Last Exit to Pine Lake Read online

  So she asked if she could read the novel he’d finished. He hesitated, because he had major reservations about it (as had a flock of publishers). But he agreed.

  Rollie and Tam

  Rollie was supervising an early morning project pouring concrete at an interchange just north of Burleigh Falls in deep spring fog when he saw Tam. She’d parked her car down the road and had set up a camera and tripod. He walked over to check out what she was doing; he didn’t want to end up on a CBC documentary or something.

  Satisfied that she just liked photography, he got her a hard hat and rather large steel boots, then let her onto the work site, after he’d explained the areas where she definitely couldn’t go.

  A half hour later the fog and the shafts of sunlight no longer danced among the machines and men, and Tam said goodbye, handing back the equipment. Rollie handed her his business card. She hesitated, then wrote her phone number on it, handing it back. “Call me in a week, and I’ll give you some prints if any turn out okay,” she said.

  They met a week later, in a little café in Lakefield. Rollie was pleased at the quality of the prints she gave him, and promised to frame them for his home on the lake. In response to one, Tam said God must have really enjoyed Himself that morning. “He does the work,” Tam explained. “I just try to get little pieces of it.”

  Rollie frowned and shook his head. “I believe in a God that created the universe, I guess, but what I’ve seen of this planet doesn’t make me think it was planned. I think God strides the galaxy to watch his handiwork (which he thinks is really good – he does a great job on planets and stars). I think sometimes he rolls a few comets inward towards a sun because they’re so nifty.

  “That,” said Rollie, “has its hazards.” He raised his doughnut: “sometimes a planet is hit by a comet, and becomes infested with life, which is harder than a tar stain to remove.” His eyes showed he was making a joke.

  “Just an accident, are we?”

  “Well, after a while, I think God just gives up trying to clean off his planet, and watches the accidental show, especially if it produces some good clowns.”

  “Sometimes I wonder,” she said, deep into a triple-chocolate cookie. “It’s hard to believe some people have any other purpose.”

  “That’s what the moon is for,” Rollie said. “Sometimes He wants a night time show as well.”

  Kimberley and Fred

  Kimberley was friends with Cindy because they’d both come to Lakefield U from Cobourg, leaving home for the first time. By the following spring Cindy was spending her time with Paul. Paul’s close friend was Fred, so Kimberley got to know Fred around a university cafeteria table.

  One day Cindy told Kimberley that she and Paul were going canoeing. Kimberley was a bit hesitant, not having been in a canoe since summer camp eight years before. “Is there anything but bugs out there?” she asked.

  It was Fred who supplied his answer first. “It’s holy,” he said. “It must have been just an accident of history that Jesus got born in a dry Middle Eastern country.”

  “You think?” Paul asked.

  “For sure. Had Jesus canoed around here, in a red canoe, every pope would be paddling out to greet people on Easter.”

  “They’d have to flood the Vatican,” Cindy said.

  “Oh, I think a northern Michelangelo would have painted God and man on some cliff face, and the cathedral would be made of tall pines swaying in the wind. It wouldn’t be dark and closed in – there would be sunlight and moonlight to bless everyone who came to pray.” Fred smiled. “And they could fish in church if they wanted.”

  In a minute, Kimberley had decided to go canoeing with the group.

  ****

  And yet Peter Finer, reporter with a thesaurus and ambition, sleeping in his in-law’s cottage, had it wrong. Paul Gottsen didn’t stay up watching the stars; rather, he spent the night in a sleeping bag with Kimberley Molley. At once point he got up to urinate, waking Kimberley. When he got back, she helped him into the sleeping bag, and eventually he slept again. Eventually, so did she.

  Peter drifted off to sleep not dreaming of lakes and starlight, but wondering if Paul Gottsen had actually written the last novel of his life, and then burned it in the cottage.

  Across the lake from Paul and Kimberley,, Mad Tom tried to figure the best way to get to the island, till the effort put him asleep, scratching at some insect biting his neck.

