Summer of the War
Authors: Gloria Whelan
Summer of the War
For Elizabeth Buzzelli,
whose garden has given pleasure
to so many
In winter's ice and snow we closed our eyes andâ¦
We slipped into our routine as easily as you putâ¦
When I walked into my room, I found Carrie puttingâ¦
The next morning Emily positively refused to go in theâ¦
The storm started in the late afternoon. The gulls hadâ¦
For the next few days Carrie kept her distance fromâ¦
July smothered us. It was hot every day, and atâ¦
The next day a miracle occurred. Carrie was out ofâ¦
The next afternoon Grandpa took the little runabout to theâ¦
When I awoke in the morning, the reflection of sunâ¦
Things happened very fast. Letters came from Mom and Dadâ¦
Grandma had long since turned the calendar in the kitchenâ¦
The mulleins were easy. Their yellow flowers and gray lambswoolâ¦
While we were all busy helping Carrie with the garden,â¦
In winter's ice and snow we closed our eyes and saw the green island and the blue lake and were comforted. I dreamed about the big wooden cottage painted green so that it disappeared into the trees. I knew every tree and every inch of deserted beach. It made the world better just to think about the summer afternoons that never seemed to end and the long evenings when we sat on the porch watching the sun sink into the lake like a great orange balloon. The minute school was out, we began packing.
This year we were more eager than ever to escape to the island, for in December the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States had declared war on Japan and Germany. The newspapers were full of lists of soldiers who had died and pictures of bombed cities. On the island we seldom saw a newspaper. On the island we would be able to forget about the war.
In past summers Mom and Dad had been with us on the island. Mom would stay all summer keeping an eye on us kids. She would wipe off her nail polish, take off her shoes, and catch up on her reading. Dad would spend a couple of weeks fishing and try not to argue with Grandpa over politics. This year everything was upside down. Dad had talked of going off to war and even started to do push-ups; but at thirty-seven and with four kids, he didn't interest the Army. That was a blow to Dad's ego, but it didn't stop him from wanting to do his part. He took a leave of absence from his position at Ford Motor Company to help supervise the production of B24 Liberators for the Army Air Force. It was a seven-day-a-week, fourteen-hour-a-day job.
Mom was going back to the medical practice she had left when we came along. She was needed because doctors were leaving their practices to join the Army and Navy. She hated to miss summer on the island, but she was excited about practicing medicine again. There were medical journals all over the house. “I've got so much catching up to do,” she said. She brought out her white coats, moved the buttons to give herself more room, and modeled them for us. She let us listen to our hearts with her stethoscope and showed us how to make our legs jerk by hitting our knees with her little rubber hammer.
I think if we hadn't had the island to look forward to, we would have felt abandoned with Mom and Dad
so wrapped up in their busy new lives; instead we felt sorry for them having to give up their summer vacations. Grandma and Grandpa would be on the island. Grandpa ruled the island. He was like an emperor presiding over a watery kingdom, or he was Shakespeare's Prospero on his uninhabited island and we were the spirits that attended him. Until Carrie came, no one considered disobeying Grandpa. Why would we? We loved him and we loved the island. It was Grandpa who formed our summers. We couldn't imagine a summer without him.
The first week in June, Tommy, Emily, Nancy, and I set off by ourselves for the island. At fourteen I was the oldest and as much in charge as my brother and sisters would let me be. I had two sisters, Emily, twelve, and Nancy, eight, and one brother, Tommy, who was ten. Mom packed chicken sandwiches, potato chips, and carrot sticks. Our suitcases were crammed with summer clothes. Instead of going in Mom's car, as we usually did, this year we would go by bus from Detroit to Mackinaw City, and from there we would take the ferry to St. Ignace. We would be on our own, which made all of us a little nervous, but since we were all together, we were sure nothing bad could happen.
We had followed the same route every summer of our lives, so it was like turning pages in a scrapbook: familiar towns, familiar farmlands, and finally, familiar forests and lakes. If even the smallest thing along
the way was differentâa new stoplight in one of the small towns, a barn painted green when for years it had been redâwe were stunned by the change and couldn't stop chattering about it. Because of Mom's and Dad's new lives, we resented changes and worried that when we got there, something on the island might be different. We wanted everything to stay just the same.
The ferry brought us across the straits to St. Ignace on Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The Upper Peninsula was more wild and more lone than the rest of Michigan. It was like the difference between a wolf and a dog. We scrambled up the stairs to the top of the ferry, where we would have the best view. Lake Huron stretched as far as you could see, and somewhere in the blue distance was the island.
