Last Exit to Pine Lake

by Lenny Everson

  ****

 

  The Cottage, Long Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

  This narration you can trust (have I ever lied to you before?).

  Paul lit three candles. One was all he needed, but he didn’t want to screw up one of the final acts in his life, so he lit three. He left an open copy of Stolen Rain on the table, with a small silver bell on top.

  Each candle was set into shredded paper at its base; paper soaked in kerosene. When the candle burned down to that level, it would ignite the paper. The paper would ignite the cabin he’d lived in for twelve years. He turned towards the window, his hands clenched, then relaxed and headed for the door.

  They’d assume he was in the cabin, he thought, and search the ashes for his teeth. The fire would be hot enough to consume anything else. Maybe someone would notice that his canoe wasn’t in the shed; maybe not.

  It would depend on whether there was an investigation. He supposed, the way he’d filled the cabin with flammables, someone would suspect arson and call someone else. That should take a few days, and by that time he would be beyond caring.

  It was dark outside. He looked around: in an hour or so the Naylor pair would be getting up, since Tam had to drive into Peterborough for her job and Rollie into Bancroft for his. At this time of year it would be a slow drive through deer country.

  Right now, though, all the other cottages – there were seven in this corner of the bay – were dark, although for a moment he thought he saw a brief flash of light at the Naylor cabin, but that might have been his imagination or some reflection of the moonlight.

  He slid the blue canoe out of the shed, got a paddle, then locked the shed.

  Oaks are happy to hang onto dead leaves until spring’s buds push them away, so he couldn’t see into the oak above the cabin to check on the woodpecker. He turned only once towards the cabin and the road, making a chopping gesture with one hand.

  ****

  Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student

  October 2, round 5 a.m.

  Hi, Cindy.

  Remember that talk we had last week about interviewing a living writer for our assignment?

  Well, I looked up a few on the net and discovered that Paul Gottsen – he wrote Naked Man with a Bible – I don’t know if you remember that one – anyway, he’s still alive and actually lives around here.

  Actually, he went into hiding after his last book didn’t sell, but there was a news article in the Examiner about how he helped save a guy who had fallen out of his boat while fishing last year, and it mentioned that it was on Long Lake, just south of Bancroft. Do you know that lake? If it hadn’t been for that, he’d still be lost as far as the world knew

  So anyway, I figured, like, how many cottages can there be on Long Lake? We canoed Long Lake this summer, if you remember, Harvey and Fred and you and me.

  Anyway, I know the lake and there’s only a couple of cottages it could be, I mean his place. I figured, what the hey, I’d just drop in; what’s the odds an old guy’s going to turn away a young woman if my car happens to show up his laneway? Or maybe my canoe shows up at the end of his dock.

  If nothing else, at least I get to meet him as he tells me to get the hell off his property. And who knows, maybe I’ll even get an interview, which should help my essay, and maybe impress Professor Jackson with my eagerness if not my writing ability. I brought a copy of Naked Man with a Bible for him to autograph if he’s in the mood.

  Maybe he did write Dark Lake, the missing seventh novel and will give me an autographed copy! That would impress Jackson.

  I can’t decide whether to drive up to his house or put in at the launch point at the end of the lake and paddle in, which is where I am now. It’s freaking pitch black out there – I slightly (!) miscalculated the time and distance from home, but it’ll be light in an hour. I can already see the sky getting a bit lighter. And the moon’s pretty low on the horizon – does that mean it’s closer to dawn?

  I figured I’d bring the canoe and camping stuff, so if I couldn’t get to see Paul Gottsen I could spend the night along the shore. The weather’s supposed to be good.

  I guess I’ll launch here and paddle in. That way, if he’s not there, I can just continue on and go camping. There’s enough light from the moon that I can paddle if I don’t hit too many rocks. I can’t remember any from last time, but if it gets too hard I’ll just come back!

  ****

 

  Paul Gottsen: Misogyny and Redemption in Naked Man with a Bible

  by Kimberley Molley

  This is another bit you might want to skip if you haven’t read any of Gottsen’s novels.

