The Hearts of Men

by Nickolas Butler

  Her bed was strewn with envelopes, small packages. She opened several before finding the copy of A Sand County Almanac. From its pages fell several leaves: oak, maple, aspen, ash, birch, catalpa, cherry, hackberry, walnut, ironwood . . .

  SIX MONTHS LATER, she was living in Willem’s flat, vacuuming his floors, washing his dishes, and spending most of her time waiting for him to return from the bush, a bar, some other trip. Her research had stalled, she had no friends, and she was now fully in love with him.

  “Why can’t I come with you?” she asked. “Why can’t I come out to the bush, too? Tell me it’s not lonely out there, all alone, in your tent. I mean, don’t you miss me?”

  Their conversations by now had become rote: She appealed; while he, stoic, aloof, frequently drunk, endured those appeals until he no longer felt like it, at which point he would simply excuse himself for a jog, or to hit the weights in his garage.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” he said. “People pay thousands of dollars for these safaris, babe. You can’t just bum along. If every guide did that, the camps would be overflowing with girlfriends and wives and who-knows-what sort of tag-alongs. Wouldn’t work.”

  “Couldn’t you get me some kind of job?” she asked. “As a cook, or something? Maybe in the office? That way I could visit your camps, maybe even work on my research. I can pull my own weight.” She grasped for any kind of hold. “Doesn’t your family have any sway? Couldn’t they help—”

  “Don’t presume to know about my family!” he shouted. “And just chill out, all right? Look, we’re not married. We started this thing as two people with two separate lives. I don’t tell you what to do. I don’t ask to follow you around, like some lost little American puppy.”

  “What did you say?” she snapped.

  “I’m going out for a smoke,” he muttered. And then, mostly to himself, “Fucking bitch.”

  “You were the one who chased me, you fucking asshole!” she shouted after him. “You were the one who promised me rhinos and lions and elephants. You were the one who stuck your fucking hands down my pants!”

  He looked over his shoulder at her, blew a jet of smoke in her direction, and said, “Yeah, well—we all make mistakes, right, love? So, maybe you should just leave, then.”

  “What?”

  “Get out, all right? How clear do you want me to be? Or I’ll bloody throw your shit out of here myself.”

  So she moved back to her old flat, where her three roommates now treated her as a stranger, where many of her belongings had gone missing, and where her bed looked not just slept in, but fucked in.

  “Yeah, we didn’t really think you were coming back,” one of her flatmates said, “so one of my buddies crashed here for two months.” Then he turned, and walked into the kitchen, there to share a conspiratorial laugh with his own girlfriend. Soon enough they were kissing.

  37

  SHE AWAKES WITH A START AND GLANCES AT HER watch. It is almost one o’clock in the morning. She must have fallen asleep. They both must have. WOJB seems stuck on a rather hypnotic drum circle, complete with tribal singers. She rises stiffly from the chair, stretches, carries their two mugs to the sink, and stands there, running the tap. She washes her face and her hands, then takes a long drink of cold, cold water, listening to the frogs chiming and croaking outside. She peers out the little kitchen window. Between the trees here and there, a few lightning bugs still strobe on and off.

  There used to be so many, many more of them, she thinks.

  She checks her phone. Even with less than reliable service, here they are, four successive messages from Thomas:

  We’re having a campfire. Other dads wondering where you are . . .

  ???

  Hello McFly???

  That one makes her grin. When Thomas was just a boy they had watched Back to the Future repeatedly. It gives her some amount of pleasure, even now, reminding him that Steven Spielberg himself, the genius who produced that film, was an Eagle Scout. Also David Lynch, though that one didn’t seem to resonate yet.

  We’re working on our Meth Manufacturing Merit Badge. See you tomorrow. Camp boyfriend?

  On some level, Thomas is perhaps right to chide her. Drinking Scotch with the camp Scoutmaster at an hour past midnight probably doesn’t look right; the so-called optics of a single woman inside his cabin. And yet, what the hell? Nelson has been like family to her since Trevor’s death. Surely, they are entitled to a few adult beverages and some conversation.

