Lake News

by Barbara Delinsky

  Lily didn’t want to know. But she couldn’t afford not to. “What does it say?”

  “That you’re holed up in your apartment,” he remarked, definitely smug this time. “Then the story shifts to Maxwell Funder. He’s quoted ad nauseam on First Amendment rights, the difference between a public person and a private person, the nature of libel cases. There are quotes from other lawyers, so-called experts. Speculation on possible legal action that you may bring. Did you retain Funder?”

  She shook her head.

  He scratched an eyebrow. “He implies you did. Doesn’t say it directly. Just leaves it wide open. Maybe you should.”

  “I can’t afford him. Besides, me against the Post?”

  “How about you against Terry Sullivan?”

  Lily stilled. She hadn’t mentioned that name to John Kipling.

  “You need to know one other thing about me,” he said, all teasing gone now. “I know Terry Sullivan. We went to college together, then worked together at the Post. He saw me as his competition and screwed me good.”

  “How?”

  “The little blond aide? She was Terry’s connection. At the time, I was surprised when he gave me her name instead of using it himself, but he said that it was my story and that he respected that. I’m not saying that he put her up to it, but he knew all along that she lied. That means he deliberately set me up. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming him for the damage I caused. The blonde was only one piece of the pie. If I’d been less eager and checked her out better, I wouldn’t have printed her story. No, all I’m saying is that I hold a grudge against Terry Sullivan. So we share that, you and me.” He turned to leave.

  “I don’t hold a grudge,” Lily told him, meaning every word. “It’s worse than that. If this gun had been loaded and you’d been him, I’d have shot you on sight.”

  With his back to her, John hung his head. When he turned, she saw a crooked smile—and for a second, just a second, she felt a connection.

  Then he turned again and walked off. He was at the steps to the beach when he yelled back, “I have ammo! Call if you want it!”

  John started up the motor and glided away, but the emotions churning inside him belied the lazy pace. Three years ago, returning to Lake Henry, he’d had a plan. Turning out Lake News each week would pay the bills while he moonlighted writing a book that would bring him fame, money, and the justification for having left Boston—and he had tried. He had written the beginnings of a dozen books. Only, none interested him enough to keep on.

  This one would. It had the potential to be big. The more he thought about it, the bigger it got. Lily’s situation was the microcosm of a large and increasingly frightening phenomenon. The media was out of control. Individual rights—in her case, the right to privacy—were being trampled. Admittedly guilty of doing trampling in his day, John knew the media mind. That made him the perfect one to write this book. The subject matter went to the heart of what worried, angered, jaded so very many people.

  There was Lily’s story.

  And there was Terry’s story. Terry was a good writer. He was actually a great writer—a master with words—and he knew it. He was arrogant and he was ambitious. But ambition alone couldn’t explain the kind of meanness that ruined innocent people. John had known enough reporters to separate those who were conscientious from those who were driven. The driven often had cause that went beyond the professional.

  John was a perfect example. His driving force was a need to stand out that went back to childhood. When he was young, it had manifested itself in petty misdeeds in school and minor run-ins with the law. When he left Lake Henry, his drive took the more positive path of competitiveness in sports, in school, in work. The last culminated in the debacle at the Post, however, after which his need to make a name for himself had been muted.

  With the prospect of writing this book, the drive was back. Yes, he wanted to make a name for himself. What journalist didn’t? But he had a conscience now. At least, he assumed conscience was behind the restraint he felt when he pictured Lily Blake standing there on her porch, in her long ivory gown and her grandmother’s shawl. He did understand what she felt. If he could help her exact revenge at the same time that he redeemed himself—both as a writer and a human being—what could be better?

  John had taken care on his approach to Celia’s cottage, meandering along the shore in a show of looking for loons, and he returned the same way, with the kind of nonchalant motoring that lakefront residents knew him for. He moseyed along until he was four properties down the shoreline, then he headed for the middle of the lake, picking up speed.

