Chapter Nine

They drove silently for a while south on the Interstate highway 65 through Indiana. There was not a lot of scenery on that particular stretch of road, but Jake was studying what there was intently. He had not wanted to have an argument with Linda this morning, especially over those small things. Details, details. She was driving him crazy with details lately. And each time she piled on a detail, he felt like he was under attack. Not only that, he thought, he felt like he was failing her.

Jake understood very well what Linda was up against and why she needed to reach out every now and then. She was home with the boys a lot while he was tied up at work and they were quite a handful. They both loved Anthony and Isaac with everything that they had and felt blessed to have them. But, after all, they were both boys and two boys at home together can be a tornado of excitement and destructive energy. Jake and Linda had resigned themselves long ago that they were not going to be able to have anything nice in their house without it getting broken by aggressive “play” until the boys were a little older. It took everything that they had to provide the boys with guidance and discipline and most of that fell on Linda. He knew that, mentally at least.

On most days, Linda was desperate for adult conversation after being cooped up with the boys all day. She got some break while Anthony was in school, but Isaac had another year to go until he started kindergarten. With Jake so busy, most of the child rearing fell on her. Even when Jake was home he was checked out mentally. He had confided in her that he felt too old to be chasing around after a preschooler and he wished that he could do better playing with them. She did not have many opportunities to sit down and talk with him about all of the little details that needed to be resolved about young children. Homework, playdates, doctor’s appointments, medicines, and all of the other minutae of young lives. Jake could manage million dollar projects, but he was mostly clueless with these details. Linda felt isolated and she resorted to these brief phone calls to try to get on Jake’s radar screen and address the issues. It just exasperated Jake and he got short tempered every time. It wasn’t good for either of them.

Sam wasn’t quite sure what was up with Jake or what had happened on his phone call. Clearly, he was agitated from his talk with Linda but Jake would not say what the call was about. Sam just let him be. “Why don’t you eat something, Jake”, he said. “Annie boxed up your breakfast for you. I think she even reheated it some.” Jake made a half hearted attempt at turning the french toast and scrambled eggs into some sort of a breakfast sandwich that could be eaten in a car, but it wasn’t very successful and after a while he gave up on it. “I’ll eat more on the way back”, Jake said as he bagged up the wrappers and napkin and put them away.

Sam tuned back into the road and set the cruise control. He liked this part of the highway even though there was nothing to see along the roadside. He liked it because it was straight for a couple of hours and he could go on autopilot and think for a while. The van was comfortable to drive this way and it was almost like he was not even driving all. Sam changed CD’s to one of an old gospel quartet that his mother had liked. She had listened to these good ‘ol boys and their bouncy harmonies for hours on end. It reminded her of the all day sings at the Southern Baptist church she grew up in. Anyway, Southern Gospel seemed fitting for the trip back to Boone Hollow.

Something about the music seemed to cut through Jake’s funk and he slowly came around. “Hey, I remember these guys – I think anyway. Didn’t Mom used to listen to them when we were growing up?” Jake searched his memory and had some vague recollections of going to outdoor concerts with Mom and of playing Blackwood Brothers vinyl albums on the console stereo in the living room while Mom looked on and sang in the background. It was rich four part harmony, male style, and Jake was especially captured by the deep voice of the bass singer. Jake didn’t remember all of the words the way that Sam did, but it was catchy nonetheless. It wasn’t long before he was snapping his fingers to the tunes about being “washed in the blood”. Eventually, the words came back to him and he was singing along. Jake was trying to hit the bass parts when baritone would have suited him better. But he had fun trying and his mood lightened up some.

“Do you think that Uncle Bob liked this kind of music too”, Jake asked.

“Not really. Robert, as he liked to be called, was more of a classical music guy for some reason. I think he picked it up from some buddies from New England while he was in the service during the war. The rest of the Fords liked gospel though. Uncle Bob used to recommend different composers to me, especially here in this last year when he was home-bound more.”

