Alone on the Shield

by Kirk Landers

  If he was fishing right now, it would probably be for bass. He said he only fished for food and went for the easiest prey because he wasn’t much good at it. In August that would be smallmouth bass. Warm water and sunlight made walleye fishing more challenging, trout fishing was ridiculous, and no one fished for northerns—you just caught them when you were fishing for something else.

  She wondered if Pender shaved and bathed regularly in the bush, or if he went feral like some trippers. She wondered, with a start, if he was even in the park, if he was really coming to the island, or if he had opted for some other entertainment at the last minute and exercised his male option to do it and not say a word.

  Which was when her pole gradually bowed over and the reel started to whine as it let out line. Annette checked to see if she was drifting, trying to ascertain if she had a fish or a snag deep down below. No wind, hardly even a breeze. It was probably a fish. She kept the line taut and let the drag setting on the reel do its job. The fish could pull off line but only at the expense of a lot of energy. When it paused to rest, she would reel it in. She had no idea how big the fish was. At seventy feet of depth, a goldfish would feel like a whale.

  Fifteen minutes later, she saw the fish for the first time—a fairly large lake trout. Ten feet from the boat, it went on another run, stripping line off the reel like a salt-water game fish. Annette kept the pole tip up to maintain tension in the line and waited for the run to end, then reeled in the fish again. After two more shorter runs, the fish was played out. She brought it in to the side of the canoe for the hard part—getting it in the boat without getting cut on the hook or its teeth. The spoon was clearly visible in the corner of the trout’s mouth. She knelt on the bottom of the boat to keep the canoe’s center of gravity low and then reached under her seat to grasp an orange plastic device with pliers-like jaws for handling toothy fish. She used it to grasp the fish’s lower jaw and plucked it from the water, bracing herself to hang on as the trout flipped powerfully. When it tired, she removed the lure and threaded a stringer through its mouth and gill plate. Maybe eighteen inches, she thought. A feast for two.

  As she tied the stringer to the back of her seat, she noticed Chaos for the first time since the fish hit. He had turned completely to face her—probably while she was boating the fish. His ears were perked and his tail up and wagging, but he was still in a prone position and centered.

  “Oh my, Chaos,” she said to him as she patted his head, “That must have been an excruciating temptation! Good boy!”

  She rinsed off her hands, dried them in the air, and paddled to their last portage of the day. When Chaos tried to rise and turn again—he liked to look forward—she verbally corrected him and readied the paddle for a whack. He obeyed the verbal command.

  * * *

  The trail started with a challenging climb, but otherwise it was an easy hike and less than a quarter mile in length. Annette hauled the canoe and gear pack on the first trip, the fish stringer lashed to the back of the pack. She made the first trip as rapidly as possible and put the fish in shallow water, tied to the canoe, hoping no eagle or bear or otter happened along before she got back with the rest of her gear.

  She was just finishing her second carry when Chaos erupted in a barking frenzy. He was ahead of her, out of her sight, probably in the launch area. The feverish pitch of his barking alarmed her. He wasn’t chasing squirrels. He was trying to scare someone or something. A bear? A couple of innocent paddlers coming the other way? As she broke into a slow jog, Annette half hoped it was a bear. Together they could shoo off a black bear without much problem. But a couple of paddlers, minding their own business, minds focused only on the portage ahead of them, getting scared by a half-crazy dog coming out of nowhere? That could be trouble. Complaint to the park rangers kind of trouble. Bad enough for a regular paddler but really hard to explain for an outfitter.

  She emerged from the forest to the beach area and froze, trying to comprehend the strange tableau in front of her. Her gear lay to one side of the beach where she left it. Chaos was midway between the tree line and the water, still barking, the hackles raised on his back as if he was confronting a grizzly bear. On the beach were the Stuarts—of course, it would have to be customers, the nastiest customers in months. They had landed their canoe and off-loaded some gear. Mrs. Stuart was halfway between the boat and the dog, kneeling, gesturing to Chaos to come to her. Her husband stood at water’s edge, watching, hands on hips, clenched teeth, a sneer on his face.

