Newman said, "We'll eat off our laps, I think. Chris is fairly intense about his set-up."
"But he's right, Aaron. It can't hurt to be ready."
"Yeah, I know. At home we laughed. at him lurking around in the yard at night, and goddamned if he didn't save our lives. This is probably sensible. But don't you feel like a horse's ass with the gun belt and all?"
"Yes, but I'd be a lot more scared without it."
"True."
The fire began to bite into the logs. Janet turned the lights off, and they sat on the floor in front of the fire as the flames began to get bigger and the shadows moved in the room. Newman got another beer.
"Like a vacation," Newman said.
"Or a honeymoon," Janet said.
"Except we came to kill a man," Newman said.
"There's no other way, Aaron."
The smell of the beans cooking on the stovetop mingled with the woodsmoke. Newman drank some beer. "No, there isn't. I'm glad you're here," he said.
"I belong here," she said. "It is our problem. It happened to us."
"I wish it hadn't."
"But it did."
"I wish I could handle it alone."
"But you can't. Who could?"
"I wish I were someone who could. Chris could."
"I wonder," Janet said. "I wonder if he doesn't need an audience to see how good he is. I wonder if he doesn't need a cause to serve, or a crowd to please."
Newman shrugged. "There's guys that could."
"And there's guys that couldn't do this," Janet said. "Guys that would just fold up and do what they were told. You can't be perfect, Aaron."
"I'd like to be better at this."
"You are being the best you can be. You've been a good father and a good husband and a good writer for a long time now. You've always handled everything you had to. You're handling this. Don't muck it up by wanting to be something else. I wouldn't trade you for Chris."
Newman was silent, sitting close to her, not touching. Chris is none of those things, he thought looking at the fire. Chris was a lousy husband and a bad father. He never was able to handle it when the kids were sick or the money was short or the plumbing broke. All he could do was fight. All he's good at is violence.
"When the going got tough, Chris bailed out," Newman said.
"What?"
"When it got tough at home. When it wasn't fun having kids or wife, Chris would go to the health club or the bars or the gym or hunting. He was tough in fighting, but he wasn't tough in hanging in there."
Janet looked at him, "God, Aaron. I think you're maturing," she said.
"Well it's true," he said, "there's more than one kind of toughness."
She nodded, smiling slightly.
"The thing is, we're in something here that requires a particular kind.
I don't know if I've got it." "I do," Janet said. "I've got it."
CHAPTER 22.
There were five of them in the boat as they rowed across to the island with the mist still lingering lightly over the lake and the sun slanting very sharply in from the east. Adolph Karl sat in the stern wearing a plaid shirt and new green polyester pants. Beside him, his son Richie, twenty-eight. His son Marty, twenty-six, sat in the bow seat with Frank Marriott. Gordy Tate rowed.
"It's them," Janet said, looking through the binoculars. "Two of them are the ones that tied me up." She handed the glasses to Newman. He looked.
"That's Karl in the stern," he said. "In the plaid shirt."
The Springfield was lying across a shooting rest that Hood had built in the fork of a small white oak at the lake edge, thirty yards from their cabin. Hood adjusted the scope.
"Goddamn," he said.
"What?" Newman was whispering, although the boat was a quarter of a mile away.
"Karl's on the wrong side. The guy with the yellow jacket on is between me and him." "Shoot both of them," Janet said.
"Let me see," Newman said. His throat was very tight and he had trouble getting his voice out. The boat was halfway across. Hood stepped aside and Newman peered through the scope. There was no fixed sight on the barrel, and the scope was like looking through a telescope. It was as if there were no gun. He could see part of Karl's checkered shirt and the back of his head. More and less of him came into view as both he and Richie moved as they talked and Tate rowed.
"We could hit him," Newman whispered. "There will never be another chance as good. We could hit him and get in the car and be on the road and they wouldn't even know where the shot came from. By the time they rowed to shore we'd be gone." "Let me see," Hood said. Newman stepped aside.
"We can do it," Newman said.
"Do it, Chris," Janet said. "Do it now."
Hood stared through the scope.
"For cris sake Chris, shoot," Newman said.
Hood held the rifle carefully in its shooting rest, his cheek against the stock, his hand curled around the curved pistol grip line of the stock, his forefinger on the trigger. His left arm was almost fully extended, steadying the rifle in its rest. He inhaled once, let out the air, and then was perfectly still.
Newman said silently, Shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot. Somewhere on the lake a fish broke. Hood inhaled, and relaxed his grip on the rifle. He straightened.
"No good," he said. "Too risky. We'll have to try for a better shot."
Newman felt his eyes fill with tears. "Jesus Christ," he said.
Janet Newman pushed past Hood and crouched over the rifle. She looked through the sight. Newman could see the rowboat disappear behind the dock. Janet stood up. She didn't say anything. She walked back toward the house. Newman followed her. Hood picked up the binoculars and began to study Karl's island.
In the house Newman smashed his hand down on the table where the packs and weapons were laid out. The rifles jounced. "Fuck," he said. His voice was shaking. "We could have done it and been gone. It could have been over now. Son of a bitch." He hit the table again.
