The other two percent was trouble, but you just faced up to it and knew that the cop would need your help someday, and you were paying local taxes, which visitors weren’t.
The constable was friendly. “’Morning, Lois.”
“Mornin’ Ted. What can I do for you today.”
“We’re still looking for Paul Gottsen; you know that.”
“That’s what everybody says.”
“We’re just checking out who else is on the lake. Do you have a list we can see?”
Lois hauled out the clipboard, then craned her neck to look out the window at the cars parked in the lot. She pulled a couple of forms out and put them into the recycle bin. “These came in last night,” she said. She spread out three forms onto the counter top. “They’re still out there, according to the forms, but I see the blue van’s missing, so I think the party boys came back early.”
“Party boys?”
“Two older gentlemen. Big orange canoe. Portage into Buzzard Lake every fall, get drunk, start yelling at each other around midnight – you can hear them quite a ways, I gather – then come back before dawn and drive away. One told me it’s the sort of honesty he doesn’t get from his wife or kids. But they’re gone, assuming one didn’t murder the other one this year.”
“So who’s still out there.”
“Well, they have to pay to park, but the launch is free. When they pay, we make them fill out the form as to where they’re going and for how long, and they have to take a garbage bag. But if someone dropped them off with their canoe and left with the car, we might not see them leave. BILLY!” A teenage kid poked his head around a door. “Go see what garbage bags came back.”
The cop bought a Coke while they waited. After a minute, the kid came back. “Number 233 is in the can.”
Lois thanked him, then moved one form to the bin. “That leaves the one pair in a white canoe, supposedly going to Triangle Lake. Not,” she noted, dipping her head and looking over her glasses, “that they all tell the truth or don’t change their minds if the portages are bad.”
“No others?”
She pointed to the parking lot. “That white Civic came in before dawn. Someone left a note and a ten-dollar bill under the door.” She unclipped it, then read it. “Kimberley Molley. Pine Lake. Red Canoe.” She looked up at the cop. “I remember her: came here with another girl and two guys in two canoes in August. Looks like she’s back here alone now.”
“Nobody else out there?” The constable remembered the two people he’d seen on Pine Lake.
“Any of the cottagers may have taken a canoe back in to the lakes. We don’t keep track of them. Or their kids. The teenagers don’t mind getting away from their parents for a few hours. She nodded in the direction of the door Billy had escaped through. Hope they take enough condoms.” A thump from the next room probably indicated that Billy had heard that.
The constable thanked her, noting that she hadn’t mentioned Mad Tom. Now he had to figure out who was with the Molley woman on Pine Lake. He got into the cruiser and called the station.
****
Mad Tom’s Diary
Have I lived too long on the shady side of life? Am I no longer Prometheus, hiding from the punishment of the hollowness of a godless universe, but become the dark shadow myself, the dark creature in the forest?
O come with me young woman. I would fain put my hand inside your blouse, feel your shadow heart, show you the flame I have inside me. I am not what you see! The brighter the flames, the darker the shadow seems, you know.
Come with me to the shady side of life. Bring whiskey and water, lilacs and worms. We'll toast our own deaths, We’ll celebrate the pitter patter of forgotten years under some old stairs.
I'll put my hand inside your blouse, feel your shadow heart.
We will watch the feet of glowing people go by, the saved soles gliding under heavenlight. Bless them, all, every one. In the darkness we will sit on old crossed planks laugh, play with nails, and dream of forests ablaze.
I am fire, and the shadow of fire.
Some people see ashes, shadows and ashes, but the can be no ashes unless there was flame; there can be no shadow unless there is light. When cloudshadow falls on the forest and water, remember Tom. When the campfire is lit by the shelter, remember Tom. You made him flame; now he is the shadow on the dark trees.
There is only one portage into Pine Lake. If I wait by it, maybe someone will be drawn to it; come carrying a canoe, moth to my flame. I have played the madman too long. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have their own fates but I must be there for the last act, the last scene. I must.
****
Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.
“Your turn,” Kimberley said.
