In the Lake of the Woods (17 page)

Kathy smiled. "But everything clicked?"

"Oh, sure. Hubby's a star."

"Well, good. Except it seemed ..." She hesitated and moved her hand along John's knee. "I don't know, it just seemed a little empty, that's all. I'm not sure what the message was."

Tony winked at her. "Win," he said.

"You aren't that cynical."

"No?"

"You're not."

"Well, gosh, you've got me semi-curious. What am I?" His eyes glittered. He finished off one of the bourbons and tucked a napkin under his collar. "Go on," he murmured. "Say nice things."

Kathy shrugged. "Nothing, really. You put up that ridiculous front of yours, the cynic act. Down below you're another poor sad dreamer like the rest of us."

"Ah, I see. And the rest of us? Who be they?"

"Everybody. John and me."

Tony's pot roast came. He made a may-I gesture, forked a potato, looked up at her with a half smile.

"John, you say? A dreamer?"

"Certainly."

"And where'd you dredge up this interesting theory?"

"Nowhere," Kathy said. "I married him."

Tony glanced over at John and chewed thoughtfully for a moment. "True enough, you married him, and what a happy stroke of fortune for the candidate. Mind-boggling, I might add. Did I ever mention how spectacular you are?"

"Not nearly enough," Kathy said. "I just wish you'd let him
say
things."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes."

"Which things are these? Which things would the candidate care to say?"

John smiled. He was conscious of Kathy's hand on his knee.

"Issues," he said. "No big deal."

"Explain," Tony said. "Honest, I'm dying to hear about these red-hot issues on your mind. Nuclear waste? Fresh plan for the isotopes?"

"Come on, man, don't start."

"The welfare state. I'll bet that one keeps you awake at night. Aid to dependent children."

John's necktie felt tight. He turned toward Kathy and tried to firm up his lips. "He's right, I guess. First the election, then worry about the rest."

"I see."

"That doesn't—"

"Win and win again," Kathy said. "And it won't ever stop, will it?"

"I didn't mean anything by that."

"Win and win."

Tony Carbo looked on with a lazy smile. "Spectacular. I'm in love with the boss's wife."

Kathy's hand slipped away.

For a while they sat listening to the noontime clatter, the dishes and deal-making.

Tony finally put his fork down.

"Maybe I'm wrong," he said merrily, "but it looks to me like this table could use a blow of fresh air. The lady's right, of course, it doesn't ever stop. Win and win and win. Very perceptive. On the other hand, there's this item called democracy, that's what all the nice patriotic folks call it. Count up the votes and deal out the power. The American way, tried and true. But, see, here's the bizarre part. Those same nice folks get awful upset when somebody goes out and jumps into the trenches and tries to make it work. People get nasty, start calling you names."

Tony was smiling, but his manner didn't carry it off. He drained the second bourbon, looked up for a waiter.

"The fact is, if you actually give a shit—if you bust your nuts and get involved and make it your life—well, fuck you, you're one more political dickhead. Gets to the edge of irony. All those holier-than-thou idiots out there. Fred Q. Public. Dumb bastard can't find his own statehouse without Rand McNally and Shep the Guide Dog. Watches a little TV news and calls himself a good citizen. Maybe votes once a year, probably doesn't. And guys like me, we're slick-dick pols. We're a pack of thieves."

The smile was gone now. Tiny beads of sweat coated his forehead.

"Anyhow, fuck that," he said. "They want better, they can unass themselves. They can
have
this fucking job."

Kathy looked at him thoughtfully. "Hooray for you. A dreamer. So why not give John a chance?"

"Me?"

"See what happens."

Tony studied her for several seconds. "Sweet Kathleen. You don't get it, do you?"

"Get it?"

"Hierarchy," he said, and smiled at John. "The sorry truth is I'm just one more hired gun. You want preacher politics, talk to the boss here."

"I don't see how that's—"

"Hubby's in charge. And I don't believe he's all that hot for issues right now. The man's got his priorities. Winning first, issues second. But go ahead and ask."

Kathy nodded.

She sipped her drink, closed her eyes for a second, then excused herself and moved off toward the ladies' room.

Tony watched until she was gone.

"Yummy specimen," he said.

"You didn't have to pull that stunt."

"Stunt?"

"It wasn't necessary."

