Loon Lake (8 page)

Annotate reference the best gangster there as follows: Thomas Crapo alias Tommy the Emperor. Born Hoboken New Jersey 1905. Hoboken Consolidated Grade School 1917. New Jersey National Guard 1914–1917. Rainbow Division American Expeditionary Force 1917–1918. Saw action Chateau-Thierry. Victory Medal. Founder Brandywine Importing Company 1919. Board of Directors Inverness Distribution Company. Founding partner Boardwalk Amusement Company 1920. President Dance-a-dime Incorporated. Founder Crapo Industrial Services Incorporated, New York, Chicago, Detroit. Patron Boys Town, March of Dimes, Police Athletic League New York, Policeman’s Benevolent Society Chicago. Present whereabouts unknown.

——

Annotate reference his girl as follows: Clara Lukaćs born 1918 Hell’s Kitchen New York. School of the Sisters of Poor Clare, expelled 1932. S.S. Kresge counter girl (notions) 1932–1934. Receptionist Lukaćs’ West 29th St Funeral Parlor 1934. Present whereabouts unknown.

The gangster’s girl was eighteen
and had had an abortion he knew nothing about.
She found something to criticize, one thing,
the single beds, and as she undressed
raising her knees, slipping off her shoes
unhooking her stockings from her garters
she spoke of the bloodlessness of the rich not believing it
while the gangster lay between the sheets in the initialed pajamas
arranging himself under the covers so that they were neat and tight
as if trying to take as little possession of the bed as possible
not wanting to appear to himself to threaten anything.
He locked his hands behind his head and ignored the girl
and lay in the dark not even smoking.

But at three that morning there was a terrible howl
from the pack of wild dogs that ran in the mountains—
not wolves but dogs that had reverted
when their owners couldn’t feed them any longer.
The old man had warned them this might happen
but the girl crept into the bed of the gangster
and he put his arm around her and held her
so that she would not slip off the edge
and they listened to the howling
and then the sound nearer to the house
of running dogs, of terrifying exertion
and then something gushing
in the gardens below the windows.
And they heard the soft separation
together with grunts and snorts and yelps
of flesh as it is fanged and lifted from a body.
Jesus, the girl said
and the gangster felt her breath on his collarbone
and smelled the gel in her hair, the sweetness of it,
and felt the gathered dice of her shoulders
and her shivering and her cold hand on his stomach
underneath the waistband.

In the morning they joined the old man
on the sun terrace outside the dining room.
Halfway down the hill a handyman pushing a wheelbarrow
was just disappearing around a bend in the path.
I hope you weren’t frightened, the old man said, they took a deer
and he turned surprisingly young blue eyes on the best gangster’s girl.
Later that morning she saw on the hills in the sun
all around Lake Loon
patches of color where the trees were turning
and she went for a walk alone and in the woods she saw
in the orange and yellowing leaves of deciduous trees
the coming winter
imagining in these high mountains
snow falling like some astronomical disaster
and Loon Lake as the white hole of a monstrous meteor
and every branch of the evergreens all around
described with snow, each twig each needle
balancing a tiny snowfall precisely imitative of itself.
And at dinner she wore her white satin gown
with nothing underneath to ruin the lines.
And the old man’s wife came to dinner this night
clearly younger than her husband, trim and neat
with small beautifully groomed hands and still young shoulders and neck
but brackets at the corners of her mouth.
She talked to them politely with no condescension
and showed them in glass cases in the game room
trophies of air races she had won
small silver women pilots
silver cups and silver planes on pedestals.
Then still early in the evening she said good night
and that she had enjoyed meeting them.
They watched her go.
And after the old man retired
and all the gangsters and their women stood around
in their black ties and tuxes and long gowns
the best gangster’s girl saw a large Victrola in the corner
of the big living room with its leather couches and
grand fireplace
the servants spirited away the coffee service
and the gangster’s girl put on a record and commanded
everyone to dance.
And they danced to the Victrola music
they felt better they did the fox trot
and went to the liquor cabinet and broke open some Scotch
and gin and they danced and smoked
the old man’s cigarettes from the boxes on the tables
and the only light came from the big fire
and the women danced with one arm dangling holding empty glasses
and the gangsters nuzzled their shoulders
and their new shoes made slow sibilant rhythms
on the polished floors
as they danced in their tuxes and gowns of satin at Loon Lake
at Loon Lake
in the rich man’s camp
in the mountains of the Adirondacks.

