Early the next morning, Ziggy and Miles drove the fifty-four miles to their spot. On a map, the canoe launch was a nondescript speck on the Mullica River inside the green swath that was Wharton State Forest, within the expansive Pine Barrens. Larger than most national parks, with 1.1 million acres to its name, the extent of the Pine Barrens remained widely unknown outside of New Jersey. Despite its vast beauty, the Pines still felt like a local secret, hiding in plain sight as it stretched across seven counties and comprised 22 percent of America’s armpit.
As Ziggy’s truck made the familiar left onto the dirt road, Miles thought of old Joe Wharton. The same nineteenth-century industrialist who founded the Wharton School of Business—where Jo Hoffman had shed her working-class background and gained the tools and contacts needed to build a resort out of sand—had also acquired ninety-six thousand acres in South Jersey with the hopes of exporting the Pinelands’ clean water to Philadelphia after the city’s shortage of potable water had led to a spike in typhoid fever. This protected land later became Wharton State Forest—the playground of Zeke Miller’s early childhood. He’d spent his first nine years on the outskirts of Hammonton, the Blueberry Capital of the World, until Ziggy’s grandfather had returned from Vietnam and decided he’d rather be a plumber in Sea Point than a picker in the Pines.
Now, more than a hundred years after Mr. Wharton was laid to rest, Ziggy and Miles embodied his philanthropic legacy in their every step. The boys pulled into the high grass next to the riverbed. They left their phones in the truck, wallets too, and hid the keys atop the front left tire, just as Zeke had always done. If the Pine Barrens was unknown to most Americans, this canoe launch that Zeke had discovered as a little boy was the sub-rosa rendezvous point nestled within that larger obscurity.
Pushing open the MVP truck’s rusty passenger door, Miles waited to hear Zeke clear his throat and mumble something about WD-40. He would comment on the beautiful day before quizzing Ziggy on the bird that just flew overhead. It was strange, how present and absent a person could be. Strange and comforting, because even though Zeke was gone, he was most definitely here among the pines.
With every step away from the ceaseless work calls, Ziggy felt lighter and allowed his arms to swing loosely, almost jauntily, as he walked to the back of the truck. A playful whistle slipped past his lips—some tune without a title he knew by heart that his dad used to whistle in this very spot. The song floated above their heads while their footfalls kept the beat, a steady crunch along the carpet of pine needles. Miles reached into his back pocket to snap photos of the river only to shake his head, embarrassed by the immediate sense of loss, the phantom limb of his phone. It took a minute, adjusting to this old life.
The launch was muddy, as expected, and Miles threatened to turn back at the sight of a snake, but once they were settled in and rowing, both men felt their muscles melt into a natural rhythm. Relief saturated their bones like a much-needed summer storm. The only sound was paddle pushing water, wind swishing through half-dressed trees—the leaves still unfurling with the longer-growing days.
“You should be up here,” Miles called over his shoulder.
“You’re always up front.”
“Yeah,” Miles agreed, “because up until now you’ve always weighed more.”
“Did you hear about the two-headed rattler?” Ziggy asked. Nothing chastened Miles quite like a snake story. “It was all over the local news. There was a baby timber rattlesnake with two heads—they called it Double Dave because the guys who found him were both named Dave.”
As expected, Miles shuddered and begged Ziggy to drop it. The boys leaned into the quiet of the Pine Barrens and the deep breaths of their own thoughts, which were the same: Zeke had been the one to tell Ziggy about Double Dave, and he would have told Miles too—teased him about it, more likely—if he’d been around. But Miles had stayed away for so long, too long. The only time he’d deigned to see his own mother was when Jo paid for an exotic getaway vacation at a five-star resort five thousand miles away, and the Miller family, as far as Miles knew, had never taken a trip anywhere outside New Jersey except once—to the Outer Banks when Bev’s brother married.
Miles dipped his paddle into the river and rowed the way Zeke had taught him, using economic strokes and not “drilling for oil,” as Zeke used to tease. On either side of the narrow river, pitch pines and blackjack oaks reached for each other from opposite banks and created a cathedral ceiling above the red canoe so that the sky didn’t appear blue but an electric, verdant green.
