A Lifetime Burning in a Moment (2 page)

There was one sink in the small bathroom but that was it. Beyond that there was no indoor plumbing. No toilet. No tub or shower. There was a small outhouse at the rear. The lake was where people bathed. No phone, no electricity. No computers, no Internet, no faxes. Neighbors are rare in these parts. “It’s just you, the lake and the woods,” Elise smiled after she’d finished reading the manager’s note.

Energized, they unpacked, changed then waded into the water of their private beach to swim off the sweat and dust of the drive. Curious, Devlin walked through waist-high water to inspect the gleaming boat tied to the dock. It came with the cabin.

“Think you can drive it,” Elise smiled.

“You bet, let’s go for a ride.”

They all climbed into the aluminum craft. The 25-horsepower outboard came to life with a bubbling rumble that churned a creamy white wake as Devlin eased it ahead before opening up the throttle. The motor whined, raising the bow as he adjusted the tiller, centering its point squarely on the middle of the lake. Warm breezes brushed their faces.

It felt good.

A baptism of sorts, Devlin thought, warmed by the absence of others.

Bedrock as old as time formed the distant peaks that guarded the lake. They jutted from rolling forests laced with clear water streams and meadows jewelled with red trilliums, orange daylilies, blue flags, and bunchberries. The lake was known as God’s secret sanctuary, according to the history Devlin had read. For years, it was all-but-forgotten, hidden in a remote reach of Canada’s border with New England. Other than an abandoned Jesuit outpost, no lasting settlements had ever been recorded here. Much of the territory had remained unexplored well into the late 1800s. The demanding terrain had repelled lumber companies.

In 1893, a Halifax shipping tycoon bought a 400-acre section surrounding the lake. He died without ever having set foot on it. His acquisition was ignored by his estate, except for the sale of a few lakeside tracts to satisfy an obscure turn-of-the-century property requirement. Situated on a peninsula, the parcels were separated by several acres of dense forest and accessed by narrow bush roads. It resembled skeletal fingers shaping a claw, the final extension of some unfortunate who had reached the lake to die.

“See.” Devlin pointed his fork at the map on the paper placemats in the restaurant, where later that day after the boat ride, he continued telling his family about the region’s history over a dinner.

“Like a skeleton’s hand,” Blake agreed. “Mom, where’s our map, so we can see where our cabin is and where we drove in the boat?”

“In the car on the front dash. We’ll check later, sweetie.”

Devlin and his wife had club sandwiches. The kids had cheeseburgers. They were the only customers. After dessert of homemade apple pie and ice-cream, they strolled outside for some window shopping at the adjacent craft shop which had just closed for the day.

“This place is a dead zone,” Annie said after oohing and ahhing with her mother over a bracelet in the shop window. As they turned to leave, Devlin saw a man walking away quickly from the side of their Ford to a pickup truck in a far corner of the empty lot.

He’d thought nothing of it until his family approached their doors and Devlin saw the beer bottle wedged between the right rear tire and the ground.

He stared.

It had been placed strategically so it would shatter and shred their tire when they drove off. Now why would someone do something like that? Devlin glanced around for an answer, glimpsing the man nearing the pickup. He heard the man’s snickering, echoing with the chuckling of a second man waiting behind the wheel of the truck.

For a few heated seconds Devlin didn’t move. The sight of the bottle hit him. The laughter hit him. Like blows to his stomach, his head, his dignity, they pounded him back through time, passed the humiliation in the auto shop, back through his life to the railyard beatings. He began walking to the truck without realizing he was heading that way until Elise begged him to come back.

Devlin kept walking.

It might’ve been because all his life he’d failed to stand up for himself. Had always bit back on his anger. It might’ve been because he’d failed to stand up for Blake. It might’ve been the pressure pent-up from years of never standing up to anyone. But deep in his gut, Devlin felt the quaking of an explosion. You just don’t pull a stunt like this, laugh and walk away. No sir. There had to be an accounting. And by God, he’d eaten too much crap in his life, not to be entitled to a little respect. Indignation hammered in his chest as he neared the truck.

The engine started.

The battered truck lumbered triumphantly toward the lot’s exit, ticking and creaking. As it moved away slowly, the two men looked at Devlin. He stared into the darkened cab then glanced at his family, feeling their fear pulling him back to the safety of doing nothing. To let it go. But he couldn’t let it go.

Something was burning with such intensity it consumed him.

A sudden yelp of laughter triggered his final decision.

Devlin trotted after the pickup. Planting himself alone in the lot, he pulled out his weapons. A pen and notebook. Defiantly ignoring the fact the two men were watching him in their mirrors, he scrawled down their plate.

Good. He had their number. That’s all he needed, he thought turning to join his family in their car.

“John what’s wrong with you?” his wife asked. “Running after those two guys. That was so foolish.”

“Excuse me,” Blake said.

“Yeah, Dad!” Annie said. “It was so embarrassing!”

“Excuse me,” Blake said.

“Why didn’t you just let it go?” his wife said.

“Excuse me,” Blake said. “But I think those guys are coming over here.”

The truck had veered from its course and was approaching them. Devlin’s Adam’s apple lifted then dropped. He hadn’t expected this.

“Please just stay in the car,” his wife said. “Calm down and don’t make this any worse. Kids, put your windows up.”

Devlin pressed the button automatically locking all four doors. The truck ticked and creaked as it eased beside him, stopping when the driver’s door drew up across from Devlin’s, leaving about six feet between them. The driver’s window was down. Devlin lowered his.

Half way.

One muscular arm tattooed with a spider’s web was draped over the truck’s steering wheel, the other rested on the door frame. The old pickup had a beat-up fiberglass cap over the bed and a crumpled front fender, as if it’d rammed something. The driver took his time dragging on his cigarette and spewing a smoke stream to the sky before turning to Devlin.

