Random Acts of Kindness (18 page)

Pine Lake, New York

I
n the sweet, long-grass days of Nicole’s youth, whenever she perceived a blue luminescence rising from the far hills or a thrumming electric whine just at the edge of her hearing, she knew it was time to leave the shore at Bay Roberts. Lightning storms in the mountains came swiftly. So she’d jump on her bike and race the rumbling clouds, hoping to make it home before the air crackled, before the first heavy drops sizzled on the asphalt, before the first branched lightning bolt pushed a charge through the humidity and raised the little hairs on the back of her arms.

Charged, electric, breathless—that was exactly how Nicole felt now, sitting in the driver’s seat, when she finally glimpsed the exit ramp to Pine Lake. After more than four thousand miles of anticipation, she turned the car onto the off-ramp. At the bottom, she took a left onto the rural road. The steering wheel dug into her sternum as she pressed close to read the old wooden sign:

Welcome to Pine Lake.

In the passenger seat, Claire released a long, slow sigh. In the back, Jenna shifted into life. A church-morning silence descended as they made their way down the half mile toward the center of the town.

Nicole recognized a patch of birch trees that marked the turnoff that led to the Historic Sayward Sawmill, a field trip destination for every Pine Lake middle schooler. She could still hear the drone of the docent’s voice telling the story of the first Vermont settler, a soldier who’d fought in the French and Indian War. He returned to his native mountains after the war long enough to convince his family of the riches waiting for them if they built a sawmill in these deep woods. Behind that sawmill’s waterwheel she’d shared her first sloppy kiss with Joey Colfax while moss squished beneath her sneakers.

The hairs on the back of her arms rose as she glimpsed the buildings on the north edge of Pine Lake. She saw the gas station, the machine tool and die shop, and, most important, the auto body shop that her uncle had once owned. She eased her foot off the gas, wishing she could pop in for just a few minutes to breathe in the smell of the grease and hear the whirr of power tools and the banging of pneumatic hammers. For two years, she’d pestered her uncle to allow her to work in that shop until he’d indulged her during senior year. He spent the next year trying to convince her to forgo college and take it over so he could spend his time fly-fishing. Now the new owners advertised a thirty-minute oil-and-lube with one of those tall, floppy-armed undulating balloon men.

At thirty-five miles an hour, she raced past it with her heart feeling like a rubber band pulled backward. It sprung back as she glimpsed a converted railroad car belching blue smoke. How many platters of greasy burgers and French-Canadian steak fries with gravy had she eaten in the laminate booths of that diner? Back in his train-obsessed days, Emile’s had been Noah’s favorite eatery.

She drew in a breath to say,
Let’s stop in Emile’s for an early lunch
—but she halted before the words formed. Nicole had promised Jenna she would get them to Camp Paskagamak by one in the afternoon, the only free time in the campers’ tight schedule. In the rearview mirror, she saw Jenna clutching Lucky close, scratching the pup into an upright doze while her gaze fixed on some middle distance.

Nicole forcibly calmed herself down. She felt like a six-year-old waking up in the dark of an early Christmas morning, her hopes flaring to life with the intensity of a Roman candle, forced by a solemn promise to stay fixed in bed until gray slats of light filtered through the blinds. Only then could she leap upon her parents’ bed to announce the arrival of Christmas morning.

She told herself they’d be back in Pine Lake tomorrow afternoon. She would have
days
to play tourist, even to unfamiliar neighborhoods like the one they were now entering. Nicole slowed down in the residential area of Cannery Row. She used to be afraid of passing through this area in her youth, partly from her mother’s warnings and partly because of its shady, seemingly shiftless collection of men loitering on corners. The small two-family houses stood only a few feet back from the sidewalk. Their porches sagged and their shutters peeled and they were bleached gray, like Monopoly houses that had baked out in the sun too long. Between the buildings, she glimpsed cluttered backyards that sloped to the water’s edge. One house bore a sign that said
Antiques
. The little patch of front lawn was cluttered with an exuberant collection of birdbaths and whirligigs and resin replicas of the Virgin Mary.

The cannery itself loomed into view, a four-floor structure by the banks of the river, stained with streaks of rust and pocked with broken windows. In the early twentieth century, it processed a motley mix of Hudson River fish but later turned to pickled cabbage and red beets and sauerkraut until American tastes changed and the costs of improving mechanization proved too much for the owners. She knew, from several forbidden youthful trips into the building, that it was dark and excitingly creepy and still smelled vaguely of vinegar. She wondered if her initials were still spray-painted in black next to Drake’s on the second floor wall.

Claire shifted forward to get a good look at the place. “I’m astonished that old thing hasn’t become a galleria or a mall by now.”