Mr. Norkin was waiting for us with his ancient Chevrolet and four cold soda pops. We had known the Norkins forever. Mr. Norkin caught fish to sell and guided sportfishermen from downstate. He knew the lake so well, Grandpa said you could drop a penny anywhere in Lake Huron and Jim Norkin could find it. Mrs. Norkin sold vegetables from her garden and worked for us one day a week on the island. Since the war began there had been gas rationing, and I handed Mr. Norkin the gas coupons Dad had saved to reimburse him for the trip between St. Ignace and Birch Bay, and then we piled into the car, everyone but Nancy fighting for the front seat.
Mr. Norkin chose Nancy to sit next to him, probably because she was the one who wasn't pushing and scrambling. He collected the empty pop bottles and carefully put them into a paper bag. There was a rumor that he made his own wine with wild grapes, and I guessed it would go into those bottles.
“So you kids made the trip all by yourselves. I heard your ma has gone back to doctoring and your pa's getting bombers built.” Since he already knew all the news from Mom's letters to Mrs. Norkin, he didn't wait for us to say anything but launched into his usual complaints. “Worst winter ever.” He said it every year. We listened politely to his tales of ice and snow shutting down the small town of Birch Bay and his grousing about gasoline rationing.
“The goverment's allowing fishing boats extra gas coupons, but there isn't enough gas to take sportfishermen out. Anyhow there aren't any sportfishermen because they don't have enough gas to get up here.”
When we reached Birch Bay, Mr. Norkin parked his car in the Norkins' barn, fluttering the chickens and worrying the horses. We got hugged by Mrs. Norkin, who shook her head over how much we had grown like she always did, and then we followed Mr. Norkin to his dock. His runabout would carry us and all our luggage to the island. With an unlit pipe clamped between his teeth and wearing his old, battered captain's cap, Mr. Norkin navigated the channel's tricky current. It was a twenty-minute run across
water whose slightly fishy smell made my hand ache for a rod and reel.
“The war's changing everything,” Mr. Norkin said. “I'm even hearing some foolish talk from Ned about joining the Navy next spring when he turns eighteen.”
I was so shocked to hear about Ned, I very nearly fell out of the boat. Ned was Mr. Norkin's son. Last year he had stopped treating me like a pest and let me go sailing with him. I thought he would look gorgeous in a uniform, but I didn't want him to go off to war.
Tommy was asking, “Are the cormorants back?”
“Yes, and they're ruining the fishing.” Mr. Norkin spit to emphasize his disgust.
“Indians use cormorants to catch fish,” Tommy said. Tommy knows everything about birds. “They tie something around the bird's long necks so they can't swallow the fish.”
“That's cruel,” Nancy said. Nancy couldn't bear for anything to be hurt. She stepped around ants and ran away when we slammed the fish we caught against the dock.
“No worse than having to wear a necktie,” Mr. Norkin told her.
I was thinking of Ned and watching for the first sight of our island. We passed Circle Island with only a few cottages and then Big Island with its row of summer places and the Lodge, a sort of clubhouse
where the island people gathered. Just beyond Big Island was Turtle Island and our cottage, the only cottage on the island. Maybe it was selfish, but I never got over the magic of having an island all to ourselves.
You had to look hard to see the dark-green cottage against the island's trees. It had a big screened porch and a screened sleeping porch on the second floor so you could be inside and out at the same time. A field-stone chimney stuck up on one side of the cottage. Behind the cottage were acres of pine and birch trees, and beyond the trees Lake Huron. In front of the cottage a dock reached out into the channel. Beside the dock was the boathouse where we kept the canoe and Grandpa's boats.
Grandpa had the American flag and the Turtle Island flag flying. As soon as we saw him waiting for us at the end of the dock, we began to wave wildly, nearly upsetting the boat. Grandma was there too, but it was Grandpa we saw, standing there like a proud captain at the prow of his ship. Grandpa was tall with silver hair and eyes that in his tanned face were as blue as a jay's feather.
Grandpa looked like a man in charge of something important, like you imagine owners of ranches or presidents look. Though Grandpa was kind and fair, I always felt intimidated by him, not exactly afraid, but hindered. He never hesitated to tell you when you had done something wrong or give you bad news. He went right at something and just did it. He
never changed his mind or gave in on something. If you crossed him, you were in trouble, but in a way Grandpa's firmness was reassuring, because you always knew right where you stood with Grandpa.
