Whistle While You Work
Monday
High of 87
“Up already?” my dad said over his paper. “I thought you teenagers all slept ’til noon.”
I wasn’t sure I’d slept at all. I’d been dressed since five. My hair had been in and out of a ponytail twice already. I’d put on lipstick, rubbed it off with a tissue, put it on again, then rubbed two-thirds of it off so I’d still look like a girl who was going to spend the day expanding a deck with her father.
All summer, I’d hoped to see J.B. I’d even dropped into the hardware store in June, when I knew UCLA was out for summer break. But he wasn’t working there, or at the rink. And I was crushed when Casey found out a few weeks later that he had an internship in LA.
At seven I was changing into my third pair of shorts when I heard the crunch of the gravel driveway. I spied J.B. through my window blinds.
There he was. Right below my window. I could see the red top of his baseball cap and a few inches of black hair tucked behind his ears.
My dad bent to show J.B. a rotting board. J.B. knelt next to him respectfully and laughed at something he said. I wanted to make my entrance when they were far apart so I could greet J.B. privately. I didn’t want him to think I’d planned this.
I waited at the window and watched until J.B. took the wheelbarrow around the house. Hoping to catch him on the side path, I finally went outside, but before I could make it around the corner he was already on his way back, the wheelbarrow loaded with boards.
“Laura, meet J.B.,” my dad said.
J.B.’s grin widened with every step closer. When he set the wheelbarrow down in front of me he said, “You.”
“We’ve met.” I tossed my hair over my shoulder. “Around town.” I slipped my dad’s old leather work gloves on and immediately started pulling boards from the wheelbarrow. No professional had ever unloaded a wood order so fast.
My dad glanced from me to the wheelbarrow to J.B., then examined his handmade blueprint, his neatly written list of supplies. When he planned even the smallest project, he accounted for all possible factors. Mishaps, delivery delays, rain. It was the ex-contractor in him.
This was a variable he hadn’t penciled out on graph paper, whatever spark existed between me and J.B. But he hid his surprise well. “Good. Let’s see what we can get done this morning. Going to be hot as blazes.”
* * *
By eleven it was eighty-three degrees and we had half the framing done. When my dad was inside filling our big thermos dispenser with water and we were grabbing more boards, J.B. said in a low, confidential tone, “How’s USC?”
“You’re hilarious. How’s UCLA?”
“Money’s tight, I worry about my mom when I’m gone, but I’ll push through.”
“Worry?”
“She had lymphoma. She’s okay now.”
“I’m so sorry.”
A pause, a nod. “I like your dad. You two do stuff like this a lot?”
“When my mother’s at her church retreat we always pick a special project. When I was young we’d make little things—a bird feeder, shelves for my room. Guess it’s our summer ritual. He used to be a contractor.”
“Unusual,” he said, “Someone as old as you still getting along with a parent like that, wanting to spend time with them. Thought I was the only one.”
“So now I’m too old?”
He took off his baseball cap, using it to wipe his forehead. He smiled and stared straight ahead. “I didn’t say too old.”
Then my dad was back bearing the big lemon yellow water dispenser with the push button. “Drink up, troops,” he said.
We fell into an easy rhythm. The three of us were serious, quiet workers, and it was too hot to talk much anyway. By noon it was so hot my shirt was pasted down my back and under my arms, but I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind that I was wearing bulky kneepads and oversized work gloves. My gear made me feel braver.
Anytime my dad went inside to the bathroom, or to fill up the water dispenser, or into the shed to find a tool, J.B. and I stole a few words.
When my dad walked down the beach to evaluate the deck from far away, J.B. handed me one of my gloves. “Lose this?” he said. “Saw it fall out of your pocket over there.”
“Thanks. You’re always finding things I’ve lost.”
“What?”
“The skating rink, two years ago? You found something. Something important to me.”
He still looked puzzled.
“I was younger. I wore my hair differently.” I bunched my hair up behind my head until he smiled, recognition dawning on his face.
“Oh, yeah!” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize that was you.”
“It was dark in the rink.”
“Still.” He shook his head. “What was it you lost? A little stone in a coin purse?”
“No. More important than that. A sort of...lucky charm.”
My dad was back.
“How does it look from down the lake, Daddy?”
“Not too shabby. Don’t think we’ll be a blight on the landscape.”
At two, as I was kneeling, placing boards, and J.B. was lying on his side on the ground to measure the grade where the new steps would go, my dad ran inside to answer the phone.
“What does J.B. stand for?”
“Guess.”
“John Boy.”
“Nope.”
“James Bond.”
“Wrong.”
“Umm... Jelly Belly?”
He sputtered out an astonished laugh. “Actually, kind of.”
I laughed, glancing at his stomach. It was flat, practically concave, under his sweat-soaked shirt. He smiled, but I saw from his eyes that he was serious.
“Sorry. I thought you were kidding.”
“I’ll tell you about it sometime.”
