The Lake, the River & the Other Lake Page 18

  “I know. I get to watch. But apparently? Dewey? The old guy with the confectioner’s certificate, whatever that is? He’s got some kind of monopoly on the big paddle and the marble table. Mrs. Hersha had me help him cut some into squares one day when things were really busy, but Dewey yelled at me that I was doing it wrong and I had to stop. You wouldn’t guess it because he’s old and weird, but Dewey smokes a lot of pot.”

  This did surprise the Reverend. He knew she was talking about Dewey Furr. Dewey was a member of First Pres, on regular rotation as an usher. He had to be pushing sixty himself. Now that Gene heard it, it fit, it made sense, but he wasn’t sure he liked having this private insight into a man who’d previously revealed nothing more about himself than a seemingly quiet nature and the overly sweet smell of corn syrup.

  “And trust me,” she said, “he is par-a-noid. So basically, I just sell fudge. Wait for people to stare at all the different kinds, make up their minds, then weigh a tiny slab of it, maybe just a sliver half the time, and box it up and sell it to them.”

  “Well,” he said. “I’m sure there’s some excitement once in a while . . .”

  She nodded. “Oh, yeah. It’s all very exciting. They’ll be making a movie of my life very soon. Christina Ricci will star. She’s good at those eye-rolling roles. Like, she was Wednesday Addams, remember? And Sleepy Hollow—member-of-a-weirdo-family roles. They’ll have to strap her chest down, of course—make her flatter . . .” He turned and squinted out at the river, telling himself not to blush, uncertain it was working. She went on. “Dewey will be played by Danny DeVito. The guy from that Twister movie will play the part of my dad. Maybe Mike Farrell could play you. You know who he is? From that show Providence?”

  He knew Mike Farrell as the actor who played B.J. on the old TV show M*A*S*H—it had been Mary’s favorite show; he’d even written a sermon or two on it—but he screwed up his face and pretended he’d never heard of him. Because it was a little embarrassing—Mike Farrell was a few years younger, better-looking, probably a little taller . . . maybe a similar look, a similar build, but come on! She couldn’t be serious. He said, “The only actor I’m familiar with is Buster Keaton. Him and that other new guy—Chaplin, is it?”

  She laughed. It was nice to show her he could tease right back.

  THAT NIGHT, HE AWOKE SUDDENLY, momentarily thrown in terms of where he was, where his wife was, what time it was. He’d been dreaming. With an erection, no less—to have one while dreaming was a notable event. He lay there, staring at the clock blinking back at him a ridiculous 2:17 and tried to recount the dream. What he remembered seemed fairly innocuous, hardly capable of producing an erection.

  It was a warm, languid dream, bright with sunlight. It was something out in back of the house. The chaise lounges, the nutty liquid of the iced coffee. And skin—yes. It was a dream of touching the girl. It was that day she held out her biceps, bragging, and wanted him to feel it. He’d declined that day but in the dream he was taking her up on it, reaching out, his fingertips tingling at the touch of her Popeyed arm, the leap of her muscle tightening. Only now she was saying, “Aren’t I strong?” and she was saying, “Can we swim?” and the feel of her arm was taut and smooth and he felt her muscle pop, bulge, challenging him, and she said, “Are you strong? Are you?” And he said, “I yam what I yam,” like the cartoon sailor, but he wasn’t making a muscle himself and he wasn’t dressed to go swimming. He was just standing there in the sun, touching her arm.

  It was the sheet itself, he discovered, and he was smoothing it with his hot, half-asleep hand, running it along the rounded edge of the mattress.

  It wasn’t a sex dream. He saw that now. Nor would it have been improper the other day. Touching her arm wouldn’t have made him a pedophile. She’d wanted him to feel her biceps, to touch her only in a bonding, palsy sort of way, and that’s exactly how he could have done it. With camaraderie, fellowship, humor, goodwill. There was nothing shameful in this. It was just basic human contact, something he desperately needed. He was starved for touch. And if he had it in a normal way like that, perhaps it would be less confusing, not so mixed up with less savory impulses. He was sure the erection was beside the point—possibly unrelated.

