Permafrost

by Peter Robertson

  There was little doubt that her witness had been effective. She relied on phrases that were not strictly biblical, but were nonetheless close enough that we outright disbelievers and Doubting Thomases could easily recognize the words.

  But she was in truth much too young for the part, her words and manner altogether too stagey. And in the end she was only the soundtrack, the sympathetic commentary. Keith was the star of the show, the silent witness. And I think we all saw through his performance. He was just a starving artist. He didn’t believe the words. He didn’t live them. And we who watched could see this clearly.

  The small crowd began to walk away as the girl scrambled to hand out her tracts. A few took them out of politeness. I refused mine.

  Keith had turned away from her and the audience and shuffled slowly down a flight of steps toward his personal heaven: his soup and his sleep.

  If Keith Pringle is now dead, then the stilted testimony of the evangelical girl with the rusty halo of hair in the striped scarf is the only means of benediction I have for him.

  This was five years ago.

  I haven’t seen Keith since.

  I have been back to visit my mother on two occasions. Both times Patricia chose not to accompany me, and both times my mother held me captive in her living room, her television on, her Oprah talking, the dark curtains drawn tight, the front door locked, and all the imagined demons of the world prowling at large, but, at least for the present time, restricted to the outside of her rapidly shrinking world.

  THIRTEEN

  Al Jr. was incredulous. “You don’t wanna rent a jet ski?”

  I was adamant. “No, I don’t.”

  “But you wanna rent a rowboat?”

  “That’s correct.”

  He shook his head once more. “Well, for fuck’s sake,” he said in exasperation.

  * * *

  A mile beyond the turn-off to Sandy’s place stood Al’s Water Sports Emporium and Live Bait Store.

  Al himself wasn’t available. According to his son he was in the crapper, and likely to be there awhile, on account of all the shit that was backed up inside of him, this backup being due, in Al Jr.’s view, to his father’s steady diet of fried eggs, fried burgers and fried chicken. It was also the son’s considered opinion that, if Al was successful in his endeavors, it was advisable to be some distance away, as the resultant aroma was likely to be, in Al Jr.’s own words, “truly fucking unpleasant.”

  All this information came unsolicited.

  Al Jr. had shoulder-length brown hair and wore black jeans, black high-top Nike basketball shoes, a black Pearl Jam T-shirt, two leather wristbands and a small tattoo on his underdeveloped left shoulder muscle that improbably bore the legend Daphne.

  “What do you want the rowboat for?”

  “I thought I might go for a row.”

  “Pretty fucking slow way to travel.”

  “I like traveling slow.”

  “You’re a foreigner aren’t you?” It wasn’t exactly an accusation. Al Jr. was just desperate to find some explanation for my odd behavior. He actually sounded relieved. “We’ve got a boat you can use. We use it to row out and rescue shit-for-brains tourist losers who fall off the jet skis and can’t get back on.” He gave me a look that silently judged me more than capable of just such a stunt.

  I asked innocently. “Do you require a deposit?”

  He sneered openly. “Oh yeah. Sure. You’re gonna get really fucking far in that. The wood’s utterly fucked and it leaks. Anyway we’ve got your car if you decide to make a run for it.” He laughed, playing the lovable redneck for all it was worth.

  We walked out to the dock, past a half-dozen shiny new Yamaha jet skis in neon colors and a rack of windsurfing boards. He pointed to the rowboat. It did look every bit as decrepit as he had indicated.

  “When do you want it back?” I asked him.

  “When you get yourself all tuckered out from all the excitement. If we’re gone and locked up, just tie the thing back up there. I’ll leave your keys in the ignition.”

  “And I can’t pay you anything for the boat?”

  He burst out laughing. “Get the fuck away from me. If anyone found out we were renting that piece of shit thing out we’d look like a pair of total fucking idiots. I’m only keeping your keys because the King of Shit will ream me out if I don’t. Now go.” He waved me away. “Go the fuck away. Have yourself some big fun.” He laughed as he walked away.