Tony grinned and wiped his mouth. "My apologies. Thinks you're Mr. Clean, doesn't she?"

"I am clean."

"Of course and absolutely." Tony seemed amused as he took a bite of pot roast and scanned the room. It took him a long while to swallow. "However you want it. Just seems a trifle odd how you stay so quiet on certain unnamed subjects."

"Such as what?"

"Don't be a party pooper. If I named them, they wouldn't be unnamed, would they?"

"Bullshit," John said. "That's a reach."

"Probably so." Tony saluted and pulled an imaginary trigger. "Anyhow, don't pin that ruthless crap on me. Things go
wrong, man, I pity the poor fucker gets in your way. Real honest-to-God pity." He wiggled his eyebrows. "Still the old magician, right? Fool all the assholes some of the time, some of the assholes all the time. Can't fool Tony Carbo none of the time."

He nudged his plate aside and waved across the room.

"And here she is, all freshly powdered. Weird thing, you know? Give me a shot, I'd drop fifty pounds for the lady. I do not joke."

When she cleared Magnuson's Island, Kathy gave the Evinrude an extra shot of gas and continued north past American Point and Buckete Island, holding a course roughly west toward Angle Inlet. It was mostly open lake, wide and blue, and the boat planed along with a firm, rhythmic thump, the bow stiff against the waves. She felt better now. The morning sunshine helped. Here and there she passed little islands with forests pushing up flush against the shoreline, purely wild, too isolated for lumbering, everything thick and firm to her eye. The water itself seemed solid, and the sky, and the autumn air. Like flesh, she thought—like the tissue of some giant animal, a creature too massive for the compass of her city-block mind. All around her, things were dense with color. On occasion she spotted a deserted fishing cabin, or a broken-down dock, but after a time the wilderness thickened and deepened and became complete She could hear her thoughts unwinding. No more politics, not ever again. All that was over It was nothing. Less than nothing.

And so she leaned back and gave the throttle a quarter turn and allowed herself to open up to the sun and speed. A golden September day, fresh-feeling, crisp and new, and everything
was part of everything else. It all blended into a smooth repetitive oneness, the trees and coves and water and sky, each piece of wilderness identical to every other piece. Kathy put a hand overboard, letting it trail through the water, watching its foamy imprint instantly close back on itself. Identical, which erased identity. Or it was all identity. An easy place, she thought, to lose yourself.

Which is what happened, maybe.

Maybe the singleness of things confused her. Maybe Buckete Island was not Buckete Island. Maybe she missed the channel into Angle Inlet by only a fraction of a mile, a miscalculation of gradient or degree. Daydreaming, maybe, or closing her eyes for an instant, or stretching out to absorb the fine morning sun. It was one possibility. No accident at all, just a banal human blunder, and she would've continued up the lake without worry, soon crossing into Canadian waters, into a great interior of islands and forests that reached northward over many hundred square miles.

For well over an hour she would've been lost without knowing how lost she was. Her eye was untrained. She had no instinct for the outdoors. She knew nothing about the sun's autumn angles, or how to judge true north, or where in nature to look for help. She was ignorant of even the most fundamental rule of the woods, which was to stop moving if ever in doubt, to take shelter and wait to be found.

Almost certainly she would've tried to work her way out; almost certainly she would've ended up hopelessly turned around.

And so at some point that morning she must've felt the first soft nudge of anxiety. Too much time, she thought. Twice before, with John, she had made the trip by water into Angle Inlet—barely forty minutes, dock to dock.

She looked at her wristwatch. The obvious thing was to start backtracking. Swing the boat south, keep her eyes open.

She was in a wide, gently curving channel flanked by four little islands, and for a few seconds she idled there, not sure about direction. She opened the red gas can, refueled, then turned the boat in a slow semicircle and took aim at a stand of pines a mile or so back down the channel. The breeze had picked up now. Not quite a wind, but the waves stood higher on the lake, and the air was taking sharp bites at her neck and shoulders. There was no sound except for the rusty old Evinrude.

Kathy buttoned up her sweater. No problem, she thought. Connect the dots.

