The Last Summer

I always remember the last Thursday in May as hands-down the best day of every year. It was the last day of school. Beginning the day after Labor Day every year, I started looking forward to that special day in May.

In hindsight, I didn’t like school because I was bullied. No one saw it, of course, and none of my teachers or peers stood up for me. I sat alone every day at lunch, rotting in my own self-inflicted silence.

But, on that blessed May 28, the final bell rang, meaning I wouldn’t have to enter the school for three whole months. Tendrils of freedom intertwined with the summer breeze and carried me home.

Every summer, the day after school got out, my parents drove me to my grandparents’ house in Lone Oak, Tennessee. Who knew what they did when I was gone, but who cared? I was at the place I belonged for the entire summer. A place where no one would call me a fat teacher’s pet, or a girl.

My name is Courtney, after my grandfather, Franklin Courtney Walter. I was bullied for having a so-called girls’ name. But I don’t mind anymore because my grandfather was such a good man.

I remember one summer with him in particular like it was yesterday. On May 29, we hopped in our brand new sports car and took off. I felt like I was sitting in a pot filled with boiling bathwater the whole way there. I couldn’t sit still. I could barely sit at all! I was so excited to see my grandparents! Sure, I would be there until Labor Day, but you could never get started too early! Not in my book, at least.

In typical little boy fashion, I sat, alert like a watchdog, staring out the window. I acknowledged every tree and every open field. It was a lot warmer than your average May. I was perspiring profusely, even though the windows were down. Granted, I was insanely excited.

“Easy there, Grasshopper!” my father remarked on multiple occasions.  I heard him, of course, but I didn’t pay attention.

Starting at about 1 p.m., I tracked our route meticulously. I knew Mom and Dad had driven this road many times, but I didn’t want any delays. Eventually, my frenzied state must have used up the last of my energy because I fell asleep. I jolted awake hours later with the honk of a truck. It wasn’t your average Ford truck, it was a semi. There were a lot of semis wandering around Lone Oak. I looked to the road sign directly to the right and I felt my stomach give a little flutter. Lone Oak: 38 miles.

Traveling at our rate, hypothetically 60 miles per hour, we would reach Lone Oak in 38 minutes. I tracked us diligently, with renewed energy, until finally, I saw the sign that said, Welcome to Lone Oak!

I was so incredibly exhilarated about the official beginning of the summer. I unbuckled my seatbelt a good block and a half away from their bright white little house. As soon as the car was parked, I began pulling violently on the door’s lock.

“Courtney Drew Walter,” scolded my mother. “You’d think we were taking you to Disney World or something!”

I didn’t even like Disney. Honestly, I’d be pretty depressed if we turned up there. My ten-year-old self took this as a wake-up call to get more excited. “Lemme out! Lemme out! Lemme out!” I continued to struggle with the door. When at last it unlocked, I darted out of there faster than lightning. My legs were both asleep and my feet were tingling painfully, but I didn’t care. With every step, feeling returned to them, and the familiar feeling of cement underfoot greeted me.

The heat was stifling. It was about four o’clock and the sun was still right above us. It cast a thick, hazy golden light similar to that of late August. Cicadas were already singing their melancholy song in the trees above us. Ants marched dutifully underfoot, and at last, I reached the door.

I knocked, a special combination of long and short knocks, to signal that I was there. Grandpa and Grandma had been waiting for me. They had watched me run up their driveway. The door opened and I saw my tall, lanky, white-haired grandmother and my short, stout, cross-looking grandfather.

For a second, I felt like I shouldn’t be there. I wanted to run. I felt like an impostor. But that all faded away when I was enveloped in their tight embraces. I was sweating bullets solely from the dash up the driveway, but at that point, I wanted nothing less.

My grandmother took my shoulders in her hands and pushed me away from her to eye me up and down. “My goodness, you’ve grown, Courtney!” she remarked, mock-disbelief etched into her voice. “You’re just about catching up to Grandpa and me, huh?”

This was her ritual. Every single time she laid her eyes on me, she’d say I’d grown. In reality, I was short and pudgy like Grandpa, but I still giggled every time.

My parents spent the first two weeks of summer at my grandparents’ house with me; then, finally, they left. Don’t get me wrong, I love them and all, but I wanted my grandparents to myself for the summer.