  He told himself it wouldn’t have been because she was sixteen, or perky or virginal or any of those qualities that would be relevant if he were a degenerate. It would be despite those things, not because of them. It would be because she was kind to him, she was lovely to him and he wanted to respond.

  It was all so confusing. And there was no way he could fall back to sleep.

  When the clock finally flopped to 2:47, he forced himself up with a groan, convinced further sleep was not in the cards. Shuffling into the den, he booted up the computer.

  What he had in mind was writing her a nice note, sending her an e-mail that made some gesture of appreciation and affection, that would substitute for a friendly chuck under the chin, a punch on the arm, an attaboy, pal.

  He started several times and deleted each time. Each attempt at a casual acknowledgment of their burgeoning friendship seemed forced at least and sort of creepy at the worst. He stared at the “TO” line, Kimberly’s e-mail address blinking there as if tapping its toe, waiting for further information below. He just couldn’t find the words.

  Possibly, there weren’t any words that wouldn’t sound creepy. Not in word or tongue, he thought, but in deed . . . The First Epistle of John. He could do something; give her something. Maybe that would suffice as a gesture of connection.

  He could get her something for her birthday, if he could find out when it was. Or at least as a token of his friendship. Except he had no idea what a sixteen-year-old girl liked these days.

  This, he decided, would be a great use of the Internet. Now, finally, he could see some sort of practical use for the thing: picking out a present for a teenager. So he did a search. The keywords he entered were: teen girl likes.

  The descriptions appeared: search results 1–5 of about 33,940 containing “teen girl likes.” Skimming, he spotted in the entries, scattered repetitions of the words sex, oral sex, blowjobs. He saw the word cocksuckers and one he’d never seen before: cumshots.

  This was not what he was looking for.

  He considered for a moment, hesitating, frozen, knowing he should return to the search box and enter something else, some stipulation. Perhaps not sex, perhaps gifts for. But he was curious now. He was there now. To run away from it now wouldn’t be piety but actually a sort of moral cowardice and self-bunkering; spiritual stage fright. He might as well be a Catholic priest; a hermetic monk.

  He opened the first entry. It was something called Guzzle Girls, part of a Web site called Ultrateen.com. A headline appeared, announcing that “Teen Girls Like Cock!” and the screen began to fill the little boxes, row after row, with photos.

  But even that didn’t prepare him. Even then he still wasn’t quite clear on what exactly he was looking at now. These were headshots of young girls, their heads tipped, chins jutting, mouths open wide like baby birds for a dangling worm. Hard penises aimed, like big arrows—This way! Come on in!—right at the mouth, right at the face. The cheeks, lips, eyes, teeth—it all glistened. He couldn’t look away. It was mesmerizing.

  He never would have imagined anything like this even existed, let alone in such quantity. Most had their eyes lidded, as if in ecstasy, as if these girls could somehow be personally satisfied with this grotesque misdirection, this biologically irrelevant act. But others had their eyes wide open, smiling up at the unseen man, and he found these a little more palatable, more like they were having fun with it, enjoying this very extreme turn of events. Maybe not faking an orgasm but simply being playful; silly. Yes, if he had to pick a portion of these images marginally less objectionable than the rest, he supposed it would be these, with the mischievous grins, the wild young eyes like it was all a whim; a hoot.

  But Lord, some of these poor young things were absolutely drenched in the stuff, not
simple spatterings but draped with it, ropes of the white sticky stuff webbing their fingers. He saw one that wore braces, the metal gummed with loads of semen. Another, with a barrette, seemed to actually be blowing a bubble with it.

  He could see now how that White House intern managed to get her dress soiled, a few years back. What he knew of that affair now seemed reserved, compared to this.