And then for well over an hour she held a line toward the southeast. It was thick, gorgeous country, everything painted in blues and greens, and the engine gave off a steady burbling noise that reassured her. A good story for dinner. Danger and high adventure. It might give John a few things to think about. Like the priorities in his life, and where his marriage ranked, and how he was in jeopardy of losing something more than an election. You could get lost in all sorts of ways—ways he'd never considered—and she'd
tell
him that.

Humming to herself, Kathy adjusted the tiller and began planning a dinner menu, two big steaks and salad and cold beer, imagining how she'd describe everything that was happening out here. Get some sympathy for herself. Get his attention for a change.

The idea gave her comfort. She could almost picture a happy ending.

After twenty minutes the channel forked around a large rocky island, narrowing for a mile, then breaking off into three smaller channels that curled away into the trees. The
place struck her as both familiar and foreign. On whim, she took the center channel and followed it through a funnel of pine and brush for what seemed far too long. Occasionally the channel widened out, opening into pretty little bays and then closing up tight again. Like a river, she thought, except it didn't flow. The water beneath her had the feel of something static and purposeless, like her marriage, with no reality beyond its own vague alliance with everything else.

Curiously, she felt no fear at all. It occurred to her that she was almost comfortable with the situation. She felt strong and capable, the same calm that came over her whenever she opened up a new crossword puzzle—all that stern geography to negotiate, a fixed grid full of hidden connections and hidden meanings. She liked unlocking things, finding solutions. For more than twenty years she'd started the day with a crossword and a cup of coffee, easing into the daylight, enjoying the soft flowering sensation that came into her bones as blocks of space suddenly took on clarity and design. It was more than habit; it was something in her genes. Even as a kid she'd lived in a puzzle world, where surfaces were like masks, where the most ordinary objects seemed fiercely alive with their own sorrows and desires. She remembered giving secret names to things, carrying on conversations with chairs and trees. Peculiar, yes, but she couldn't help herself. It had always seemed so implausible that the world could be indifferent to its own existence, and although she'd long ago given up on churches, Kathy couldn't help believing in some fundamental governing principle beneath things, an aspect of consciousness that could be approached through acts of human sympathy.

Like John, she thought. AH that sadness under the flat gray surface of his eyes. A good feeling to be away from it.

Ahead, the channel widened out into a stretch of open water, deep blue and icy looking. She squinted up at the sun to calculate the remaining daylight. Maybe five hours until dark Angle Inlet had to be somewhere off to the south, probably a shade to the west.

She nodded to herself and said, "All right, fine," and fixed the boat on a southerly course, or what she took to be south, now and then checking her direction against the sun. The day was bright and windy, a string of filmy white clouds scudding eastward. She eased back on the throttle and for more than two hours moved through a chain of silvery bays and lakes that unfolded without stop to the horizon. There were no cabins, no other boats. Along the shoreline, thick growths of cattails bent sideways in the wind, and there were occasional flights of ducks and loons, but mostly it was a dull succession of woods and water. After a time she felt a detached laziness come over her, a shutting-down sensation. At one point she found herself singing old nursery songs; later on she laughed at the memory of one of Harmon's filthy jokes—a chipmunk, a deaf rhinoceros. A spasm of guilt went through her. Not that she'd ever loved the man, not even close, but there was still the shame of what had happened back then. She pictured his bare white chest, the fingers so thick and stubby for someone who made a living at dentistry. Hard to believe she'd felt things for him.

Enough, she thought. Leave it alone.

Still, it was hard to keep her mind on the boat. Hard to sustain much resolve. Overhead, a big pale sun burned without heat. The day was slowly tilting toward shadow.

Her mind, too.

"Harmon, Harmon," she said.

Five minutes later she ran out of gas. The abrupt quiet
surprised her. Even with the wind, the afternoon seemed hugely empty. She was bobbing thirty yards off the shore of another small wooded island.

For a few minutes Kathy sat still. What she needed, really, was a nap. Curl up and let the waves rock her to sleep. Instead, she got to her knees, opened the red gas can, and carefully refilled the Evinrude's tank. At least she'd had enough foresight to stow the extra fuel. And the thing now was not to waste any. A good steady speed, straight lines from point to point. She closed her eyes and jiggled the can, estimated another four gallons or so. Which was plenty. She said it aloud—"Plenty"—then bent forward and yanked on the starter cord. The Evinrude gave off a weak whine. She tried again, twice more, but there was nothing.