Indian Summer (12 page)

Marcie has had several dogs as pets, so she knows that they have different barks to mean different things. This bark was not your friendly “hello” bark or an angry bark for the delivery man, but an insistent “something is wrong” bark. Lucy jumps up from her chair and rushes over to Jayne saying, “No Pansy! You’re scaring Jayne. Bad dog!” Pansy stops barking and crouches to the ground with her head down and her tail between her legs in a submissive pose.

Marcie runs down the hill “Wait!” she calls out. “I saw the whole thing. Jayne was trying to get around Pansy to get to the water. Pansy tried to block her, but couldn’t so
she barked to get our attention.” She stops to catch her breath. “Pansy saved her from falling into the lake!”

“Oh!” Lucy exclaims. “I guess we were a little engrossed in our conversation. I didn’t notice that Jayne had gotten out of the pool until I heard Pansy barking. Come here, girl,” she calls to Pansy. “It’s okay. I’m sorry.” She hugs Pansy with one arm and Jayne with the other as Pansy licks both of their faces and wags her tail enthusiastically. “You saved my baby! But how did she know?” Lucy looks enquiringly at Al and Mamaw, and at Marcie, who is also kneeling beside Pansy and stroking her head

“I don’t know, but she was definitely blocking her from going down to the water. Jayne was laughing—she thought it was a game. I assumed you were all watching and knew what was going on. I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry, we should have been watching,” says Mamaw. “Thank goodness Pansy was there. We always knew she was special.”

“She is very aware of how I am feeling.” Al clears his throat and adds: “It’s comforting to have her hovering around me when I’m not feeling well.”

“I’m just glad she was watching out for Jayne. You’re a good dog.” Lucy hugs Pansy more tightly and is rewarded with another swipe of pink tongue on her cheek. She stands up and lifts Jayne onto her hip. “After all that excitement I think it’s time for Jayne to have a nap!” She
goes into the house, and that seems to be the cue for everyone else to disperse to their own activities. Mamaw gets her gardening shears to deadhead flowers in the garden. Marcie goes back to the hammock to finish her book, and Al ambles over to watch the boys swim…

A
L SITS IN
one of a pair of Adirondack chairs positioned on the lawn to appreciate the best view of the bay. Al has lived his entire life on the lake and has seen a lot of changes during those 80 years. The cottages have grown bigger over the years, and the boats are bigger and more powerful. All the water recreation gear; the skis, wake boards, water trampolines, inner tubes for three, four, five or even more people, is more complicated and technical.
Back in my day we had a raft and our swim trunks, or a pail of worms and a bamboo pole
, he thinks. Not that it’s all bad or that he wishes for the old days—far from it. He loves the Internet and uses his computer to look up the weather conditions for fishing and to shop online. It’s so much easier than going into the city. And he wouldn’t trade his Zebco fishing pole for anything. Watching Eric and Drew playing swamp monster with Michael, jumping off the diving board, laughing and splashing each other, he knows that the essential things haven’t changed much. Kids and
families enjoying themselves and spending time together. The extra trappings are certainly nice, but they aren’t really necessary to enjoy the lake and its beauty.

He doses off in the chair for a few minutes and then wakes with a start when Eric lets out a yell as he jumps off the diving board into the dark green water. The older Al gets, the more his dreams include family and friends who are no longer living. Sometimes they seem as real to him as the people who are still alive. He thinks it may be because he is getting closer to the end of his life, so he is more attuned to it. It is comforting to visit old friends and loved ones in his dreams.

“Al, look at my jump!” Drew calls out to him. “It’s a sea slug!” Al obliges by watching Drew leap from the board and land in a belly flop with a tremendous splash. He claps appreciatively when Drew resurfaces. Al feels lucky to have such a good relationship with the Horton family. Spending time with the children really adds joy to his life.

“What should I do for this dive?” Drew calls to Al.

Al cups his hands to his mouth and yells, “How about a starfish?” Drew jumps from the board with his arms and legs spread wide and a big smile on his face. Al can’t help but smile, too.

