Death on a Small, Dark Lake

by Lenny Everson

  Chapter 15

  I woke up alone, aching and disoriented. It was raining lightly, but the wind had dropped to almost nothing.

  I got out of the car and determined from the moss on the trees, the aches in my bones, and the clock on the dashboard that it was after three in the afternoon. I was still in the parking lot of Hawk Lake Lodge.

  There are four Factors of Misery in canoeing. They are rain, wind, cold, and bugs. You can have a good trip in spite of any one of these factors. Sometimes, in spite of two of them, if you’re eager, and if they don’t last too long. It didn’t look like a good day for canoeing. It was chill, it was raining, and the wind was getting up again.

  I phoned Aisha.

  “No more fries,” she said, after I said hello. “Have a toasted bacon and tomato sandwich or something.”

  I erased fries from my mind. The last bunch was probably sticking themselves to my arteries anyway. “I’ll do that,” I said.

  “I’ve always been concerned about you paddling alone,” she said, “but I’m not sure the company you’re keeping lately is any better. Did they find out who killed that guy?”

  “Actually,” I said, “they might just decide that George died accidentally”

  “You don’t seem to believe that.”

  “Can I tell you about it when I get home?”

  “You’re coming home tonight? I’ll have to throw all my boyfriends out.”

  I did as Aisha suggested, finding someone to cook and then talking her into frying some bacon. It was just as well; Kele paddled George’s canoe up to the dock as the toast popped. Ned and Patrick paddled their duct-taped canoe right afterwards. They were wet and cold. And tired. I told the cook to keep the griddle hot - there were customers coming in. The cook, who was very pregnant, wore a shapeless polyester dress with faded palm trees on it. She had a long face with bright blue eyes and straight blond hair tied behind her head. She smiled and nodded, but said nothing.

  The three of them came into the café still not fully straightened up from the long paddle. They didn’t have much to say to each other, I noticed. Kele looked around, then came over to my table. He looked me in the eye. “I’m cold,” he said. I got up and got him a hot chocolate. While I was waiting at the counter, Patrick came up and ordered two bowls of soup. Patrick looked at the hot chocolate and ordered a couple, for himself and Ned. And hamburgers.

  I called to Kele, “you want a hamburg?”

  “Two,” he called back. I ordered two hamburgers for him and a small Pepsi for me, and returned to the table to wait. Ned and Patrick came over and joined us.

  “Where’s Samuel?” Ned asked, sipping his hot chocolate. Before I could answer, the cook called, and Ned went up to get two bowls of straight-out-of-the can Scotch Broth soup.

  When Ned and Patrick were working on their bowls of soup and I was on my Pepsi, I told Ned, “I haven’t seen Samuel since we got back. I guess he went to rest, same as I did.”

  “Rough route?” Kele asked.

  “Upwind, of course, and a long portage.”

  “I’ve always wanted to try that way,” Kele said, “but I heard it was rough.”

  “Swamp,” I said, “and hills and mud, then more of the same. How was your trip back?”

  “We got headwind most of the way to Hawk Lake,” Ned said, “then the wind stopped and it started to rain.”

  There was a moment of silent commiseration among fellow canoeists before the cook called that the food was ready. Kele and Patrick got up to get it, and came back with hamburgs for the other three and fries for me. Surprisingly, the phone didn’t ring at that moment, so there was a faint hope Aisha might not find out.

  There was silence as we ate. Not being social, I looked out at the lake, where a light but steady rain was falling. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Kele stealing some of my fries.

  “Is that the Mounties?” I asked, nodding towards the door that faced the parking lot. When the others had turned, I grabbed Kele’s second hamburg and took a bite out of it.

  “Must have been mistaken,” I mumbled when they turned back, still trying to swallow the chunk of Kele’s hamburg. Kele looked at his mutilated burger then went back to eating.

  Some women might look at four guys, tired from canoeing, sitting at a plywood table covered with a red-check plastic cover. They might see these guys all rugged and silent huddled over their food and think, “Jeez, wonderful how them guys can sit there in almost total silence and male-bond like that.”

  It certainly wasn’t true in this case. I took my mind as far as I could get from that table, recalling quiet summer nights beside small lakes bright with starshine and the sparks from my campfire rising into the velvet sky. Alone.

  And curling up to sleep inside my little tent, wondering if it would rain the next morning so I could get some pictures.