  Ten minutes later he guided the boat back to shore and tied it up beside his canoe, at the ratty patch of wood he called his dock. One day he would tear it down and put out a handsome planked dock. At the end would be a big square with a canopy roof to provide shade for a desk, a chair, and a typewriter. He would write there while the sun streamed in over the water and loons floated nearby. If it rained, he would unroll an isinglass window or two.

  It was a Hemingway image, he thought, not entirely unfitting for a guy reputed to be a distant cousin of Rudyard Kipling.

  Securing the boat, he removed a second bag of groceries, put it in his truck, slid in behind the wheel, and set off. The air was brisk but he kept his windows down. It was another stellar fall day, another day to appreciate the brilliance of foliage whose height of color was yet a week or two away. He passed private roads that led to Mully Point and Seizer Bay, then, farther on, to Gemini Beach and Lemon Cove. Thissen Cove came next. He was acutely aware of passing the narrow drive that led there, and for the briefest instant wondered if Lily would flee.

  He had taken a calculated risk in going to see her. But if the look on her face meant anything, he had figured correctly. She had nowhere else to go, and she knew it.

  Satisfied, he drove on around the lake. Lake Henry center was buzzing. If people weren’t fetching mail at the post office, they were buying supplies at Charlie’s or pulling in at the end of the parking area behind it. There sat the police station, the church, and the library, left to right. All three were of white wood with black shutters. Each played multiple roles. The police station was a long, single-storied frame structure that also housed the town clerk, the town registrar, and social services. The library, a square Federal, rented out its generous third floor to the Lake Henry Commission. The Historical Society worked out of the basement of the church, which stood tall, venerable, and proud.

  Today the Historical Society was having a plant and shrub sale, which meant that there were many cars and trucks backed up to the church, and they would not be quick to leave. Plant and shrub sales in Lake Henry—like bake sales, or art sales, or garage sales—were for socializing as much as anything else. There were as many people standing outside their vehicles, chatting in clusters, waving to friends, as there were buying plants and shrubs.

  John scanned the cars and trucks, picking out an unfamiliar one or two. Tourists passing through? he wondered. The media in disguise? He skimmed the crowd for cameras but didn’t see a one. Not today. Not yet.

  Relieved, he drove on out of the center of town to the fork where Ridge Road broke off from the main. Symbolic, it was, that break. The road was different from there on. The same frost heaves had cracked it as had cracked the rest of the town’s roads, yet these cracks seemed deeper, the resulting bumps larger. The ground was no drier here than in lower Lake Henry, but his tires kicked up dirt that put a tired look on everything in sight. Maples here were more burnt than orange, birches more jaundiced than yellow. Even the hemlock boughs sagged, as though they had too much weight to bear.

  The lake might smell of autumn, the town center might smell of whatever was hot on Charlie’s grill, but the Ridge inevitably smelled bad. If it wasn’t a plumbing problem, it was a trash problem or a fire problem. Something was always burning out—a fan belt, a fuse, an insignificant little motor that stunk up the place—and the smell lingered, because the a
ir didn’t circulate well here. With the lake on one side and the hill on another, odors just sat.

  The Ridge was actually a long, broad ledge etched into the hills several hundred feet above the lake. A road marked the lakeside. On the hillside were rows of small, tin-roofed, three-room homes, built at the turn of the century by the owners of the mill to house their employees. Back then, it hadn’t been a bad place to live. The Winslows, who owned the mill, were kind and conscientious. They had kept the homes painted and repaired, added insulation, removed debris, kept bracken cleared to make way for grass so that the children would have a safe place to play. The fourth generation of Winslows running the mill were kind and conscientious, too. In the late sixties, when freedom became a national watchword, they were one of the first businesses to give its employees a piece of the profit. As part of the plan—considered extraordinarily altruistic at the time—they sold those little homes to their occupants for a dollar apiece.

