Last Exit to Pine Lake Read online

  Sometimes it seems to me that light is all one thing, one big spotlight on a stage of clowns. It bounces and reflects and disappears behind a door like a young woman in a French bedroom farce. The light from the bulbs in the ceiling reflected off the cards I held.

  It reflected off a room full of clowns, big smiles painted on their faces. My sister got a phone call. It sounded like it was from someone she wasn’t really fond of. She listened a lot, nodding her head and making reflections from her glasses dance around the room, but showed no inclination to return to the card game, which she was winning. Her husband had liquid gold light in his glass, trying to get stupid in a reasonable time. He had a head start.

  They had their demons, I know, but they fight the same fight with those demons and with each other again and again, unwilling to admit they can’t ever win. I saw a candle in a jar and lit it; and somehow even that annoyed them, but they were to polite to me to say so.

  Three hours earlier, on Pine Lake, the light that had bounced off the bow waves of a blue canoe and off a million yellow leaves on the portage, then danced away, came back, and later converged in the flare of a match. Kimberley had discovered Paul on the island, mumbling and sick, and set up camp there.

  The match she used undoubtedly reminded the writer of the one he’d used to torch his life. Who, he must have wondered, was this angel in a canoe, carrying fire and warmth against the fall of darkness.

  ****

  Island: Pine Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

  Kimberley put her small brown tent up on a suitably flat spot. It was, of course, a self-supporting tent. She’d once seen a couple try to use a tent held up by stakes in this rocky country. They’d given up finally, laying each stake on the rock surface then piling stones on it. Even then, the tent had sagged in the night.

  She spread out everything she was going to need, inflated her air mattress, then put the sleeping bag onto it. The food, a book to read, and the other things a civilized person can’t do without she spread out on the rock. Then she stood by the writer, watching him. His breath came unevenly, and a late-season deerfly crawled across his forehead without waking him. She fanned it away with her hand, then swatted it when it tried out the back of her neck, as deerflies do.

  Gottsen still didn’t move, so she cooked up a supper in a small fry pan. She’d brought a block of frozen chili, trusting it to thaw on the journey.

  Then she looked at the bottle of Forty Creek whiskey, in its plastic bottle, and thought blank thoughts, sitting with her knees drawn up tight and her arms wrapped around them, watching the dark pines on the shore and the patterns on the water. After a minute, she began to cry.

  Abruptly, Paul spoke. “We chased dreams that summer, and waters and Fridays. And ourselves. We pursued ourselves. And when we could find no more dreams, we followed the winds. Do you know about that?” He kept his eyes closed.

  “Where are the dreams when you get old?” Kimberley asked. “Do the waters disappear into the sea and the winds merely chill your bones?” She got up to add a couple of twigs to the fire. “But, to answer your question, yes, I lived last summer like that. It was too good.”

  “We weren’t new to it,” Paul continued, “but we grew smiles like the trees grow leaves. Blue lakes and green fish under the magic surface, until long shadows scared us off the waters. We owed nothing to anyone but ourselves and we paid each other in what coin we had.”

  “You talk in poetry and parables and icons and legends, just like one critic said.”

  “There will be Fridays and winds and warm May afternoons, and couples chasing their dreams and cagey bass hiding under lily pads from your canoe. There will. I think I can promise you that. I can’t see you, you know. My eyes. What’s your name?”

  “Kimberley Molley.” She spelled the last part. “You talk like you’re writing another novel. Or quoting yourself.”

  “It insulates me from the truth that burns.” He paused. “Same girl that was here before?”

  “Same one,” she said.

  “Can I have a drink of water; I’m awfully dry.”

  “No problem. Can you sit up?” She poured water from her bottle into a cup.

  He sat up. After a long drink, he said, “I forgive you all your sins.”

  “Thanks.” That and a quarter will get me a phone call if I can find Superman’s phone booth.”

