Give a woman a disaster and she turns squirrel. I gave her a hug and nodded. We went on around the house. It didn't take more than a glance to understand why Billy had been a little overwhelmed. “Lordy,” Steff said in a faint voice.
From where we stood we had enough elevation to be able to see almost a quarter of a mile of shoreline-the Bibber property to our left, our own, and Brent Norton's to our right.
The huge old pine that had guarded our boat cove had been sheared off halfway up. What was left looked like a brutally sharpened pencil, and the inside of the tree seemed a glistening and defenseless white against the age-and-weather-darkened outer bark. A hundred feet of tree, the old pine's top half, lay partly submerged in our shallow cove. It occurred to me that we were very lucky our little Star-Cruiser wasn't sunk underneath it. The week before, it had developed engine trouble and it was still at the Naples marina, patiently waiting its turn.
On the other side of our little piece of shorefront, the boathouse my father had built-the boathouse that had once housed a sixty-foot Chris-Craft when the Drayton family fortunes had been at higher mark than they were today-lay under another big tree. It was the one that had stood on Norton's side of the property line, I saw. That raised the first flush of anger. The tree had been dead for five years and he should have long since had it taken down. Now it was three-quarters of the way down; our boathouse was propping it up. The roof had taken on a drunken, swaybacked look. The wind had swirled shingles from the hole the tree had made all over the point of land the boathouse stood on. Billy's description, “bashed,” was as good as any.
“That's Norton's tree!” Steff said. And she said it with such hurt indignation that I had to smile in spite of the pain I felt. The flagpole was lying in the water and Old Glory floated soggily beside it in a tangle of lanyard. And I could imagine Norton's response: Sue me.
Billy was on the rock breakwater, examining the dock that had washed up on the stones. It was painted in jaunty blue and yellow stripes. He looked back over his shoulder at us and yelled gleefully, “It's the Martinses', isn't it?”
“Yeah, it is,” I said. “Wade in and fish the flag out, would you, Big Bill?”
“Sure!”
To the right of the breakwater was a small sandy beach. In 1941, before Pearl Harbor paid off the Great Depression in blood, my dad hired a man to truck in that fine beach sand-six dumptrucks full-and to spread it out to a depth that is about nipple-high on me, say five feet. The workman charged eighty bucks for the job, and the sand has never moved. Just as well, you know, you can't put a sandy beach in on your land now. Now that the sewerage runoff from the booming cottage-building industry has killed most of the fish and made the rest of them unsafe to eat, the EPA has forbidden installing sand beaches. They might upset the ecology of the lake, you see, and it is presently against the law for anyone except land developers to do that.
Billy went for the flag-then stopped. At the same moment I felt Steff go rigid against me, and I saw it myself. The Harrison side of the lake was gone. It had been buried under a line of bright-white mist, like a fair-weather cloud fallen to earth.
My dream of the night before recurred, and when Steff asked me what it was, the word that nearly jumped first from my mouth was God.
“David?”
You couldn't see even a hint of the shoreline over there, but years of looking at Long Lake made me believe that the shoreline wasn't hidden by much; only yards, maybe. The edge of the mist was nearly ruler-straight.
“What is it, Dad?” Billy yelled. He was in the water up to his knees, groping for the soggy flag.
“Fogbank,” I said.
“On the lake?” Steff asked doubtfully, and I could see Mrs. Carmody's influence in her eyes. Damn the woman. My own moment of unease was passing. Dreams, after all, are insubstantial things, like mist itself.
“Sure. You've seen fog on the lake before.”
“Never like that. That looks more like a cloud.”
“It's the brightness of the sun,” I said. “It's the same way clouds look from an airplane when you fly over them.”
“What would do it? We only get fog in damp weather.”
“No, we've got it right now,” I said. “Harrison does, anyway. It's a little leftover from the storm, that's all. Two fronts meeting. Something along that line.”
“David, are you sure?”