Every morning, my grandpa would head to the back booth in the local cafe to meet with some of his friends. They would talk and laugh and have a good old time. On Fridays, I would get to go with him. I would use water to slick my hair back so I looked like Ronald Wesson, one of my grandpa’s friends. He would jokingly thank me for showing up to “keep the discussion PG.”

I loved Ron. He always joked around with me and acted like I was one of his old buddies. He passed away before the summer ended.

On the days I didn’t go to the cafe, I stayed home with Grandma. We baked together, we read books, we watered the garden, we canned, we played card games, we did everything! By the time Grandpa got home, usually around 10 o’clock, we would joke that we had already done a “whole days’ worth of doings.”

Sunday mornings we’d get up with the rooster’s crow and tidy ourselves up for church. The church was just down the road from us. Back home I was Presbyterian, but in Tennessee, I was Baptist. I loved the preacher dearly. Michael Watson was his name. That man got me to believe in God hard-core. He could write and he could preach something fierce. His intricately crafted sermons made me an adequate young man.

As much as I loved all of that – the car ride there, the Friday mornings with Grandpa, other mornings with Grandma, the sermons – my favorite part was by far the drives.

Grandpa Frank would take me out on drives every so often. Grandma Louise would always get so upset when we left because she knew full well Grandpa couldn’t drive. He would run a stop sign and just chuckle as an apology. He took corners way too fast, and oftentimes I prayed to make it back home in one piece. Alas, I always did. He would wink at me and state, “Courtney boy, you gotta live while you’re a’living.”

This specific summer was one of the hottest on record. Temperatures sashayed lazily into the upper nineties and above by early June, and they dwelled there for the duration of the summer.

I remember one hot day in particular. It was 9 a.m. and Grandpa was already back from the cafe. It was too hot for him and his buddies there with the stoves going and all. It was 95 degrees by 10 a.m. and 104 by noon. The heat was stifling and I honest-to-God thought that I’d perish of oxygen deprivation before I made it through the night.

Grandma Louise was inside making a salad out of withered greens from her garden. Grandpa and I were outside, slumped down in whatever shade we could find at noon on any given summer day.

“Say, Courtney,” he asked brusquely, his eyes twinkling merrily, “whaddya say we take this here car out for a spin?”

The car was a ‘54 Mustang, blood red and nearly in mint condition. I nodded vigorously and we took off. I hung my head out the window, the mix of hot air and the car’s speed making me nauseous. Still, though, the little bit of breeze felt insanely refreshing, stifling as it was. We drove haughtily along all of the small town’s residential streets. I flashed a cheeky smile at Valerie Jane Maddison, who was slumped limply under an apple tree. I hoped an apple would come down and conk her on the head. Maybe she’d have some sense that way, I thought. That nasty devil must’ve been planting seeds in my head again.

Through the humidity, thunder clapped and lightning flashed fleetingly above us. Nourishing rain poured down. The whole town must have been outside getting drenched. Grandpa sped us home at warp speed and, what do you know, Grandma Louise was waiting for us.

“Frank Walter!” she barked. “What do you think you’re doing, driving Courtney around in the rain! He could have gotten sick, not to mention killed!” She shook me by my shoulders before asking, “Talk some sense into that grandfather of yours next time, you hear me?”

I nodded innocently, knowing darn well I wouldn’t. That was the end of August. Soon, Labor Day would come and I was to return home to school, bullies, and our Presbyterian church. Even to this day, I remember that summer vividly as the best of my life. That was the last summer my grandparents spent on this Earth and they chose to spend it with me. I would redo my whole life, all the bad parts included, just to see them again. A summer just hasn’t been a summer since they’ve been gone.

When I was young, I married a woman named Patricia and that never worked out. When I was older, I remarried and Penny and I had a son, Joshua. Now Joshua has a little girl, Drew Hope Walter. Since Penny is gone, Joshua decided to send Drew to stay with me for the summer. I’m ready for her.

I want to give her the same childhood I had. I’ll take her to meet my friends, drive her around in my putsy old convertible, do everything I did so many years ago. I waited for her on my doorstep all day long. I opened the door, and before I could say anything, she started talking. She’s like her dad that way.

“Hi, Grandpa! I’m so excited to spend the summer here! Lone Oaks is such a quaint town, isn’t it?”

She reminds me of… me.