“But, by the nineties, all your forests went rafting down to the States-isn’t that right?” Ketchum asked Charlotte. She was surprised by the question; she didn’t know, but Ketchum did.
It was like logging everywhere, after all. The great forests had been cut down; the mills had burned down, or they’d been torn down. “The mills perished out of sheer neglect,” as Ketchum liked to put it.
“Maybe that bear’s on a nearby island,” Ketchum said, looking all around. “Hero’s not agitated enough for there to be a bear on this island.” (To Danny and Charlotte, the lean hound looked agitated enough for there to be a bear on the dock.)
It turned out that there was a bear on Barclay Island that summer. The water between the two islands was a short swim for a bear-both Danny and Ketchum discovered they could wade there-but the bear never showed up on Turner Island, perhaps because the bear had smelled Ketchum’s dog.
“Burn the grease off the grill on the barbecue, after you’ve used it,” Ketchum advised them. “Don’t put the garbage out, and keep the fruit in the fridge. I would leave Hero with you, but I need him to look after me.”
There was an uninhabited log cabin, the first building to be assembled on Turner Island, near the back dock. Charlotte gave Ketchum a tour of it. The screens were a little torn, and a pair of bunk beds had first been separated and then nailed together, side by side, where they were covered with a king-size mattress that overhung the bed frames. The blanket on the bed was moth-eaten, and the mattress was mildewed; no one had stayed there since Charlotte ’s grandfather stopped coming to the island.
It had been his cabin, Charlotte said, and after the old man died, no other member of the Turner family went near the run-down building, which Charlotte said was haunted (or so she’d believed as a girl).
She pulled aside a well-worn, dirty rug; she wanted to show Ketchum the hidden trapdoor in the floor. The cabin was set on cement posts, not much taller than cinder blocks-there was no foundation-and under the trapdoor was nothing but bare ground, about three feet below the floor. With the pine trees all around, pine needles had blown under the cabin, which gave the ground a deceptively soft and comfortable appearance.
“We don’t know what Granddaddy used the trapdoor for,” Charlotte explained to Ketchum, “but because he was a gambling man, we suspect he hid his money here.”
Hero was sniffing the hole in the floor when Ketchum asked: “Was your granddaddy a hunting man, Charlotte?”
“Oh, yes!” Charlotte cried. “When he died, we finally threw away his guns.” (Ketchum winced.)
“Well, this here’s a meat locker,” Ketchum told her. “Your granddaddy came up here in the winter, I would bet.”
“Yes, he did!” Charlotte said, impressed.
“Probably after deer season, when the bay was frozen,” Ketchum considered. “I’m guessing that when he shot a deer-and your Mounties would have known when someone was shooting, given how quiet it would be here in the winter, with all the snow-and when the Mounties came and asked him what he was shooting, I expect your granddaddy told them some story. Like he was shooting over a red squirrel’s head, because the squirrel’s chattering was driving him crazy, or that a herd of deer had been feeding on his favorite cedars, and he shot over their heads so they would go eat all the cedars on someone else’s island-when the whole time he was talking, the deer, which Granddaddy would have gutted over this hole, so there wouldn’t be any blood in the snow, and where he was keeping the meat cold… well, do you see what I’m getting at, Charlotte?” Ketchum asked her. “This here hole is a poacher’s meat locker! I told you-there’s lots of deer around here, I’ll bet.”
Ketchum and Hero had stayed in that run-down log cabin, haunted or not. (“Hell, most places I’ve lived are haunted,” Ketchum had remarked.) The newer sleeping cabins were not to the old woodsman’s liking; as for the torn screens in Granddaddy’s cabin, Ketchum said, “If you don’t get bitten by a mosquito or two, you can hardly tell you’re in the woods.” And there was more loon activity in that back bay, because there were fewer boats; Ketchum had figured that out on the first day, too. He liked the sound of loons. “Besides, Hero farts something awful-you wouldn’t want him stinking up your sleeping cabins, Charlotte!”
At the end of the day, Charlotte wasn’t shocked by the idea that her granddaddy had been a poacher. He’d died destitute and alcoholic; gambling debts and whiskey had done him in. Now, at least, the trapdoor in the floor had been given a reason for its existence, and this rather quickly led Ketchum to his suggested improvements. It never occurred to the old river driver that Charlotte had not once been interested in living on her beloved island in the frigid winter months, when the prevailing wind had permanently bent the trees-when the bay was frozen and piled high with snow, and there wasn’t a human soul around, except the occasional ice fisherman and those madmen who rode their snowmobiles over the lake.
“It wouldn’t take a whole lot to winterize the main cottage,” Ketchum began. “When you put in your flush toilets, you just want to be sure you install two septic systems-the main one, and a smaller one that nobody has to know about. Forget about using the sleeping cabins; it would be too expensive to heat them. Just stick to the main cottage. A little electric heat will be enough to keep the toilet and the sink-and the big bathtub you want, Charlotte -from freezing. You just have to heat-wrap the pipes to the small septic tank. That way, you can flush the toilet and drain the dishwater out of the sink-and empty the bathtub, too. You just can’t pump water up from the lake, or heat any water-not in a propane hot-water heater, anyway. You’ll have to cut a hole in the ice, and bring your water up by bucket; you heat the water on the gas stove for your baths, and for washing the dishes. You would sleep in the main cottage, of course-and most of your heat would come from the woodstove. You’ll need a woodstove in your writing shack, too, Danny-but that’s all you’ll need. The back bay nearest the mainland will freeze first; you can haul in your groceries on a sled towed by a snowmobile, and take your trash to town the same way. Hell, you could ski or snowshoe here from the mainland,” Ketchum said. “You just might be better off staying away from the main channel out of Pointe au Baril Station. I don’t imagine that channel freezes over too safely.”
“But why would we want to come here in the winter?” Danny asked the old woodsman; Charlotte just stared at Ketchum, uncomprehending.
“Well, why don’t we come up here this winter, Danny?” Ketchum asked the writer. “I’ll show you why you might like it.”
Ketchum didn’t mean “winter”-not exactly. He meant deer season, which was in November. The first deer season that Danny met up with Ketchum at Pointe au Baril Station, the ice hadn’t thickened sufficiently for them to cross the back bay from the mainland to Turner Island; not even snowshoes or cross-country skis would have been safe, and Ketchum’s snowmobile surely would have sunk. In addition to the snowmobile, and a vast array of foul-weather gear, Ketchum had brought the guns, but he’d left Hero at home-actually, he’d left that fine animal with Six-Pack Pam. Six-Pack had dogs, and Hero “tolerated” her dogs, Ketchum said. (Deer hunting was “unsuitable” for dogs, Ketchum also said.)
It didn’t matter that they couldn’t get to Charlotte ’s island that first year, anyway. The builder wouldn’t be finished with all the improvements before the following summer; Ketchum’s clever winterizing would have to wait until then, too. The builder, Andy Grant, was what Ketchum affectionately called “a local fella.” In fact, Charlotte had grown up with him-they’d been childhood friends. Andy had not only renovated the main cottage for Charlotte ’s parents a few years ago; he’d more recently restored the two sleeping cabins to Charlotte ’s specifications.