  ****

  News Release: Bancroft Police Service

  Fire at Cottage on Long Lake Termed “Suspicious”

  October 2:

  For More Information contact Constable Bruce Knight, Bancroft Police Service

  This afternoon, October 2, the district Fire Marshall determined that there were no human remains in the cottage that burned on Long Lake. The fire was reported this morning when the Bancroft Fire Department was called to the scene. At the time some neighbours believed that the owner, Paul Gottsen, was likely inside at the time of the fire.

  Police are asking for public assistance in locating Mr. Gottsen, a white male, aged 62. His car and motorboat were at the scene. Police are checking to see if a canoe was burned in the fire, or if any other boats nearby are missing.

  ****

  Mad Tom’s Diary

  Across the skies of doom and dawn the angels vend their wares. But all they sell are words, nothing but words on old paper. Yet the people buy; yet the people buy. All Paul ever sold was words; I have read them. Some are better than any the angels sold.

  All around the world the prophets danced and sang and still dance and sing. And all those men ever peddled were words, same stuff Paul tried to sell.

  I think if there were a God and if he ever came to visit this outhouse planet and watch our little tragicomedy he would be known by this: there would be no words: He would arrive in a thunder of silence.

  -------------

  I followed her along the shore. I watched her as she looked at my home. I watch her now. She must be part of the enemy; the odds are too small to be otherwise. Now they know where I am. She must not be allowed to get back over the hill. Or will killing her bring more? I don’t know what I want. I don’t.

  What are women to a raggedy wood buffoon? Nothing any more; but this memory of a girl. Somewhere long ago where the mine drips water and the floor is littered with dead canaries among the diamonds, hiding because I knew they’d come hunting me, frightened of my Frankengenes. I found her, or she found me, and then there was some time we spent face to face and hand in hand, our crooked souls hunkered in that shared darkness, back to back, grasping cudgels, waiting against the frantic coming of torch and yell and the smell of burning fur.

  I do not blame her. There are many roads on this planet.

  You think I am damned.

  Not ever so much as those in Japanese cars driving in the November rain to work, lost souls in lines on the Queen Lizzie Highway at seven in the morning. The stars they promised themselves are down to headlights, and the traffic slows to a crawl to pass some poor bastard changing a tire with no help from God.

  They dream now of sleeping in on Saturday and raking leaves off their tiny estates, while someone else sings songs to their car radios, and other souls, lost in their thousands, have no idea that I’ll be in the woods again. If they laugh at me I’ll cry for them.

  I watch her make a fire and set up a tent.

  ****

  Island: Pine Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

  “You’re planning on staying?” His left eye was working a bit better now, and he could see that she was young. He remembered being at campsites with young women; this was not the same.

  “Too late to look for another campsite now.”

  “What time is it?” He drank more water from her cup. He regretted not being dead.

  She pulled out her phone and inspected the dial. “Just after four. I’ll be dark in an hour.”

  “You got that right. And cold.” The writer reached into his jacket inner pocket, taking out a small brown bottle of pills. Carefully, he started
to open the lid.

  “I’ll take those,” Kimberley said, removing the bottle from his hand and inspecting the label. “Aha. Planning on getting enough sleep with these?”

  “Give them back. They’re not yours.”

  “Are now.” She stepped back.

  “I want them. I came here to die and I need them for that.”

  “Rollie and Tam figured that.”

  “And you’re going to stop me? That’s cruel, you know.”

  “Oh, I don’t intend to stop you.” Kimberley looked towards the forest and not at him, and stuffed the bottle into a pocket. “I just haven’t got my interview yet, if you remember.”

  “You,” he said, “ are a perverse bitch. Let me die.”

  “Heck, I’ll help you. As soon as I’ve got my information.” In truth, she didn’t have a clue what she was doing, or why, but something in her didn’t want to spend the night with a corpse on this Pine Lake. “Meanwhile, would you like something to eat?”

  “You’ve got spare food?” He got up and moved to his canoe, then sat down using the canoe as a backrest.

  “I prepared for a three-day trip, and somehow I don’t think I’ll be here that long. I’ve got some chili con carne and bread, if you want.”

