The Lake, the River & the Other Lake Page 6

  It was clear, early that first day, why the job, despite its alleged prestige, was so poorly paid. He was redundant, not assisting with much of anything other than a few deckhand things like securing lines and radioing to the pilothouse that they were coming through, if Keith had the wheel and couldn’t work the walkie-talkie. The rest of the time, he was just supposed to look at the river—just stare straight out and fix it in his mind when Keith called out the “map” to the captain—announcing each underwater obstruction like a tourist guide for things unseen.

  It was hard to keep doing that, focusing, especially on such a beautiful day, with the breeze blurring the trees, girls on bikes riding along the paths of the village park, calling to each other in shrill voices that carried out along the water, and Fudgies snapping photos from the riverwalk and waving to them just because they were on a boat. It must have been these sorts of distractions that kept him from realizing, at the end of piloting a big cabin sailboat registered out of Charlevoix, that the captain was tipping them all, handing him a five.

  “Kid,” Keith said, and then Mark saw it. The tip wasn’t surprising—most of the summer people were tipping—but he hadn’t even noticed they’d reached the end of the river. Mark slipped the five into his jeans, mumbling thanks, and then they stepped off and cast loose the mooring lines and the big sailboat was free and clear, with a clang of the big brass bell, pulling away into Meenigeesis. Keith logged it in, scribbling something on the clipboard that hung by the door, recapped the tethered pen, then shoved Mark into the river.

  The cold water filled his mouth and eyes and he couldn’t see again till he was back on the surface, thrashing, gasping to breathe, trying to find a handhold. The river was walled here, with no natural riverbank, just the slimy pilings of the inner pilothouse, with its little wooden wharf jutting out overhead. It seemed, now, looking up into the shafting sun, that it was several stories above him.

  “Starboard,” Keith hollered down. “There’s a ladder.”

  But Mark was all turned around, dog-paddling in a circle, the water still choppy from the wake of the departing sailboat. He clawed at the nearest wooden piling. It felt like he was wearing a suit of armor.

  “Starboard! Jeezo! . . .”

  Finally he found it, a haphazard row of wooden scraps nailed to one of the pilings, like on some kid’s flimsy treehouse. He pulled himself up, fumbling and slipping. The second he reached the platform, he quickly moved into the pilothouse rather than risk standing back out on that tiny strip of dock that ran along the edge of the little shack. “Jesus,” he said, “What the fuck—”

  It felt like burlap, hitting him in the face. Keith had thrown him a towel. It smelled of diesel, like he’d been using it to work on an engine. “Each trip,” Keith said, “you don’t use your eyes, you go in the water. That’s the deal. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Good. So I guess it won’t happen again.”

  Mark went in the water three more times that day. Keith was clearly enjoying it. He told the old guy, Walt, “You ever notice how rich kids stink when you get them wet?” Mark would have argued the point about him being rich; he didn’t feel that was very accurate—his family was well-off, maybe, but look around this place, look over in the marina, or just north of town, with the little airstrip and the private planes—that was rich. But since Keith made the cracks directly to Walt, acting like Mark wasn’t even in the pilothouse, he knew it was pointless to answer back. “Me,” Keith said, “I’d start wearing shorts next time, something lightweight like a normal pilot-boy, if I was going in the water so much as he is . . . Jeezo . . .”

  The next day he only went in the water once. The third day he had a good day and stayed dry his whole shift.

  “You’re learning,” Walt said. “Very good. It’s all about paying attention. That’s all. Keeping your eyes open, looking ahead.” He actually ruffled Mark’s hair. Keith looked disappointed.

  The next day wasn’t so good. He got shoved in twice. But overall, figuring it mathematically, Mark decided he was probably catching on.

