Last Exit to Pine Lake

by Lenny Everson

  A journalist never knows what’s ahead, but it seemed wiser to keep going than to take the chance the guy behind me would get off one lucky shot as me, and my little camera, and my cell phone, and my recorder, could roll the canoe, especially with his weight acting as a ballast.

  ****

  Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.

  “I don’t think Tom can swim,” Paul said. “Otherwise he’d have been over here by now.”

  “I bet.” Kimberley moved closer to Paul, then tentatively put a hand on his shoulder.

  “And he doesn’t have a canoe.”

  “Strange, around here.” Kimberley tilted her head towards the water.

  “Oh, you can walk around the lakes, and he was sure the satellites and airplane going overhead kept track of canoes.”

  “The thinks so?”

  “We’ve had three – no, four – conversations back in the woods. Not here, though, until now. The first one hardly counted. He had a gun and can’t make himself understood very well when he’s uptight.”

  She turned to look at the writer. “Didn’t the gun make it awkward?”

  “Rather. Until I found out he doesn’t have any bullets for it. I guess he ran out and I figured it wasn’t a good idea to give him any more.”

  “I’m with you on that one. What do you think he’ll do?”

  “Who knows? If he thinks this is a conspiracy to get him, he could do anything to any of us. If not…. I just don’t know. He’s a frightened man.”

  “How deep’s the water right offshore here?” Kimberley got to her feet as the canoe got closer.

  “Falls off real quick; goes down really deep.”

  The canoe approached the island steadily. As it did, Peter carefully set his paddle down and took out a camera from an inside jacket pocket. Keeping it hidden from Tom, he took his first picture as the island neared.

  Kimberley stepped up to the water. Paul was right: other than a small underwater ledge, the edge of the island was an underwater cliff. She could see Peter taking another picture as she reached toward the canoe. Then she stepped onto the ledge, grabbed the gunnel of the canoe, and pushed down. Even then, the canoe would have rolled back upright if Tom had not panicked and stood up.

  The yellow canoe went over far enough to roll Tom, little rifle and all, into the water. Peter grabbed onto the gunnels with a death grip, and bent over until his face touched the prow of the canoe, a manoeuvre that kept him in the boat when it rolled back upright, the way a good canoe should. He then leapt out onto the shore and helped Kimberley drag the canoe partly out of the water. It had a lot of water in it, and was too heavy to haul out completely.

  Tom himself might have drowned, but he caught one end of a rope that had fallen out of the canoe, and holding onto that was hauled landward until his feet found the ledge and he could crawl onto the land like a wet cat. The rifle was nowhere to be seen. He found a warm part of the rock and began taking his soaked clothes off, turning to Paul and saying, “People can be wet and cold.”

  “You, at least, old friend,” Paul said. “Glad to see you.”

  “People bother people?” Tom asked, still fighting buttons.

  “Kimberley’s on our side. Don’t know about this other dude, though.”

  “People will see about people,” Tom said.

  Kimberley was taking her wet shoes off when Peter, who was dry except for one foot, started emptying the canoe of his stuff, keeping a wary eye on Tom. Barefoot, Kimberley walked over and began bailing water out of the canoe with an empty Blue Bonnet Margarine container that was floating among the other goods. In a couple of minutes, they hauled the canoe further onto shore, so they could reach more of Peter’s floating camping equipment.

  Peter checked his jacket. From the inside pocket, he pulled out the camera and the recorder, and set them on a flat section of shore. When he turned back to the canoe, Kimberley walked over, took both items, and tossed them, one after the other, well out into the lake. Peter stood up in time to see them hit the water. When he turned to Kimberley, she just shrugged. “Sorry about that,” she said. He, however, was at a loss for words.

  Paul, who had been about to say something to Tom, turned. “What was that?” he asked.

  “I seem to have inadvertently tossed this dude’s camera and recorder into the lake.”

  Paul laughed. “Now I think I’m getting to like you.

  “Great,” Kimberley said. “Just adopt me or marry me in the next few minutes so I can inherit your cabin.” She turned to Peter. “You a reporter, or something.”

