A Different Kind of Summer. Caron Todd

paddle acting as rudder he was in control of where they went, and he steered them to the middle of the river. David didn’t push the point. There was a brittleness about Sam, as if he’d be glad of a chance to push back. It was enough to feel muscles pulling, hear the dip of the paddles and know his brother was safe at home. A kayak passed them and a mother mallard led a line of fluff balls away from them into the reeds, but other than that they were alone.

      Here and there dampness seeped through the canvas. “Have we got anything to bail with, Sam? If we need to, I mean?”

      “Nope.”

      “I don’t want much of this river in here with us.”

      Sam didn’t answer. Maybe he’d forgotten about the variety of unpleasant things that were dumped into the Red. The water could cause a rash were it touched skin, or cramps in anyone unfortunate enough to ingest it.

      “Is this your leave instead of August? We should tell Sarah to come now if she can.”

      “Don’t bother.”

      “But you’ll want to see her.”

      “Not really.”

      David wasn’t sure what to make of his brother’s tone. He didn’t sound angry, but he wasn’t joking around, either.

      “Sam.”

      “What?”

      “Don’t be like that.”

      “Like what?”

      “It’s just a canoe.”

      “It’s not just a canoe. It’s our canoe.”

      They were out of the slow-moving loop. The farther they went the harder the paddle back would be and he’d arrive at work sweaty after all. Unless the steady seeping became leaking and they sank. Swimming to shore through this brown soup would be one way of solving the sweaty problem.

      “It’s good you came home early, Sam. Mom and Dad missed you.”

      “They’re all right, aren’t they? Sarah’s not driving them crazy?”

      “Sarah’s not the problem, not for Mom and Dad, anyway.”

      “So there is a problem? I thought there was.”

      “It’s nothing serious. Dad’s bothered about the big 7-0.” It wasn’t the age, his father had told him, not the nearly three-quarters of a century behind him. Feeling like a wise old man was fine. The problem was he wanted to keep on being one for another three-quarters of a century.

      The canoe had slowed. David looked over his shoulder. Sam wasn’t moving. He stared at the riverbank, his face unguarded, exhaustion in every line.

      “Sam?”

      “I thought it would be…like it usually is. Greener.”

      “The trees are stressed. One year there’s flooding, the next it’s dry. We’ve had thaws in January. It’s not what they need.” David angled his paddle, pushing away from the current as best he could from the bow. “You all right?”

      “Yeah. Yeah, of course.” Sam began to turn the canoe around.

      TO CHRIS, nice clothes meant matching. He came to breakfast wearing blue jeans and a blue T-shirt, and when it was time to leave he added a blue baseball cap. Although he seemed a little wound up about what he might learn at the museum, Gwyn thought he was happy to be going.

      She set the pace, fast enough for them to reach the stop before the bus, but slow enough to accommodate Chris’s frequent pausing and squatting to watch ants drag dead bugs across the cement, bumblebees bounce from clover flower to clover flower and caterpillars invite almost certain death on the slow crawl from boulevard to nearby lawn.

      “Caterpillars are sort of like snakes,” he said.

      Gwyn took his hand and hurried across the road just before the light changed. “How are caterpillars like snakes?”

      “Same kind of bodies.”

      “Long and squiggly?”

      “Yeah. Why is that?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Then there’s larva. Same type of body, too.”

      He talked about animal bodies all the way to the museum. Shapes of snouts, lengths of necks, reasons for tails. When Gwyn stopped to put the change from the admission in her purse he hurried ahead into the galleries. She caught up with him watching a video about the Earth’s changing tectonic plates. A male voice narrated while colored jigsaw pieces floated around two attached blue ovals, finally taking the shape of a modern map of the world. When the video ended Chris pushed a button and watched the whole thing again.

      “So-o,” he said. “Things used to be different. All the land in the world was in one place.”

      “A supercontinent.”

      “I kind of thought it was more, you know…”

      “Nailed down?”

      She was trying to lighten the mood, but he nodded seriously. “I don’t really like that idea, Mom. What if it’s still doing it?”

      “Still moving? I don’t think so. Not enough to make a difference to us, anyway. Not enough to make the trip to Australia any shorter.”

      He gave her a look she would have called world-weary in an older person.

      “It is a strange idea. You expect the ground under your feet to stay in one place.”

      “Right.” He seemed more satisfied with that response. “All the time, too.”

      “Because it’s not a boat. It’s a continent.”

      That got a smile. He led the way around the corner and found what he’d come for: a floor-to-ceiling painting of a woolly mammoth.

      Gwyn skimmed the small box of text provided. “It doesn’t say anything about your mammoth, Chris. Just about mammoths in general. They lived until around ten thousand years ago, at the time of the last ice age, and then they became extinct. They had long shaggy hair and long curving tusks. Several complete specimens have been found.”

      “Does it say anything about grass?”

      “Not a thing.”

      Chris frowned with concentration while he tried to sound out the text for himself. He was doing fine at home with Dr. Seuss, but whoever wrote the museum’s plaques wasn’t into helpful rhyming.

      “I’m not sure where to look next, sweetheart. Maybe the library.”

      “Can I be of any help?”

      A man stood a few feet away. Gwyn got the feeling he’d been there for a while. He was tall and dark, with an air of quiet authority. How he pulled that off in casual clothes with his pant legs damp and wrinkled below the knee, she didn’t know. A name tag hung from a long string, like a shoelace, around his neck. She got as far as David, then found she didn’t want to look at his chest long enough to read the rest. His eyes were dark brown, coffee brown. It was hard to meet them, but hard to look away, too.

      He took care of that, turning to smile at Chris. “Did you want to know something about mammoths?”

      After all the museum employees Chris had happily questioned on other visits, older fatherly ones and young motherly ones and gangly brotherly ones, he chose this moment to remember not to speak to strangers, not even strangers with name tags. Gwyn looked at the man’s collar instead of his warm, dark eyes and explained about the movie and the mammoth.

      He nodded, with some enthusiasm. “I know the specimen you mean. A number of surprisingly well-preserved mammoths have been found. I’ve heard that the scientists who dug up one of them actually cooked themselves a few steaks.”

      Gwyn’s