Read The Banks of Certain Rivers for Free Online

you’re putting it.”
    He follows me inside, with Alan behind, and I shove the couch and
chair to the sides of the living room to give us a clear path to the
hearth. Leland looks around the room.
    “You’ve been doing some work, Neil,” he
says. ”Looking pretty good in here.” I realize, as
he says it, that it’s been years since Leland Dinks has been
inside my home. We used to run together, back when our kids were
little, and he and his wife Sherry would come over for dinner once in
a while. Our sons were close friends then, all up through middle
school, and we saw them a lot. Then Leland got more wrapped up with
his real estate dealings, all my stuff happened, the boys stopped
being friends and we stopped seeing each other. Things change
like that. Especially when you have kids. You don’t really
mourn the difference, you just accept that things have changed and
move on.
    “It’s a never-ending project,” I say. “Chris
and I need to nail up the trim next. Maybe this winter.”
    “I can get you a break on materials,” Leland says,
turning slowly to take in the room. “You should call me. I’m
set up with a bunch of suppliers.”
    Alan snorts at this. “You want to help him fix up his house so
you can tear it down to build condominiums? That makes a ton of
sense.”
    Leland holds out his hands and shakes his head. “You guys need
to hear me out. I’m not asking to buy everything this time. You
can keep your houses, keep a big piece of your property, and I’ll
still give you both a deal on a condo. We’ve got it all mapped
out. I can show you the drawings right now—”
    “Fireplace,” I say. “Let’s get it in here,
then you can tell us everything.”
    “Right,” Leland says. The three of us move the thing
inside easily (only after Alan and Leland take a moment to bicker
over whether or not it will fit through the door), and come back
outside to hear Leland’s pitch. It doesn’t take long for
him to become very enthusiastic, waving his arms over the set of
blueprints he’s rolled out and weighted down flat with rocks
over the hood of his truck. He’s offering as much money as he
did the last time, a sizable amount of it, but for only half the
land; he wants roughly to split the orchard diagonally to take the
northwest corner (including all of our beach and the old Olsson guest
cottage), along with the northern half of Alan’s farm.
    “And to top everything off, I’ll throw in a timeshare for
both of you,” he says, smiling broadly. “Use it whenever.
Rent it out if you want. And let me tell you this. I don’t want
to hear your answer right now. You guys take a week to think about,
and I’ll—”
    “I don’t need a week to think about it,” Alan says,
picking his bike up from where we moved it to the ground. “I
can give you my answer right now: no. No, no and no.” Leland
shakes his head as Alan mounts the bicycle. “I’ll see you
in the morning, Neil!” Alan calls, riding off down the drive.
    “Can you talk to that guy?” Leland asks, watching the
bike clatter away in a cloud of late summer dust. “Are you able
to get through to him?”
    “I don’t think there’s much of a point,” I
say. “And honestly, I don’t think there’s much of a
chance that I’m going to change my mind either.”
    Leland claps his hand on my upper arm. “I told you, I don’t
want an answer yet. Give it some thought. Some serious thought.
I’ll come by sometime next week, and you tell me then. That
okay?”
    “Fine,” I say.
    “All right,” Leland says, rolling up his plans. “Next
week sometime. All right.”

    Inside, after Leland has gone, I unpack my bag, and when I fish my cellphone from my work
pants pocket I find I’ve received a text message from my son.
    “Just got 2 Grayling,” it says. Like most of the other
kids from Port Manitou, he’s gone with his friends to watch
tonight’s game too. I tap a message back.
    “Have fun. Let me know when you’re headed