The Visitor

We left early. The truck was loaded with planks, shingles, tar, plywood, and any other roofing materials Grampa thought we would need. He had overpacked, but that was to be expected.

The lake was choppy when we arrived. I tried to give Dad the good bar but he wouldn’t take it.

“You’re worth more with that than I am,” he said.

We began ripping shingles off the roof.

“Any word from Sam?” I asked.

“Nope.” Dad dumped a wad of crumbled 1980s square-tips over the edge. “Says he might be coming through on the way to Bar Harbor. But—you know how it is. Never really know what’s going on with him.”

I didn’t want to talk about Sam, but somehow Dad and I always ended up talking about Sam.

Ducks sat on the rocks by the boat mooring. Sam and I used to shoot at them with our slingshots when we were kids. The goal was to land the rock right behind the ducks. Sometimes we didn’t aim far enough behind them.

“Quite the job you got going there,” came a voice from below. I saw Dad duck behind the angle of the roof. He grimaced, rolled his eyes, then stood up and looked down at Ron Paquette’s smug grin.

“Hey, Ron. On orders from the old man, you know how it is.”

“You know, I got a lift over at the house. I could bring it over for you.” Good old Ron. Always had a tool we could borrow, never a hand.

Dad leaned over the edge. “Well…maybe. You mean, like…use the lift arm instead of staging?”

           “Yeah.” Ron waved at the staging. “Your old man probably bought this stuff in 1950.”  

           “Tell you what,” said Dad without looking over the edge. “We’ll finish ripping and then let you know.”

           Ron was crestfallen. “Alright.”

           Mom pulled in the driveway. We heard her voice change from excitement to aggravation when Ron greeted her. Dad and I grinned at each other. I knew he was thinking about the way Mom described Ron when he wasn’t around. We went back to ripping while Ron watched Mom and Pip unload the car.

           When the shingles and paper were off, we came down to get a drink. Pip was already in the lake with the dog. Dad found lemonade in the fridge.

           Mom came in. “Sure didn’t take him long to show up, did it?”

           Dad grinned at me. “He’s a nice guy, honey. Means well.”

           “Doesn’t he have anything to do?”

           “Guess not.”

           “I’ve been hearing all kinds of racket coming from over there this afternoon. Machinery of some sort.”

           “Yeah, he said he had a lift over there,” I said.

“Of course he does.”

“Don’t be so hard on him, Mom,” I said. “He’s good at some things, you know.”

“Like what?”

“Like telling other people how he would do their work better than they’re doing it.”

That made her laugh.

We went back out and I began sliding sheets of pressure-treated plywood onto the staging. An osprey circled over the lake. The afternoon was tired and still.

“You sure you don’t want that lift?”

Dad gathered himself. “Hey there, Ron.”

“Plywood looks awful heavy. Lift would make it a lot easier.” Ron was wearing one of his three T-shirts, a grey tie-dye with a painting of howling wolves on the front.

“I think we’re good,” said Dad. He looked at me and I nodded to provide reinforcement.

Ron shook his head. “Just like your old man, gotta do it the hard way.”

Later in the afternoon, when the sun’s warmth had finally relented from its noonday aggression, Pip and I walked up to the spring and then down the gravel road to look at the old Tukel mansion. Thick cobwebbed log butts jutted out at the corners and moss coated the porch staircase. The murky windows were unshrouded, and I could see the faint outline of a refrigerator and a stone fireplace.

           “Ever see anyone here?” asked Pip. She threw a stick into the lake and the dog plowed through the lily pads.

           “Never.”

           “Why don’t we just move in ourselves?”

           I chuckled. “It’s not ours. Someone else owns it.”

           Pip pondered. “But if they aren’t using it, why can’t we?” I opened my mouth to answer, but she continued—“We could even help clean it up!”

I smiled at her. “That would be nice.”

           Dad and I worked for a couple hours after dinner putting flashing on the edges and corners of the roof. The old flashing fell away like slow-cooked barbecue ribs off the bone. Ron stopped by again to tell some stories about dirt-bikes and the market for scrap metal in Connecticut, but he soon realized that we weren’t in a talking mood. Dad and I were back in our rhythm. It never took long for us to get it back, even after months of not working together. Like riding a bike.

           That night we sat around the campfire, roasting marshmallows and watching the shooting stars. A few lights sparkled across the water, but school had started and the lake was quiet.

           “Don’t get it too close to the fire, Pip,” said Mom. “You’re going to burn it.”

           “I like them burnt,” said Pip. She thrust her marshmallow into the blaze.

           “I heard from Sam,” said Dad.

           Mom left Pip to her burning.

           “Said he’s coming out from Buffalo,” Dad continued, “and he’ll be here tomorrow afternoon.”

           “That’s great!” Mom was happy. I was too, but I knew there was something else. We all did. Something we all wanted out of Sam but knew we weren’t going to get.

           Crunching sticks sounded on the path.

Mom’s hands went to her head. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” She looked back at Dad hands open, as if pleading a case. “Why does he have to keep showing up?” 

The crunching grew louder. I realized it was coming from the direction of the spring. Pip glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.

A head of long, curly blonde hair emerged out of the darkness.

The visitor approached the fire, flip-flops slapping the dewy grass.

“I’m Ty,” he said, setting a box of soda cans by the fire. “I brought Dr. Pepper.”

