Love Among the Ruins

by Robert Clark

  William felt himself in a dilemma. There was nothing so odd in this corner of the world as a man indifferent to fishing (or at least to discoursing about fish—their psychology, habits, and lore—and fishing), yet he in no way wanted to encourage this man to entangle himself in their affairs. Then he stumbled across a brilliant parry.

  “Oh, we’re nuts about fishing. But Mom hates it, doesn’t she, Em?” William turned to Emily.

  “Detests it,” Emily said.

  “Doesn’t like me and Dad going off. It makes her feel like a widow, she says. So she said, this trip, you want me to come, no fishing. So that’s the law.”

  “Tough business, that,” the man said. “But you got to keep the womenfolk happy, don’t you?”

  “Sure do,” said William.

  “Well, you’ll have yourself some fun with that canoe. Best time up here’s right now. No bugs. Practically no people.”

  “That’s the way we like it,” William said.

  “Yeah,” Emily said. “The serenity. The peace.”

  “God’s country. Truly,” the man added.

  They drove the rest of the way in silence. Emily looked out the back window of the pickup, at the plume of dust fanning out over the road behind them. They were putting the whole world behind them. They were going deep into creation, as the man had said.

  Lac La Cache consisted of a boat ramp, a couple of summer cabins (the septic tank of one of which the man in the pickup was here to investigate), and Nelson’s store, a building not much more prepossessing than the warming hut at St. Clair Park. There were, as promised, canoes lying inverted on the grass outside and, sheltering under the eaves of the roof, an old soda pop cooler that was full of live minnows. Next to this sat a fuel tank in a cradle and sundry cans, some full, some empty, of oil for blending into outboard motor mix.

  The proprietor, the eponymous Arnie Nelson ( and it would be difficult to say, in their mutual dishevelment, their air of a temporary project having gone on longer than anyone might have expected, where Nelson’s the store left off and Arnie the man began), had come to his front door on hearing the noise of the pickup’s arrival. When he saw that the passengers pulling their bags from the rear were kids, he cursed (“Dag-nabbit”) under his breath, for being kids, they either had no money or would be unlikely to spend it on anything. Maybe a candy bar, and Arnie had several of these—no matter that their carapaces had reached melting point several times during the summer—he’d just as soon dispose of before he closed up for the season at the end of the month. No one came to Lac La Cache without trading at Nelson’s. There had been a Hudson’s Bay post as long as 150 years back, though there was not much about Nelson’s to suggest anything of the voyageurs and beaver pelts: Rather, it had the look of a henhouse superintended by a fox.

  Emily and William approached the door and Arnie swung the screen open to admit them. “Hi, kids,” he said. “What can we do for you?”

  “We need some supplies,” William said.

  “We got ’em.”

  “And I heard you might be able to sell us a canoe.”

  “Well, yes indeed.” Arnie was happily thunderstruck. The sale of a canoe, properly regulated, would cover the better part of his passage to Tampa, Vero Beach, and points south, upon which he planned to embark no later than noon on October 15. “I think we might arrange that. Come around the side here, and I’ll show you what we’ve got.”

  What Arnie had were five aluminum canoes of various antiquity, none so blatantly dented as to suggest porosity and any one of which might be deemed to be serviceable. “Take your pick,” Arnie said. “I maintain ’em all myself.”

  “I was kind of thinking of fiberglass. Because of the weight,” said William.

  “Well, weight’s one thing, I suppose. But toughness is another. You hit a rock, it’ll stove fiberglass clean in. And there’s lots of rocks around here. That’s why I don’t have ’em—fiberglass. Not durable.”

  “I guess you have a point.”

  “You going to be making a lot of portages?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I don’t think so.”

  “Well, there you are. You’re better off with something that can stand up to the country.”

  “So how much are they?” William asked.

  “Depends on which one you want.”

  Emily pointed to what was doubtless the least distressed-looking of the five. “This one looks okay,” she said.

  “So how about that one?” William said.

