Loon Lake (7 page)

Listen, he says holding his hand up, forefinger pointed. The dogs are gone. She smiles and accepts this as something he’s done. Sitting Indian style, she leans forward and touches his face. Her robe has fallen open over her thighs like a curtain rising. He kisses her hand as it is withdrawn. I’ve loved three times in my life, he says. Always the same person.

I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, she says. But I see I’ve got a live one here.

Then she is lying on the floor in his arms reading his face with judicious solemnity, her eyes gathering up the dim light of the room so widely open that he feels himself pouring into them. Because her spirit is strong he is surprised by the frailty of her. She is a small person. Her breasts are full and her thighs rather short. He can feel her ribs. Her buttocks are hard with a thin layer of sweet softness over them, like a child’s ass. Her mons hair feels lightly oiled. He touches her cunt. She closes her eyes. A queer bitter smell comes off her body. He kisses her soft open mouth and it’s just as he knew, she is here and he’s found her again.

Like many large overweight men he has surprising agility. She is obviously entranced. But the lack of practice is too much for him.

She says with characteristic directness: Is that the whole show?

He laughs and one way or another maintains her interest. Eventually he is ready again. Later he will try to remember the experience of being in her and will find that difficult. But he’ll remember them lying on their backs next to each other and the feel of the hard nap of the carpet on his sweaty skin. He’ll remember that when he turned on his side to look at her the silhouette of her body in the dark was like a range of distant hills.

Yes, she said, as if their fucking had been conversation, sometimes nothing else will do but to drive as flat out hard and fast as you can.

Annotated text
Loon Lake
by Warren Penfield.
If you listen the small splash is beaver.
As beaver swim their fur lies back and their heads elongate
and a true imperial cruelty shines from their eyes.
They’re rodents, after all.
Beaver otter weasel mink and rat
a rodent specie of the Adirondacks
and they redistrict the world.
They go after the young trees and bring them down—
whole hillsides collapse in the lake when they’re through.
They make their lodges of skinned poles, mud and boughs
like igloos of dark wet wood
and they enter and exit under water and build shelves
out of the water for the babies.
And when the mahogany speedboat goes by
trimmed with silver horns
in Loon Lake, in the Adirondacks,
the waves of the lake inside the beaver lodge lap gently
against the children’s feet in the darkness.

Loon Lake
was once the destination of private railroad cars
rocking on a single track
through forests of pine and spruce and hemlock
branches and fronds brushing the windows of cut glass
while inside incandescent bulbs flickered
in frosted-glass chimneys over double beds
and liquor bottles trembled in their recessed cabinet fittings
above card tables of green baize
in rooms entered through narrow doors with brass latches.

If you step on a twig in a soft bed of pine needles
under an ancient stand of this wilderness
you will make no sound.
All due respect to the Indians of Loon Lake
the Adirondack nations, with all due respect.
What a clear cold life it must have been.
Everyone knew where he stood
chiefs or children or malcontents
and every village had its lover whom no one wanted
who sometimes lay down because of that
with a last self-pitying look at Loon Lake
before intoning his death prayers
and beginning the difficult business of dying by will
on the dry hummocks of pine needles.
The loons they heard were the loons we hear today,
cries to distract the dying
loons diving into the cold black lake
and diving back out again in a whorl of clinging water
clinging like importuning spirits
fingers shattering in spray
feeling up the wing along the rounded body of the
thrillingly exerting loon
taking a fish
rising to the moon streamlined
its loon eyes round and red.
A doomed Indian would hear them at night in their diving
and hear their cry not as triumph or as rage
or the insane compatibility with the earth
attributed to birds of prey
but in protest against falling
of having to fall into that black water
and struggle up from it again and again
the water kissing and pawing and whispering
the most horrible promises
the awful presumptuousness of the water
squeezing the eyes out of the head
floating the lungs out on the beak which clamps on them
like wriggling fish
extruding all organs and waste matter
turning the bird inside out
which the Indian sees is what death is
the environment exchanging itself for the being.
And there are stars where that happens too in space
in the black space some railroad journeys above the Adirondacks.

