Lone Wolf (4 page)

6

W
E DISCUSSED BUYING FIVE CANS
of bear pepper spray—one for each of the cabins—but when I ran into the sporting goods store and found they were about fifty bucks each, I knew Dad would be relieved to find that they only had a couple cans of the stuff left. There was dust on the tops, indicating that the product was not exactly flying off the shelf.

I popped into a men’s shop on the main street for some extra underwear and socks, since I’d left the city without packing. When I got back into the pickup, Dad said he was thinking about inviting everyone from the other cabins to his place for dinner and beer.

“Everyone’s probably kind of shook up, with what happened and all,” Dad said. “That poor son of a bitch, getting eaten by a goddamn bear. And I don’t want everyone bailing on me either, leaving me with a bunch of empty cabins. Cabin three’s already empty. You can help yourself to that one.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Dad pointed up the street to Henry’s Grocery, said I could get everything I needed there while he sat in the truck and nursed his ankle. “You know how to buy groceries?” he asked. “Or is that something Sarah does?”

“Sometimes she takes me with her, puts me in the little seat so I can pick up some tips,” I said.

Dad said that if Bob did well out on the lake today, he’d bring some fish that could be fried up. But Dad also wanted frozen hamburger patties, buns, stuff for making salad, chips, plenty of beer. He was very specific. “Not those buns with the sesame seeds on top. They get caught in my teeth. I hate that. And get the frozen sirloin burgers, not the mystery meat stuff.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“And none of that light beer. Nobody wants to drink that pony piss.”

“Got it, Dad.”

“Did I mention about the sesame seeds?”

“Yes, Dad.”

“I don’t want you to make a mistake, that’s all.”

“Hey, what about the Wickenses?” I asked. “You inviting them to this shindig? They really took the hit on this one. It was the daughter’s boyfriend the bear decided to have for lunch.”

Dad looked straight ahead through the windshield. “I think the best thing would be to let them deal with their grief in private.”

“What’s the deal with them anyway?” I asked. “The Keep Out signs and the gate and the barbed wire. Isn’t that your property they’re on?”

Dad swallowed, kept looking out the window. I noticed him clenching his right fist. “That’s none of your concern, Zachary.”

“All I’m saying is, who
are
these people? The property looks like it’s going to ratshit. Old cars, a fridge outside, and Jesus, have you seen those pit bulls? They nearly took a leg off me when the chief and Bob and I went up there to talk to them. Who keeps fucking dogs like that? Nutcases, that’s who. Have you seen the teeth on those things? I’d rather go swimming with sharks than knock on their front door if—”

“Zachary!” Dad bellowed. “Enough!”

“Dad, look, they’re on your property. They’re renting your farmhouse. If you’ve got some problem with them, you should do something about it.”

He turned and glared at me. “Did I say I had a problem with them? Have I complained to you about them? Have I said one damn thing to you about them?”

I slammed the truck door and headed up the street for Henry’s Grocery. I noticed along the way, taped to the light standards, flyers for the fall fair, which kicked off with a parade four days from now, on Saturday. And some other posters, taped just above or below the ones for the fall fair, headlined “Keep the Parade Straight!”

I didn’t know what that meant, exactly. Perhaps, other years, it had taken a roundabout, serpentine route through Braynor that had somehow made the fall fair parade a less than spectacular entertainment. I didn’t bother to read the rest of the poster to find out. I was on a mission.

Once inside Henry’s, I grabbed a cart with two front wheels so badly aligned and balanced I wondered briefly whether Braynor was built on a fault line. Working without a list, I made my way through the store, picking up a head of romaine, some croutons, a bag of hamburger buns without sesame seeds, God forbid.

I was coming around the end of the aisle when I nearly ran the cart into a thin, white-coated man who at first I thought had escaped from some laboratory, but the absence of a pocket full of pens and the presence of blood splotches identified him as someone who had recently been behind the meat counter. Then I noticed the name “Charles” stitched to his jacket, and the clipboard in his hand.

He peered at me over his wire glasses.

“Hello,” he said.

I nodded.

“Charles Henry,” he said, offering a hand. I didn’t have a chance to check it for blood before I took it. “Manager, Henry’s Grocery. I don’t believe I know you.”