  Outside the window, a big Toyota sport-utility with provincial-police markings backed up towards the dock. Two cops in yellow rain gear got out. One went to the dock, while the other came up to the lodge.

  “Hi,” Seth said, looking around. “Anyone want to tell me which canoe was George’s?”

  Kele got up, put on the wet jacket that he’d had over the back of his chair, and went out with Seth.

  “I’ll go see if I can help,” I said abruptly.

  I watched as Seth, Kele, and the other cop loaded the canoe onto the Toyota, then tied it down. I supposed it was going to be tested somewhere, for an inquest or whatever, but nobody bothered to tell me anything, and a few minutes later the police drove off and Kele headed up towards the cabins. Alone by the dock, I watched the rain dapple the gray lake waters, and had no desire to take a picture.

  I headed back to my car.

  My car was where I left it. I got in.

  “Hi,” said Pica from the passenger seat.

  “Jesus suffering Christ almighty!” I commented.

  “Nope,” she said, “just me. You’ll get to Jesus in your own time, I suppose.” She looked at me, tilted her head, and said, “It doesn’t look like you’ve been finding Jesus out in the bush.”

  “I’m going home,” I said, staring ahead through the rain-soaked windshield. “I’m tired and I want to go home to my wife.” The inside of the window was foggier than my brain.

  “You want salvation first.”

  “Pardon?” I started the car, and turned on the heater.

  “There’s something about you that says you camped in Eden one night and found it full of snakes.”

  “Are you going to get out?”

  “You can’t run away from your problems.”

  “I was planning on driving.” I leaned back against the seat and watched the fog clear away from the inside of the window. “If I drive fast enough, maybe I can outrun a few cliches.”

  “George is dead. His problems are over. Yours are going to fester in your brain. What are you going to do, pour alcohol on them?”

  “Got any more of those preserved apricots?”

  “Won’t work.”

  “What the fuck do you know?” I raised my voice a couple of decibels.

  “Ooo. Bad language and volume. Does that work most of the time?”

  “Not lately. Not enough. Why don’t you go off and diddle the cop while I go home and make some popcorn and put my feet up?”

  “I’ll diddle anybody I want to diddle. But Seth’s just a friend. I ride around in his cop car and he tells me about his wife and his ex-career. I told him to tell anybody who asked that I give him blow jobs while he drives. Did he tell you that?”

  I said nothing, which was probably the wisest choice under the circumstances.

  “He had a breakdown, you know,” Pica said. “A couple of weeks in the funny farm even. You know why? Because he really believed he could do something good for this planet. He’d be better and smarter and wiser than anybody on the police force. He’d know he slaughtered a few dragons and saved a few princesses. He’d be one of the good ones. It’s a chro
nic problem with men, you know. Now he just wants to avoid stress of any kind.”

  “Young woman, I greatly fear you do not always speak the truth.”

  “Finally, you’re catching on. Like Seth and all men, you’re waving your rusty sword against the universe of mistruth, aren’t you? Do you carry old poems from lost loves in your wallet, too? Do you cry in the night over lost lovers and empty bottles? I heard they’re likely to say George died by accident.”

  “You think so?” I shifted in my seat.

  “You don’t.” Pica turned to stare out the side window towards the lodge. “I can tell you don’t.”

  “Maybe I can just tell Seth, and he’ll go out and arrest somebody.”

  “Not likely,” Pica said.

  “Oh?” I got a bag of peanuts that Aisha didn’t know about. I turned down the heater a bit: it was getting hot in the car.

  “He’s still afraid I somehow fired those shots,” she said.

  “Did you?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I found the poor shepherd who’d stolen the rifle, drowned him and his flock in the lake, and popped off a few shots at Kele.”

  “But Seth might look good if he solves a murder.”

  “If there was a murder. If not, he’d better not say so. Otherwise, he’s liable to be posted up north guarding the railway to Moose Factory while his wife gets the house.”

  “That would be a problem.”

  It would. He was very good at his job, top of his class, when he popped that boy in Toronto.”

  “What can I do? No.” I had had enough. “Out.”

  “Call me sometime,” Pica said. “You’ll need to know things sooner or later. And I have the answers. Like maybe, where Bob’s been the last few days.” She got out, smiled brightly, and left.

  I drove out of the lodge parking lot faster than I should have, but slowed down on the long, slippery road to the highway. It was getting late, and Aisha would be wondering where I was.