by Kirk Landers
“Annette?” He asked it, trying to accompany the question with a friendly smile, not easy after the encounter with the fat boys and her dog.
“Pender.” She said it like a statement of fact. She tried to smile back, but there was more doubt than mirth in her expression.
“What happened here?” she asked. “Did you have a fight with those two men?”
“Well, kind of. It’s a long story.”
“I’ll bet. I’ve never heard of trippers in the park getting into a fight. More than thirty years I’ve been here, and I’ve never heard of a fight in Quetico.”
Silence. Pender couldn’t think of what to say. He was trying to process everything. The situation. His crazy day. His week. His life. What it must look like to Annette. And he was trying to do all this as he appraised her physically. A sixties folk singer with gray hair, he thought. Still lean and fit, some softness at the jawline, but strong features. Beautiful. Hot, in a back-to-nature kind of way. And angry. Just like old times.
“Are we in danger, Gabe? Chaos and I?”
Pender started to speak, then halted, digested what she said. “Chaos? That’s his name? Wow. That works.” He stopped again, composed himself. “No, you’re not in danger, of course not. It’s not what you think—”
“Then could you drop the hatchet, please? Or put it away?” She nodded to the tool still in his hand.
He looked at the hatchet, back at her, blushed. “Sure. Sorry.”
He laid the hatchet on his pack. “I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot here. Those two guys . . . we had a run-in a week or so ago . . .” His voice trailed off.
“A week ago? Have they been following you all that time? Did you know a park ranger was looking for a solo canoeist who did something to some fishermen in the Boundary Waters? Was that you? What did you do?”
Pender gazed at her thoughtfully. This wasn’t going well. Not at all. Jesus, she was going to tell him to go to hell before they even talked about the weather or their kids. Jesus. He shook his head. Life could be such a mind fuck.
“There were four of them camping and fishing on a border lake, U.S. side. They had a big cooler of beer, in cans of course. And that irked me. When I see metal in these campsites I want to, to . . .” He was going to say “kick ass” but realized how violent that sounded. He shrugged. “You know, convince people they shouldn’t do that.”
Annette had a dubious look on her face.
“Actually, I wanted to let them know in no uncertain terms how much it pissed me off that they’d desecrate this place like that.”
“You did something to them because they had cans in the park?” Annette asked, incredulous.
“They were also playing music on a boom box. Loud. Loud enough to keep me awake on the other side of the lake. That made me crazy. So what I did was, I waited until they went to sleep and then I swiped their canoes and their boom box and I used the boom box to anchor their canoes about a half klick away. I couldn’t do anything about the cans.”
“You stole their canoes?”
“No, I moved them. To a place they couldn’t see, but not that far away.”
“Did it occur to you that you were putting their lives in danger?”
“No,” said Pender, getting testy at her attitude. “It occurred to me that they needed to know other people in this wilderness give a shit about it and won’t let a bunch of redneck assholes abuse it. And I think they got the message.”
“They followed you for days. What message do you think they got?”
“I think they found out this place is full of left-wing, tree-hugging communists and even the old ones are not worth tangling with. I did that fat son of a bitch a favor. I only hit him once and only with the flat side of the ax, and only on the leg. I didn’t even break his leg!”
“Oh, the humanitarian of the year! I can’t believe you just said that!” said Annette, her face flushing. “Do you hear yourself? Do you even realize what you’re saying? You’re a good guy because you didn’t kill someone with a hatchet? If you’re not an ax murderer, you’re okay?”
He flushed deep red and started to answer but stopped when the sense of her last words computed in his mind. He tried not to laugh, tried to stay mad, but he couldn’t muffle the snicker. The harder he tried not to, the louder it got.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not laughing at you. It just sounded funny. You can laugh, too, if you want.”
Annette smiled a tight smile. “Good one, Pender.”
“I’m glad we got that out of the way. We did, didn’t we?”
Annette shook her head. She slung his food pack on her shoulders and picked up his paddles. “Lunchtime. Let’s sort this out over a meal.”
With that, she headed down the trail, Chaos running after her. Pender watched her go, admired her easy gait, how strong she was, but feminine too. And she already hated him. He paused for a moment, trying to let his mind process all the things that had happened in the past fifteen minutes. Jesus. He packed up his hatchet, shouldered the other pack and his canoe, and followed Annette to her lake.
18
Annette dropped Pender’s paddles on the beach, threw his pack in her canoe, collected Chaos, and launched before Pender finished the portage. She didn’t look back. She was fifty yards away by the time Pender took his first stroke. She paddled leisurely in a canoe with less hull speed than his, but he still had to paddle like a racer to close the gap between them, and even then it took most of a kilometer to draw abreast of her. He was impressed. She had perfect paddle stroke form, far more efficient than him, and faster. It would be nice if she’d take it easy when they paddled together.
The dog started to stand as Pender came aside, and Annette tapped him with a light but curiously loud thump to the head with her paddle. The dog lay down obediently but kept his head up, looking over the gunnel at Pender.
“I see you use the kindness method of dog training,” Pender called.
