Loon Lake

by E. L. Doctorow

  I think I can imagine some faint memory of the odor of those dogs, feel the closeness of their life, their wild heartbeat! I hear their snorts and the snaps of teeth on air, I remember the toothtumblers lock once the flesh is found, the quick release and regrip down to the bone.

  I recall without difficulty the intimate apprehension of prey in the jaws of a maniac life beyond all appeal.

  Somehow I was vaulted or inspired upward in some acrobatic backward tumble through the unframed shack window. I took one of the dogs with me, slamming it fixed in my wrist against the inner wall of the shack while the heads of the others appeared outside the window, a fountain of faces leaping and falling back in rage in frustration. But then one gripped the sill with its paws and began to pull itself up till its own weight would get it inside, I grabbed a tennis racquet hanging in its press and swung toward that head down on those paws. The dog fell out of sight and the other, who had come in with me, stunned loose from its slam against the wall, I now caught on the back with the racquet edge in its heavy press and broke its spine. They were not uniformed pedigreed hounds, they were every kind and make, and this one, a smaller mongrel, I lifted howling and threw to the others.

  Things immediately got quiet. I heard the yelps and moans and grunts of appeasement, the soft sound of flesh being fanged. The small moonlit square of night I saw from the floor of the shack was peaceful with stars. Maybe I heard human voices, or the firing of a rifle or a gun, but I’m not sure. I lay there and as the blood flowed from me I lost consciousness.

  Adirondacks.

  Region first known for wilderness industries trapping hunting.

  Earliest roads were logging trails out came the great trees

  chained to sledges. In the winter blocks of ice were sawn

  from the frozen lakes and carried in procession on funicular tracks

  uphill to the railroad depots for shipment to the cities.

  In early spring the tapping of the huge sugar maples

  and the sap houses sweet blue smoke hanging over the green valleys.

  In summer the natives grew small corn and picked wild berries

  and grilled trout on open fires by the edge of rock rivers.

  But one summer after the May flies painters and poets arrived

  who paid money to sit in guide boats and to stand momentously

  above the gorges of rushing streams.

  The artists and poets patrons seeing and hearing their reports

  bought vast tracts of the Adirondacks very cheaply

  and began to build elaborate camps there thus inventing

  the wilderness as luxury.

  Loon Lake a high mountain retreat cratered as purely cold and

  clear in the mountains as water cupped in your hands.

  In the morning the old man, Bennett, gave them all woolen ponchos and took them for a speedboat ride on the lake. She sat up front between him and Tommy. Tommy put his arm around her but she preferred to lean forward in the lee of the windshield where she avoided the wind if not the cold space it left as it blew by.

  The little flag in the stern flapped like a machine gun. In the back seat there was no protection at all and they were truly unhappy. The cigarette was whipped out of Buster’s mouth and taken in the air over the wake by a black-and-white bird, some sort of gull. She saw that, having turned to smile back at them, her knee just touching the old man’s pants leg, and Buster, looking startled, saw it too. It seemed to fall away into the sky; He faced her stupidly, his mouth still open and a piece of cigarette paper pasted on his lower lip.

  She knew Bennett was showing off for her, rearing the mahogany speedboat through the waves as if it were Buck Jones’ Silver. The sky was very low and the tops of the hills around the lake were shrouded in clouds. The clouds drifted through the trees and she was startled by that intimacy. She thought clouds should stay up in the sky where they belonged.

  They had come to the closed end of the lake. The old man throttled down and the boat settled flatter in the water. There were marshes here and dead striplings poking out of the water. He headed straight for the trees and she felt Tommy clench up until a notch appeared in the shoreline. They went into a channel at slow speed and rode serenely by a beaver lodge of wet dark sticks and mud. The old man pointed it out.

  She imagined the beaver pups inside their lodge lying on shelves just out of reach of the wavelets lapping their feet.

  Then they were out in an even bigger lake with the hills somewhat farther away and a broad stretch of sky higher over everything. It turned out the old man owned this lake too. She wondered if he trained the crazy bird who came down from the sky for a cigarette.

