Crow Lake

by Mary Lawson

  Jake had first throw, by virtue of it being his game and his knife. “Stand at attention,” he said. His eyes were fixed on Arthur’s left foot and he spoke in a hushed voice. He had a great feeling for the drama of the moment, had Jake. “Keep your feet together. Don’t move them, no matter what.”

  He took the knife by the blade and began swinging it loosely between finger and thumb. His forefinger rested easily in the blood runnel. He seemed scarcely to be holding the knife at all. Arthur watched the blade. In spite of himself, he felt his left foot curl inwards.

  “Keep it still,” Jake said. “I’m warning you.”

  Arthur forced his foot to lie flat. The thought came into his mind—not drifting gently in but appearing suddenly, fully formed, like a cold hard round little pebble—that Jake hated him. The thought had never occurred to him before but suddenly, there it was. Though he couldn’t imagine a reason. Surely he was the one who should have done the hating.

  The knife swung for a minute more, and then, in one swift graceful movement, Jake lifted his arm and threw, and the blade circled, drawing swift shining arcs in the air, and then buried itself deeply in the ground a couple of inches from the outside edge of Arthur’s foot. A beautiful throw.

  Jake’s eyes left the ground and he grinned at Arthur. “That’s one,” he said. “Your turn. Move your foot out to the knife.”

  Arthur moved his foot outwards to the edge of the knife and drew the blade from the ground. The skin on the top of his left foot was stinging, though nothing had touched it. He straightened up. Jake stood facing him, still grinning, arms at his sides, feet together. Eyes bright. Excited, but without fear. Without fear because— and Arthur saw this suddenly too—Jake knew that Arthur would never risk throwing really close.

  Arthur imagined his mother’s face if he were to prove Jake wrong and slice off his toe. He imagined what his father would do to him if he were even to catch him playing this stupid game. He couldn’t think how he’d allowed Jake to persuade him. He must have been mad.

  “Come on,” Jake said. “Come on come on come on! Close as you can!”

  Arthur held the knife by the blade, as Jake had done, but it was hard to relax his fingers enough to let it swing. He’d thrown a knife before and he wasn’t too bad a shot—in fact a few years back he and his friend Carl Luntz from the next farm had painted a target on the wall of the Luntzes’ hay barn and held competitions, which Arthur usually won—but the outcome had never mattered. Now, the chance that he would hit that narrow blue-veined foot seemed overwhelmingly high. And then, all at once, he saw the answer—so obvious that only someone as dim-witted as he must surely be wouldn’t have seen it earlier. Throw wide. Not so wide that Jake would guess he was doing it deliberately, but wide enough to bring the game to a safe and rapid close. Make Jake do the splits in three or four steps. Jake would jeer but he was going to jeer anyway, and the game would be over, and Jake would have to leave him alone.

  Arthur felt his muscles start to relax. The knife swung more easily. He took a deep breath and threw.

  The knife circled clumsily once in the air and then landed on its side eighteen inches or so from Jake’s foot.

  Jake said, “That’s pathetic. Take it again. It’s gotta stick in the ground or it doesn’t count.”

  Arthur picked up the knife, swung again, and threw, more confident now, and this time the knife embedded itself in the ground ten inches from Jake’s little toe.

  Jake made a sound of disgust. He moved his foot out to the blade and picked it up. He looked disappointed and pitying, which was fine by Arthur.

  “Okay,” Jake said. “My turn.”

  He took the knife by the blade and swung it back and forth, looking briefly at Arthur, and when their eyes met there was a slight pause—just a fraction of a second—during which the knife hesitated in its lazy swing and then picked up its rhythm again. Thinking back on it afterward, Arthur was never able to decide whether there was any significance in that pause—whether in that instant of eye contact Jake had seen into his mind and guessed what he intended to do.

  At the time he didn’t think anything, because there was no time to think. Jake lifted the knife with the same swift movement as before and threw it, but harder than before, and faster, so that it was only a shining blur as it spun through the air. Arthur found himself staring down at the knife embedded in his foot. There was a surreal split second before the blood started to well up and then up it came, dark and thick as syrup.

