Alone on the Shield

by Kirk Landers

  “How long have you felt like this?”

  “Since I came home from Vietnam to a country run by a bunch of phony, draft-dodging cowards.” Pender shook his head. “Goddamn. I thought everyone was there, but most people were back here, getting the good jobs, partying, getting laid.”

  “That’s a long time to carry a grudge.”

  Pender shrugged. “Most of the time you bury it. Just put it in a dark corner of your mind and get on with things.”

  “What’s different now?”

  Pender thought awhile and smiled ironically. “The anger’s all that’s left. All the things I focused on all these years are gone. My career. My wife. My daughter’s on her own. I have money in the bank, but in every other way, I’m bankrupt.”

  Bewilderment swept over Pender’s face. “Where did it go?”

  The therapist’s eyebrows arched in question. “You have money and freedom. How bad can it be?”

  “I’m sixty years old, and I don’t have a reason to get up in the morning. And when I get up, I have no place to go.”

  “Have you considered taking up a hobby or volunteering? Or maybe traveling?”

  Pender shrugged. “I’m planning a trip. But it’s not like I have a place I’d rather be. It’s that I can’t stand it where I am.”

  The therapist stared at him for a long moment. “Where are you going?” he said finally.

  “I’m heading up to Ontario. I’m going to spend a month or so in a canoe wilderness called Quetico.”

  “And after that?”

  “Who knows?” said Pender. “I won’t be coming back here. Maybe I’ll take a train to Prince Edward Island, poke around ’til I get bored or someone runs me out of town. I could go on to Paris. I think I’d look good in a beret, sipping coffee at a sidewalk table, maybe faking like I’m an artist up on Montmartre. What do you think?”

  “Canoeing by yourself sounds dangerous. Aren’t there bears and wolves up there?”

  “You never see the wolves, and the bears are mostly shy, like big dogs. I’ve been soloing up there for years. This is just a longer stretch than usual. I’ll have one break in the monotony. I’ll be meeting an old girlfriend for a few days. I haven’t seen her in forty years.”

  “A romantic liaison?”

  “No. I’m looking in on some old friends on this trip. When I found out Annette was up in Atikokan, I added her to the list. She agreed, so we’re meeting at her favorite island.”

  “Forty years is a long time,” said the therapist. “I’m surprised you still remembered her.”

  Pender glanced away, focusing on a book-lined wall. “I did my best to forget her, but there were a lot of dark nights in Vietnam, sitting in the rain, getting your mind off the bugs and the jungle rot. You had to see with your eyes and hear with your ears, but you needed to do something with your mind so you wouldn’t go crazy. My mind kept coming back to her.”

  “What happened between you?”

  Pender thought for a moment. “Ah, stupid mistake. Not the only one in my life. It’ll be nice to see her.”

  “Does she know about your anger issues?”

  “Sure. We’ve been exchanging e-mails for a while, and I don’t keep secrets. But she knows I’m no threat to her.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She’s not a bully.”

  The therapist’s timer chimed softly, signaling the end of the session.

  “Mr. Pender,” said the therapist, “whatever you think of me or my motives for seeing you, I assure you that you are in need of further therapy. Eight sessions aren’t enough to get into your issues, but if you were staying with me, we’d explore the possibility that you are suffering from the delayed onset of posttraumatic stress disorder.”

  “My war was four decades ago.”

  “Don’t kid yourself. It happens. And beyond that, war isn’t the only condition that can cause PTSD. Whatever the cause, you have deep-seated anger issues. You have a tendency to blow up at others, and I worry that you may be a danger to yourself. You need counseling.”

  “I don’t believe in God, and I don’t believe in head-shrinking. How about you tell the company I’m not going to hurt anyone, and I’ll make my way swiftly out of the country.”

  The therapist shook his head. “I’ll tell your former employer we’ve gone as far as we can and that I’ve recommended further therapy and you have resolved to avoid physical confrontations in the future.”

  The therapist considered him for a moment, like he had more to say. Pender waited.

  “You can’t walk away from everything,” the therapist said finally. “It’s all part of you. You need to stay connected.”

  “To what?”

  “Your daughter, for example. You should reach out to her.”

  “She barely knows I exist. She’ll be fine with me disappearing. It’ll save her the Christmas card and birthday phone call.”

  “From what you’ve told me, I’d say she may be trying to get your attention. It happens that way sometimes with kids and parents. She may want you to show you love her. If you can’t see her before you go, at least write to her. Help her understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.”

  Pender stared at the therapist, silent, like he’d just seen the earth move and was trying to understand it.

  “Mr. Pender?” the therapist asked gently.

  Pender focused on him and smiled self-consciously. “Sorry. You’re right. Maybe I’ll keep a journal for her. I’ll tell her about Quetico and why wilderness matters. And I’ll tell her who I am, really.”

  “I hope she reads it.”

  Pender shrugged indifferently. His moment of introspection had passed. “Maybe she will, maybe she won’t. I’ll write it and take what comes.”

  “Good luck, Mr. Pender. I hope you find some kind of inner peace someday.”

  Pender stood and offered a handshake to the therapist. “I wonder who I’d be if I had inner peace.”