  The old man snores loudly from his chair. She lays a blanket over top of him, and then, quite without thinking about it, kisses his forehead, and runs a finger over his fine, short white hair.

  “Good night,” she says.

  He continues snoring.

  THE GRASS IS WET WITH DEW as she walks over the parade ground to the path that leads through the forest. The camp is quiet. She hugs her shoulders, knows that those glasses of Scotch will haunt her in the morning. Entering the forest the night sky disappears to just the slenderest pockets that open and close with the barely perceptible sway of the canopy. She can barely make out the white bark of the densely clustered poplars, and the loop-de-loop shadows of the little bats working the darkness as if on trapezes, guide wires.

  She is close to the camp when she sees the figure ahead, smoking a cigarette in the gloom, an orange bead of light throbbing and glowing, only to be flicked out away into the ferns as she closes the gap between them.

  “Hello?” she calls out pleasantly, firmly.

  The figure does not answer. No matter, she thinks; these boys all wear damn earbuds. Every one of them will be deaf by fifty.

  “Hello?” she calls again.

  “A little late to be out, don’t you think?” It is Bill, the man from dinner.

  She laughs it off, though already her skin is crawling, the fine hairs on her arms and neck standing at attention. “I’m sorry,” she says with a jovially exaggerated politeness. “I don’t know that we were introduced at dinner. My name is Rachel.” She extends a hand into the darkness.

  “Bill,” he says, his huge hand at first seeking, but not finding hers. Then, after clumsily touching fingers, his hand swallows hers. His skin is rough, his arm hairy. It’s as if she’s touching some huge circus animal, and she can smell him through the clean night air: a staleness, like a damp basement, or a closet that hasn’t been opened in years. She can’t tell whether or not it is his breath, or his body, but she instantly regrets not walking right past him. Nor does he relinquish his grip of her; in fact, his fingers seem to scuttle slowly up her wrist. She pulls her hand away.

  “I was just catching up with Scoutmaster Doughty,” she says, employing that name, that authority, for whatever it’s worth to this man. The camp is so far from a real police department, after all, if anything were to happen.

  “Didn’t think the old man had it in him,” Bill grunts.

  “Anyway, good night,” she says, ignoring the crude barb.

  “Hey,” he calls out, seemingly unconcerned about waking their nearby campsite.

  She turns quickly. “Bill, I’m pretty tired, okay? I want to get to bed.”

  “I just wanted to say,” he continues, “that I’m sorry about your husband. I still don’t believe that this is a place for women, but, just the same . . .”

  She is stunned; he might as well have struck her in the forehead with a stone.

  “Thank you,” she says. “I . . . appreciate that. Good night, then.”

  She can hear his lighter behind her: the scrape of the sparkwheel, the suck of gas, a little light in the night, and his cigarette burning, the cloud of smoke drifting toward her, and then, his big feet, plodding on, down the gravel path in the other direction, a deep, phlegmy cough.

  Reaching Arrowhead, she gropes through the dark at tree trunks, picnic tables, makeshift laundry lines. The campfire is all but burnt out, and only a very few flashlights blur light across the cabin’s thick canvas siding and heavy plastic ceilings. Finding her cabin
, she locks the screen door and crawls onto her bed, no longer even exhausted so much as simply gratified to have reached the sanctuary of this space. Her breathing is frenzied. She does not sleep at all well and then, too soon, it is morning already.

  38

  THOMAS POUNDS ON THE SCREEN DOOR OF HER CABIN. The camp is lively, loud. Boys scampering like loosed dogs, fathers barking orders, the splash of water, even music playing.

  “Mom,” he says, “the door’s locked.”

  Her head pounding, she rises from the bed, unlatches the door, and flops back down on her double cot.

  “Are you hungover, Mom?” he asks. Then, with real amusement, poking a finger at her shoulder, “Mommmmm . . . are you, like, seriously hungover? Were you out drinking last night?”

  Little pokes jabbing her armpits, her belly, her neck. She could kill him, but, of course, this is her fault. She sits up.