  Course: Contemporary Writers 1209

  (continued)

  In Naked Man with a Bible the four principle characters provide most of the action through conversation and remembering past incidents in their lives.

  The online Free Dictionary defines “protagonist” as “the main character in a drama or other literary work,” or “the leader of a cause; a champion”. I find many modern literary works problematic when it comes to using traditional methods. Naked Man with a Bible, for example, doesn’t give the reader a protagonist in the traditional sense.

  Instead, the weather, their guilt over past deeds, and their present circumstances drives a wedge between them, and also leads the reader from present, back in time, and then back to the present again. As to whether the characters find a quantum of solace in their stories, each reader will have to decide for herself or himself.

  Basically, the stories start out with the characters each expressing the virtue of chastity in his own way, the difference being that each subsequently found himself in circumstances where irregardless of his own deeply-held beliefs, For every moral belief in maintaining courage and moral wholesomeness, the character was challenged by events equally as strong in the opposite direction, which pulled him towards the sin that was the opposite of chastity, which is lust.

  Whitestonejournal.com describes lust as “the self-destructive drive for pleasure out of proportion to its worth. Sex, power, or image can be used well, but they tend to go out of control.” Due to the fact that the men in this book tend towards seeing women as sexual objects, this necessitates a lot of talk, which would be just “guy talk” if they weren’t carrying guns and out to kill animals.

  Edgar (the one who was eventually castrated and killed by Bob) in one of those long conversations for which Gottsen became known, defines males (and their function in life) in terms of cats. “My cat is fed, watered, and warms himself by the old stone wall,” Edgar says, inscribing men with a passivity that doesn’t reflect reality as we know it. For Daigen (op. cit.) this puts men in the same boat as the ancient Greek gods, who were never considered to have had to work.

  Edgar also describes the cat as trying to get up enough ambition to go hunt in the field for small mice. He then looks around to see if anybody got the point, but only Cal does. According to him, every woman should own, or at least study, cats as a way of learning about male brain functions.

  Is this Gottsen’s view? Probably. If so, the assumption really is that women can be providers of warmth, food, and water – while men look for interesting things to do in life. This is “redneck” thought, a hedonistic abrogation of men’s responsibilities in a heterosexual relationship. Where is the parallel description of Woman and her needs? This is the misogyny of omission. We can’t try and expect, in a group of men, to find a deep discussion of women, but a word of sympathy from one of the four towards an understanding of women’s burden would go a long way towards lessening the charge that the novel is anti-women.

  If men learned more about cats they’d more deeply appreciate the independence/dependence matrix a woman should inhabit in a good relationship. Instead these guys prefer dogs, like Peg, due to the fact that a dog has nothing to teach any of the four except slavish devotion and servitude.

  ****

 

  The Cottage, Long Lake. Fir
e Day. October 2.

  He got the canoe out of the shed. It was heavy for him now, and he could see blood behind his eyes when he lifted it. But he set it onto the ground, then began dragging it down to the shore.

  He tripped once, on a rock he’d brought back from Tennessee. The moonlight made things vague like ethics in a dying heart. After a moment, he got up and continued dragging the canoe.

  Somewhere on the lake a splash told him of life and death. The canoe came after him like the old lizard, time, whose bright orange eyes had followed him and his women all his life.

  He put one paddle into the water for support. He slid the canoe into the water, got in, and pushed the paddle against the mud bottom. In moments he was on the lake, a full moon falling slowly into the western hills.

  Then he pushed off, his image shimmering in the water and his coat silvered by the moonlight.

  For a moment, he again thought he saw the flash of a light in the Naylor cottage, but it was an hour before Tam or Rollie would be up, so he put it down to the reflection of moonlight or starlight on a pane of glass.

  Sometimes, departing a shore by canoe is a song in the heart. Sometimes it is an escape. Once, and only once, it can be the departure from a world of things you’ll never know again. Raking leaves. Good movies. Potato soup. The sound of kids playing. And chocolate.