I laughed and hauled my arm around her neck. “No, actually, I'm bullshitting like crazy. If I was sure, I'd be doing the weather on the six-o'clock news. Go on and make your shopping list.”
She gave me one more doubtful glance, looked at the fogbank for a moment or two with the flat of her hand held up to shade her eyes, and then shook her head. “Weird,” she said, and walked away.
For Billy, the mist had lost its novelty. He had fished the flag and a tangle of lanyard out of the water. We spread it on the lawn to dry.
“I heard it was wrong to ever let the flag touch the ground, Daddy,” he said in a businesslike, let's-get-this-out-of-the-way tone. “Yeah?” “Yeah. Victor McAllister says they lectercute people for it.” “Well, you tell Vic he's full of what makes the grass grow green.” “Horseshit, right?” Billy is a bright boy, but oddly humorless. To the champ, everything is serious business. I'm hoping that he'll live long enough to learn that in this world that is a very dangerous attitude. ' “Yeah, right, but don't tell your mother I said so. When the flag's dry, we'll put it away. We'll even fold it into a cocked hat, so we'll be on safe ground there.” “Daddy, will we fix the boathouse roof and get a new flagpole?” For the first time he looked anxious. He'd maybe had enough destruction for a while. I clapped him on the shoulder. “You're damn tooting.”
“Can I go over to the Gibbers' and see what happened there?” “Just for a couple of minutes. They'll be cleaning up, too, and sometimes that makes people feel a little ugly.” The way I presently felt about Norton. “Okay. Bye!” He was off.
“Stay out of their way, champ. And Billy?” He glanced back. “Remember about the live wires. If you see more, steer clear of them.” “Sure, Dad.”
I stood there for a moment, first surveying the -damage, then glancing out at the mist again. It seemed closer, but it was very hard to tell for sure. If it was closer, it was defying all the laws of nature, because the wind-a very gentle breeze-was against it. That, of course, was patently impossible. It was very, very white. The only thing I can compare it to would be fresh-fallen snow lying in dazzling contrast to the deep-blue brilliance of the winter sky. But snow reflects hundreds and hundreds of diamond points in the sun, and this peculiar fogbank, although bright and clean-looking, did not sparkle. In spite of what Steff had said, mist isn't uncommon on clear days, but when there's a lot of it, the suspended moisture almost always causes a rainbow. But there was no rainbow here.
The unease was back, tugging at me, but before it could deepen I heard a low mechanical sound-whut-whut-whut! -followed by a barely audible “Shit!” The mechanical sound was repeated, but this time there was no oath. The third time the chuffing sound was followed by “Mother-fuck!” in that same low I'm-all-by-myself-but-boy-am-I-pissed tone. Whut-whut-whut-whut-Silence-then: “You cunt.”
I began to grin. Sound carries well out here, and all the buzzing chainsaws were fairly distant. Distant enough for me to recognize the not-so-dulcet tones of my next-door neighbor, the renowned lawyer and lakefront-property-owner, Brenton Norton.
I moved down a little closer to the water, pretending to stroll toward the dock beached, on our breakwater. Now I could see Norton. He was in the clearing beside his screened-in porch, standing on a carpet of old pine needles and dressed in paint-spotted jeans and a while strappy T-shirt. His forty-dollar haircut was in disarray and sweat poured down his face. He was down on one knee, laboring over his own chainsaw. It was much bigger and fancier than my little $79. 95 Value House job. It seemed to have everything, in fact, but a starter button. He was yanking a cord, producing the listless whut-whut-whut sounds and nothing more. I was gladdened in my heart to see that a yellow birch had fallen across his picnic table and smashed it in two. Norton gave a tremendous yank on the starter cord. Whut-whut-whutwhutwhut-WHAT! WHAT! WHAT!... WHAT.. .. Whut. Almost had it there for a minute, fella. Another Herculean tug. Whut-whut-whut. “Cocksucker,” Norton whispered fiercely, and bared his teeth at his fancy chainsaw.