  9

  2001 WAS A SUMMER OF FIRSTS for the Reverend Eugene Reecher. It was the first summer without his wife and the first summer of his retirement. He still lived in the parsonage—the little white split-level beside the First Presbyterian Church—that still faced the river, the Oh-John-Ninny, which formed the far edge of the backyard; still looked out every day at the ribbon of blue that was Lake Michigan beyond. What was different now was the free time—the long rambling days that lingered on into the night. Mary, who’d apparently been carrying cancer around in her throat for some time, secretly storing it up, blithely ignorant until the last few months, succumbed mercifully quickly, in the late fall. And soon after, he’d stepped down, after thirty-two years of service to the only congregation he’d ever known.

  And now all that remained was this house that had been, for thirty-two years, temporary shelter; something they’d borrowed from the church. He’d never felt completely at home here, knowing, as most ministers know, that the house comes (and goes) with the job. But now it seemed it was the sum total of those years—all there was left—and he could not imagine leaving the house behind. Not yet.

  Still, he was really starting to rattle. The house, which had always seemed meager and inadequate, now seemed overwhelming, vast and cluttered. And yet so empty. Ringingly empty, like the sanctuary on a weekday.

  The place still smelled of Mary. Even after being contaminated and diluted with her medicines and the smell of death, after she was gone, her true smell, her life smell, seemed to return to the house, as if none of that—none of those ugly scents of ending—was a match for her; nothing could compete with Mary.

  He’d considered potpourri, incense, scented candles, but he didn’t have the heart. Nor could he throw away her clothes. Not yet. In time, but not yet. And on bad nights, nights when he played the wrong records, the Abbey Lincoln or the Chet Baker or the Mary Lou Williams, he’d wander into her closet as if he’d simply taken a wrong turn in the hallway and press his face into her blouses and inhale and then he’d call the kids.

  The kids were grown and had their own lives with which to contend and he regretted calling them each time he did it, not because of their reactions or inability to help, but because he knew this wasn’t the proper role for him. He was supposed to be the one giving the solace; the one taking away the pain.

  His son, Ben, lived in Tucson. His daughter, Abbey, in Olympia, Washington, wasn’t any closer. Ben had his work and family to keep him more than busy; Abbey had her work and her dogs and her allergies and her work and her three-days-a week analysis and more work. So he really hated reaching out to them. He knew what a bother he must be.

  Ben was the one who finally spelled it out. “Dad,” he said, “we really want to stay in touch with you. We do. Every day would be great. But we just don’t have time for the phone.” Gene noticed his son never used the word bother, but he had always been the more patient and polite of the children.

  They sent him a computer and signed him up for Internet service. He had no idea what to do with it.

  A week after it arrived, Ben called and asked how it was going and he told him he was “still figuring it out.” Another week went by and Ben called again, from his cell phone, driving up to Lake Mead, and accused him of not even opening the box yet. Gene didn’t appreciate the tone and besides, it was just a lucky guess.

  “Dad,” Ben said, “come on. Am I going to have to hire a tutor for you?”

  Gene recalled the posture lessons he’d endured for five years as a young boy, the instructor, Mrs. Siddons, invading his home every Wednesday afternoon, with her strange liniment smell and the wooden yardstick she jammed down his shirt collar till it poked into the cheeks of his buttocks. And despite her own rigid form, her seeming steely manner, she was so easily disappointed in his lack of progress, she appeared as if she might break into tears any moment. It was unsettling. So a tutor did not sound
like a good idea at all. He hoped Ben was kidding.

  “They have them,” Ben said. “They come to your house, set up your desktop, teach you the basics. They have them here, I mean. I don’t know about back there. I suppose I could call around, maybe find someone to drive down from Traverse or up from Grand Rapids.” He sighed heavily, as if they were talking now about moving a piano.

  “Don’t do that,” Gene said. “Really. I’ll figure it out.”

  “Like hell you will.” Ben had to realize he would disapprove of such talk. Of course, it was that “P.K.” syndrome popping out, even now, late in life. Even in his forties, Ben could occasionally behave like a rebellious “preacher’s kid.” He said, “We got the thing, frankly, to keep you busy. I can’t imagine staring at the unopened box will keep you busy very much longer.”

