Counting Aprils

“C’mon Gordo,” Starsky says as he opens the door.

Gordo runs ahead, feathered tail wagging and a blaze of gold against the dawning April sky. They head up the rise—the rise, not the hill, Hutch always said– in the crisp air.

Aprils are different in Minnesota, different from the Aprils he knew in Bay City what seems like centuries ago. Here April means sometimes snow, sometimes surprisingly warm days of sunshine that tricks the senses into believing summer is just around the bend, but mostly it means the trickling of melt-water, the sound of birds returning, and mud that spatters on Gordo’s three legs.

He knows why he counts Aprils instead of Marches or Augusts. He counts Aprils because the first time he and Hutch made love; it was a soft April night in Bay City—after Kira, after Rigger, before Gunther. There was the sound of city traffic, not the sound of birdsong and sheep baas. And there was Hutch, long-limbed and strong and beautiful. Oh, so beautiful.

Gordo circles around him, nearly dancing in the joy of mud.

“You’re gonna need a bath again,” Starsky tells him, but Gordo doesn’t seem to care as he shoots off again, up the rise.

The first April in Minnesota was not quite a year after Gunther. Seeing Hutch on the old farmstead was a revelation. He knew Hutch loved nature, knew he loved the land, but seeing him relax, the lines of his face smooth out, made him vow to make sure Hutch got away from the city and their jobs more often.

It was a long time before they came to Minnesota and the farm again. Life happened and somehow the years flew by. Promotions, becoming instructors at the Academy, and then… Hutch’s parents grew older and frailer and Hutch’s face grew drawn with worry.

It wasn’t a hard decision on Starsky’s part. He knew Hutch would have done the same for him had his mother lived longer. So they packed up their Bay City lives and moved to Minnesota.

The first April in Duluth was rough. Hutch’s father was ill. His mother passed away not long after they arrived. Although his father never quite accepted their relationship—he introduced Starsky to acquaintances as Hutch’s friend—he never outwardly spoke against them. Starsky used to put his hand on Hutch’s arm, shake his head when Hutch would grow indignant.

“It doesn’t matter,” he would tell Hutch. “We know what we have.”

“It does matter,” Hutch would snap back. “I want other people to know, too.”

To which Starsky would shake his head and squeeze Hutch’s arm, and whisper, “I think everyone has figured it out by now.”

But they only had five Aprils together in Minnesota. Such a short time when they were so happy.

Starsky is at the top of the rise now. The first daffodils are blooming, and Starsky smiles.

He remembers Hutch planting them during their first fall.

“How do you know they’ll come up?” Starsky asked as he pushed yet another bulb into the earth.

“We don’t,” Hutch said, sitting back on his heels and smiling that smile that rivaled the sun. “But it’s…” Hutch looked around, threw his arms wide. “hope. We’re planting hope that we’ll be here to see them, that they survive, that we do. And even if we aren’t here to see them, Mandy will be able to run up the hill and pick daffodils for Jenny.” And then Hutch got the sappy look he always did when he spoke of their grandniece.

It was two Aprils since Hutch had been here to see the daffodils—in a few weeks, they will spill down the rise, a path of gold and white and green. For now, though, this little clump is enough.

Gordo has stretched out, panting, and looking for all the world as if he’s smiling at the daffodils. A vee of geese flies overhead, honking as they fly ever northward.

They sound happy—a different sound, Starsky thinks, than the sound when they fly south for the winter. Two autumns ago, the southbound honking of geese was unbearable. Winter was coming, and Hutch was gone.

He’s glad Hutch didn’t die in an April—because how would he ever be able to bear the beauty of an April again? Hutch died on a rainy day in October. It was just a routine operation—no big deal; the doctor had said, repair of a hernia. Starsky kissed Hutch before he went into the operating room and waited. And waited. And when the doctor came out, he knew something very, very wrong had happened.

An error with anesthesia, and Hutch was on life support. Kelly and Thomas sat with Starsky, Kelly crying over her brother. Jenny, pregnant with her second child—the one Hutch would never see—and Lucas, her husband, wept and tried to explain to Mandy that Grandda Ken was dead.

As for Starsky, he sat stony-faced and still, unable to understand, and knowing there was no miracle this time. When the doctors disconnected the equipment, Starsky lay his head on Hutch’s chest and felt the beat of Hutch’s heart falter and die. He thought his own would follow.

That Christmas, Thomas and Kelly gave him Gordo—an abandoned Golden Retriever who was left for dead by the side of the road and only had three legs.

Gordo didn’t care that Starsky was angry and bitter. What Gordo did care about was running, his nose tunneling through snow drifts, jumping to catch the snowballs Starsky threw and never finding them. If Starsky didn’t love Gordo at first, that was okay with Gordo too.

But in the cold dark of the first winter without Hutch, Gordo hopped onto the bed, snuggled up to Starsky and licked away his tears, and eventually April and daffodils came again. His first April in so many years without a Hutch in it.

That year seemed filled with Octobers, not Aprils. But last year, the second April—the daffodils had seemed to glow with inner fire. The geese flew higher and honked louder, and the loons called from the pond and raised two chicks.

And here he is now—standing on the rise, with Gordo re-energized. If he looks to the east, he can see the faint glimmer of Lake Superior—a flashing silver-blue. But he focuses instead on the homestead, at Kelly and Thomas’ farmhouse where smoke rises from the chimney, on the pond where the loons have already returned. When he walks up here on a summer day, the blue of the pond will be the exact color of Hutch’s eyes, and he will smile and hold the secret close. He listens to the baas of the ewes and even at this distance; he sees the lambs leaping and jumping in sheer delight at being alive. Where he stands now will be meadow grasses in a few months’ time, coming to his hips. The flock will move up here, spread out, grazing. Gordo will ignore them and plop down at Starsky’s feet while the lambs come with wagging tails for petting and the ewes munch contentedly on the sweet summer grasses.

“Grandda Dave!” Mandy calls as she climbs the rise, little Jacob Kenneth holding her hand, his pudgy legs pumping as he tries to keep up with his sister.

Starsky sees Hutch then—a child, running through the meadow grasses up the rise, looking far to Lake Superior, dreaming of the sea, dreaming of so many, many wonderful things.

“Grandda Ken’s daffydillys came back,” Mandy says, and she hugs her arms to her chest and spins around in the joy of April.

“They did,” Starsky says. “And they’ll keep coming back for a long, long time. He planted them for you. ” Jacob Kenneth holds up his arms and stamps his foot, a demand to be picked up and carried. Starsky obliges—he always does.

He gives a whistle to Gordo who gets up and races down the hill with a laughing Mandy running full tilt and follows them, carrying Jacob Kenneth into another April.