"There's nothing to be done," Janet Newman said. "We'll have to wait for the next chance, but this time you or I will have to do it. We'll have to stop waiting for Chris to do it. We'll shoot as soon as we can."
The rowboat went back and forth two more times that day, but Karl wasn't in it. It went to and from the island three times the next day, without Karl. The third time it returned to the island it was powered by an outboard motor. The next morning a second boat with an outboard went out to the island. And at eight-five that morning both boats pulled away from the dock, went around the far side of the island, and headed down the lake.
Hood came in from his post at the rifle stand, hurrying.
"Grab the packs," he said, "they're running."
Newman and Janet each picked up a pack by the straps, and a long gun, and followed Hood out of the cabin and down toward the canoe. On the lake, a quarter of a mile away, the two row boats moved slowly east, driven by the small outboard engines.
Janet Newman sat on the floor in the middle of the canoe. Newman took the bow paddle, Hood the stern. The canoe moved out from the dock and turned east after the two rowboats. It was eight-thirty in the morning, the sun was up and shining in their eyes, skipping brightly off the water of the lake. There was no wind. The canoe went around a small point and the dock was out of sight. White oak and red maple pushed down close to the water, many had fallen in where the banks had eroded and given way. There was nothing alive in sight except the two rowboats ahead of them in the sun.
"We'll stay close to the shore," Hood said, "like we're just canoeing."
"Can we stay with them, paddling?" Janet said.
"Yeah," Hood said. "The outboards are only little ones. They're not going to leave us."
"Lake's not that big," Newman said.
"But there's an outlet," Hood said. "According to my map the ponds connect and there's access to the Saco River."
"So we could be in for a long trip," Janet said.
"If we have to trail them for long they'll get suspicious," Newman
said.
Hood didn't say anything. The canoe moved easily in the water. Behind them something broke in the water. They could hear the splash. A loon dived between them and the outboards. The sun moved higher. Newman 'could feel the sweat begin to break on his forehead and the muscles starting to loosen. Hood guided the canoe easily. Newman was a strong paddle in the bow.
"Chris," Newman said. "What the hell did you mean, ''re running'?" "They're moving out," Hood said.
"But they aren't running from us, specifically. That is, there's nothing as far as they know chasing them."
"No. They weren't hurrying. They weren't running. It was just an expression."
A painted turtle slipped off a semi submerged log and hung motionless in the water, only its head exposed as the canoe passed. Hood guided the canoe out farther from the lake shore. In close the shore was thick with the snags of fallen timber. There were slick black branches just below the surface.
The packs and the long guns were on the floor of the canoe.
"We're going to run out of lake pretty soon," Newman said. The lake water was the color of strong tea. Looking down Newman could see swarms of fry moving below the eddy of his paddle. Janet Newman had the field glasses on the two rowboats. "They're turning," she said.
The two boats moved slowly in an arc to the left and moved at right angles to the east end of the lake shore.
"We'll keep paddling along the shoreline," Hood said. "If they keep going around the edge of the lake like that we can see them and we can cut across and catch up if we have to. This way it doesn't look like we're following them and we're still keeping them in sight." Hood wore a gray woolen shirt with the sleeves rolled up past the elbows, denim pants, and hiking boots. Newman had on a blue woolen shirt with the sleeves rolled, cream-colored corduroy pants, and hiking boots. They continued to paddle along the shoreline, slowly curving north.
The sun was almost straight overhead when Janet said, "They're landing." Hood and Newman let the canoe drift as they looked back and across the lake. The two boats were near shore, and they could make out one of the men wading ashore.
"The great big one has gotten out," Janet said, watching through the binoculars. "He's pulling both boats up onto a little beach."
As they drifted, the canoe paddles laid across the gunnels of the canoe, they watched the two rowboats across the lake empty. There were the same five people. Karl, his two sons, and Tate and Marriott.
"They each have a pack," Janet said. "And rifles. The packs are a lot larger than ours. They have, what are they called, pack boards
The five men walked away from the boats and into the woods.
"What now?" Newman said.
"We'll follow them," Hood said. "Let's paddle."
Both men dug the paddle blades hard into the water, turning their bodies, bending their backs. The canoe slid forward. As they paddled they fell into rhythm with each other, their bodies bending steadily and together, the paddles digging into the dark water. Newman felt the sweat running along his back. Cutting across the foot of the lake they were a hundred yards down-lake of the rowboats in half an hour.
"We'll go in here," Hood said, and turned the canoe into a cove. A single mink frog plopped off a stone into the water. Hood guided the canoe between two large rocks. Newman reached out and balanced the canoe with a hand on each rock and stepped out. He was in calf-deep water. He pulled the canoe through so that its forward third rested on the bank. Janet handed his rifle and pack to him, picked up her own and, carefully balancing in the half-steady canoe, came out after him and stepped ashore. Hood followed.
"Secure the canoe," he said. He leaned the Springfield against a tree and moved off into the woods at a silent trot; as he went he took out the.45 and thumbed back the hammer. Newman leaned his Winchester beside the Springfield. He took Janet's carbine and put it against the same rock. Then he and Janet pulled the canoe up onto the small beach of pebbles and coarse sand at the foot of the cut bank. Newman tied the bow to a black birch sapling with the mooring line.