“Bite your tongue,” Nicole said. “If they developed it, where would the next generation of Pine Lake get into mischief?”

Jenna shuffled forward between the front seats. “My mother told me that it took the city council two years to commission a new sign for the town. Just imagine how long it’s going to take for them to sell that property.”

Claire stopped braiding her hair to squint down the road. “Hey, is that really Ray’s General Store up ahead?”

Jenna said, “It’s run by Ray’s son now—Bob.”

“My dad used to say there wasn’t a piece of fishing or camping equipment known to man that you couldn’t find in those aisles.”

“I used to buy pine tar there,” Nicole said. “And softball bats.”

Jenna made a muffled snorting sound. “Like you didn’t wander up here just to watch Drake Weldon unloading stock.”

Nicole’s face went warm at the memory of the tall, lanky hockey player with the charming broken canine.

“Yeah, Barbie and Ken.” Claire eyeballed the beach balls and folding chairs and plastic kayaks piled up outside the old store. “I was sure you two would give birth to two-point-five children destined for major league sports.”

“Pul-eese.” Nicole paused at one of the three stoplights in town. Then, from old habit, she turned right toward the old square. “That boy spent more time on his hair than I did on mine. I don’t think we exchanged more than six words all year. He kept trying to get me to the cannery to—”

Her words stopped on a breath. The beating heart of the town spread before her in full end-of-summer vacation mode. The streets teamed with tourists in khaki capris and flip-flops, wearing straw hats and carrying oversize canvas beach bags. The porch of the Adirondack Inn
was full of folks eating brook trout seared in a butter sauce. Even Josey’s, the tiny restaurant that served five-dollar pancake breakfasts with real Adirondack maple syrup, had set a couple of plastic tables on the sidewalk in front of their establishment. Among the little boutiques strolled the better-dressed tourists, the ones who’d probably taken rooms in one of the Victorian B&Bs that graced the slope of the old town.

Claire reached back to tap Jenna on the knee. “Jenna, look—the Book Bag. It’s still here.”

“Yes it is.” Jenna glanced balefully at the tiny storefront. “I single-handedly kept that bookstore afloat during my high school years.”

Claire said, “Maybe now it’s kept afloat by that chain store café that opened up beside it.”

Nicole said, “That didn’t kill Ricky’s Roast, did it? I’ll be so mad if it shut down because of some chain.”

Jenna asked, “What’s the fascination with Ricky’s Roast? Did you really drink coffee in high school?”

“How else do you think I managed two sports, three clubs, and a college-bound course load?”

“You’re perfect.”

Nicole snorted. “You were woefully misinformed. Caffeine, the magic elixir.” She did a little leap in her seat when she caught sight of her old haunt. “There it is—Ricky’s Roast. Oh, my gosh, it hasn’t changed.”

Claire murmured, “It’s still full of men with scruffy beards.”

“God, yes,” Nicole breathed.

Jenna shook her head. “Wow. Two coffeehouses in town now. The Saint Regis brats are really taking over the place.”

Nicole reached back to slap at air as Jenna cringed away, laughing. Then, suddenly, they were driving out of the square and onto the winding residential roads past all the neat little cape houses that were rented out during the summer. The swiftness took Nicole by surprise. The square had seemed endless to the high school girl she once had been, and also to the summer tourist that she had become. Then again, most places seemed endless when you’re tugging three children alongside you.

Nicole tried to keep her eyes on the road and her mind on the route to Camp Paskagamak, but the pattern of the dappled light—so lovely, so familiar—brought on memories both old and new. Late August was the season of fund-raising car washes, of watching the returning college boys sprawl on the lake beaches. Late August was the season of menthol-scented sunburn cream, of shopping in Ray’s for packages of clean white paper and fresh spiral notebooks. Late August was Noah and Christian and Julia toasted golden and coated with coarse-grained lake sand that she’d still be scrubbing out of their hair in September. Late August was when time felt elastic, stretched to its limit as she swam in warm waters under cool skies.

Her heart leapt as she caught sight of another sign on the west edge of town.

Claire drawled, “Well, look at that. Bay Roberts, just beyond those trees.”

A grove of quivering aspens revealed teasing glimpses of the lake. Nicole tried to keep her eyes on the road but somehow she saw it all anyway, the winding shaded path, the picnic tables, the bright water, the long gray dock.

The urge was almost unbearable. She imagined herself pulling the car off the asphalt onto the soft dirt shoulder. She imagined racing down the pine-needle path, over sand that sizzled and gave under her toes. She imagined the soles of her feet hitting the weathered boards of the old pier as she made a beeline to the far edge. She imagined raising her arms above her head and pushing off the end of the pier, sailing through the air before plunging into the cool green underwater world.