I thought, why would he? But then, in a small town, I guess if you’re the local grocer you get to know all the local faces.

“No,” I said. “I’m just staying at my father’s place.”

Henry’s face was screwed up like he was detecting a bad smell, but since I couldn’t smell anything, I figured that was his normal expression. “That doesn’t mean you can’t sign the petition,” he said. “It’s open to anyone.”

“I’m sorry?” I said.

He shoved the clipboard at me. “To keep the parade family-friendly,” he said. “Just sign down there. We’re getting a lot of names, but we need more if we’re going to be able to get the mayor to back down.”

I smiled politely and waved my hands in front of me. “I don’t really know much about all that, but thanks, and good luck, okay?”

As I tried to wheel the cart around him he said, “Don’t you believe in decency?”

I honestly thought it was a bit overrated, but had a hunch this was the wrong time to say so. “Listen, really, good luck, but I’m really a bit pressed here,” I said, and got the cart around him, feeling his glare all the way down the aisle.

When I returned to the pickup with the groceries, I knew Dad wanted to look in the bags, see whether I got the order right, so I put them right behind my seat where he couldn’t reach them. I saw him glance back there a couple of times, the anxiety plainly visible on his face, but with his ankle so sore, he couldn’t shift around very far.

“Met Mr. Henry,” I said, turning the key and pulling the transmission down into drive.

“Oh,” said Dad, still pissed over our earlier argument.

“His face always look like that?”

Dad didn’t respond, and we didn’t talk the rest of the way back.

A small crowd gathered when we came down the hill and to a stop behind Dad’s cabin. At a glance, it looked like most everyone I’d seen earlier. The older couple, the well-dressed heavyset guy, and Bob Spooner.

They gathered around Dad’s side, opened the door for him, helped him out. Spooner saw the crutches behind the seats, grabbed them, assisted Dad in getting them under his arms. “Come on, Arlen, let’s get you inside.”

I got out the driver’s door, not rushing. Everyone else wanted to help. They seemed to have a genuine affection for Dad, particularly Bob and the older couple. This, I was learning, was not your typical fishing camp where the guests were strangers. This was some kind of family.

I brought in the groceries and my new clothes and the bear repellent, glancing over my shoulder into the woods as I approached the cabin. It was dusk, and the trees were losing their distinctness and blending together into a single shadow against the darkening sky. I stopped a moment and listened, hearing nothing but a light breeze blowing through the pines. Now, with daylight fading, it was hard to tell where, exactly, the body had been. It was long gone now, taken away shortly after May Wickens fell into her father’s arms, and the entire incident, in many ways, seemed part of the distant past. Almost as if it had never happened.

Dad was inviting everyone to come back in an hour. Bob Spooner said he did, indeed, have a stringerful of pickerel hanging off the dock that he could clean up before then, and the others were making offers of what they could bring. Before they could head back to their respective cabins and get ready, Dad wanted to introduce me formally to everyone, even if I’d already made their acquaintance.

“Bob I know,” I said, shaking his hand again. Then Dad introduced me to Hank and Betty Wrigley, the older couple, who came from Pennsylvania every fall to rent cabin 4 for three weeks, and finally, the plump guy decked out in Eddie Bauer, who pressed his sweaty palm into mine and shook it for at least three seconds longer than he should have. Everything about him screamed “sales.”

“I’m Leonard Colebert, and I’m in diapers!” He beamed.

The others either shook their heads or rolled their eyes, or both. I guessed that they’d heard this one before.

“No kidding?” I said.

“That’s right. I own Colebert Enterprises, makers of diapers for infants, toddlers, bedwetters, adults, you name it. If you can’t hold it, we will.” He laughed.

I found myself discreetly wiping the sweat from his hand on the backside of my jeans. I wondered if I was starting to develop a phobia about handshaking.

“Well,” I said. “You been coming here long?”

He shook his head. “Only a couple years. Not as long as Hank and Betty here, certainly not as long as Bob. Bob, how long you been coming up here?”