  “Stop it!” Annette commanded Chaos as she came alongside him. His panicky barking ebbed. She repeated the command, and he gave a couple of intermittent yips and then went quiet. He looked at her and wagged his tail uncertainly. He was ill at ease in the presence of the Stuarts.

  Mrs. Stuart stood silently, still looking at the dog. Her husband flashed a humorless grin.

  “That’s my goddamn dog you have there, Miss.”

  “How long since you’ve seen him?” Annette asked.

  “Three days. Not that it’s any of your business. Just hand him over.” Stuart extended his hand and gestured for Annette to bring him the dog. Like a lord commanding a servant.

  “Why did you abandon him?” Annette held her ground, and the dog stayed with her.

  “That’s none of your business!” The man started to lurch toward her, angry like a bull. In the moment it took him to step forward, Annette dropped the paddles and fishing pole in her hands, unfastened the belt on her pack, and dropped it on the ground behind her. Before he took a second step, she had snatched one of the paddles and brandished it in two hands like a martial arts combatant with a parrying stick. It was reflexive.

  Mrs. Stuart jumped between them, facing her husband. Her health-club body was tense. Annette could just see Mr. Stuart’s angry red face over her shoulder. She could feel his rage.

  “Stop! Stop it right there, George!” Mrs. Stuart said. Her tone was sharp, authoritative. He stopped. His face flushed crimson. Two women giving him lip. But he stayed where he was. He could brush his wife aside if he wanted. He could overwhelm both of them. He was a big man. But his wife’s tone was a warning that there would be repercussions if he did. So he stayed where he was.

  Mrs. Stuart turned to Annette. “The dog kept jumping off the canoe, and he capsized us twice. We lost a lot of gear and a lot of food. George screamed at him and kicked him and wanted to drown him, but he got free and ran off. Abandoning him seemed like his best chance at survival.” She shrugged apologetically.

  Annette stared at the woman for a moment. She hadn’t expected the lady to speak, hadn’t heard her say more than a few words when they were getting ready for the trip. Wouldn’t have guessed she had the strength to stand up to her husband. And another part of Annette’s mind was conscious of how beautiful this middle-aged woman was, even in the bush without makeup and a hairdresser. Smooth complexion, pretty coloring. Was this what she gave up to be a woman of the Ontario wilderness? And Pender. There must be dozens of women like this in Pender’s circles. Even the married ones, some of them, the ones with husbands like Stuart, would be interested in a man like him. When Pender met her he would see a withered shadow of the schoolgirl he once knew, a wilderness granny. Someone you have lunch with, pay the tab and forget about.

  “Why do you want him now?” Annette posed the question to George Stuart. His sneer had given way to a lemon-sucking contortion of lips, eyes, and jaws.

  “Because he’s mine!” he bellowed. “I paid good money for him. He’s mine.”

  “But you don’t even like him,” his wife said.

  “I hate him! But he’s mine. And if I want to drown him or kick him to death, that’s my prerogative.”

  “Not here,” said Annette. “In Ontario we have laws against animal abuse.” She didn’t know if that was true or not, but it should be true. She’d make it true. She’d deal with the consequences later.

  “So you’re stealing my dog?”

  “If your dog wants to go with
you, I won’t stop him,” said Annette. “But he doesn’t look like he wants to go with you, and I’m not going to make him.”

  “So you’re stealing my dog. I’ll press charges. You can count on it.”

  “Stop it, George!” his wife said.

  “Keep out of this. You’ve said enough already.”

  Mrs. Stuart stood her ground. “If you press charges, I’ll give them a statement about what you did to this dog and how this lady saved his life. Now let’s get this godforsaken trip over with!”

  She looked at Annette and shrugged. “We’re going back. We’re low on food, we lost the stove, we don’t have stakes for the tent. We’re in bad shape. We need to cancel the floatplane and pay for the lost gear.”

  Annette nodded sympathetically. “I’m sorry it turned out so bad for you.”