Then each of them slipped on their knapsacks and waited, listening.
There were birds. They must have been in the woods all the time, but in the tense silence as they listened for danger Newman heard them as he had not before. He saw every flutter among the trees as possible danger, and his senses sharpened to them. He picked up the Winchester.
Janet held the carbine.
"Pull the bolt," he said.
It snicked loudly in the thick green shadows. Thick stands of white pine mingled with the oak and maple. He worked the lever on the Winchester. The sound was loud and metallic.
"Christ, you can hear that in Quebec," Newman said. He was whispering.
The birds moved in the trees, darting, fluttering, their voices in various pitches and speeds. He saw blue jays and once a grosbeak with a faint rosy blush on its breast. He heard what he thought from childhood memory was a catbird. The lake made motion noise as it eddied slightly against the small grainy beach.
A red-winged blackbird flashed across the brief opening between two trees. Newman jumped very slightly. Then he heard the sound of something larger moving through the woods. It was to his right. He turned, bringing the rifle up as something moved in the bushes. As he aimed he moved his body between Janet and the movement. He didn't know he was doing it. The movement clarified and Chris Hood came out of the woods. Newman exhaled and put his hand behind him and touched Janet.
Shit, he thought. I'm shielding her. He felt brave. / did it involuntarily. My instincts are good.
"They've moved out," Hood said. "There's a trail leads up from where they beached the boats, and they've followed it. Come on."
They followed him to the place where the boats were beached, empty, the motors tilted up.
"Do you know where they're going?" Janet said.
"Deeper into the woods," Hood said. "Look." He brought out a detailed map of the area. "I picked this up at the sporting goods store in town. We're about here, I figure. We were going east into the sunrise all morning and then we turned here, and I figure this is the cove we passed back there."
Newman looked at the map. "There's nothing but woods forever," he said.
"Then we have them this time," Janet said.
Newman looked up from the map.
Hood said, "Yes." Newman said, "You've got five armed men trapped in a thousand miles of woods. I'm not sure we've got them cornered."
"Help me with the boats," Hood said. He overturned one of them and with his hatchet chopped a hole in the bottom. "Do the other one," he said.
"If they didn't know something was up," Newman said, "they will when they get back here."
"They'll head back here if we don't get them first, and when they get here we'll have them trapped against the lake." Hood was excited. His movements were quick. Newman turned the second boat over and sank the hatchet blade into the plywood bottom. He chopped a hole several inches around in the bottom, prying the splintering plywood with the hatchet blade.
"Better hide the canoe," he said.
"Yes," Hood said. "I'll take it down-lake a little ways and hide it and come back up here. You and Janet wait here and watch. You better get out of sight."
They helped him push the canoe back off the beach, and they watched him paddle from the stern, turning the paddle blade after each stroke to hold the canoe steady. When he went around the near curve of the lake, Newman turned and looked for a place to hide.
"Under the big pine tree," he said to Janet, "behind those rocks. I hope they don't come back while Chris is gone." "Me too," Janet said. They slipped under the tree and lay on their stomachs behind the gray rocks.
"You too?" Newman said. "You sound scared."
"I am." "I thought you weren't," he said.
"I wasn't. But I am now."
"How come?"
"It's the woods, I think. It's so alien." "Or we are," he said.
The rocks behind which they lay were gray, granite flecked with quartz.
Grayish lichen grew over parts of them. The dead pine-needles had made a thick, soft blanket around the base of the tree and no vegetation had been able to push up through it.
"Aaron, destroying those boats has really committed us."
"I know."
"If they come back they'll know."
"They'll know something," Newman said. "But they won't necessarily know what."
"But they'll be very much more wary, and there are five to our three."
"Right. It's better if we surprise them before they see the boats."
There was a locust keen in the air, and the noise of a woodpecker.
"You seem better, Aaron."
"How so?"
"Less-what?-ambivalent, I guess. Less tied in a knot, more ready, looser."
"If rape is inevitable, lay back and enjoy it." Newman said.
"Meaning?"
"Meaning I'm committed. It's too late to agonize. I'm scared, but I'm not uncertain, you know."
"I guess so." "You're kind of nice yourself," he said.
"Like what?"
"Like not so bossy, not so controlling. Softer, maybe." "I just react to you," she said. "If you don't push at me, I don't have to push back."
Newman made a harsh, derisive sound. "Family that kills together stays together," he said.
There was movement along the lake and Chris Hood appeared, walking quietly.
Janet said, "Over here, Chris."
Hood slid under the tree with them. "Canoe's in the cove just around the point," he said. "I put some rocks in it and sank it in about three feet of water. It's under the water at the base of the only big rock in the cove."
Newman nodded.
"Remember where it is," Hood said. "In case I don't come back with you."
"Maybe none of us will come back," Newman said.
"Then it won't matter," Hood said.
CHAPTER 23.
The trail was little more than a continuous opening in the thick forest. It was laced with greenbrier and slow going. But all around them the greenbrier was thicker, and brush and second-growth saplings were dense and difficult.
Wilderness Page 11