H
e was a whistling wonder with his face and arms and legs in bandages and bandages crisscrossed like bandoliers across his chest. Every now and then they looked in on him with the same separation of themselves from the sight as rubes looking at the freaks. They all wore green.

They told him the dog packs were well known in the region, several of them told him that, as if it were a consolation. He had difficulty speaking through his pain and swollen tissue, so that they could not be exactly sure what he thought of them and their fucking dogs.

The elderly country doctor was eager to see what complication might set in to try him beyond the resources of his medicine.

There were pills for the pain but I took as few as I could. It seemed important to me to stay awake, to know what was going on. Maybe I would come back. The room was damp. There was a small window high on the wall. I was in the basement of one of the log buildings I’d seen and it seemed to me not a very safe place to be. Also it was as bad as the original event to dream of it again drugged in a kind of dream prison and struggling for consciousness. Pain was better. It came
in spasms and with the sharp point of imprinted teeth, it tore along in clawing sweeps down my chest and seemed sometimes to raise the bandages from the skin. I tried to consider it objectively, like a scientist sitting in a white coat looking through a microscope. Ahh, peering at each little cellpoint of pain. Remarkable!

And since I was in pain, I thought of my mother and father. I thought of myself bedridden in Paterson. They look at me lying there flushed and wheezing, a boy impossibly exercised just by the act of living, and go off to work at their machines.

A man looked in on me each morning and made a grunt of disgust or scorn just like my father had although heavyset not at all like my thin and gaunt father but in the same role, with the same wordless eloquence. He wore a kind of uniform of dark green shirt and matching pants.

And for my mother a woman in pale green uniform and white shoes and opaque brown hose with a thick seam down the back. An impassive porky being with hands that worked at high speed setting down trays pounding pillows carrying off urinals while she thought her own thoughts.

I could tell that each of them felt badly used to be taking care of some tramp who had wandered onto the grounds. It was an affront to the natural order which made service to people bearable because they were higher than you, not lower.

I responded with a pride of my own which asked for nothing and gave as little indication of need as possible. And I never thanked them for anything. As I felt better I grew contemptuous as if, coming into this province of wealth, I had adopted its customs. Or perhaps it was more serious, perhaps it had been injected in the saliva of the dogs.

On the other hand I had only the word of these people that the dogs didn’t belong to the owner of this place. And even if they didn’t, they certainly ran to his advantage. My rage flared as if it were the last wound to be felt and the slowest to heal.

As time went on I understood that I lay in a room of the staff house where perhaps fifteen or twenty people lived who wore the green livery, forest-green for the outdoor workers, the paler shade for the indoor. They all looked somewhat stolidly alike, as if related.

I was alert to find a friend and I did. She was a girl of the pale green
set, a young maid in the big house who shyly looked in on me, advancing each time a little farther into the room until finally she showed up in mid-morning one day when everyone else was working. She had seen we were the same age and that was enough.

Her name was Libby. She didn’t think of not answering any question that occurred to me.

This place was called Loon Lake. It was the domain of the same F. W. Bennett of the Bennett Autobody Works. Did I know the name? He was very rich. He owned thirty thousand acres here and it was just one of his places. He owned the lake itself, the water in the lake, the land under the water and the fish that swam in it.

“But not the dogs,” I said.

“Oh no,” she said, “those are wild-running, those dogs. It’s the fault of the people who own them and can’t feed them anymore. And then they go off and forage and breed wild and hunt in packs.”

“The people?”

“The dogs. All through the mountains it’s like that, not just here. Does it hurt?” she asked.