The sun warmed the rock nicely. More geese flew by. On the far shore a mink nosed among the logs by the shore, looking for crayfish and frogs. The wind picked up a bit, making the treetops sway and lightly brushing the reeds behind the island.
“Fair is fair,” Paul said. He inspected his liquor supply. He’d finished up half the bottle of whisky Kimberley had given him, but Kimberley noted he didn’t seem particularly changed. It seemed, to her that older men tried to minimize the effect of alcohol whereas younger men liked to exaggerate the consequences, perhaps so as to lessen their responsibility for any events that followed. Young women, too, she thought.
“You talk like your books,” she added.
“It provides the distance I need.”
“Your wife? I read something about that.”
“I prefer to be found drunk and relaxed,” he said, “not drunk and crying in my last minutes, although that might yet happen. This story is about a man.”
“Most of your stories are pretty male-centered. At least I read one critic that said so.”
“Crogyn? She was right. Women devastate me. Always have. Men like to keep themselves as cartoons or icons to avoid the evil they were born with. Makes for easier stories.”
“Or just lazy?”
“Like all writers I’ve met.”
“Old, bitter, disillusioned by the creative act?” She debated pulling the sleeping bag off Paul’s canoe and rolling it up but then worried that the plane might be back again. The day was warming nicely, and although there had been warning of a chance of rain in the afternoon, there were few clouds in the sky.
“Next story,” Paul said. There was a pause, then: “He remembered each spring of his childhood, the land gold, and the orchards green with figs and olives, before it the world became too warm and people took to the shade. He remembered the way the wild mustard covered the slopes that rolled like waves of sunlight down to the bay.” The writer paused and they both contemplated the gold forest across the lake, comparing it to a drier, more storied landscape.
“No women in this story?” Kimberley asked.
“Yes. No. Be patient and we’ll see.” He moved to a new spot, facing the sunlight. “Childhood is temporary, of course. The rough and tumble of old ones and young ones teaching each other things ages one inexorably. Past yellow flowers came the road, dry and hard, turning through the desert, past the well, past the temple, and up to the hill.”
“He could easily see eternity from the hill but it was spring again, so he strained, trying to see if he’d left even the faintest trail in his life through the wild mustard.”
“Going for the icon instead of the cartoon, I see”, Kimberley said. “However unlikely, it probably makes a man feel better on his last day. I think you’ve left a path, even so. Always pays, I guess, to reach a bit higher.”
“I could never see eternity. Only the calloused feet of those who could.”
“Religious, then? I wouldn’t have thought so from the stuff I’ve read.” She got out a bag of chocolate-chip cookies and handed him a couple. “You can continue.”
“That was it. Now your turn again.”
“Getting briefer, aren’t we. Okay, let me think a moment.” Long pause to listen to a flock of ducks settle
on the water. “In the dream,” the student started, slowly, “she sat at the small table by an open window. It was in the small, dark hours of the morning. She wanted no more alcohol, but neither did she want sleep.”
“Was the night silent as death?”
Kimberley shook her head. “Far away a train whistle broke the night like a hammer shatters glass.”
“Wherever that train was going, she wanted to go, too. She tried to get up, but something dark held her down and wouldn’t let her go running out of the house to the train.
“She woke up, sweating, wondering why she hadn’t bought a ticket on that train. ‘Well, then,’ she said, shifting the sheets to the side and sitting on the edge of the bed. She stepped to the bedroom window, but there was nothing outside but dark white oak leaves tapping the pane. She thought there really was a vanishing sound, but it might have been only her youth. It might have been her whole previous life. She touched the cold glass with her forehead. ‘Well, then,’ she said again, watching the falling leaves, backlit by the streetlight.”
“You’ve been reading too much of that Gottsen guy,”
“Only Naked Man with a Bible.”
“One too many, nonetheless. I’m last summer’s waves on last summer’s shore.”
“You have no way of knowing for sure. Tell me another bible story. It suits this place.”
