by Jean Andrews
“We hardly ever have tourists buy guns and practice shooting as part of their vacation.” He let the remark hang.
“To tell you the truth, I’m on the lake alone, and it’s just an insurance policy.”
“Well, a lot of things look dangerous at first, but they’re not always, so the secret is to think before you shoot, but don’t think so long that you wish you’d shot.” We both laughed. I tried to pay him, but he said “protect and serve” was part of his job, and it seemed like that’s what he’d just done.
I felt secure now with my training and my new friend, Sam the sheriff. In fact, I was feeling so good that I headed back to town to Gus’s tavern. I’d been told that bars up North were more family oriented than drinking establishments in the South. People gathered in a tavern to talk and watch football and gossip.
A short and battered ship’s door led into a room so dark I had to stop and let my eyes adjust. Several men were at the bar, and two big-boned women were seated at a small table. I sat on a barstool and ordered a cabernet, while everyone in the bar visually examined me. No matter where I went, people stopped to take a look, like dogs sniffing the butt of a new arrival. I assumed they were checking me out to decide if it was okay for me to stay.
Gus, the owner, swabbed the bar top with his left hand and plopped my wine down with his right. The size of the wineglass was reminiscent of a medieval goblet. A big, athletic-looking, young woman in jeans and a dark-blue T-shirt with a navy insignia was serving other patrons.
Leaning into one wiry-looking guy, she warned, “He’ll get you in trouble, Tony.” She seemed to be referencing someone not in attendance.
The bald-headed man replied, “I’ve been in so much trouble all my life, it doesn’t feel good if I’m not! Skol!” He lifted his glass in a toast to his apparently troubled life.
Other men chimed in. “Skol!”
She moved on, obviously tired of trying to teach pigs to sing.
With the tourist season, they were pretty busy, and I assumed they made most of their money in the summer. The men were raucous and joking with one another. One thin, gristly old man talked about a fish that got away. “She was so big she just broke my line and spit the hook back at me, then flipped that big sleek body in the air and took off. She would’ve broken all records.”
“You sure you’re not talking about a woman?” Gus, his big belly bouncing, injected himself into the conversation, apparently believing it was his job to keep people talking so they’d keep drinking. They both laughed.
The woman in the navy T-shirt had moved behind the bar, and she put a second glass of wine in front of me. “On me. Name’s Kay. Welcome to the woods.” I thanked her. “I live on the opposite side of the lake from you, but I can see the lights along the cove from my place, and it’s nice to have so many cabins lit up this summer.”
Gus immediately jumped in. “You the lady from New York? We don’t get fancy New Yorkers often.” I explained I used to come up to this lake as a kid, but he was already working on his not-from-here descriptor. “Another drink, Fancy Pants?”
“I just put one in front of her, Gus.” Kay gave me an eye-roll as if to say men are clueless.
“So you know everybody around here,” I said to Gus.
“Oh, ya.”
“What’s the story about the woman on the Point?” I asked.
“Well, let’s see if I got all the names right. Psycho Psychic, Lady of the Loons, Horse’s ass, A roll in the bay—”
Another man seated at the bar, clearly three sheets to the wind, guffawed and slurred his words. “Better watch what yer sayin’, or she run you over with that horse!”
Kay shot me a look that seemed to say she could function as the bouncer if things got out of hand.
“Her name is Levade,” I said, irritated at Gus’s disparaging her and aware that I was feeling the buzz from the second glass of wine.
“Knew it started with an L.” Gus paused. “Don’t matter. You can call her anything, and she’ll come.” He laughed, and a couple of men joined in.
The anger shot up into my head like an ice cream headache. A scruffy, pot-bellied bar owner trashing a woman’s reputation for a few laughs from a bunch of locals.
“Well, thanks for being a protector of the female gender,” I said, raising my glass in a mock toast. “To Mr. Bar Wiper, who smells like a diaper, so much in demand he dates his right hand.”