Tuesday
High of 89
We finished the framing early and broke for lunch. When my dad was inside ordering pizza I said, “It’s supposed to be even hotter tomorrow. Hope you’re not sorry you took the job.”
“I’m definitely not sorry.”
(A beautiful word, definitely. I savored it and all it implied.)
“You have air-conditioning?” He nodded at the house.
“Yeah, but we hardly ever use it. If my room’s too hot to sleep I go swimming. My wet hair’s usually enough to cool me off.”
“You swim last night?”
“Yeah.”
“Which one’s yours?” He looked up at the two possible windows.
I pointed.
He stared up at my bedroom window, then got busy picking up scraps below the table saw.
My dad came through the sliding glass door, whistling “Bolero.”
“Josefina’s says one hour.”
* * *
That night when my dad was watching a tape of 60 Minutes, Casey called from a pay phone in Davis, where her swim team was competing. It wasn’t an official meet, but they’d finished strong this year and their coach wanted them to stay sharp. Casey was one of the best on the team.
“Hallelujah,” she said. “Finally, something interesting happens in this town.”
“He hasn’t even asked me out.”
“Minor detail.”
“Tell me about your trip. Any progress with butterfly girl?” Casey had a long-standing crush on some raven-haired pre-pre-Olympian from another school who was 1. gorgeous and 2. smoking everyone in the 200 meter fly.
“She’s definitely straight. Or thinks she is. This giant boyfriend in a baseball cap came to cheer her on. I’m heartbroken.”
“Idiot girl. I’m sorry.”
“Well. At least one of us has a love life. I can’t wait to check it out in person.”
“Don’t look at us too much, you’ll make me nervous.”
“I won’t.”
“But don’t not look at us.”
She laughed. “I’ll look a totally normal amount of times. Even if you rip off that tight shirt and lay him down on a pile of sawdust.”
“Case.”
“Kidding.”
Wednesday
High of 92
Casey swam over at nine. She emerged from the lake like a selkie, in cutoffs and a tank top, and my dad laughed as she trotted over, barefoot and dripping. She and my dad had hit it off immediately, though he rarely saw her outside school functions and church retreat week.
“You’ll need shoes, Red,” he said. “Otherwise we’ll be driving you to Emergency with a nail through your foot.”
“Whoops.”
“I’ll lend you sneakers, Case. J.B., this is Casey.”
She waved. “Hey.”
“Nice entrance,” he said.
“Red’s the local mermaid, she lives in the lake.” My dad looked up from his graph paper blueprint to wink at her.
“Actually I live over there.” She pointed across the water.
“I delivered something to that house once, for Pedersen’s,” J.B. said. “Sawhorses. I met your mom.”
“Sure, she’s still got them in her studio.”
“Cool old place.”
“Thanks.”
Casey was good to her word. Our work site got more lively with her around, but she didn’t stare. She threw herself into the project.
Near the end of the day J.B. was placing the last few boards on the steps and I was securing them with the nail gun. Casey was by the back door, sanding the old section of the deck, producing a steady music of whines and hums with the electric sander. My dad was mixing an old can of wood protectant, the sound exactly the same as when my mother beat cake batter with her wooden spoon.
He held the stick up to the sunlight, checking the varnish color. “Better bring two gallons tomorrow,” he said to J.B. “In the Light Amber. Thought I had an unopened can in the shed, but guess my mind’s not as sharp as I thought it was. Guess I’m no longer the sharpest tool in the shed.”
“Daddy,” I groaned, but J.B. and Casey laughed.
“I’m going to have one more look.”
His lanky denim form disappeared into the shed but we could hear him whistling.
“Is your mom’s sense of humor like his?” J.B. said.
This produced a curious sound from me. A choked-off, dry laugh that no one would mistake for real amusement.
“What?”
“She’s nothing like him.” I braced the nail gun at a forty-five-degree angle, fingers curled back, the way I’d learned when I was twelve. Whoosh-bam. Such a satisfying, complete sound.
J.B. changed the subject, speaking in between the nail gun’s reports. “So you’ve been kayaking a lot this summer?” Whoosh-bam. Whoosh-bam. “You’re into that, right?”
I turned to him in surprise. He must have seen me on the water or asked around about me. Maybe both.
Casey moved as far from us as she could, pulling her orange extension cord taut and turning the sander up to High.
“I don’t get on the lake as much as I should,” he admitted. “Here, this one’s good to go.”
Whoosh-bam, whoosh-bam. “I could take you out sometime,” I said.
“Definitely. I’d like that.”
He stayed for dinner. The four of us sat on the dock and devoured the best of the Tupperware provisions. Cold fettuccine with ham and-peas, cold chicken croquettes, cold salmon cakes. The secret to my mother’s heavy, old-fashioned food was eating it straight from the fridge after a full day of manual labor. Sitting next to a certain older boy with a wood shaving in his hair, an inch above his left ear, didn’t hurt, either.
