One hot summer

So every year my family has the same vacation.

Dad loads the car up with all the fishing stuff, including enough rods and landing nets to supply a couple more people if we wanted to. But we don’t ask anyone else to come. His focus is on fish, not friendship.

Mom brings a stack of Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen magazines. Mikey has his toy Roy Rogers and Dale Evans with their horses. I call them his cowboy dolls, but Mom and Dad say boys don’t play with dolls, so they can’t be dolls.

Once Dad fills the trunk of that ’63 Galaxie with fishing stuff and big metal coolers for all the fish he hopes to bring back, there’s no room for our clothes. Mikey and I have to share the back seat with a box or two of clothes, toys and detective magazines.

We’ve been going to the same lake since I was a little kid. Now that I’m 14, I’m getting kind of tired of fishing. I’d rather just watch TV. But they don’t have TV up there because there’s no city near enough to broadcast. You’d think it was 1920 instead of 1965. I brought my new transistor radio, but the only station I could get plays polkas and a guy who reads the obituaries. I understand why Mom brings a bunch of magazines to read at the cabin while we fish.

Mostly I daydream a lot while I’m waiting for a fish to bite.

You’d think I would dream about baseball or fighting Nazis like in the movies, but mostly I think about school. I mean, mostly I think about the girl who sat in front of me last year in sixth grade.

Debbie Gilbert has this kind of fluffy blond hair that sometimes looks gold in the sun, but when light from the window shines through it, there are little rays of reddish-brown glowing in it. When she turns her head quickly to pass a note to Kathy in the next row, her hair follows behind, then covers one of her green eyes like the veil on one of the slave women in the Bible movies, then bounces back, hopping a little when she giggles at whatever she wrote in the note.

Her shampoo must be made out of fruit because her hair smells like coconut and pineapple and stuff. When I smell it I want to lick her all over her face like a sheep dog. Forget I said that; I don’t want people to think I’m a freak.

I don’t know why girls fuss with their hair so much. Guys like me couldn’t care less.

There aren’t any girls at the lake unless you include Mom, and she doesn’t count.

That brings me to the swimming adventure.

Where we fish in the North Woods, it’s so cold in the morning that we have to wear sweatshirts and long pants. By noon, it gets so hot that the sweat drips in your eyes when you’re just sitting still waiting for a bite. The sun reflects off the water and will blind you, even with a hat and sunglasses on. Worst of all, these were the hottest days of summer. We’d peel off our sweatshirts and T-shirts, and even change into cutoffs, but we still cooked in the heat.

After fishing one morning, we took a break and had lunch on an island. I told Dad I’d like to go swimming, but I didn’t bring my swimsuit and didn’t want to fish in wet cutoffs all afternoon.

“Just swim naked, Son,” he said. “Nobody will see you out here.”

Sure enough, I couldn’t hear any boat motors or see anyone on shore.

Dad had a beer while he and Mikey ate their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I walked several yards to a rocky little beach, stripped down to nothing except Dad’s old Coast Guard hat turned down like a mushroom top, and waded into the chilly lake.

I was slowly treading water, looking up at fluffy clouds and the pine trees lining the shore, when I heard the canoe paddles.

“Hi there. Mind if we share your beach?”

They were maybe college age, one with short dark hair and the other with the same sort of golden halo as Debbie Gilbert. Both were beautiful. Both wore bikinis.

“It’s a free country,” I said, trying my best to sound calm and worldly.

So they beached their canoe and jumped into the water. They splashed each other, then splashed me. They asked me about school and where I was from. They said they were taking a break from books and boyfriends and city heat. We talked about how beautiful and wild the North Woods were and what sort of fish we caught. Laura and Bryce were so nice I almost forgot I was swimming naked with two older women, but the part of me underwater reminded me now and then.

After a half hour or so, we were all friends and I hoped it would last forever. Then Dad called.

“I’ll be right there,” I yelled. But I didn’t move.

“It’s OK. We won’t look,” said Bryce, the blond one.

I panicked. Were they able to see me through the murky lake water?

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“We know you’re skinny-dipping,” Laura said, winking at Bryce. “We can see your clothes on shore.”

I was embarrassed, but also happy I didn’t have to hide. I felt like a dumb kid, but also a lot more grown up than I was an hour earlier. I strolled slowly to the shore, almost hoping they’d sneak a look at a scrawny frame that I hoped was as handsome as their college boyfriends’. I grabbed my clothes and dressed behind a boulder.

“Have a nice swim, Son?” Dad asked when I returned to the picnic.

“Yeah.”

“Nice and cool in the water? See any fish?”

“Yeah, cool water,” I said. “Not much to see, though. It was too hot to even think about fish.”