  When he had gone, I climbed carefully into the boat. The wood felt like sponge and there was an inch of warm water languishing in the bottom. As a result the boat was considerably more stable than I would have imagined.

  Rowing carefully away from the dock, I headed out toward Foolishness Island.

  * * *

  As a child I had taken camping trips in the countryside north of where I lived. We rowed across lakes of crystal-clear water, ice cold all year long, to set up our camps on grassy beaches and sing lewd songs and cook our sausages in the evening fires and listen to the older boys brag about beer and girls.

  We would rub our smoke-filled eyes and wonder when all this would be ours.

  That was the last time I had rowed a boat, almost twenty-five years ago.

  The island gradually grew closer, far smaller than I had imagined, perhaps no more than five hundred yards stretching from end to end. There was no sign of a dock. But there was sand, and I could draw the boat up there. I wasn’t especially worried about damaging the craft. I might even be doing Al Jr. a favor if I punched a hole in the bottom. Of course I would then have to swim back, and that would be foolishness indeed.

  As I rowed to the far side of the island, I looked back at the shoreline. The Handle was still visible. I could see Connie’s house, the Tait house, and Will Sanders’ place. It was warm in the late afternoon and my shoulders were beginning to hurt. I tried to look for Sandy’s house. Perhaps a small part of the roof peeked out from the trees. But I wasn’t sure. It did look far away.

  The island was perhaps half as wide as it was long, and the far shoreline boasted more flat sand. As I rowed for the nearest stretch and prepared to touch bottom, the Handle disappeared behind the island, and a sense of isolation passed over me, like a cloud across the face of the sun.

  WE’RE MAKING IT BETTER FOR YOU!!!

  THIS ISLAND IS CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS

  FOR THE REST OF THE SUMMER

  BY ORDER OF THE HANDLE RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION

  The sign was a makeshift affair hammered into the side of a tree. I wondered if it was even legal. Did the people living in the Handle actually own rights to the island?

  I pulled the boat up onto the beach.

  The sand gave way to ground and dense evergreen trees that hung like a canopy over the edge of the water. Under the trees, it was unnaturally dark, and a thick soft carpet of needles silenced my footsteps. A rough mud path followed the edge of the island, away from the boat.

  In a small clearing stood a picnic table with a pile of dry logs underneath for a fire. A round deep pile of ashes signified the site of the fire. I dragged a stick through the ashes, which were white and fine, and I wondered how recent they were. The wind would surely soon blow them away.

  There was a portable toilet, locked, and a small one-room log cabin, also locked. I picked up a stone and threw it through the cabin window, then reached carefully inside and opened the latch. I climbed through the window, avoiding the shards of glass littering the wood floor. It was airless and hot inside and, except for the glass, very tidy. Much too tidy. I expected dust but there was none. A clean sink stood in the corner. A piece of soap was still slightly damp on the underside. The cabin was clearly meant for communal use. Copious rules were Scotch taped to the back of the door, and once again the Residents Association was in evidence. I pulled a piece of paper towel from a roll and covered my hand with it.
Inside an old Norge refrigerator a carton of skimmed milk was only three days past its expiration date.

  The island’s closure was clearly a recent development.

  I wiped the window latch with the paper towel. I picked up my stone. I had been careful to touch nothing else. I pushed the door open with my shoulder and threw my stone far into the trees. Somewhere in the distance I heard the gentle hum of a motorboat moving across the water.

  The rest was an airtight silence.

  The density of the trees denied sound and light.

  In another time I could easily have liked the island.

  It could have been a peaceful place. But that day I felt sure that it wasn’t.

  I looked for things that were out of place, that were subtly wrong, as I walked the path. I was thinking of the traps that Keith had supposedly made. But I didn’t really know what a rabbit trap looked like. My childhood camping trips hadn’t gotten that rustic. I looked instead for belongings, for old clothes. But I didn’t see any.

  I thought of the remains of the fire, of how fine the dust was.

