The Lake, the River & the Other Lake

by Steve Amick

  “Check it out,” Keith said to Walt. “Tommy Dillard’s at the Wobbly Moose, right? Last call, he goes home with—get this: Nancy Knecht. You know who I mean? The tree girl, the ranger?”

  Walt said nothing.

  “You know,” Keith said. “Dark hair? Must be early twenties now? Used to be sort of plain and librarianish, but then she got real good-looking?”

  “Sure. Nan. Pat and Sandy’s kid.”

  Mark was stumped way back at Tommy Dillard. He had no face to connect to any of these names. The Wobbly Moose, he knew; could picture the carved sign, the cartoon moose; walleyed, knock-kneed. That was the bar where he’d started to do it with Courtney that one night, in the alley.

  Walt added, “You pronounce the K, though. It’s not silent.”

  Keith wiped at his leg where he’d spilled his beer opening it. “Whatever. Anyhow, Dillard claims he gets her home and he’s thinking she’s just hanging out, grabbing one more after hours, just there to shoot the shit . . . Thinks she’ll be leaving soon—get in her truck and go back to the woods or wherever. ’Cause I guess she never has anything to do with anybody. Only then she tells him—check it out—they’re not fooling around, kissing, nothing—not even flirting, Dillard says—but she goes, ‘I’ll stay the night and we can fool around, if you want.’ Just like that. Only she’s got two conditions: one, she gets to spend the whole night there, he’s not going to get weird after, hustle her out, and B, they have to leave the lights on. Not just during. After. While they’re sleeping. The whole time. Till it’s daylight.”

  Walt seemed annoyed. “Yeah? And?”

  “And? Jeezo! And so, well, Dillard tells me, ‘Hey, how much could that run up my electric bill? Six, eight hours wasted electricity—cheap tail at half the price.’”

  Walt grunted.

  “What?” Keith said.

  “Tommy’s a turd. And you’re a turd for passing that along.”

  “Hey! I’m just repeating what he told me.” Keith threw up his hands, as if for protection. He was younger than Walt, but slight and wiry, and Mark imagined, if they ever fought, old Walt might be able to take him—though he had no idea why the two would fight, not understanding a goddamn lick of this. “This is Dillard’s say-so. I’m not claiming it’s true. How am I a turd?”

  Walt considered, then made a so-so wobble gesture with his hand. “Okay, you’re turdish then. Maybe not as bad as Tommy, but still. You ought to keep your hole shut. I went to school with her dad. The guy got killed. In that bad fire? And Nan is a nice girl.”

  This was pretty much like watching Telemundo, Mark decided. You see something’s going on, but it could be anything, who knows.

  It was quiet in the pilothouse for a long uncomfortable moment as the two men drank their beer. Mark could hear rigging clang on boats over in the marina and gulls cry and the rumble of Walt’s belly. Walt got up with a groan and moved over to the doorway and stood in it, looking down at the river.

  Keith looked kind of sheepish, picking at something on his boot, then shaking and nodding his head more or less at the same time. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I just thought it was really strange, you know? Her acting like that.”

  Mark heard the word strange and had a thought. It was weird, but lately, he was starting to wonder about what the people they helped were like, what went on in their lives, what they did down in the sleeping quarters when the pilot-boys stepped off—what sentimental knickknacks they kept on board that they would grieve over if their boat ever sank and what they worried about and discussed down there at night or up at the helm, one on one, out in the crashing privacy of Lake Michigan. And it had just occurred to him: what if that woman they were talking about, the good girl gone bad or whatever, was the same ranger lady who spent the night with Courtney’s dad on the boat? She did ask to stay all night and leave the light on. And what if—here’s where it got real Twilight Zone—what if she’d seen those “strange lights in the sky” some freaks were supposedly seeing lately? She was a ranger, right? She lived out in the woods, where it was dark. Well, maybe she’d had some sort of alien encounter out there, the kind where there’s memory lapses and big-eyed creatures looming over your bed? Or at least thought she might have, but wasn’t sure, couldn’t remember? Or just worried she would—and so she was desperate not to be alone at night—only she couldn’t explain it to anyone, what she was afraid of, on account of it would seem nuts. Yeah—if that was the deal, even the girl next door would go home with a different guy every night, just anyone, and fuck him even, but make him keep the light on, just to feel safe and not feel alone. Wouldn’t she? Anyone would. God, he would anyway, if it was him.

