From time to time Brenda felt a gentle nudge under her feet. The huge boat was kissing the bottom, even in the middle of the passage marked by rubber floats.
Gus pointed to one. “They work the same in open water. In the channel, it’s green on your left, red on your right.” Marion wrote furiously. “Do that, and you’re staying in deep water.”
The shoreline was muddy, fatigued-looking with winter debris. An occasional runabout hung suspended before a cottage. The river snaked slowly in wide loops. Birds darted before the bow; trees seemed to grow straight out of ledge rock on the eastern shore.
But it was sunny and clear, the air smelling of earth and wood. It wafted through the bow’s half-open door wall and mingled with cooking odors. In the galley, Heather was frying eggs and bacon, making toast. Presently she brought them plates. Tina rolled her chair to the oval dining table and ate looking out.
“How are the loons these days?” she asked.
Gus nodded, huge hands on the chromed wheel. “Plenty of loons. You got your mallards and mergansers. The moose herd they say is big now. Bear, I told you about.”
“You told us,” Brenda said. “We won’t forget.”
“I have a place in mind you’ll like, about six miles from here. A beaver dam you may want to see. When you go ashore—” He reached out and tapped a roll of duct tape next to the compass. “—wrap this around your pants. At the ankles. This has been a wet spring, we got a lot of deer ticks. There’s another roll in the silver drawer.”
“And eagles,” Tina said. “I read they’re back.”
“Plenty. I don’t know how many nests. You could go a year and not see one when I was growing up. Now, they’re all over. You’ll see some for sure.”
“Good. Everyone should see an eagle at least once.”
Brenda looked at her, and Tina winked. She pivoted her chair from the table, and wheeled herself down the passage.
◆◆◆◆◆
Negotiating the channel took almost an hour. Marion went topside and showered in the upper-deck bath. Fifteen minutes later, she came down in fresh clothes, toweling her hair. “I now know something of life among the high rollers,” she said. “Traveling off the beaten path, on your own private yacht.”
“Maybe that’s your future,” Brenda said. “After Drew’s deal, you can buy a Greek island. You can fly your low-roller friends in for the weekend.”
“An island’s too much worry. This is better. All the fun without the responsibility.”
Brenda went up then. She undressed, feeling liberated before the open window with nothing outside but rock and tree branches. Under the shower it was cozy and bright, the skylight open. Steam funneled up. An odd pleasure came from the big boat gently rocking. Birds calling. Like the canoe, it made her remember Micronesia. She had showered this way on Pirim atoll, under the soft, tepid spray that fell from a rain barrel in Calvin Moser’s little grass shack. She could tell from the open hatch above her that the air temperature was rising.
She came down, and minutes later the water widened. “Sullivan Bay,” Gus said. The channel narrowed again, then finally gave way to big water. To the right, fishermen in a runabout sat raising and lowering their rods. Both men waved and Gus sounded the horn. The houseboat passed up between two big, forested islands. Once they were through, he shoved the twin throttles forward. As the motors grew loud, the air freshened, paper plates blew off the table. Brenda closed the door wall.
“Yeah, we’re going to move good here,” Gus said. “There’s a little chop. You might want to check your friend in the chair. Tell her to hold on.” He slipped off the high stool and motioned for Marion to take the wheel. “Go ahead, it’s easy.”
She took his place, looking intent.
A captain’s peaked hat rested on rolled charts in front of the controls. He got it and set it on her head. “Steady as she goes, captain.”
Brenda stepped away, feeling for her sea legs. She used the dining table for balance, then lurched down the passage and stopped at the bathroom. She knocked on the door. “Heather? Everything all right?”
“God, what’s happening?”
“Hold on to something, we’re making time.”
“Is it safe?”
“Just hold on, everything’s fine.” She braced herself in the passage and worked back to the rear door.
Outside, Tina sat facing the stern. She was gripping the ladder, her chair locked. Sonny sat next to her, head raised, nose working. Brenda stepped out, feeling the loud motors’ vibration underfoot. Water foamed below the transom. It formed a wedge that fell away in twin wakes. The churning water was a rich brown.