The men at the bar whooped and hollered and slapped the scarred, lacquered bar top. I tossed my money down on the counter and stalked out, as Kay gave me a thumbs-up.
Admittedly, had I not been a little high, I wouldn’t have said that. In fact, I had no idea why I was defending a woman I barely knew. Maybe I was defending all women.
Maynard stepped out of the bar behind me, and I hadn’t even realized he was in there.
“Gus ain’t a bad fella, ya know. Yust been in the dark too long.” He chuckled as he guided me to the curb, took a thermos of coffee out of his truck, and poured me a cup, while I leaned up against the hood. He didn’t even mention I was mildly drunk or that I’d insulted Muskie citizen number 574. He just picked up where we’d left off.
“Ever since we had coffee, I thought about those days. Used to fish off the Point, and sometimes I’d watch Angelique work those white horses out on the beach. Seems like there was different ones. I was fishin’ the old log bed for bass right off her dock, and I could see your auntie over there sometimes by moonlight, the two of ’em yust playin’ with the horses like two young girls. That Angelique, she could make a horse tap-dance and sing the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ Said she took her horses to this place where only white horses can go. Don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds real pretty.”
I drank the coffee. “Tell me about this Frank guy. Seems like he’s the star of the town, with all his fishing trophies.”
“He’s got skills and he’s got demons. After his wife died, he left town for a while, but this was her home, and their home together, so he’s come back. Don’t think ya have any need of him.” Maynard made me drink a second cup of coffee and patted my arm with his big, gnarled hand. “Ya drive slow home, ya?”
“Oh, ya,” I said, thinking, my God, I’ve become a drunken Norwegian.
Chapter Eight
The story I’d begun writing two years ago in New York, and brought with me to the cabin, was about a man who was stalking his ex-wife because he believed her sexual forays were making a fool of him, even though they were no longer married. Meanwhile, the ex-wife was desperately looking for love but unclear what love looked like. How can she find something she can’t articulate, or recognize even if she sees it? I pondered that question.
The house phone clanged.
“So how’s it going?” Ramona asked.
“I was about to write War And Peace, Volume II, when you rang.”
“I’ll hang up, for God’s sake!”
“No! I’ll get back to it. I’ve seen some inspiring backdrops, if that makes you feel better. I took a tour of the lake with this really weird guy who knows all about the woods. The creepiest part was that his cabin is full of dead animals—he’s a taxidermist.”
“That’s Frank Tinnerson! I had no idea he was still up there. Stay away from him. Everyone on the lake knows he killed his wife and had her dogs stuffed.”
“What?! Those were dogs?”
“Pomeranians.” Ramona was talking distractedly to someone who was obviously standing in her office doorway, and for a minute she tried to carry on two conversations, finally ending mine. “I’ve got to take care of this. Sorry. Marney can fill you in, but just don’t be alone with him.”
She hung up, and I immediately headed to Marney’s. She was wearing a flowing pink, silk robe and fuzzy house slippers with floppy, golf-ball-sized poodle heads on each toe, giving me Frank-flashbacks. Her hair was in curlers, the kind I hadn’t seen outside an old five and dime store in thirty years. She was delighted to see me, despite my having shunned her for a
few days.
“The whole town knows Frank murdered his wife, but no one talks about it,” Marney said, serving me tea and cookies. They were gingerbread and homemade, so I was beginning to warm up to chats with her.
Marney’s white cabin was white inside as well as out. And every wall contained knickknack shelves with salt-and-pepper shakers in the shape of animals kissing. Pink ceramic, salt-and-pepper pigs kissing, black and white cows kissing, rodents, snakes, teapots, all ceramic, all salt-and-pepper shakers, and all kissing. Before I could comment, Marney explained, “Love is the salt and pepper of life!”
“Unless you have high blood pressure,” I teased.
“Making love lowers your blood pressure,” she confided in a whisper.
