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Swede was a native of sorts. He and his wife Quenby lived year-round on an island up here on the lake. They operated a kind of small rustic lodge for men from the city who came up to fish and hunt. Swede took them out to the best places, Quenby cooked and kept the cabin up. They could take care of as many as eight at a time. They moved here years ago, shortly after marrying. Real natives, folks born and bred on the lake, are pretty rare; their 14-yearold daughter Ola is one of the few.
How far was it to Swede’s island? This is a better question maybe than “Who is Swede?” but you are even less sure of the answer. You’ve been fishing all day and you haven’t been paying much attention. No lights to be seen anywhere, and Swede always keeps a dock light burning, but you may be on the back side of his island, cut off from the light by the thick pines, only yards away from home, so to speak. Or maybe miles away. Most likely miles.
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Yes, goddamn it, it was going to rain. Carl sucked on a beer in the bow. Swede tinkered quietly with the motor in the stern.
What made a guy move up into these parts? Carl wondered. It was okay for maybe a week or two, but he couldn’t see living up here all the time. Well, of course, if a man really loved to fish. Fish and hunt. If he didn’t like the retrace in the city, and so on. Must be a bitch for Swede’s wife and kid, though. Carl knew his own wife would never stand still for the idea. And Swede was probably pretty hard on old Quenby. With Swede there were never two ways about it That’s the idea Carl got.
Carl tipped the can of beer back, drained it. Stale and warm. It disgusted him. He heaved the empty tin out into the darkness, heard it plunk somewhere on the black water. He couldn’t see if it sank or not. It probably didn’t sink. He’d have to piss again soon. Probably he should do it before they got moving again. He didn’t mind pissing from the boat, in a way he even enjoyed it, he felt like part of things up here when he was pissing from a boat, but right now it seemed too quiet or something.
Then he got to worrying that maybe he shouldn’t have thrown it out there on the water, that beercan, probably there was some law about it, and anyway you could get things like that caught in boat motors, couldn’t you? Hell, maybe that was what was wrong with the goddamn motor now. He’d just shown his ignorance again probably. That was what he hated most about coming up here, showing his ignorance. In groups it wasn’t so bad, they were all green and could joke about it, but Carl was all alone this trip. Never again.
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The Coleman lantern is lit Her flesh glows in its eerie light and the starched white linens are ominously alive with their thrashing shadows. She has brought clean towels; or perhaps some coffee, a book. Wouldn’t look right to put out the lantern while she’s down here, but its fierce gleam is disquieting. Pine boughs scratch the roof. The springs clatter and something scurries under the cabin. “Hurry!” she whispers.
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“Listen, Swede, you need some help?” Swede didn’t reply, so Carl stood up in a kind of crouch and made a motion as though he were going to step back and give a hand. He could barely make Swede out back there. He stayed carefully in the middle of the boat He wasn’t completely stupid.
Swede grunted. Carl took it to mean he didn’t want any help, so he sat down again. There was one more can of beer under his seat, but he didn’t much care to drink it His pants, he had noticed on rising and sitting, were damp, and he felt stiff and sore. It was late. The truth was, he didn’t know the first goddamn thing about out board motors anyway.
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There’s this story about Swede. Ola liked to tell it and she told it well. About three years ago, when Ola was eleven, Swede had come back from a two-week hunting trip up north. For ducks. Ola, telling the story, would make a big thing about the beard he came back with and the jokes her mother made about it
Quenby had welcomed Swede home with a big steak supper: thick T-bones, potatoes wrapped in roil and baked in the coals, a heaped green salad. And lemon pie. Nothing in die world like Quenby’s homemade lemon pie, and she’d baked it just for Swede. It was a great supper. Ola skipped most of the details, but one could imagine them. After supper, Swede said he’d bring in the pie and coffee
In the kitchen, he discovered that Ola’s cat had tracked through the pie. Right through the middle of it. It was riddled with cat tracks, and there was lemon pie all over the bench and floor. Daddy had been looking forward to that lemon pie for two weeks, Ola would say, and now it was full of cat tracks.
He picked up his gun from beside the back door, pulled some shells out of his jacket pocket, and loaded it. He found the cat in the laundryroom with lemon pie still stuck to its paws and whiskers. He picked it up by the nape and carried it outside. It was getting dark, but you could still see plainly enough. At least against the sky.
He walked out past die barbecue pit. It was dark enough that the coals seemed to glow now. Just past the pit, he stopped. He swung his arm in a lazy arc and pitched the cat high in the air. Its four paws scrambled in space. He lifted the gun to his shoulder and blew the cat’s head off. Her daddy was a good shot.
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Her mock pout, as she strides across the room, clutching the imaginary cat, makes you laugh. She needs a new pair of shorts. Last year they were loose on her, wrinkled where bunched at the waist, gaping around her small thighs. But she’s grown, filled out a tot, as young girls her age do. When her shirt rides up over her waist, you notice that the zipper gapes in an open V above her hip bone. The white cloth is taut and glossy over her firm bottom; the only wrinkle is the almost painful crease between her legs.
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Carl scrubbed his beard. It was pretty bristly, but that was because it was still new. He could imagine what his wife would say. He’d kid his face into a serious frown and tell her, hell, he was figuring on keeping the beard permanently now. Well, he wouldn’t, of course, he’d feel like an ass at the office with it on, he’d just say that to rile his wife a little. Though, damn it, he did enjoy the beard. He wished more guys where he worked wore beards. He liked to scratch the back of his hand and wrist with it.
“You want this last beer, Swede?” he asked. He didn’t get an answer. Swede was awful quiet He was a quiet type of guy. Reticent, that’s how he is, thought Carl. “Maybe Quenby’s baked a pie,” he said, hoping he wasn’t being too obvious. Sure was taking one helluva long time.
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He lifts the hem of his tee shirt off his hairy belly, up his chest, but she can’t seem to wait for that — her thighs jerk up, her ankles lock behind his buttocks, and they crash to the bed, the old springs shrieking and thumping like a speeding subway, traffic at noon, arriving trains. His legs and buttocks, though pale and flabby, seem dark against the pure white spectacle of the starched sheets, the flushed glow of her full heaving body, there in the harsh blaze of the Goleman lantern. Strange, they should keep it burning. His short stiff beard scrubs the hollow of her throat, his broad hands knead her trembling flesh. She sighs, whimpers, pleads, as her body slaps rhythmically against his. “Yes!” she cries hoarsely.
You turn silently from the window. At the house, when you arrive, you find Ola washing dishes.
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What did Quenby talk about? Her garden probably, pie baking, the neighbors. About the wind that had come up one night while he’d been gone, and how she’d had to move some of the boats around. His two-week beard: looked like a darned broom, she said. He’d have to sleep down with the dogs if he didn’t cut it off. Ola would giggle, imagining her daddy sleeping with the dogs. And, yes, Quenby would probably talk about Ola, about the things she’d done or said while he was away, what she was doing in sixth grade, about her pets and her friends and the ways she’d helped around the place.