men jump out of the first van: one with a microphone, and the other with a boxy video camera draped in a clear plastic rain cover up on his shoulder. Both wear rain jackets with their station logo on the breast, and they come to my house and ring my bell. Instead of answering, I take out my phone and call Alan.

  “Neil! So you saw the—”

  “Shut up,” I say. “There are news vans in my driveway. One’s from a TV station downstate.”

  “For real?”

  “Yes, for real!” They ring the doorbell again.

  “I’m guessing you don’t want them there.”

  “No.”

  “Sit tight. I’ll be right over to take care of it.”

  The newsmen ring a final time, wait a minute, and slog back to their vehicle. A couple moments after that Alan, wearing an olive green rain poncho, rides up my drive on his bike. He stops next to the passenger side of the first van and the window rolls down. They all chat for a bit, Alan points to the road and nods, the window rolls up and the van drives away. Alan speaks to the guys in the second van, and they drive away too.

  Alan comes into my house through the side door without knocking.

  “What did they want?” I ask him as he hangs his dripping poncho on the back of a chair. “Why does anyone in Detroit care about this?”

  “It’s not just Detroit,” Alan says. “They’re CNN’s Lower Michigan affiliate. The other guys are from FOX.”

  I have to sit down. “You’re kidding me.”

  “You had almost a hundred and fifty thousand views on YouTube this morning,” he reports with a smile. “You have gone viral, as they say.”

  “You’re smiling about this? Why the fuck are you smiling?”

  “Because when it’s revealed that the video is fake, the damages you claim when you sue whoever made it will be, in part, predicated on how frequently the video was viewed. Let’s get those numbers up, right?”

  My home phone rings again, and I put my head in my hands while I wait for the beep.

  “Oh, look at me, I’m big and tough and totally picking on people my own size!” It’s a man, speaking like a dopey cartoon character. “Look at me, I’m such a fucking pussy in real life that I have to pick on kids! Bwaaaaa!”

  “Unplug that,” Alan tells me. “Get dressed for a run.”

  “Alan, I’m not really—”

  “Unplug it now, and get into your running things. I’ll ride with you.”

  “What about the guys in the van?”

  “We’ll go through the orchard to my house.” Alan leans to the wall by my phone as he speaks, reaches down, and straightens back up with my phone’s loose power cord dangling from his hand. “We’ll duck through the orchard, then we’ll go north on the highway. They won’t even see us.”

  “Fine,” I say. I change into running clothes, shorts and a long-sleeved shirt for the chill, and I find a light jacket that actually fits. We go outside and I look all around for signs of video cameras before trotting off through the cherry trees. Alan rides behind me as I run the wet dirt path. When we get to the highway he moves to my side, speeding up ahead to go single file when we hear a car behind and falling back once it’s passed. We say nothing for the first mile or so, until Alan finally speaks.

  “I feel like you’re a prizefighter,” he says from beneath the hood of his poncho. His knees rise and fall as he pedals. “And I’m your trainer. Getting you in shape for the big fight.”

  “It is a big fight,” I say. I consider telling him about Leland’s visit, but I don’t.

  “I feel like a prizefighter myself sometimes. A sexual prizefighter.”

  “God, Al, come on.”

  “I’m being serious. Kristin would back up my assessment, I believe.”

  “I don’t need to picture this.”

  “You’re almost forty, Neil. I’ll be fifty in two more years. Can you believe it? Fifty. I feel like a newlywed, though, when it comes to my sexual prowess.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I imagine you might be
edging me out in frequency, however. Maybe not quality, but you and Lauren, quantity! Putting up big numbers. Like a pair of bunnies.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Not at all. But I’m happy for you, young man. You two. You should marry her, you know.”

  “I think I’ve got a little more on my plate to worry about right now. And Lauren isn’t so happy about the whole thing. I mean, she’s really unhappy.”

  “It will all pass, Neil. And remember, you’re telling Christopher tonight. The hardest part will be behind you.”

  Alan stands up to work his heavy bike to the crest of a hill ahead of me. He stops and slides his poncho off over his head, and I realize for the first time this morning that it’s stopped raining. Alan rolls up his poncho and drops it into his handlebar basket. I give him my jacket and he rolls it up too before lifting his head toward the maybe brighter clouds.