“What do you do? Shoot them? Kick them?” Annette refused to look at him. She had seen his pictures on the Internet, and the glimpse of him on the beach confirmed that he was a graying version of the college boy she had known. A little more flesh on the face, the lines and creases of age. Slim. Handsome in a weather-beaten kind of way. But too violent to get involved with.
He started to respond, then shut up. He smiled and nodded. He tried to make the smile seem good-natured. “Good one,” he said.
They paddled in silence, Pender glancing over to her frequently, Annette staring straight ahead. She was trying not to feel sorry for herself, trying not to write off this encounter despite overwhelming evidence that Pender was a testosterone-driven jackass. He kept hoping she’d look at him, establish eye contact, open up to conversation.
“We could talk, you know,” he called to her. “It’s not like there’s anyone else to talk to.”
She continued paddling, eyes straight ahead.
“Come on,” he said. “You can’t hate me already. We just met. If you give me a chance, in a couple of days you’ll know me well enough to really hate me.” He stared at her and thought he saw a suppressed smile. He wanted to say something funny about the dog, but they were reaching the rocky shoals of Annette’s island.
Annette floated into the take-out area, Pender holding just offshore because the take-out area was too small for two boats to land at the same time. Annette stepped out of her canoe into a foot of water and plucked Pender’s pack from her boat. She slung it over one shoulder and then lifted her canoe over the other shoulder and carried it to a nest-like opening in the shore brush, laying it in place, hull up. She hiked up the steep incline to her camp, never looking back at Pender. He watched her ascend the trail. She really was pissed at him.
The dog watched Pender land, but only because he was taking a dump near the trailhead. Pender shook his head. An angry wilderness mama and her shit machine. What a date. And he wondered, as he climbed the trail to her camp, if the pile of poop he stepped in the night
before came from her dog.
Annette placed Pender’s pack in her kitchen area, a space created by three log benches forming a rectangle with the fire ring as the fourth side. She had built up the fire ring over the years. The fire pit itself was built atop several layers of rocks to prevent root fires, and she had created counter space on each side of it by placing large, flat rocks on top of walls of smaller ones.
Her food pack sat next to another flat rock that formed a tabletop a few feet in front of the fire pit. She sat on a log in front of the table and began sorting through her food pack.
When Pender entered the camp, Chaos bounded toward him, then skidded to a stop as if remembering his willingness to kick a dog. Chaos eyed him warily, but Annette didn’t look up from her work or acknowledge his presence. He carried his gear pack to the tenting area, parked it next to Annette’s, and mentally noted where he’d pitch his tent.
He meandered up to the kitchen.
Annette was making sandwiches in stony silence, fuming that she had relegated herself to kitchen duty for a violent slob who didn’t have the decency to show up on time.
“I’m making lunch, but I’m not your mother, okay? You can do the dishes.” She didn’t look up when she said it, didn’t look at Pender at all.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll cook dinner. And do the dishes. I’m not your father, but I think you knew that.”
Annette remained silent. She finished the sandwiches and made two cups of soup. “I’ve got enough fresh food for breakfast and lunch tomorrow. Then that’s it,” she said. She didn’t ask him if he had any fresh food. He wouldn’t. He had been in the park for more than a week.
She handed him a plastic cup of soup and his sandwich on a paper towel.
“Somehow I didn’t think I’d be welcome tomorrow,” he said as he sat on one of the logs.
“I’m thinking about it.” Her voice was cold, but she finally looked at him. “Come on,” she said. And she led the way to her overlook on the high bluff. She sat on a small boulder and began eating, ignoring Pender. He sat stiffly on the ground near her. They ate in silence, gazing out on the lake and the forests beyond. The brightness of the midday sun made the lake a pale blue color and bleached the shores into faded pastels of green and yellow. A pair of loons floated near shore, the only things moving in an idyllic landscape. As they ate, the only sound came from a light breeze rustling through the pine needles.
Chaos joined them, lying next to Annette, keeping her between him and Pender.
“Nice dog,” said Pender.
She nodded.
“How old is he?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Okay. How long have you had him?”
“A few days. I found him on the way here.”
Pender waited for her to tell the story, but she went silent.
“Did you find him in the park?” he asked
She nodded.
“Does that happen a lot? Finding dogs in the park?”
“No,” said Annette. “He had been abandoned.”
“Really? Couldn’t he have just wandered off? It’s hard to imagine someone abandoning a dog out here.”
“He was definitely abandoned.”
Pender gradually worked the story of the Stuarts out of her.
“If that guy had charged you, would you have hit him with the paddle?” he asked.
She nodded yes.
He thought about that. “How is that different than me taking down Mr. Football back there?” he asked.
“How is it similar?” Annette hissed her answer. “I didn’t antagonize that man. I saved a dog.”
“I defended myself, just like you would have.”
“You hit that poor man with a hatchet, Pender! You could have killed him.”
“You’re kidding now, right?” He peered at her face, looking for a tell-tale smile. It wasn’t there. Just an angry grimace. “I hit him with the flat side of the hatchet. I didn’t use the blade. I could have. I chose not to.”