“Hey, Jenna,” Claire asked, “how’s Lucky doing?”

“He’s just fine.” Jenna set his tags jingling with a scratch. “I’d say he’s good for an hour or so—”

“Are you sure about that?” Claire interrupted. “There’s pretty much nothing between here and the camp, nothing but trees and hills.”

“What else does a dog need?”

“Maybe he needs a little time romping in the water. Maybe he needs, say, ten minutes to bask in the sun.” Claire lifted her arms. “I know I’m ready for a stretch.”

Nicole figured she must be glowing with a sort of blue luminescence, or her yearning was emitting a high whine just on the edge of hearing, because why else in the sudden silence of the car would Claire be looking at her with a sly smile on her face?

“Hey, Nic,” Jenna said. “Promise me you’ll wear a bathing suit, okay?”

Camp Paskagamak, Pine Lake

J
enna last laid eyes on the entrance to Camp Paskagamak nearly twenty years ago, when she’d finished her final summer as a Master Ranger. Now the Chevy rocked over the same dirt road, plunging into the same ditch of tire tracks, only to clamber over a ridge into a second puddle-pocked set of tracks. She leaned forward to get a better look at the bentwood lattice that arched over the entranceway, trying not to whack her head against the back of the driver’s seat as the car lurched. The sign still spelled out the name of the camp in woody letters. Beyond, the road opened up to a clearing faced by a familiar log cabin. The word
Office
had been charcoal-burned into the gable.

The nausea that rose up her throat wasn’t from car sickness. It was an echo of anxiety and excitement that used to grip her whenever her parents dropped her off here in early July. In the sweaty humidity—or in the pouring rain—there had always been a confusion of cars and luggage and green-shirted Master Rangers with clipboards doing their smiling best to herd her away from her parents and through the office door. She’d be worrying that her campmates from Canada hadn’t signed up again; she’d be wondering if any of the new girls in her bunkhouse would be mean; she’d be anxious at being forced to play the first-evening ice-breaking games that required tying her wrists up to strangers or accepting random hugs.

With all its forced communal activities, all signs indicated that as a child, she would hate this camp. But at the mess hall, she never ate alone. At the lake, she never lacked a swimming partner. And the cabins proved to be potent incubators hatching the kind of instant friendships that could be stretched for a month and then linger for years of pen-pal closeness.

Jenna rolled down the window and filled her lungs with the scent of green growing things and sticky sap. It was a singular source of joy that Zoe loved this place, too. Over the years, Zoe had zoomed her way through Fox Circle to Wolf Pack Den to Brown Bear Lair to Moose Marsh to Hawk Heights. Maybe, if Zoe set her mind to it, she’d make it to Apprentice Forest Ranger this year, as every Hogan had done for the past three generations. The blood-sister secrets of this camp had been one of the few things Jenna could share with Zoe alone, impishly holding them back from Nate, who would just shake his head and smile.

As Nicole pulled to a stop, Jenna clicked a leash on Lucky and shoved the door open so he could tumble outside to do his business. Cicadas screamed in the trees. The sun baked the russet needle carpet of the clearing. The trunks of the white pines, arrow straight, formed a formidable fence beyond the camp office.

She tightened her grip on the leash as her mind raced. Even if she could finagle her way past that front desk—an unlikely process—there was a good chance that Zoe wouldn’t even want to talk to her. Zoe probably treated this place as the perfect one-month retreat from the trouble at home.

And here Jenna was, dragging that trouble right to Zoe’s cabin door.

“So,” Claire mused, “this is the famous Camp Paskagamak.”

Claire stood arms akimbo, eyeballing the main office cabin and beyond to the emerald shadows of the woods. Jenna forgot that Claire hadn’t attended the summer camp. Most of the kids who grew up in Pine Lake attended, but Claire was considered a come-away because she’d only moved to town in middle school when her father got a job as a park ranger.

“I expected sniper’s towers and barbed wire.” Claire pulled her braid through the back of her Iowa seed-cap hat. “I’m terribly disappointed.”

“They’re hidden in the trees.” Nicole rounded the car to join them. Her hair was still damp from her swim at Bay Roberts. “Jenna, are you sure you want to play this straight?”

Jenna nodded as a sudden pressure squeezed her chest.

“As far as I know,” Nicole continued, “no excuse less than a death in the family will allow a camper to see her parents before End-of-Days.”

Jenna raised a two-finger salute. “Camp Rangers don’t lie.”

“For the love of Buddha,” Claire said, “I knew this place was a cult.”