  “A reporter or something,” Peter agreed, after a minute. “And hostage till you rescued me. I guess I owe you that.”

  “Well,” Paul said, “I’ve been saving my final comments into a voice recorder myself, in the last day. I’ll give it to you before you leave.

  “I’d like that!” Peter was sounding more cheerful. He began getting the items that had been removed from his backpack and were now floating inside the canoe. After he’d got most of them out, he and Kimberley tipped the canoe over to let the water pour out.

  “Paul,” Kimberley said, “we have more whiskey.” She held up a large plastic bottle of Seagram’s VO.

  “Ah, Rollie asked me to give this to you,” Peter said.

  “Good old Rollie. Always willing to help me out.” He took the bottle from Kimberley, then removed the cap. “Anybody else want some.”

  “There will be drunks!” Tom shouted, by now buck naked, having removed his wet clothes, all of them.

  “You’re right, my friend,” Paul said. “Kimberley, can you find a cup for my friend here?” When she did, he handed Tom a half cupful, telling him, “Drink it slowly. If you get drunk you’ll be helpless when they come for you.”

  “There will be comings?” Tom said. “There will be comings? There will be comings?” He began to bob up and down doing knee bends and looking along the far shores.”

  “I don’t know,” Paul said, “but I believe it’s likely someone will be along this afternoon. He turned to the others. “Tom’s really quite articulate and intelligent when he’s relaxed, but not when he’s uptight about things. I think he’ll be like this as long as you’re here.”

  Peter turned to Kimberley. “Who are you and what are you doing here.”

  ****

  Peter Finer, Journalist

  From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen. This is a Rejected Section of the Manuscript.

  So they came, one by one, and each with his or her own motives, to Pine Lake. They came over the portage bearing their colourful canoes each on his or her own head, as the short shining autumn day sang to them in colours they tried to ignore.

  They came through the yellow beech and through the maples of heart-stopping orange. Stumbling on rocks, they passed even under a grove of hemlock, walking like supplicants between the pillars and under the canopy that spread above them. Then they walked downhill into the pine forest that circled the little lake, home to a big, strange man, who wanted only to stay hidden, and sweep the spotlight away if it came near him.

  They had, each, a different motive in their hearts and wore different shoes on their feet, but they came like clowns into the circus ring to the dark mystery of water, stone, and tree. The geese sang of miles awaiting them and sunny shores, but the chickadees told them winter was coming, and they should beware.

  They crossed water in boats so small even a sick old man or a young woman could carry them on their shoulders. They put the boats into the water and, like boats should, they floated on the surface. It was, as always, a commonplace and a miracle. The boat and the human hung between high blue sky and unseeable depths, depths in which whole life forces could live and die and lost canoeists could roll and be nuzzled by silent creatures should they make just one mistake of gravity. Somewhere at the base of their spines a coiled and primeval serpent knew that the bottom of the lake was the darkness on a bright day.

  But they crossed the water anyway, like
acolytes to the god of pain, each wondering if they’d made a mistake.

  Then the man who played the dying novelist in this theatre met the girl who played the essence of youth and together they faced the man with questions. And the only one who could touch on the truth of it all was the Caliban, the Wild Man, who kept the deeps of human fears from a thousand centuries aching in his bones and, for a long moment, couldn’t speak.

  They faced each other and looked for truth, and redemption, and pity and light. The water sparkled underneath a cooling sky, so they reached for the whiskey bottle because it was all too much for them.

  And the geese sang above them and the white-throated sparrow in the cedar called O sweet Canada Canada Canada, but in the deep water the burbot swam slowly along the bottom, tasting the mud and waiting for night.

  ****

  Peter Finer, Journalist

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

  There we were, four people on an island. My voice recorder and camera were in the mud on the dark bottom of Pine Lake. I’d figured there was an even chance I’d get to Gottsen after he’d killed himself. I still had a pen and a notepad, so I started interviewing the other inhabitants of the island.

  That was a mistake.

