Wolf Point Page 17

  Lester pushed the boat off from the rocks and jumped into the stern. He primed the engine and started it on the third pull, and a moment later the boat was cutting through the water, driving away from the shore and out to the center of the river. Then suddenly he cursed and cut the motor. From the stern of the boat, near the engine, something rattled. It sounded like a chain slapping against the transom.

  Jenny said, “What the hell is that?” The sound came again, several loud jolts of chain scraping on metal. The three of them were silent, listening.

  “It’s the fish,” Lester said. He made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a shiver. “I forgot about them.” He leaned over the stern and looked down into the water, and then the sound came again, the rattling of the fish pulling on the stringer.

  Jenny said, “Let those things loose.”

  “Fuck no. We might need them for food.”

  “Need them for food?” Jenny said. Her tone of voice had gone beyond amazement into wonder. “We’re going to need them for food? Did I hear you right?”

  T said, “How many fish you got on, Les?”

  “’Bout ten,” Lester answered, still grinning at T.

  “You’re over the legal limit,” T said. “If a ranger stops us,” he added, “you could get in trouble.”

  A second passed, and then Jenny and Lester both laughed.

  “You not in such bad shape,” Lester said. “You still makin’ jokes.” He leaned over the transom, thrust his arm down into the water, and half lifted the stringer of fish out of the water before it jerked back violently out his hand. “Goddamn,” he said.

  T said, “What are you doing, Les?”

  Lester unclipped the stringer, wrapped the top of the chain around his forearm, and grasped the bottom in both fists. “Want to show you the big one,” he said. He crouched down and then yanked the stringer of fish out of the water and dropped it in the boat.

  “Jesus God,” Jenny said. She pulled her feet up onto the thwart.

  T leaned forward to get a better look at the fish. They were all bass except for two pickerel and one big northern pike. The pike looked to be three feet long and weigh several pounds.

  “Ain’t this one a monster?” Lester said. He nudged the pike with his foot and it leaped up, splashing water and fish slime.

  Jenny covered her face. “Please, Lester,” she said, “get those things out of the boat.”

  “What do you think?” Lester asked T.

  “Nice,” T said. “Northern pike. Big one.”

  “Goddamn right,” Lester said. He lifted the stringer up high to show off the full length of the big fish, and for the briefest of moments everything was still: there was only Lester with his youthful, muscular chest and his thick, long hair, proudly holding up a stringer of fish against the night sky. Then the big pike jerked violently and the chain ripped out of his hand. The pike bounced once in the bottom of the boat and went over the side. Lester lurched for the stringer and managed to get his hands around a bass, but it slipped instantly out of his grasp as the whole stringer disappeared into the river.

  Lester sat back on the stern thwart and rested one arm on the engine. He watched the river where the stringer had cut through the surface and gone under and the water had closed up over it like a wound instantly healed. “Sum’ bitch,” he said softly. He stared at T a moment, his face solemn. “What do you think’ll happen?” he asked. His voice was suddenly and strikingly gentle. “Will they all just pull in different directions until they kill each other or something?”

  “About like that,” T said. “Probably they’ll die one at a time until the only one left alive can’t drag all the dead weight, and then he’ll die too.”

  “That’s a pleasant thought,” Jenny said.

  Lester nodded. “Seem ’bout right.” He pointed to the guitar case. “Open that thing up,” he said to Jenny.

  “What for?”

  “For to get high,” he said.

  “Are you kidding?” She laughed and held the heels of her hands to her temples as if trying to keep her head from flying apart. “Lester,” she said, “what are we doing? Please—”

  “What?” he said, and gestured to the river around them. They were floating out toward the middle of the Saint Lawrence, toward the Canadian side, the American shore behind them a dark outline against the sky. “You got somethin’ better to do?” he asked Jenny. “Bet you T wants to get high.” He turned to T and raised his voice, as if talking to someone hard of hearing. “You want to get high, Tom?”