  Arthur looked at Jake and saw that he was staring at the knife. His expression was one of surprise, and this was something that Arthur wondered about later too. Was Jake surprised because he had never considered the possibility that he might be a less-than-perfect shot? Did he have that much confidence in himself, that little self-doubt?

  Or was he merely surprised at how easy it was to give in to an impulse, and carry through the thought that lay in your mind? Simply to do whatever you wanted to do, and damn the consequences.

  chapter

  ONE

  Firefighters Battle Bushfire

  Lost Bear Hunter Located by Plane: In Bush 40 Hours

  —Temiskaming Speaker, May 1957

  On a small farm about two miles outside Struan there lived a beautiful woman. She was tall and willowy with a lot of fair hair that she drew back into a thick plait and tied with whatever came to hand—a bit of frayed ribbon, an elastic band, an old piece of string. On Sundays she rolled it into a shining ball at the nape of her neck and fastened it somehow so that it wouldn’t fall down during church. Her name was Laura Dunn. Laura, her own name, soft and beautiful like she was; Dunn, her husband’s name, solid and lumpen like her husband. Arthur Dunn was a farmer, a big, heavyset man with a neck at least twice the width of his wife’s, and to Ian, sitting with his parents three pews behind, he looked about as exciting as dishwater.

  Ian had first noticed Laura Dunn when he was fourteen—she must have been around all his life but that was the year he became aware of her. She would have been about thirty at the time. She and Arthur had three children, or possibly four. Ian wasn’t sure—he’d never paid any attention to the children.

  For a year he made do with watching her in church on Sundays—the Dunns came into town for church every Sunday without fail. Then, when he was fifteen, Ian’s father said that he should get a job working Saturdays and holidays and start saving up for his further education, the theory being that you appreciated things more if you’d helped to pay for them yourself. Ian couldn’t recall anyone asking him if he wanted more education—it was another of the many assumptions people made about his life—but in this particular case he didn’t argue. He got on his bike and cycled out to the Dunns’ farm.

  The farm was an oddity in the Struan area because Arthur Dunn still worked his land with horses. It wasn’t because he couldn’t afford a tractor—the farm was prosperous enough—and it wasn’t through any religious convictions like the Mennonites farther south. When asked about it Arthur would study the ground thoughtfully, as if the question had never occurred to him before, and then say that he guessed he liked horses. No one bought that explanation, though. They all believed that Arthur had been put off tractors years earlier, when his father got one and drove it down to the lower forty—where he rolled it into a ditch and killed himself, all within two hours of its arrival on the farm. Even the youngest and least intelligent of the plow horses would have known better than to fall into a ditch. The day after the funeral Arthur got rid of the tractor and harnessed up the team again and he’d been plodding along behind them ever since.

  He was out in the fields when Ian cycled up to the farm. Ian saw him, off in the distance, being towed along by two great heavy-footed animals like a picture postcard of a time gone by. Ian leaned his bike up against the pump, which he guessed would only be used to fill the water trough—all but the most remote farms in the area had running water, and electricity too; they’d been connected up to the grid two years ago, when the power li
nes were run in for the sawmill.

  Ian picked his way between the chickens to the back door. There was a front door on the other side of the house, but he figured no one ever used it. It would lead into the sitting room, where probably no one ever sat, whereas the back door led into the kitchen, which was where life would be lived. He could hear Laura Dunn talking as he climbed the three steps to the door. The inner door was open, letting the sound of voices out, but the screen door was closed, making it difficult to see in. She was scolding one of the kids, by the sound of it, though Ian couldn’t make out the words because a baby was crying. Her voice wasn’t sharp and sarcastic, as Ian’s mother’s voice tended to be when she was annoyed about something. It was exasperated, but still gentle and light, or so it seemed to Ian.

