Chip
The resort is spread over hundreds of acres, and he is the weed man.
He wears work gloves and carries a giant pail, and the groundskeeper has him pulling weeds from the billion flower beds around the property.
He swears the weeds grow in minutes some days.
By morning, they have sprouted out of new places.
He bends down, sweat dripping from his face, and grabs and twists.
He wants to clear the whole place of weeds so they can find something else for him to do, but every time he turns around, they are back. He thinks of Vicky, her arms crossed, her eyes smiling. Had enough of your escape?
It’s the end of June, and the place is abuzz with Fourth of July plans: a huge picnic and fireworks.
His sunburn has faded to a golden tan, and his face feels tight.
He’s always thirsty. He wishes he’d brought the canteen his aunt Dana bought him years ago.
He’d keep it around his neck and consume the cold water all day.
He looks into the woods at the edge of the property and wonders if there is a creek out there.
He would crouch down and lap at the water like a forest animal; he’d dunk his face in it and splash it on his arms. Every so often a nice breeze comes off the mountain and passes through the trees, but by ten in the morning there’s no escaping the blazing sun.
When Chip got poison ivy a few days ago on his arms and legs, his roommate, Phil, reached into his cupboard and threw him a bottle of calamine lotion. “I’m not rubbing it on you,” he said, grimacing.
Chip thinks again of Vicky and wishes she were here. He has no one to talk to, and every day, on weed patrol, he’s alone with his thoughts for too long. He imagines admitting to Vicky that he’s disappointed, that he thought this would be an adventure, would be more fun.
Sometimes when he’s clocking in first thing in the morning, he sees the giant dining room with guests in their linen and seersucker suits, and he imagines bringing them coffee and listening to their stories.
He sees the entrance of the Wooden Duck lounge upstairs, and he wants to hear guests hitting the billiard balls, watch them throw darts and flirt with each other.
But instead he pulls his stupid weeds, some of which explode with seeds or leak white liquid onto his gloves, and he feels removed from everyone else.
Sometimes he gets so dizzy he has to sit in the shade by the horse barn and take deep breaths.
Headaches grip him every so often, but if he distracts himself, he can will them away.
Two days ago, the sun was so intense that he felt his feet get heavy, and he stumbled to the side of the equipment garage and worried he’d faint.
He slowly slid his way to the ground and sat against the cool wood siding and told himself “You’re stronger than this. ” And it worked.
But he thought he’d laugh more here. He thought he’d meet some cool guys to hang out with at night; maybe a nice girl would join him for a moonlit walk.
He thought there would be keg parties, trips to a club or concert, everyone piled into someone’s car.
But the halls of the crew lodge are fairly quiet, and Phil, who’s in his twenties, goes to bed at ten most nights. “Shit, bro, I’m beat.”
When Chip is weeding, which is all he’s ever doing unless he’s on break, he thinks about his family.
He thinks about walking past Maggie and giving her a “horse bite” on her arm, or how much she loves that necklace he bought her.
He thinks of his dad’s gentle voice, how worried he got as Vietnam escalated, and how he started talking about moving the family to Canada.
“We’ll stay as long as we need to,” his dad used to say, not knowing Chip was prepared to go enlist if the war had continued.
He imagined basic training, imagined the big transport plane taking them over to Southeast Asia.
Back then, before all the doctors’ appointments, he thought he was invincible.
He thought he could land in a war zone and make it back unscathed.
But now he wouldn’t have been allowed to go.
Then he thinks of his mother—her cups of tea on the back patio in the morning, the way she sometimes left random gifts on his bed for him to find when he came home from school: a Peppermint Pattie, a lifeguard whistle.
She adored Maggie and babied her, but she always held Chip on the highest pedestal.
If he’s honest, while he weeds, he really misses her loving smile.
He stands up and wipes his hands on his pants and thinks he should go inside and tell that uptight Paige that he needs something better to do here. Fortune favors the bold, his grandmother always says. If he can’t be bold now, in the last months of his life, then what’s the point?
The back of his neck feels scalded from the sun, and he thinks he should ask Phil or one of the girls down the hall if he could tag along into town with them to buy sunscreen.
He coughs. More pollen in the back of his throat—it sometimes builds up so much it chokes him, and he spits it out.
“Excuse me!” someone calls to him. “Please don’t spit here.”
He turns to see a tall woman with pinned-up hair, wearing a lavender blazer that looks expensive but wrinkled. “Sorry,” he says. But he still feels the pollen and keeps clearing his throat.
She studies him. “It just isn’t sanitary, you know? And we like everything to be perfect for our guests.”