“Thirty, thirty-two years,” Bob said evenly. “Right back to when Denny himself had it. Didn’t have running water or toilets in the cabins back then, but then Denny sold the place around 1980, and Lyall Langdon bought it, did a bit of upgrading, and he was the one sold the place to your dad. But they’ve always hung on to the name Denny’s Cabins. Everyone knows it by that, and it’s a name with a certain recognition factor.”

“And you?” Leonard said to Hank and Betty Wrigley.

Betty, quietly, said, “Well, I guess nearly twenty years. We used to come up for a week every summer, but once Hank and I were both retired, we made it three weeks.”

“What sort of work did you retire from?” I asked, already weary of Leonard leading the conversation.

Betty said, “I was a nurse, and Hank here was in construction.”

Hank nodded. “I had my own crew. We built houses, mostly.”

“Me,” said Leonard, “I don’t think I’ll ever retire. I just love it too much. Love it love it love it. But I like to get away from it all, too, you know. I could afford to stay anywhere, but I like it here.”

Dad shot Leonard a look that said “Asshole.”

Bob Spooner said to Dad, “You want to give Orville, and, you know, a call, see if they want to come out.”

Dad waved a hand dismissively. “We’ll see.” He changed the subject. “Hey, we picked up some cans of anti-bear spray. Anybody wants to borrow a can, let me know.”

Bob smiled. “I keep my Smith and Wesson in my tackle box. Maybe I’m gonna have to start carrying it with me everywhere I go.”

Terrific, I thought. We could all get guns and wander around the place packing heat.

Everyone agreed to meet back at Dad’s place within the hour, and once Dad was settled inside, Bob motioned for me to join him.

“It’s a good thing you’re here, your dad really needs you right now,” he said. Bob was a tall guy, an inch or two over six feet, and even though he was twenty or more years older than I, I had to work to match his stride.

“Yeah, well, he’s not always the best at making one feel welcome,” I said.

“He does like things just so,” Bob conceded. “But he’s really improved this place since buying it from Langdon. Langdon, he fixed the place up when he first bought the camp, but in those last few years he had it, he let it run down. Broken boards in the docks, busted steps into the cabins. You had to be careful you didn’t trip and break your neck.”

“If it was a safety issue, I’m sure Dad was all over it,” I said. I don’t know whether I was comforted or distressed by the fact that I might have come by my own safety phobias honestly.

We were walking along the lake’s edge, listening to the water lap up against the shore. We passed a high, small wooden table with a hole cut in the center, and positioned directly under it, a short metal trash can with a lid on it.

I pointed. “What’s this?”

“That’s where we clean our catch,” Bob said. “Scrape what’s left into the hole, falls into the bucket. Has to be emptied every day. That right there would be incentive for a bear to wander down here. Need to mention that to Arlen.”

My eyes darted about nervously. I reached under the table and gingerly lifted the lid for a peek inside. An eye, still tucked into a fish’s severed head, glared at me.

I put the lid back on.

“Anyway,” Bob continued, “your dad’s kept what was good about this place, and fixed what was bad, and I’m grateful to him for that. This lake, it means the world to me, coming up here year after year. The fish don’t bite quite the way they used to, there’s a few more people fishing out of this lake than used to, but it’s still beautiful up here. I’m up here three weeks of every year, and the other forty-nine I’m wishing I was. I’m thinking, now that my wife is gone—she passed four years ago from cancer, awful thing—that maybe I’ll spend my whole summer here. If I thought your father would go for it, I’d sell my home in the city, get cabin two winterized like the one your dad lives in, just live up here year-round.”

“You should talk to him,” I said. “I bet he’d go for it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But first, he’s going to have to figure out what to do about them.” He nodded his head back in the direction of the farmhouse. “They’re trouble.”

“Dad doesn’t want to talk about them.”

“That’s ’cause he don’t know what to do about them. And that embarrasses him.”

“Just what’s the problem?”

“They remind me of that bunch at Waco, remember them?”

I nodded.

“Cutting themself off from the world, thinking everybody’s out to get them, getting themselves ready to defend themself against attackers.”

“What attackers?”

“The government, most likely. But if not them, black folk, homosexuals, Communists, who knows? That woman, the young one whose boyfriend got eaten by the bear? She’s got a ten-year-old boy. He don’t go to school. They teach him right there, up at the house. Y’imagine the kind of poison that’s going into that boy’s head?”