  There was a lull in the baby’s crying and Ian, standing on the top step with his hand lifted, ready to knock on the door, heard Laura Dunn say, “Well for goodness sake, Carter, couldn’t you share it? Couldn’t you let her have a turn?” And a boy’s voice said, “She never shares hers!” And a little girl’s voice wailed, “I do so!” and the baby started to howl again. There was the sound of a chair being scuffed along the floor and then the screen door was flung open, nearly knocking Ian off the step, and a boy charged out. He gave Ian a startled, angry glance before jumping off the steps and disappearing around the side of the house. He looked about twelve years old and had the sort of face, Ian thought, that made you want to hit him. The sullen, sulky face of a kid who thinks the world’s against him.

  The screen door slammed closed again and Laura Dunn appeared behind it. She gave a start when she saw Ian standing there and said, “Oh! Oh … hello! It’s Ian, isn’t it? Dr. Christopherson’s son?”

  “Yes,” Ian said. “Um, yes … um, I’ve come to talk to Mr. Dunn … about a job. I wondered if he’d be taking on anyone this summer. I mean, full-time this summer, but maybe Saturdays right away, and then full-time once the holidays start.”

  He felt himself flushing. He was gabbling, because she was so near, just inches away behind the screen door, and she was looking at him, directly and only at him, with those wonderful soft eyes, eyes that he’d noticed always seemed shadowed, as if they contained deep, unfathomable mysteries, or—the possibility occurred to him now, what with the crying of the baby and the behavior of the kids—as if she were tired all the time.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, well yes, I’m sure he’d be glad of some help. Just a minute, Ian… . I’ll come out. Just a minute.”

  She disappeared. Ian heard her say something to somebody and then she reappeared with a baby in her arms. A little girl was behind her, but she shrank back when she saw Ian standing there. He moved down off the steps and Laura came out, bouncing the baby gently up and down on her hip. The baby was fat and sexless, like all babies, and had round, unconvincing tears rolling down its cheeks. It and Ian looked at each other and the baby gave a sort of snort, as if it didn’t think much of what it saw, and put its thumb in its mouth.

  “There now,” Laura said, brushing the top of its head with her lips. “That’s better. This is Ian. Say hello to Ian.”

  “Hi,” Ian said. He smiled warily at the baby. It stared back and then curled up and buried its face in the folds of Laura’s dress, its free hand clutching possessively at her breast. Ian quickly looked down at his feet.

  “The thing is, you’ll really need to speak to Arthur,” Laura was saying. “He’s plowing at the moment.” She nodded in the direction of the picture-postcard view of her husband. “If you’d like to go out and have a word with him … just along that track there.” She looked doubtfully at Ian’s bike. “Only I think you’d be better to walk. The horses cut up the path a bit… . But I’m sure he’ll be pleased—it’s so hard to get help. Men nowadays don’t know how to deal with horses, you see.” She smiled at him. “But maybe you like them. Is that why you’ve come?”

  “Well, sort of,” Ian said. He hadn’t given the work of the farm—the actual job he was applying for—a thought. Arthur Dunn could have hitched his plow to a moose, for all he cared. At the moment all his attention was taken up with trying not to look at the baby, which had now, unbelievably, wormed its hand inside its mother’s dress and was tugging at what it found in there, all the while making fretful smacking noises with its lips.

  Laura gently disengaged the small hand. “Shush,” she said to the baby. She smiled at Ian again, seeming not to notice his embarrassment. “Come back and let me know what he says, all right?”

  Ian nodded, and turned, his mind filled to the brim with the nearness of her, her overwhelming presence, and made his way down the muddy track to where Arthur Dunn was plodding up and down the furrows behind his horses. Arthur Dunn, so solid, so dull, so obviously unworthy of such a wife. Arthur Dunn, who, when he saw Ian approaching, halted his team and came across the field to meet him, and said yeah, sure, he could use a hand, and would Ian like to start this coming Saturday?