  ——

  Later, in the boathouse, Buster was so relieved at having survived travel on water that he told everyone about the bird.

  That was a loon, the old man said, a kind of grebe. They all respectfully considered this intelligence.

  You knew that didn’t you Buster, Tommy said.

  They put their ponchos back on the wall pegs and reclaimed their fedoras. There were other speedboats in the boathouse, each in its own berth. There were racks with wooden canoes. It was a brown log boathouse with casement windows in the same style as the big house up the hill.

  There was a man there to take care of everything.

  Bennett led the way. She noted how easily he moved up the path, his back straight, beautiful white hair. These people knew as no one else how to take care of themselves. He was dressed for the outdoors, with boots and a red plaid flannel shirt.

  She held Tommy’s arm and enjoyed the warmth of the land on her back. It looked as if the sun might burn through the clouds. She felt good. She felt like dancing. She watched her own feet walking in their strap shoes. They were grown-up-looking feet. She was arm in arm with Tommy, pulling him in close, trying to match strides up the hill. She watched his small black wing-tipped shoes pacing along, their shine ruined, and the cuffs of his pin-stripe flapping dust from the ground.

  Up ahead the party was met by a fat guy. He saw her and stood as if struck by lightning. He had been coming down to the lake but turned now with another glance at her over his shoulder and ran along behind the old man.

  She held Tommy’s arm, held him back and let them all go out of sight up the hill.

  You’ve got to be joking, Tommy said.

  She rubbed against him. She kissed him and ran her tongue over his lips and leaned back from him holding her groin against him and looking into his eyes right there in the mountains of the Adirondacks.

  Well the kid’s impressed, Tommy said.

  She nodded while looking into his eyes. The tip of her tongue appeared in the corner of her mouth. He disengaged her arms and stood back from her.

  That’s how much you know, he said.

  It’s who she is, thinks Warren, definitely, now dressed in flimsies and struggling with the torments of her class but it’s her, the same girl, returned to my life, changed in time, true, changed in place, changed let us be honest in character, but how can I doubt my feelings they are all I have I have spent my life studying them and of them all this is the indisputable constant, the feeling of recognition I have for her when she appears, the ease with which she comes to me regardless of the circumstances, for I have no particular appeal to women, only to this woman, and so the recognition must be mutual and it pushes us toward each other despite our differences, and our inability to understand each other’s language, and here it has happened again though I am indisputably older fatter and more ridiculous as a figure of love than I have been before. Always I am older. Always we do not understand each other. Always I lose her. Oh God who made this girl give her to me this time to hold let me sink into the complacencies of fulfilled love, let us lose our memories together, and let me die from the ordinary insubstantial results of having lived.

  What he intuits from the coolness of her conversation or the moods that come over her is that she did not expect to find herself in her present situation
. She is not devious and did not plan this. She seems to take each day as it comes and is clearly forged in her being by the race of men she’s had to deal with. In short, they are equals. The realization sends him to the bottle with a shaking hand.

  Naturally she would think he was part of the old man’s retinue. It was a natural assumption. At drinks that evening they’re alone. Can I tell you a story? he says. Outside, the rain is heavy, the kind of rain that tamps down the wind. Smoke from the big fireplace drifts into the room like a wisp of cloud come in from the mountains.

  I’ve lived here for six years. I’m a poet and the Bennetts are my patrons. But I found this place on my own and when I came here it was to kill him.

  The old man?

  Yes.

  She has to this point only half listened but now he is rewarded by her direct gaze. She sips her Manhattan. She is wearing pleated linen slacks and a thin blouse half buttoned. She likes to show herself.

  I swear to the lordourgod I will make her see who I am.

  People I loved died because of the policies of one of his companies. He owns lots of companies.

  You know what he’s worth?

  Worth? What can it matter. I haven’t got a dime myself, he says conscientiously, as if he’d made it his life’s achievement. Millions, billions, the power over people. So I was going to kill him. I got through the dogs with just a tear or two and introduced myself out on that terrace there through the dining room one morning with my knife in my pocket.