  I kept on walking.

  The path abruptly came into light, opening out, the sky a faded blue overhead. I was back at the water’s edge, where the ground rose slightly, perhaps ten feet. A single tree stood on top of the rise, its labyrinth of roots exposed on the far side, where the mud slipped away to sand.

  I sat down against the tree and looked out across the water.

  Unlike the Handle, there was no uniformity to the dwelling places along this side of Paddle Lake. A half-million-dollar construction of glass fronting onto the water stood next to a seasonal fishing cabin or ramshackle A-frame. People had bought their summer homes here years ago, when water frontage was doubtless cheap. They had given little thought to winterizing their places, and had probably never used them much beyond a month or so in the summer, for fishing and boating, for a safe place in the country for the kids.

  But lakefront access had become costly. The cottages were vanishing, and the glass palaces were taking their place. The texture of the communities had to be changing dramatically. I couldn’t really tell if it was for the better. I didn’t live here, and, in truth, both types of settlers were equally alien to me.

  But it was without question a pretty spot.

  I pulled hard at one of the roots and it came away in my hand. I could still hear the sputtering of the motorboat. It was much louder now. Much closer. My hands were dirty and my sneakers were mud and blood-splattered. I was still wearing the T-shirt and shorts from the morning tennis game with the Tait boy, and I was certain I looked like hell. I could also use a shower.

  I closed my eyes and thought then of Sandy Weller, and of my wife, and of my money. I briefly considered the smattering of people who haunted the periphery of my life, haunted it because of the money. What would happen to most of the people if you subtracted money from the equation? What would happen to me if you subtracted money from the equation?

  I thought about my mother then.

  * * *

  A silence stretched out, and I couldn’t hear the boat’s motor anymore.

  The first bullet hit the tree with a sharp crack. I threw myself to the ground and began to roll backwards, away from the water, away from where I thought the shot had come from.

  My world slowed down as the second shot tore into the ground three feet from my left knee.

  Sharp pine needles dug into my hands as I forced myself to crawl faster. I heard the engine of the boat again. It was close by now.

  Whoever was shooting was doing it from the boat.

  A candy wrapper lay less than an inch from my face, the paper brightly colored. I stopped crawling and lay there, my face in the dirt, paralyzed by fear, staring at the paper.

  I crawled again.

  My knee hit something hard, a piece of sharp metal, submerged beneath the needles and dirt. I looked back through the break in the trees. I couldn’t see the boat, and I hoped, rather than reasoned, that they couldn’t possibly see me.

  My cheeks were salty and wet to the touch. I was still vain enough to be glad no one could see me. Could I stand up and walk? As a child my worst dreams would culminate in my legs refusing to work when I was very frightened, leaving me to crawl ignobly away from the nameless nightmare bogeyman.

  I was crawling now.

  This was my worst dream.

  A man’s loud voice. Was he laughing?

  Without warning there was the sharp crack of four shots fired close together, followed by the grunt of the outboard as the boat picked up speed.

  When the sound of the engine became a low drone I stood up and wiped away my tears. I took two shaky steps, before a submerged piece of metal wrapped itself around my foot, and I fell back down.

  I brushed aside the needles to reveal my steel assailant. It gleamed back at me, defying its junk status, the pale metallic green of a Schwinn ladies bicycle, a basket attached to the front, a basket for Bridget Cassidy to carry her things in.

  When I got back to the beach I discovered where the last four gunshots had struck. The old rowboat sported a compact quartet of leaks, each much larger than the bullet holes, as the soft, rotting wood had given way with the impact.

  I was now looking at a long swim home.

  I sat on the beach for a while, and waited for my body to stop shaking.

  The wet wood was heavy and the old boat resisted my efforts, but eventually I succeeded in dragging it all the way up onto the beach and turning it over. It would dry out a little in the last of the day’s sunlight.

