Silver Pontoons

By Buz Ecker

It was in August, and it was in 1974, and she was married.

She had such a nice rear end, Jamie thought, and he could see the outline of
her panties through her shorts, plus those long tanned legs, and light brown
sandals, and red toenails. Her hair was straight and black and she hardly ever wore
a bra, and Jamie watched her pointy nipples jiggle as she walked down the path,
married.

She was fifteen years older than him, and Jamie knew her husband from the
summer before. He was a nice enough guy, and he was a counselor with the older
campers, and he was out on the long canoe trip to Hudson’s Bay.

Jamie was 19, and it was before his junior year in college. Her name was
Heather, and her husband was Ben, and they were fifteen years older, and married
to each other. Jamie knew it was wrong to lust after her, but then there were her
blue eyes and black hair and sandals and panties through her shorts.

Jamie sat at the tourist bar across the lake with several other counselors, and
they had each been in the woods and lakes of Ontario for a week with the younger
campers, except Jamie, who had flown in to the Bloodvein River trip, to take the
place of a counselor who had a broken leg. They were drinking long neck
Budweisers and John Denver was playing on the jukebox. After they paddled back,
Jamie was stumbly drunk, and walked to his cabin through the spruce trees at the
bottom of the hill. He made it through the door and fell on his bunk, then stared
into the darkness and thought of her. At that very moment she was alone in one of
the married staff cabins down the point, and all Jamie had to do was go there. Then
he fell asleep thinking:
He was in a floatplane, and he could smell the airplane fuel coming from the
roar of the prop in front and the horizon looks grey. Moons and townies and
sorority girls are on the shoreline below and they are waving to Jamie the bush
pilot, waiting for him to land in the narrows and save them. When he lands and
taxis up by the cedars on the shore, they run away into the woods. Jamie stares at
the small waves by the large silver pontoons. He taxis into the wind, steering with
the controls by his feet. He pulls the throttle out, and now he is gaining speed, now
lifting off, now over the trees, and no one is saved. But he is the bush pilot, and he
can smell the fuel, and there’s the grey horizon through the prop, and more lakes
and rivers and hills.

When the morning bell rang, Jamie was still in his clothes on the top of his
bunk. He opened his eyes and watched the campers stir in their bunks. Jamie
looked out the screen and saw the sun just above the lake where it met the sky. He
felt queasy and sat up and watched as the campers got dressed, then he thought of
Heather. He would see her in the dining hall, and her husband was on the long trip,
and she would be wearing shorts with her black hair, and she would watch Jamie
walk into the dining hall with his campers. There would be the noises of all their
conversations and outside the floatplanes would be starting their runs down the
lake.

She’s married.

There was Moons and townies and sorority girls, but none of them were
married. The guilt was there already though nothing had happened. Her husband
would find out, then it would be big trouble. She’s off limits, and that settles it.

Jamie looked at her as she sat with some other wives. Heather’s eyes met
Jamie’s, then he looked away. Just once. No one would know. Her husband would
never find out. Jamie’s lust would be fulfilled, and he would never forget the
oneness and tingling of being deep inside her. Just once. Camp would be over, then
there would be a few weeks before school started, and all the campers would be
back in their homes wherever they lived. No one would know. The oneness and the
tingling would be hidden in the past, and there would be no guilt. The memory
would be sacred, the earth and Jamie and everyone else spinning away from that
moment in time. The tingling would overcome Jamie, and he would leave a part of
him inside her. Jamie looked at her again. He stared at her face and felt the
stirrings in his groin. No one would know. There would be no guilt.

But there was. She was married. Jamie wasn’t. It was a path of guilt, and yet
there were her eyes, her shorts, her panties.
 Jamie walked back down the hill through the spruce to his cabin with his
campers ahead. He walked to the back of the cabin by himself, by the clothesline
on the dirt path past the boulders and tall Norways to a clearing. He sat on a rock
outcrop by all the brown needles and listened to the roar of the floatplanes as they
took off down the lake. He wanted to be a bush pilot, wearing faded jeans, and
boots and flannel shirts with a stubbly beard. It would be Beefeater’s every night,
and long necks and townies. He could take Heather with him. They would roar
down the lake and gain thrust, and slowly lift off the rough waters into the wind,
then over the shoreline with the alders and cedars and poplars and birch. Then
there would be other lakes and streams, and beaver lodges, and ponds, and
potholes, and falls and rapids. There would be clouds and the sun. It would be the
two of them. Jamie would slowly descend into a stretch of water and taxi where the
water was deep by the shore, and the motor would cut, then he would tie a rope to
a tree, then he would help Heather out to one of the silver pontoons. They would
make their way into the brush, and find a place, then look into each other’s eyes.
They would kiss, and unzip each other’s pants, and he would be a bush pilot.

The leaves blew and the pine boughs bent in the breezes above, and Jamie
listened to the floatplanes out on the lake, and the motorboats, and the voices of the
campers cleaning the cabin. She’s married, and it would be a huge mistake that he
would have to live with forever. He just could not stop the thoughts. It would be
the tinglings in a torrent of lust and pleasure. Jamie would make love to a married
woman.

Before camp started for that summer of 1974, Jamie was at a lounge in town
where a small blond haired singer sat on a stool on the stage and strummed her
guitar and sang Janis Joplin songs. She was a townie. Jamie was at a table in the
back, and he was sitting with several other counselors. They were each smoking
Winston’s and drinking Long Island Iced Teas. Jamie stared at the singer, and he
was loaded and the room bounced, and he took drags on his Winston. When she
went on break, Jamie followed her, and they sat at the bar and Jamie tried to hide
his drunkenness. They made small talk and would meet after her gig.

