In the Lake of the Woods. Tim O’Brien

and sidewalks and lawns as if in search of a lost nickel. Maybe in the garage, he’d think. Maybe under the cushions of the sofa. It was only a game, or a way of coping, but now and then he’d get lucky. Just by chance he’d glance down and suddenly spot his father in the grass behind the house. “Bingo,” his father would say, and John would feel a hinge swing open. He’d bend down and pick up his father and put him in his pocket and be careful never to lose him again.

       4

       What He Remembered

      Their seventh day at Lake of the Woods passed quietly. There was a telephone but it never rang. There were no newspapers, no reporters or telegrams. Inside the cottage, things had a fragile, hollowed-out quality, a suspended feeling, and over the morning hours a great liquid silence seemed to flow in from the woods and curl up around their bodies. They tried to ignore it; they were cautious with each other. When they spoke, which was not often, it was to maintain the pretense that they were in control of their own lives, that their problems were soluble, that in time the world would become a happier place. Though it required the exercise of tact and willpower, they tried to find comfort in the ordinary motions of life; they simulated their marriage, the old habits and routines. At the breakfast table, over coffee, Kathy jotted down a grocery list. “Caviar,” she said, and John Wade laughed and said, “Truffles, too,” and they exchanged smiles as proof of their courage and resolve. Often, though, the strain was almost impossible to bear. On one occasion, as she was washing the breakfast dishes, Kathy made a low sound in her throat and began to say something, just a word or two, then her eyes focused elsewhere, beyond him, beyond the walls of the cottage, and then after a time she looked down at the dishwater and did not look back again. It was an image that would not go away. Twenty-four hours later, when she was gone, John Wade would remember the enormous distance that had come into her face at that instant, a kind of travel, and he would find himself wondering where she had taken herself, and why, and by what means.

      He would never know.

      In the days ahead he would look for clues in the clutter of daily detail. The faded blue jeans she wore that morning, her old tennis shoes, her white cotton sweater. The distance in her eyes. The way she rinsed the breakfast dishes and dried her hands and then walked out of the kitchen without looking at him.

      What if she’d spoken?

      What if she’d leaned against the refrigerator and said, “Let’s do some loving right here,” and what if they had, and what if everything that happened could not have happened because of those other happenings?

      

      Some things he would remember clearly. Other things he would remember only as shadows, or not at all. It was a matter of adhesion. What stuck and what didn’t. He would be quite certain, for instance, that around noon that day they put on their swimsuits and went down to the lake. For more than an hour they lay inert in the sun, half dozing, then later they went swimming until the cold drove them back onto the dock. The afternoon was large and empty. Brilliant patches of red and yellow burned among the pines along the shore, and in the air there was the sharp, dying scent of autumn. There were no boats on the lake, no swimmers or fishermen. To the south, a mile away, the triangular roof of the Forest Service fire tower seemed to float on an expansive green sea; a narrow dirt road cut diagonally through the timber, and beyond the road a trace of gray smoke rose from the Rasmussen cottage off to the west. Northward it was all woods and water.

      He would remember a gliding, buoyant feeling in his stomach. The afternoons were always better. Waves and reflections, the big silver lake planing out toward Canada. Not so bad, he was thinking. He watched the sky and pretended he was a winner. Handshakes and happy faces—it made a nice picture. A winner, sure, and so he lay basking in the crisp white sunlight, almost believing.

      Later, Kathy nudged him. “Hey there,” she said, “you all right?”

      “Perfect,” he said.

      “You don’t seem—”

      “No, I’m perfect.”

      Kathy’s eyes traveled away again. She put on a pair of sunglasses. There was some unfilled time before she said, “John?”

      “Oh, Christ,” he said. “Fuck it.”

      He would remember a movement at her jaw, a locking motion.

      

      They swam again, taking turns diving from the dock, going deep, then they dried themselves in the sun and walked up to the cottage for a late lunch. Kathy spent the remainder of the afternoon working on a book of crossword puzzles. Wade sat over a pile of bills at the kitchen table. He built up neat stacks in order of priority, slipped rubber bands around them, dropped them in his briefcase.

      His eyes ached.

      There was that electricity in his blood.

      At three o’clock he put in a call to Tony Carbo, who wasn’t available. A half hour later, when he tried again, Tony’s secretary said he’d gone out for the day.

      Wade thanked her and hung up.

      He unplugged the telephone, carried it into the kitchen, tossed it in a cupboard under the sink.

      “Kill Jesus,” he said, which amused him.

      

      Maybe he dozed off. Maybe he had a drink or two. All he would remember with any certainty was that late in the afternoon they locked up the cottage and made the six-mile drive into town. He would remember an odd pressure against his ears—an underwater squeeze. They followed the dirt road west to the Rasmussen cottage, where the road looped north and crossed an iron bridge and turned to loose gravel. Wade would remember giant pines standing flat-up along the roadbed, the branches sometimes vaulting overhead to form shadowed tunnels through the forest. Kathy sat with her hands folded in her lap; after a mile or two she switched on the radio, listened for a moment, then switched it off again. She seemed preoccupied, or nervous, or something in between. If they spoke at all during the ride, he would have no memory of it.

      Two miles from town the land began to open up, thinning into brush and scrub pine. The road made a last sharp turn and ran straight west along the shoreline into Angle Inlet. Like a postcard from the moon, Wade thought. They passed Pearson’s Texaco station, a small white schoolhouse, a row of lonely looking houses in need of paint. Somebody’s cat prowled away the afternoon on the post office steps.

      Wade parked and went in to pick up the mail. A statement from their accountant, a letter from Kathy’s sister in Minneapolis.

      They crossed the street, did the grocery shopping, bought aspirin and booze and tanning lotion, then sat down for coffee at the little sandwich counter in Arndahl’s Mini-Mart. A revolving Coca-Cola clock put the time at 5:12. In nineteen hours, almost exactly, Kathy would be gone, but now the corners of her eyes seemed to relax as she skimmed the letter from her sister. At one point she snorted and made a tossing motion with her head. “Oh, God,” she moaned, then chuckled, then folded the letter and said, “Here we go again.”

      “What’s that?”

      “Patty. Double trouble, as usual—two boyfriends. Always the juggler.”

      Wade nodded at the counter and said, “Good for Patty. More power to her.” There was that sizzle in his blood, the smell of fish and sawdust sweating up from the Mini-Mart floorboards. An aluminum minnow tank near the door gave off a steady bubbling sound.

      “Power’s fine,” Kathy said, “but not more men. No kidding, it seems like they always come in pairs—for Patty, I mean. They’re like snakes or politicians or something.” She flicked her eyebrows at him. “That’s a joke.”

      “Good one.”

      “John—”

      “Clever, clever.”