Then in another week or ten days we were total middle-schoolers. We looked in the rearview mirror, and elementary school was a dot in the distance.
In homeroom we were even easing in with the other sixes, the ones from Eastside and Central. One of the Siennas—Sienna Searcy from Eastside—was a total Natalie Schuster clone.
“We’re cursed,” Lynn Stanley muttered. “We’re doomed.”
One of the guys from Central wore a T-shirt three days running that read:
ZOMBIES EAT BRAINS
SO YOU’LL BE OKAY
I wouldn’t say we all bonded, but we got through homeroom together every morning.
On the Friday before Labor Day weekend the printer on Ms. Roebuck’s desk spat out a message from the office. Ms. Roebuck wasn’t safe around the printer either. It started printing out copies for all of us till Raymond Petrovich stepped in.
Working off the printout, Ms. Roebuck said, “Class, when you come back on Tuesday, we’ll have a new member. A foreign student named Hilary Evelyn Calthorpe.”
Raymond was keeping busy around her, computing the morning attendance. “What are these words, Josh?” Ms. Roebuck showed him.
“It looks like differently abled,” Raymond said. “We could use a new ink cartridge. I’ll print myself a hall pass and get one out of supplies.”
So after the holiday, we’d be having a new foreign, differently abled classmate named Hilary Evelyn Calthorpe.
“Is that it? Is that all we know about this person?” Sienna Searcy barked out. “I mean, what are we supposed to do, lead her from class to class? Honestly, we already have too many people in this homeroom.” Sienna looked around at us. “And most of them are people you never even heard of. Seriously, what next?”
But Ms. Roebuck didn’t know anything. At her elbow the printer began printing out hall passes for us all.
• • •
Then it was Saturday. Dad and I were in a rented 4x4 with a trailer hitch, pulling the vintage Nash Rambler, bound for the automobile museum in Kenosha. We were a little worried that you needed a permit to tow a vehicle on the interstate. Or as Dad put it, “Let’s get an early start and hope for the best.” We were wearing swim trunks under our shorts in case we found a lake to jump into.
So far so good as we pulled off for a quick breakfast. Right away the Rambler drew a crowd of car freaks with their cameras out. It never looked better: the turquoise and cream paint job, the rustless chrome, the upholstery hand-sewn by Dad.
And when we got to Kenosha, the museum people were pretty excited. There was paperwork, and Dad is more businesslike than you’d expect. He showed me the check, and it wasn’t bad for a summer’s work. “Better than working the night shift at Jack in the Box,” as he said.
By afternoon we were heading west on 50 toward Lake Geneva. Uncle Paul had rented a cottage up there for summer weekends, but hadn’t invited us. Were we inviting ourselves?
“Are we going to Uncle Paul’s place?”
“We might drop by,” Dad said. “There’s plenty of day left.”
We came up over a rise, and there was the lake. Blue, almost black, with little white sails like sharks’ teeth. Puffy clouds. Blue sky. Another perfect place, like Wrigley Field.
We crept through the town traffic. Then we were over on the Williams Bay side. We’d been up here in the winter for ice boating but now it was dense and different. We turned off the road and bumped down a track. A bunch of little cottages clustered around a pier. Two cars were pulled up on the side. One was a beat-up Kia. The other was Uncle Paul’s car, a white convertible Audi A3, turbocharged. Custom cherry upholstery. Basically a dressed-up VW, but very hot, very cool.
The path between the cottages dropped down to the pier. There sat Uncle Paul in trunks and a canvas hat next to an ice chest. His feet were in the water. Another guy was on his other side, also with his feet in the water. They were sitting close, and their heads were closer.
They both looked up when they heard us. The other guy was Mr. McLeod.
I didn’t see this coming.
Did you? Because I didn’t.
Did they see us coming? Probably not, and Uncle Paul looked really surprised. He’d rubbed sunblock over his shoulders. He’d definitely been working out. Needless to say, so had Mr. McLeod.
“Hey, guys, sittin’ on the dock of the bay?” Dad said, which may have been a code.
What were we up to?
Dad eased out of his shorts, shirt, shoes. He made a pile of them on the pier and folded his shades on top. Then he dropped into the lake in his baggy trunks.
“Hey, Uncle Paul,” I said.
“Hey, Archer.” He put up a big hand. He was friendly, but it was like Dad and I were crowding him a little bit.
I pointed out past the pier. “Hey, Mr. McLeod. North, right?” Since he loves directions.
“It’s east, Archer. Good to see you. How’s middle school?”
“We haven’t learned anything yet,” I told him. “We could use you back. And the brownies.”
I made a pile of my clothes and jumped in the water. Dad was out there, just climbing onto the float. He has his own swimming style, but he gets there.
I don’t exactly cut through the water, but I get there too. I pulled up on the float that had a little bounce to it. There’s just room for two. The sun was dazzling, like diamonds on the water. We were already half dry and wouldn’t be here long without sunblock. We stretched out on our stomachs.