  Gene pointed out that he’d managed to figure out the microwave all on his own.

  “Great,” Ben said, with that dry humor he got from his late mother. “They’re exactly the same. Listen, as soon as you figure it out, e-mail me a frozen pizza, okay?” The line was cutting in and out. He said, “Damn! I’m in a canyon, Dad . . .” and then he was gone.

  HE MADE UP LITTLE NOTICES, announcing that he was seeking to hire a tutor to show him how to work the computer. He wrote each one out by hand with an old marker he’d found in the laundry room and he thought, after about the third copy, how much easier making the notices might be if he knew how to use the computer.

  But if he could already do that, he wouldn’t need the notices—an amusing circle of irony that, in the past, might have inspired an idea for a sermon. Perhaps as a metaphor for material acquisition; he could even push the acceptable boundaries of the more conservative members of the congregation by slipping in a quote from Thoreau . . .

  But if he were still writing sermons, he could have typed these notices. He’d typed all his sermons on an old Olivetti over in the minister’s office in back of the church—a well-worn short walk through his backyard. He still had the key—they wouldn’t mind. The problem was, perhaps as recently as a week before, when he went over there to type a letter to a woman Mary had grown up with down in New Buffalo—to thank her, finally, for her long and lovely letter of condolence, maybe really getting into the details of Mary’s final days and his life now and updating her about the kids and all—he found the trustees or somebody had decided to replace the typewriter with another one of these shiny boxes like the one Ben had dumped on him. They were getting things ready for his permanent replacement, whoever he might be. Or she, he had to keep reminding himself. (Yes, possibly she! Very good! That would be a progressive step for ol’ First Pres!)

  After ten copies, his hand ached and he had to call it quits. He considered, as a sort of a joke, continuing to write a few more with the idea that the rapidly deteriorating handwriting would become such a psychotic scrawl, anyone even glancing at it would take pity on him for not being able to use the computer, thinking him perhaps a mentally retarded adult, and they’d simply have to help him.

  He posted the signs in the obvious places: the library, the post office, the Spartan store, the Helpee-Selfee laundromat, the real estate office—where people stopped to look in the window at the photos of cottages for sale—and above that, B’s Wax, the musty used-record shop.

  The B’s Wax clientele wasn’t exactly right—too analog to be computer whizzes—but he tacked one up there anyway as an excuse to stop and paw through the rare jazz records. Playing on the store’s stereo system was something by Abbey Lincoln—he was pretty sure it was off Abbey Is Blue, on Riverside Records, 1959, with Philly Joe Jones, Stanley Turrentine and Max Roach, of course, Abbey Lincoln’s husband at the time—and the names of the numbers ran together in his head—“Lonely House,” “Let Up,” “Come Sunday,” “Lost in the Stars, “Long as You’re Living” . . . one other he couldn’t remember . . . The sultry sounds, familiar like something deep in his bones, pried out a smile and thoughts of Mary and how they’d listen to these records Sunday nights when they were both very young and surrounded by clerical friends who thought the two of them, comparatively, extremely wild—borderline beatniks, possibly socialists.

  The owner and manager, Bob Beirnbaum, squeezed up behind him and read Gene’s handwritten notice over his shoulder, breathing heavily through his nose. “Great,” he grumbled. “You’ll be another customer lost to eBay . . .”

  Bob liked to refer to himself by his teenage nickname, which was Mr. B. He was in his late fifties, sadly overweight. He lived alone in a small room in back, and for years Gene found it puzzling how a little shop like this, in a town like Weneshkeen—where most people would tell you Ben Webster was “that dictionary guy” and Slim Gaillard made silent Westerns—would even be profitable enough to cover the rent. The selections seemed too esoteric for the taste of most of Weneshkeen’s year-round residents and the technology too archaic for the summer people, who might have the taste and the money but probably found even CDs quaint. Then he learned Bob owned the whole building. The little Queen Anne with gingerbread railings was originally a private home—Bob’s parents’ private home, which he’d inherited. What was now the record shop had been Bob’s childhood bedroom. Basically, he’d just put stickers on his vast record collection and hung out a sign down on the porch. The thing that paid for everything was the office space he rented to the real estate agents downstairs.

