Dead Meat

by William G. Tapply

  Her laugh was low, deep in her throat, cynical, wry, and it made me uncomfortable. “I am not naive, Brady,” she said.

  “And I am, huh?”

  “Yes, you are. For a lawyer it’s pretty unusual. It’s a lovable trait.”

  I harrumphed my disagreement but didn’t say anything.

  “I don’t suspect,” she continued. “I assume. See, that’s the difference between us. You’re naive. You assume the best. Innocent until proven guilty. That stuff. Well, not me. Tiny has a lady friend. It’s pretty evident. It’s kinda cute, actually. A couple days before he leaves to see her, I can tell it’s coming. He gets tense. Becomes polite and considerate of my feelings. Out of character. Then, when he figures he’s got me softened up, he announces, and it’s always when there’s other people around so we won’t really be able to discuss it, he says, ‘Oh, by the way, honey, I’ll be flying out with Gib tomorrow, just for the day. Business, you know.’ And when he gets back he’s—he’s cordial, formal, very proper with me, as if I were an important stranger.” She snorted a little laugh through her nose. “As if I had no idea what was going on.”

  “I wouldn’t jump to conclusions,” I said lamely.

  “Jump? Shit. It took me a year to figure it out. I didn’t jump. I took many small, careful steps. Anyway, it doesn’t matter one way or another. He’ll be gone tomorrow, and we’ll go fishing, and then you can tell me whether Woody’s any better at guidin’ than me.”

  The summer sun burned away the morning mists and beat down brutally on the lake. By eight o’clock, when breakfast was over and Gib and Tiny had taxied away from the dock in Gib’s Cessna, the temperature had already reached eighty. No breeze relieved the heat. Raven Lake was a mirror, except in the coves, where thermal tricks sucked the air gently across the top of the water, corrugating its surface.

  I lugged my fishing equipment down to the dock. Marge had maneuvered the canoe around to the side, where we could load it easily. I handed the gear down to her. A big wicker basket sat on the dock. I had to use both hands to lift it.

  “What’s in here, the anchor?”

  She grinned. “Just lunch stuff. You’ll see.”

  “A basketful of skillets, then.”

  I eased myself into the canoe and cast us off from the dock.

  “Lousy day for fishing,” said Marge as she shoved us off toward the middle of the lake with a strong thrust of her paddle. “Salmon’ll be down deep.”

  “Maybe we should just concentrate on the bass,” I said.

  “We’ll catch us some salmon,” she said. “Just have to work a little for them. Good guidin’ll make the difference. I know a place.”

  I was nestled in the bow, facing backward for the run downlake. Marge sat in the stern to run the motor. She wore a plaid cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up over her elbows, short cutoff blue jeans, tennis shoes without socks, and a man’s felt hat, with the brim pulled low over her forehead.

  She gave the engine rope a yank, and it sputtered to life. Then she turned to face forward, hunched in what looked like a familiar position, her left elbow cocked up behind her to handle the steering and her right arm resting casually across her smoothly tanned thigh. She squinted her eyes against the reflected glare of the sun and smiled at me. She mouthed something to me, which was lost in the roar of the outboard motor. I thought she said, “Tallyho!” I responded with a grin and a thumbs-up sign. She rolled her eyes, and I knew I had misunderstood her. I shrugged apologetically. She shook her head in mock disgust.

  After a ten-minute run she cut the motor. The sudden absence of engine noise was startling, and we drifted for several moments without speaking, unwilling to destroy the silence.

  Marge took up a paddle and steered us to a spot perhaps a hundred feet from shore, off a point of land. “There’s a ledge that runs out here,” she said softly, respectful of the quiet. “Drops off quick on either side. We’ll anchor on top of it, and we can cast parallel to the dropoff. Salmon like to lie here on a day like this.” She took bearings from the shore, grunted her satisfaction, and let the anchor over the side, paying out line through both hands. “There,” she said, as the line went slack. “Perfect.”

  She took a couple of half hitches with the anchor line onto a thwart. Then she picked up her fly rod. “You gonna fish, Counselor, or are you gonna sunbathe?”

