Chapter 42
Despite the late night we’d spent together, the women were up early, at first light.
Although I’d slept on a blanket on hard ground, I felt better rested than I had in days.
Freedom will do that. Lou and Johanna prepared a breakfast of oatmeal with nuts and dried fruit, and we ate watching the sun begin to peek above the trees across the channel.
They loaned me their binoculars, and I scoped out the Kennedy brothers’ campsite. Nothing moving.
“What are you going to do?” Lou asked.
“Lurk mostly,” I told her. “Keep out of sight, but keep an eye on them, make sure no one comes near their campsite.”
“What do you think they’ll do when they find out you’ve taken their canoe?” Johanna asked.
“Go berserk at first, I’m sure. Then God only knows. They don’t have a map. They don’t know the territory. I can’t imagine they’ll try to make it to Canada on their own. If they do, I’ll follow them.”
“We can leave you food,” Johanna said.
“I have plenty,” I assured them and pointed to the food canister I’d taken from the brothers.
“You can keep the binoculars. And I can leave you the blanket,” Lou said. “I’d give you my sleeping bag, but honestly, I’ll need it.”
“You both have been more than generous. Just get out as fast as you can and get the word out about Lost Man Lake and those two sons of bitches over there.”
By the time the women shoved off in their canoe, the sun was fully up.
Lou and Johanna headed west, keeping the island between them and the Kennedy brothers so they wouldn’t be seen.
They swore that if they came across anyone else heading my way, they’d warn them.
It would take them all of that day and most of the next to reach their entry point and their cell phones.
Two days at the very least before anyone with a badge and a gun would arrive to deal with the situation.
In addition to the binoculars and blanket, they left me matches, a tarp for shelter if it rained, and a mess kit.
I decided to make the campsite my outpost for observing the Kennedys.
There was a path that others before me had worn to a point of land about fifty yards from the campsite with a good view east and west on that part of Lost Man Lake.
I would be able to see canoeists approaching from both directions and, if I paddled hard, could intercept them before they blundered into the two dangerous men.
I set myself up in the shade of a white pine, watching as the morning wore on and the Kennedy brothers continued to snooze away in their tent.
For Stan to sleep through the grunts and snores that came from his brother, I figured he had to have been really exhausted, his body feeling tortured.
Good. I wanted them both to feel like they’d been in hell, because I was still sore from the beatings Ollie had delighted in giving me.
Even though we’d made a kind of connection, I was including Stan in my animosity.
He blamed his brother for so much, but he was guilty too, because in the end he always buckled, always gave in to Ollie.
Was it weakness? A brotherly bond? It didn’t matter.
The result was the same. People were hurt. People died.
I finally spotted movement and lifted the binoculars.
It was Stan. He’d crawled from the tent and was eyeing the tree where I was no longer tied.
He hurried to the shoreline and discovered the canoe was missing.
He scanned the lake, lifted his hands to the sky, opened his mouth, and a moment later, his cry of utter frustration came to me across the water.
He stood there, looking completely dejected.
Then Ollie crawled from the tent, probably awakened by that primal scream.
He came to where his brother stood and they spoke.
Then Ollie shoved him and Stan went down.
Ollie stood over him, gesturing wildly, pointing to the jack pine where the rope I’d cut to free myself still lay, then to the lake.
Stan remained on the ground. As nearly as I could tell, he was taking his brother’s abuse without responding.
Ollie finally walked away, to the tree where I’d been tied, and gave it a punch as if the jack pine was responsible for my escape.
Then he held his fist and I could tell he’d hurt his hand. Oh, I was loving this.
They had no food. That fact finally dawned on them, and there was another scene of Ollie berating his brother.
At last, they stood on the shoreline together, talking now in what I guessed were reasonable voices, probably trying to figure out their options.
I could tell from their body language—both brothers looked like they were sagging under huge weights—that they realized the hopelessness of their situation.
Then they simply sat down and stared at the open water and the multitude of islands and inlets, silently absorbing the incomprehensible nature of Lost Man Lake and the abject reality of their situation.
They didn’t break camp. Where would they go?
In the late morning, Stan assembled Cordell’s collapsible fishing pole, chose a lure—I was too far away to see clearly what kind—and tried his luck from the shoreline.
He cast again and again, slowly reeling in the line each time.
After an hour, he gave up. Ollie, this whole time, was drinking from his whiskey bottle.
When Stan returned empty-handed, Ollie said something, probably derisive because Stan threw the rod at Ollie’s feet and stomped away.
In the early afternoon, Stan disappeared for a long time in the woods.
I wondered if maybe he was trying to find a way that led north.
If so, it would be a waste of his energy.
There is no direct route north. And good luck trying to bushwhack your way to Canada.
Even the most experienced outdoorsman would consider such an effort doomed.
But Stan came back an hour later carrying a tent bag.
He dumped the contents at Ollie’s feet and the two brothers picked up something in their hands.
With my binoculars, I strained to see what it was and finally figured out that Stan had gone hunting mushrooms. Well, good luck with that.
If you don’t know your fungi, you’re taking your life in your hands.
The brothers must have been discussing the same issue, a contentious exchange, because in the end Ollie threw down whatever he had in his hands and, along with everything else Stan had gathered, ground it into the dirt under his feet.