  There was a long pause. “I’d die for some right now. If it’s hot: I’m getting cold now.”

  She turned the lid of a frypan into a plate for him, then put chili on it, with a piece of bread on the side. She opened a couple of his sleeping pills and mixed the contents into the food. “The sun’s just starting to go behind the hills. It’ll be cold soon, she said.” She handed him the food, along with water in a plastic bottle. He said nothing, but ate slowly.

  ****

  Tam Speaks

  No, it wasn’t the rejection of Stolen Rain that walled him in here. Oh, I mean…. Well, he certainly wasn’t pleased with it. I mean, who would be, but he always thought that someday, maybe long after he was gone, that they’d come around to it. I guess that that’s happened to lots of books. But he didn’t bring it up, often, maybe a remark when he was drunk or something. People liked Paul, though.

  The lake’s getting cold and clear and dark, isn’t it? It gets cold these nights. I wouldn’t want to be out there tonight.

  He said he was becoming his cat.

  What did he mean by that? Probably that were in their own boundaries, eating and sleeping too much, spending too much time watching out the windows. Not much in the cabin but his writing table and his bed. He once told me the restlessness faded after a few years and didn’t come back till it was too late. He spent a long time each day with that mouse. I think he had to write not to dry up and blow away.

  I agree with him: every woman should own a cat. It’s the best way to understand men.

  He never forgave himself. I don’t know for what. I told him I’d forgive him, but he refused to talk about it, even when drunk; he just clammed up tighter. Maybe something to do with his second wife.

  No, don’t be silly; we were never close like that. I’m married, you know.

  His favourite character? Superman. A guy who does the world only good and has no coffee friendships. Does that make sense? Except me, maybe, and Rollie. I made him cookies sometimes. And he and Rollie would go fishing in the boat, with a bottle of whiskey they didn’t tell me about. At first, anyway. Then they stopped doing that a few years ago. Maybe he said something to Rollie. How would I know?

  Oh, yeah. It gets kind of… quiet…. out here after the summer people have gone. Me and Rollie, we wanted someplace like this, but if I didn’t have my job in Peterborough, I could go bananas. We wanted a place to watch nature. We weren’t young and all anymore. Sometimes at four in the morning in the first couple of years, I’d go out and stand at the edge of the drive just beyond the porch light, where the road blends into darkness.

  Love is a torch; too bright, you know. It lets you see the road, but not the stars. That’s my line, not Paul’s.

  Rollie and I put our first Christmas tree on the tiny kitchen table. The cottage was small – we added on later – and we needed the bedroom, of course. For three weeks we ate supper sitting on the kitchen floor, cups and dishes spread all around us.

  We had a brass bed. They were popular then Paul said brass beds should come with warnings. And a wonderful quilt bought from the Mennonite auction. We watched winter come; I remember it. Peaceful, very peaceful.

  No, not then. We were here for three years before Paul bought the cottage next door. He seemed a likeable fellow, but I learned to watch his eyes. There was always too much going on in there, and he really hated the way he always tried to please people when he didn’t want to.

  Friends. Yes, I’d say Paul and Rollie and I were friends, or as close to friends as he had then. It was easy for a woman to be friends with Paul. He genuinely thought all women were beautiful. I remember once I was supposed to meet him in Peterborough for lunch. He was going in to town for paint or whatever. I was just a bit late, but when he saw me he smiled like his world had been remade, and hugged me till I could hardly breathe. Every woman deserves to be thought beautiful, if only for a few heartbeats.

  Paul and I? I told you. Just friends. Of course Rollie didn’t trust him very far, but that’s Rollie. I’m a bit overweight, at the moment. Paul said that the instant men die, they dream of thin angels, thin beautiful angels, because they know there can be no overweight women in heaven. He said men on earth do not trust overweight women, since these obviously do not know the way to Heaven.