A
FTER SAILING PRACTICE
on Thursday, Kaitlyn and her mom planned to go shopping, but Marcie didn’t feel like tagging along. She finished her book yesterday and wanted to go to the library to check out a new book. She thought sailing practice had gone really well that morning. The four of them are experienced sailors and know what to do in their respective jobs on the boat. It’s more a matter of learning to work together as a team and anticipating what needs to be done and what the others are doing at any given moment so the whole process goes smoothly. Marcie feels confident in her abilities as a sailor and in her role manning the spinnaker and keeping track of the wind flow. Since she didn’t feel any nervousness, she was able to relax and feel the joy of sailing. She never gets tired of the wind in her hair, the movement of the boat on the water, and the exhilaration of feeling propelled through the waves by the wind.

They did several runs up and down the lake working on speed and timing, and Kyle was especially pleased with their performance. “Great work everyone,” he said several times. “I feel really good about how we’re progressing as a
team. What do you think about racing in this Sunday’s Regatta?”

“It would be good practice, and we could take a look at some of the competition,” Conner answered. “But would we be tipping our hand by racing before the 4th?”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“I don’t know if that will really matter,” Marcie shrugged. “The Sunday Regattas go on all summer long. People with lake houses aren’t here every weekend, and full-time residents don’t race every Sunday. According to Eric, it’s a different race every weekend because the participants are always different. The Boat Company team might be out racing though.”

“That could be a good thing—we’d see how we stack up. Let’s think about it. We don’t have to decide right now,” Kyle said as they brought the boat in to dock and set about stowing the sails and halyards.

Now, as she rides her bike along the main road into town, Marcie decides not to tell Eric that they might race in Sunday’s Regatta. She knows he’s been practicing with the Boat Company team this week too, and she doesn’t want them to race on Sunday just to compete with her team. If they race, fine, she just doesn’t want to push the issue.

She glances up at the canopy of leaves overhead. This is one of her favorite streets. All along the parkway on
both sides of the road, enormous ash trees grow. Their branches arch out over the street to meet in the middle, forming a tunnel of green as high as a cathedral. To Marcie, it seems like a king or queen should be riding horseback majestically down the center of the boulevard.

The library is in a red brick building one block off Main Street. The original library was in a converted Georgian-style house with white pillars and a veranda, but a modern brick and glass annex was added several years ago. The combination isn’t as strange as it sounds, but Marcie thinks it looks a little bit like the library sprouted wings off its backside where the addition flares out to surround a glass-enclosed atrium. It’s a bigger library than you might think a town of this size would need, but the summer crowd uses it often too. Marcie is glad, because it means they almost always have the currently popular books available. She loves the library and usually checks out more books than she could possibly read before the due date.

Walking up the sweeping staircase and through the front door, she takes the first right into the young adult section. They have a number of books displayed on a table in the center of the room surrounded by comfy couches for reading. She stops at the table to peruse the books, as they are probably newer releases that she hasn’t read yet. A few seem interesting, so she reads the jacket cover and inside flap, and selects three to check out.

After checking out her books at the circulation desk, she passes a large map of Lake Pappakeechee and the surrounding area on the wall. She stops to look at it more closely and sees that it has the locations of Native American sites in the area as well as the trading routes used by Native Americans when they lived here. Lake Pappakeechee isn’t the only lake in the region, but it is the largest. There are many smaller lakes, and most of them are connected by rivers and marshes. Most of the sites on the map are from the Miami tribe, but there is one that is noted as an Adena site, located on the shore of the largest river in the area. It is almost at the edge of the map. It shows an area with three circles in a line. A dotted line is drawn down the centers of the circles, connecting them, and there are dotted lines bisecting the centers of each circle in diagonal directions. She hadn’t even thought about looking anything up about Native American sites—until now. Something about the Adena circles makes her think. Turning around, she approaches the librarian at the Reference Desk.

“Excuse me, do you have any books about the Adena Indians from this area?” Marcie asks the librarian. She notices that her name tag says M
ISS
R
OBINSON
.

“Let me see.” She lifts the glasses hanging on a beaded chain around her neck and places them on the bridge of
her nose before turning to her computer. “Is that spelled A-D-E-N-A?” She types rapidly on the keyboard.

Marcie nods and answers, “Yes.”

