“Now why would you be having breakfast with Hank?” Osborne asked without thinking. “Sorry, none of my business.”
“We’re on a committee for the Trout Unlimited banquet,” said Lew. “But after today, I have to beg off, given the circumstances … though Hank is good at computers. He could come in handy.”
“Isn’t that nice,” said Osborne. He kicked at the ground with the toe of his boot.
“Hank’s amazing. He’s catalogued every trout fly he’s tied in the last two years. He trades on the Internet and has gotten ten, twenty dollars each for some of his flies.”
“Hmm.” Osborne set down his can. “Getting late, Lew. Ready to head back?”
“You betcha, Doc. But what a night, huh?”
As Osborne slid onto the hard seat beside her, he decided not to mention that he was developing an acute allergy to Hank Kendrickson. And now the guy had a way to muscle in on the investigation. Great. Thirty minutes later, Osborne pulled into his own driveway. He parked, entered the house, and let Mike out for an evening run. Walking back toward the kitchen, he paused in front of a mirror hanging in the hallway. He scrutinized his face. Did he look his sixty-three years? Did he look ten to fifteen years older than Hank?
The early-summer tan gave him a healthy glow beneath his full head of silver black hair, if he had to say so himself. His daughters told him he looked distinguished, and he wanted to believe them. The high cheekbones inherited from his Meteis grandmother kept wrinkles to a minimum. And yet his life was there in the lines around his eyes and mouth. The pains, the pleasures, the responsibilities, the years of loneliness in his marriage, things done … and not done. Osborne turned away and shrugged. At least it was an honest face.
The phone rang suddenly. He glanced at his watch. Nearly ten. Had to be family.
“Hi, hon,” he said, expecting the voice of Erin.
“ ‘Hon’ yourself,” said Ray. “I got a big problem, Doc. Got a minute? I’m coming up.”
“Good news or bad news?”
“Oh … good news. It’s good news, Doc.”
Osborne set down the phone. He wasn’t stupid. The tone in Ray’s voice was not happy. Whatever it was, it was not good news.
twelve
“No human being, however great, or powerful, was ever so free as a fish.”
John Ruskin
The water was black and still around the dock as Osborne rocked gently in his old chair. Ray sat in the green plastic Adirondack that he had carried up with him.
“Twenty-two bucks at Wal-Mart,” he said, ambling toward Osborne’s dock with the chair held high. Osborne watched as he plopped the chair down, angled it just so, stood up, turned around, and stuck out his flat butt to ease all six feet five inches down onto the chair, slowly. Very slowly.
Osborne looked out into the night and waited. Ray’s strategy for dealing with complications in his personal life was identical to his strategy for landing a wary, wise trophy muskie: slow, methodical, exploratory casts leavened with patience. Hours, days, and weeks of casting. Tonight’s pace signaled something was up, all right. Something serious.
“Did you hear the one about the nut who screws and bolts?”
“Five times, you razzbonya. Most recently yesterday morning at McDonald’s. Everyone you know has heard it five times, Ray.” Osborne kept his voice brisk, hoping to speed up the process. A faint whiff of whiskey on the night air worried him.
“Jeez, really? I must be losing it…. Anything new on Sandy Herre?” Ray stalled.
“Nothing. How did the gun work?”
“Fine. She loves it. We’re shooting skeet Thursday. She’s bringing her friend along. Guy’s got a thirty-six-thousand-dollar Rigby twelve-gauge side-by-side. I tell ya, Doc, this shotgun thing is outta control.” Ray’s voice was flat. He wasn’t thinking shotguns.
Osborne said nothing. He waited, his eyes growing adjusted to the darkness, good enough for him to see his neighbor’s profile a few feet away. Suddenly Ray shifted forward in his chair, bracing his elbows on his knees and looking away from his friend.
“I had a call from Elise tonight. She’s flying in tomorrow.”