  “You know how to pick ’em. That’s the newest of the bunch—the one I like to use myself.” He hesitated, as though weighing whether he could bear to part with the object of such sentiment. “I don’t know. It’s a lot of trouble just to get ’em trucked in here. I paid three hundred for her.”

  “Boy, that seems a little high,” William said. “I mean, I worked at a sporting goods store and I don’t think any of ours were that much.”

  “Well, you see, it’s the freight. It’ll pretty near double your cost. That and the maintenance. You got to recognize, you’re a long way from anywhere up here.”

  “I suppose. But still, I don’t know.”

  “Tell you what. I’ll let it go for half of what I paid. One-fifty. You can’t get fairer than that.”

  “I think that’s about what they go for new.”

  “Well, I explained how it is,” Arnie said. “Heck, I don’t know why I should even bother. I just got to get another one in here next season. It’s a losing deal for me, when I think about it.” Arnie put his index finger on his lip to indicate that he was, indeed, thinking, and moreover, rethinking.

  Emily looked at William and shrugged. William shrugged in return and said, “Okay, I suppose. Since it’s such a good canoe.”

  “I think you just made yourself a good deal,” Arnie said. “I must be a little loco today.” He knocked on the gunwale of the canoe. “Now, I suppose you’ll want paddles. Life jackets.”

  “They’re not included?” Emily asked.

  “They weren’t included for me. When I bought her. It’s just another thing to get hauled in here next season.”

  “How about we throw in ten bucks, then?”

  “Ten bucks’ll get you the paddles. The life jackets I can’t do for that. I’d have to get ten more. These are Coast Guard–approved, you know. I can’t just give ’em away.”

  William was already feeling a little humiliated by the course this transaction had taken. “We’ll manage without them, I guess.” He gestured toward Emily. “My sister’s a Red Cross lifesaver.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Arnie. “Want to come inside? Get your supplies?”

  “Sure.”

  “Hang on. Let me get your paddles.” Arnie selected two, seemingly at random, from an oil drum next to the minnow tank. “These okay?”

  William looked at Emily, and Emily nodded. “I suppose,” he said.

  Arnie leaned the paddles against the canoe, and William and Emily followed him into the store, a store perhaps only in the sense that there were shelves fastened to the walls and items resting on these that were apparently for sale. There was no cash register, no scale. There was a Hamm’s beer lighted clock on the wall, and a large refrigerator which contained, along with Arnie’s personal groceries, a large stock of this product.

  “So what do you need?” Arnie asked.

  “Well, we’re going camping. With our folks.”

  “Didn’t see them.”

  “Oh, they’re already here.”

  “Haven’t seen anyone in a few days, actually.”

  “Oh, they put in last week. With the boat. Over at Crane Lake.”

  “They going to pick you up here?”

  “No. We’re going to paddle over to them.”

  Arnie Nelson was not himself a gifted liar, but he was a connoisseur of the liar’s art, and he was interested to see where this tale the boy was telling him would go if he bore down on it a little. “They came over from Crane?” he asked. “Throug
h the pass, I guess.” There was no pass. “Since you said you weren’t doing much portaging.”

  “Yeah,” said William. “That must be how they came.”

  Arnie was disappointed in so lame a response. Amusements were hard to find at Lac La Cache. “Beautiful stretch of water, the pass,” he could not resist adding. “So how about your supplies?”

  “Well, do you have hardtack? Bannock? Pemmican? That kind of thing?”

  “Afraid not. We got what you see. Canned hash. Chili. Stew. Vienna sausage.”

  “I suppose we’ll have some of that then.”

  “Help yourself then.”

  Emily and William plucked cans from the shelves until both their arms were full, and turned back to Arnie. “Set it all down here”—he indicated a table already occupied by an unwashed plate and a beer can—“and we’ll ring you up.”

  “Do you have any bacon?” William asked. He looked at Emily. “We kind of have to have bacon.”

  Arnie shook his head. “All I have is what I keep for myself. Of course, I guess if you really needed it, I could get more. It’s a long drive to town, but you guys are good customers now.”