  She looked at the two of them for a moment. “I have a deal for you. I’ll cover the cost of the lost gear in return for the dog.”

  Stuart started to object, but his wife interceded. “Done!” She turned to him, a grim expression on her face. “Well?”

  He flashed an angry grimace and turned away from her, an alpha male’s way of giving up without giving in.

  “Okay,” said Annette. “Now, get your map. I’ll show you a faster way to get out of here.” She sketched a route on their topo map to a closer take-out spot, wrote the Canadian Shield Outfitters phone number on the map, and explained how to use the phone at the take-out.

  “Cancel your floatplane as soon as you get in so you get your deposit back,” she told Mrs. Stuart, “and don’t forget to tell them about our deal on the gear. They’ll believe you.”

  As the Stuarts repacked their canoe, Annette and Lexie exchanged a few pleasantries in passing, enough to make Annette think the lady might be a decent person, despite the roaring jerk she was married to. When George went into the woods to pee, Annette smiled at the woman and said, “This is a special place for the right people. You ought to get together with an adventurous girlfriend or two and come up here for a ladies-only trip.”

  “You’d take us after all this?” The woman gestured with her hand at the dog and the woods where her husband had gone.

  “Hey, I’ve been married. I’d never hold a woman’s husband against her.” They laughed. “You seem like a good person. And if you want your dog back, I’d surrender him to you.”

  “He’s better off with you,” Mrs. Stuart said, her eyes misty.

  They shook hands, just as Stuart emerged from the forest, still glowering. “Let’s go,” he said, gesturing to his wife, ignoring Annette altogether.

  Annette watched them leave. She wondered if Mrs. Stuart would really consider coming up here on her own someday. Not likely. But she would have fun if she did. What the heck. Just having a week away from Mr. Hotshot would have to be a great vacation.

  14

  Annette waited until the Stuarts were out of sight and then launched her canoe into the crystalline blue waters of the big lake. It was one of the great jewels of Quetico, a long, winding bottomless lake that stretched more than twenty miles across the northwest quadrant of the park. Paddlers experienced it like a series of small lakes connected by narrow passages, each as varied as if they had portaged through a series of four or five lakes.

  Annette glided into the big water, turning south as she emerged from the portage bay. An hour later she stopped for lunch on a rocky beach. While Chaos romped and swam, she filleted the trout and left the entrails and skin on a high rock that jutted into the lake. Gulls were circling in the sky before she finished washing the knife and her dishes. Every trace of the fish parts left on the rock would be gone within an hour after they left.

  The gentle breezes of morning gave way to mild afternoon winds out of the southwest as Annette entered the lake’s popular Narrows, a five-kilometer stretch where the shores pinched in to widths of less than fifty yards in places. The area was easily accessible from several popular entries into Quetico and featured good bass and walleye fishing, idyllic campsites perched atop the forested rocks on each shore, and protection from prevailing winds. It was one of the most popular destinations in the park.

  As she pressed on, she considered how much farther to go. If the weather held and she worked at it, she could get within two hours or so of the island today. On the other hand, if she arrived too early in the morning, she’d already be there when Pender came along and that might look a little anxious, a granny trying too hard. Which was uncomfortably close to the truth, the more she thought about it.

  No, she’d paddle on a while longer but camp early. The Sturgeon Narrows gave way to two kilometers of open water, then the lake narrowed, widened, and narrowed again. She stopped in the midafternoon, taking a campsite perched like an eagle’s aerie above a boulder-strewn stretch of waterway that separated the mainland from a sheer-sided island by maybe fifty feet. Getting her gear up to the campsite was a vigorous workout, but the view was worth it. Chaos romped in the forest while Annette set up her camp and gathered wood for an evening fire.

  As she laid out neat stacks of kindling, starter tinder, and bigger pieces of wood sawed to length, she wondered where Pender was and what he was doing. An image came into her mind: What if he happened along tonight, trying to make time, running out of daylight, saw her fire? She imagined him hailing the campsite from down below, asking if he might pitch a tent somewhere, use her fire for a quick meal. Him coming up the slope, the two of them slowly recognizing each other, him kissing her like when they were kids . . .

