Down there below, on the opposite shore, two men came down the path to the water’s edge together. Men the size of clothespins. One of them unlocked the boathouse door on the landward side, and they both went in and disappeared for awhile. Then the bigger double door on the lake side swung open into its two halves, and they were folded back out of the way. Then they came out to the end of the little pier carrying a rowboat between them. They let it down into the water, and carelessly slung a rope over one of the pier pilings to hold it. Then they brought out a second, then a third.
The waiter waited. The watcher watched. Only breathing, nothing else.
They were in and out, now, all the time, in desultory activity; sometimes one was out while the other was within, sometimes both were inside at once. One got down into one of the moored boats and tinkered with it for a long time, then climbed up again and went inside.
Death took nourishment. Under the branches, one hand moved slowly, down along his own person. He fumbled, took out a chocolate bar. He gnawed at it, keeping half the wrapper turned downward about it, like a cuff, in order to maintain a place for his fingers to hold onto it. When it was gone and only the empty cuff was left, he even finished up the crumbs that were left along the seams of his palms, dredging them up with the tip of his tongue like an anteater.
Then he dug a small hole beside him, with just two fingers, and buried the small banded wrapper of glossy paper and the inner wrapper of tinfoil, and covered them over.
Death of a chocolate bar. Death and burial of a chocolate bar. Death of a man? What was the difference? Death was death, always death.
A man was coming down the path alone, toward the boat-house. He was clothespin-sized, but his shape was the shape of Wise. His walk was the walk of Wise. His dark-blue suit was the dark-blue suit that Wise wore, and the flat straw boater on his head was the flat straw boater that Wise wore. He held a small square basket in one hand, with a handle-grip, such as might have been used to carry a lunch in. And under that same arm, pressed to his side, was an even smaller, flat shape that Marshall made out to be a book.
The watcher never moved. He only breathed; more quickly, but he only breathed, stirring the pine needles a little before his shrouded nose.
Wise went into the boathouse. Then he came out onto the pier with the other two men. They stood around for a few moments, in friendly, desultory fashion, looking now at the lake, now at the sky, now at the boats, nodding a little (he could see them nod).
Then Wise handed something to one of the boatmen. The boatman put it away, handed him something back. Wise lowered his basket into one of the boats. Then he dropped his book down atop it. Then he clambered down into it himself, a little ungracefully but sturdily, just as Wise would have done such a thing.
He stood in it for awhile and stripped off his coat, and folded it lining-out, and placed it over by the basket. His hat he left on, perhaps out of regard for the sun; not the sun as it was now, but the sun as it would be later.
Then he loosed the boat and sat down to his oars. The two men, after watching his dexterity for a moment or two, went back inside the boathouse, one of them speeding him with a half-wave of the arm, as if bidding him to enjoy himself.
He was alone now on the lake, on all that silvery-gilt water. He rowed with the air of a man who enjoys rowing, with a long leisurely pull, lithely, without knots, without strain. And though he was far away, you could almost hear him exhale with deep satisfaction each time, as he rested at the moment of equipoise before starting his oars over and back to him again. A man rowing, not to get anywhere, but for the sake of rowing itself.
He stopped presently to undo and detach his necktie, place it with his coat. Then he opened his collar and stripped his sleeves up over his elbows. Then with renewed relish went back to his oars again.
A second boat was venturing out into the lake by this time, a young couple in it, she with sunshade held aloft. Then presently a third, this one with a man with his small boy in it. Then more.
Soon it was as though an ever-advancing flotilla were striking out from shore, fan-shaped, point foremost, but with the lead boat, the first one, still maintaining its distance. The fan-wise tracks they left on the glasslike surface of the water (which was being disturbed for the first time that day) heightened the impression of their number, made it seem greater than it was. There were in reality no more than half a dozen.
The phalanx formation was soon broken up, once the original impetus out from shoreline had been accomplished, and some of them just lolled about where they were, and others strayed off on circular courses of their own (perhaps because the rowers used more strength with one arm than the other) that got them nowhere. Only the lead boat kept going resolutely, clear across the lake to the far side, as if seeking privacy from its fellows.
The water was now like fluid brass with the rapidly mounting sun. It cast a phosphorescent yellow gleam even on the trunks of the firs and spruces that ventured down the steeply inclined slopes too close to it, and moved illusionary viscous disks about on the undersides of their overhanging shoots and branches.
The gemmed oars of the lead boat had stopped flashing by this time; its occupant had banked and rested them. He took up the book he had brought with him, reclined in the bottom of the boat so that his shoulder blades rested against the plank seat at one end of it, his heels were cocked against the one at the other. Concavely arched like that, only both extremities of his person were visible above the gunwale, even when looked down on from a considerable height as he was now; his head and shoulders at the prow, his feet and crossed ankles at the stern. In-between, he disappeared.
He held the book standing open on his chest, and leaning over somewhat downward, so that his eyes could properly focus on it without his having to raise his head; his hat, at the same time, he tipped far forward, almost to the bridge of his nose, to keep the sun out of his eyes.
The boat drifted gently and at random, whichever way the water willed it.
A promontory, running down from the height where death watched, its backbone fuzzy with the tips of little firs, thrust far out into the water, nearly across to the other shore. This in reality made two lakes instead of one, with just a slender channel to join them. On the one side of it was the large, main part of the lake, now dotted with all these boats; on the other, just a little basin, far more circumscribed, private, secluded, screened from view by the aforementioned spit or promontory. At the moment it was empty of life. And yet the pull of the water, apparently, was from the larger body, in through the needlelike channel, to this smaller lagoon. A tiered falls at one end might have had something to do with it. For the untended boat, slowly coasting the intervening peninsula, was being effortlessly but surely drawn toward the connecting strait.
Death just watched and waited, in position to command both sides at once. For on the one hand there were the many boats, and on the other there were none. None to give succor or to bear witness.
The prow slowly turned in toward the restricted little channel, and for a few moments, even from where death watched, it was as though the boat had been swallowed up, or had beached itself and gone underground. Then presently it began to peer forth on the other side, where solitude was, and then came out full-length, and floated there, cut off and alone.