Her face tensed in frustration. “It started with you antagonizing those men, stealing their property. What gives you the right?”
“It started with them playing loud rock and roll in the wilderness. It started with them hauling a case or two of beer in cans into the park. Wouldn’t that piss you off?”
“Of course it would. But I wouldn’t go steal their property.”
“What would you do?”
“I’d tell them they were breaking park rules and being discourteous to others.”
“That’s what I told them,” said Pender. “I just used actions instead of words.”
Annette walked back to the fire ring, Chaos at her side. Pender followed, finishing his meal as he walked.
“We need to be able to disagree,” he said when he caught up.
“I’m a Canadian. We can disagree without destroying each other. Try it. Maybe you can learn something new, though I doubt it.”
Pender couldn’t think of anything to say. He picked up the lunch dishes and cleaning materials and made his way down to the beach. He eased his canoe through the shoals and washed dishes about a hundred feet from the island.
When he got back to camp, Annette was sitting on one of the log benches, waiting for him. “You need to understand that what you did to those men is as upsetting to me as what they did was upsetting to you. If you can’t understand that, there’s really no point in staying here.”
“I understand,” Pender said, drying the dishes.
She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. “You seem like a violent, angry man,” she said. “I don’t feel safe around you.”
He straightened from his labors, and they locked eyes. He shook his head sadly from side to side. “Okay. I’ll go. But if I was what you think I am, it would have been a lot easier to kill that man or break his leg so bad he’d never walk right again.”
Annette seethed. “That’s right. You had all that training. A hundred ways to kill a person. Thank you for your restraint. You’re such a good person.”
Pender stood still, immobilized by her anger. “I thought you were someone else,” he said finally. He walked toward his gear.
She followed him. “You thought I was someone else?” Scorn dripped from her voice. “I thought you were human. I thought you might have a conscience and care about people other than yourself.”
He shouldered his gear pack. “Sorry to disappoint,” he said, and headed for the trail down to the beach.
Annette rushed in front of him, making him stop, her jaws clenched in anger. “You owe me an apology.”
“What?” Pender was shocked. He fumbled for a moment. “Apologize for what? Because I was a day late? I’m sorry. I had an accident that slowed me down.”
“Because you came in like a brute, like a . . . crazy man.”
Pender started to answer in anger, stopped himself, and took a moment to regain his composure. “I apologize for appearing that way,” he said. “That’s not who I am.” As he stepped around her, he added, “As for the cruelty, I could never rival you in that particular arena.”
She stopped him again, planting herself in front of him, one hand held to his chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Think about it,” he said. He tried to walk around her, but she stepped in front of him again.
“No. You tell me about it. Do you have the guts to tell me to my face?”
He started to speak and stopped. “No,” he said finally.
“You owe me that much. I used my whole summer vacation to see you. You can at least tell me how I’m such a bad person, because, to tell you the truth, before you got here I thought I was okay.”
He nodded his head like he was saying yes. “You don’t remember what you said to me when we broke up?” His eyebrows were raised in question and he searched her eyes for recognition.
She puzzled for a moment. “Nothing specific. I remember I was really frustrated.” She looked at him. “What did I say?
”
Pender shook his head again, side to side, a disgusted look on his face. “At least when I hurt someone, I have the decency to remember what I did. No wonder you’re so goddamn righteous.”
“What did I say?” Annette blocked him again so he couldn’t move past her. “Please. I want to know.”
“You said, ‘I hope you get drafted and you go to Vietnam and you get shot and die there.’ Your exact words. It’s like you carved them into my brain. Absolutely the best fuck-you line ever. I’ll never forget it. Congratulations.”
Horror swept over Annette’s face. “Did I really say that? Could I have said that?”
“You know you did,” said Pender. “I can see it on your face.”
He started to move, but she stopped him, gently this time. “You’re right. I said it. And it was a terrible thing to say. I said it in anger. I apologize. I’m sorry. Really. I’m very sorry.”
“Apology accepted.” He stepped around her. “Thanks for lunch.” He started down the trail to the beach.
She followed him. “Gabe, stop. Let’s start over again, okay? Let’s spend the afternoon paddling around the lake and have a nice dinner tonight.”
He paused. “God, I hate to waste a great exit line like that.”
Annette blinked, trying to understand what he said. She broke into a smile, finally. “You never were one for straight answers,” she said.
They returned to camp and tried to start a conversation, but it was awkward. Annette ended the fumbling with a simple declaration: “Let’s go fishing.”
They paddled side by side this time, Annette directing them into the northeast bay, where she had paddled that morning. They tried to fish a little, but when the afternoon breezes picked up, the canoes blew quickly downwind, sometimes banging into one another.
“Next time we should lash our boats together,” said Annette. Pender nodded. He didn’t know what she was talking about—he was strictly a solo guy—but he was glad she was thinking there’d be another time.
They trolled lures for a while, producing a few small fish that they released. Later in the afternoon, they eased into the best walleye waters, a pinch point where the opposing shores of the lake jutted to within a hundred yards or so of each other. They were sheltered from the winds there. Annette talked to Pender as she positioned them between the points.