Practical Sins for Cold Climates

by Shelley Costa

  4

  They heard the meeting well before they got to Camp Sajo’s main lodge, a low sprawling cedar-shingled building in a clearing at the center of the camp, with rows of crude plywood window shutters that swung upwards and were propped open with sticks. Mosquitoes dusted at the screens, and Val swatted at the ones that landed on her as she followed Decker up the single swaybacked step to the wide porch that seemed to wrap around the entire building. He chose that moment to whisper that they were stepping into a perfect storm of all the lake’s factions: cottagers, youth camp owners, permanent residents, outfitters, and Ojibways, the local Native American tribe.

  A heavyset older woman in loose black capris was pulling weeds in a small vegetable garden. “Kay Stanley, the camp cook,” Decker told her. Val watched her gently release a handful of weeds into a bushel basket, unaware of the raised voices sailing out through the double screen doors. Someone was wielding a gavel to bring the group back to order.

  Val and Decker went inside.

  What hit her first was the smell of nachos, old fish, and Deep Woods Off spread among the fifty or so men and women, reminding her of a really lousy weekend she spent tent camping in the Catskills about twelve years ago with a puritanical boyfriend who thought Madonna was the Antichrist.

  Benches were set out like pews in a Quaker meeting house, and it was clear that people had come to the meeting straight from whatever else they were doing on the lake. A trail of sawdust boot prints led to one tight group of workmen who stood around with their arms crossed, daring everyone else to make sense.

  Decker steered her around to the side of the great room. Cottagers with pastel t-shirts that said “Canoe Head” or “The Near North” were sitting in proper little rows, tired from a day of blueberry picking and birdwatching, their hands clasped around their crossed knees. They had an expectant look, like someone was going to give a talk on edible mushrooms or the virtues of composting.

  It was hard to tell the outfitters from the youth camp owners. They both sported straps to hold their glasses in place, like they had to be prepared for anything nature could, at any conceivable moment, dish out, and wore nylon cargo pants that were the kind of sartorial nightmare you can zip off at the ankle, knee, thigh, and hip, although what you then do with all the litter of pants parts, Val couldn’t tell.

  What Val figured were the local Ojibways didn’t have to wear shirts that stated a damn thing.

  There was an older guy up at the front with flyaway gray hair that appeared to have its own agenda, who was wearing a shirt with a collar and a bolo tie. There was a nondescript woman wearing a summer suit who seemed to have been directly airlifted from Toronto, and Val had thirty bad seconds wondering if she was a competitor, someone from HarperCollins Canada, say, whose own briefcase held a sheaf of papers requiring Charles Cable’s signature, too—although the expression on her face seemed to shift from a kind of hard-won bureaucratic patience to a low-level snarkiness that said let them yammer on all they want, these goddamn lake trout, but I know the law.

  From a room off the side of the great room stepped a woman who spotted Decker right away. She was a tall redhead, her hair in shoulder-length layered waves, her hand pushing absently at a forelock as she came over to them, smiling. She was wearing a long artsy shift made out of thin cotton in a pattern of dripping teals and ochres. Val recognized her as an older version of the redhead from the Hathaway family photo album.

  A quick look told Val she was braless, but then, breasts that trim didn’t need the packaging, and there was just a hint of French-cut panty line that said this was a gal who still shopped at Victoria’s Secret. She had those pretty Brit lips that were shaped like the most delicate lines of India ink. Her eyes were pale green, her collarbone awash with sun freckles, all twenty finger and toenails were unpolished, and her nose was severe.

  She was beautiful.

  Caroline Selkirk gave Decker a peck on the cheek, which he returned, all very careful brotherly love, and then she shook Val’s hand. “Peter Hathaway.” She leaned into Val, raising her voice in order to be heard over the meeting that was escalating all around them. “He’s your boss?”

  Val slid a look at Decker, who was fanning himself complacently with his hat, waiting to hear how she answered. “Right. My boss, my colleague…” Where should she stop? Certainly before the events of last night, when at 5:25 he had spontaneously asked her to dinner so he could give her some final instructions about the trip.