  It wasn’t a bad theory, and the idea that it could be true made him feel a little sorry for this woman, this person he’d never laid eyes on except, possibly, through the slats of a closet door.

  It made sense. Sort of. But he wasn’t sure it would out loud. Besides, he didn’t even know Walt and Keith well enough to open his mouth. They’d either laugh at him or yell at him and he didn’t care enough to give them an excuse to do either. Still, it was a weird thing, imagining about someone else like that; trying to puzzle out what a stranger was feeling and thinking. He wasn’t sure he’d ever had a thought quite like that before.

  In the doorway, Walt was still looking out at the river, the town, maybe the clouds moving inland to the east, and his simple shrug, the first thing to finally stir in the otherwise motionless pilothouse, was like the gavel at the end of one of his dad’s cases. “People have a lot of junk going on, you know? Inside.” Without looking at him, Walt was addressing Keith. “You never know what that’s all about. You can’t judge.”

  “Anyway,” Keith said. “Sorry about being . . . turdish.”

  Walt swiveled around slow, like an old gray bear, and studied Keith with a long sort of curious look. “I knew a girl once was turdish.” He tipped back the last of his beer. “Made a hell of a taffy.”

  Keith started to smirk. “They run a nice bathhouse, too, those people.”

  Walt chuckled, turning to step back out on the deck, and dropped his empty in the trash, right beside Mark. He looked him in the eye and said, “Listen, don’t spread any of this garbage around, okay, kid?”

  “I don’t even know who you’re talking about. Any of that.”

  “Good!” Keith jabbed a bony finger in his direction. “You don’t need to know.”

  Like I care, he wanted to say. Like I really care . . .

  49

  NORMALLY, ROGER DRINKWATER didn’t spend nearly as much time in the local bars as he had been lately. For one thing, he always felt a little too much like an outsider, like a mascot, the one token native they chose to humor or something—the “good Indian” in a bad Western. Plus, he hated contributing to the stereotype, no matter how much recent genetic studies bore out a legitimate basis for an alcoholic gene among his people. (Though probably there was more of that on the Polish side.) Inevitably, if he stayed late enough, some jackass would get shitfaced and start making drunk Indian cracks about his name, like that was the first time he’d heard such comic genius and hadn’t spent six months in boot camp with a purple-faced DI who called him Betterdrinkwaterinstead’causeyousafuckingredskin, boy! building it into a spittle-flying scream each time. And besides, he really didn’t drink all that much.

  But ever since he blew up the Petersons’ dock and the interim sheriff got up in his face and said he had his eye on him, he’d been trying to figure out how to do it again. And get away with it again, of course. The jerk did, in fact, seem to have his eye on him, so now it was going to be a little challenging.

  The sheriff’s normal daily patrols were now apparently doubled. It seemed as though every time Roger looked out the window, Hatchert was making his rounds again, slowly circling the lake. And he’d pull into Roger’s little driveway, too, just to make his presence known. During his morning swim, Roger would often stick his head up and see the sheriff’s car id
ling beside his house, the man squinting out at him. And after dark he’d pull in and swivel his spotlight around, out on his dock and even into his windows, regardless of the hour.

  So, knowing the trick to pulling it off again was building a good alibi, Roger began frequenting the Potlicker and the Wobbly Moose and Carrigan’s, saying hello to people to whom he’d normally, at the most, grunt and wave. He didn’t have a plan yet, but he had the vague idea that the more he made his presence known, the more people might be confused, at some later date, and think he was there when he wasn’t. They might at least say, “Coach Drinkwater? Yeah . . . I think he was here . . . I mean, he’s always around . . .” Granted, it wasn’t much of a plan, but until he thought of something specific, it seemed like a good policy. Besides, what better way—other than plying Janey Struska for information—to hear the latest gossip and theories about what was going on out on Meenigeesis with the jet-skis and what would be done about it? For the most part, he didn’t even have to start up a conversation. Most people seemed to buy into the cigar store Indian bit. He could just sit there stone-faced on a barstool and listen. It was amazing the things people discussed openly, all around him, as if he were invisible.