  “Listen,” he says, and I hear the faint rumble of a far-away jet. “United two-twenty-three, out of Chicago bound for Copenhagen.”

  “You know them all, don’t you?” I say, bending to touch my toes.

  Alan nods. “Pretty much. Yes, I do.”

  From: xc.coach.kaz@gmail.com

  To:w.kazenzakis@gmail.com

  Sent: September 12, 2:45 pm

  Subject:dune orchard

  _____________________________

  If the orchard was preserved as something like, say, a park, do you think your dad would have been okay with it?

  Especially if it meant you could stay there and we could send Chris wherever he wanted to go for college?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Back home from my run, I see on my cell that I’ve missed a call from Uncle Art.

  “Hey there, Neil, saw the uh, paper, you want to give me a call when you have a chance?” I start to hit reply, but I stop myself; I’m still in my running clothes, and after a glass of water and an apple I go back outside and run over to the beach house. Arthur’s out on the deck when I get there, fighting to keep a winter shutter in place as he tries to screw it down with a cordless drill. I grab the splintery thing from beneath and hold it still, and Art takes a screw from his teeth, mates it to the drill bit, and drives it tight.

  “Thank you,” he says, pulling at the shutter to test how firmly it’s anchored. “Not sure how many more holes this old trim is going to take.” Art is a fit man, in his mid-sixties with large, work-worn hands. Over his shoulder, the lake is a storm-driven gray like the clouds.

  “All these windows really need to be replaced,” I say.

  “No kidding,” Art says, sending another screw home. “So what in the heck is going on with you?”

  “You saw the paper,” I say, and he nods. “Did you see the video?” Art smirks.

  “Sending email to my kids marks the extent of my computer ability. Penny does the Facebook, she tried to show me all that….” He chuckles. “No, I haven’t watched the video.”

  “You don’t need to,” I say. “I haven’t even seen at the article yet, to be honest.”

  Art waves me into the house and points to the chipped Formica kitchen counter. The paper is there, but I spend a moment looking over the interior of the place, the leak-spotted ceiling and worn carpet, trying to recall if it was this shabby when my family was renting it.

  “I know,” Art says, reading my mind. “Pretty run down. But it still has its charms.”

  I grab the paper and sit on a wobbly barstool. The article is about what I’d expected: unbalanced, poorly sourced and just a little mean. Neil Kazenzakis declined to comment for this story, it says, as did senior school administration officials. Gracie Adams was happy to talk, however. She wants to get beyond this and back to the great work of educating kids and preparing them for careers or higher education. The family comes across as less generous. Though it’s not the policy of the paper to report the names of minor victims of crime, it says, it’s widely known that Cody Tate was involved, and the Tate family is pursuing all legal avenues against the district and Mr. Kazenzakis.

  The Port Manitou Police Department, the article concludes, is continuing its investigation.

  “Great,” I say. “Terrific.”

  “How in the world did this happen?” Art asks.

  “I thought I was breaking up a fight,” I say. “I thought I was doing the right thing. I guess I wasn’t. And I tell you, I watch the video sometimes, and I almost believe that’s the way it really happened. Not like the way I remember it.”

  “Memory is a funny thing,” Art says. “Just have a conversation with my sister for proof.” He smiles sadly as he says it.

  I look around the interior of the house again. “How much do you think it would take to spruce this place up?” I ask.

  “Oh, golly, I…” Art taps his finger on his chin. “You mean really do it right? You’d have to gut the place, I’m sure. This main part of the structure is nearly sixty years old, the wiring isn’t up to code, and who knows what else you’d find once you really dug into it. And whoever did the addition shouldn’t have been allowed to swing a hammer, so that would need a load of work, if not torn down and built back up from scratch. You’d have a crew on this job for the better part of a year, I’d guess. Why are you asking?”

  “Just a thought,” I say.