The librarian peers more closely at the computer screen. “It looks like we do have a small section with the other books on local history.” Miss Robinson turns her gaze to Marcie again. “We also have a small display case with items found by locals—mostly arrowheads and pottery shards and the like. I’m not sure that any would be Adena, though. I’ll show you the books and where the display case is located.” Marcie follows her over to the stacks. “The books should be in this section.” Miss Robinson indicates a section on the second shelf of one of the stacks. “And the display case is down at the end of the non-fiction section in the atrium. Let me know if you need anything else.” Her skirt flares out as she turns and walks briskly back to the reference desk.

Marcie looks at the titles of the books and sees that only three are relevant, so she brings them all to the table at the end of the shelves. Taking off her backpack, she places it against the table leg. The first book she selects is titled
Mysteries of the Adena People
. She opens the book and sees an artist’s drawing of a circular mound of earth with Native American people sitting on the mound facing a man standing at one end with his arms in the air. He must be a chief or priest, judging by his more elaborate dress. Marcie
can hardly believe her eyes. The picture is strikingly similar to the vision she had in James Woods. With shaking hands, she turns the page and begins skimming the first chapter. It says, the Adena Indians, or “Mound Builders,” were named after the farm in Ohio where the first site was discovered. The farmer called the property Adena, which is a Hebrew word meaning “beautiful land.” They are identified with mounds they built out of earth. The mounds were aligned with the rising and setting points of astrological bodies and were often used for ceremonial purposes. The ceremonial mounds are sometimes called “sacred circles” by archaeologists. On the next page is a list of more than 50 astrological alignments that one of the mounds studied by archaeologists was found to predict. The right hand side of the page has a drawing similar to the one on the map on the library wall—three circles in a line bisected by dotted lines. The dotted lines show how the mounds are aligned with celestial activity.
Just like Stonehenge
, Marcie thinks. The Summer Solstice Sunrise and Moonrise, the Equinox Sunrise and Moonrise, and the movements of many other stars, planets, and constellations are on the list. She doesn’t even know when the Equinox is during the year, and these people kept track of it by building a mound of earth! The book also says the mounds are often found near rivers or bodies of water. That fits with what she saw too. The mound had been on
the shore of a lake, maybe Lake Pappakeechee. But Bob at the zoning office said there aren’t any Native American sites on the lake. Sacred circles and celestial bodies … Marcie shivers, but not from the air conditioning.

Closing the book, she gets up from the table, and walks past the non-fiction section and down a ramp to the atrium. The two-story space is open on three sides to the library stacks. She looks for the display table and sees it positioned next to the low wall surrounding the atrium. Sunlight streams in from the glass wall at the far end of the room and reflects off the glass top of the case.

The artifacts are arranged on beige felt under the glass with labels showing where they were found. She’s surprised to see that a lot of arrowheads and pottery shards were found in James Woods. Then her eye is drawn to something in the corner of the case … a copper bracelet. Her breath catches in her throat. An image from her memory of the dark-haired girl wearing a copper bracelet flashes through her mind. The label says it was found in James Woods. She grips the sides of the table to steady herself.

The wooden side of the table feels loose in her hand. Looking down, Marcie sees that it is hinged on the bottom like a door. She pushes against the wood and it folds open, revealing the artifacts inside. Someone must have forgotten to lock it. The bracelet is resting right at the edge of
the felt. She could easily touch it. Her hands are sweating now, and she wipes them on her shorts. She quickly looks around and sees that no one is watching her. Tentatively, she reaches for the bracelet. Her fingers touch the cool metal and … nothing happens. She had been expecting something, like an electric shock, to surge through her. She slips the bracelet on her wrist. It feels cool against her skin. Its hammered surface sparkles in the sunlight. She removes the bracelet from her wrist and begins replacing it in the case, but at the last minute shoves it in the pocket of her shorts. Luckily, no one is nearby in the atrium to see her take it. She closes the side door on the case. She doesn’t really think about what she’s doing—that she’s actually stealing the bracelet. She quickly gathers up her books and checks out, mumbling replies to the librarian’s questions. She gets on her bike and rides home, her mind in a whirl.