Nicole glanced warily toward the office. “Okay, here’s my advice. Don’t let Mrs. Garfunkle frazzle you. You know the rules, you respect the rules, you understand the rules. But you’ve driven clear across this great big country to see your daughter. Look Godzilla in the eye. Be assertive. Be reasonable. Be unafraid.”

Jenna nodded her head so hard that the clip in her hair wobbled.

“And if that doesn’t work”—Nicole slapped the hood of the Lumina—“we’ve got flashlights, water bottles, good walking shoes, and a map of the camp. My phone has a compass if we get lost. We’ll head around to the main electric shed on the northwest side and hike a mile to the wigwams.”

Claire said, “Wow. Next time I plan to rob a convenience store, Nic, I’m calling you.”

Jenna tugged Lucky into action and headed toward the porch. The screen door squealed open to the chemical smell of mosquito repellent and coconut sunscreen. It slammed shut behind them as Jenna’s eyes adjusted to the dim interior. On the wall hung a large map of the camp complex, pinhole-studded and curling at the corners. Around it were scattered framed photos of campers past, from the grainy black-and-white shots of solemn children in woolen bathing suits from the 1920s to the mud-smeared and chalk-tattooed urchins of the more recent crop. Behind the battered counter, an older woman sat in front of a computer monitor, her head tilted up so she could see through the narrow reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose.

“Welcome to Camp Paskagamak,” she sang, raising a hand. “I’ll be right with you.”

Mrs. Garfunkle had been at least sixty when Jenna had been a camper. At least that was what she and the girls had estimated back when Jenna was thirteen and sixty years old seemed just one bout of poison ivy short of the grave. Now the camp director stretched up to her full four feet seven inches, all dentured smiles and snow-angel white hair.

Claire leaned in and whispered, “Godzilla?”

“Another group of lost sheep, I see.” Mrs. Garfunkle planted her hands on her square-bodied hips. “You ladies must really be lost if you found your way all the way out here.”

“We’re not lost,” Jenna said. “We’ve come to see you.”

“Ah, well, we don’t do tours during the season.” She reached for a map and a booklet entitled
Historic Camp Paskagamak
. She pulled a pencil from behind her ear. “Touring interferes with the disciplined schedule we set up for the young men and women, so today I’m afraid you’ll be confined to what you can see of the place from the back of this cabin. You are welcome to come back in a week when we’ve—wait.” Mrs. Garfunkle squinted at her. “I know you.”

Jenna swore she could smell it: that strange mix of onion and lavender that billowed off the camp director, as if the woman bathed in bath salts in the morning then ate a burrito for breakfast.

Mrs. Garfunkle seemed to be laboring, so Jenna decided to help her along. “Master Forest Ranger Jen Hogan, here,” she said, cutting herself off before adding
reporting for duty
.

“My faith, it is you, Jenna.” Mrs. Garfunkle’s blue eyes were swallowed by a bed of happy folds. “Between the dog and the fancy hair you fooled me for a minute. But there’s no hiding the straight posture of a girl who in her sixth year made Ranger of the Year.”

Claire exploded in a coughing fit.

Jenna tried very hard not to flush. “I’m sure there have been many since.”

“Oh, no, only a few sixth-years ever made that distinction, and all in better days. Still, I try to remember every last brave, every last squaw, even if it is politically incorrect to call the girls that these days.” She glanced behind Jenna, to Claire swallowing her humor and Nicole standing by the door. Her gaze hesitated on Nicole’s face before giving her a nod and returning her attention to Jenna. “It’s a pleasure to see you, Ranger Hogan, but certainly you didn’t come all the way up here to see the camp?”

“That would be against regulations,” Jenna said. “Ordinance number three section D, expressly prohibiting any individual or individuals not previously sanctioned by the Council of Elders to stray into Paskagamak hunting lands during the season of the Long Days.”

Mrs. Garfunkle pulled off her reading glasses to look at Jenna more closely, ignoring Claire’s next coughing fit. It occurred to Jenna that her first introduction to a foreign culture was here at camp, with all its protocol and particular rules and muddled Indian culture references and language. She’d thrived under the strictures. Unlike the fluid social soup of high school, here she understood the rules. Here, she felt like she was home.

“Well.” Mrs. Garfunkle took great care cleaning her glasses with the hem of her camp polo shirt. “I must say, most campers forget the rules from one year to another.”

“I wouldn’t dare. I have a daughter in her fifth year.”

“Do you?” She tugged at the whistle hanging from her neck, puzzling. “I would think I would have remembered you had I seen you at the Opening or at the End-of-Days.”

“My husband or my parents usually take care of the drop-off and pickup.”