I had flashbacks of shrieking Marney and grunting Ralph having sex, but they were now two little ceramic salt-and-pepper hippos, which made me realize I’d traveled too far down the spice rack.
I shifted gears. “So Frank wasn’t tried?”
“He wasn’t even arrested. He said it was an accident and that he was heartbroken. Frank and his wife, her name was Dolores, fought all the time, I can tell you that. She was real pretty, with long black hair. In fact she looked a little bit Indian. I always thought Ojibwe, but Frank of course had to say she was European. Sometimes she’d show up in town with bruises, and she’d say she was clumsy and had an accident. But I heard she told someone that if she died, they should know that he killed her. The woods protects a lot of strange people.”
“What about the woman on the Point?” I always managed to switch to that topic because she was my mind magnet, constantly pulling my thoughts in her direction.
“Speaking of strange people!” She laughed. “I don’t know her, she keeps to herself, but her aunt was a famous equestrian. And she had these white horses she trained and traveled with and kept in some fancy barn. She was an odd one too, so maybe it’s just the family way.”
“I somehow think I met her once, maybe when I stayed that summer with Aunt Alice. Was she dark-haired?”
“Wore it swept back like a man, but on her it worked. She was very dashing. I can’t recall how she died, but in her will, she left everything to the niece, who probably has enough to live on, because she doesn’t do anything that anybody can see.”
“Well, maybe she does something she just doesn’t talk about.”
“Like what?” Marney’s eyes widened, probably at the thought there might be something someone didn’t talk about, since she talked about everything that blew through her brain.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, some say she’s a loner, and some say she’s a hooker. Now there’s something she wouldn’t want to talk about! I can tell you one thing. The wives around here keep their husbands away from her. I don’t let Ralph near her.”
“Good idea,” I said. For her sake. It wasn’t lost on me that women will turn on other women quicker than a man will, to curry favor with men, even when the men aren’t around. Maybe that’s why several of my female friends sided with Ben after the divorce, or maybe I was just a lousy friend and Ben was more emotionally accessible. Maybe I’m the loner and the hooker that Marney referenced. I started a mental count of my failed love affairs and stopped at twelve—a dozen of anything is enough. How could none of those affairs have been even remotely satisfying?
I thanked Marney for the hospitality and made my escape, heading into town for a few items from the drugstore.
* * *
Muskie Drugs had a soda fountain in back and a comic-book rack in the front. In between was every basic item a person could need for poison ivy, jock itch, hair color, or minor cuts, and things I couldn’t imagine anyone needing, like a Muskie key chain, a hairnet with God Bless America on it, and a tiny crossbow that fired toothpicks in case your children felt the urge to blind one another.
A skinny schoolgirl in tight jeans and sporting a rose tattoo on her forearm rang up my toothpaste and magazines.
“So you’re meeting everybody,” she said. “Not hard in a town this size. Say you’re from New York.”
“I am.” I introduced myself.
She extended her hand. “Casey Williamson,” she said, and I realized the name Williamson was on the drugstore and the hardware store. “I dream about that. I’ve read about the subways and Fifth Avenue and all the big theater shows. I want to go to college near there so I can take the train and see it all.”
“I’ll bet you do every bit of that and more.” I smiled at her.
“You think so? She twisted a long strand of her strawberry-blond hair.
“Absolutely.” I flashed her a big smile.
“Heard you met Frank and he gave you the tour…he killed his wife, ya know?” She said it as if it were part of his name: Frank who killed his wife.
“But he didn’t go to jail,” I said.
“No.” She paused. “Sure didn’t. His wife, Dolores, used to come in here. She was a real kind lady. Frank’s a badass. He tried to rape me once.” She was babbling like a kid not knowing when she was over-sharing. “I was babysitting their three little dogs, and he came in and got all over me, but I was lucky because his wife came home and started screaming bloody murder, and Kay was cleaning out their boat house, and she ran up and hauled him off me, or it could have been real bad.”
“I met a woman named Kay at Gus’s tavern.”
