Butternut Summer (27 page)

“Do you want another beer?”

“What?” Will asked, startled, looking up.

“I said, ‘do you want another beer?'” the bartender asked, looking pointedly at Will's empty bottle.

“Oh, no thanks,” he said, glancing around the bar. He was amazed to see that while he'd been thinking about Daisy, the place had gotten crowded—and loud.

He left some bills on the counter for a tip and went to find Jason, who was in the middle of a game of pool.

“I think I'm going to take off now,” he told him.

“That's all right,” Jason said, taking a shot. “You were lousy company, anyway.”

Will didn't disagree. Other than working on cars, there were only two things now he was able to do: be with Daisy and think about Daisy.

“I'll see you tomorrow,” he said to Jason, and he turned to leave, but Jason put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him.

“Hey, Will,” he said. “I like Daisy. If she's what you want, then I'm happy for you. Really, I am.”

Thanks,” Will said gratefully, before an uncomfortable silence fell over them. This was about as serious as their conversations ever got.

“See you tomorrow,” Jason said, taking his hand off his shoulder.

“Yeah, okay,” Will said with a quick smile. And he couldn't know it then, as he pushed open the bar's screen door and walked out into the dusky parking lot, but he would remember every single detail of those summer nights with Daisy—Pearl's, the Black Bear, the front seat of the pickup—until the day he died. Life, it turned out, didn't get a whole lot more perfect than that.

I
t's crowded tonight,” Jack said, sliding down to make room for more people at their table in Butternut's American Legion hall.

“It's always crowded,” Daisy remarked, looking up from her fried walleye. “But you know that, don't you? You must have come to one of these the last time you lived in Butternut.”

“I don't think so,” Jack said, because this fish fry was exactly the kind of thing he'd made a habit of avoiding back then. Occasionally, Caroline had twisted his arm into going to some picnic, or potluck or church social, but they'd always seemed to him to be boring, gossipy affairs, and they'd always had the added disadvantage, from his perspective, of not serving alcohol.

But this fish fry tonight didn't seem so bad. For one thing, he was here with Daisy, and in between gorging themselves on the fried walleye, the biscuits, and the coleslaw, they'd been talking. Talking about everything and nothing, about all the things they'd never talked about when Jack was away. Talking was such a simple thing, he thought. But he would never take it for granted again, at least not when it came to his daughter.

And the America Legion hall was cheerful enough too. The wood-paneled walls were lined with photographs of Butternut veterans from every war since World War I, and the rafters were hung with fluttering pennants from the baseball championships this chapter of the Legion had won. Then there were the long tables, set with red, white, and blue plastic tablecloths and bunches of freshly picked wildflowers for their centerpieces.

“Well, you must have had to work pretty hard to avoid the fish fry,” Daisy said, amused. “I don't know if you noticed it then, Dad, but there's not a lot to do in Butternut on a Friday night.”

“Oh, I noticed it,” Jack said. But he hadn't cared the last time he'd lived here; he'd made his own fun or, more accurately, his own trouble.

“Did you hate Butternut then, Dad?” Daisy asked, her blue eyes thoughtful.

“Did I hate it?” Jack repeated, sipping his iced tea. “No, I wouldn't say I
hated
it,” he said, though that was a bald-faced lie. “I'd say it was more like its charms escaped me.”

“And now? Do its charms still escape you?”

“Not anymore,” Jack said, with a smile. But unlike his daughter, he didn't love Butternut. Not yet. He only loved two of the people who happened to be living in it right now.

“Was it the town you didn't like back then, or the people?” Daisy asked, pausing, a forkful of coleslaw on its way to her mouth.

He shrugged. “To me, they were one and the same, though I didn't dislike
all
of it, of course. I didn't dislike you, or your mom. I think what I really didn't like was . . .” He paused here, wanting to be honest with his daughter, but still learning how to be. “I think what I, yes, hated,” he started again, “was the feeling I got, every time I walked into some place—the grocery store, the hardware store, Pearl's—that everyone who was in there had just been talking about me. Partly that was my guilty conscience. But partly, I think, it was because they
had
just been talking about me.”
Me, and whoever I owed money to, or whoever I'd gotten into a fight with, or whoever I was sleeping with, other than my wife, of course . . 
.