“Wonderful,” said Osborne with a determined lack of enthusiasm. How many times had he listened to Ray talk about the woman who had stolen his heart in high school and held it hostage ever since? The pretty girl with the almond eyes who left Loon Lake for the big city and a career as a fashion model, followed by a career as the trophy wife of a series of ever-older rich men. The current husband paid well: Twice recently Elise had arrived in a private jet to see her mother. And when she came, she always managed a visit with Ray: just long enough to lure him in, keep him circling.
Osborne didn’t like Elise. He didn’t like her when she was a spoiled teenager with a fast red convertible—the kind of car he could never afford for his own daughters—and rotten teeth from too much candy, gum, and Coca-Cola. And he didn’t like her now. He didn’t trust her. Not from the day she broke an appointment and swore to her mother that Osborne’s office had made the mistake. Osborne had charged for the visit anyway. When Elise’s mother called up, angry with the bill, Osborne clarified the situation: “I don’t need you or your daughter as patients of mine any longer. Do I make myself clear?”
As far as Osborne was concerned, the etchings of rot on Elise’s molars were more telling than the calculated perfect smile. But Ray knew and loved a different Elise. “Her face is as breathtaking as a forget-me-not,” he would say, comparing her to the exquisite blue flower that sprang up in tiny, perfect arcs along the lakeshore. Osborne was tired of hearing it.
“That woman is no reason to fall off the wagon, my friend. I sure as hell hope—”
“Nope. This is not her fault.”
“Al-l-l righty, then. You must have a good reason. You better have a good reason, because I am not in the mood for an all-night intervention.” Osborne sighed. He was tired and cranky, and he couldn’t help it.
“Ray, we’ve been here too many times before, you and me. And I’m sorry if I seem rude, but Lew’s asked me to meet a flight at eight-thirty tomorrow morning … but, well …” Osborne threw his hands up in frustration. He wanted to be rested and alert when he met Gina Palmer, and he felt guilty about that. But he just didn’t have the time to waste tonight, especially if it had anything to do with Elise.
“Elise may be on the same flight, Doc.”
“Slumming it, is she? What happened to the private plane?”
Ray ignored the sarcasm in Osborne’s voice. “She’s bringing someone this time.”
“I’m afraid to ask. Her husband? No, wait. Her next husband.”
“My son.”
The words hung in the still air. Osborne wasn’t sure he had heard right.
“Your son.” He repeated Ray’s words, hoping he’d heard wrong.
“Yes.”
“You never told me you had a son.”
“I didn’t know until this afternoon.”
“Ray … how could you not know such a thing?”
“That’s what I thought, Doc. So after she called, I went up to see her mother at the nursing home. The old lady’s still got her wits, y’know. She said it’s true.”
“Oh come on, she’s always believed anything her daughter says. You know that.”
Ray ignored him. “I guess … I guess what happened was Elise got pregnant the end of our senior year. Then, in the fall, we both went off to different schools. I thought so, anyway. But it turns out her family sent her to a place in Minneapolis where she had the baby. They kept it a secret. Elise’s older sister and her husband wanted to adopt the baby. They raised the boy. Then, last year, Elise’s sister was divorced, the boy was having problems, and Elise decided she wanted her—our—son back. She says he’s a good-looking boy.”
“Oh.” Osborne remembered a phrase his daughter Erin had used, referring to problems she was encountering as a president of the Loon Lake School Board. “So, parenthood as a fashion statement?�
��
“C’mon, Doc, Elise isn’t that bad.”
“Ray.” Osborne sat forward, halting his rocking chair. “I find it impossible to believe you would not have known about this years ago. How did she keep it a secret when you two were kids, for heaven’s sake?”
“She told me she didn’t even know until she was three months along. Then her parents made her swear to keep it quiet. I believe her. You know her father hated the sight of me.”
Of course he did, thought Osborne. He and that wretched mother of hers had big plans for their lovely little girl. Elise was raised to marry well, a plan that most certainly excluded local boys. They weren’t paying the bills for Northwestern University just to see her return to Loon Lake.
“Does the boy know Elise is his natural mother?”
“Now he does. And Elise told him I’m his birth father. But the kid’s kinda screwed up, Doc. She’s handing him off to me. She thinks maybe some time on the lake, away from friends who are a bad influence … maybe that’ll make a difference. Anyway, I don’t have a choice. He’s coming.”