  The student, Kimberley Molley merely told me what to do with myself when I merely asked for her name. I gathered she had had a bad experience sometime with the media, or else she’d developed a bond with Gottsen rather quickly and didn’t want to see him answer questions before he died. I waited a moment, hoping some modicum of guilt from having destroyed my property might temper her disenthusiasm. There was what would have been a long silence, except for Gottsen talking to the Naked Hulk, Tom.

  Not for a moment did I consider interviewing Tom. Even if I had know his diaries would eventually be discovered in his “habitation” under the hemlocks, it was obvious that he wasn’t able to communicate much. And, besides, he seemed to consider me an enemy of some sort. Paranoiacs are hard to deal with, naked or not, but when they outweigh you by a lot of muscle and there’s no place to run to in a hurry, it’s better to just let them alone, I figured.

  That left Gottsen himself. The media, which I represented in his eyes, may not have generated the bad reviews he got for Stolen Rain, but they certainly disseminated those reviews. I was heartened when he offered me his voice recorder, but not inclined to try to get it from him at that moment.

  That left me standing on the island, one foot wet, and nothing to do. So I did the only reasonable thing: I found a plastic cup among the goods Rollie had sent with me, and went over to ask for some whiskey. After a moment’s reflection, Paul half filled my cup. I thanked him, considered the universe, and chugged it in one gulp. After I’d danced a bit, Paul noted that Rollie had sent him overstrength liquor brought in from the States.

  “Oh, God!” I noted, a bit shaky.

  “Is no god!” Tom yelled capturing everyone’s attention. “Cannot be! Must not be!

  We all looked at each other. Then Paul, his eyes closed, spoke. “Every evening God opens a fold-down desk before She pulls her comforter over Her head and sleeps the sleep of the damned. She writes the whole events of the day in a radiant book.” He opened one eye for a moment, and looked at us. “It helps to keep her warm. Lucifer, you see, stole Light and scattered Her power across the gray planet.

  “God cannot be caught, but if you’re quick, you can see Her in the strange reflection from a whiskey bottle, if it is topped with a half-burned candle and if it is full of tears.” If he’d aggravated the naked man next to him, he didn’t seem worried.

  But Tom began to shout. It was obviously a sensitive topic in his life. Suddenly I really, really hated Kimberley for the loss of my voice recorder. Tom ranted about God for a while. When he paused, Kimberley turned to Paul. “Any stories about mythical heroes as comment?” she asked.

  Paul was obviously in pain. But he answered, “I came across Odysseus out in a field by the edge of an open grave, drunk and loud, stomping on grasshoppers and crying (he always was a sensitive man).

  “Well, I asked, and Odysseus roared, ‘Gods! You have no gods in your bloody cold country!’

  “I offered to show him channel 27 on weekdays on the one-eyed Cyclops or almost anything on a Sunday morning, but he would not be comforted. ‘Fuck you,” he ranted at the sky positively begging for thunderbolts (or even a small rain).

  “It was a brave performance from an old man; he got my sympathy, and the lovely sweet song of a meadowlark bravely singing over the grave of all his dreams, fears, and hiccups.” Paul stopped suddenly.

  Well, I didn’t know what it meant, but it stopped Tom in his rant. He looked at Paul, who was holding a bottle of pills. He looked around at us and the lake. Then he looked up. In the bright blue sky an airplane, probably on its way into Toronto, was leaving a bright contrail that passed directly above us. Coming in from the northwest, another plane, somewhat higher, was leaving another contrail. We watched as they slowly crossed our sky, crossing directly above us. It turned out to be a particularly unfortunate coincidence.

  Paul spoke up. “He thinks the government spreads special chemicals by adding them to jet fuel. The chemicals make us stupid and amenable to government propaganda.”

  “Speaks for itself!” Tom yelled.

  “Even me?” Paul asked him.

  Tom stared at Paul, then yelled, “Who’s got the antidote? Who among us had the prevention?” He stepped between myself and Kimberley, over to the writer, and snatched the bottle of pills from Paul’s hand. “Who always wondered? Who always suspected?” Tom yelled. He took the whiskey bottle from the rock, and backed away, toward the swamp.