  The Ridge went downhill from there. The pride that initially kept things going gradually went the way of interest and money. Increasingly, broken windows were covered with boards, broken stairs were walked around. Tin roofs rusted, paint peeled, shutters slipped, cars stopped running and lay where they fell—and none of it for lack of know-how. After automation cut employment at the mill, the small homes had been taken over by menial laborers. They were paid to keep Lake Henry running smoothly, but by the time they reached home, their energy was spent. In its place was an ugly brew of boredom, frustration, and anger at the limits of their lives. So these men who were good with their hands put them to crueler use here. The bulk of the efforts of the Lake Henry Police Department was spent responding to domestic violence on the Ridge.

  There was a book in the Ridge. John knew that. Between past and present there were several books. But there wasn’t one he could write. He was too close.

  Cresting the rise now, he could barely see the rows of ramshackle homes, hidden among the trees like ticks on a dog. But the dog was mangy. And mean. John had barely passed the first of the people sitting on crooked porch steps when they turned to stare.

  He had betrayed the Ridge by moving to the lake. No matter that one of their own had moved up in the world. No matter that he tried to help those who remained. No matter that he used the paper to lobby on their behalf. The sight of him reminded them of everything they couldn’t be. Out of sight was out of mind, and the feeling was mutual. John had begged his father to live with him down on the lake, but Gus Kipling had nixed that idea with the same disdain he showed for everything John did. So John bit the bullet and visited him here twice a week, more often if there was a problem and Dulcey Hewitt called.

  Dulcey lived next door to Gus. She had three young children and a hard shell. She had to have that to put up with Gus, even though John paid her to do it.

  Girding himself, John pulled up at his father’s home. It had been his home once too, but memory hurt. So, as with the Ridge itself, he distanced himself. As he saw it now, the house was all Gus’s. Neither John nor his mother nor his brother lived here. John had gone so far as to change its looks, painting it a steel blue, adding a wraparound porch, planting the front yard with hardy shrubs that wouldn’t die of Gus’s neglect.

  With the grocery bag in his arm, he left the truck, crossed the porch, and opened the front door. The place was a mess, but that was nothing new. Gus liked clutter. John was forever amazed that a man who had trouble walking could create so much havoc in such a short time. Dulcey was forever telling John about it, full of apology, since Gus made it look like she was never in, when, in fact, she neatened up twice a day. At least the place was clean under the clutter.

  “Gus?” he called. Setting the bag down in the tiny kitchen, he checked the bedroom and the bathroom. Returning to the kitchen, he opened the back door and something inside him twisted and pulled. His father was at the very back of the tiny yard, a bent beanpole of a white-haired creature shuffling through knee-high grass, carrying a fieldstone that medical science said he should no longer be able to lift.

  “Christ,” John whispered, trotting down the steps and across the yard. Loudly, he said, “What are you doing, Dad?”

  Gus eased his stone down on a ragged wall of similar stones, pushed and shoved until it was turned one way, then another, finally hauled it up, and started limping back through the tall grass. When John tried to take it from him, he pulled it in close and shuffled off in another direction.

  “You’re supposed to be weak,” John reminded him. “You’re supposed to be letting your heart recover.”

  “Fa what?” Gus grumbled in a cracked voice. He stopped at another patch of wall and deposited the stone with the kind of thunk that would have been unthinkable in his heyday. “If I cahn’t lay stone, I’d as soon be dead.”

  “You retired two years ago.”

  “You said that, sonny. Not me. You painted my house. You bought rugs an’ a sofa. You bought a microwave. A television. A compu-tuh. I don’t want none a it,” he growled with the wave of a gnarled hand. “All’s I want’s my stone.” With an effort, he turned around the one he had carried. He pushed it to the left, then the right. Then he swore and muttered, “Damned thruf-tuh don’t fit.”

  John had watched his father enough to know how a stone wall was built. Two rows of stones determined the depth of the wall. To enhance stability, every six feet along the length, masons added a single larger stone that spanned the depth. That stone was called a thrufter.

