In the Lake of the Woods Read online

  Exhibit Five: Photographs (2) of boathouse (exterior), Lake of the Woods

  Exhibit Six: Photographs (3) of Wade cottage" (exterior), Lake of the Woods

  I'll bet she's on a Greyhound bus somewhere. Married to that creep, that's where I'd be. She liked buses.

  —Bethany Kee (Associate Admissions Director, University of Minnesota)

  I can't discuss this.7

  —Patricia S. Hood (Sister of Kathleen Wade)

  Engine trouble. That old beat-up Evinrude. Busted cord probably, or the plugs went bad. Give it time, she'll walk right through that door over there. I bet she will.8 —Ruth Rasmussen

  I was working down at the Mini-Mart and they come in and I served them both coffee at the counter and then after a while they started having this argument. It went on for a while. She was mad. That's all I know.9

  —Myra Shaw (Waitress)

  A politician's wife, so naturally you try extra hard. We did everything except empty out the goddamn lake. I'm not done yet. Every day goes by, I keep my eyes open. You never know.10

  —Arthur J. Lux (Sheriff, Lake of the Woods County)

  The guy offed her.11

  —Vincent R. (Vinny) Pearson

  That's preposterous. They loved each other. John wouldn't hurt a fly.

  —Eleanor K. Wade

  Fucking flies!

  —Richard Thinbill

  3. The Nature of Loss

  When he was fourteen, John Wade lost his father. He was in the junior high gymnasium, shooting baskets, and after a time the teacher put his arm around John's shoulder and said, "Take a shower now. Your mom's here."

  What John felt that night, and for many nights afterward, was the desire to kill.

  At the funeral he wanted to kill everybody who was crying and everybody who wasn't. He wanted to take a hammer and crawl into the casket and kill his father for dying. But he was helpless. He didn't know where to start.

  In the weeks that followed, because he was young and full of grief, he tried to pretend that his father was not truly dead. He would talk to him in his imagination, carrying on whole conversations about baseball and school and girls. Late at night, in bed, he'd cradle his pillow and pretend it was his father, feeling the closeness. "Don't be dead," he'd say, and his father would wink and say, "Well, hey, keep talking," and then for a long while they'd discuss the right way to hit a baseball, a good level swing, keeping your head steady and squaring up your shoulders and letting the bat do the job. It was pretending, but the pretending helped. And so when things got especially bad, John would sometimes invent elaborate stories about how he could've saved his father. He imagined all the things he could've done. He imagined putting his lips against his father's mouth and blowing hard and making the heart come alive again; he imagined yelling in his father's ear, begging him to please stop dying. Once or twice it almost worked. "Okay," his father would say, "I'll stop, I'll stop," but he never did.

  In his heart, despite the daydreams, John could not fool himself. He knew the truth. At school, when the teachers told him how sorry they were that he had lost his father, he understood that lost was just another way of saying dead. But still the idea kept turning in his mind. He'd picture his father stumbling down a dark alley, lost, not dead at all. And then the pretending would start again. John would go back in his memory over all the places his father might be—under the bed or behind the bookcases in the living room—and in this way he would spend many hours looking for his father, opening closets, scanning the carpets 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 Ser vice 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, dropp
ed 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."

  A muscle moved at her cheek. She picked up a glass salt shaker, tapped it against the counter.

  "It's not my fault."

  Wade shrugged. "Sorry."

  "So stop it," she said. "Just goddamn stop."

  Kathy spun around on her stool, got up, went over to the magazine rack, and stood with her back to him. Dusk was settling in fast. A cold lake breeze slapped up against the Mini-Mart's screen door, startling the plump young waitress, causing a spill as she refilled their cups.

  It was 5:24.

  After a time Kathy sat down again and studied the frosted mirror behind the counter, the ads for Pabst and Hamm's and Bromo-Seltzer. She avoided eye contact, sliding down inside herself, and for an instant, watching her in the mirror, John Wade was assaulted by the ferocity of his own love. A beautiful woman. Her face was tired, with the lax darkening that accompanies age, but still he found much to admire. The green eyes and brown summer skin and slim legs and shapely little fingers. Other things, too—subtle things. The way her hand fit precisely into his. How the sun had turned her hair almost white at the temples. Back in college, he remembered, she used to lie in bed and grasp her own feet like a baby and tell funny stories and giggle and roll around and be happy. All these things and a million more.