  Over drinks and bruschetta he had presented her with a set of keys and a raft of papers. She would be staying at the Hathaway family cottage—no renters right now, and his nieces, those lovely little freeloaders Muffy and Lana, left the lake early to go to a Lightning Dust concert in Montreal. The fridge is stocked and the girls say they changed the sheets.

  He’s assuming there’s still furniture and pots and pans—he hadn’t been to the cottage in four years, not since his lady friend at the time came across a garter snake in a cake pan. That did it for her. And as for him, Val noticed, since he started dressing like the shepherd of SoHo, he was suddenly having to go very far away—to places like Crete and the Galapagos—in order to work on his “centeredness.” In that strange Hathaway mind, getting to the family cottage in Canada didn’t involve enough suffering to bring him peace of mind.

  Caroline went on, “Peter and I had a thing about twenty years ago, but then…” Wrinkling her nose, she waved it away with a secretive smile like she had cast a charm over it and happily moved on. How old was Caroline? Forty? Little crow’s feet, her skin a final creamy softness before the comedy team of sag and droop make their entrance. Val’s own friends in their forties enjoyed trotting out their sexual histories for the general entertainment, either because nothing much was happening in the here and now, or because discretion was just another thing that didn’t matter very much when you come right down to it, like chewing with your mouth closed.

  Pretty soon, Val could see herself collaring total strangers in Times Square and telling them about leaving the restaurant last night with Peter, both of them awash with wine and remembrance, chattering away as he walked her home. And into the building. And into the apartment. And into her bed. Daria had never happened. Cormac was pure fabrication. They actually found themselves saying things like Oh, Peter, Peter, and Darling, I’ve missed you so much, words they would slash mercilessly wherever they found them in a manuscript, but not before they’d call them out jubilantly to each other. Val, wait ’til you hear this one!

  Suddenly all that twaddle coming from their own lips sounded like the mysteries of the universe revealed. At one point she was weeping. At one point he looked like a man who had staggered into an oasis with just one breath left in him. That patchouli smell of the man, the glint of his earrings in the candlelight—she never wanted to be anywhere else in the world. Suddenly he was leaving, she was retreating without going anywhere at all, and she wondered whether that same old gauze of idiocy and equivocation was back. And she had gotten up at five a.m. for a flight. Peter and I had a thing about twenty years ago, but then…Well, Caroline Selkirk, we had a thing less than twenty-four hours ago.

  “It’s getting nasty,” Decker murmured.

  Caroline just shook her head fondly at the meeting, like a first-grade teacher doing playground duty, watching the little scamps get out of hand.

  “Which one’s Cable?” Val asked Decker. He angled his body around until he could pick Charles Cable out of the crowd, drawing Val’s head closer to him so she could see where he was pointing. Charles Cable was up at the front, the older man with the flyaway hair like a stand of sea oats in a hurricane.

  The goal was in sight.

  Val felt herself settle into her game head. More people were standing. Only the most elderly—bony in their straw hats and fishing caps spangled with fishing flies—were still seated, part of a generation that still waited decorously for the opportunity to vot
e, assemble, worship, make their point, or storm a beachhead. All the others were youthful philistines.

  “Well, there won’t be any more wilderness if we don’t put a stop to these damn—”

  Someone topped him. “And what about the lumber mill, hey?”

  “—to these damn—”

  “Martin,” a voice shouted over the din. “Martin, is that you?” Like he wanted to pinpoint the exact location to operate his handheld rocket launcher.

  “How are we supposed to make a living? Tell me that.”

  “If you can’t live here, then fucking move, I say.”

  Collective gasps from cottagers.

  “Move? Move? My whole family was living here, winter and summer, for three generations before you even got here, you silly piece of summertime shit.”

  “Now, Dixon—”

  The gavel was half-hearted, like a woodpecker on a bug-free tree. “Look, the town council will listen to all—”

  “Shut up, you hypocrite—”

  “—all sides of the issue before we—”

  “What’s the issue? Tell me that. What one, single, end-of-all-time issue are you bunch of two-faced councilors going to—”

  Generalized huff was setting in. “I’m an elected official—” he was struggling to get to his feet, like he was tripping over his own bluster, “—working for the public good—”

  “What about the good of the lake?” a cottager piped up.