  Tam and Rollie shared a bed back on Long Lake, the smoke from Paul Gottsen’s cottage still ruining the cold night air. Rollie slept; Tam didn’t.

  One day over: one more to go in this story. In the last seconds before sleep took them, each of the characters might have been wise to ask themselves, “Why this day and where has it gone when the ripples settle and the moon comes over the hogback hill?

  “Why a blue canoe that made diamonds on the water surface, the prodigal sun burning overhead and Paul’s hand cold with water running down the paddle? And why the marsh, empty of redwings (the woven nests swaying in the wind from the north)?”

  The lakes go clear in fall, and golden birch leaves goldenroad the portage trails, and high clouds write on the sky. This is lesson enough, perhaps.

  “Why this day, you ask again,” not comprehending, “and where has it gone when the ripples settle and the moon comes over the hogback hill?”

  The next chapter holds as much or as little answer as there is.

  ****

  CHAPTER THREE

  ****

  Bancroft OPP. Day After Fire Day.

  The constable in charge of the investigation said, “Yeah, thanks,” into the phone, and hung up, meaning, thanks for nothing, buddy.

  He’d been told that there was no helicopter available for at least a day. Someone needed one to look for a small boat stolen by some teens and now missing off Toronto, and the other was in for maintenance. Furthermore, it had been hinted that the constable’s request wasn’t going to be a high priority. If Gottsen were alive, he probably wasn’t lost and therefore wouldn’t need a helicopter. If he were dead, he could wait patiently for one.

  The constable in charge of the investigation into the fire on Long Lake reached for the phone again. There might be a plane available locally.

  Half an hour later the bad station-house coffee was screwing up his digestion, and he had a plane. It wasn’t a float plane, so he couldn’t land anywhere except back at the Bancroft airport, but at least it was a plane. The pilot had been having a disagreement with his wife over pesticides, weeds, and ecology, so he was glad to get out of the house. The police didn’t pay a heck of a lot for such a search, but everything looked better at a few thousand feet.

  When the pilot got to the airport, the cop was waiting for him. Twenty-five minutes later they were airborne, heading south to look for a blue canoe with an arsonist inside.

  ****

  Mad Tom’s Diary

  Got to get to the island. Too cold to swim. Everything depends on getting to the island.

  Tried to get around back but it’s all swamp as black and cold and oozy as God’s love in the morning. I could make a raft, but that would take all day.

  Gotta, gotta, gotta.

  What will that bitch do to him? What destiny will I not be part of?

  This planet’s a prison in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Ontario being one o' the worst. The doctor said there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so: therefore to me it is a prison. I could be bounded in a nutshell, habitating a warm room in the Filbert Factory, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

  A dream itself is but a shadow. Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason this morning again, and if I cannot reason, I must be on that island, fighting shadows, defending and killing Paul. Beguiled, I would cut her hair and she would be happy the way I’d done it. Alas, poor Tom, I knew him well.

  Jack and Jill went over the hill

  Sliding towards the wa
ter

  One went down, heaven bound

  The other, to witness slaughter.

  ****

  Tam Speaks

  This morning I could not get warm, although I turned up the furnace and wore a coat in the house. I took a day’s holiday owed to me from work. That may have been a mistake. I came to this lake for peace, and this morning I cannot find it. Not here, alone.

  Then I dug up the herb garden. No need. I'm no shrink; you tell me.

  After coffee I sat on the porch, and I pretended I heard a car door slamming.

  I planted that herb garden behind the house, where Rollie wasn’t likely to run over it in his car. How hard could it be, I thought. A little garden, a bit of spice for flavoring. This is rocky country, but there are a few places where the soil’s black and there’s a bit of sun.

  It didn’t work. Rollie didn’t care for most of the spices – he’s a pretty plain and straightforward guy and there’s an old pine that puts us in shade in mid-afternoon. Just when the sun was needed, it would be behind the pine.

  It is peaceful here; don’t get me wrong. I guess it’ll be even more peaceful, unless someone puts up a new cottage on Paul’s lot.