I tried to make sense of the situation. He had come from the path, but we would have seen a car arrive if he had driven down to Ron’s camp. It had seemed like he was coming from the spring, but the only camp in that direction was the Tukel mansion.

“Where are you coming from?” said Dad.

“My folks’ place, down by the spring,” said Ty.

Dad stared. “You’re a Tukel?”

“Yup.”

“No way!” exclaimed Mom.

“Yup,” said Ty, laughing. “Parents always told me the house up here was creepy. Guess I just wanted to see for myself.”

“Did you know old man Tukel?” asked Dad.

Ty shrugged. “He wasn’t too much of a people person. After we moved to the Vineyard, we didn’t hear much from him.”

We began trading stories about old man Tukel. We knew a few stories, mostly from Grandpa, but Ty had dozens of them. The moon glinted off the new flashing on the roof.

“Are you here by yourself?” asked Pip.

“Yup,” said Ty.

“Aren’t you scared in that creepy house?”

“Nope.”

“You can sleep on our porch if you get scared.”

Ty laughed. “Sounds good.”

The next morning we began shingling. We worked quickly and had the first five rows done in an hour. The first five rows always took the longest. I cut and set the shingles, Dad powered them home with the nail-gun. I never liked nail-guns. They made me shiver, made me think of Sam’s quad with a nail sticking out of it and the emergency room doctor wielding a pair of pliers.

Pip called up to the stage. “Can we go fishing?”

“Sure,” said Dad. He looked at me. “Can you take her?”

“You gonna be ok by yourself?”

“Yeah. Just cut me 10 or 20 down the line and I’ll be good.”

I called down to Pip: “Get the tackle box.”

I opened a ream of shingles and trimmed them to the pattern lengths. Dad could deal with the end pieces once he got there.

“You should stop by and see if Ty wants to come,” said Dad.

“You think so?”

“Yeah. Gotta be lonely over there by himself.”

I started down the ladder.

“Make sure you check the bilge pump before you go,” Dad called after me. 

Pip was sitting in the boat with a fishing pole in each hand. I tested the bilge and we headed toward the Tukel mansion. The prop gargled through the lily pads as we approached the dock. Ty was sitting in a lawn chair on the porch, smoking and drinking a Dr. Pepper.

“We’re headed up lake to get some bass. Want to join?”

Ty grinned. “Give me a sec to me get my sunglasses.”

Pip and the dog moved to the front of the boat, and Ty joined me behind the console. He reeked of marijuana. Pip’s nose wrinkled when she smelled it. We headed for the far shore.

“You fish this lake a lot?” asked Ty.

“Yeah,” I said. “Been coming up here for years. You?”

“First time here. But I fish off the beach on the Vineyard all the time. Bonita, bluefish, stripers.”

“You like living on the Vineyard?”  

“Yeah, bro. Island life is the good life.”

We nosed in and out of coves for the rest of the morning, trying our luck around any rock pile or submerged log we could find. I didn’t catch anything, but Ty and Pip each caught two bass. I looked back at the camp and saw smoke from the campfire dragging slowly into the sky.

By early afternoon, Pip had had enough. As we motored out of the cove, I noticed the bilge wasn’t working. I played with the switch to no avail.

“Bilge giving you trouble?”

Ty was standing behind me, hands on his knees.

“Yeah. This thing has been giving us trouble for years. Gonna have to fix it when we get back. You know how these things are—”

I turned back to give him the customary shrug and smile, but Ty was already at the back of the boat, bending over the prop and fiddling with the bilge.

“Try it now.”

I flipped the bilge on, and it spat water into the lake.

“Thanks, man,” I said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“No worries,” said Ty. He draped his bony frame into the passenger seat and sipped on his Dr. Pepper.

We pulled into the dock as the afternoon chop was beginning to blow in. The staging was still up, but I couldn’t see Dad on the roof. Pip was already into the potato chips, so Ty and I left her in the cabin and walked up the hill to the driveway. Dad was leaning on a gravel rake, talking to Ron. Mom was nowhere to be seen.

“How was the fishing?” said Dad.

“Great,” I said. “Ty and Pip each got two. I got skunked. Ty fixed the bilge.”

Dad’s smile opened into surprise and gratitude. “Thanks, Ty!”

“No worries.” Ty nodded several times. I could tell he was still pretty high, although the marijuana smell wasn’t as strong as it had been in the morning.

Dad turned to me. “Mom is coming back from the store in a bit and we gotta get this pile smoothed out.” He held eye contact with me, and I knew he had been interrupted by Ron and was frustrated that the job was unfinished. Ty and I set to work.

“Like I was saying,” said Ron to Dad, “I got a four-wheeler and an old snow-plow over at the house. We could hook it up and do this in no time.”

I glanced at Dad and winked. He struggled to hide a grin.

Then, without warning, Ty turned to Ron and said, “There’s some Dr. Pepper over there by my hat, on the porch steps. You’re welcome to grab one if you want.”  

Ron looked at him for a long moment, as if he were shocked to hear words come out of Ty’s mouth. His eyes momentarily darted between Dad and I. We could see the indecision on his face, the knowledge that Ty had forced him into a position he could not escape from. Dad grinned at Ty. Then Ron shrugged, kicked the dirt with his feet, slowly spun away, and ambled down the hill to the porch steps. We watched him take Dr. Pepper from the case, turn back and consider us from the bottom of the hill, then disappear down the trail to his cabin.

Dad leaned over, grinning ear to ear, and gave Ty a fist bump. “My kinda guy.”