Chapter 44
“I thought you couldn’t swim,” I said, ignoring the hand he offered.
“I can’t. Neither can my brother. I was the only who could fit into this.” Stan touched the life vest.
“Stay where you are,” I said, still not wanting to drop my guard. “Don’t move.”
I gave him a wide berth and went to the log where I’d sunk the blade of the hatchet I had used to cut firewood. I yanked it free and called to Stan, “Okay, come up to the fire, where I can see you clearly.”
He approached, hands still raised. “I’m not here to harm you.”
“Take the vest off and sit.”
He removed the life vest, dropped it on the ground, and sat on the log near the fire pit. He was soaked to the bone. The wind out of the west was still blowing hard, and he wrapped his arms around himself for warmth. I wasn’t ready to feel any compassion, so I let him shiver.
“You didn’t mean any harm?” I said. “Then why the hell are you here?”
“To steal your canoe, that’s all. We just want to get across the border. We have someone waiting for us there.”
“Who?”
“My wife, Jeanette. My ex-wife, actually,” he corrected himself.
“Was she in on your plan? Did she know about the pack?”
“She had nothing to do with this.”
“She’ll have a hell of a time convincing a jury of that.”
“Look, we’re still… we still… we care about each other, okay?
The divorce was about other things. I swear she knows nothing about why we’re here.
She thinks it’s something my brother and me are doing to be closer as brothers.
I pitched it as a way to come to terms with my father’s death.
Knowing how I really felt about my old man, well, that made her a little suspicious, but she came around.
She’s waiting at a lodge at the edge of the Quetico. ”
“Then what? I’m sure the authorities here will be in touch with the RCMP. They’ll be looking for you.”
“We have a private plane chartered to take us to—” He stopped. “I’ve said enough.”
“You’re not going to make it now, wherever you were going.”
He leaned toward the fire as if trying to soak up the heat of the flames. “It’s not over till the fat lady sings.”
“It’s over for you, I guarantee. There’s no way you’re getting the canoe. You’re both stuck here until you’re arrested. If I don’t miss my guess, that’ll be sometime tomorrow.”
“My brother’s not as dumb as he seems. And he’s a survivor.”
“I’m going to make sure no one blunders into him. He won’t be killing anybody else and stealing their canoe.”
“I don’t know how, but if there’s a way in hell to get us out of here, he’ll find it, mark my words.” Stan shoved his hands toward the fire. “Damn, I’m freezing.”
“Everything you’re wearing is cotton, sucking all the heat out of you.” I grabbed the blanket Lou and Johanna had left me. “Take those wet clothes off and spread them out beside you on the log. Then put this around you.”
He stripped and set his wet clothes out to dry, then wrapped himself in the blanket. From where he sat, he looked up at me, eyeing me strangely, as if I was some kind of exotic animal he’d never seen before. “Why are you so kind to me?”
“Make no mistake,” I warned him. “You try anything I’ll split your head open with this hatchet.”
“You could have let me drown out there.”
“Believe me, I thought about it.”
“You didn’t have to give me this blanket. You could have just let me sit here freezing. It’s probably what I would have done if I were you. And my brother, he’d have taken great delight in seeing you suffer. So, why?”
There was a sawed-off section of log across the fire pit from where Stan sat.
I eased myself down on it, hatchet still in hand.
The wind swept through the pines around us and the sound was like the rush of water in a fast stream.
It shifted and shaped the smoke that rose up from the flames and carried embers like little fireflies toward the lake.
For a long time, I said nothing, and Stan simply waited.
Finally I said, “Up here, we call this God’s country.
I come into the Boundary Waters as often as I can because it feels to me like a sanctuary.
It’s been this way forever, a place you can feel the presence of the Creator all around you.
I’m sure there are other places like this, other sanctuaries of the Divine, but this is the place for me.
” I stopped and gathered my thoughts again.
“You and your brother, you violated the spirit of this place. You brought hate and anger with you. You killed. And you know something just as bad as that? You made me want to kill, too. In this place where the Creator dwells, you put murder in my heart.” Then I shook my head.
“No, you didn’t put it there. It’s always there.
The wolf of hate. You just helped me feed that beast.”
“The wolf of hate,” he said, mulling over the words. “Most of my life, that’s all I’ve known. My brother, too. What else is there?”
