“Not sure about that, either.”
“Well, which one is it?”
“Better not say until I check around. Then could be we’ll have something to discuss.” He shoved his skiff away from mine. “Don’t forget about that screwdriver. Mine or Zaleski’s.”
“I won’t.”
He waggled a hand, used a short paddle to get himself pointed lakeward, fired up his engine, and went roaring off in the general direction of his cabin. I set off at a much more sedate clip, heading home sadder and wiser and wondering just what Ostergaard had meant by “one of the first-timers ain’t what he seems to be.”
Midafternoon, just past five Texas time, I tried the Houston Center Marriott again and this time I caught Kerry in her room. She’d tried me twice, she said, and it was a good thing I’d called when I had because she and Jim Carpenter had been invited back to Milo Fisher’s ranch for an intimate dinner and they were being picked up by Milo’s limo driver at five-thirty.
“A limo, no less. My, my. What does ‘intimate dinner’ mean, exactly?”
“Don’t be jealous, you. All it means is Milo and his wife, Jim and me, and one or two other couples.”
“Couples. Uh-huh.”
“You are jealous. And after you swore up and down—”
“I’m pulling your leg. Yesterday was the big barbecue, right?”
“Yes, and it was fun. There were at least sixty people — friends, neighbors, business associates — and enough food and liquor for a hundred more.”
“Sounds like you’re winning Fisher over to the Bates and Carpenter team.”
“I think we are. I think he’ll actually sign with us before we leave Houston. Keep your fingers crossed.”
“You betcha.”
She asked about Deep Mountain Lake and my vacation so far. I provided a quick report, deemphasizing both the fish episode this morning and my difficulties with Zaleski’s cranky outboard this afternoon. After which I steered the conversation back to Milo Fisher, for no reason other than it struck me as a more interesting topic.
“Tell me about this ranch of his,” I said. “How big is it?”
“A little less than two thousand acres.”
“Two thousand?”
“That’s not so big by Texas standards. It’s quite a showplace. If I ever have to fly back here, I’d like you to come along. You’d love it.”
“That’s debatable.”
“No, you really would. Milo, too.”
“I could never love anybody named Milo.”
“Like him, I mean. He’s a character.”
“How so?”
“Oh, you know, stereotypical Texas bombast in the way he dresses and talks. Ten-gallon hats and fancy boots, the whole bit.
But it’s all a put-on. He’s smart and shrewd, and one of the funniest people I’ve ever met.”
“Funny, huh?”
“One joke after another, more one-liners than a stand-up comic. He had everybody in stitches yesterday.”
“Dirty jokes, no doubt.”
“Not really. His funniest are so clean he could tell them on the Disney Channel.”
“For example?”
“There were so many I can remember only a couple. I’ll tell you when I see you.”
“Tell me one now. I can use a good laugh.”
“Well… my favorite, then.” She chuckled in anticipation, stopped herself, and said, “All right. A married man goes out into the forest, into the deepest part, and while he’s there a tree falls. He hears it loud and clear. But he’s completely alone — no wife, no other woman within a hundred miles. Is he still wrong?”
I waited.
Silence from her end, so I said, “Go ahead.”
“Go ahead?”
“With the rest of the story. I’m listening.”
“You don’t get it,” she said.
“Get it? Get what?”
“The joke.”
“I haven’t heard the rest of it yet.”
“There isn’t any more. That’s it, that’s the joke.”
“You mean ‘Is he still wrong?’ is the punch line?”
“Of course it’s the punch line. You really don’t get it?”
“No, I really don’t. What’s the point?”
“The point,” she said in that tone she uses when her patience is being tried, “is that it’s funny. Women think it’s hysterical. Most men find it funny, too.”
“What’s funny about ‘Is he still wrong?’ “
“The man hears the tree fall, but since there’s no woman around… Oh, never mind. Forget it. Forget the whole thing.”
“I don’t want to forget it. I want to know what it means.”
“It’s a take-off on the old argument about a tree falling in the woods and does it make a sound if there’s nobody around to hear it—”
“I got that part,” I said, “the take-off part. But you said the man’s there in the forest and he hears it fall. Right?”
She said something that sounded like “Gnrrr.”
“But his wife’s not there, no woman’s around, so is he still wrong. That doesn’t make any sense. That’s the part I don’t get.”
“For God’s sake!” she said. “It’s a joke about men and women… about marriage and the differences between the sexes. All right, it’s stereotypical but that’s what makes it so funny, don’t you see that? The male-female, husband-wife stereotypes? Like Milo being a Texas stereotype?”
I had no idea what she was talking about. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” I said.
Silence. A long silence.
“Kerry?”
“You are the most literal, exasperating man I’ve ever known,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like strangling you.”
“Because I don’t understand some damn stupid joke that doesn’t make any sense? A joke is supposed to be funny. It’s supposed to have a punch line that makes you laugh.”
“We haven’t been married long enough,” she said. Through her teeth, the way it sounded. “Maybe that’s the problem here.”
“We haven’t been married long enough for what?”
“You’ll find out. And when you do, you’ll be just like that man in the forest, you’ll still be wrong!”
I sat there for five minutes after we rang off, and I still didn’t get the damn joke.
Wrong about what?
Pan-barbecued trout was not quite as good as the pan-fried-in-butter variety, in my opinion, but that didn’t stop me from eating two of the large fillets Marian prepared. Chuck had had a profitable morning at his secret fishing hole: a pair of rainbows weighing a total of three and a half pounds. He ate two fillets himself, and we managed to consume most of the salad and potatoes and biscuits that went with them. Personal tastes aside, it was a fine meal served on the Dixons’ deck under a sunset sky streaked with burnt orange.
I stayed until nine-thirty, at which point sleepiness and Chuck’s insistence that we leave for our outing at the crack of dawn prodded me back to the Zaleski cabin. It wasn’t until I was in bed a while later that I remembered my conversation with Nils Ostergaard on the lake.
He hadn’t stopped by before dinner and there’d been no sign of him during or after. And even if I’d still been up with the lights on, it was too late now to come calling. Changed his mind about confiding in me, I thought, or put it off until later. His “checking around” must not have produced any results after all.
From the notebooks of Donald Michael Latimer
Sun., June 30 — 9:00 P.M.
Kathryn.
Last night I dreamed about her. This morning I thought about her as I was fishing. This afternoon, when I paid Judson for gas from my dwindling supply of cash, I imagined again what she’ll look like when she opens her special gift and how good I’ll feel when she’s finally dead. Even better than I’ll feel when Dixon is finally dead.