  “What do you want?” she asks, suddenly remembering the gallon jug of water that she cached under one of the bunks. She leans over to fill a large tin camp cup and begins slugging back water as if she’s just returned from an epic jog.

  “I was looking for you last night,” he says.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Needed money for the canteen,” he explains easily, this sixteen-year-old who is looking more and more like a young man.

  “You don’t have any money?” she asks.

  “It’s just that, if you’re the one dragging me to camp, I figure you can finance it, too,” he says. “By the way, flag is in ten minutes.”

  He bounds out of the cabin, and the screen door slamming might as well be an atomic bomb for the throbbing pain reverberating through her temples, her poor skull. She groans, then collects herself and begins to dress for the day. She’ll have to shower later. No need to impress anyone here, anyway.

  NO LONGER IS reveille played by an actual bugler, some boy who plays trumpet in his high school marching band. A number of years ago the camp could not find a bugler, and Nelson simply erected a series of sirens throughout the camp that double as an emergency alert system, and so it is that while Rachel walks briskly down the forest path to the parade ground, she is suddenly greeted with the triumphant recorded sound of an early morning bugle, echoing through the glades of maples, armies of oak.

  She stops in her place, closes her eyes, relaxes her breathing. It is good to be here, she thinks. Good to be here with my son. To see Nelson, too. Unexpectedly, she drops into a down dog, feels chips of bark, tiny stones, and dirt on the palms of her hands, brushing her kneecaps. There, alone in the forest, as Nelson prattles through the morning announcements, his voice warbling and far off, she practices five minutes of yoga. When he calls the boys to breakfast, she feels renewed, and imagines for a second that she is at some expensive retreat where wealthy alcoholics, sex addicts, and pill poppers pay a couple thousand a day to dry out and what not.

  “Namaste,” she whispers to the forest.

  IT WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE TO REMAIN A CYNIC, she thinks, eating breakfast with these boys every morning in this mess hall. She is thoughtful, totally at ease, and there is something deeply comforting in simply standing outside the cafeteria, listening to the laughter and boy conversation within. No phones bleating, no text alerts, just chatter, rising in volume occasionally, but mainly a cheerful cacophony. She enters the mess hall, sits down beside the fathers of her boy’s troop.

  “Good morning,” she says, swinging one leg over the bench seat, and then the other.

  “Coffee?” one of the fathers asks, and she nods, gratefully, as they pass a mug in her direction. There isn’t much discussion among the men, and she has the sense that perhaps they’ve been talking about her, is slightly embarrassed to realize, Of course they’ve been talking about me.

  One of them leans down the table and says, “Excuse me, Miss Quick. This is probably rude, but I wondered where your husband served. In the Marines, was it?”

  She blows on her coffee, nods thoughtfully. It’s a common enough question, even posed in this manner, not exactly rude, if perhaps a bit forward. “The SEALs,” she explains. “He did two tours in Afghanistan, but he was involved in other specific missions in other countries. I’ll be honest, I didn’t ask a lot of questions because he couldn’t tell me, even if he wanted to.” She smiles grimly at the questioner. “Of course I was curious, but . . . I was also just happy to have him home.”

  “Top-secret stuff, uh?” the man says.

  “Yes.” She presses a finger against her wedding band, pushes it around the flesh of her finger. “He was elite.”

  The table is quiet again. She is passed a tray of pancakes, then a dish of margarine, some Aunt Jemima syrup. She hates this fake stuff—corn syrup, more like diabetes in a bottle. She sighs. Between the men at her table and the two dry pancakes on her plate, she allows herself to dream of a weekend campout with Thomas in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, maybe the Porcupine Mountains. She imagines them waking up, grilling flapjacks on an old iron skillet; apple butter and real maple syrup, blueberries and bacon. Coffee strong enough to eat the enamel right off her teeth. Thick flannel shirts and the sound of the nearest public radio station emanating from the radio of the Cherokee. Or is this just the fantasy time she dreams of with the husband she lost? She has to take care not to commingle her responsibilities for Thomas with her unfulfilled desires for his father. It is not the boy’s fault she was widowed.

