Bermuda Shorts - James Patterson [3]
‘“I would will this island to the Boy Scouts before I would think of selling it to a man who took a drink!”‘ my father quoted Emily later that day over a Canadian Club and Coke. That winter, not an hour after signing Queen Victoria’s deed over to my father, Emily Marshall died. It was her ninety-sixth birthday. Her nieces had her cremated and, when the spring thaw came to Lovesick Lake, they sprinkled her ashes over Clovelly Island.
For the next ten summers, I filled the kerosene lamps and saw that the wicks were fresh. We cooked our meals on the iron woodstove in the kitchen, picked wild choke cherries for making jam, kept the outhouses neat, and cleaned the porcelain chamber pots that went beneath the beds at night. We fought the giant spiders that lived in the rotting wood and, piece by piece, we burned the decaying remnants of Emily Marshall’s century in the bedroom stoves and the giant living room fireplace. We were convinced we could hear her cry on those nights when the wind and the lake were calm and the only sound as we went to sleep was her sighing hiss from the fire.
Twice a week Mr. Spencely brought giant blocks of ice that he carried up from the dock with big frightening tongs and buried in the sawdust in the icehouse. We would chip off hunks with an ice pick for the icebox in the kitchen. The Ojibwas asked for permission to harvest the rice that grew wild in the water behind the island, and sold it back to us cheap along with big bags of delicious juicy frogs’ legs skinned and ready to cook.
When I was ten years old, my father commissioned old Chubby Blewett to build for me one of his prized sixteen-foot cedar-strip boats. It was the greatest gift I was ever given and easily the grandest prize I will ever know. The bottom and inside floorboards were painted red to my personal specification. I called the boat Charley after a boy I had known in school who had moved away before we had a chance to become friends.
My older sister and younger brother and myself were each allowed to invite a friend up for the summer, or portions of it. This involved a delicate recruiting process for each of us, using my mother’s charming diplomacy as a last resort. Our friends were always very curious about where we went to spend our summers, and it wasn’t without some lament that we said goodbye at the end of each school year, knowing that when we returned all would be different, old friends would have forgotten us, changed, moved on. Kids change a lot over a summer. Those who decided to brave the trek north with us had to know how to swim, first and foremost, had to get tetanus shots, and had to have some resistance to poison ivy. They also had to be down with the concept of how to Make Your Own Fun, and understand that chores aren’t merely annoying responsibilities assigned to build character, but essential if you wanted to eat, have water to drink, or keep warm. Some who came lasted a week and had to go home. We would snicker to ourselves knowingly as we waved goodbye. Others loved it and, like us, never wanted to leave.
We would explore the nearby uninhabited islands, go fishing, skinny dipping, and sneak out at night to play boat tag with the teenagers around the lake, amazing them with our intimate knowledge of the rocks that lay treacherously beneath its more shallow surfaces.
One friend of mine from back home who took to the place like a brother was Willy. He was a big strong kid, on the hefty side, just perfect for weighing down the bow of my boat. We would hide behind forest islands and ambush the giant cabin cruisers that came down the main channel and go boat-surfing in their wake. Willy would giggle hysterically as he got soaked. We would guide the Sunday morning fishermen out of the weeds, out of the rocks, out of the rain. We would guide the drunks on the lake home at night, knowing