Osborne stared at Ray’s shadow in silence.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I wish I was. They’re on an early United flight tomorrow morning. Could be the same one you’re meeting, I guess.
“Jeez,” was all Osborne could muster. “Exactly what kind of problems is this kid having, Ray?”
“The usual. Drugs, alcohol, too many Cheez-Its. I’ll know more when he gets here. Elise said he won’t listen to her. He’s run away a couple times. He’s rowdy, arrogant.”
“And you’re supposed to be a good influence? You’ve never grown up yourself, Ray,” said Osborne, grinning. “I’m having a hard time imagining how this is going to work.”
“Yeah,” said Ray, his voice lightening, “me, too. Pretty goofy, huh?”
The two men sat in silence. A fish slurped somewhere off in the blackness. A loon sent out a haunting cry.
“You never know, he might like it here,” Osborne said finally.
Ray nodded, then turned his head sideways to look at Osborne. “Doc, there’s something I’ve always wanted to ask you….”
“Shoot.” Osborne hoped to hell he wasn’t going to ask him how to raise children.
“Why did you stay married to Mary Lee?”
That was a bullet out of the blue. Osborne turned away from his friend to stare into the velvet blackness. Tiny pinpoints of light stood out on the far shore. A cloud cover overhead shut out the stars. Osborne paused before he spoke. “I’ve never discussed this with anyone, Ray, you know that. Not even myself, I guess. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Ray waited.
“Okay … I’ll talk about it on one condition: You promise not to touch that bottle again.”
A long, long wait. The water was silent. No voices whispered in the tall pines guarding the shore behind them.
“Okey-doke.” Osborne heard a rustling and saw the outline of an arm arc overhead. A soft plop and the pint bottle sank into the weed bed ten yards out from the dock.
“I like to think I’m an honorable man,” said Osborne. “I keep my promises. It’s as simple as that. My generation, Ray, whether it was the Depression or the wars or growing up Irish Catholic, I don’t know … We weren’t raised to feel we had the choices you have.”
“Even though you were miserable.”
“Being happy wasn’t the issue. Being responsible was.”
“ ‘All men lead lives of quiet desperation'?”
“Something along that line. Who said that, anyway, Thoreau? G. K. Chesterton?”
“David Letterman.”
“Baloney.”
“You were happy being unhappy.”
“No. I had no alternatives, Ray. I made my living here, I had children to raise. Loon Lake has been my home since I was a young man. I could never see changing one thing without changing everything. Why are you asking me this tonight?”
“I’m trying to figure out how I messed up, Doc. I mean, what the hell do I think I’m doing? I fish, I dig graves, and now some poor kid finds out he’s got me for a father. I feel … I feel … I have nothing to offer this boy, Doc.” Despair edged his voice like a tear down a cheek. “Now, someone like you, someone who has always done the right thing—”
“The right thing? Hold on. Let me finish what I was saying,” said Osborne. “I kept my promises, all right, but it was the easy way out. I wasn’t fair to Mary Lee those last years. To be married to her and to feel about her the way I did. I can tell you I was an honorable man, but I can’t tell you that I am proud of that. Does keeping promises mean I never made a mistake? I don’t think so. Strange as it may seem, I envy you, Ray. You live an honest life.”
“O-o-h, I don’t know about that,” said Ray. “I’ve made promises. Lots of promises.” He was leaning forward, right elbow on one knee, his chin cupped in his hand. Osborne figured he was thinking back to when he was eighteen on a warm summer night, promising Elise whatever it took to get what he wanted. “I’ve kept none. Not a one.”
“Now that’s not true,” said Osborne. “You’re being a little too hard on yourself, don’t you think?”
“Name one I’ve kept.”
“You promised me that if I stayed off the booze, you would show me your secret weed bed over on Dog Lake. And you did.”
“That’s true, I did, didn’t I?”
“You’ve kept many promises, Ray. You’re a good man.”