“You all right?” she shouted.
“Never better! It takes me back!” Tina had put on sunglasses. Her salt-and-pepper gray hair was blowing.
“You’ve been here?” Brenda held on to the ladder.
“Near here, with Bert. Years ago.”
Good times before nature pulled a fast one. Before the mister said goodbye. Brenda couldn’t help the thought. But she was glad to see Tina happy.
“I want to thank you!” Tina shouted.
“For what?”
“Bringing me. You’re never going to know what it means.” Tina smiled again and looked away, out over the water.
No, I won’t, Brenda thought. She wondered what it would be like, the MS. To be going forward just like everyone else. The days full or not, but passing like a train on a track, the rails ticking off the months and years, the simplest acts taken for granted. Until one day you lost your balance in a new way. Then again.
At first you would take it in stride, maybe for years, thinking to yourself, this is just how it goes. This is just middle age, saying, Hello, there, Tina, guess what? You’re not young anymore. Until one day you blacked out and woke lying on a sidewalk, looking up at strange faces. And pretty soon questions with no answers would be part of your new, radically altered take on things.
Brenda steadied herself, straddle-legged. “Ever catch a fish?”
Tina nodded. “You?”
“Bluefish, Cape Cod. Growing up. My dad taught me.”
“We went to the Cape in ‘75. I’m a natural-born scavenger, low tide was my thing. Shells, driftwood. Lakes are great, but nothing beats the ocean. Heather told me you had quite an experience in the Pacific.”
“Micronesia.”
“She said you almost died. You were on a drifting boat for two weeks.”
“Until a cruise ship picked us up, yeah.”
“Is this taking you back?”
“A little bit. But it was very hot.”
Tina took off her sunglasses and looked up, holding to the ladder with her free hand. “I think you must be a tough cookie. I mean that as a compliment.”
“And that’s how I’ll take it. I think you must be one yourself.”
“I have a question.”
Brenda waited.
“Out in the Pacific, when you were drifting. Did you ever give up?”
“How do you mean?”
“Quit. Say to hell with it. Believe you wouldn’t make it.”
Brenda was looking into intelligent, gray-green eyes. She felt held by them as she rose and fell with the big boat’s heavy progress. In whose wake, no waters breed or break. The line came to her, a poem of Philip Larkin’s. And with it came a weighted sensation, the gravitational fact of mortality. In a moment, the sunny lake seemed too bright. A reproach.
“The person I was with did the quitting,” she said finally. “On the fishing boat. He gave up, and I think that’s why I didn’t. He became my project. I had to work on him hard. He set the perfect bad example to keep me going.”
Tina nodded. “You mean he was a distraction. Your pupil in survival. Did you write about it in your book?”
“Some. I think he decided what was happening would get him fired or passed over for promotion. We’re starving, but he’s worried about a bad performance review. Why live if you aren’t going to make vice president? S
omething like that.”
Tina shook her head. She put her sunglasses back on and looked away to the water. The trailing islands were small now, lumps of green. Buoys danced in the boat’s wake. To their left, the shoreline was perhaps two hundred yards off. Sand beach lay exposed, and now gave way to rock, sheer and fortress-like. Traced on the rock, white sediment marked the drop produced by the dam Gus Gustofson had described. Kettle Falls.
“Without your student,” Tina called. “Your pupil. What then?”
“No idea. Glad I never had to find out.”
Tina nodded, holding on, jostled in the chair.
Eyes narrowed against the wind, Schmidt reached up and turned his Milwaukee Brewers baseball cap backward.
Doing it made him think of his son. Andy didn’t wear caps that way anymore. He said it looked stupid, plus the sizer band left a mark on your forehead. Out on job sites now, Andy wore his cap the regular way, A & M DESIGN printed on the front. It was more important these days to advertise his landscaping business than to make a fashion statement.
Fitting the cap more firmly, Schmidt gripped the throttle and shoved it forward. The big Honda responded, the bow rose. A&M stood for Andy Schmidt and Mike Vreeland, friends through childhood, now business partners. After high school, it had been pickup trucks and ponytails, lots of beer and no doubt everything else. Lillie had been sure Andy would kill himself some night after closing. Let him run, Schmidt told her, knowing any preaching would go unheard. Trust me on this, he said. You’re seeing me thirty years ago.