“But you don't feel that way anymore, do you?” Daisy asked, frowning.

“Not really,” Jack said. And it was true. Since he'd been back, there'd been some townspeople who'd been friendly, and some, fewer, who'd been unfriendly. But for the most part, they'd simply been curious about why he'd come back, and how long he was planning on staying. The first question Jack had answered, somewhat disingenuously, by explaining that he was fixing up Wayland's cabin, and the second he'd answered by saying, honestly, that he didn't know how long he'd be staying. (He didn't add, of course, that the answer to that question was up to Caroline.)

“I'll bet there are some familiar faces here tonight,” Daisy said, looking around the room.

“There are,” Jack agreed, his eyes following hers. “I remember Dawn Peterson,” he said, nodding in the direction of an older woman in line at the buffet table. “I take it she still owns the bait-and-tackle shop?”

“She does,” Daisy said. “And that man with her is her third husband, Johnny.”

Jack raised his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

Daisy nodded.

“He must be twenty years younger than she is,” Jack pointed out.

“Oh, at least,” Daisy agreed. “Her husbands keep getting younger. But, you know, all those worms can't sell themselves.”

Jack chuckled and looked around some more. “I remember the Jalowitzes, too.” He indicated a man sitting a few tables down from them. “They have a big family, don't they? What, six or seven kids?”

Daisy nodded solemnly. “They had seven. But their oldest son, Don, died in Iraq. His picture's up over there,” she said, glancing at one of the walls.

“I'm sorry,” Jack said.

“The entire town lined the streets the day his casket came home,” Daisy said softly. “Mom closed Pearl's so we could be there, too.”

Jack nodded, awed, as always, by someone who could be so brave at an age when he'd been content to just be reckless.

“Do you want some more iced tea?” he asked Daisy, noticing her cup was empty.

“No, I'm fine,” she said contentedly, putting down a half-eaten biscuit. “In fact, I don't know if I can eat another bite. But, Dad, seriously, how are you really doing here?”

“I'm doing fine,” he said, a little evasively. He preferred to talk about Daisy when they were together.

“You're not . . . you're not lonely, are you?” she asked.

“What? No,” he said, a little too quickly, and Daisy didn't miss it. Daisy didn't miss anything, as far as he could tell.

“Honey, if you're worried about me, you're worried for nothing,” Jack said now. “I'm fine. During the day, I don't have time to get lonely. I'm basically rebuilding that cabin from the inside out, and, if it doesn't kill me, it'll definitely make me stronger.” He laughed, shaking his head. “And then, at night, I have my meetings. I don't always want to go to them, but once I get there, I'm usually glad I did. It's kind of like working out at the gym that way. And sometimes, after the meetings, a few of us grab a cup of coffee together at the Quick and Convenient. It's nice. We're not soul mates or anything, but it helps pass the time.” It was
after
he got back to the cabin that the nights were a problem. Each night, really, was its own kind of eternity, crowded as it was by guilt, and regret, and that longing, still, to do it all again, but differently this time. He didn't tell Daisy about that part of his night though.

“And how's . . . how's everything else going?” Daisy asked; “everything else” was a euphemism for his relationship with Caroline. Because even though they'd never discussed the real reason why Jack had moved back to Butternut, Daisy knew what it was. And he knew that she knew. It was strange, he thought, strange and amazing, really, that even after all those years apart, he and Daisy still shared some kind of unspoken understanding with each other.

“Everything else is going fine,” he said, though he had his doubts about this, too.

“Good,” she said, smiling. And seeing her smile gave Jack an idea.

“Daisy, would you mind if I asked someone to take our picture together?” he asked, sliding his cell phone out of his pocket.