  She turns and looks through the big bay windows. She turns back.

  But you didn’t, she says.

  One night when the dogs are in the neighborhood he takes two wineglasses and a bottle of his table red and closes his door and half walks half runs over to her cottage.

  I thought you might need some company, he says.

  He follows her inside. She wears a robe. She is barefoot. He realizes she answered the door without breaking stride. She is pacing the room. Her arms are folded across her breasts.

  The doors to her terrace are closed and locked. The curtain is pulled shut. The room smells of cigarettes. He pours the wine.

  Later they are sitting on the floor beside the bed. He has been telling her about his life. He has recited some of his work. She has listened and smoked and held out her glass for wine.

  Listen, he says holding his hand up, forefinger pointed. The dogs are gone. She smiles and accepts this as something he’s done. Sitting Indian style, she leans forward and touches his face. Her robe has fallen open over her thighs like a curtain rising. He kisses her hand as it is withdrawn. I’ve loved three times in my life, he says. Always the same person.

  I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, she says. But I see I’ve got a live one here.

  Then she is lying on the floor in his arms reading his face with judicious solemnity, her eyes gathering up the dim light of the room so widely open that he feels himself pouring into them. Because her spirit is strong he is surprised by the frailty of her. She is a small person. Her breasts are full and her thighs rather short. He can feel her ribs. Her buttocks are hard with a thin layer of sweet softness over them, like a child’s ass. Her mons hair feels lightly oiled. He touches her cunt. She closes her eyes. A queer bitter smell comes off her body. He kisses her soft open mouth and it’s just as he knew, she is here and he’s found her again.

  Like many large overweight men he has surprising agility. She is obviously entranced. But the lack of practice is too much for him.

  She says with characteristic directness: Is that the whole show?

  He laughs and one way or another maintains her interest. Eventually he is ready again. Later he will try to remember the experience of being in her and will find that difficult. But he’ll remember them lying on their backs next to each other and the feel of the hard nap of the carpet on his sweaty skin. He’ll remember that when he turned on his side to look at her the silhouette of her body in the dark was like a range of distant hills.

  Yes, she said, as if their fucking had been conversation, sometimes nothing else will do but to drive as flat out hard and fast as you can.

  Annotated text Loon Lake by Warren Penfield.

  If you listen the small splash is beaver.

  As beaver swim their fur lies back and their heads elongate

  and a true imperial cruelty shines from their eyes.

  They’re rodents, after all.

  Beaver otter weasel mink and rat

  a rodent specie of the Adirondacks

  and they redistrict the world.

  They go after the young trees and bring them down—

  whole hillsides collapse in the lake when they’re through.

  They make their lodges of skinned poles, mud and boughs

  like igloos of dark wet wood

  and they enter and exit under water and build shelves

  out of the water for the babies.

  And when the mahogany speedboat goes by

  trimmed with silver horns

  in Loon Lake, in the Adirondacks,

  the waves of the lake inside the beaver lodge lap gently

  against the children’s feet in the darkness.

  Loon Lake

  was once the destination of private railroad cars

  rocking on a single track

  through forests of pine and spruce and hemlock

  branches and fronds brushing the windows of cut glass

  while inside incandescent bulbs flickered

  in frosted-glass chimneys over double beds

  and liquor bottles trembled in their recessed cabinet fittings

  above card tables of green baize

  in rooms entered through narrow doors with brass latches.

  If you step on a twig in a soft bed of pine needles

  under an ancient stand of this wilderness

  you will make no sound.

  All due respect to the Indians of Loon Lake

  the Adirondack nations, with all due respect.

  What a clear cold life it must have been.

  Everyone knew where he stood

  chiefs or children or malcontents

  and every village had its lover whom no one wanted

  who sometimes lay down because of that

  with a last self-pitying look at Loon Lake

  before intoning his death prayers

  and beginning the difficult business of dying by will

  on the dry hummocks of pine needles.