  “Well, look,” says the good doctor Platz, scratching at the scarred wood of the table, “the guys and I were talking a bit last night, and we want to just reiterate that, you know, we can keep an eye on Thomas, if you’d like, you know—if you’d feel more comfortable heading back home. Relax, you know, or get some chores done.” He motions around the table. “The troop’s got plenty of chaperones this year, so, he’ll be well watched.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand,” she says, setting her knife and fork down.

  “It’s just that,” the doctor continues, “well, we’re all sort of in agreement that this is sort of a sacred time for us, between father and son. It’s the only place a lot of us have to get away from everything, you know? To be alone.”

  “Get away?” she asks.

  The doctor pushes his glasses up his nose, smiles condescendingly. “That’s right. It’s an escape.”

  “From what, exactly? Who?” She wants to call him out, ask, Do you mean women?

  He pushes back from the table, crosses his arms, “All right, we realize that perhaps you’ve taken vacation time of your own, which is why we’re all happy to pitch in and rent you a cabin at Roger’s Island. I’ve got friends over there, you know. Very exclusive resort, but we could manage it. Probably be real nice for you there. Quiet. They pamper you, too. Great food.” He laughs, motions to his plate. “Not this garbage.” The other men at the table give nervous laughs behind hands covering cowardly poker faces.

  The only thing she can think to say is, “Wow.”

  The doctor gives a hearty laugh. “Well, we knew this probably wasn’t your first choice, to be here. I mean, what woman wants to come to a Boy Scout camp for a week, sleep in some dingy little cabin, and hang out with a bunch of stinky teenage kids, right?” He reaches for her shoulder, gives it a series of squeezes. “It’s the least we can do.”

  She shrugs his hand away. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  He shakes his head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “You actually want me to go? This isn’t just, some kind of bad joke?”

  He stutters out a laugh somewhere between nervous and cocky. “Well, it’s not that we necessarily want you to go; it’s that, well, we thought you might be more comfortable somewhere else. Relaxing and what have you. Roger’s Island has a massage therapist on-staff. Probably a nail technician, too. Like I said, happy to cover the cost.”

  “Oh, how very kind of you. You do know that I’m a field biologist for the DNR? So, I might actually enjoy spending time in the outdoors.”


  She stands from the table without having taken as much as a bite from the pancakes.

  “Excuse me,” she says, “I think maybe I’ll go for a little swim. Work out some of this anger I’m presently feeling.”

  “So, should we make a reservation for you?” the doctor says, quite satisfied with the negotiation.

  She lays a hand very softly on his shoulder, leans in close to his ear. “You’re too sweet, really,” she says. “But I think I’ll stay right here, thank you so much.”

  She leaves the mess hall furious, speed-walking and in desperate need of a door to slam—slam hard enough to punish the hinges.

  Ten years—ten years she’s been coming to Camp Whiteside, and it feels like longer, frankly, given all she’d heard about the camp from Trevor dating back to their late teens, long before they were even married, to say nothing of his old photo albums, Scout paraphernalia, and all the mementoes and equipment stretching back into her father-in-law’s childhood. She’s come here in every season. Slept in a tent in subzero temperatures when their troop’s campfire melted down some two feet through ice and snow, creating its own wintry crater. Walked the forest floors in spring when trilliums blanket the recently thawed ground with their white blossoms; hunted fiddleheads and morel mushrooms. And in autumn, staying up late to watch the aurora borealis, or collecting fallen leaves with Thomas, assembling a string of yellow or orange like the photographs of Andy Goldsworthy’s work she saw once in a coffee table book.

  “Assholes,” she says aloud. And it feels good, to call them that. What they so clearly are.

  The day is already warming, the haze over the forest’s canopy beginning to burn off. She decides to take a swim while the rest of the camp is still eating their breakfast. This, too, is one of the pleasures of this camp, her time here: swimming in a freshwater lake without fear of motor boats or jet-skis, drunken pontoonists or waterskiers slaloming behind some speedboat.