“Good day’s work,” my dad said when the Tupperwares were empty and the sun was an orange glow behind the mountains. He stood and rubbed his shoulders. “Well, I’m turning in, kids. See you bright and early tomorrow. We need all hands on deck.”
Good-natured groans all around this time.
“Daddy. How long have you been waiting to say that?”
“Couple days.” He winked and raised his hand in a salute as he walked down the dock.
“I love your dad,” Casey said once he was inside. She stood up, flapping her sweaty tank top away from her stomach, then stretching as if she were every bit as achy as my sixty-six-year-old father. “I’d better go, too. If I wait too long my muscles are going to get so stiff I won’t be able to swim home.” She kicked off my blue Keds and dove in before I knew what was happening. When she bobbed up ten yards away, she called, “It feels fantastic, you two should cool off.”
J.B. and I watched her cross the lake, efficient and graceful. Not looking one bit tired.
“It’s a trippy little house,” J.B. said, squinting at The Shipwreck. “Marbles and stuff hidden under floorboards, old initials carved everywhere. Ollie was worried somebody’d bulldoze it.”
“You know about the Collier boys?”
“Sure. The famous Collier boys. There’s an old newspaper photo of them, it’s pretty cool. Ollie taped it to the register at the hardware store.”
“The black-and-white one? My dad found that. He had a copy blown up for Casey and her mom, but it’s a surprise so don’t say anything.”
“I don’t think I’d have made a good Collier boy. Sounds like they were real hell-raisers. I spent my childhood watching Star Trek and taking the toaster apart.”
“That’s rebellious. In an indoor way.”
He laughed. “Not if you put it back together every time.”
“It’s sad, though. A lot of those Colliers died young.”
“Don’t tell me you believe in that curse stuff?”
“No.”
“They’re probably retired in Florida. Bored and happy.”
“That’s what my dad thinks. This town does like to make up stories.”
We were quiet for a long time, looking at the water. The heat was no longer brutal, but my shirt was still pasted to my back.
“So,” he said. “You swim as well as her?”
“Not nearly. But I’d go in for a little.”
“I can wait for you to get your suit.”
“It’s okay.” I unlaced my tennis shoes and went down the ladder. I pushed off and floated on my back, tipping my chin up to soak my hair.
He hesitated, started to tug his shirt up, then left it on and jumped off the edge of the dock.
He emerged sputtering, his hair slicked back. “How are you not freezing?”
“I’m used to it. This is pretty warm, actually. It’s ice water in June.”
“You’re lucky, living right on the water,” he said, his voice strained from treading water.
“I know.”
In one of Casey’s books we’d have stripped down to nothing by now. We’d be clinging to each other, bare chests slick and heaving.
But it was exciting enough for me, hearing his splashes nearby in the almost-dark. It was plenty.
“So tell me what this Jelly Belly stuff is about,” I said.
Water poured off his back as he climbed up the ladder and settled on the top step. He wrung out the hem of his T-shirt and ran his hands through his wet hair, staring across the lake intently.
“I was a heavy kid,” he said. “When I started fifth grade, this was back in San Mateo, not here, I weighed 170 pounds and I was only five-two.” He paused and glanced down at me. “Here’s where you say, ‘No way.’”
“Keep going.” I swam up to him in a lazy sidestroke.
“I was unhappy. My parents had separated. I used to polish off a box of Little Debbie cakes on the way to school. In sixth grade we went on a field trip to the Jelly Belly candy factory, and there you go. Instant nickname.”
I held on to the sides of the ladder, looking up at him.
He shrugged. “My initials really are J.B., so this kid Trad Whitaker thought he was being ultraclever.”
“Trad? Not Tad? Trad?”
“Trad. I lost the weight after we came here. You’re getting out?”
He moved off the ladder so I could climb up. We sat next to each other, our legs dangling off the dock. Casey or Alex had flipped the porch light on at their house. Soon my dad would flick ours on, too, and he’d realize that J.B.’s truck hadn’t rumbled away. It was almost time for him to leave.
“I hate Trad Whitaker,” I said. “What do your initials really stand for?”
His hand curled against my cheek in a pretend megaphone. I froze, clasped my knees with my hands, as his lips hummed against my earlobe. “Julian Baker.”
Did his mouth linger near my ear a second longer than necessary? It was so close to that tender, hidden spot under the corner of my jaw, the one his lips had discovered back in Deva Vance’s basement. (In one of Casey’s books I would shiver, and turn to him, and we would slide into a perfect kiss and I’d hear bottle rockets that would wake the Collier boys from the dead.)
But our porch light flicked on.
He pulled back and cleared his throat, speaking normally again. “Julian Archuleta-Nuñoz Flynn Baker.”
* * *
Very little sleep that night. My fingers were too busy moving back and forth between my earlobe and jaw, and other places, and my mind was too busy imagining him, also awake, also imagining, over in Green Creek.