  Ian’s grandfather had been Struan’s first resident doctor and when he’d answered the “Doctor Wanted” advertisement they’d put in a Toronto medical journal, the grateful townspeople built him a house just a block west of Main Street, a couple of hundred yards from the lake. It was a handsome wooden structure, white-painted and green-trimmed, with lawns on all four sides and a white picket fence surrounding the lawns. In the early days there was a neat white stable for the horse and buggy twenty yards from the house. Later the first Dr. Christopherson acquired a Buick Roadster, which became as much a part of him as his old black leather medical bag, and a garage was added beside the stable. He kept the horse for use in winter, when the back roads around Struan were impassable by anything except a sled. His son, the present Dr. Christopherson (who also drove a Buick, though his was the sedan), was sometimes heard lamenting the absence of the sled even now, given the state of the town’s one and only snowplow.

  As much as anything else, the building of the house had been a statement of faith on the part of the people of Struan. Until then they’d had to go to New Liskeard if they required a doctor, and if you needed medical help badly enough to make the journey to New Liskeard, the odds were that you were in no state to make the journey. Getting their own doctor was a sign that the town had arrived. In the brief interval between applying the final coat of paint and the arrival of Dr. Christopherson, the people of Struan found excuses to walk past the house and admire it. You looked at that house and you thought, this is no fly-by-night northern settlement sprung up around a sawmill; any town that can afford to build its doctor a house like this is here to stay.

  Ian was aware of most of this personal and civic history, and as far as he was concerned his grandfather must have been raving mad. Imagine voluntarily leaving a city like Toronto to come to a hick town like Struan. And though you could excuse his grandfather’s mistake on the grounds of ignorance—he couldn’t have had any real idea what he was coming to—there was no such excuse for Ian’s father. He had been born and brought up in Struan, and had then escaped, but after living in Toronto for almost a decade while he took his medical degree and worked in the Sick Children’s Hospital, he had returned to Struan to take over his father’s practice. Ian couldn’t understand it. Why would anyone do such a thing? What was Struan, apart from a sawmill? A sorry bunch of stores lined up along a dusty main street, with nothing in them anyone would want to buy. A couple of churches. The Hudson’s Bay Company. A post office. A bank. Harper’s Restaurant. Ben’s Bar. A hotel—because, incredibly, some people chose to come to Struan for their holidays—and a little clutch of holiday cottages down by the lake. The lake was the town’s only asset, in Ian’s opinion. It was large—fifty miles long, north to south, and almost twenty miles across— and deep, and very clear, surrounded on all sides by low granite hills studded with spruce and wind-blasted pines. Its shore was so ragged with bays and inlets and islands that you could spend your life exploring and never find half of them. When Ian dreamed of leaving the town, which he did all t
he time nowadays, the thought of leaving the lake was the only thing that bothered him. The lake and Laura Dunn.

  He parked his bike up against the veranda of the house, then climbed the wide wooden steps to the porch and went in. The door to his father’s office was closed and he could hear voices behind it, but the waiting room was empty, so Ian sat down on one of the dozen or so battered old chairs lining the walls and flicked through a two-year-old copy of Reader’s Digest while he thought about Laura Dunn. The way strands of her hair escaped from their elastic band and drifted around her face. Those shadowed eyes. Her breasts. He’d noticed— he couldn’t help noticing—that on the front of her dress there had been two wet circles where her breasts had leaked milk.

  The door to the office opened and Ted Pickett, owner of Pickett’s Hardware, came out with his arm in a sling. He nodded at Ian and grimaced and Ian grimaced back. Patients entered the house by a side door, but both the office and the waiting room were right off the hall, so all his life he’d been used to seeing people going in and out in varying degrees of anguish, and he’d got his responses down pat.

  “He doesn’t think it’s broken,” Mr. Pickett said.

  “That’s lucky,” Ian said.

  “He thinks it’s just sprained. Hurts like hell though.”

  Ian nodded sympathetically. “Did you fall off the ladder?” There was a ladder on wheels in the hardware store that Mr. Pickett scooted around on, reaching for nails or nuts or brackets or hinges, an accident waiting to happen.

  “Yeah,” Mr. Pickett said, looking surprised. “How did you know?”