  The loons they heard were the loons we hear today,

  cries to distract the dying

  loons diving into the cold black lake

  and diving back out again in a whorl of clinging water

  clinging like importuning spirits

  fingers shattering in spray

  feeling up the wing along the rounded body of the

  thrillingly exerting loon

  taking a fish

  rising to the moon streamlined

  its loon eyes round and red.

  A doomed Indian would hear them at night in their diving

  and hear their cry not as triumph or as rage

  or the insane compatibility with the earth

  attributed to birds of prey

  but in protest against falling

  of having to fall into that black water

  and struggle up from it again and again

  the water kissing and pawing and whispering

  the most horrible promises

  the awful presumptuousness of the water

  squeezing the eyes out of the head

  floating the lungs out on the beak which clamps on them

  like wriggling fish

  extruding all organs and waste matter

  turning the bird inside out

  which the Indian sees is what death is

  the environment exchanging itself for the being.

  And there are stars where that happens too in space

  in the black space some railroad journeys above the Adir
ondacks.

  Well, anyway, in the summer of 1936

  a chilling summer high in the Eastern mountains

  a group of people arrived at a rich man’s camp

  in his private railway car

  the men in fedoras and dark double-breasted suits

  and the women in silver fox and cloche hats

  sheer stockings of Japanese silk

  and dresses that clung to them in the mountain air.

  They shivered from the station to the camp

  in an open carriage drawn by two horses.

  It was the clearest night in the heavens

  and the silhouettes of the jagged pines on the mountaintop

  in the moonlight looked like arrowheads

  looked like the graves of heroic Indians.

  The old man who was their host

  an industrialist of enormous wealth

  over the years had welcomed to his camp

  financiers politicians screen stars

  European princes boxing champions and

  conductors of major orchestras

  all of whom were honored to sign the guest book.

  Occasionally for complicated reasons

  he received persons strangely undistinguished.

  His camp was a long log building of two stories

  on a hill overlooking Loon Lake.

  There was a great rustic entrance hall

  with a wide staircase of halved logs

  and a balustrade made of scraped saplings

  a living room as large as a hotel lobby

  with walls papered in birch bark

  and hung with the mounted heads of deer and elk

  and with modern leather sofas with rounded corners

  and a great warming fireplace of native stone

  big enough to roast an ox.

  It was a fine manor house lacking nothing

  with suites of bedrooms each with its own shade porch

  and the most discreet staff of cooks and maids and porters

  but designated a camp because its décor was rough-hewn.

  Annotate old man who was their host as follows: F (Francis) W (Warren) Bennett born August 2 1878 Glens Falls New York. Father millionaire Augustus Bennett founder of Union Supply Company major outfitter army uniforms and military accessories hats boots Springfield rifles insignia saddles ceremonial swords etc to Army of the United States during Civil War. FW Bennett a student at Groton thence Massachusetts Institute of Technology Boston graduating with a degree in mine engineering. Bought controlling interest Missouri-Clanback Coal Company St Louis upon graduation. Took control Missouri & Western Railroad 1902. Founding partner Colorado Fuel Company with John C. Osgood Julian Kleber John L Jerome. Surviving partner associate of John D. Rockefeller Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, vice president of engineering. Immense success Colorado and Missouri speculative coal-mining ventures suggested use of capital abroad. Took over National Mexican Silver Mining Company. Founder Chilean-American Copper Company. Board of Directors James Steel Co., Northwest Lumber Trust, Baltimore, Chicago & Albuquerque RR Co., etc. Trustee Jordan College, Rhinebeck N.Y. Trustee Miss Morris’ School for Young Women, Briarcliff Manor NY. Member Knickerbocker, Acropolis, New York; Silks, Saratoga Springs; Rhode Island Keel, Newport. Marriages Fanny Teale Stevens, no issue; Bootsie van der Kellen, no issue; Lucinda Bailey, no issue. Died 1967 Lausanne Switzerland.