He notices the bags under her eyes, and that her blouse is misbuttoned. “Yeah, sorry, I understand.” His shoulders hurt from bending over. He pulls his arms behind him to stretch and then stops because he’s worried she won’t like the sight of that, either. Who is she?
“How long have you been working here?” she asks. She pulls a handkerchief out of her pocket and is about to blot her face with it but stops. “Hot as Hades, isn’t it?” She looks down at the handkerchief and passes it to him. “Here, keep it.”
“Oh, thanks. About a week, and yes, really hot.” The cloth feels nice on his skin, and he’s embarrassed to see how dirty it is when he pulls it away. He stuffs it in his pocket.
“Come with me,” she says and motions to him. “Just for a moment.”
He looks around to make sure she isn’t talking to someone else, and follows her down the flagstone path toward the pool.
She doesn’t talk, just walks more quickly than he’s ever seen a person go.
He follows but half expects her to turn around and yell that he should get back to work.
Then he wonders if she’s going to bring him to some part of the resort he’s missed: a huge patch filled with dandelions and chickweed and crabgrass.
He imagines her pointing, and the pain in his hands as he stoops to pull it.
They get to the pool area, where a few guests are seated at metal tables.
He watches a woman in a yellow swimsuit jump off the diving board into the crystal-clear water.
There is a lifeguard up on a white chair who he’s seen in the crew lodge, and a guy Phil introduced him to yesterday is bringing trays of drinks and snacks to guests in lounge chairs.
Chip feels underdressed, and wonders if the handkerchief made his face look worse, more smeared.
He picks at a bug bite on his hand, and the woman gestures to him.
“Take any seat you want,” she says, and nods toward to the tables with striped umbrellas.
“You want me to sit?”
“Of course,” she says. “And what kind, butter pecan, mint, Whitehouse cherry?”
He stands near the closest table and pulls out a chair. “You’re getting me an ice cream?”
“No,” she says. “I’m getting us ice cream. It’s too hot for anything else.” She points. “Now sit in the shade, please.”
He takes small, careful bites from the glass dish of chocolate ice cream she placed before him, and it tastes perfect, sweet and slightly bitter.
He almost always orders raspberry when he’s home, but they don’t have it here.
Every once in a while, he gets a hint of salt on his tongue, and he imagines the ice cream is from some French gourmet shop.
“I asked Edmond to bring us some waters, too,” she says as she sits.
His body is cooling down, and it feels great to sit. He wants to ask her if she often randomly treats her employees like this, but he kind of suspects she does. “What’s your name?” She digs into her ice cream.
“I’m Chip,” he says. He realizes he forgot his nametag. He always forgets it. “Chip Bishop.”
“That’s a memorable name! You should be in Hollywood, Chip Bishop.” She extends her hand. “Rhonda Simmons.”
He shakes it. He can’t decide if she’s the owner or a manager or what she is.
He was hired by Paige, who acts like she owns the place, and did his paperwork with a man named Alfred who smelled like his grandfather’s aftershave and wore the shiniest cuff links.
“Thank you for the ice cream,” he says. Some at the bottom has melted, and he tries not to let it spill on his shirt. “Are you, um, are you…?”
“The boss?” she says, and laughs. “Yes, but only by inheritance, not quite by design.” She looks around.
“It’s a lot, but it was my father’s dream, and now it’s mine.
Dream by transfer, right?” She shakes her head.
“There was a time when I had my own dreams, and my husband says this place is an albatross, but I’ve grown to love it.
” She looks pleased. “Daddy asked for so little. He was quiet and pleasant and long before he opened the resort he used to sketch the Red Maple on napkins—he knew the name for it, knew where it would be. When he saved enough money he bought this land, and he built it all just as he’d dreamed. ”
The guy nods to Chip as he brings them their waters, and Rhonda smiles at the guy and nods.
Chip finishes his ice cream and looks around.
He tries to imagine this land before it was developed.
How beautiful it must have been. How many years did it take to build all that he sees around him?
The little cottages. The bridge at the edge of the lake.
Of course the main hotel, but the outbuildings, too, the crew lodge.
“I’ll never do anything like that,” he says without thinking.
She reaches over and pats his hand. “You’re young, my friend. You have plenty of time.”
After the sun has hidden behind clouds, Chip stands and tells her he’d better get back to work.
She brings their dishes over to the window of the ice cream place and wipes the table with a cleaning rag.
“Are you happy on weed duty, Mr. Bishop?” She squares her shoulders.
“I have this habit of being unhappy if our employees aren’t happy. ”
He feels himself flush. She seems so generous he could probably tell her he wants something else, and she would make it happen. He could work inside, be around more people. He has only one chance at the kind of summer he needs. “Oh, yeah, sure,” he hears himself say. “The weeds are fine.”