“It don’t tickle.”

A tremor went through her. She held her arms as if she was cold.

“Tell me, does your F. W. Bennett have a wife?”

“Oh, sure! She’s famous. The Mrs. Bennett who wins all the air races. Her picture’s in the papers. Lucinda Bennett?”

“Oh, her,” I said. “The one with the blond hair?”

“No, she’s a brunette.” Libby touched her own hair, which was brunet too. Like all her features it was ordinary. She was possessed of a sort of plain prettiness that caused you to study her and wish this feature or that might be better.

“Brunettes are my favorite,” I said.

She blushed. She was a simple innocent person, she granted me her own youthful face on the world without knowing who I was or where I came from. In five minutes I had her whole history. Her uncle, one of the groundkeepers, had gotten her the job. She made twelve dollars a week plus room and board. She was fervent in her gratitude. She spoke in what I could tell was the communal piety of the staff. How nervously lucky they
would have to feel, how clannish in their good fortune exempt in these mountains from an afflicted age. Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Bennett came or went separately or together or had guests or didn’t, but the place was maintained all year round including the dead of winter.

“Don’t you get lonely up here?” I said.

She thought a long time. “Well, I send six dollars to my father in Albany.”

Not realizing this was enough for me to feel chastened, she frowned and cast about in her mind for justification. “You’d be surprised who comes here,” she said. She brightened “You get to see famous people.”

“Who?”

“Why, big politicians, and prime ministers from England. And Jeanette MacDonald? She was here in the spring! She’s beautiful. I saw her clothes. She gave me five dollars!”

“Who else?”

“Oh well, I never saw him, it was before I came. But Charlie Chaplin.”

“Sure,” I said. “On roller skates.”

She looked then suddenly frightened. Who would doubt her word? She turned and left the room, and I thought to myself well that’s that. But a short while later she returned, softly closing the door behind her. She held a large leatherbound book to her chest and looked at me over the gilt edge with bright excited eyes. “I better not get caught,” she said.

It was the Loon Lake guest book. She fixed the pillows so I could pull myself up and she sat on the side of the bed and opened the book to a page marked “1931.” Her index finger ran down a list of signatures and stopped and she turned her eyes on me as I saw whose signature it was: Charles Chaplin had made an elegant scrawl, and next to it, where there was a space for comment, he had written: “Splendid weekend! Gay company!”

Vindicated, Libby watched with pleasure as I became absorbed by all the names, right up to the present: signatures of movie stars, orchestra leaders, authors, senators, all famous enough to be recognized by me, but also signatures I recognized only vaguely, or only sensed as names of magnitude, like the name F. W. Bennett, names that had been given to things, names painted on the big signs over factories or carved in the stone
over the entrances of office buildings. I couldn’t stop looking at them. I felt I could learn something, that there was something here, some powerful knowledge I could use. But it was in code! If only I could understand the significance of the notations, I’d have what I needed I’d know what I’d always dreamed of knowing—although I couldn’t have said what it was. I touched the signatures, traced them trying to feel the ink. It was some mysterious system of legalities and caste and extended brilliant endeavor—all abbreviated into these names and dates of proud people from all over the world who had come here to this secret place in the mountains.

I became aware of this girl Libby in her pale green uniform. She sat very close to me, the starched front of her uniform rose and fell with her breathing. When I glanced up from the book I found her face near mine, her head bowed and her eyes on the page, but her consciousness all directed to me. Her full lower lip was impressed into a suggestion of voluptuousness by her front teeth. She had thick wavy hair. What sweet appropriate modesty of being. Her trust was part of it, or so I understood—the willingness of the others of us to find a place and live our lives within it, making our trembling alliances and becoming famous and powerful to each other.

I turned back to the book. Some of the people there were such big shots they needed only one name to identify themselves. Leopold, one of them had written. Of Belgium.

I said to Libby, “Hey, how long have I been here, anyway?”

“We were taking off the summer covers and putting the rugs down,” she said. “It was that night. I never hope to hear what I heard that night.”