  In my memory, the beach house was never so dilapidated. And of all the times I stayed there, there is one visit, one night that stands out in my head above the rest. The autumn of my junior year in high school I qualified for the Michigan State Cross Country Championships in Ann Arbor. Simply competing would have been exciting enough, but even better was the fact that Wendy and Carol drove down from Port Manitou to attend the event and cheer me on. I didn’t have a very good race (I finished in eleventh place), but seeing Wendy waiting at the finish made me feel like I was flying. After, we sneaked off into the woods and made out against a tree; my body, skin flushed and raging with teen want, was pressed against hers and I almost had her shorts unbuttoned before we were nearly caught by one of my coaches.

  “Later,” she said, giggling as we walked back to her mom’s car. “Be patient.”

  We wrote letters through the winter, we hinted at desire and obliquely referred to our “almosts” by the tree. In the spring we both ran track, and while Wendy did not qualify for state that year, she did suggest I ask my mom and dad if I could drive up to see her run at a district invitational in the early spring. Astonishingly, my parents said yes, maybe persuaded by my argument that it was only fair after Wendy had come to watch me.

  My mom let me take her old Honda Accord, and I left early that Saturday morning. Michael had talked about joining me, but thankfully bailed out at the last minute. My plan was to watch Wendy run, join the Olssons for an early dinner, and make the nearly four-hour drive to be home by midnight.

  The day was cold, unusually cold, and windy, and I wished I’d brought something other than a light jacket while I watched Wendy compete. She only made it to the semifinals in the four hundred meter, fifth place in that heat (disappointing because that was her best event), and an unexpected third in the finals of the eight hundred. Seeing her get her little medal while I stood with Carol and Dick made me forget about the cold. She smiled with pure joy on the podium, even with her third place finish.

  Dinner at Wendy’s house was a fine time. The Olssons laughed at the table, which surprised me, as I’d always imagined Dick would be dour and imposing in their home. He doted on his daughter, and teased me about how close I was sitting to her. I don’t know how his demeanor would have changed had he known that, beneath the table, she’d slipped her foot out of her shoe to rub her toes against my ankle.

  Wendy’s parents asked me the expected questions: how’s your family, how is school, have you given much thought to college? When I told them I was seriously considering Michigan State, Dick looked very pleased.

  “Oh, a great school, your dad there and all, and did you know Wendy was planning to apply?”

  I acted sur
prised but of course I knew; we’d been plotting it through the mail since the fall. Destined to be together forever, as all young lovers know they are. Wendy’s toes pressed harder and she smiled.

  Raindrops streaked the dining room window as we ate. The phone rang, and Carol rose to answer it. She wore a bemused expression on her face when she returned to the table.

  “Well,” she said. “We may just have ourselves an overnight guest. They’re supposed to be getting an ice storm downstate tonight, and your parents aren’t too comfortable with the thought of you driving home in it, Neil.”

  Wendy’s foot froze against my leg.

  “We could probably put him on the fold-out, Dick—”

  “I did just open up the beach house. I think he’d be more comfortable in a bed over there.” He gave me a look that even my seventeen year-old self could not miss; it was one thing for me to sit close to his daughter at the dinner table, but to be in such proximity under cover of darkness was not acceptable at all.

  “I think the beach house would be great,” I said meekly.

  I called my parents back to confirm I’d be staying. Dick made like he was going to drive me over to the cottage right then, but Carol laughed at him.

  “For goodness sake,” she said. “It’s only six o’clock. Let the kids hang out for a while. They can have a little date.”

  Alone in the Olssons’ living room, Wendy and I watched TV and held hands under a pillow, and grabbed kisses from each other when we could. Wendy was more forward in this pursuit; I couldn’t shake the vision of Dick catching us and tearing me limb from limb.

  “I can try to sneak over,” Wendy whispered, pulling back from my lips after a particularly aggressive kiss. “It will be late, though.”

  “Are you insane? Your dad will kill you if he catches you. He’ll kill both of us.”

  “He sleeps like a rock. I do it a ton.” I gave her a look and she added, “Only for parties! He deadbolts the door but I just go out the window.”

  Dick took me to the beach house just before ten. I offered to drive myself there, but he insisted; I think the idea of my complete isolation and immobilization appealed to him. He walked me up the wet gravel path to the back door with a flashlight, and inside the old light switch in the hall came up with a loud snap! It was so cold inside I could see my breath.