  “Gonna fish.”

  “This is Woody’s place.” She stripped line off her reel and began to cast. “He took me here once. Day like this. Rest of the lake was dead far as salmon were concerned. We done real good that day,” she drawled in a poor imitation of Woody. “Everyone else got skunked. So we agreed. Neither of us’d show it to anybody else. It was our place. Mine and Woody’s. I don’t think he’d mind if I shared it with you, though.”

  “I’m not so sure,” I said.

  “Brady?”

  “Yes?”

  “You don’t think Woody killed that man, do you?”

  “No, I don’t. Do you?”

  She stared at the lake thoughtfully for a moment. “I want to,” she said finally. “It makes me feel like a traitor, but I want it to be Woody.”

  “I think I understand.”

  “See,” she continued, “in my heart I don’t believe it. But if it wasn’t Woody, then it was someone else, right? And if it was someone else, that frightens me. Because that someone else…”

  “Sure.”

  “They’re still here,” she finished. “That’s why nobody wants to say that Woody didn’t do it.”

  I nodded. There was nothing more to say.

  We fished hard for more than an hour without a strike. Marge cast comfortably and accurately, and she didn’t seem to tire. Once we saw a dimple on the surface of the water, maybe eighty feet away, equidistant from Marge and me. It could have been a tiny baitfish. Or it could have been a monster salmon, sucking in a floating insect.

  She glanced sideways at me from under the brim of her hat. “My fish,” she said.

  “Like hell,” I replied. We both took aim at the disappearing rings. It was a long cast for a fly rod, maximum distance for a strong caster with properly balanced equipment. I dropped my streamer fly on the edge of the nearest widening ripple. Marge’s landed five or six feet beyond mine, almost a bull’s eye.

  The fish, whatever it had been, ignored both of our flies.

  “That,” I said, “was one helluva cast.”

  “For a woman, you mean,” she said.

  “That is not what I meant, and it is not what I said.”

  She shrugged, but I could see her smile as she turned away from me.

  A few minutes later Marge muttered, “Hey, there. Little tipdipper, huh? Come on, big fella.” An instant later she cried, “Ha!”

  Her rod bowed as something strong and heavy began to rip the line from her reel. She held the rod over her head with both hands, using a finger of her left hand to increase the drag of the reel. When she turned the fish, it bolted toward the surface and leaped high out of water.

  “A noble fish,” I commented.

  Marge grunted, too deep in concentration to respond.

  She finally brought the spent salmon alongside the canoe. I reached down with the long-handled net and scooped him out. “Five and a half pounds, easy,” I said, extending the net to her so she could remove her fish.

  She used the mesh of the net to help her grip the fish behind his gills. She twisted the fly gently from the corner of his mouth and then jerked her head at me. I lowered the net into the water and flipped it over, releasing the big salmon.

  Marge sat there in the stern of the canoe, panting and grinning. Her forehead glistened with perspiration. “Imagine living in a city,” she said. She reached over the side of the canoe with her hat, scooped it full of water, and replaced it on top of her head. The frigid lake water cascaded down the front of her, soaking her shirt and plastering it to the front of her. It made her breasts stand out against the wet fabric. She wore no bra. I could see how
the cold water had hardened her nipples.

  “Wow!” she breathed. “That is some cold.”

  “A pretty piece of angling,” I observed.

  “Mmm,” she said. “Ready for some lunch?”

  “Aye, aye, Skipper.”

  She hauled up the anchor and paddled us to shore. She beached the canoe, and I climbed out and held it steady for her while she moved down the length of it. She put her hand on my shoulder to brace herself as she stepped out.

  Our luncheon site was a sandy little spit of land. Several tall pine trees shaded us from the high sun, but the place was exposed enough to allow what there was of a breeze to waft through, cooling us and clearing away the blackflies.

  I went on a firewood search while Marge unloaded her basket and moved some rocks together for the fireplace. When I returned with a big armload of wood, she had already set out on a blanket a plate containing a pleasing arrangement of three different cheeses and crackers. She held two goblets of white wine in her hand.