  I look at the ashes of the cabin. Paul once told me I made fire, and found fire, and played with fire, in the way that women do. What did he know?

  Then Paul said ashes have their own song and ashes are their own wine. He told me that I would keep running from those flames till they caught me. He told me what I really feared was ashes. Whatever that meant. Maybe he was right, anyway.

  I had one guy who said he was flame and shadow. The brighter the flames, he’d tell me, the darker the shadow. Come with me to the shady side of life, he wrote in a poem to me, bring whiskey and water, lilacs and worms. and we'll toast our own deaths, celebrate the pitter patter of forgotten years under the old stairs. He said we’d bless the feet of people going by and laugh and play with nails and dream of houses and forest burning. Or something like that: I don’t have the poem any more. There are things you have to give up.

  When we split up, I would have kept walking, but I figured you can only go as far as China, then you’re coming back again. There was nothing to go home to so I went home, sat in a chair by the window, drank milk, and watched snow drift by the streetlight.

  And now, even my garden. My little garden of spices.

  Once I had a friend, a girl, who listened to me when I had too many words bottled up in me. I believed she was my friend and we’d always be able to talk about men and life and maple walnut ice cream. She would wear wooden beads one day as a surprise and I would show up at the café blonde, with small gold ear-rings.

  I never hated Santa, you know; but in my life I’ve had problems with those that encouraged me to believe. Are there no phones? Does pen not meet paper any more? I guess there is a strange quiet beauty to an ending. There's Sinatra on the fm station, I have a pumpkin pie, all to myself while out there, god will soon pull a fine white cloth over yesterday.

  I came to the lake to get away from dreams, but they grow like weeds in a small garden.

  That’s enough for now. Go away: I have work to do.

  ****

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ****

  Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student

  Hi, me.

  Morning after a very strange night. Woke up alone, not knowing where the heck I was. Figured it out when I saw his blue canoe outside the tent. Fuck.

  Paul still alive. Thank God for that. Cold outside the tent: sun coming over the hills and mists dancing on the lake. Tent and everything probably clammy with dew. Lots of ducks and geese making noise out there. I feel like going back to sleep and sleeping until it’s all over. Good idea. Everything’s damp out there.

  I slept some in the night, I guess. Must have. Didn’t think I would. Couldn’t have been much. Strange noises out there. Thought it was Mad Tom coming, but no sign of him now. I think maybe I’ll just take my stuff and make a run for it! Great idea. Paul doesn’t want anyone around and I don’t want to be around. Case closed. My hands are starting to shake!

  I can hear Paul out there, getting a fire going. Must be doing it for me; he’s got no reason to make himself comfortable unless he changed his mind. Better check that. He can go die in some hospital like the rest of us. What’s he got against hospitals? Good places to die. Lots of people do it there.

  Maybe I’ll make breakfast in a few minutes. Give him that whiskey bottle. Then when he tells me to leave, I’ll just go, and tell Tam I tried to stay but got thrown out. Voted off the island, like.

  I’ve got enough problems of my own: I don’t need this. Could put me right off camping.

  Note to me: go camping without men. They begin life or end life and neither is going to be top of my list of events.

  ****

  Island: Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.

  Kimberley crawled out of the sleeping bag and came out of the small tent on her hands and knees. She could see Paul sitting beside a small, almost smokeless, fire. He was breaking off small sticks of dry wood and putting them into the flames. He watched her. “Morning is my good time of day,” he said. “You’re kind of cute, now that I can see you.”

  “You probably say that to all the girls you spent a night in the sack with,” she said, straightening up slowly.

  He contemplated that. “That’s probably true.”

  She gathered some toilet items from her packsack, and headed for the nearest cedar bush. The sun was fully clear of the hills and the mist was dissipating on the lake. She looked for signs of Mad Tom, but saw none.