  But the more he stared at these images, the more he could start to see the attraction. Not for these specific images, of course—coldly posed, fake and theatrical—or the crude, unfeeling manipulation behind them, but simply the basic appeal of the mouth. It did present itself, now that he really looked at it, as a wonderfully inviting portal to another person. With all the shame and hiding we attach to the rest of our body, how odd it seemed now that this one intimate organ be left fully exposed—prominently featured even, due south of the eyes, not crammed shamefully into underpants. There it was, the mouth: out in the open, wide and wet and warm. Removing for a second the issue of jamming one’s privates into it, but simply considering it as an entryway—a way in, a point of contact—it did intrigue.

  His late wife, Mary, would sometimes pop his fingers in her mouth, in the throes of lovemaking. At first he’d been shocked, but when he relaxed and stopped questioning it, he realized it had an effect. He felt so close, touching her tongue, her teeth. She did it to him, as well, and it didn’t feel sinful or decadent. It felt joined.

  That, however, had been the extent of it. The subject came up in the early seventies, when that movie Deep Throat became the national topic of conversation at even the most conservative dinner parties. They had several friends, in fact, who carpooled one Saturday night down to Grand Rapids to see it. He and Mary declined, but joshed with the rest of the gang about it and saw them off. They were dressed up, too, as if heading to a cocktail party or fancy restaurant. He remembered Hal Markham, that cutup, being not at all discreet about it, waving goodbye like a kid and yelling something out the window like, “You sure, Gene? Come on! Call it research for your next sermon!”

  In fact, he considered doing just that—not going to the adult movie house in Grand Rapids, of course—just slipping in some vague reference to this popular film the following Sunday that Hal Markham and the rest of them would pick up on, but would be lost on the rest of the congregation. “Do it,” Mary told him, and he said he would—just wait and see!—but when it came time to write it, he abandoned the idea. He couldn’t figure out how to slip it in without either being really obvious and clumsy and dumb or being so obtuse even their friends wouldn’t get it. A direct approach, a sermon against oral sex itself, was not something he would ever do, nor something he believed needed to be done. Besides, it was a fad—a hot topic to be giggled at, but certainly not something that was actually catching on in any permanent way. For instance, there was already a buzz about the coming Bicentennial, and he was sure this oral sex business would soon be forgotten, replaced in folks’ minds with a fixation on Paul Revere, Betsy Ross and the whole Revolutionary War.

  Later that night, while their friends were probably still on their way back to Weneshkeen, Mary said, in the darkness of their bedroom, as if addressing the ceiling, “That’s not something you need me to do, is it, Gene?”

  He denied it was. And she said she didn’t need him to do it either.

  There were two occasions, he remembered, in which her mouth actually touched him there. Her lips hardly passed the glans, though: just a light smoochy peck on the tip, played for laughs, clowning around. Both times, it was in the shower that this happened, both times, the kids were away at band camp, and both times she stood immediately and turned her face to the water’s current.

  He never thought the lack of that type of lovemaking marked either one of them a cold fish. Mary certainly wasn’t. There was an arousal in her eyes alone, a wild flash that even just recalling tonight caused his cheeks to flush, his mind to grow fuzzy and unfocused, his breath to catch. And all that was just from a look she gave him. She had made him very happy. If she were here tonight, she would tell him to come to bed. If she were still alive, he wouldn’t be looking at these pictures.

  But he was looking at them, and he continued to do so, going back and opening the other entries, Web sites he could hardly believe were legal, moving slowly, patiently, through each gallery like a stranger in a foreign museum who can’t speak the language or read the brochure, who can just look and wonder and tell himself he’s not in a position to judge.

  And later, he would look back at this night as the beginning of it all, the raft of unsolicited pornographic e-mails, invitations and links; the deluge; the fissure that opened up beneath his feet, sweeping him tumbling in.

  36

  ONE OF THE SUCKIEST parts of being a deputy, this time of year, was having to drive around town selling raffle tickets for Sumac Days. Hatchert wasn’t doing it, but she wondered if that was less about him being the boss and more because he didn’t really know anybody yet. Janey knew she should probably feel good about the fact that the village considered her well liked enough to be able to push the raffle tickets. And with select people, the merchants and more well-to-do summer people, she was supposed to ask about sponsorship. They could make tax-deductible donations to the festival or even sponsor a float. This year when Bear Eckenrod in the village offices handed her the stack of raffle tickets, he asked her to approach the billionaire with the Ark, that Noah Yoder kid. Hit him up for a big sponsorship.

