aumdadaGospel14: an early ending

The end of summer is not the beginning of the fall. It’s the return of books, pencils and paper, and back to school. That was always the Wednesday after Labor Day, so we would most often leave the lake on the Tuesday in-between, although most everyone else left the afternoon of the holiday. All the docks and rafts and boats would be pulled in to the shore, leaving the lake in its wilderness condition of nothing but a smooth blank mirror.

The Francis family summered on the lot next to my Uncle Charley’s. Actually it was the lot one over from his; there was an empty lot of trees between the two, right across the picture window of our cottage (today there’s a large all-season house sitting there). My father would sit at the table in front of the window and stare through those trees almost every evening he was there, ruminating on the life spans of the congregating moths at the light shining from the table-lamp.

There were nine children in the Francis family, although there were only eight on this particular summer. The oldest had been killed in Viet Nam the previous spring. They had been slow to arrive that summer, but they finally did almost en masse for the Fourth of July, and kept more to themselves than usual, breaking camp early the Sunday of Labor Day weekend.

By Monday late afternoon, everyone else had disappeared but Paula and myself. We walked down to the Francis waterfront and sat on the blue raft now pulled on to the shore. The matching blue docks were stacked behind it. Wooden shutters had been nailed to the windows of the blue cottage. The beach was clean of toys and blue Adirondack chairs. We stared out at the lake and discussed the events of that summer. Jane and I had finally become a thing after two years of flirting with the possibility, but had broken it off after less than two passionate months. Paula had started up something with George and wondered what it was and where in the world it was going.

“He seems serious about us,” she was saying, “but he doesn’t want to have anything to do with anyone else. It’s kind of intense.” She was now matching his intensity with her own natural obsessive nature.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “I don’t think I even saw him the entire month of August.” Even after Jane and I had broken it off, we had returned to flirting again with the possibility, so the last couple of weeks of the month had been back and forth ones of dueling obsessions, away, looking for another, and near, longing for the same old same. I really didn’t have a chance to miss George at all.

“I know,” she replied. “We weren’t separated at all this last month. I hardly saw any of you guys either.” I said nothing more but it had occurred to me as well the George and Joey rift had finally cracked us apart.

We continued to look out at the water. Ah, the summer was over. “It’s never going to be the same,” the lake reflected my own sad silent voice back to me.