  He was doing exactly this one night at the Potlicker, nursing a Vernors, chuckling politely to the bartender’s report that there were unsubstantiated rumors going around that folks had seen “unexplained lights in the sky” in the area. When pressed, Dale McConkey, the bartender, couldn’t say where this had been, exactly, nor identify one single eyewitness, other than “some koo-koo puffs, obviously.” One of the waitresses piped in with her guess that they were “summer kids on Ecstasy.” Roger concurred with both theories, glad to hear there was something, no matter how bullshit, to overshadow any possible gossip about his secret jet-ski war. He nodded and smiled. It seemed like more than enough social interaction for one night, so he finished his Vernors and got up to leave.

  It was a nice night and he’d walked there, so he left the back way, out onto the deck, packed with chattering Fudgies jockeying round the wire spool tables with their pitchers of beer, and down the steps to the riverwalk. Not the straightest route back home, but the Ojaanimiziibii lapped a deep mercurial blue-gray and the stars hung oversized tonight like something fanciful dreamed up by a Hollywood set designer in the thirties. At the first landing, with its bench and more stairs leading back up the hill, he paused and looked back out to the west, at the glowing lighthouse at the end of the channel. He thought about his Fourth of July marathon maneuver down under that water. Different kind of night, he thought. He heard motion on the stairs but knew who it was.

  “Peaceful, huh?”

  The crunch of her belt gear, something about her hardy gait, gave Struska away before he turned. “Right now it is,” he said. “Here. Back home on the lake, some brat’s probably breaking the curfew. Wouldn’t surprise me at all.”

  They both seemed to think of the bench simultaneously, taking a seat with deep sighs. There was no more mention of jet-skis for a time. They sat admiring the night sky and pointing out the miraculously obvious.

  “If things are that bad out there,” she said after a while, “maybe you ought to think about moving.”

  “Where would I move to? Please.”

  “I’m thinking maybe inland, some place off the water.”

  Roger snorted. “I’m not. Thinking that. Jesus . . .” Though the truth was, in dark moments, he was thinking about just that. One idea had him maybe approaching that nutjob G. Johnny Scudder about some sort of swap. The old man, a descendant of the original nutjob, had recently acquired a lot of wooded land. (It was rumored he was planning a religious cult–based recreational community along what he considered would be the new coastline of Michigan once the floodwaters of “the Endtimes” arrived.) It was all cheap land deeper in, out toward the National Forest more. Moving might become an option down the line, but for now, he couldn’t imagine that kind of a change. It would be brutal, like yanking up a morel mushroom and trying to grow it in your kitchen herb garden. He was an Ojaanimiziibii, a water-based people. And he was a Pole, a stubborn, combative people. The combination made it almost genetically impossible that he would budge. But he didn’t explain this to Janey. He just told her, “Forget it. Not gonna happen.”

  She peered sideways at him, camouflaged by leaf shadows. “You’re dug in, then? Battle stations? Reinforcing the trenches?”

  Roger tipped his head in acquiescence; gave her a chuckle-y little snort. But he did not nod.

  She glanced away, back out toward the lighthouse. “By the way, those are not terms you want to use in front of my new boss, okay? That military posturing. He’d see it as evidence.”

  “He still think I’m behind all that? Up to some sort of secret war with the jet-skis?”

  “Yeah, he feels pretty sure about it. But that’s where we differ.”

  “You don’t think it’s me.”

  She turned back to face him, smiling. “No, I know it’s you—which is where Hatchert and I differ.”

  “What would I have to do to convince you you were wrong?”

  “Well, alibis always work for me. They’re not a hundred percent, but you have someone vouching for your whereabouts at a certain time, personally, I tend to look elsewhere for the perpetrator.”

  “Yeah? Like what kind of alibi are we talking about?”