  She passed me one of the glasses. “To this place,” she toasted.

  “Amen,” I murmured.

  “You just sit tight, now,” she told me after sipping her wine. “I’m gonna make you a lunch the likes of which you have never tasted on the shores of this or any other lake.”

  She built a big fire, and we sat away from it while it burned down to coals. By then the wine bottle was nearly empty. “Don’t worry,” said Marge. “I brought another.”

  She fished it out of the basket and handed it to me, along with a corkscrew. I twisted out the cork and refilled our glasses. Marge removed a big black skillet from that seemingly bottomless basket. She set it atop the rocks over the coals. She put in a whole stick of margarine. After it had begun sizzling, she tossed in three or four garlic cloves. When their aroma burst forth, she removed a small cooler from the basket. From it she took out a plastic bag that was filled with small white Y-shaped pieces of meat. “Kept ’em on ice,” she said as she dropped them into the skillet.

  I leaned forward and frowned. I couldn’t tell what she was cooking. She noticed and grinned. “Grenouilles,” she said.

  I shrugged.

  “Coscie di rana.”

  “No hablo,” I said.

  “Frogs’ legs. Caught ’em myself last night.”

  “Delicious,” I said. “Love ’em.”

  She splashed some wine into the skillet, lifted it by its handle, and rocked it back and forth, mingling the juices. Then she used a long-handled fork to turn them over.

  She dove back into the cooler and came out with a small bunch of asparagus spears. “Catch them last night, too?” I said.

  “Had Bud bring ’em back from Greenville. They’re in season. Native and fresh.”

  She stirred them frequently, and after a couple of minutes she announced, “Chow time.”

  She handed me a plate from her basket. Real china. I held it while she loaded it up with frogs legs and asparagus. Then I held her plate for her so she could serve herself.

  Finally, she brought forth a round loaf of hard bread. She broke off a piece and handed the loaf to me.

  I topped off our wineglasses. We clicked them together. Our eyes met over the rims. Marge was not smiling. “To good food,” I said.

  “To this day,” she answered somberly.

  We ate slowly, talking little. It was the kind of meal that deserved to be savored and contemplated, and it took a conscious effort of will to restrain my appetite and normal gluttonous approach to dining.

  We sat cross-legged on the blanket, side by side, plates balanced on our laps, needing more than two hands apiece to steady the plate, manipulate a fork, hold a glass, and maneuver a chunk of bread among the juices of the meal.

  When we had finished, I poured more wine into our glasses. “That,” I proclaimed, “was elegant.”

  Her eyes stared into mine. “I wanted it to be memorable.”

  I grinned. “Frogs’ legs! Damn!”

  She stood up abruptly. “Gotta clean up,” she mumbled, turning away from me.

  She scraped the little frog bones into the coals, which crackled briefly into flames. Then she gathered the dishes and the skillet and took them to the water’s edge. I doused the fire and then dropped onto the blanket, lying back on my elbows.

  She returned a moment later, wiping her hands on the fronts of her thighs. “Any wine left?”

  “A little.”

  She knelt beside me and found her glass. I sat up, filled it, and lay back again.

  She lifted it to her mouth, watching me. “Brady?”

  “You want a cigarette?”

  She frowned, then shrugged. “Sure.”

  She sat back on her heels while I lit cigarettes for us. She took one from my hand and puffed at it quickly. “Listen,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “I think…”

  She reached over and placed two fingers gently on my lips. “Shh,” she said. “Don’t talk, for once. Listen. Okay?”

  I rolled my eyes and nodded.

  “You are thinking I brought you here to seduce you. Right?”

  I shrugged.