  T didn’t answer. He had fallen into a calm, distanced perspective on things. He felt free to observe what was going on and comment or not comment as he chose. The boat rocked slightly in the deeper water where it floated along, pulled by a swift current toward the shipping lanes. Jenny sat on the center thwart with her knees pulled up to her chin, her hair tossed about by breezes. Lester sat on the stern thwart and stared at him, waiting for an answer.

  “T?” Lester repeated.

  T chose not to answer.

  “Fuck it, then.” Lester leaned over the center thwart, alongside Jenny. “We getting’ high,” he said. He undid the snaps of the guitar case and flipped up the top. “What did Jenny tell you?” he asked T as he reached into the sound hole of the guitar and came up with a clear plastic zip-lock bag of multicolored pills. “She tell you poor innocent Jenny, fucked-up Lester ruinin’ her life?”

  “Why?” Jenny said. “Isn’t that the truth?”

  Lester found a pair of matching green gelatin capsules, popped them in his mouth, then reached over the side of the boat and scooped up a handful of water to wash them down. “These good,” he said, pulling a black pill from the bag. He handed it to T. “Take this,” he said. “You’ll feel better.”

  T considered the pill. It looked like a rabbit pellet.

  “Come on, take it,” Lester urged. “I’m not fuckin’ with you. You needs this.”

  T nodded, though he had no idea what he was nodding at or why. His concentration was focused on the guitar, on the resonant dark wood of the fingerboard, on the high polish of the body. It struck him as a lovingly and beautifully made thing, a work of art that like all works of art was something more than the sum of its parts. Resting in its case, cushioned and protected by a crimson, velvety padding, it called out to be touched.

  “Open up,” Lester said. When T didn’t answer, Lester touched his chin with a fingertip, gently pulling his mouth open, and tossed the pill into the back of his throat.

  T swallowed. “What’s it going to do?” he asked.

  “Make you feel better,” Lester said.

  Jenny said, “Why’s life got to be like this, Lester?” She seemed completely serious. “A few hours ago, it was like a miracle. God drops all the money we need in our laps, plus some. Then you, you got to go and get spun. And now look at this.” She gestured toward T. “Look at what you’ve done.”

  “Jenny,” Lester said. He put the bag of pills back into the guitar and pulled out a fat joint. “You really think he give us that money? Really? You believe it?”

  “Lester,” Jenny said urgently, as if she’d just been offered an opening in an argument. “He’s going to give us the money, Lester. We can still work this thing out.“

  “No,” Lester said.

  “Yes,” Jenny said. “Me and him, we got something going between us, Les. We can still work this out.”

  Lester nodded and seemed to think about what Jenny had just said. “He going to give us sixty thousand dollars, Jenny?” He shook his head slowly, solemnly. “Think about it,” he said. “You know it don’t happen like that. He’s givin’ us sixty thousand dollars? I don’t think so. Not us. Not likely.”

  “Lester, please,” Jenny said. “You’re not getting it. You’re not seeing the whole picture. You’re wrecked, honey. You’re wrecked and you’re missing the big picture.”

  “No I’m not,” he said. He lit the joint with an old Zippo lighter, which he also pulled out of the body
of the guitar. He inhaled and held the smoke in and stared Jenny down. “You ain’t ever treatin’ me with any respect, are you, Jenny?”

  “Honey,” she said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Even now, out here, like this.” He gestured to the wide expanse of dark water around their small boat.

  T leaned toward the guitar case and pushed the hard plastic top, which fell closed with a little whoosh of air, and then the guitar disappeared. “Like a mummy in a sarcophagus,” he said. “The thing’s airtight.” He struggled to close the series of metal snaps that would lock the case.

  “I got it,” Jenny said. She and Lester were both watching T intently. Jenny closed the remaining snaps.

  Lester said, “What you doing there, bud?”