  “The lake pays the taxes!” A Canoe Head jabbed the air.

  A workman rounded on him. “The town damn well services the lake.”

  “Well, if that’s what you want to call it,” someone sneered, which led to a minute of loud incoherence. Then the pushing started, and the sudden eruption didn’t prepare anybody for Quaker pews falling like sinners all around them. A few polite old cottagers started to struggle to their feet, perhaps to register an official protest in the general anarchy. Val watched what she could make out of Charles Cable at the front of the crowd, his head steadily moving toward the back door, his arm hurling fed-up, Zeus-like bolts behind him.

  Val pulled the papers out of her briefcase and headed into the mêlée, ignoring Decker’s “Wait!” and clutching her briefcase like a lifeline out of Hell, keeping the flyaway hair in her sights. An outfitter whose pants were zipped off at the thigh fell into her, but she stayed on her feet, driven by the need to locate once and for all the space junk scribbler whose signature was the only thing that stood between Valjean Cameron and her own almighty bed on 51st Street in a place where nobody had to count loon chicks at all, ever.

  The gaveling got louder, like a jackhammer in her brain, and she was making real headway toward the back door, elbowing a brawny workman in painter pants, when there were strangled cries, and someone yelled, “Give me that, you sellout,” sellout, sellout, sellout to the great urban whore, and it wouldn’t strike her until much later that the last thing she thought of as the brawny workman grabbed the gavel and lost his balance, his fist hurtling toward Val’s face, was Daria the baldheaded Flottner.

  5

  Val sat up, groaning, and something fell away from her face. Her right cheek, her eye, her nose? Nothing would surprise her. Groping around, her hand settled on an ice pack. Then her fingertips dabbed at the place where she had last seen her right eye, only now it was sunk somewhere between her abnormally large cheek and her eyebrow, which seemed somewhat lower than before. Like every cell on the right side of her face was pumped full of cheap whiskey and then ignited. Her tongue slid quickly over her teeth—all present, none loose. In her worst nightmares she had a mouth full of loose teeth, like a honky-tonk piano whose ivories had seen better days.

  She looked around, started small, took note of the couch where she’d been deposited. It was a leftover from the ’70s, Scandinavian style, with a screaming Bargello fabric that felt pretty much like the inside of her head. She was in the office at Camp Sajo, judging by the rolltop desk and file cabinets. Someone had lighted the oil lamp, which let off a faint citronella scent. Outside the open window, it was dusk, so she hadn’t been out for long. She heard feet crunching on a trail nearby, in a way that sounded like normal life resumed, and her one good eye saw a bat streaking by. Her eyelashes felt like they were gummed to her face. She checked her hands in the dim light: no blood. So aside from a face like Orson Welles and—she looked down at herself—the nachos she was wearing, she was good to go.

  Val held onto the doorway and stepped up into the great room. The gaslight chandelier was burning, and Decker, Caroline, and the camp cook, Kay, were cleaning up. Now that all the others were gone, she could really see the place. It had to be the heart of whatever this camp had once been, with the open rafters, cavernous old stone fireplace at the far end, trophy cases, and camp memorabilia. Large framed pictures of campers in their cabin groups were all over the walls.

  The year 1932 was closest to where Val was standing. The girls with their Carole Lombard bobbed locks, the boys with their hair cut long in front and skimmed back without brilliantine—kind of like Decker’s, all these years later. All their squints in the sunlight, their grins at the photographer, arms filled with paddles and each other, before a World War would keep some of them from ever coming back. It meant something to have them live forever on the walls of Camp Sajo, preserved in the soft amber light.

  “Hey, you’re up.” Decker looked over at her, setting a long bench back on its low feet.