It takes a long time to starve to death, so I wasn’t worried about the two brothers buying the farm that way, though it would have been just fine with me if they had.
I was in possession of the water bag and could drink filtered water.
The brothers had a whole lake to satisfy their thirst, but if they drank that water, they risked getting giardia, which isn’t deadly but can create all kinds of unpleasant symptoms—diarrhea, cramps, nausea, joint pain—that can be difficult to address and can last a long time.
I wouldn’t have minded at all if the Kennedy brothers happened to ingest that little parasite.
From the beginning, I’d intended to make the brothers suffer in every way possible.
It was a darkly satisfying feeling, watching those two men clumsily try to meet the challenges facing them without help.
They’d come with greed, not reverence, in their hearts, and it was as if the spirits of the wilderness were rewarding them in the way they deserved.
But there was also a part of me tugging in a different direction, one that urged compassion.
I knew about the childhood that had shaped them both, a father cruel and abusive, who’d shown them no love but had showered affection on Crispin, a boy from the outside.
We are shaped early, bent toward a path not always of our own choosing.
As I watched the brothers, Stan especially, who’d been both protected and bullied by his older brother, I thought of the two wolves Henry Meloux had once told me about, two wolves always battling in the human heart.
One, Henry said, was hate. The other was love.
When I asked him which one wins the battle, his reply was “The one you feed. Always the one you feed.”
I knew which wolf I was feeding. But the other, the wolf of love, of compassion, was still fighting.
I suppose the ancient and protective chemistry of our bodies compels us toward violence.
Maybe it’s the eternal consciousness of our souls that urges us in the other direction.
Whatever the truth, I couldn’t help wishing nothing but the worst for the Kennedy brothers, both of them.
I spent the day observing that campsite across the water, keeping myself hidden.
It was a long, dull vigil, and by late afternoon, I found myself working hard to keep from nodding off.
Not successfully, it turned out. With a start I woke from a little snooze.
I rubbed my eyes and saw the brothers standing at the water’s edge, waving their arms like crazy and shouting.
I looked west and discovered why. Two people in a canoe were heading toward their camp.
I’ve often spent a week in the Boundary Waters without seeing another soul, but on this cursed trip other people just kept popping up. I thought it was either terrible luck or some test of my own determination that two more people were heading into harm’s way.
I ran for my canoe and launched it onto Lost Man Lake.
The canoeists were still a good two hundred yards from the Kennedys.
I don’t think I’ve ever paddled so hard.
I could hear the brothers hollering, their cries for help shattering the usual quiet of the lake.
They were so animated, so desperate looking that if I were the clueless two who were paddling toward them, I’d have thought it was a dire emergency.
In the Boundary Waters, you don’t expect to be ambushed.
I started hollering, too, even as I paddled. Which caused the brothers to pause a moment as they realized I was still around. Then they redoubled their efforts.
A hundred yards out, the two innocents finally stowed their paddles. Thank God, I thought. I kept up my own stroking and eventually came alongside their canoe.
The man in the stern was reed-thin, half my age, with a scraggly beard that gave his face a goat-like appearance.
He wore a beat-up, stained ball cap and a ratty Guns N’ Roses T-shirt.
In the bow was a kid, maybe twelve years old, wearing glasses with lenses so thick they made his eyes look huge, as if in constant surprise or wonderment.
“What’s all the hullabaloo?” the man asked. “Those two guys over there okay?”
“No, and that’s a good thing.”
I told them who I was, and the kid said, “Hey, we ate at Sam’s Place just before we came into the Boundary Waters. Good burgers.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Then I gave them a very short version of what was happening.
“We heard there was something going on out here,” the man said. “Didn’t hear details though, just that we should be cautious and avoid the area around Devil’s End. But that’s miles south of us. By the way, name’s Abe, and this is my son, Gabriel.”
“You’d best keep going wherever it is you’re going,” I told them.
“We’d been thinking about setting up at the campsite over there, or the one on the island where you say you’re staying. Our map indicates there’s another spot a half mile northeast.”
“We could stay here and help,” Gabriel suggested. Behind those lenses, his eyes looked big and eager.
“I suppose we could,” his dad said.
It was a tempting offer, but I didn’t want anybody else getting hurt.
“Those men are armed,” I told them. “I’d rather you both stayed safely away from here. Have you seen anybody else on the lake?”
“You’re the first,” Abe said.
“Keep going, and if you do see anyone else, tell them to keep away from here. Okay?”
“We will,” Abe promised.
The Kennedy brothers had stopped shouting and waving and just stood now, watching my exchange with the father and son.
When Abe and his son took off paddling well away from the danger on the shoreline, the two brothers eyed me for a long time, and even at a distance the darkness of their thoughts was clear in the expressions on their faces.
I stared back, my own look one of challenge, maybe even triumph. Once again, I’d bested them.
I turned my canoe back to the island. No use now trying to keep the brothers from knowing where I was camped.
Didn’t matter. They had no canoe, no way to reach me, no chance to make me suffer in the way their hearts were probably hungering for.
I figured that sometime late tomorrow, if I could keep any other unwary paddlers away, the Kennedy brothers would be in the arms of the law.
But, as it’s often wisely said, you should never count your chickens before they hatch.