  “It’s a beautiful guitar,” T said, and then he leaned back, tired from the effort of closing the case. He laid his head down on the aluminum bow and looked straight up at the sky. He was amazed at the wide field of stars. He felt certain they hadn’t been there a few moments ago. He would have seen them. They were so bright and big their light raged out of the black sky—and they went on forever, covering the earth like a dome. “Were there stars before?” he asked.

  “Before what, T?” Jenny put her hand on his knee.

  “Before,” he said.

  Jenny turned around on her seat so that she was facing Lester. She leaned close to him. “Listen to me,” she said. “Start this thing up and take us back in.”

  “Yeah?” Lester said.

  “Yes,” Jenny answered. “We can take him to a hospital and tell them the truth. You got high. You shot him. It doesn’t matter. You’re going to have to change your name. You’re going to have to do a whole new identity anyway.

  “No, I’m not,” Lester said.

  “Yeah, you are!” Jenny shouted. “We get T to a hospital. You go on to Canada. When he’s better, we’ll pay off Willie. And then, Lester— Are you listening?”

  “I’m listening,” he said.

  “Lester. You know I love you. I’m always going to love you. You’re my brother. You’re the brother I never had.”

  “Brother with benefits,” he said.

  “Stop,” she said. She leaned in closer to him and put her hands on his knees. “I’ll get you all the money you need. I won’t leave you hanging. I’ll get you the money you need to get started again. You can go back to school. You can study acting. You had talent, Les. You had real talent.”

  Lester nudged her aside so that he could see to the bow. “Hey, T?” he said. “When you all intimate with Jenny, back in the cabin? You know, when you and her got something going between you? She say I asked her to marry me? She tell you that? More than once, truth, over the years?”

  “Lester,” Jenny said. “Lester…” She pulled her legs up and buried her face in her knees.

  T said to Lester, “I’d really like to figure this all out before you shoot me.”

  Lester said, “I already shot you, bud.”

  “Figure it out before you kill me,” T corrected himself.

  Lester said, “They ain’t nothin’ to figure out, T. Don’t worry ’bout it.”

  Jenny reached toward Lester for the joint.

  “There you go,” he said, and handed it to her.

  She took a long hit and looked up at the stars as she held in the smoke. A breeze rippled through the thin fabric of her sundress, and she folded her arms over her belly, holding the dress close.

  T was thinking about Carolyn. He was considering the possibility that his life had gone fatally off course the moment she touched him in front of the fireplace that night when the snow was falling thick through a beam of light out her bay window in Syracuse. The thick flakes rocking slowly down. He lay on his back and watched snowflakes in the light while she undid his clothes, and he could still see the moment even now so many years later with Carolyn, what?, a skeleton inside a sealed box now, but then her fingers working on the buttons of his shirt amazed him. He had to look away, out the window to the snow. When he looked back she was pulling her sweater over her head. She undid her bra and he touched her breasts, but it wasn’t the sex. She recited poetry: things fall apart, the center will not hold. She overwhelmed him. He became her companion, a kind of courtesan, there for the sex and to learn a thing or two at her feet, and that was what he was thinking about, that was what was going around and around in his mind: Did it start there? Because Alicia was right, no use now to deny it even though part of him still wanted to deny it. She was right. There was nobody there. There was nobody home, not really. He attached himself and tried to pretend he had a life. Brooke too. When he tried to think back to a point where what he wanted was what he wanted and not what Brooke offered or Alicia demanded, but his own, his own desires, when he tried to think back he had to go into his past before Carolyn. He wanted to be an artist. Before Carolyn he had a notion of himself as a poet. But Carolyn was a poet. She had published books of poetry. She had won prizes and awards for her poetry and of course what he wrote was worthless next to Carolyn and they both knew it and so he was quiet and he read her books and studied her poets and tried to learn from her while she recited from her vast store of poetry from Coleridge to Yeats to all the contemporaries and he learned to be quiet and listen though in the beginning it was with the idea that one day he would write great poems and he could still remember that, remember thinking that, and that was how far back he had to go to remember something he wanted that had nothing to do with anyone else. It preceded Brooke and Alicia and Carolyn and it had nothing to do with his parents, who were unread and uneducated. But after Carolyn, he never wrote another poem. He wasn’t sure why. He started poems, he started many poems and stories over the years, but he never finished anything, and he was wondering now if she hadn’t overwhelmed him, if his life might not have taken a different path had he not fallen in love with his professor. He fell in love with her. She cared nothing for him, not really; he understood that now. He was a boy. She played with him. He amused her. He was there for the sex and the amusement and she was there for her work, her writing, her scholarship. If he thought about it hard enough he could hate her. But he wasn’t sure. It was only a theory. It could just as easily be an excuse. Carolyn could be someone convenient to blame. It was confusing. He was confused. He wished he could figure it all out.