“I’d like to be a good father. I’d like to not embarrass the kid, y’know?” Ray stood up and stretched. “Thanks, Doc. Time for bed. And no booze … I promise.” He picked up his chair and started to walk north toward his own property. When he reached the path he could follow through the trees to his trailer, Osborne called out.
“Ray,” he said softly, knowing his voice carried through the still air. Ray paused on the rise above him, his face hidden in the shadows. “I didn’t keep all my promises. Look at Mallory.”
“She’s you through and through, Doc.”
“She’s having a hard time. That’s my fault.”
“C’mon, we all have to find our own way.”
And then he was gone.
Osborne remained where he was, rocking. The loon called. Mourning. Once. Twice. And yet again. For the first time in a long time, Osborne felt at peace. He had no idea why.
The pockets were heavy in his old fishing pants. Osborne looked down in surprise. He hadn’t seen these pants in years. Didn’t Mary Lee throw these out? He pulled at the waistband to adjust the trousers. The weight was pulling them down.
Damn. What did he have in his pockets, anyway? Thrusting both hands deep, he yelped in surprise as something clamped hard on both sets of fingers, clamped and bit and kept on biting.
Screaming with pain, Osborne yanked both hands out.
The teeth in his pockets began chattering. The two mouths opening and closing in a fierce staccato, leaping against the fabric as though they could tear right through the pockets. Terrified that they might come at his eyes, at his face, Osborne struggled with his belt. He couldn’t get it undone, he couldn’t get the pants off! My God, they were biting through the fabric. He screamed.
He woke to a pitch-black room. Mike’s anxious wet nose pushed against his shoulder. Osborne lay perfectly still, registering where he was. He was in his own bed, he wasn’t wearing pants, no teeth were coming at him. He flexed his hands where they lay at his sides. They were free.
He shivered in the dark and sat up to reach for the quilt and the sheet that he had thrown off.
“It’s okay, Mike,” he whispered to the black Lab who now had a paw up on the pillow. “Go lie down. Be a good dog.” Mike gave a quizzical cock of his head, turned, and loped back to his sheepskin pillow.
But even as Osborne dozed off, he could still feel where the teeth had seized his flesh.
thirteen
“Of course, folk fish for different reasons. There are enough as
pects of angling to satisfy the aspirations of people remarkably unalike.”
Maurice Wiggin
Gina Palmer flew down the stairs from the Northwest plane and pushed through the doors of the Rhinelander airport like a dragonfly in flight.
She was dressed all in black and quite tiny, though her slim figure was topped with a largish head. Her big eyes were startling in their intense blueness against luminous white skin. Or maybe it was just the intensity with which she stared as she headed in his direction. Osborne braced himself for a landing.
She headed toward where he stood behind the small cluster of people waiting just beyond the security door. “Dr. Osborne?” Her voice was deep and loud, the voice of a woman three times her size.
“How did you know?” he blurted.
“You look like a dentist,” she said. “No, of course not.” Her voice might be loud, but it was friendly. “Look around. How many older gentlemen do you see? You told me you were retired, right? And I was hoping you weren’t that idiot over there with the fish on his head.”
Osborne glanced around. She was right. The only other people in the tiny airport were a young couple greeting an elderly woman and two college boys, probably camp counselors, lining up a gaggle of youngsters that had been on Gina’s flight.
“You’re very observant,” he said.
“Not really.” She shifted a bulging black leather bag to another shoulder. “Years of reporting make it second nature. You rarely have more than fifteen seconds before the cops bump you from the crime scene, so you grow fast eyes.”
“You have luggage?”
“I sure hope so,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting a puddle-jumper. They stuck my carry-on underneath and made me check my computer. Where will I—oops, I see it.”
“Yep, right there.” Osborne pointed to a metal bin, which was the top of a luggage carousel in the middle of the one-room airport. Next to the carousel, elevated on a wooden stand, was a plastic column housing a display of local real estate agents. At the moment, it was also supporting the right arm of Ray Pradt, who leaned against it as he sipped from a cup of hot coffee.
Dead Water Page 8