  “Well, I suppose . . . if you and I were . . . hanging out in a public place for a good portion of time one night . . . and meanwhile something happened on Meenigeesis at the same time, I’d probably be convinced.”

  “You talking about a date, Struska?”

  She shrugged. “Sure. Why not? But you’d have to make it pretty convincing . . .”

  It was a pretty odd thing to suggest, really—going on a date. Not something he did over much. He liked women plenty; he’d just never gotten close to many. He’d even lived with a few over the years—brief circlings and skirmishes that usually ended with a lot of steam and ruckus-raising, mostly on their part, while he sat out on the cane rocker or repaired a canoe and waited for it to pass like a thunderhead rolling inland; he waited for them to leave. He couldn’t recall ever telling any of them “I love you,” though he might have muttered “Gi zah gin” at a few, which was essentially the same thing, minus the part where they knew what he was saying.

  Still, this idea of a date with Struska, even as an alibi—thinking about it after he said good night and he continued his walk back to the lake—grew more and more intriguing all way home. And then, as he stepped up onto his porch and the familiar floorboards creaked, he turned back to get a look at the stars painted on the still surface of the Meenigeesis and it came to him that she had pointed out Jupiter back on the riverwalk and he’d sat right there beside her and gazed up at it, tipped his chin up, defenselessly, vulnerably exposing his jugular, his carotid artery, and hell if he could picture putting his hand up for protection, covering his throat. He’d just sat there with his hands jammed in his jeans pockets, not acting “crusted” at all, as that loon Crystal would have said.

  I’ll be damned, he thought. He wondered what it meant, if anything. Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe he was getting sloppy, no longer SEAL material. Or maybe it was her.

  Maybe.

  NEXT MORNING, RIGHT AFTER HIS SWIM, he made a call to Glenn Landry up at Camp Grayling: “Roger Drinkwater. Listen, you guys’re still interested in getting me to teach the demo units, right?”

  “Definitely.” Landry sounded shocked, suddenly awake.

  Roger told him he thought he saw a way that he’d be willing to do it.

  50

  IT WASN’T EASY for Mark to get the day off, but he wanted to take Courtney up to Sleeping Bear Dunes. He had to do some real finagling with Keith and juggling schedules with the two other under-boys, local jerks with attitude who were less than cooperative. But eventually he worked it out and so finally they were going to have a real date. They were going to be seen together in public.
In the daylight, with talking and getting to know each other. Doing polite date-y things, not just screwing around. Sure, there was a lot of wild, rolling ground up there, off the trails, lots of nooks and crannies where you could hide and hump, but he wasn’t really thinking they’d be fooling around today. Well, maybe in the car, on the way back, they could pull over in the National Forest somewhere. But mostly, he just wanted to have a date date. And because she was so geared up about “adventure” all the time, he thought the whole dune thing, the biking, would at least keep her from dozing off.

  When Courtney finally showed, she was wearing her Tevas. “It’s rugged terrain up there,” he explained. “You’re gonna need better shoes. Running shoes, at least. Hiking boots if you got them.”

  She shrugged, looking off toward the boats in the marina. “Whatever. Look, I just came to tell you I can’t go.”

  “What?” They’d been planning this for over a week.

  “I’m not going. I can’t today.”

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” he said, though truthfully, he sort of could. He kept staring at her, those wintry blue eyes squinting off toward the marina, the sweep of her hand, a habit of hers, through her ponytail, as if she were annoyed with her own hair. And she wouldn’t look at him. “So, what—you’re just standing me up?”

  Her nose wrinkled like he’d cut one. “I never get that. What’s that even supposed to mean—‘standing you up’? I’m here telling you. How is that standing you up?”

  “You show up half an hour after you say you’re showing up, just to tell me you’re not going. I say that’s standing me up, yeah.”

  “Well,” she said, looking at her watch, “I don’t.”

  For a moment, he listened to the clang of rigging and turned to watch it, the spiring masts and the arcing gulls. Without looking back at her, he asked her what she had to do today that was so important.

  “I don’t owe you an explanation,” she said. “It’s a free country.”