He squinted against the wind at the familiar shoreline. Remembering himself young here, his son now a man, he thought of Jerry Rizzo. The guy hadn’t moved on. In his thirties but stuck somewhere around eighteen. It had been evident last night when Rohmer woke him. Surly, not drunk but acting it, Rizzo had not bothered to get up and shake hands.
You saw it in bars, and at Miller Park. Or the way some guys manhandled snowmobiles and boats. Attitude, everyone called it now. The fake hair and fuck-you stare, the bad mouth and gravel voice lifted from the movies. If you didn’t give it back to them, most guys with a chip like that on their shoulders would let it go. Not this one. Beyond some point, if guys like Jerry Rizzo didn’t get lucky for real instead of just laid after closing—if they didn’t find work they could go after, and someone who mattered—the kid thing just kept going on.
So why had Rohmer brought him along?
A boat on his right sat at anchor off a starboard island. He throttled back and aimed for it. Two men were jigging for walleye. He and Louis had fished the same spot last summer.
Louis Rohmer’s problem wasn’t a chip on his shoulder. It was emptiness behind the eyes. Even in Cabo San Lucas, Schmidt had sensed it. A laugh that didn’t quite work, a certain inability to take pleasure from what he was doing. Always Rohmer was somewhere else. Divided. Last August, from the time he climbed down from his plane and handed Schmidt a two-hundred-dollar bottle of Pauillac, it had been there. When he had called last month, only loneliness explained saying okay to Louis Rohmer.
He neared the runabout and slowed. The two men were looking his way, rods suspended.
“Any luck?”
“Two keepers in four hours,” one said. “We’re packing it in.”
“It’s the falls, the water’s down.”
The man shook his head. “Always messes it up.”
“Any houseboats come out this morning?”
“The big one, an hour back. They went east.”
Schmidt waved, put the engine in gear and moved slowly away. Gradually he shoved the control forward, the bow rose. He cut left to pick up the channel. Gus would take them east four or five miles, into Lake Namakan. He would find a nice place to tie up and leave them for a day or two, to get used to the boat. Schmidt doubted they would move themselves, and that was a shame. Every tie-up point offered something different. Beaver dams, the waterfall at Lost Bay. Mica Bay was always good for northerns, in front of the little runoff that kept fish interested.
He veered right, leveled the Stratos and began the passage between two more islands. But whether they moved or not, he would make sure they got to Johnson Bay. If the warm weather held, they would get its full effect at sunset. The water would be orange and brown, all weedy shadows and perfect calm. A real picture. Whenever he thought of selling his place, Johnson Bay changed his mind.
He glanced left and right, twin islands rising on both sides. Where the shale rock ended, red and white pine and spruce trees rose steeply. Alone now, as he had been last night in his truck, he could think about it better. Think about her better. Moving fast this way, once more he saw her coming toward him.
Even in the semi-darkness, her hair had looked red. No gas can and no wave, walking along the shoulder to Orr. On her own, not waving to him for help. Then Schmidt had seen two others at the back of the Suburban. If loneliness explained agreeing to fish with Louis Rohmer, it also explained thinking about the redhead. Just small talk during the twenty minutes he spent changing the tire, but there she still was.
Leaving the two islands behind, he aimed straight. The boat trimmed nicely as he shoved the throttle. Lonely. That’s what he was. He felt foolish, but very clearly saw himself and the redhead. They were fishing in Johnson Bay. The look was still there, the one she’d given him, arms folded and talking to him as he worked.
What look?
It had to just be her face, her eyes looking friendly that way for Bozo the clown or anyone. Nothing special in that look for him. But if you were hard up enough, that’s not what you made of it. Knowing you were being foolish, you dropped back thirty years, not Jerry Rizzo’s ten or fifteen. And it wasn’t like there was any chance. Even screwed-up lonely, you knew that. Someone that young turning on the charm, that was just a bonus. A tip for the old boy for changing your tire. A sexual courtesy. Something to cheer him up for the rest of his drive.