“No, of course not,” she said, and she grabbed Bill Phipps, the first person who walked by their table, and asked him to take their picture. He took it and then he stayed to talk to Jack about the mill, where Jack had once worked, and about Wayland's cabin, which he said he'd like to take a look at once Jack was done fixing it up.

“That came out well,” Daisy said, looking at the picture on Jack's cell phone after Bill had left their table.

“It did, didn't it?” he agreed. “By the way, how's Will?” he asked when they'd settled back into their conversation.

“Will?” Daisy repeated, her cheeks coloring.

Jack nodded. “That is his name, isn't it?” he said mildly.

“Yes, it's his name. But every time I hear it, Dad, even when I'm the one saying it, I feel like I'm hearing it for the first time. And I feel like . . . like it's the most amazing name in the whole world. Does that sound stupid?”

Jack shook his head. “No, it doesn't sound stupid.”

“Juvenile, maybe?”

Jack smiled. “Well, juvenile,
maybe
. But falling in love makes juveniles of all of us.”

She colored again, darker this time, and Jack wondered if he'd crossed a line. Had he said something too personal? “Let's talk about something else,” he suggested, picking up his fork and turning his attention to his coleslaw.

“No, I want to talk about this,” Daisy said firmly. “I want to talk about Will. And about what you said, about falling in love.” She looked down at her plate. “Because I have a question for you.”

“Okay,” Jack said, a little uneasily. “As long as you realize I'm not exactly an expert on matters of the heart. Your mom, actually, might know more about this than I do.” That was cowardly, he knew. But also true.

Daisy shook her head though. “No, I can't talk to Mom about this. She doesn't like Will.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“No, but she doesn't need to,” Daisy said. “I know her well enough to know.”

Jack didn't dispute that.

“But, Dad, it's not fair. She doesn't even know him. How can she not like him?”

Jack shrugged. “Sometimes we see what we want to see in a person. Or what we expect to see, anyway.”

Daisy nodded. “Well, then Mom sees the person Will was in high school. He used to . . . you know, just kind of hang out, cut class, get detention. Stuff like that. He was kind of a . . .”

“A punk?” Jack suggested. “That's what people used to call guys like that when I was your age.” Jack knew this because he'd been considered one of them himself.

“Yeah, okay, I guess he was kind of a punk,” Daisy said, with a little laugh. “But he's not like that anymore, Dad. I don't even know, honestly, if he was
ever
like that. He's . . . he's different. He's not like anyone else I've ever met before. He's really . . .”

“It's okay if you can't put it into words,” Jack said. “Love does that to us, too. Now, what was the question you wanted to ask me?”

Daisy looked down at her plate again and became suddenly absorbed in breaking off a piece of her biscuit. “It's about that,” she said, blushing. “About being in love. Is it possible . . . I mean considering how short a time I've known him . . . is it possible that I could already be in love with Will?” She looked up at him now, her cheeks bright pink. With a telltale complexion like that, Jack thought, she was never going to be able to play poker.

“Of course it's possible you're in love with him,” he said. “Why wouldn't it be?”

“Because . . . because it's so new, so fast. How could anyone fall in love that quickly?”

“I don't know
how
they can, Daisy. But they do; they do it all the time.” He thought, for a moment, about telling her a story, a story about the first time he'd laid eyes on her mother. He'd only recently moved to Butternut to work at the lumber mill, and he'd walked into Pearl's one morning in search of a decent cup of coffee. And there she was, standing beside a table, taking someone's order, her expression a mixture of boredom and politeness as she scribbled on her check pad. She'd looked up though, midorder, and her eyes had found Jack's, across the room, and she'd smiled at him. And just like that, Jack had felt it, a sensation like all the air was rushing out of his body at the same time. She'd felt it too; she could barely finish taking the order, she was so flustered. He'd thought, before then, that love at first sight was a cliché. He didn't think so after that.

“But, Dad,” Daisy was saying, when his mind returned to the conversation, “I'm not like those people, people like Jessica. She falls in love all the time. She's . . . impulsive—I guess that's the kindest word for it—but I'm not. I'm the opposite of impulsive.”