The Summer Guest Read Online Free PDF

mistake, and I know that to such people I am just another body for hire, like the nanny who raises their children, the broker who sells them the stocks that make them more money, the lawyer they retain when they wish to divorce. But because they are rich enough to have these things, they are gracious to me, even respect me, for I know what they do not: where the fish are and what they are likely to take. For this they rent me, body and soul, at two hundred fifty dollars a day, a hundred fifty for the half, as pure a bargain as I know about, and dirt cheap if truth be told.
    There are regulars, too, people who come up here every year at the times they like best: early summer for the big mayfly hatches, or else the long dry days of August, after the blackflies have gone, the days are as crisp as a butterfly on pins, and the fish have wised up and aren’t especially hungry besides-not the easiest time to catch them, but that’s not why these folks are here, and not why I’m here, either. Which brings me to the last summer I saw Harry Wainwright-the Harrison P. Wainwright, he of the thirty-odd consecutive summers, the Forbes 500 and the NYSE and all the rest-who came up here at last to die.
    We put on the dog for lifers like Harry Wainwright, which up here is really just a state of mind, since there’s no way to be fancy. The cabins are identical, rustic and spare, each with a couple of creaky cots, a potbellied stove, and a tippy porch on the water with a view across it to the mountains. What I mean is, we’re ready to see him, glad as hell to see him, because lifers like Harry are the bread and butter of a place like ours; we can’t afford to advertise, and don’t have a mind to anyway, having never bothered to begin with. At the time I’m speaking of, Harry was probably seventy, though until he’d gotten sick he’d aged easily, like the rich man he was. He owned a string of discount drugstores in the South and Midwest (I’d heard it said that if you bought a bottle of aspirin anywhere from Atlanta to Omaha, you probably paid Harry Wainwright for the privilege), and a lot of other things besides, a veritable empire of goods and services in which I had no stake, except for what he paid me as a guide. He hardly needed one; he’d fished this spot since Kennedy was in the White House and knew it as well as any man alive. His tips, always embarrassingly huge, were just another way of expressing his pure happiness to be here.
    Did he impress me? Who wouldn’t be impressed by Harry Wainwright?
    So, the story: In rolls Harry, whom we all knew was dying of cancer, late on an August afternoon in the Year of Our Lord 1994, with his second (i.e., younger) wife, his son and tiny granddaughter, all heaped into a big rented Suburban to haul them up from the airport in Portland with their gear: as beautiful a family as ever I’ve seen. The day’s just tipped toward evening, the best time to arrive, and it’s late enough in the season that the birches and striped maples are just beginning to turn in bright crowns of yellow and red, set against the blue, blue sky. Harry is stretched out on the second seat, his back propped against the door with pillows, like old Ramses himself; Harry Jr. (who goes by Hal) is driving; second wife Frances is in the passenger seat; January (named for the month of her birth or the month of her conception, take your pick) is tucked into her comfy car seat in the way back; the car cruises down the long drive. Everybody loves the last eight miles: when you finally arrive, it’s like you’ve already done something, like the fun’s already started.
    We were expecting him, of course. The night before, we all sat down for a meeting, after Joe had taken the call from Hal, saying Harry wanted to come up, short notice he knew but was there space, and so on. We met in the dining room after supper: me, Joe’s wife, Lucy, who ran the kitchen and took care of the books, and their daughter, Kate, who was a