  At that point, he poured the entire bottle of pills into his mouth, and began chewing and swallowing, helped by slugging back the whiskey at the same time.

  Kimberley seemed frozen, but I stepped forward. Tom scooped up a baseball-size rock and held it over his head. When he’d got the pills down he set down the whiskey carefully, saying, “Why do they listen? Why don’t they fight? How do I know?” Then he began a long quote from Leviticus, mixed in with a bit of Hamlet. I looked briefly back at Paul. He was filling my packsack with stones. “Might be a good idea,” I thought, assuming he was reducing the available ammunition supply, before I turned back to Tom.

  Kimberley and I didn’t move; we just stood there, watching Mad Tom being mad. He came close to accusing us of being part of a conspiracy to capture him, drug him into subservience, then release him. At the time it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. I’d have edged away if I weren’t afraid it would provoke him.

  Then, abruptly, Tom stopped ranting. His voice went up an octave and the rock fell out of his hand, hitting him on the shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice. He stopped talking, and fell to the ground, one arm under him, and his head sideways.

  We waited a moment, then I stepped slowly up to Tom. Kimberley, still standing there, said, “Can we do anything?”

  “He’s still breathing,” I said, “but not well. He’ll die unless we can get that shit our of him. Do you have a stomach pump handy?”

  “Can we make him throw up?”

  “Probably not. And if he did, he’d probably choke on his own vomit.” That comment was followed by silence as we watched Tom lie there. The silence was followed by the sound of a small airplane getting louder. A yellow float plane came in over the hills, dipped till it was treetop height, and flew over the lake. “Inspecting the lake for a landing,” I shouted above the noise at Kimberley. “So they know where the rocks are.”

  “Where’s Paul?” Kimberley asked. “Where’s Paul?”

  She had a point there. I couldn’t see any sign of him. All three canoes were still there, and I ran towards the clump of trees we’d been using as a toilet, although they were short enough that a guy would really have to lie down to hide. There was no sign of the writer.

  “No. Not there. Out there,” Kimberley yelled.

  I turned to lo
ok. She was pointing towards the lake surface. From deep in the lake a large bubble rose to the surface, followed by a couple more. “Holy shit,” I said, walking to the edge of the lake. There wasn’t a sign of anyone or anything.

  The plane came in from the same direction as before, but landed this time, throwing up waves until it was close to the island. The pilot turned it towards us, then killed the engine. A man in a police uniform got out onto the pontoon with a rope. I admit I was a bit stunned at this point, so Kimberley caught the rope and looped it around a boulder the size of a dog. The cop pulled at the rope, and the plane moved to the shore.

  When he’d stepped onto the shore, he looked at both of us, then nodded in the direction of Tom. “What’s the situation with that individual?”

  “He swallowed a bottle of pills. Sleeping pills, I think.” Peter handed over the empty bottle with Gottsen’s name on it.

  “And he washed them down with half a bottle of whiskey,” Kimberley said.

  The cop examined Tom. “We’ll have to get him to hospital as quick as soon as possible. Can you help get him onto the plane?” By this time the pilot had brought a nylon stretcher with aluminum poles.

  Well, I could, and we did, the cop, the pilot, Kimberley, and I rolling Tom onto the stretcher, then getting it onto the plane. Tom was heavy and the last part, between the water’s edge and the door took some chunks of skin from Tom’s arms and legs, but we managed it. The last thing the cop said was, “I want both of you to show up at the OPP office in Bancroft tomorrow.

  Then he untied the rope, got into the plane, and in a minute or two they were gone into the sky.

  ****

  Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.

  For a moment after the plane was gone Peter and Kimberley watched the empty sky. The echoes seemed to die slowly, and it was only when a heron abruptly flew in and landed just down the shoreline that a proper silence returned to Pine Lake.

  Both people turned and walked back to the centre of the island. The journalist began writing into a little white notepad. Kimberley rolled up her tent and sleeping bag, packing them into the one large pack. The heron changed its mind and flew away. Neither of them more than glanced at the lake where Paul had disappeared.