“Is there a problem, mister?”

Devlin figured the man to be his age. He was wearing dark glasses, a filthy ballcap and looked as though he hadn’t shaved for several days.

“Your friend seems to have misplaced his beer bottle under my tire. I think he wanted to give me a flat.”

“Give you a flat?”

The man’s face soured. He turned to his passenger who appeared mystified. The driver turned back to Devlin.

“I think you’re mistaken.”

“Mistaken?” Devlin made a point of surveying the empty lot. “You’re right. Obviously, with no one else here, it couldn’t have been you.”

The air tightened as if a gun had been cocked.

“John please!” his wife whispered.

“John?” the man had heard. “That your name?”

The driver said something to his passenger and they laughed. Devlin couldn’t make out what he’d said about his name as Elise squeezed his knee. He glanced at the frightened faces of his children in the mirror. Elise was now squeezing so hard it hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Devlin said. “It was a bad joke. You’re right. I’m mistaken. It must’ve rolled under there. I’m sorry I chased you. I was wrong. Please forget it.”

“Did you call me a bad joke, John?”

Devlin saw his reflection in the driver’s dark glasses. Tiny. Small, shrinking away, as he always did.

“No. Forgive me. I made a bad joke. I was wrong to accuse you of anything. Totally out of line. I apologize.”

The driver’s face hardened as he and his passenger scanned Devlin, his family and their car for a long, cold moment. Then the driver studied his cigarette butt. Before he flicked it away, he half grinned and nodded.

“No harm done, John.”

The truck’s motor ticked as it rolled away then vanished down the road.

Elise wanted them to wait. So they did. For a long moment, Devlin sat motionless behind the wheel. Then he cursed under his breath, turned the Ford’s ignition and started back to their cabin along the serpentine dirt road.

No one spoke.

The ping of gravel punctuated the silence, decompressing the tension as each of them withdrew into their thoughts. Devlin soon took comfort in the soft strains of music leaking from Annie’s headset she listened to a CD. Blake looked toward the lake while Elise glimpsed her passenger side mirror.

“Oh God, they’re following us!”

Devlin’s skin prickled when he saw the pick-up’s grill and damaged front fender half-concealed like a phantom in the dust behind them.

“Hang on!”

He accelerated and the Ford roared along the narrow route, bobbing on its sudden hills and valleys, sunlight flashing through the thick woods, branches slapping the car as stones boiled against its undercarriage.

“Daddee!” Annie gripped her armrest.

Blake was numb with fear.

“Oh God, John,” his wife said.

“We just need to buy some distance.” Devlin’s ears pounded with each curve he rounded. “There it is.” He braked, the car slid, creating thick, choking dust clouds as he turned into the underbrush of their entrance. The Ford bounced. He tucked it neatly into a leafy canopy and shut off the motor.

No one moved.

For several desperate moments they heard nothing but their breathing which halted when the pick-up approached -- crunching gravel then the ticking engine. Under her breath Elise prayed for the two strangers to please just go away. Seconds later the truck rolled through their fading dust curtain, leaving another in its wake.

Devlin allowed a full minute to pass before he turned to Elise.

“Well that was an adventure,” he smiled weakly. “All right back there?”

“Just fine, Dad,” Annie groaned.

Elise shook her head muttering something about brainless men.

“I think that’s the end of it,” Devlin said. “I think it’s over.”

That night they built a fire by the beach, huddled together, toasted marshmallows and watched the constellations wheel by as Devlin assured Blake and Annie that everything was fine. Later, after the children had gone to bed, Devlin and Elise lay awake and considered telling police about what had happened. But Devlin hesitated.

“When you think about it, it was really nothing.”

“John, what if those men come to our cabin?”

“El, those idiots were drinking, probably passing through town and decided to have fun at our expense.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Sure I’m right. They’re probably passed out, or a hundred miles away by now.”

That’s what Devlin wanted to believe as he stared into the darkness, listening to every sound in the night until finally he was taken by sleep. It was accompanied by a dream that Elise was shaking him and wouldn’t stop until he -“John, wake up. There’s something outside!”

“Wha - what?”

At that moment, there was wooden snap near their window. Oh Christ Devlin thought, swallowing hard. Then all went quiet.

“I’m scared, John do something!”

Quickly and quietly Devlin pulled on his jeans, found the new flashlight he bought special for the trip and crept to the deck for the axe he used for the fire. He padded around the cabin in the pitch black in time to hear a rustling in the bush near the bedroom window. His flashlight beam captured the furry fat rump and striped tail of a raccoon vanishing into the forest.

When he told Elise they had to stifle their laughter.

“This is just too silly,” she said before falling soundly to sleep.

The next morning was glorious.

Devlin spent much of it reading
Crime and Punishment
in the hammock. Elise and Annie collected wildflowers in front of the cabin while Blake fished off the dock. For lunch, they cooked hotdogs over an open fire near the beach. That afternoon when Devlin went to the car for his copy of
Ulysses
, he noticed the Ford was leaning at an odd angle. Then he discovered why. The right rear tire was flat.

The same tire that those jerks had targetted.

And there was another problem but before Devlin could figure a way to deal with it, Elise was standing behind him, hands thrust to her face.

“It was them,” she said. “Those two assholes did it in the night.” Elise never swore. She turned to look at Blake and Annie on the dock. “I want to go home.”

Devlin tried to calm her by pointing to a rusted nail.

“It wasn’t them. Look, this is why the tire’s flat,” he told her. “We simply ran over a nail. The bad news is we don’t have a spare. No jack, nothing. We pulled it all out to pack more stuff in the trunk. It was dumb.”