  Presently, Wade sighed and slipped a dollar bill under his saucer.

  "Kath, I am sorry," he said. "I mean it."

  "Fine, you're sorry."

  "All right?"

  "Sorry, sorry. Never ends." Kathy waited for the young waitress to scoop up their cups. "Stop blaming me. We lost. That's the truth—we lost."

  "It was more than that."

  "John, we can't keep doing this."

  Wade looked at the revolving clock. "Mr. Monster."

  ***

  They had a light supper, played backgammon for dimes, sat listening to records in the living room. Around eight o'clock they went out for a short walk. There was a moon and some stars, and the night was windy and cool. The fog had not yet rolled in off the lake. In the coming days John Wade would remember how he reached out to take her hand, the easy lacing of their fingers. But he would also remember how Kathy pulled away after a few steps. She folded her arms across her chest and walked up to the yellow cottage and went inside without waiting for him.

  They did not take their blankets to the porch that night. They did not make love. For the rest of the evening they concentrated on backgammon, pushing dimes back and forth across the kitchen table.

  At one point he looked up at her and said, "Kath, that stuff in the newspapers—"

  Kathy passed him the dice.

  "Your move," she said.

  As near as he could remember, they went to bed around eleven. Kathy snapped off the lamp. She turned onto her side and said, "Dream time," almost cheerfully, as if it did not matter at all that she was now going away.

  5. Hypothesis

  The purest mystery, of course, but maybe she had a secret lover. Marriages come unraveled. Pressures accumulate. There was precedent in their lives.

  In the kitchen that morning, when her eyes traveled away, maybe Kathy Wade was imagining a hotel room in Minneapolis, or in Seattle or Milwaukee, a large clean room with air-conditioning and fresh flowers and no politics and no defeat. Maybe she saw someone waiting for her. Or someone driving north toward Lake of the Woods, moving fast, coming to her rescue. An honest, quiet man. A man without guile or hidden history. Maybe she had grown tired of tricks and trapdoors, a husband she had never known, and later that night, when she said "Dream time," maybe it was this she meant—an escape dream, a dream she would now enter.

  Among the missing, as among the dead, there is only the flux of possibility. Maybe a heaven, maybe not.

  Maybe she couldn't bear to tell him. Maybe she staged it. Not likely, but not implausible either. The motives were plentiful—fed up, afraid, exhausted by unhappiness. Maybe she woke early the next morning and slipped out of bed and got dressed and moved out to the porch and quietly closed the door behind her and walked up the narrow dirt road to where a car was waiting.

  6. Evidence

  We called him Sorcerer. It was a nickname.

  —Richard Thinbill

  Exhibit Seven: Photograph of John Wade, age 12

  Smiling

  Husky, not fat

  Holding a magician's wand over four white mice

  He used to practice down in the basement, just stand in front of that old mirror of his and do tricks for hours and hours. His father didn't think it was healthy. Always alone, always shut up by himself. A very secretive boy, I think I mentioned that.

  —Eleanor K. Wade

  Exhibit Eight: John Wade's Box of Tricks, Partial List

  Miser's Dream

  Horn of Plenty

  Spirit of the Dark

  The Egg Bag

  Guillotine of Death

  Silks

  Pulls

  Wands

  Wires

  Duplicates (6) of father's necktie

  My sister seemed almost scared of him sometimes. I remember this one time when Kathy ... Look, I don't think it's something we sh
ould talk about.

  —Patricia S. Hood

  What did she so desire escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all.

  Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its line of force, she may fall back on superstition or take up a useless hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?12

  —Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49)

  To study psychological trauma is to come face to face both with human vulnerability in the natural world and with the capacity for evil in human nature.13

  —Judith Herman (Trauma and Recovery)

  There is no such thing as "getting used to combat"... Each moment of combat imposes a strain so great that men will break down in direct relation to the intensity and duration of their exposure. Thus psychiatric casualties are as inevitable as gunshot and shrapnel wounds in warfare.14