  “Well, if you could . . .” William said.

  “I suppose. But I got to charge for my trouble. For the freight, and so forth.”

  “Sure.”

  “Say five bucks.”

  “That’s an awful lot.”

  “Whole pound. Costs me five bucks in gas just to drive to town.”

  William said, “Okay, I suppose.”

  “Well, there you are then. Let me just ring you up.” Arnie went to work on a pastel-colored notepad. “That’s one hundred and ninety-two dollars, with the canoe, of course. There’s tax, of course. But we can let that go, by the by. Nobody much watching up here.”

  William nodded. He went outside, followed by Emily, and Arnie watched him dig inside the duffel bag sitting on the ground. He returned with two hundred dollars in twenties.

  “I don’t know if I can change that,” Arnie said.

  “You’d only need eight bucks.”

  “So I would,” Arnie said with a note of surprise. “Well, let me see.” He felt his pockets, and then dug inside one of them with an expression that intuited he was working a dry hole. “Well, what do you know,” he said, extracting a tangled five-dollar bill. “Here you go.” He unfolded it and passed it to William. “I’ll have the other three dollars for you when you come back through.”

  “I don’t know that we will be,” William said. “We’ll probably go out with my folks.”

  “Oh, through that Crane Lake pass.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, you just swing by. It’ll be here.”

  “Okay.” William and Emily began to move to the door, laden with cans. Arnie went to the refrigerator and extracted a packet of bacon from what seemed to be a half-dozen such packets. “Don’t forget this,” he said, and set it atop William’s armload of groceries. “And don’t forget to come back.”

  William and Emily were afloat at last, at four o’clock in the afternoon, a beautiful clear afternoon, untroubled by wind or heat or insects. The canoe sat a little low in the water, being filled amidships with the duffel, Emily’s bag, and the two dozen or so cans they’d bought at Nelson’s. When the canoe was launched, that was to be the true beginning of their voyage, of their new life, but for William it was a little sullied by their transactions with Arnie. He allowed how Arnie would fit right in with Mr. Murkowski in the back room at Brower’s.

  “We still have a lot of money,” Emily said. “Which we don’t really need.”

  “I guess.” And then they began to paddle, north and east, parallel to the shore of the lake. In twenty minutes they could scarcely see Nelson’s store; in thirty, it was gone. There was nothing at all, save the seethe of the canoe sliding through the water, the drops that fell from their paddles, that rang on to the lake surface. They thought they might have heard an outboard, but it might have been a gust of wind.

  “This is far enough. For today,” William said, and they turned towards the shore. They found a spot where a long shelf of rock cut into the lake; that made, after a fashion, a little dock next to which they could berth the canoe before pulling it up onto the shore. Next to this there was a low area that might almost have passed as a beach and behind it, where the forest began, a clearing where they could camp; where there was indeed the remains of a fire ring, laid, for all William and Emily knew, a century before.

  After they had disembarked, they stood together ankle-deep in the water and pulled the canoe up as far as its not inconsiderable weight would allow, and then they began to unload a few things from William’s duffel. It was a sunny and cloudless afternoon, so they would not pitch the tent. William would merely lay his tarp on the ground—on a high spot, under the trees, close to the fire ring, but not too close—and spread out his big sleeping bag on top of it. When he had done this, he and Emily stood at the edge of the tarp, their bare feet still a little wet from the lake, and began to undress each other without so much as a word passing between them. They were half in dark, half in light—great swaths of shadow and sun scudding over their bodies—and Emily might run her hand round the edge of William’s hip and back onto his buttock and seem to lose sight of it entirely; even as her own breast glowed, gold and rose, perched in William’s palm.

  They lay down on the flannel of the open sleeping bag. They kissed each other’s chest, and still lying on their sides, William pushed himself into her. They had not been together for over a week and William thrust hard and deep, but they were not done for some time; long enough that Emily clenched her jaw and quivered and grasped William’s shoulder not once but twice; long enough that when William could contain himself no longer and withdrew to release himself all at once, all over Emily’s belly and breasts, her body and most of his were completely in shadow, the sun having moved some distance down the lake.