  Never is a long, long, time, even on a small lake in the darkness. He added pasta and sauce with meatballs to the list of things he was trying not to think of.

  He closed his eyes, feeling the canoe move through the water till all momentum was lost. He and the canoe stayed there a moment, dark shadows on moon-water. He made no move to look back and felt no desire to do so.

  He hit no rocks, more by luck than design; the lake was full of sunkers and a canoeist never memorizes all of them. Besides, in the darkness, things look different.

  A set of noises caught his attention; it sounded like someone unloading a canoe from a car, then getting stuff from the trunk. He saw the tiny gleam of a flashlight at the end of the lake. How bizarre – someone else planning on paddling in the dark.

  When he turned back, the pain rose from his abdomen, the night descended, and he passed out. A couple of seconds later, he woke to find himself lying forward across the portage yoke, still hanging onto the paddle. He vomited over the edge of the canoe, but once again, to his disgust, he neither fell from the canoe nor drowned. “Can’t win them all, I guess,” he said out loud, his anger straining the words.

  He stretched out his fingers, which had been holding the paddle too tightly.

  The thwump of a paddle accidentally banging a canoe came down the lake and echoed against the old rock cliffs. He paddled a little faster, then paused to take out his recorder.

  ****

 

  Paul Gottsen. Fire Day. October 2.

  Please, no more stars. No more rainbows, Jesus. Send me just a warmer night than I’ve known so far.

  I have not been an honest man; not even to myself. There is truth in fiction, but I hid truth deep and well. I hid it in masks since that event I refuse to remember. It has been a fire in my heart since then. Not all the whiskey I drank has put it out. All my masks have had clown faces printed onto them.

  In my life I stumbled to the campfire that is Truth knowing nothing. I staggered towards the music that filled the forest that lies make, a black dog gripped, long-fanged to my thigh. On my shoulder a crow wiped his beak and guilt on my poor head.

  When I got to the Stage of Truth the music wavered; bluegrass turning bad. The audience was gone and half the banjo strings were broken. The players were tired, not knowing when the show should end; not knowing that it should end. In a tree, a figure blocked the starlight, eyes reflecting gold. They told me this guy had the program, rulebook, and scales, but no-one ever got him to come down.

  Had I a kazoo, I would have played Amazing Grace. But for the dog, I would have climbed the tree. Had I the schedule, we could all have gone home without those tears.

  I could canoe in the tears I have refused to cry.

  Now the campfire light is fading and the music is gone. I am in a canoe enjoying the silence and looking forward to the dark. But there is another canoe on this lake and it is coming my way. I expected to meet the grim reaper in my canoe soon, but I never expected to find him in his own damn canoe.

  I shall outpaddle him and his gift. He can catch me on the portage trail, or in Samara.

  ****

 

  Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student.

  October 2, round 5 a.m.

  Hi Cindy:

  Out on the lake in my canoe. Dark but there’s good moonlight or I wouldn’t try it. I think I see a candle in Gottsen’s window, but can’t be sure. Going to paddle around a bit more to see if he wakes up in there.

  There’s somebody else out on the lake! Heard him over by the cliffs. Think somebody was throwing up. Then there was talking. Probably somebody partying too much at one of the campsites. Stupid to go out on the lake when you’re drunk. Hope he doesn’t drown right when I’m here.

  Me again. Had a sudden thought: what if that’s Paul Gottsen out in that canoe? (Joke.) Well, they say writers are a bit strange!

  Heading in towards Gottsen’s cabin. Should be light in a half an hour or so. I’ll sit on his dock and surprise him. If I don’t report in, I’ve been kidnapped and am being kept as a sex slave in his basement. I guess cottages don’t usually have basements, actually.

  ****

  Peter Finer, Journalist

  From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.

  What were his thoughts as he took that one-way paddle across the lake in the darkness? Did he think of his unwritten novel, of the critics?