  There was one upside to this demeaning errand though—she thought she’d be able to feel the guy out about the Letterman rumors. One version she was hearing was that the talk show host was staying out at Noah’s Ark, either as a guest of the boy genius or as a summer tenant. She was hearing other variations, too: that he was going to buy the bootlegger’s place, Cliffhead, or that he had a massive cabin cruiser he was going to keep at the marina or—maybe the most unlikely, she felt—a three-masted sailboat anchored offshore in Lake Michigan and he was helicoptering in and out for the weekends, sending only his cook into Weneshkeen in an outboard dinghy for groceries and supplies.

  The fact that she didn’t know much more than everyone else, just a bunch of rumors and weird theories, made her question her skills as a policewoman. Never mind that she might not be so gung ho about being a cop anymore—maybe she wasn’t even cut out for it. She’d been investigating, of course. Asking around. Hatchert had been no help. He’d simply said they hadn’t yet received any official request for extra security from anyone identifying themselves as Letterman’s people. And she’d asked a few of the Realtors. The only one who seemed to know something—or maybe pretended to know something—was Barry Self, the one brokering Cliffhead. Officially, the agency he worked for had been listing that old white elephant for several years now, back before he even moved to Weneshkeen and opened the B&B with his wife, so it was fair to say it wasn’t one of their more active listings. But when she’d asked him if he knew anything about Letterman visiting or renting or looking to buy in the area, he said no, and he looked genuinely puzzled, like he was hearing this rumor for the first time. But then, a moment later, as she was turning to leave, he asked if she could keep a special eye on the bootlegger’s place. And when she asked why, was there a problem? he said no, he just wanted to make sure it was looked after. No special reason. So one way or the other, the guy was seriously full of shit.

  At the Ark, she was a little surprised billionaire boy answered the door himself. She’d been under the impression that he had a full household staff plus quite an entourage of hangers-on. The summer before, at least, there had been so many there that Kurt Lasco said he had to go out twice in four months to empty the septic. The place seemed empty now. Surely he could afford someone to answer the door and probably a separate person to handle these kinds of solicitations? Maybe he’d decided to simplify when he’s up here, enjoy a little solitude, Thoreau-style. Otherwise, why would he be standing there in his kitchen with her, offering her espresso and
listening to her spiel about Sumac Days?

  He’d already shot down the idea of providing a large sponsorship under the Yoman!® company name. “I’m trying to be sensitive to possible resentment among the . . . locals,” he said, “toward my . . .” She thought he was going to say “money”; but he said, “company name. I don’t want them to feel they’re seeing Yoman!® plastered everywhere.”

  She said she understood and suggested he could be listed personally as a sponsor. Just his name, not the famous company name. He tipped his head, unsure. “That’s trickier, accounting-wise. Plus, I think that’s worse in terms of goodwill. They probably resent the pipsqueak upstart himself personally far more than the company that earned him all that undeserved money.”

  “Well . . .” She saw her opportunity now to dig a little toward her own self-serving line of inquiry. “Another thing would be if you have guests coming to stay with you? It might be fun to sponsor a float or something under their name or names and—”

  He cut her off. “Not this summer. I don’t think I’m expecting many guests.”

  With this, she was now pretty convinced she could rule out the rumor that Letterman was going to be staying in this house. Maybe the old bootlegger’s estate, maybe somewhere else, maybe it was a crock . . .

  “Tell me again about this Sumac Days. What goes on with that?” It felt like he was changing the subject. What the hell did he think went on? It was Sumac Days. Normal Sumac Days–type activities, of course. But she went into it, since he was an outsider and maybe a little slow, reeling off the basics—the parade, the costumes, the reenactments, the sumac lemonade stands, the fudge judging, the 10k fun run (the Sumacathon), the rubber ducky race, the raffles and midway rides and dances and the crowning of the Sumac Days Court.