  “T,” Lester said. “Tell me the truth.” He sat with one arm up on the engine and he had begun tapping his feet again, heels moving rapidly in rhythm, his weight resting on his toes. “It don’t make no difference now,” he said. “Would you given us that money?”

  T nodded. He would have given them the money. “Pretty sure I would have,” he said. His head felt funny. He couldn’t pinpoint the feeling. It was like an echo chamber stuffed with gauze. The whole left side of his chest throbbed and felt hot, but it wasn’t hurting much. He wasn’t hurting so much as he was weak and… dazed. He could think clearly for a minute or two and then the thoughts would shift and change. He knew he should be doing something about this situation, about Lester and the boat and Jenny and getting back to shore, talking Lester out of dumping him in the river, which he was sure was why they were out here—he was sure he was going to wind up floating along the bottom of the river—but he couldn’t keep his thoughts together. They kept shifting. He would have given them the money. Why not? What did he care? “Money’s not the issue,” he said to Lester. “Money’s not the problem.”

  “It’s not?” Lester said. He laughed and hunched up his body so that he was sitting in the boat the way he had been sitting on the couch, leaning forward and tapping his feet.

  Jenny said, “I told you he’d give us the money.” She looked out across the river. She seemed pensive, as if she’d resigned herself to the situation for the moment at least and was taking some time to mull things over. She offered T a hit on the joint. T shook his head. “My uncle,” she said. “The guitar uncle. He filled up a rowboat with rocks so that it could just barely still floa
t. Then he tied himself to the seat—”

  “Why you tellin’ him that story?” Lester interrupted.

  “What?” Jenny said. “Why not? Why shouldn’t I?”

  “Just shut the fuck up ’bout that. I don’t want you tellin’ him that story.”

  Jenny said, “You’re so out of it, Lester.” She nodded her head toward the gun stuck in his underwear. “Aren’t you afraid you’re going to blow your balls off?”

  “Hey, T?” Lester said. “You know why you’re out here?”

  T met Lester’s eyes for a moment and looked at him as if he might be able to understand something more about him by observing the weathered features of his face, the way his skin looked seared by time—but in the end Lester’s face told him very little. It was a youthful face, though worn and battered. A few years ago he had seen an exhibit of Richard Avedon’s photographs. He had wandered before the trademark black-and-white portraits of the rich and poor, the good and bad, famous and unknown, and he had come away with the same feeling, that in the end the body tells you next to nothing. For all its uniqueness, it reveals nothing essential at all. He forgot what Lester had asked. He laid his head down on the bow and returned his gaze to the stars.

  Lester turned his attention back to Jenny. “I always liked Ronnie,” he said.

  Jenny said, “He was a sweet man.”

  “T!” Lester yelled.

  T pulled himself back into the boat. He had been sailing up toward the stars, leaving the little boat with Jenny and Lester under him on the black river while his body floated up like one of the childhood images from church on Sundays of Christ ascending to the heavens. He half expected Mary to appear alongside him and the cherubim to join them blowing trumpets. Yet he hadn’t missed any of Lester and Jenny’s conversation. “Must have been a mini hallucination,” he said.

  “I’m sure,” Lester said. “Whatever.”