The Summer Guest Read Online Free PDF Page A

hand.”
    On tiptoes she lifted herself to peer out the window. At last she groaned in surrender and lifted the baby toward him.
    “Please, Joe, be careful.”
    He took the baby from her. Their little boy was wearing a blue snowsuit with silhouetted reindeers dancing across it, and a cap that Amy had pulled down over his ears and forehead so that only his face showed. His hands were bare; clipped mittens dangled from his sleeves. Joe settled his son into the crook of one elbow, then lowered himself again to the window to offer Amy his free hand. But she shook her head and bent her back low, as he had done, gripping the window frame to pull herself through.
    “Just don’t drop him,” she warned. She blew the air from her lungs and rocked her weight back with one foot on the chair. “This is absolutely the stupidest thing we’ve ever done, bar none.”
    He wanted to laugh. “You’ll see.”
    She gave herself a pull and at once she was up and outside, beside him. As he watched her, the fear melted from her eyes. In its place he saw the pure radiance of her astonishment.
    “For the love of God, Joe.”
    The first day, he thought. For all their lives, in hours dark and light, this was the day they would always remember. In his arms, in the bright sunlight, his little boy looked at him inquiringly, as if to say; why am I on this roof?
    “For this,” Joe said, and held him high, to show him what was his.

A GIRL CAN TALK TO HER DAD ABOUT PEAS

ONE
    Jordan
     
    Everybody has a story, so here is mine-the story of me and Kate and old Harry Wainwright, and the woods and lake where all of this takes place. My name: Jordan Heronimus Patterson Jr., son of the late Captain Jordan Heronimus Patterson Sr., USN, both of us Virginia born and bred, though now I live here, in the North Woods of Maine, where I make my living as a fishing guide. My father, a Navy pilot, loved the air, as I love what’s beneath it-the sun and light and snow and mountains of this remote place, and the big trout under the water. To meet me, you might think I must be simple, or unambitious, or just plain lazy, a grown man who fishes for a living; that is, a man who plays. When I take a party out on the lake, or downriver for the last of the spawning runs when they’ll still take a streamer, the man may ask me, or the woman if there is a woman, “What else do you do?” Or, “Do you really stay up here all winter?” A question I don’t hold against them, because I’m young, just thirty, and here is far from anywhere, the hardness of winter plain to see even on the sweetest summer afternoon in the twisted way the pines grow; they’re asking about movies and restaurants and stores, of course, all the things they love, so it’s natural to ask it: What else do I do? So I tell them about taking care of the boats and cabins, and hunting parties in the fall, which I’ll do if I have to but don’t really care for; and I may throw in a thing or two about college, how I didn’t mind going when I was there (University of Maine at Orono, class of 1986, B.S. in economics with a minor in forestry, thank you very much); and the man will nod, or the woman, thinking: Why, here’s a man of no account! And for one silent second they’re me, and happy because of it, and then they’ll ask me where to fish or what pattern to use on the line, and they’ll catch something because of what I tell them and go home to Boston or New York or even Los Angeles, and I’ll stay here as the snow piles up, something I can’t explain to anyone, not even to myself.
    And if I sound as if I don’t like these people, that isn’t at all true. The camp is far north, four hours by car from Portland and tricky to find, and the people who will make such a journey are serious about fishing. They are rich, most of them, a fact they cannot hide; one sees the evidence in their cars, their clothes, the good leather of their luggage and shoes. It’s large what’s between us, make no