  When she came back, and had rinsed her hands in the lake water, she almost emptied the packsack, putting the items onto the flat rock. She took out an expandable metal grate and arranged a couple of rocks to hold it above the flames. Then she got a coffee pot, scooped some of Pine Lake into it, and set it onto the grate. Drops from the outside of the pot sizzled into the flames. She broke off a larger dead branch from an oak (white oak) and dragged it closer.

  Finally, she set in front of Paul the whiskey bottle. She held on to the bottle of pills she’d taken from him in the evening.

  He eyed both items with his one good eye.

  “Tell me what these pills are for,” she said. “In case someone asks, later.”

  He smiled, understanding. “They’re to help blood circulation in my legs.” He rubbed his nose.

  “They look like sleeping pills.”

  “Of course they aren’t. They’re just for circulation.” They both understood that maybe there might be an official inquiry, and she’d need to tell them what Paul had told her.

  She handed the pills, then said, “I’m making breakfast after the coffee. Want some?” She refused to look at him.

  “Within a month I’ll have no control over most of my body,” he said. “I’ll just lie there thinking thoughts I can’t speak and regretting things I can’t do anything about. If I’m not tormented by bed sores and things like that. Or an itch I can’t scratch. A vegetable with a brain and feelings.”

  She started making a breakfast of eggs and bacon, keeping her eye away from him.

  “If I’m lucky, I’ll catch pneumonia and die soon. Or after a year or two. Nobody lasts longer than that, except one guy who holds the record at fifteen years.” He poked at the fire. “No cure.”

  An owl called once and some geese settled into the water not far out. A mink raised its head at the other end of the island, then went back to looking for crayfish along the shore. The burbot, which had scouted out the shoreline in the night, drifted back to the deeps.

  “Breakfast?” she asked.

  He looked at her a long time. “You have enough for two? Enough for a guy that isn’t planning to be around long enough to digest it?”

  “Goddamn right.”

  “I’d be proud to have some.”

  He set the pill bottle onto a rock, then picked up the whiskey. He looked at it and nodded. She assumed he
approved of the brand. Actually, he approved of the plastic bottle, since he dropped things constantly. “Want some?”

  “No.” But she wanted all of it and looked away.

  “Good. I can drink from the bottle.” He took a swallow and grimaced.

  “Don’t like it?”

  “Stomach hurts when I drink nowadays. Don’t worry: it won’t kill me.” He ate his breakfast in a hurry, then took another sip. “You should go home now.”

  “I know.”

  “You won’t get much of an interview.”

  “I know.”

  “Then why?”

  “Promised Tam.”

  He laughed, coughed, then laughed some more. “What, she doesn’t want me to die alone?”

  “So she said.”

  “She’s a good person, but if I’d wanted to have company, I’d have arranged some. Why do you think I snuck out of there?”

  “I’m here now,” Kimberley said.

  “So you might as well stay?”

  “I dunno. It’s not looking like such a good idea any more. I’ll leave as soon as I get packed up.”

  He thought a bit. “Wait till ten. I’ll answer a few questions if you want. How’s that?”

  “Okay,” she said, and regretted it at once, angry at herself.

  Returning to the tent, she pulled the sleeping bag out, unzipped it, and stretched it out on his canoe. The tent, she turned upside down and laid it against the canoe, too, to let the bottom moisture evaporate.

  That’s when the plane came over the lake, low.

  ****

  Peter Finer, Journalist

  From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.

  For one reason or another, Peter’s biography has Kimberley arriving at the island in the morning after the fire, rather than the afternoon before. His book was such a success that the real story is little known.

  The October morning was long in coming to Pine Lake. The hills to the east block the sun, so Paul Gottsen spent a long time in the dark chalice that was the lake before the first rays cut between the beach trees on the hill crest and reached down to touch the writer by his small fire.

  He didn’t really know why he hadn’t killed himself the day before. He’d brought a bottle of sleeping pills to do the job, and there was the danger that if he waited, someone might come to prevent him. It would be a real piss-off to find himself, after all, in a hospital bed, in pain and thinking of a new novel he’d write if he could communicate.