“You were in touch with Uncle Bob?” Jake asked, surprised. “I didn’t know that.”

“Yeah, I was actually. Uncle Bob usually emailed me every other week or so to let me know what was up with the family in Boone Hollow. Mostly he kept me up to date with what Bobby and Diana were up to. He was pretty good at it. He should have been a journalist. Mom used to be his touchstone for that, and I guess I inherited that role. There’s even a newsletter that the family sends out a couple of times a year. I used to forward it on to you, but I got messages back that you deleted it unread so I stopped sending it.”

“Wow. I guess I remember seeing them in my inbox. But I’m used to deleting everything that isn’t project related. I can’t afford to get a virus on my PC.”

Jake thought silently for a while. How was it that Sam knew so much more about the family than he did? Jake could name Uncle Bob’s wife and each of his kids, but he had not seen them in years and he wasn’t even sure that he would recognize the kids at the funeral. He was vaguely aware that Uncle Bob’s wife, Verdela had passed on a few years back. He wasn’t quite sure when. Jake had missed the funeral, of course, because he had to go into the office and catch up on a backlog of administrative paperwork. He had several overdue perfomance evaluations to write and he chose that day to do them. The family would understand, he thought. They would understand that sometimes you had to make sacrifices like that when you were mid-career and you were trying to get ahead so that you could provide more for your family.

Sam could guess what Jake was thinking and decided to help him out.

“I don’t know if you remember, but I did spend a summer living down at Uncle Bob’s house. I was missing Kentucky after we had moved up to Illinois and Bob and Verdela let me stay with them for a few weeks to visit with my friends. Mom and Dad thought it would be good for me.”

Uncle Bob had been doing well in his construction business in those years and he had a good enough income to provide for his family plus have some extras. One of those extras was having a lot on an enormous lake in Southern Kentucky and a boat tied up to the dock at the edge of his property. Eventually he planned to build a retirement home there on that lot, but for the time being he had a temporary solution. Bob had purchased a large mobile home and had parked it on his lot. He had fixed it up to the point that it was almost a home by adding a large screened in porch and a pathway down the hill to the dock. He added gardens and a barbecue pit and a large tool shed for the lawn mower and the fishing poles and twenty pairs of old tennis shoes in all sizes for his guests who hadn’t brought suitable shoes for fishing in. At a glance from the lake, you couldn’t tell that it wasn’t a permanent home. Bob was an accomplished handyman and he had done his family proud with that vacation getaway spot.

Sam fell in love all over again with Kentucky in that summer on the lake. He had grown up there and it was home. All of his friends were there. He had felt uprooted and misplaced when Edward moved the family to Illinois in search of better teaching jobs. Jake was young enough when they moved that he had adapted easily and moved on. He considered himself an Illinoisan and did not really miss Kentucky all of that much. His only connection was with the relatives that he did not see all that often anyway. Sam was a different story. He was a Kentucky boy through and through. He always called Kentucky “the Promised Land” and he fully intended to return there and build a home when he retired. And that summer at the lake had cemented his love for Kentucky.

He went out fishing with Uncle Bob early in the cool morning every day that summer. Sam learned how to fish that summer. He learned how to pick out the best fishing holes from the nooks and crannies and coves that lay around the edge of the lake. He learned how to bait a hook and how to cast a rod and reel without taking out someone’s eye. He learned how to get the hook out of his finger with a pair of needle nose pliers when he miscast. Sam and Bob caught a lot of fish together that summer and they had fun together in the evening cleaning and pan frying the day’s catch. Verdela wasn’t a fan of the taste of fish, but she let the boys be boys and she helped by cooking up all of the fixin’s that went with the fish. Uncle Bob had even found a way to help Sam catch a nice size trophy fish that he had mounted for Sam to take home with him to hang on his bedroom wall. Sam still had that tattered old trophy and had it with him in the back of the van today to honor Uncle Bob.