“Oh?”

The camp director’s response was distracted. Jenna could tell she was mentally flipping through her memory of current campers in an effort to identify her daughter. Then the director waved a hand in the air. “Well, End-of-Days is this coming Sunday, so I suppose I’ll be seeing you then—”

“Actually, I’d like to see my daughter now.”

Jenna watched as Mrs. Garfunkle’s smile hardened and cracked like clay left too long in the sun. Those blue eyes narrowed. The director’s shoulders slid back and her spine straightened and her lungs expanded so she seemed to grow and lengthen like some cartoon superhero. Here was the sachem with the jaw of iron. This was the woman with a set of lungs that could blow a whistle until Canadian wolves howled over the border. Here was the Godzilla stare that could make a teenager blurt all the camp-bed secrets she’d drawn blood and pinkie-sworn never to tell.

“Ranger Hogan, you know perfectly well there’s a strict prohibition on family visits except on the two prescheduled End-of Days.”

“I realize that my request violates protocol.”

“Rules, not protocol. Rules are the very pillar—”

“—of civilization. I’m willing to abide by the rules, Master Ranger Garfunkle. I came today to ask for sanction by the Council of Elders.”

“A situation covered by regulation seventeen part B.” Mrs. Garfunkle’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Has there been a sudden major illness or a death in the family?”

Only a death
of
the family.

Jenna bit back the words. She couldn’t mention the divorce. A divorce meant a conflict between parents. Mrs. Garfunkle would defy taking a side in any domestic dispute, and Jenna didn’t want to give the camp director any reason to have her escorted off the campgrounds.

She said, “No, not a death.”

“Well, that settles it then.” The director slipped on her glasses. “You know that we here at Camp Paskagamak take special pride in nurturing in our young rangers the importance of personal responsibility and growing independence, and these rules serve to foster those qualities that are ever more important in today’s society.” Mrs. Garfunkle strode to her desk and splayed her fingertips over the surface. “Ranger, I must admit I’m disappointed.”

Jenna felt the little muscles at the base of her neck contract. She wasn’t a thirteen-year-old girl anymore. For all the camp’s rules, she knew very well that there was no legal way Mrs. Garfunkle or anyone else could keep her away from her daughter. So, as Claire had taught her while meditating at Niagara Falls, she mindfully noticed her body’s physical reaction to the stress. She noted it, sensed it, admitted it, and dismissed it. Then she pressed her sneakered feet flat on the pine-knotted wood of the floors.

“The Council must reconsider.” Jenna heard Claire and Nicole shuffle close behind her. “There are extenuating circumstances of a personal nature that will have a direct effect on Zoe’s sense of self-worth—”

“Zoe?” Mrs. Garfunkle froze as she tugged her glasses off her face. “Do you mean Zoe
Elliott
?”

Jenna realized she’d neglected to mention her married last name, a lapse that caused so much confusion among teachers, doctors, and coaches at home that she just let them all call her Mrs. Elliott.

Mrs. Garfunkle’s liver-spotted hand fluttered to her chest, where it lay, patting, patting, patting. The older woman opened her mouth and then just as quickly shut it. She pressed her mouth so tight that her lips went white. Then Mrs. Garfunkle dropped into the desk chair and attacked the keyboard.

Jenna pressed against the counter, trying to see what the camp director was typing. A terrible foreboding gripped her. Zoe was okay, she told herself. Zoe couldn’t be hurt. The camp would have contacted her parents. Her parents would have contacted her. She had a new phone but the same cell phone number. If they contacted Nate, then he would have called her from Seattle if something was wrong.

Another thought arose, an ugly thought, like a troll waddling from under a dank bridge. Nate knew she was coming to Pine Lake. Maybe Nate flew in and took Zoe away before she could have a chance to talk to Zoe alone.

Mrs. Garfunkle said, “You’re in luck. Zoe is just about to start archery.”

Jenna collapsed against the counter so hard that the edge dug into her solar plexus.

Mrs. Garfunkle reached for the corded phone. “I’ll have your daughter report to Wawobi Point. I assume you remember the way?”

Zoe had dyed her hair purple.

Sitting on a fallen weathered log at Wawobi Point, Jenna watched that bobbing purple head as Zoe wound her way through the pine woods. Jenna wondered where on earth Zoe had bought the dyeing kit. They certainly didn’t sell things like
that
at the camp Trading Post. The closest general store to the camp was a tiny grocery in a one-crossroads town six miles away, an escape-and-return that no girl had ever accomplished without being caught. Zoe must have bought the kit in Seattle and smuggled it in. Jenna imagined she’d done the dye job in the communal bathroom sometime in the middle of the night.