  “Useta get it right the feust time,” Gus spewed under his breath. “Now cahn’t do it a-tall. Not the feust time, not the tenth.” He lifted a leg and kicked the wall with a booted foot. The recoil set him back on his butt on the grass.

  John hurried to help him back up, but it was a slow process, as physically painful for Gus as it was emotionally painful for John. He remembered a hardy man, a tireless one who worked from sunup to sundown, picking just the right piece of stone for a particular part of a wall, positioning it, moving it to a better spot, finding the best possible arrangement with the rest both for fit and for looks. Gus Kipling’s stonework was more artistic than stonework had a right to be.

  Now he was a grizzled old man, wrinkled from sun, snow, and scowls, scarred from years of physical work. He had been handsome once, but his face had settled crookedly with age, leaving one eye higher and more open than the other. Most people backed away from the orneriness of it. John thought it made him look sadder.

  It was a minute before Gus was steady on his feet, another before he yanked his elbow free of John’s grasp.

  John went to the stone that wasn’t right. “Tell me where you want it.”

  “You cahn’t do it!” Gus bellowed. “It’s my job.”

  John backed off while Gus fussed over the stone, but the nudges he gave it were weaker now, his head and shoulders more bent. He was clearly unhappy, not with one rock alone, but with life as a whole. His doctor called it borderline depression and said it was common among the elderly, but that didn’t make it any easier for John to watch. Gus had been this way for a while.

  “How about a beer?” he asked after a while of watching Gus’s back. The old man was facing the wall and didn’t look to be doing much of anything but stewing.

  He grunted. “One a day’s all I get. If I have it now, what’s fa latuh?”

  “You can have two today,” John decided. He took off for the house and returned with two long-necks from the fridge. He handed one to Gus and sat nearby on the wall.

  Gus stood in the tall grass. His feet were planted wide, minimizing his sway when he tipped back his head and took a long guzzle. He hitched the bottom of the bottle toward the wall. “You can walk on that, y’know.”

  “I know.”

  “Cahn’t walk on everyone’s wall. Some’d fall apaht.”

  “Yup.”

  “Too bad you nevuh could get the hang a this kinda weuk.”

  John could never get the hang of it because Gus would never show him. He was e
ither too involved, too impatient, or too rushed. So John had watched from a distance, and even then had picked up a lot. He knew which stones came from where by their color, knew that the best stones had flat areas and angles, knew that the laying surface was as important to stability as the showing surface was to looks, knew not to ever, ever split a stone.

  “This is aht,” Gus announced. “What you do with that papuh ain’t aht.”

  John let the dig go. “Did Donny ever work with you?” he asked. The doctor had suggested getting the old man to talk, and the issue of Donny needed airing.

  Gus made a noncommittal sound and took another swig of his beer.

  “He said he would have liked to go into the business with you.”

  “He was dyin’. What else’s he gonna say?”

  “He could’ve said he hated your guts. Instead, he said he wanted to work with you. I’d call that a compliment.”

  Gus shot him a cockeyed look. “What uh you up to?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You nevuh done anythin’ in life for nothin’.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Always aftuh somethin’. Always wantin’ to be bigguh ’n’ bettuh.”

  John looked off to the side. They’d been through this before, he and Gus. It went nowhere, at least nowhere John wanted to be. Quietly, he said, “I think about Donny a lot. That’s all.”

  “What’s the point? He’s dead.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry about that.”

  “I find that hahd to b’lieve.”

  “Because I bullied him? Well, I’m sorry for that, too.”

  Gus grunted. That, and the cry of a baby several houses over, were the only sounds of life. Birds didn’t sing here. They seemed to sense they’d be shot long before they’d be given a crust of stale bread.

  “Have you been following the Lily Blake thing?” John asked.

  Gus made a sputtering sound, meant to be a denial, but John wasn’t buying. For a man who claimed not to watch television, Gus occasionally betrayed himself with a comment that was a little too knowing.