“That’s her. We were in school together. She’s a few years older than me.”
“Did you report what Frank did to you?”
“To my mom. She runs the hardware store. My parents own both places. If we’d told my dad, he would have tried to kill Frank and gotten killed himself in the process, Mom said, so we kept it to ourselves.”
“That’s terrible.” In fact, it was terrible on many levels: being attacked, having no one to report it to, having to hide it from your dad or he might get killed, and being the injured party but having to worry about everyone else’s feelings except your own.
“Yeah.” She sighed, seeming grateful to have gotten it off her chest.
“Who’s the real pretty blond lady who was in here the other day?” I took a chance she would remember.
She pointed through the glass doors at Levade entering the hardware store across the street. “She’s the coolest thing up here. I want to look that hot at her age.”
I assured Casey that hot was on her horizon, as I dashed out the door and across the street, entering the hardware store where I’d bought my shotgun right over the counter. It was the largest store in town, taking up most of the block, and I told myself I wanted to look around and see what else they sold, but really I wanted to see Levade. By the time I entered, she’d disappeared into the back of the store, so I hung around the entrance, knowing she’d have to exit in that direction.
Up front was an entire area devoted to animal traps in a dozen different sizes, fishing rods and waders, snowshoes, and a case full of knives with beautifully carved handles. Little Man stood at the counter talking to Gladys, the owner, and I said hello to both of them. “Those are some powerful knives,” he said, tapping the glass as if to see how sturdy it was.
“You’re Casey’s mom,” I said to the frizzy-haired Gladys, and she said she was. “I didn’t make the connection until Casey told me. A small town can be a tough place for a girl to grow up in.”
She glanced at Little Man and then looked at me, as if she knew Casey had shared something personal. “Only tough in spots. Most people are real good here.”
I asked to see one of the knives, so she took it out of the case, and I ran my fingers across the striated handle. The hardwood was carved in the image of a Norse forest god overlooking a wolf’s head peering out of the trees. “I’m not a knife collector, but these are beautiful, and this one is very tempting, just as a piece of art.”
“Knives give us strength to have what is necessary to live,” Little Man said to me, then left the store as if his business there was complete.
When I looked up from
the case, I saw Frank examining a bear trap. He was dressed in camo fatigues and a tight black T-shirt that accentuated his muscled biceps. I pivoted and tried to avoid him, but he’d spotted me and quickly struck up a conversation.
“I enjoyed our day together. I’d love to show you some other parts of the lake, when you have time.”
“I’m actually pretty busy working on my book right now.”
“Everybody needs a break.” He grinned. “Can’t work all the time.”
Levade rounded the corner from an adjacent aisle, carrying a windbreaker. She stopped abruptly and stared at him as if she knew him and didn’t like him. He spoke to me while looking directly at her, saying with undeniable pleasure, “I’m not as much a tour guide as I am a hunter, but I don’t want anything to suffer, of course. Like to stalk things, pretty things, as you can tell from my collection.” He glanced over at me. “But I can always postpone hunting to show an attractive lady the lake.”
“She doesn’t want to see the lake or anything else with you, Frank.” Levade’s voice was calm, but her tone was a warning.
His eyes moved to her. “We’ll catch up later. Have a good one.” Then he left.
Levade was visibly upset. She left the windbreaker on the counter, saying, “I’ll pick this up later, Gladys,” and disappeared as quickly as Frank had, ignoring me as if I weren’t there.
“What was that all about?” I asked Gladys, who’d witnessed the exchange.
She shrugged like she knew the answer but wasn’t sharing. Finally, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “She comes into town to shop, but she pretty much stays to herself, doesn’t hang around to chat. I don’t care what they say about her since she’s helped out an awful lot of women here…a few men too. She knows things.”
“What kind of things?”
The bell over the front door made a tinkling sound, signaling another customer had entered, and Gladys said loudly, “If you decide you want one of those knives, you let me know.”
Chapter Nine