  * * *

  Pender drove directly to his shell of an apartment. His footsteps raised echoes as he entered the barren dwelling. It was his divorce abode, a temporary residence to give him shelter while he decided where to live next. The living room contained an old couch, a table and a chair, and, incongruously, a sleek solo canoe, a wilderness tripper in uncoated Kevlar, light and fast, more than seventeen feet long, and bearing the scratches and scars of repeated encounters with rocky shores and submerged shoals. His sleeping bag and pad lay in the middle of the bedroom floor, along with a duffel bag and two large voyageur packs filled with all his earthly possessions except the scarred laptop on the table.

  He sat at the table and stared into space. He tried to visualize his life from now on, but the only thing left other than the routine minutiae was the trip to Quetico. At least that event would be different this time. No deadlines. And a date with his college girlfriend. It had seemed like such a great idea when they set it up, but as he pondered it now, he knew it would be another disappointment. They had nothing in common but a forty-year-old memory and a passion for paddling alone into the Quetico wilderness. Still, it wasn’t like he had anything else to do.

  He fired up the computer, logged on to his e-mail account, and wrote a message to Annette Blain, the former Annette DuBose, the first love of his life who turned out to own a business on the edge of Quetico, the second love of his life.

  “Leaving in the morning. See you on the island August 10. —Pender.”

  He shut down the computer and surveyed the stark confines around him. It was so like the prison of his life. He sighed. Empty. Meaningless. How could the future be any worse?

  2

  Annette crossed her arms as soon as he started talking. The man had manic eyes, and his body was as tense as a drawn hunting bow.

  “I want to make you rich,” he said. He smiled wide, lips thin and tight. There was no sincerity in his words and something more like menace in his body language. This was a canned sales pitch that worked with people who could be over
powered by his dominance. Like a television preacher who could convert the weak into paying parishioners, and who ignored everyone else because the converts were all that mattered.

  Annette crossed her legs and raised her eyebrows skeptically.

  “I’m going to make you a great offer for your cabins. More than you ever dreamed you’d get.”

  “They’re not for sale,” said Annette. “I would have saved us both some time if I’d known that’s what you wanted.”

  “Hear me out, Ms. Blain,” he said. Smooth, unruffled, like he knew she was going to say that. “This is perfect for both of us. I need an office for my fly-in cabin business, and I need a place to put up clients before and after their trips. This is the perfect place.” He said it like she was supposed to clap and be glad. She didn’t and she wasn’t.

  The man got more intense, leaning across the table a little. “You don’t need the cabins anymore. You run the biggest outfitting business in northwest Ontario. You’ve arrived! Sell the cabins to me, and you can live in town and concentrate on the canoe business. And you’ll have hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank just waiting for when you want to head for Florida.”

  “Florida is my idea of hell,” said Annette. “The cabins aren’t for sale.”

  “You don’t want to be rich?” The man tried to grin, but his face formed something more like a leering grimace.

  “How rich were you going to make me, Mr. . . .” Annette’s question tapered off as she tried to remember his name.

  “Williams. Dwight Williams.” He wasn’t perturbed at all and didn’t pause even to take a breath. “I have a cashier’s check right here for three hundred thousand Canadian dollars.”

  “I’m supposed to jump up and down at that price?” Annette was deliberately incredulous.

  “That’s a fair offer!” Williams insisted.

  “I could get that just by making a phone call, probably a lot more.”

  “Not with the recession in the U.S.,” said Williams. “I did my research. Three hundred thousand is what the place is worth. It’s ten times what you paid for it.”

  Annette stood. “When I choose to sell, it will be for more than three hundred thousand. If I get rich from selling, it won’t be because of the buyer; it will be because of what I’ve created. The cabins aren’t for sale.”

  Williams leaned across the table, his face inches from hers, flushed with anger. “Name your price,” he hissed. It was a challenge.

  Annette stood her ground and locked eyes with him. “The cabins aren’t for sale. Our business is done.”

  “You’re selling to the Gilberts, aren’t you?” He said it like an accusation, like a man who found out his wife was cheating on him.

  “My cabins are my business. Please leave.”

  “You don’t understand. I need this property.” His voice was loud now, his face red. “I’m trying to be nice about it.”

  “You have failed, Mr. Williams. Leave. Leave now.”

  As Annette spoke, her daughter stepped into the kitchen, a shotgun in hand.

  “What are you going to do with that, Missy?” Williams laughed. “You gonna shoot me?”

  “She won’t have to,” said Annette. “You’re leaving right now.” Her voice was calm.

  Williams looked from one woman to the other and shrugged. “Didn’t mean to ruffle feathers, ladies. Just trying to make a deal.”

  Annette gestured to the door and followed him out.

  “There are three hotels in town that would be glad to have your clients’ business,” said Annette. “And there are several storefronts available for your office. But I’d advise you to sell your cabins and do something else, somewhere else. Your act won’t play here.”

  “Oh really?” Sarcasm dripped from Williams’s voice.

  Annette nodded. “Don’t be fooled by how friendly everyone is. You get in their faces and you’ll have real trouble. I’m the only person in Atikokan who’d let you walk out of here with your balls still attached to your body.”