  Emily raises herself onto an elbow and ponders what to do about the fluid, congealing but still thin enough to find channels through which it might run down her waist or into her navel. But William takes her hand and they walk down to the water. The water is warm, as warm as it ever gets (it being late afternoon, at the very end of the season, when every drop of winter has been wrung out of the lake, just before the next winter begins), and they walk in, up to just below Emily’s waist, which is just above the top of William’s thighs. They wash each other. The soap is still in Emily’s bulging flight bag, but they are not very dirty: some dust, sweat, William’s semen and Emily’s lubrications, and the fusty, near-forgotten residues of the bus, the pickup, and Nelson’s store. When they are done, even the sour and greasy odor of Arnie’s greed is washed away, together with not only the memory but the very fact of his paltry machinations, the sham of his lies, of his pathetic efforts to make nothing into something.

  William goes back to the shore, to the big slab of rock, and leans against it. He watches Emily continue to brush and splash herself with water, to lower herself to shoulder depth and then dip her head under completely. She emerges, working her fingers through her hair, unknotting its tangles, combing the water out of it. It is a great labor to be a woman, to do all this tending and polishing of one’s beauty, and it has, William sees, nothing to do with conceit or fastidiousness or vanity. He has never seen Emily naked from such a distance or so unframed by other things, by rooms and doors or even the tall grass of the park. Now there is just the sky above her and the water below and the rising of her arm as she scoops water or rakes her hair with her hands.

  Heretofore, he has seen her mostly piecemeal, in parts, and those parts—her face at rest, her breasts and their nipples, pink as candy Valentine hearts—have moved him and aroused him; and he has thought, as perhaps every man has thought at some point, that were he to apprehend them all at once he would be overwhelmed, overcome by a sort of paralysis of wonder and eros and—why this last should be, no one can say—pity.

  But now William
sees Emily whole, or at least as one thing, one part in something greater: the sky and the water, saturated with the accumulation of all the day’s light, which just now and just here is the world entire. She is in it and also of it, but her beauty remains. She is still, for William, the most beautiful thing in it; perhaps she is the door, the crack in the ordinary, through which he can enter into it fully.

  Emily is still merely standing in the water, the water lapping against and eddying through her crotch, bearing the last trace of her and William’s lovemaking away. She knows William is watching her, and she does not care. She does not worry that her breasts are too small or her stomach and her fanny are too big. She feels herself in the center of his gaze, and she pictures what he sees—the water and the girl in the water—and she, too, sees that they are beautiful. She cups another handful of water and pours it over her shoulder, lets it run down her arm, mixing them altogether: the girl, the water, the light, his looking.

  This was all surely freedom, but being utterly at liberty has its entailments, its queries and demands. If nothing else, William had to gather wood. They would need a fire, if not for warmth then for cooking. No one had camped on this spot for a very long time, so he could gather everything they would need right off the ground, within a twenty-yard radius of their campsite, in scarcely fifteen minutes. He was in the midst of setting down a load by the fire ring when Emily came up out of the lake naked and beaded with water. He thought how much he loved her and how fine and good everything was and then that he might cry. He brushed his fingers under his nose, and he could not say whether the scent was Emily’s or the wood he had been carrying or the water of the lake.

  Emily dressed and William built a fire, a little box fire, branch stacked on branch to make a square crib upon which one might set a pot without using a trivet. He got his cast-iron Dutch oven from the duffel—this being one of the chief sources of its weight—opened a can of hash, scooped it out into the pot, and let it heat on the fire. One can was enough for the two of them, or would have to do, because, although William would begin fishing and trapping tomorrow, the stocks of food they had brought in—the cans and an enormous supply of rice—would have to last a long time; long enough at least for them to set up their permanent camp and make a return run to Nelson’s, should that unsavory prospect become necessary.