  When Gene turned to leave, unsure where Bob had slunk away to, he just called out a simple goodbye and got, in response, a waggling hand, emerging from somewhere over in the Peruvian section and a growled, “Yeah, I’ll pray for your soul, Preacher Reecher . . .”

  The ribbing with the name was pretty common, but the part about his soul was new and at first Gene found it a little puzzling—and off-putting: wasn’t Bob being a little flippant and crass with a man he knew was still in mourning? It was only when he reached the bottom of the stairs, and the real estate office, that he got it. He saw the new broker fellow—Barry or Bradley or something—through the hallway window, working at his computer. Ah, he thought. Bob was just making a crack about his getting a computer, intimating he was about to step into some dark, soulless netherworld. He wasn’t making light of his grief. It made him smile again—too late for Bob to enjoy his reaction—but Gene enjoyed the jest, nonetheless.

  Then he saw, seated across from the broker’s desk, one of his flock—former flock—John Schank, head of the New Building Committee, and he decided to keep moving. He considered himself a friend to all in Weneshkeen, but some conversations were best avoided.

  Next, he made stops at all the bulletin boards he could find along the block-long stretch of the more touristy shops, directly across from the marina—the T-shirt place, the candy-and-fudge shop, the Petoskey stone place, the ice-cream-and-fudge shop, the coffee shop and the just plain fudge shop, T.G.I.Fudge. Leaving T.G.I.Fudge, he heard someone behind him, calling after him: “Sir?”

  His first thought was that he’d left his roll of masking tape behind. He turned to see it was the same little black-haired counter girl in the smudged apron who had just granted him permission, moments before, to hang up his sign. But she’d removed it. It was there in her hand. He wondered if she was going to ask him to take it back. Maybe there was something wrong with it.

  But no, she was holding out her hand for him to shake. “Kimberly.”

  “Kimberly,” he repeated, shaking it, still unsure what was going on.

  “Uh . . . okay, first? I used to go to your church?”

  “I’m sorry.” He couldn’t place the face. “You’ll forgive me, but the last few months . . .”

  “This was years and years ago. When I was little.”

  He tried not to smile at this. She was still little—a kid, as far as he could tell. Somewhere in her teens.

  “It was my mom who took us. But they got divorced when I was four. I’m only up here in the summers now. With my dad.” She told him her father’s name and he thought he recognized i
t. One of the local tradesmen. A plumber or a water heater man, perhaps. “Anyways, I could help you with your computer,” she said. “No problem. I’m not a gearhead or anything, but I’m sure I know enough.”

  The term gearhead caused him to look at her head and he could see now that her hair was dyed black. Perhaps it was dark to begin with but certainly not that dark. She wore it chopped in a sort of mid-length bob. He supposed they weren’t calling it a bob these days, but he would be hard-pressed to produce the proper current terminology.

  He wasn’t clear at all what a gearhead might be, but he was fairly certain he probably didn’t require one of those. She wasn’t at all what he imagined in a tutor, but he couldn’t think of any reason to object, so he asked her when she was available.

  “Well,” she said, rolling her shoulder and head back toward the fudge shop, “I’ve got this,” and it sounded like an admission, something she wasn’t too proud of but felt compelled to fess up to. “But it’s real flexible. Half-days, three days a week. It rotates, we trade shifts . . . so whenever.”

  Before he could think of any further objections, they were arriving at an appointment for the following day and shaking hands. When he remembered he hadn’t given her the address yet, she shrugged and said of course she knew where it was; that it was just like going to church.

  “Sort of,” he told her. “One door over. Almost church.”

  When he got home, he smelled something like confectioner’s sugar—maybe almond extract, mint—and realized it was his hand.

  10