  Williams smiled, like he wasn’t impressed, and got in his car. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said, and then drove off, his tires spitting gravel and dirt in his wake.

  Christy was just getting off the phone when Annette walked back to the door.

  “Sorry about the noise, Christy. Were you going to shoot him?”

  “I could shoot a bear, but I’m not sure I could have shot that man.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. Next time just call a neighbor.”

  “I called the Gilberts. I just called back and told them the crisis had passed. They want to hear about it tonight. You guys have a meeting?”

  Annette nodded. The Gilberts were going to offer to buy her out. What was it about the financial crisis that made her modest enterprise so interesting all of a sudden?

  * * *

  Annette and Dan Gilbert sipped cold beers at one of the tables in the trip planning room at Canadian Shield Outfitters.

  It had been a long day for both of them, the midsummer rush—everyone trying to get in their canoe trips or fishing excursions before school started. The building was her favorite indoor place in Atikokan, with rough-hewn pine walls studded with a taxidermist’s zoo of Canadian Shield fish and mammals. The lower reaches of one wall displayed topographical maps for the 1,837 square miles of Quetico Provincial Park, while topo maps for the even vaster White Otter Wilderness Area lined another. The building had the feel of a trapper’s cabin, dim, cozy, lightly scented with the lingering aroma of the morning’s coffee. In winter, the potbelly stove added a hint of wood smoke and heat that drew people together to tell stories.

  Dan’s father and a partner built the place in 1970, the same year Annette and her husband moved to Atikokan. They were draft resisters, ready to start a new life in a wilderness still unsullied by ruthless capitalists and in a country that lived peacefully in the shadow of the U.S. As successful and busy as they were, the Gilberts always had time to answer questions for the young American expats trying to make a go of it on the Shield.

  They talked about families first, especially Annette’s younger daughter, who had endured a sudden divorce and moved back to Atikokan in the dead of winter with a three-year-old daughter in tow.

  “She’s getting her feet back under herself,” said Annette. “But she didn’t see it coming.”

  They let the conversation lapse into silence. It was one of the things she loved about Atikokan. People didn’t feel like they had to fill every minute with talk.

  “How does she like our little arrangement?” Dan was starting to get to the point of the meeting. Annette had been managing CSO’s canoe business since May. It was an intricate arrangement: she also managed her own canoe outfitting business, keeping the brands separate, but running all the customers out of the CSO facility. And her daughter took over the management of Annette’s cabins.

  “She loves it. She can take care of the cabins and see to her daughter at the same time. And Christy likes having her own show to run.”

  “Think she’ll stay?” Dan asked.

  Annette sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t even know what to hope for. I love having her here. Our arrangement with you has been good for both of us. But she’s still young and she’s always been a romantic and there are so few eligible men here . . .”

  Dan nodded in understanding. Atikokan was a hardscrabble town in the middle of the vast Canadian Shield, a wilderness of ancient rocks, bottomless lakes, and sprawling forests interrupted only by bogs and the remnants of surface mines and a few narrow ribbons of roadway. Its population was barely three thousand and falling, and it was the largest community for a hundred miles.

  “I guess you know why I’m asking . . .”

  Annette sighed again. “Yes. And, yes, I like our arrangement. I have more income than I ever had before and Christy has a great situation, but I don’t see this as a long-term arrangement. It’s hard to explain to my clients why they’re getting outfitted at Canadian Shield. I tel
l them that I’m running both canoe businesses and they accept it. But over time I’ll lose my business identity, and it’ll be hard when we separate the businesses again. So I’m hoping you’re going to tell me you’ve found someone to run the canoe business. I promise I won’t cry my eyes out.”

  Dan rubbed his chin and offered a wry smile. “Well, we hope we have someone.”

  He sat forward, elbows on the table. “Here’s the thing. Dad wants to ease off and have me run the business. I can’t do the cabins and the airplanes and the canoe outfitting myself, and the people we’ve interviewed . . . well, the ones who had the qualifications all had baggage. One is a drunk, one I’m pretty sure is a thief, and the others are people who change jobs every couple years for whatever reason. And none of them want to manage the canoe business—they want the cabins, because that’s where the money is.

  “Our canoe business isn’t growing but turns a nice profit. We want to keep it going and we think it can grow a little if the person running it is passionate about the business.”

  Dan Gilbert locked eyes with Annette.

  “So, we’d really like to work out a long-term arrangement with you to run it. You’re smart, you’re honest, customers like you. You love the business. You’ve guided. You know Quetico and White Otter like your backyard. That’s what it takes to make the business go, that and promoting it in the winter. There’s enough money to keep us both happy, especially when we combine your outfitting business with ours. Can we talk about it?”

  Dan had his father’s charm, and his engaging directness. Annette had known him all his life. He and Christy even dated at times during high school, though the school was so small, that was almost inevitable. Annette couldn’t help but smile.

  “I owe you and your family a lot,” she said to him. “And you know I love you guys. But if I go to work for you, I lose my independence. And I’ve had some bad experiences with that.”

  “You mean Rob?” Dan asked, referencing Annette’s ex-husband.