“Check out that sassafras on the right,” Ziggy said. During their middle school years, after Ari had left for good, and Jo had a very public, very cliched fling with her tennis instructor, Zeke had taken both boys out every weekend, enlightening them about New Jersey’s flora, teaching them how to identify each tree species, first by the bark, then the leaves.
“I forgot how hot you get for a good-looking sassafras,” Miles teased.
“If my dad were here, he’d be flirting with that white cedar.”
Miles’s laugh skittered down the river like a dragonfly just as the Mullica opened up into a clearing and the sunlight, no longer inconspicuous behind the spring boughs, beat down on the boys with a long winter’s worth of pent-up heat. Shards of light reflected on the water’s surface and mirrored the trees above the canoe. It was warm for May, and then it was hot.
“Want to capsize?” Miles asked over his shoulder.
“That’s the theme of the year,” Ziggy replied. “Let’s do it.”
Together, the boys leaned hard on the starboard and began to rock their weight. Canoes were difficult to capsize, but Zeke had taught them how to do it on a clear summer day the year they turned thirteen, when Miles became a man and his dad reappeared at his bar mitzvah with his masseuse-girlfriend, Florida tanned and oblivious to the destruction their presence caused. “I’m teaching you how to flip for two reasons,” Zeke had explained from his kayak. “One, it’s fun, but two, if there’s a storm and you get flipped, you’ve got to know how to turn the boat over and get back in.”
As the boat rocked, Ziggy felt the taut exhilaration in his gut, the roller-coaster thrill, that moment of maybe. And then he was under.
Allowing himself to sink, Ziggy closed his eyes and listened to the shrill silence of the river and wished he could stay down there in the peace forever. Opening his eyes to the murky yellow haze under water, he heard his dad’s voice, and so did Miles, as they both swam toward air. How many times, over how many years, had Zeke told them the same thing, the Mullica mantra, whenever they’d slipped under the surface: Look for the light and then kick like hell to reach it.
The first half of the drive home was spent listening to a podcast, but after a stop at Wawa for gas and snacks, Miles felt the energy return to his strongest muscle: his mouth.
“I don’t know how you’ve been doing it,” he said, opening a bag of Doritos. “Being back makes me miss him so much—I keep waiting for him to show up and announce the Phillies score.”
Ziggy nodded, keeping his eyes on the road.
“Do you ever think about going somewhere else?” Miles asked. “Maybe just to get away, but also, like, moving? I don’t know how you can stay in that house and drive in this truck and not drown.” When Ziggy didn’t say anything, Miles continued. “I just wonder how you’re going to balance it—like, how do you honor him but not get stuck in the past or, I dunno, haunted by it?”
“I guess we’re just gonna have to figure it out,” Ziggy said, biting into the first Butterfinger he’d had in months, excited to discover it tasted amazing. “And I can’t do anything until I get the business in order, which is why I need you to go through the books.”
“And do what, exactly?”
“Decode his billing and budget system so I know who to pay and who needs to pay me. And then, once we figure that out, I was hoping you could show me how to move it all online so it’s easier to track going forward.”
“Right,” Miles agreed, craning his neck to look at the stack of composition books in the narrow storage space behind his seat. “I should be able to get to them this week. Just don’t make me deal with any of those clogged drains.” He shivered at the thought. In the canoe, Ziggy had told Miles his most recent horror story about snaking a shower drain at the local gym. The image had made Miles gag and he nearly dry-heaved just thinking about it now. In fact, Miles determined, looking out the window at the field of goldenrod, the next girl he dated would need to have short hair to avoid any such follicle catastrophes in the future.
Like Bell.
But Bell wasn’t responding to his texts, even though they were both in Sea Point—he’d driven by her house and seen her car. Even if she was playing hard to get now and ignoring his blue-text blitz, Miles knew her well enough to know she’d eventually text back if he played it right. First loves rarely lasted but they never died.
As Ziggy drove over the bridge into Sea Point, Miles surreptitiously checked his phone. The messages to Bell were all unanswered. He scrolled up to evaluate how pathetic he looked, this full-court press, and read back down to his most recent one, a photograph of the red canoe. It was a good photo—artsy, but not over-the-top. Admiring his work, Miles suddenly registered the three dots that popped up on her empty side of the conversation. She was typing, and then, just as suddenly, she wasn’t.
Still staring at his phone, Miles asked Ziggy, “Want to go out this weekend?”