No, he wasn’t thinking of her because he actually thought Brenda Redhead was sending him something at the side of the road. It was just better than thinking anything else. Better and more fun, to make it up as he drove down a dark road. Or after he went to bed.
Or guided his boat over Lake Kabetogama, seeing the two of them on Johnson Bay, at dusk.
“That’s about it.”
Gus stepped down onto the transom. “Fuel tanks are full. The one in your Lund is topped up. If it looks like rain, be sure to close the windows. You don’t want to come back to soggy beds. Got rain gear?”
“We do,” Marion said. “I wish you’d stay for lunch.”
“Thanks, but we got a lot of work. If I’m not there, the boys goof off. Now, it’s channel one or two on the radio. You call any time. Right around this inlet—” he pointed “—you have a nice place for bass. A little farther up is good for northern and walleye. If you decide to move, remember, green left, red right. You got to pay attention when the water’s low like this. Lot of big rocks and sandbars, and they aren’t all marked.”
“Don’t worry, we won’t be moving,” Marion said. “This is perfect.”
He looked relieved. “Okay, then. Catch you later.”
As he stepped down into the skiff, a motor was growing louder. Gus looked out to the lake. Brenda shaded her eyes, and now a sleek boat passed in the channel and disappeared behind the cove’s far side. Then the motor changed pitch. Seconds later, the boat reappeared. The driver swung sharply and came at them. Planing smoothly, the hull rode the waves, hardly touching the water—until the motor’s pitch dropped.
Charlie Schmidt. Seconds later he stood and waved, cap on backward. It made her smile. She waved back, Marion, too, and Tina. Sonny was at the railing, barking, tail banging the wheelchair as Heather stepped from the passage. “What’s—” She looked out. “Why, that’s him, the man on the road.”
“Sonny, quiet.” Tina stroked the dog. He whined and paced next to her, looking out.
“Good.” Marion still wore the captain’s hat. In white jeans and the fishermen
’s knit sweater she looked the part. “We owe that guy.”
Gus looked to them. “You know Charlie?”
“He fixed a flat for us outside Orr,” Brenda said. “We asked him to dinner.”
“You’re all set, then.” Gus reached to the cleat and untied the rope. “Get him to take you in that Stratos of his to Kettle Falls. Take you only ten minutes in that thing. Don’t know if the hotel’s open, but it’s worth going for the falls alone.”
Slowing to a stop now, Charlie waited for Gus to push off and start his motor. The huge man pulled the rope, sat, and worked the tiller. As he neared the other boat he said something. Charlie nodded and laughed. Guy stuff about us girls, Brenda thought. Charlie said something more, nodded again and took off his cap to smooth his head. Before he put it back on, peak in front this time, she saw his hair. It was receding some, cut short. Brown with plenty of gray. He looked his age.
Gus’s boat now nosed up and headed away. Rocking in the wake, Charlie floated toward them. He shut down his engine, moved forward, and grabbed a yellow bowline.
“Hello there,” Brenda said. “As you see, we made it.”
He looked at her and threw the line. She caught it and pulled, amused at the corny symbolism—throw me a rope. She held on as he jumped to the transom. The dog barked again. As he had on the road, Charlie crouched to eye level before holding out his hand. He scratched the dog’s head, stood and stepped up onto the stern.
“The Viking knight returns,” Tina said. “On a new charger.”
“How’d you know where to find us?” Marion asked.
“Some guys fishing saw you. Your upper deck’s visible from the channel. I thought Gus would bring you about this far.”
“How about a beer?” Brenda handed him the rope.
“Sounds good.” He knelt and tied it to a cleat, his hands purposeful and practiced as she remembered them. He finished and stood, the dog wanting more, nuzzling his hand. Slightly awkward, he scratched Sonny’s ears. “So, you’re ready for bear.” He looked at the overhang above the stern, then to the gas grills. “Roughing it this is not.”
Deep North (A Brenda Contay Novel Of Suspense Book 2) Page 7