  ****

  Rollie Speaks

  He could be a son of a bitch sometimes, but I guess that’s true of everybody on this lake, at least the ones who stay here year round. Me, too, I guess. Some days it was best that we just avoided each other; other times we went fishing. A couple of times, near the beginning, when he first got here, we went camping overnight back in the little lakes. But that didn’t last. We just didn’t have enough we could agree about that we could talk about around a campfire.

  Oh, yeah, I liked him well enough, at least at the start. At least most of the time. We’d go out in his boat and fish. Didn’t catch a lot, although one time he brought in an eight-pound lake trout on a jig. He wouldn’t use worms, which are the best bait in this lake. He didn’t like to hurt things, or people, at least physically hurt them.

  He wouldn’t talk about his books, especially that one that nobody liked. I tried to read it – Tam got a copy, but it was way over my head. I’m a plain and simple guy, strong as concrete and not much brighter some days. If the world ends, concrete remains.

  Paul was deeper. You’d look into his eyes and not necessarily like what you thought you saw. And he tried so hard to make people like him. Worked at it, and then they’d see that look in his eyes and not trust him as far as they could throw him.

  Trust him? Well, if I were on a lake in winter and fell through the ice, he’d be there. But if I needed somebody to tell me I was a nice guy when the world was about to dump me, I don’t know. I guess I’ll never know, now.

  I taught him about liquid and solid, about water and land. I’m like the rock at the edge of the shore. It doesn’t take much to figure it out because it’s not going anywhere. He was like the water in the lake. Changed all the time, and there were fast currents in the wind and currents moving too slow to see.

  He didn’t know much about boats or water before he got here. We’d go out into the lake with a bottle of whiskey Tam wasn’t supposed to know about, and fish and talk about things. I told him that people are like clowns in a big circus; most of them just don’t know it.

  Solid and steady. I work in concrete, you know. Treat it right and it’s strong as rock. That’s what Tam saw in me, you know. She’d had some pretty miserable excuses for boyfriends, and I guess she liked a bit of stability. With me, what you get is what you’re gonna get.

  That’s not always good, you know. You look at concrete and in the corners there’s candy wrappers that skuttle and sk
itter around in the wind, as Paul might have expressed it, and a weed that waves in that wind. The weed’s alive, and the trash just seems alive, and people are both and if you want all that movement you don’t want me. Go enjoy the weeds. While they last.

  Some of my best friends were just life’s clowns. Circus players. The good ones were like trapeze artists on the wire, but they found out you have to be careful then. If you fall, and no one gasps or even hides a smile, you might as well run from the tent before they start applauding the clowns instead.

  Do you get what I’m saying? Tam sort of did, at the first, but then she’d heard it all so I stopped saying it before she thought I was a clown, too.

  We were in love then, or as much love as we could be. I was a rock, steady and dull. She was more like a long-winged bird. Paul told me that; he said even on a rock on the shore, she’d always be feeling the wind on her feathers, feeling the edge of some hurricane with want and fearing.

  I guess I was hoping she’d change. She did, a bit, but she always missed the storms. Even though she learned she couldn’t fly above them after all.

  ****

  Island: Pine Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

  “They’ll come looking for me,” he said. “Sooner or later, they’ll figure out I wasn’t in the cabin when it burned.” He turned his best eye towards her. “You know about the cabin?”

  She explained how she’d come to the lake.

  “Ah,” he said. “That was you I heard in the dark. Explains a few things. Got any more chili, by any chance?”

  “A bit,” she said, scraping some off her plate. “Want bread with that?”

  “It would be good. My stomach hurts all the time nowadays, and food helps. Does it bother you to share your food with a guy who doesn’t plan to be around to digest it?”

  “Not at all,” she lied, and they both knew it. She watched the far shore. The writer finished the food, then lay down and closed his eyes.

  The shadows from the hills crept across the campsite and the temperature dropped abruptly.

  She got into her canoe, then paddled across the lake to the portage site. The wind was gone and the lake was glassy smooth, reflecting the last light falling onto the trees. A loon watched her without comment.