  Chaos charged out of the woods and ran a circle around her, tongue out, tail wagging. He sat next to the fire pit, tail still wagging, looking her in the eye, his body tense with anticipation.

  “You like it here, I guess,” said Annette. She straightened from her labors and went to her food pack to set up her kitchen. The dog fell in beside her, step for step, still looking her in the eye, tongue still out, wet with saliva now.

  “Oh, you like it here because you’re hungry, right?”

  As she knelt to set up the stove on the rocks of the fire pit, Chaos snuggled next to her, expertly pushing his cold, wet nose under her arm, then tilting his face upward to lick her.

  “Stop that, you rogue!” she laughed and pushed his face away from hers. “No French kissing on the first date.” He wagged his tail. “Or the second. Or any time with dogs, okay? Get it?” He wagged his tail as if in agreement, but she didn’t take him seriously.

  * * *

  Pender was nowhere near Annette at that moment. He was more than a day behind her, camped on a swampy little lake where his body gave out in the early afternoon. Healthy, he would have pressed on for hours, wouldn’t have stopped until he knew he could get to Annette’s island the next day.

  But he wasn’t healthy. Seven hours of paddling and portaging had left him in anguish. His back ached and sent out shooting pains when he moved too far or too fast. It affected everything he did, attacking his will like a ruthless enemy wielding a white-hot knife. The route that followed his difficult portage that morning had looked easy on the topo map, but it played much harder. By the time he launched into this dark, swampy lake, he had nothing left. It was all he could do to load his canoe and begin scouring the shoreline for a place to camp. There were no established campsites on this lake. This was the kind of lake where only the desperate camped, the ones who ran out of daylight or energy or luck when they got here. Like Pender.

  All he really wanted was solid ground a few feet above lake level. An open area where he could set up his tent would be nice. He’d cook over the gas stove again, no problem.

  He settled for a point that sat three or four feet above water level and sloped gently upward for twenty yards or so, then gave way to a bog in an advanced state of atrophy. The point was covered with grasses and scrub, and held some late-season mosquitoes. He found a small flat area covered by grassy growth but free of woody brush. He pitched his tent in the knee-deep grass, hoping the soft vegetation might cushion his
sleep. After that, he sank two sticks in the soft earth and put his boots on them to start drying out. Then he sat on a rock and slowly stretched his taut back muscles, arching, bending forward, turning gently from side to side. He lay on his back and pulled his knees to his chest, then repeated everything, over and over. It hurt like hell at first, but after he worked it for twenty minutes or so, his back loosened and the aching ebbed to a tolerable level.

  He picked his way through the scrub and grass to explore what the point had to offer, which was pretty much nothing. It was a featureless, bland piece of real estate, one end dipped in a dreary lake with stained water, the other leading to a few sparse trees and acres of reeds and low-lying bog vegetation.

  He found a rock that had two flat sides to cook on and set it up beside his sitting rock. As he boiled water for his freeze-dried dinner, he scribbled an emotional note to Annette in his journal and another to his daughter . . . in case he didn’t make it out alive. As he wrote, he realized how depressed he was, contemplating death when really, it was just discomfort he was suffering from. And he realized how important the rendezvous with Annette had become to him.

  As I ponder my bleak circumstances, I realize that meeting you on the island is what I’ve been living for all these months, he wrote. I have nothing else, no other plan. I’m going to arrive late, but I hope you wait for me.

  He ate in silence, gazing at the gloomy lake and the featureless scrub. He had camped in ugly places before, but this was the ugliest. He had contemplated his life under dark skies many times, but this was the darkest. He knew the sun would rise again, the clouds would move on, life would continue. But he didn’t try to deny the melancholy of the moment. What would it be like, he thought, to die here? How would it feel? Would he be angry that his life expired in such a dreary place? Especially knowing that if he had stayed on the other route he could die on a spectacular blue-water lake, in a campsite with a lovely view, tucked in among the red pines, with the breezes sifting like silk through long needles, loons calling to one another.