The Three Boxes On Our Bench
There were the two boys. Walter Brenner, who we called Walt, who was quiet and good with his hands and already half a man at thirteen because his father had died and left him the oldest. And Danny Vitek, who was the opposite of quiet, who talked the whole summer long, who had opinions about everything and a plan for everything, and who loved that lake more than any of us because his family ran the little resort on the north shore, six cabins and a bait shop and a dock that needed painting every spring.
It was Danny’s bench. I should say that. His grandfather had built it, cut the planks from a white oak that came down in a storm, and set it on the point where you could see the whole lake open up in front of you like God had cleared His throat and was about to say something. Danny’s grandfather carved the year into the armrest. 1949. We used to run our thumbs over those numbers.
The summer of 1971 we practically lived on that point. We were done with the eighth grade and we were going to start high school in the fall over in Alder Creek, bused in from all our scattered farms, and I think some animal part of us knew that the thing we had, the five of us running wild all summer, was about to change. High school changes you. It picks you up and sorts you into people you were not before. We did not have the words for that at thirteen. But we felt it coming the way you feel weather.
It was Lorraine who cried about it first, of course. One evening in late August we were all sitting on the bench and the sun was going down red over the tamaracks and the red winged blackbirds were making their racket in the cattails, and Lorraine just started crying and said what if we all go different ways. What if we grow up and forget each other. And Dot, who hated crying, said don’t be stupid, Lorraine, we are never going to forget each other.
And Danny, who always had a plan, said here is what we do. He said let us promise to come back. Right here, to this bench. And he picked a date. He wanted it to be a long way off, so far off it would feel like forever, because that was the kind of boy he was. He figured on his fingers and he said the first Saturday of October, in the year 2026. Fifty five years. He said we would all be old by then, old as our grandparents, and we would come back here and sit on this bench and see who we turned out to be.
I remember Walt said that is a long time, Danny. And Danny said that is the whole point.
So we stacked our hands up, all five, right there on the oak armrest over the carved 1949, and we swore it. First Saturday of October, 2026. Kettle Lake. This bench. All of us. No matter what.