“Sure. From the other point of view. ‘Hey!’ I said, reaching up to tickle the feet just above me. ‘You're not dead yet, are you?’ The feet didn't even wiggle but I continued anyway. ‘What's the matter, fella? No spidey-silk to immobilize the Enemy? No Super-Powers to vanquish legions?’”
“Now you are going to Hell,” Kimberley laughed.
The writer continued. “I squinted in the dry light to the sparse crowd below. The city stank, and not just the smoke from Gehenna. Soldiers, bored as plowhorses watched the clouds. I continued, eating a sandwich: ‘The Hulk could have slaughtered a few Romans with a timber that size, you know. Batman, even, would be standing on Herod's palace, right now, scowling,’ I told him.
“A drop of red blood just missed me: I could sell this stuff for a bundle, I thought, but what the hell. ‘You still up there?’ I asked. ‘Fine way to spend a Saturday morning, eh?’ I scratched my own ribs. Looked around: the other two guys were thoroughly dead. Crows picked at their eyes. ‘You won't be forgotten,’ I added. But even a demo of X-ray vision might have made a difference. Don't die on me yet: I'm not finished.’
“But there was nothing I could add. A Superhero either is, or isn't. You fight nasty monsters from other galaxies, or you don't. This fellow didn't. Two paths diverged on the dusty road to Jerusalem. Superjew took the one, and that has made all the difference.” The writer threw a stone into the lake, where the ripples died away quickly. “Your turn again,” he said.
“Can I portray myself as a saint?”
“Mary, if you want.”
“Which one?”
“Either, in your own mind, I suspect.”
“Touché,” she said.
“I couldn’t imagine a college kid not having a drink under circumstances like these. You must be going nuts. A story?”
“Sure, but I’m not into icons and cartoons. We women don’t like to climb so high or sink so low. It hasn’t served us well in the past.”
Paul grunted. There was little left in the bottle.
After a long silence, Kimberley said, “I saw him standing under a streetlight, once. It was spring, and he was watching the water flow down the street. I was going to speak to him, but I noticed that he was crying." She looked at Paul, but he said nothing.
She waited. “Why?” he asked.
“Because, somewhere, someone was walking a remote beach, looking for strange seashells to add to his collection, or remarkable flotsam in the line of high tide.”
She waited, again, for a question.
“This guy – he doesn’t sound young.”
“Middle aged, I guess.”
“He wanted to collect sea shells?” But he knew the answer.
“No.” She tried skipping a chunk of rock on the water. It didn’t work. “He just wanted to be able to.”
“Did it affect his marriage?”
“There were silences in the kitchen. His wife had one bad dream. In the dream, he was asleep, curled up on one pan of the scales, but slowly sliding off. Frantically, she would throw things onto the opposite pan. Tables and pies, and a shopping bag full of bright clothes.”
“Won’t work,” Paul said. “I know. Won’t work for men or women.”
“Nothing worked, not even Timbits. At last she crawled onto the rising pan herself but it made no difference. She always saw him slide, still sleeping off the other side. She usually woke up almost in time to call his name before he began that long, long fall.”
“Did she see him landing on a sandy beach, full of seashells?”
“She couldn’t. It would not have been her.”
“Sad.”
“A lot of life is. Shall I roll you into the lake and stand on your head?” Kimberley stared at him a moment.
“Oh! Would you? I’d appreciate that. I’d forgive you for everything.”
“Would you forgive yourself?”
“Doubt it.”
They watched a beaver cross the lake for reasons known only to beavers.
****
Mad Tom’s Diary
I was into poetry.
I found, after a while, though, that my words were like butterflies, painted by a blinded old man, trying to remember by touching the canvas, an old woman trying to remember by feeling the ashes.
****
Peter Finer, Journalist
From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.
Finer continues his Biography Of Paul Gottsen by describing his version of how he and Kimberley met Paul on the island in Pine Lake.