I almost dozed, but said, “Dad, Uncle Paul said he loved somebody. You know what? I bet it’s Mr. McLeod.”
“You may be onto something, Archer,” Dad said.
The sun was intense, but this was the last day of August. There was a little hint of something else in the air. Change.
“Dad, we didn’t come up here just to jump in the lake, did we?”
“No,” Dad said, “but it’s great.”
“And we didn’t come up here just to remind Uncle Paul he’d forgotten to invite us, right?”
“No,” Dad said, “but you’re getting warmer.”
“Dad, let’s not play games. What’s happening?”
“Your uncle Paul has a long history of talking himself out of relationships. He cuts and runs.”
“Why does he do that?”
Dad was up on an elbow, looking back at the pier.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe because he hadn’t met Ed McLeod yet.”
“Because Mr. McLeod’s a keeper, right?”
“If your uncle doesn’t mess up. He looks like a keeper from where I stand.”
“Do you think they’re alike?”
“Do you think your mom and me are alike?”
“Yikes, no way, Dad.”
“I think they’re a fit,” he said. “But Paul has this big image—the cars, the clothes, the job, the whole package—and he kind of hides out behind it.”
“So are we going to talk it over with him? Knock some sense into him?”
“No, we’re guys,” Dad said. “We’ll talk about the Cubs, and cars.”
“That’ll help?”
“You work with what you’ve got. But we’ll make sure he sees there’s a place for Ed McLeod in our family. We’ll keep an eye out for whatever we can do. It’ll take the time it takes. It’ll work or it won’t work.”
Now Dad was up in a crouch, and into the water. I followed. We raced, and he let me win. He’d always let me win, but now I noticed.
We sat through the afternoon, drinking canned diet tea out of the ice chest. The four of us dangled our legs off the pier: six hairy legs with big calves, plus two pale matchsticks. We talked about the Cubs and cars as the sun slid behind the trees, taking down summer.
Mr. McLeod mentioned to Dad that there were three things wrong with his Kia. Ignition and a couple of other things. Clogged fuel line. Dad said he’d have a look and put his clothes on. Mr. McLeod pulled on a T-shirt, and they went up the path to the cars.
That left me with Uncle Paul down on the pier. He doesn’t know anything about what goes on under a car hood, probably because he trades them in before the first oil change. It was evening around us, but still afternoon across the lake. East. The sun was setting in their windows over there.
I looked around in my head for a good way to start. Then I thought of something. “Did Mr. McLeod ever fix you any of his stinging nettle soup?”
“His what?” Uncle Paul said.
“He can make soup out of stinging nettles.”
“Not for me he can’t.”
“Dad says Mr. McLeod looks like a keeper to him. He was just saying that out on the float.”
“A keeper?” Uncle Paul said.
I nodded. “Like you and him. Together. That’d be good, right?”
“Ah,” Uncle Paul said.
“Because I think I could handle it,” I said. “It’d be unusual to have your teacher in the family, but I don’t think it’d be a problem for me.”
“Well, that’s a load off my mind,” Uncle Paul said. “But there’s another problem.”
“What is it?” I couldn’t think of one.
“You’re rushing us,” Uncle Paul said.
“No, we’re not,” I said. “It’ll take the time it takes. It’ll work or it won’t work.”
“Why does that sound exactly like your dad?”
“Search me,” I said.
Long-legged bugs skimmed the surface, right where our feet were in the water. That type of bug used to freak me out when I was younger. But I’m okay with them now. It takes the time it takes.
We sat there quite a while, watching the water. And I was thinking.
“Mr. McLeod never had a dad. He told Grandpa.”
“I know,” Uncle Paul said.
“So if he ever wanted to be a dad—you know, down the road. Would he know how?”
“Yes,” Uncle Paul said. “He’d see how your dad does it.”
• • •
Then after a while Dad and Mr. McLeod came back. Dad was wiping the grease off his hands with gasoline on a rag. They trundled onto the pier.
Mr. McLeod was skinning off his shirt. He was going to take another dip in the lake. Then in a quick move he was behind Uncle Paul. He reached down and had him under the arms. He was going to hoist him up and throw him in the lake.
“No, you’re not going to do that,” Uncle Paul said, twisting around. “I’m bigger than you are.”
“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” Mr. McLeod said.
They were both on their feet, grappling. They were basically acting a lot younger than they were, and getting closer and closer to the edge of the pier.
“No. Stop. I don’t want to get my hat wet,” Uncle Paul said, grunting.
“Or your hair, probably,” Mr. McLeod said, also grunting.
For a second they were in the air, locked together, so they looked like a fit to me. Then a giant splat, and they were in the water, and Uncle Paul’s hat was floating away. Dad was laughing, and I was there, and it was great.
We left them splashing around in the lake. We’d stretched the day as far as it would go, and we had a long drive ahead of us, Dad and I. What Mr. McLeod and Uncle Paul had ahead of them I wasn’t too sure.