Her name was Scooter and she was short. Jamie felt bold and she drank
several bourbon and cokes, then they each walked up the long staircase by the front
desk, then down the hallway with all the doors and the windows at the end. She put
a key in her door, opened it, then Jamie attacked her with kisses and groping, and
he lost count of how many times they made love, but he was up with the sun, and
dressed while she lay there sleeping. He walked down the corridor and his head felt
like there were heavy chains attached to his skull. He made his way down the stairs
to the front desk where all the fishermen were, and there was the stale smell of
cigarette smoke and beer from the lounge. Jamie drove back to the landing, the
musky smell of the night permeating the air. It was yet another night in another
bedroom, another girl, another hash mark in a hidden book.

Now Jamie had to start the day, and be with his campers. It was only three
and a half hours to lunch, when he would see Heather again. Maybe she would
smile at him, or they could talk, or maybe they could go into town together. Jamie
was now behind his cabin by the clothesline, and he stopped and stared at the
ground. He heard sparrows in the birches above, then the voices of the campers in
the cabin. Nineteen and all this—floatplanes, trees, and breezes, and a married
woman.

After morning classes, Jamie walked up the stony trail from the tetherball
court to the dining hall. He was early for lunch, and he could hear the cooks in the
kitchen, and water running in sinks, and laughter. It was sunny and hot outside, and
Jamie’s stomach still ached from the night before. He wished she would come in
early also, and they would talk, and Jamie would trust fate to where it would lead
him. He sat at his table, and his thoughts of her were slow, like a slideshow, then it
was a movie, and it was her smiling, her face, her shorts, her legs, her sandals, her
eyes. Jamie’s shoulders twitched and he stared blankly through the windows of the
dining hall to the lake beyond. He saw a clip board with sheets of paper and a pen
at the table next to him. Then he wrote her something she would never see:

I want to be with you the whole night long.

I want to hold you next to me all night,
and see you naked by my side. It’s wrong,
but I don’t care; I’ll leave before first light.
No one will know our secret time alone.
If I release myself inside of you,
will you stay quiet? Or will you just moan?
We’ll please each other kissing, just us two.
Then this will lead to other things we’ll touch.
 We’ll make love twice or more, then I will head
into the night; the stars and loons, my lust
fulfilled. The silent lake, then to my bed.
I’ll wait to hear floatplanes take off and land.
There’ll be no guilt, no shame, just me, a man.

A counselor had broken his leg on the Bloodvein River trip in northern
Ontario, and Jamie was chosen to take his place. Jamie was taken by boat to the
floatplane base in the late afternoon. He would have to stay in Red Lake that night,
for there would not be enough daylight left to find them on the river. The float
plane was small, and the pockets of air bounced him and the bush pilot. They
followed lakes and streams and gravel roads below, and the smell of fuel from the
prop in front, and the silver pontoons below enveloped Jamie. He was proud that
he was chosen, and now it was near dark, and he saw the large bay by the buildings
of Red Lake, with all the different colored floatplanes tied up to the docks. After
they landed and tied up, Jamie walked across the street with the bush pilot to a bar.
Jamie had forgotten the pilot’s name, but he looked rugged and chiseled as he
swaggered on the street by Jamie, in faded jeans and dark boots.

A single light bulb shone above the door, and a small sign to the right read
“Red Lake Inn.” It was dimly lit inside and dark skinned Ojibway men sang and
chanted and danced. Jamie stared at them and was afraid. He wanted to leave, but
he said nothing. He sat at the bar with the bush pilot and drank Old Vienna’s next
to some older fishermen who chain smoked and drank shots. The Ojibways fought
each other and bumped into the back of Jamie. Bottles broke on the floor, and there
was yelling and screaming, and Jamie watched them as they fought; the bush pilot
and the fishermen stared straight ahead.

Early in the morning, they found the trip on the river, and they landed and
taxied up to the group of canoes, and Jamie stepped out on one of the silver
pontoons, not knowing what the future would hold for him after this trip down the
Bloodvein; only that it was August, and it was 1974.

By the time Heather walked in through the door of the dining hall, there
were campers setting tables. Jamie put the sheet of paper with what he had written
to Heather in his pocket. The bell rang outside, and the campers rushed in, and
Jamie kept looking to Heather. He wondered what she looked like naked. He had
to find a way. He just had to. Then Heather saw him staring at her, and Jamie saw a
face that whispered okay.

Another hash mark, the same musky aromas in the air. Yes, she was married,
but now Jamie was on the prowl to be deep inside her. Only the two of them would
know, and her husband would return the next day, and he would never find out. It
would not be a mistake he would have to live with for the rest of his life. No guilt.
No shame. Fate would get Jamie there. His mind was slides turned into films, and
it was her, and her alone. She was fifteen years older than him, but she would be
naked, and in his arms for just one night. Then there would be loons and stars and
trails, and hills and trees. Then it would be the morning again, with floatplanes and
silver pontoons.

That very night, the night before her husband would return the following
afternoon, Jamie drove into town alone. He went to a tourist bar and drank gin and
beer, and this made him bold like a bush pilot, and it justified what he would do.
He was back at camp in the solemn hours of the night, and he staggered down the
path to the married staff cabins. As he neared Heather’s cabin, he heard a recording
of part of Nixon’s resignation speech from earlier that evening on a radio, coming
from another cabin nearby:

For more than a quarter of a century in public life I have shared in the
turbulent history of this era. I have fought for what I believed in. I have tried to the
best of my ability to discharge those duties and meet those responsibilities that
were entrusted to me.

Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have
taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena,
“whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who
errs and comes short again and again because there is not effort without error and
short coming, but who does actually strive to do the deed, who knows the great
enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the
best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievements and who at the worst, if he
fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”