The Summer Guest Read Online Free PDF Page B

junior at Bowdoin and worked in the summers as a guide, and Joe told us what he knew-that Harry had cancer and wanted to fish. The rest, about dying, was in there, but nothing he dared say. The next afternoon Hal called us from a pay phone in town to tell us they were thirty minutes away, so when the car came down the drive, Kate and Joe and I were waiting for them.
    Still, when Hal opened the old man’s door, it was a shock, and for a moment I thought maybe we’d all missed something and they were bringing his body up for burial-though a man like Harry Wainwright should go to his reward in a pharaoh’s robes, not the frayed khakis and tennis shoes and ratty blue sweater, all of it looking pale and loose, that he had on. The sight of a rich man dying is one to shake all your assumptions about a free market economy; here is something-life, health, a fresh set of orders for maniac cells run amok-that can’t be bought. As Hal swung the door wide we all held our breaths a little, deciding how to be normal, looking at the sneakers, white as the underbellies of two freshly bagged trout. Hal gave Joe’s hand and then my own a solid shake-as I said, he’s a good-looking man, his hair gone prematurely silver and tied in a hipster ponytail, the skin around his eyes handsomely crinkled from squinting out over the world’s warm waters at all times of year-and then said loudly, to me and everybody else, “Pop? Jordan ’s here to help us get you out.”
    Which proved tricky: the cancer, which had started in his lungs, had spread to the bones of his back. The poor guy was stiff as a cracker. Those last eight miles, as bouncy as a carnival ride, must have felt as bad as anything in his life. I scampered around to the rear passenger door; Frances climbed onto the backseat of the Suburban to hold his hands and keep him upright, and I popped open the door and let him sink into my arms. From the other side, Hal and Frances pushed his feet toward me, and as I pulled him out the old guy unfolded like a pocketknife; in a wink he was standing erect, me hugging him from behind, a little unsure if I should let him go or not. He weighed almost nothing, poor bird, although I also believed that if he fell the ground might actually shake, and it would be the worst moment of my life so far.
    “ Thank you, Jordan.”
    I looked past his ear and saw that I was supposed to hold him until Frances came around with the walker. Frances was maybe fifty, and I always thought of her as a little mannish, though in a pleasing way: she’s a solid woman, her thickness like the thickness of a good book. Fixed to one of the walker’s legs was a shiny chrome tank, about the size of a propane canister, with a clear plastic tube that ran to a heart-shaped mask that Frances wedged over Harry’s head to ride in the folds of his neck.
    “I am, as you see, much reduced, and I thank you.”
    This was Harry’s way of speaking; he liked to use expressions like “much reduced” when he meant sick as a poisoned rat. It’s easy to be dumb about the rich, but Harry Wainwright really was different from anyone else I knew. If you’ve read the articles, you know the story-Harry made sensational copy-a classic all-American bootstraps tale of ingenuity and elbow-grease, the hard lean years and the big idea and then the one-way rocket ride of his amazing life; point being, he was entitled to use any turn of phrase that pleased him. He also cursed a lot, though I could tell it made him happier to do than it makes most people. When Harry Wainwright called a fish “one whomping badass motherfucker,” I knew it really was.
    “Sure thing, Mr. Wainwright,” I said. “It’s great to see you again.”
    Silence, and I was surprised he hadn’t corrected me. For eight summers the joke was always the same: I’d call him Mr. Wainwright, he’d say, for god’s sake, Jordan, call me Harry, though I never, ever did. I wondered if he’d forgotten, and then if maybe he was too sick