Gottsen, at this point, was near death. The doctors had told him, “no stress and no strenuous exercise”. But he’d hauled that canoe over two portages and crossed Sparkler Lake, much of it in the darkness. Nobody knows how often he fell, but when Kimberley Molley slid her lightweight red canoe against the island, he was unconscious. She walked up to him and tried to get him to wake, but for a moment, she thought he was dead.
She would have wondered how he got there, with no tent, sleeping bag, or other equipment. But she did the only thing she could think of: she opened a small bottle of brandy and poured a bit into his mouth. Amazingly, he coughed and opened his eyes. Bewildered, he asked, “Who are you?”
I myself, at this point, was carrying Rollie’s bright yellow canoe and a packsack of goods on the root-scrambled slope down to Sparkler Lake. A grouse took off in a drum of wings, startling me, but reminding me where I was, when my mind kept running ahead. So I stopped, and looked around. Nature was preparing for a winter that I at least expected to see. Somewhere out Alberta way winter walked the land in feet of freezing rain. Out in Flin Flon a man was examining his frost-killed plants, rescuing a few tomatoes to make into spaghetti sauce for the evening’s meal. But here in southern Ontario it was bright sunshine with the steady falling of leaves onto the waters as I started the paddle across Sparkler.
Up at Thunder Bay, that day, it was raining steadily, and paddlers were storing canoes in the garage, tracing with gentle fingers the lines that rocks had left on the hull. In Wawa people were putting camping equipment onto shelves with rain drumming onto their roofs.. The rain would get to me sometime, but not yet. Here I felt yellow birch leaves and yellow beach leaves falling on me and my borrowed canoe. There was a hymn to the land and a promise of resurrection.
I paddled across Sparkler Lake and spent a few minutes looking for the portage to Pine Lake. This wasn’t a common route, so there was no paper sign attached to a tree. But Rollie had described it well, and, on a rock along the shore, I saw a bit of blue paint a rock had scraped off a canoe. I looked at the steep hill and the dense brush, and decided to take my pack
and the canoe in separate trips.
There was little but a few old strings tied around trees to mark the way, but when I got to the top of the ridge, I set the pack down, then went back to get the canoe, thinking that the morning was a work of art that should be saved somehow. Maybe God recycles such days in other universes, taking them from a tall green filing cabinet if the local beings deserve them.
When I got to the top carrying the canoe, I paused to let my cardiovascular system catch up with me, and leaned the canoe against a tree. Then I continued on downhill with the pack, watching the lake get closer in small glimpses through the trees. As I descended, the forest opened up into a stand of tall beach scattered with pines. At one point I could see Pine Lake, and was happy knowing I was on the right track, that Gottsen was on this lake. I left the pack at the edge of the shore, watched the two people on the island for a minute, then went back for the canoe.
It seemed faster the second time down the slope even with the canoe on my head. When I got to the shore, I rolled it off my shoulders and onto the ground.
Then a man stepped from behind a young spruce and pointed a gun at my head.
****
Mad Tom’s Diary
The man locally known as “Mad Tom” kept a diary for almost four years. This is taken from a portion of the diary written in the first year.
During the day, the ashes in the fireplace bother me, but I can’t tell you why.
Maybe the ashes tell me that there were fires, once, sucking oxygen from the room, consuming it in a frenzied ballroom of light, then pouring the residue, black, up the chimney and into the night sky.
There are stars up there, in the night sky, wavering in the smoke from the chimney. They burn, too, like sparks in a galactic fire, trailing planets and comets like dust in their wakes.
Everything burns out, eventually. The stars will, too. Don’t tell me love is eternal; even the stars burn out.
The hotter a fire is, the faster it burns.
Let’s not be sentimental about this; there are many ashes you’d like taken away from your fireplace, chucked into the backyard, and left to vanish slowly into the ground, making the grass greener and letting future fires burn a little more brightly.
Fires can be choked by too much ash, you know.
There’s too much ash in the fireplace. I should get a shovel and a bucket and take the ashes out. I look at the fireplace and know this and see the ghosts of old fires looking back at me.
Last Exit to Pine Lake Page 10