  “I wasn’t exactly taking a nap.” From behind the ice pack clamped to the right side of her face, she managed a small smile. She wondered whether Decker had singlehandedly moved her to the couch, or whether it took all three of them to do the job, but at that moment in time she couldn’t take another blow, so she didn’t ask.

  Caroline handed him her broom and came over. She braced Val’s shoulders, and looked her over optimistically. “Well…” She finally pursed her lips, and they both watched a clod of nachos flop from her chest to the floor.

  Val couldn’t help a mighty sigh. “Damn, I’m hungry.”

  “Come on, we’ll get something to eat.”

  Val squinted at her. “What happened?”

  Caroline’s neck got even longer as she dropped her shoulders. “I adjourned the meeting after you went down.”

  “You threw them out, is what you did,” said Kay, holding a dustpan while Decker swept broken glass into it.

  “Well, I’d never seen such bad behavior. Dixon Foote, Martin, the others.”

  Sweeping, Decker didn’t look at her. “And it’s getting worse, Caro.” His voice was quiet, and Val watched him move the broom in wide, precise arcs, like he was trying to outline the shape of the problem. Val grabbed a thirty-gallon trash can with one hand and dragged it over to them as Caroline said nothing for a minute and went over to the table at the front, near the fireplace.

  “Well, what am I supposed to do, Wade? Not let them meet here?”

  Kay emptied the dustpan, her fingers suddenly pushing gently at Val’s swollen cheek like she was testing a cake for doneness. Her nose was flat and broad, her eyes dark, and she had the kind of face that seemed to be smiling even in repose.

  “Three days,” she wrinkled her nose at Val, “the swelling will go down. Keep icing it.”

  “Well?” Caroline turned with a sheaf of loose papers in her hands.

  “I don’t know.” Decker seemed restless.

  Caroline stacked the papers, shaking her head. “Just let them all fester in their own little places, without ever seeing one another, without—”

  “I don’t know!” He sent the broom sliding across the floor, then he dropped onto one of the long benches and ran his hands over his face. “They don’t do anything for you. They break your glasses, they eat your food, they damage your stuff, and when it comes right down to it, Caroline, they won’t do a damn thing to save your camp.” He swiveled around
to look at her, straightening up. “No, dear, saving your camp is the very last thing they’d all get together—somewhere—anywhere—to have a meeting about—”

  “That’s not true,” she said coolly, brushing past him.

  “—and you’d be a fool to think otherwise.”

  Caroline handed Val the stack of papers. “I’m sorry, Val. These are yours.” It was Charles Cable’s blank contract, warped from food that had soaked into the pages, and smeared with the prints of work boots. Caroline turned slowly to face Decker. “I know these people, Wade,” she said with her chin high. “There isn’t one of them who’d hurt me.”

  “Caroline, you remember them from when you were a girl. From when you were Trey Selkirk’s kid. You and Leslie. But you don’t know who they’ve become—”

  “Why are you talking this way?”

  “One of them killed Leslie.”

  “That’s crazy. Someone broke in. Someone broke in and killed Leslie, Wade, and broke things, and stole—”

  Wade looked hard at her. “The door was open.” Val could tell it was old, old ground. And a futile effort.

  “You’re never going to let it go, are you?” Caroline Selkirk stood in the great room of her lodge, where Val had been knocked out in the brawl, where Kay was moving a broken bench into the shadows, where beer bottles were smashed underfoot, and food had been swept into the garbage can, and it was only then that she looked broken to Val. Broken and an easy ten years older suddenly.

  “She was beaten up, thrown through a glass window, and fell two stories to the rocks.”

  “I know!” Caroline yelled at him, her voice filling the shadows.

  Looking squarely at his sister-in-law, he said quietly, “Kind of hard to let it go.”

  So much for a Northwoods misadventure, thought Val, trying to breathe through the image of Leslie Decker’s murder. Something worse than black bears and hypothermia was at work here. Her eyes slid to Caroline Selkirk. In the great room at Camp Sajo, where the campers of 1932 had talked about hemlines and Greta Garbo and the Lindbergh baby, the only movement was the rise and fall of Caroline’s chest.