  I ran back to the cabin and pushed the door open, grabbing the rest of the paper towels and, from inside a medicine cabinet, a tin of Band-Aids. My hand brushed against a box of safety matches and I hesitated. The urge to torch the cabin, to destroy the whole damn island was a strong one.

  Back at the beach I dried off the inside and outside of the boat as best I could, taking special care to dry the vessel’s fresh wounds thoroughly. Then I packed the holes with the paper towels and secured the makeshift plugs with Band-Aids.

  I had no illusions about the effectiveness of the repairs. The plugs wouldn’t last much of the way across the lake. But they might get me partway, hopefully leaving a swimming distance well within the capabilities of a scared man, and a mediocre swimmer.

  The boat slid slowly back into the water and I lowered myself gently in. Row fast and risk opening the repairs? Or use slow strokes that would hinder my progress but protect my handiwork for as long as possible? I opted for speed and dug the oars deep into the water. As I stroked, I watched the Band-Aids as they began to peel inexorably away from the soft wood.

  I rowed all the harder.

  At what seemed close to the halfway point I could no longer ignore the reality that my ship was going down. The rowing had become progressively harder, and my bandaged paper towel plugs were sodden, all but worthless. The water felt warm around my ankles.

  I could see the houses of the Handle clearly.

  I climbed over the side and swam toward the shore.

  I learned to swim after a fashion as an eight-year-old child. The crawl had always eluded me; I never quite mastered breathing and swimming and bringing my head up above the water in an effortless sequence. But I had acquired a slow and dependable breaststroke, and this was what I employed to get me back to the beach.

  I can’t say how long it took. I should have checked my watch before starting. It was close to five o’ clock when I reached land. I would guess I was in the water for close to an hour. I was extremely tired.

  An expensive Swiss watch is about as waterproof as a thirty-dollar Timex, but ox-leather straps barely survive one good dunking, and mine certainly looked the worse for wear.

  Resisting every urge to collapse for a while on the soft sand, I hurried across the beach. Paranoia was setting in. Maybe the
natives were friendly, but it was also possible that the shooter on the water lived in a house close enough to be watching me now.

  It wasn’t a feeling for which I cared.

  * * *

  I walked for an hour and a half.

  Al the terminally constipated and his surly son had locked up shop for the day. My car was in the parking lot, unlocked, apparently untouched, the keys as promised in the ignition.

  I opened the trunk and pulled my wallet out from under the carpet. I found a piece of paper and a pen in the glove compartment and I wrote a short note, in which I apologized for the sudden demise of their rowboat. I didn’t bother to sign it. Wrapping a hundred dollar bill inside the paper, I folded it up and slid it under the door of the store.

  Al could buy himself a new boat, a ton of fried food, or a year’s supply of laxatives.

  Then I drove away.

  My clothes were close to dry when I got back to Sandy’s house. It would be an hour until she and our dinner showed up.

  After a quick shower I put on a white cotton shirt, Timberland shoes, and a pair of Ralph Lauren jeans. There was a six-pack of Stroh’s beer cold in the refrigerator. I opened one and sat on the porch with a fitness magazine I had every intention of reading. I sat instead for a long while staring at nothing.

  I got the laptop down from my bedroom and fired it up, logging onto CompuServe and entering the keyword for the online version of the city newspaper. Were there developments in Keith’s story about which I wasn’t aware?

  Searching for KEITH produced several articles about a baseball player with a cocaine problem and a low batting average. Searching for PRINGLE brought up the original article I had read, the one about tourists in trouble.

  There was nothing else.

  Whatever his fate, it was apparently unrecorded.

  I looked for messages and found two.

  Nye said little more than hi. Tom Younger had left a long rambling message. He had just gotten himself online. Wasn’t it truly neat? This was his first time. This was in fact the first goddamn message he’d ever sent. Someone had told him the Vice President was online. Was that right? Maybe he’d just up and tell him what a prize putz he was. He’d figured I’d be online. Wasn’t it just too goddamn neat? How was the house search going? He asked me to leave him a message. He was going to try the CB section now. He still had to think of a neat handle.