  “Well, it’s true. I did. And you are thinking that I am trying to recapture something that happened between me and Tiny Wheeler twenty-odd years ago. You don’t have to say anything. You aren’t all that dumb. So you’ve got this whole scene psyched out, being a smart city lawyer and all. And you’re Tiny’s friend and Vern’s attorney, and the last damn thing you need is to get messed up with this horny country wife who’s been neglected for too long, but you’re too much of a gentleman to straight out turn me down, because you don’t know how to do it without doing something bad to what’s left of my dignity, probably not being accustomed to turning down an easy lay in the first place. Am I making any sense here?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, good. And you’re thinking that this broad who just turned forty must need piles of reassurance that she’s still attractive and sexy, and you’d really like to find a way to give her that without getting otherwise involved. And you’re pretty damn sure that if we stripped down and coupled right here by the lake, we’d end up getting involved, knowing the horny broad in question as well as you do. So you’re figuring you’ve got two alternatives. Wanna hear them?”

  “Sure. I guess so.”

  “I was gonna tell you, anyway. The first one is, give in, do it, and damn the torpedoes, which you’d like to do—I think—right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “What’s the other alternative?”

  “The only other thing is to act like a real shit so I’ll get pissed off and you won’t have to spurn me because I’ll spurn you. Have I got it?”

  I smiled and shook my head slowly. “You’re actually way ahead of me. But, yeah, that’s about it, Marge.”

  “And I’m way ahead of you,” she said, “because I knew all that a long time ago. Before today, even.” With her forefinger she dug a little hole in the ground and shoved her cigarette butt into it. Then she took mine from me and did the same. She turned to face me. She put a hand on my chest and pushed me so that I lay flat on my back. She knelt beside me, her bare leg against the side of my chest, and placed her hands on either side of my head. She bent so that her face was only inches from mine.

  “You,” she said softly, “you think this is a big moral issue.” I could feel her breath cool on my face, the sweetness of the wine mingled with the acid smell of tobacco. “It’s not, my friend. This has nothing to do with Tiny. You’re worried about Tiny. I know that. He’s your friend. Okay. He’s my husband. So Tiny is my problem, not yours. This isn’t a moral thing, Brady Coyne. It has nothing to do with anything or anyone else. It’s just you and me.”

  “Look,” I said.

  “No,” she said. Her mouth lowered itself onto mine. It was a soft kiss, tentative, a mere brushing of lips, quick, instinctive, and then a flicker of tongues. Abruptly she moved away. She sat back on her heels, smiling.

  I rolled up onto one e
lbow and made a big show of searching for a cigarette. I found my pack behind where Marge was squatting. I snaked my arm carefully behind her to avoid touching her. Then I did what I usually do when I don’t know what I really should do. I lit a cigarette.

  Which goes a long way to explaining why I smoke too much.

  I avoided looking at Marge for as long as I could. When I finally shifted my eyes to her, I saw that she had stopped smiling.

  I took a deep breath. “Jesus, Marge.”

  She narrowed her eyes and thrust her chin at me. “You gonna say something about the fickleness of women? Got a smartass comment to make, Counselor?”

  “I certainly know better than to make generalizations about women,” I said. “Because every time I make one, I get taught that it’s wrong. I will tell you one thing, though.”

  “And what is that?”

  “If seduction was your aim, lady, consider it an unmitigated success.”

  She stood up quickly and turned away. I sat there puffing stupidly at my cigarette and watched her walk down to the lake. She held her shoulders rigid and barely moved her hips. I figured I’d said the wrong thing again.

  Thirteen

  HAPPY HOUR, AS TINY CALLED it, had already begun, and I was rocking on the porch when I heard the distant whine of Gib’s Cessna. Lew Pike was perched up on the railing by my feet. Somehow he managed to chew tobacco, drink beer, and tell stories all at the same time, which I found remarkable.

  “That’ll be Gib,” Pike drawled without turning or otherwise missing a beat in his tale, which had something to do with a porcupine that had acquired a taste for leather boots.

  Several minutes later the plane skidded down and taxied up to the dock. I watched idly as Gib bounced out and made fast to the dock. Then Tiny climbed out. The two of them sauntered up the path toward the lodge.

  They both nodded at Lew and me as they went inside. Moments later Gib came back out. He stood there, holding a drink in his hand, waiting for a pause in Lew’s seemingly interminable story, the point, I gradually discerned, being that no goldurn porcupine could outsmart ol’ Lew Pike, by God.

  “Got a minute, man?” said Gib to me.