“You have boys you love. And there still seems to be something between you and your wife.”
“There is. Or there could be.”
“Well, there you go. And despite the fact that to me he’s an asshole of the highest magnitude, you seem to care about that jackass across the water there.”
Stan gave what looked to me like a helpless shrug. “He’s my brother.”
The moon was still playing hide-and-seek behind patches of cloud. We’d been in darkness for a while, then the cloud passed, and Stan’s face was illuminated. I could see him, hunched in the blanket I’d loaned him, wrestling with his thoughts.
“We’ve always been able to stay ahead of the law,” he finally said. “Our old man, too, until this place brought him down. You talk about the spirit here. Think that might be responsible?”
“I don’t claim to know anything. But it’s probably worth considering.”
“Is it too late, do you think?”
“Too late for what?”
“To stop feeding that wolf of hate.”
“Ask me, you already have.”
He looked beyond me, toward the campfire across the channel. “I don’t think my brother will understand.”
“Seems to me we can only be responsible for what’s in our own hearts.”
“I’m sorry,” Stan said.
“For what?”
“All this.” He closed his eyes. “Maybe for everything in my whole life.”
“Does that include your two boys?”
“No. But I wish I could be sure they won’t feed the wrong wolf.”
I couldn’t help him there.
“So. What now?” he asked.
“I don’t know about you, but I need some sleep. Any chance your brother might try to follow you over here?”
“I took the only life vest. And like I told you, neither of us can swim.”
“I’ll leave you the blanket. You stay with the fire.”
“What about you?”
“I’m taking the canoe.”
“Going where?”
“I think I’ll keep that to myself.”
“I get it. Don’t trust me. Probably for the best. Thanks for the blanket.”
I left him to his own thoughts, which were troubling, I’m sure. He was facing prison, probably for a very long time. How to explain that to the two boys he loved? What do you do when you write off your whole life?
The wind had let up quite a bit. I paddled without great difficulty back to the point where I’d spent the day keeping watch on the two Kennedy brothers.
I tied the canoe to the trunk of a birch at the water’s edge and settled myself on the soft bed of needles under the white pine where I’d sat for hours.
I could see the campfire across the channel slowly dying.
It was like the dreams of the two brothers, dreams of vast wealth.
Whatever was in the pack, whatever promise of riches, I figured that in the light of what the next day’s dawn was going to bring, it would all turn to ash.
I’ve always been a light sleeper. When my children were very young and would wake in the night and come to their parents’ bedroom seeking comfort, the soft padding of their feet on the floor woke me well before I heard their voices.
In the wild, even after a long day of paddling and portaging, I sleep with one ear cocked for the approach of forest creatures.
The break of a twig or a sudden rustling of the underbrush brings me wide awake in an instant.
I heard Stan coming. When I opened my eyes, I saw that the moon was almost directly overhead, illuminating everything with a white light bright enough to cast deep shadows.
I didn’t move from where I lay cloaked in the dark.
I watched him slowly make his way toward the shoreline and the birch tree where I’d tethered my canoe.
He was dressed, so his clothes must have finally dried from the heat of the fire.
I couldn’t see anything in his hands, nothing there that he might be thinking of using to knock me cold.
He took a few steps, stopped, peered into the trees along the path, then took a few more steps.
He’d almost reached the birch tree when I finally spoke up.
“Trouble sleeping?”
He turned, his face pale in the moonlight, his surprise obvious in the way his eyes were wide and round like two white poker chips.
“I… I… was… just looking… for the toilet,” he stammered. “I have to piss.”
“You took the wrong path,” I said.
“I can see that now.” He stood still for a few moments, deer in the headlights, if you don’t mind a cliché. Then he said, “Well, I’ll just go back to the campsite. I’ll, uh, see you in the morning.”
“In the morning,” I said.
I watched him walk back the way he’d come.
When he was out of sight, I went down, untied my canoe, stepped in, and shoved off from the shore.
When I was several yards out, I dropped the anchor, then eased myself onto the bottom of my old Wenonah.
It wasn’t comfortable, but if Stan came calling again, this time more silently and with something in his hand, he’d have to splash his way out to me.
I stared up at the man in the moon. His face reminded me a little of the smiling face of Ernie, the cookie jar on my kitchen counter.
“What do you think?” I asked.
But like Ernie, he made no reply.