Sam learned more that summer from Uncle Bob than fishing, of course. The fishing was mainly a pretext to get some time with his young nephew to have some talks about the things that were troubling him. Bob knew that Sam was a little bit lost from the move up north. He understood that a move like that would be rough on a young guy in high school. Bob let him talk it out while they fished and eventually they got around to other topics that were bothering Sam as well. He had met Marie in his Social Studies class at school and they had started dating a right before school ended for the summer. Sam was missing Marie and was trying to sort out how serious this might be. He hadn’t dated anyone else, but he thought that she might be the one he could be with. Verdela had picked up on this and had helped Sam write her a letter once a week to send home.

Marie turned out to be the key to what was really troubling Sam. Now that he was dating he was starting to think seriously about his future for the first time and he had to face the question of what he would be when he “grew up”. He was growing up now and he needed to have the answer soon. Sam was fairly sure that he did not want to go to college. His father was encouraging him to go because he vauled education and had fought hard to get his own college education years earlier. He wanted his boys to have a better life than he did and he believed that a college education helped you to achieve that. But Sam didn’t see himself as a college man and had no idea what kind of career he would need a degree for. Sam wanted to work with his hands, like Uncle Bob did. Bob empathized with that but he wanted to be nuetral in his advice to Sam.

“Sam, what is it that you really want to do with your life?”, Bob had asked him one quiet day out in the boat on the lake. “What’s the most important to you that you want to make sure you accomplish.”

“I want to start working and have a family. That’s all I know for sure.”

“So a family is important to you? Are you sure about that? You are a young man and you have a lot of living you could do before you settle down and start a family.”

“I like being around family. I miss being around our big family here in Boone Hollow. We’re all by ourselves in Illinois.”

“Okay. Have you thought about traveling?”, Bob asked. “You could be in sales and have a travel route.”

“I don’t know any salesmen, but I don’t see myself doing that.

“You could work for an airline. They’re all hiring ticket agents and baggage handlers. That would be a good job and it would have travel benefits. You could take your family and see the world outside of our little slice of it.”

“I just want to move back here to Boone Hollow and get job at the bakery in town or somewhere.”

“Watch your line there Sam. I think you have a nibble. Watch your bobber……watch it…there!. See that? Oops, I think he got your bait. Bring it back in and let’s bait it back up.”

“Uncle Bob, I may not have a choice in the matter. I’ve been paying attention to the war in Vietnam on TV more this year. I may get drafted after I graduate next year and sent over there to fight. Honestly, I’m worried about that.”

That stopped Uncle Bob in his tracks. He reached out across the boat and put his hand on Sam’s shoulders. “Well, that’s something you can’t control, Sam. If it happens it happens, God forbid. Try not to think about that too much. Let’s assume that you don’t get drafted. What do you want to do.”

“I want to work with my hands, like you do Uncle Bob. In construction somehow. Or like Marie’s dad works at the factory back home.

“Sam, those are all good jobs and they’re fine jobs. You can be a good man and be a good provider for your family doing those things. If that’s what your heart is set on then do that and do it the best you can. That’s all that I would ask from you.”

“Thanks, Uncle Bob. I appreciate you saying that. No one else has talked with me much about this. And I think about it a lot. Mostly, I think that I will disappoint Dad if I don’t at least try to go to college.”

“Sam, your father had a hard life and he just wants the best for you, I’m sure. I’ll talk to your father about what we’ve discussed today if you would like me too.”

“Thanks a lot. I’d like that.”

The summer ended too soon for Sam and it was hard for him to leave that lake house when the time came and head back to Illinois. On the positive side though, he was anxious to get back and to see Marie and to start their senior year together.

Jake looked over at Sam as he changed to another gospel CD on the stereo. “You know, I had forgotten that you spent that summer. That was such a long time ago. I don’t even remember when that was.”

“It was the summer before the summer that we went on the camping trip, if that helps you out any.”