  Or did his mind leap back to his teenage years, canoeing when he was young and strong along some western Ontario river with one in a sequence of girlfriends paddling with him? Did he remember the heat of those afternoons, their canoe slipping through riffles, the pastures gold in the sunlight, another summer grew old. He’d have longed for her as young men must, the shadows lengthening and the heat rising, the birds and bees looping across the water.

  At some rapids they’d have had to pull the canoe through the high weeds to get to deep water again. Did he, partway through, whisper her name? Did she smile at him, take off her hat, and look around? Did she look him in the eyes, and, almost as if by accident, touch his hand?

  Paddling in the dark, feeling older than the rocks, did he remember young desires, warmth among the nodding reeds, the passion hot as the molten core of the earth, and the way the redwing blackbirds in the cattails scolded afterwards?

  Did he look back to see the cabin in flames? Did he look back to remember the fires of youth? Did part of his heart die when he saw the ashes of his unpublished novel, Dark Lake, rising into the clean-pre-dawn air?

  And so he came to the far shore, by the portage sign tacked to the tree, almost invisible in the starlight. He used no flashlight: this was escape, nothing short of that.

  ****

  Long Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

  Part of his mind puzzled at the idea of another canoe on the lake in the night. He wondered if some group from the university had camped along the shore. After a night of partying, someone was apt to wake up hung over and pissed off at some remark made earlier. And just up and leave. Or maybe he’d done that himself long years before.

  Nonetheless it was stupid to go out on the lake when you’re drunk, unless you were looking forward to a nice drowning. But he wasn’t up to effecting another rescue if the other canoe rolled over. A month before, he’d helped rescue a man who fell out of a small fishing boat. The story in the Bancroft Examiner had carried his name, and since then he’d been getting an increasing number of inquiries about whether he was that Paul Gottsen. None of which he’d answered.

  He missed the landing for the portage twice in the darkness. It wasn’t a regulation portage or there would have been a yellow triang
ular sign stapled to a tree.

  But the portage to Sparkler Lake, (and from there to Pine Lake) wasn’t marked, and even in daylight was hard to see. He’d been over it many times, but things in the world of dark don’t give up their secrets so easily. It was hard getting out of the canoe – there was no proper landing – but years of practice allowed him to keep his feet dry. Dying was one thing: discomfort was another.

  He held onto the branches of white cedar as he carefully stepped onto a rock, testing to be sure it was dry.

  He gagged a bit as he hauled his small pack onto the shore, then dragged the canoe up over the shore rocks and logs and onto the forest floor. In his mind the noise of the canoe scraping and banging sounded like an advancing army, but it was over quickly enough.

  He pointed one finger at the hill as if his body would follow the intention, but fatigue caught him and like a tree falling he dropped to the ground.

  He lay on his back for a few minutes, watching the full moon lower itself behind the cedars towards the western horizon. Then he took a deep drink from one of the two Pepsi bottles he’d brought, and got up. His canoe was Kevlar and light – he’d bought it a dozen years back when portaging his older fiberglass canoe got to be a problem – so he was able to get it up. The trail was faint, but familiar, and he moved slowly, like Frankenstein in old age, trying to get up the hill and away from the shore before daylight.

  The sky was getting light as he followed the tiny creek for a bit, then turned onto the rolling waves of bare granite, bones of the planet, speckled with moss and scattered with patches of pine. When he got to the top the world was getting bright. He hurried the canoe down the other side, so as not to be seen. Then he set it down, and turned back.

  A bright glow of flame and a rising plume of smoke marked his cottage. He hoped the cat and the Wounded Woodpecker had made it away as safely as he had.

  He thought about a goodbye wave, but that life was a stranger to him, now.

  Then he somehow remembered Sylvia, a woman he’s spent six months with some years before. They’d never liked each other, but had exchanged Christmas cards for a few years after with no more happiness than they’d shared bodily fluids. Abruptly, he realized the deep purple of the sky was colour of the earrings that she always kept on until lovemaking was over.