Summer Elegy

Not going so quietly into the long nights

By TD Mischke

Published on August 25, 2009

It must have been the "Back to School Sale" stamped across the top of the Sunday insert. It slid from the newspaper, landing on the living room rug, and had the same effect on Danny that firecrackers had on Grandpa Neil. Gramps would always sense he was back on the beaches of Anzio and would have to be given his pills and some chamomile tea. Danny just needed to get out of the house and down to the Mississippi. He too was escaping painful memories. At 23 he was no longer a schoolkid, but the effect was the same. As soon as those ads appeared, pushing colorful notebooks, shiny new pencil cases, and handsome backpacks, he saw summer slamming its golden doors, and he panicked.

He wasn't alone, of course. There was the kid in the school-supplies aisle at Target whose shell-shocked ears could no longer handle the barking orders of his mother telling him to check off "glue" and "protractor" from the list so they could see what was left to purchase. That boy was already out of his body, his spirit sailing far beyond the parking lot into nearby woods where dirt bike trails knew nothing of chalkboards and well-groomed hair.

Julie and Kate were also answering the call. Though they couldn't articulate the feeling, they shared a knowing sadness hearing their parents talk of how ordered things were going to be once school was back in session and the family could get back to a sensible routine. As the adults lamented how negligent they'd been all summer, allowing the kids to run wild, the girls slipped out the back door and up the alley to their tree house. They turned up the volume on their iPods and lay on their backs, staring up at the sunlit diamonds flashing between the branches of their leafy canopy.

Even Mr. Jeffers felt the pangs. He was in his 60s, but he saw the parade of fresh faces parking across the street for freshman orientation, and he too recalled the melancholy of his youth when the Fair would end and the night air would offer its first hint of a beckoning autumn. Like the rest, he knew where to go to know a summer afternoon one last time, to live it fully and completely, allowing it to settle deep in his bones, breathing in the scent of the soil, laying his bare legs across one last stretch of velvet grass.

All over the city, there was one final rebellion. For seven days the community-wide revolt seemed, at times, powerful enough to shift time, slow the arching sun, wall off September like sandbags against a rising river.

Everywhere the music was turned louder, the rag tops dropped with more gusto, bikers rode with renewed passion, skinny-dippers were less modest, curfews were playfully ignored, and the sweat—the warm, sweet, salty sweat—was allowed to linger longer on the skin of the enraptured. Those who'd found a summer lover steadfastly refused to sober up from their giddy three-month infatuation and ditched all responsibilities for the allure of outdoor cafes and red wine, kicking off their sandals and resting their feet against each other's skin.

But for Danny, just staying close to the river was enough. It was warm on the shore, and cool up inside the shallow limestone cave. His friends knew where to find him, and they'd gather around his small campfire at twilight, just below the U of M. There they raised a toast to the summer of '09; all it brought, all it had taken, and the songs and scenes for which it would be remembered.

"You don't get the summers back," Danny said. "That's the reason God gave us the autumn colors, to help us weather the grief, to buffer the blow, to hold us one more time in his arms before casting us into the bleak winter.

"Let's meet back here in a month and a half, boys. When the colors are at their peak and October gives us the one jewel August can't deliver.

"In the meantime, here's a toast to the bare shoulders, long legs, and suntanned skin of every girl we saw and sang a song to somewhere in our souls."

"Amen," the boys said, as the sun dropped below the horizon and a sharp, cool breeze drifted in from the future.