Well, anyway, in the summer of 1936
a chilling summer high in the Eastern mountains
a group of people arrived at a rich man’s camp
in his private railway car
the men in fedoras and dark double-breasted suits
and the women in silver fox and cloche hats
sheer stockings of Japanese silk
and dresses that clung to them in the mountain air.
They shivered from the station to the camp
in an open carriage drawn by two horses.
It was the clearest night in the heavens
and the silhouettes of the jagged pines on the mountaintop
in the moonlight looked like arrowheads
looked like the graves of heroic Indians.
The old man who was their host
an industrialist of enormous wealth
over the years had welcomed to his camp
financiers politicians screen stars
European princes boxing champions and
conductors of major orchestras
all of whom were honored to sign the guest book.
Occasionally for complicated reasons
he received persons strangely undistinguished.
His camp was a long log building of two stories
on a hill overlooking Loon Lake.
There was a great rustic entrance hall
with a wide staircase of halved logs
and a balustrade made of scraped saplings
a living room as large as a hotel lobby
with walls papered in birch bark
and hung with the mounted heads of deer and elk
and with modern leather sofas with rounded corners
and a great warming fireplace of native stone
big enough to roast an ox.
It was a fine manor house lacking nothing
with suites of bedrooms each with its own shade porch
and the most discreet staff of cooks and maids and porters
but designated a camp because its décor was rough-hewn.

Annotate old man who was their host as follows: F (Francis) W (Warren) Bennett born August 2 1878 Glens Falls New York. Father millionaire Augustus Bennett founder of Union Supply Company major outfitter army uniforms and military accessories hats boots Springfield rifles insignia saddles ceremonial swords etc to Army of the United States during Civil War. FW Bennett a student at Groton thence Massachusetts Institute
of Technology Boston graduating with a degree in mine engineering. Bought controlling interest Missouri-Clanback Coal Company St Louis upon graduation. Took control Missouri & Western Railroad 1902. Founding partner Colorado Fuel Company with John C. Osgood Julian Kleber John L Jerome. Surviving partner associate of John D. Rockefeller Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, vice president of engineering. Immense success Colorado and Missouri speculative coal-mining ventures suggested use of capital abroad. Took over National Mexican Silver Mining Company. Founder Chilean-American Copper Company. Board of Directors James Steel Co., Northwest Lumber Trust, Baltimore, Chicago & Albuquerque RR Co., etc. Trustee Jordan College, Rhinebeck N.Y. Trustee Miss Morris’ School for Young Women, Briarcliff Manor NY. Member Knickerbocker, Acropolis, New York; Silks, Saratoga Springs; Rhode Island Keel, Newport. Marriages Fanny Teale Stevens, no issue; Bootsie van der Kellen, no issue; Lucinda Bailey, no issue. Died 1967 Lausanne Switzerland.

And this party of visitors were really romantic gangsters
thieves, extortionists and murderers of the lower class
and their women who might or might not be whores.
The old man welcomed them warmly
enjoying their responses to his camp
admiring the women in their tight dresses and red lips
relishing the having of them there so out of place
at Loon Lake.
The first morning of their visit
he led everyone down the hill
to give them rides in his biggest speedboat
a long mahogany Chris-Craft with a powerful inboard
that resonantly shook the water as she idled.
He handed them each a woolen poncho with a hood
and told them the ride was fast and cold
but still they were not prepared when under way
he opened up the throttle
and the boat reared in the water like Buck Jones’ horse.
The women shrieked and gripped the gangsters’ arms
and spray stinging like ice coated their faces
while the small flag at the stern snapped like a machine gun.
And one of the men lipping an unlit cigarette
felt it whipped away by the wind.
He turned and saw it sail over the wake
where a loon appeared from nowhere
beaked it before it hit the water
and rose back into the sky above the mountain.

Annotate boat reared in the water like Buck Jones’ horse as follows: Buck Jones a cowboy movie star silents 1920s and talkies early 1930s. Others of this specie: Tom Mix, Tim McCoy, Big Boy Williams. Buck Jones’ horse palomino stallion named Silver. Others of this specie: Pal Feller Tony.

The old man rode them around Loon Lake, its islands
through channels where beaver had built their lodges
and everything they saw the trees the mountains
the water and even the land they couldn’t see under the water
was what he owned. And then he brought them in throttling down
and the boat was awash in a rush of foam
like the outspread wings of a waterbird coming to rest.
Two other mahogany boats of different lengths
were berthed in the boathouse
and racks of canoes and guide boats upside down
and on walls paddles hanging from brackets
and fishing rods and snowshoes for some strange reason
and not a gangster there did not reflect
how this dark boathouse with its canals
and hollow-sounding deck floors
was bigger than the home his family lived in
when he was a kid, as big as the orphan’s home in fact.
But one gangster wanted to know about the lake
and its connecting lakes, the distance one could travel on them
as if he was planning a fast getaway.