Grandma was more easygoing. Before she said something, you could see her thinking about how it would affect you. She liked everyone to be happy. She was the one who smoothed your feathers after Grandpa ruffled them.
It was all I could do to keep from jumping out of the boat and swimming the last few feet to the island. The minute Mr. Norkin moored the runabout, we scrambled onto the dock, throwing our arms around Grandma and Grandpa. We took in our luggage and looked quickly around for any changes. A new jigsaw puzzle lay scattered on the table waiting for rainy afternoons. As usual there were some new books on the shelves, but lots of battered old favorites, too, like
Little Women
and
Great Expectations
left over from when Grandma was a girl. There was the same bright-yellow pile of
National Geographic
, and Grandma had crocheted a new afghan to warm us on cool evenings. After Grandma gave us some of her molasses cookies and lemonade and Grandpa saw that all our things were unpacked and put away neatly in our drawers and closets, we were off to our favorite places on the island.
Emily headed for the flower garden. It wasn't that she liked gardens so much as she liked the idea of
gardens. Emily could imagine the ugliest thing into something beautiful. She loved pretty stuff and spent her allowance on things like a handkerchief trimmed with lace. She went around smelling of Mom's perfume and took hours in the bathroom doing her hair.
“Mrs. Norkin's sent the marigolds all ready for me to plant,” Emily called out. For some reason no one took care of the garden except Emily, who planted marigolds every year. Grandpa whitewashed stones that set the garden apart and kept it from growing wild, but he never pulled a weed. Grandma didn't tend it either, which was strange, because Grandma was so particular about everything in its place that you could find what you were looking for in the kitchen with your eyes closed. The neglected garden was an island on an island, and only Emily's marigolds, Grandpa's stones, and a patch of trillium that must have been planted long ago kept the bracken and weeds from taking over.
Tommy called, “Hey! The ring-billed gulls are back!” He had the canoe out, paddling to Gull Rock, an enormous boulder sticking up in the lake about fifty feet out from the shore. Tommy was on speaking terms with all the birds on the island. You could hear him sneaking down the stairs at five in the morning to rendezvous with a snit-streaked snook or something equally strange. Whenever we played wishes, Tommy's first wish was always the same. He wanted wings. When he was little, he nearly broke his neck
by jumping from a tree, sure that he would be able to fly when he needed to.
Nancy had her arms around Polo, Grandma and Grandpa's ancient German shepherd. “Did you miss me, Polo?” she was crooning in his ear, and Polo was happily licking her face. Nancy loved creatures. When mice overran the cottage, Nancy wouldn't allow snap traps. Instead the mice had to be live-trapped and carried by boat to the mainland, where Nancy explored the nearby woods until she found a place with oaks so the mice would have acorns. When we all sat along the dock fishing, Nancy fished without bait on her hook.
I took off for the south side of the island out of sight of the cottage. The cottage was on the north or channel side, where the water was warmer and calmer. The south side of the island was on Lake Huron. It was the storm side. The water there was cold, the winds strong, the waves high. I wasn't allowed to take the runabout out onto the big lake. I had to keep to the channel. I loved to sit on the storm side on a windy day and watch the whitecaps crash onto the shore. I imagined how, long ago, the French fur traders paddled their canoes past our island, canoes loaded with trade goods in the spring and furs in the fall. The Indians would have come this way too, trusting their birchbark canoes to survive the dangerous waves.
Our island was only one of several along the
northwest coast of Lake Huron. The cottages on the islands, like our cottage, were owned by families from the Midwest, families who had been summering there since the turn of the century, making believe for a whole summer that life was simple and uncomplicated. We had kerosene lamps and a wood stove. Except for the clubhouse, none of the cottages, including ours, had a phone. The islands were like castles with moats all around them. Protected by a ring of water, you believed nothing bad could get to you.
Once a week we put on city clothes and met at the clubhouse on Big Island for dinner with the other island people. The rest of the time our family was totally alone on our island. Grandpa said being alone was a chance to discover ourselves. He said each one of us was an island, and the most exciting discovery we would ever make was to know ourselves.
I thought I knew myself. I was just me who lived half in the real world and half someplace else. I got up and ate three meals and did all the things my family did. The other part of me spent the day with the characters in whatever book I was reading. In my imagination I transformed the island. One day it might be the Greek island of Crete and I would be running through the labyrinth to escape the minotaur. Another time it would be the Galápagos Islands with gooney birds that let me walk right up to them. Although I got along fine with people, something about the lonely and wild side of the island agreed with me.