Just disappearing around the corner out of sight
was the boathouse attendant.
And everyone walked up the hill for drinks and lunch.
Drinks were at twelve-thirty and lunch at one-thirty
after which, returning to their rooms,
the guests found riding outfits laid across their beds
and boots in their right sizes all new.
At three they met each other at the stables
laughing at each other and being laughed at
and the stableman fitted them out with horses
and the sensation was particularly giddy when the horses
began to move without warning ignoring them up there in the saddle
threatening to launch with each bounce like a paddle ball.
And so each day the best gangster among them realized
there would be something to do they could not do well.

The unchecked walking horses made for the woods
no one was in the lead, the old man was not there.
They were alone on these horses who took this wide trail
they seemed to know.
They were busy maintaining themselves on the tops of these horses
stepping with their plodding footfall through the soft earth
of the wide trail.
By and by proceeding gently downhill they came
to another shore of the lake, of Loon Lake,
and the trees were cut down here and the cold sun shone.
They found themselves before an airplane hangar
with a concrete ramp sloping into the water.
As the horses stood there the hangar doors slid open
there was a man pushing back each of the steel doors
although they saw only his arm and hand and shoetops.
And then from a gray cloud over the mountain
beyond the far end of the lake an airplane appeared
and made its descent in front of the mountain
growing larger as it came toward them
a green-and-white seaplane with a cowled engine and overhead wing.
It landed in the water with barely a splash
taxiing smartly with a feathery sound.
The horses nickered and stirred, everyone held on
and the lead gangster said whoa boy, whoa boy
and the goddamn plane came right out of the water
up the ramp, water falling from its pontoons
the wheels in the pontoons leaving a wet track on the concrete
and nosed up to the open hangar
blowing up a cloud of dirt and noise.
The engine was cut and the cabin door opened
and putting her hands on the wing struts a woman jumped down
a slim woman in trousers and a leather jacket and a silk scarf
and a leather helmet which she removed showing light-brown hair cut close
and she looked at them and nodded without smiling
and that was the old man’s wife.

Annotate old man’s wife as follows: Lucinda Bailey Bennett born 1896 Philadelphia PA. Father US Undersecretary of State Bangwin Channing under McKinley. Private tutoring in France and Switzerland. Miss Morris’ School for Young Women. Brearly. Long Island School of Aviation practicing stalls tailspins stalled glide half-roll snap roll slow roll rolling eight wingovers Immelmann loops. Winner First Woman’s Air Regatta Long Island New York to Palm Beach Florida 1921. Winner Single-Engine National Women’s Sprints 1922–1929. First woman to fly alone Long Island-Bermuda. Woman’s world record cross-country flight Long Island to San Diego 1932, twenty-seven hours sixteen minutes. First
woman to fly alone Long Island to Newfoundland. Winner Chicago Air Meet 1931, 1932, 1933. Glenn Curtiss National Aviatrix Silver Cup 1934. Lindbergh Trophy 1935. Member President’s Commission on the Future of Aviation 1936. Honorary Member US Naval Air Patrol 1936. Lost on round-the-world flight over the Pacific 1937.

She strode off down the trail toward the big house
and they were not to see her again that day
neither at drinks which were at six-thirty
nor dinner at seven-thirty.
But her husband was a gracious host
attentive to the women particularly.
He revealed that she was a famous aviatrix
and some of them recognized her name from the newspapers.
He spoke proudly of her accomplishments
the races she won flying measured courses
marked by towers with checkered windsocks
and her endurance flights some of which
were still the record for a woman.
After dinner he talked vaguely of his life
his regret that so much of it was business.
He talked about the unrest in the country
and the peculiar mood of the workers
and he solicited the gangsters’ views over brandy
on the likelihood of revolution.
And now he said rising I’m going to retire.
But you’re still young said one of the gangsters.
For the night the old man said with a smile
I mean I’m going to bed. Good night.
And when he went up the stairs of halved tree trunks
they all looked at each other and had nothing to say.
They were standing where the old man had left them
in their tuxes and black ties.
They had stood when he stood the women had stood when he stood
and quietly as they could they all went to their rooms,
where the bedcovers had been turned back and the reading lamps lighted.
And in the room of the best gangster there
a slim and swarthy man with dark eyes, a short man
very well put together
there were doors leading to a screened porch
and he opened them and stood on the dark porch
and heard the night life of the forest and the lake
and the splash of the fish terrifyingly removed from Loon Lake.
He had long since run out of words
for his sickening recognition of real class
nervously insisting how swell it was.
He turned back into the room.
His girl was fingering the hand-embroidered initials
in the center of the blanket.
They were the same initials as on the bath towels
and on the cigarette box filled with fresh Luckies
and on the matchbooks and on the breast pockets of the pajamas
of every size stocked in the drawers
the same initials, the logo.