by Kirk Landers
“We didn’t have foxholes.”
“Were there a lot of atheists?”
“I don’t know. A lot of the kids were religious when they got there, kissing their crosses and saying prayers and stuff. I think some of them got over it, and some of them went home in body bags. I suppose the ones who went home alive figured it worked, that God looked over them and fucked the other guy. Why would you worship someone like that?”
Annette pondered his answers.
“So you have no conscience about killing people, no God, no higher moral calling?”
“I didn’t have a conscience about killing people in a war. But I don’t go around killing people. I don’t own a gun. I haven’t shot one since I came home. I haven’t had a fight, other than popping that one arrogant, stupid, corporate bureaucrat last winter.”
“What about those canoe racers?”
“It wasn’t a fight. I just messed with them. I shouldn’t have, but to be honest, I still like the memory of it. I think it’ll be a long time before those two motherfuckers knock over another racer and laugh about it. That’s the sort of thing a good God would appreciate.”
“What about the guys who followed you here?”
“They followed me. I just defended myself.”
Annette shook her head. Pender could feel her do it. “What?” he said.
“I was thinking of inviting you to my home when we leave here. But I’m afraid you might have a lot of violence still waiting to get out. Who are you?”
Pender shook his head. “How many firearms do you own?”
“I own a rifle and a shotgun for dealing with bears and wolves. And I’ve only shot the ones that wouldn’t go away.”
“Still,” said Pender, “peace lovers, two guns. Warmongers, none. And I’ve never had a fight with a Canadian.”
“That’s not very convincing.”
Pender shrugged.
“You don’t care, do you? Jesus, I’m thinking of sharing my home and family, and I’m thinking it’s this big deal because this is all I have. And you’re thinking, what? How boring that would be? How you want to get going so you can, what? Beat someone with your hatchet? Get back to Chicago and bed some young bimbo? God, Pender, you’re such a shit.”
“What?” he was stunned. He swiveled to face her. “I wasn’t thinking any of those things. I was defending myself against your accusations. I don’t think I’m violent . . .” His voice trailed off. “Despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary.”
After a moment, Annette giggled. Pender laughed softly.
“Okay, I guess I have some issues.”
“Have you always been this way?”
“No. It just seems to be oozing out of me now. I think I’ve been angry since you broke up with me, and it just kept building. Going to Vietnam and getting nothing but shit for it. Did you know about that? If a guy had a GI haircut, most of the women in America wouldn’t talk to him. Coming home was worse than going to war. Trying to get a job, but the draft dodgers had all the jobs. They were home getting experience while I was shitting in the jungle and swatting mosquitoes.”
He dropped his head and closed his eyes for a moment.
“I remember thinking when Jane Fonda went to North Vietnam, everyone hates us, including all the good-looking women, led by Jane Fonda. You think I’m being funny, but I’m not. That’s how it felt.”
Annette leaned her head to rest on his shoulder and put her hand on his. Pender felt her and liked that she did that, but he couldn’t stop.
“Then we do away with the draft, and all the draft dodgers get very brave and want to fight wars. I get into corporate life, and it’s all phony. The guys at the top didn’t give a shit about the business, just how much money they made, how big their office was, making sure they were in line for the next big promotion. I made those fuckers look good by doing what needed to be done, and they hated me for not doing what they said to do.”
“Were you trying to be an executive?” Annette asked it doubtfully. Pender didn’t seem the type.
“No. No, I just wanted to be left alone. Let our magazine team do what we need to do and don’t even pretend you understand it. Just keep the fuck out of the way and count the money when it comes in.”
He took a deep breath.
“Same in ’Nam. The stupidity could just take your breath away. One time the base commander took away our bullets. It was New Year’s, and he was afraid we’d shoot tracers to celebrate. So our whole camp was defended by a few guys with two clips of ammo each. In a goddamn war zone!”
Annette squeezed his hand, not sure what to say.
“It gave me an edge,” said Pender. “The people I met in business didn’t know what a shit storm was and wouldn’t walk through one on a bet. I knew I was tougher and meaner than them.”
He smiled.
“The anger’s been inside me for a long time. I think busting that thumb-sucking twit Chuckie Blue in the gut was sort of the cork coming out of the champagne bottle. It felt good. But that was just the first bubble coming out. There were lots more. The corporate bubble. The war bubble. The draft-dodging, neocon, coward bubble. The Jane Fonda bubble . . .” He lapsed into silence.
When she couldn’t take the tension anymore, she nudged him in the ribs. “So, I guess the question is, how much do you like champagne?”
20
By midmorning the rains passed, giving way to a classic Quetico summer day with vaguely overcast skies, gentle winds, and mild air temperatures.
Annette rigged the canoes together again, and the three of them paddled into the west bay to fish. She positioned them on a reef that often held walleye and smallmouth bass.
“Get to it, Yank,” she said. “I’ll hold us in place, and you have yourself some tourist fun. Cast off the bow and let it drop to twenty, twenty-five feet.”
Pender stood in one canoe and cast while Annette sat in the other and used an assortment of paddle strokes to hold the craft above the structure. She did it effortlessly, as a skilled equestrian might ride a horse or a professional point guard might dribble a basketball.
The fishing was slow. Pender cast out a plastic grub on a lead-headed jig and retrieved it slowly, letting the jig drop and flutter every few turns of the reel. Songbirds twittered a melodic singsong in the distance. A breeze ruffled the water surface. Rays of sun spiked through the clouds. Pender glanced around between casts. Chaos was sprawled on his back in the front of Annette’s canoe, his legs skyward as if posing for a Snoopy cartoon. Annette peered toward a far shore with an unfocused gaze. He thought she might be bored.
“Why did you marry him? Rob?”
Annette came out of her reverie and thought for a moment. “I don’t know—why did you marry your wife?”
“No fair. I asked first.”
“Well, that’s my answer. Why does anyone marry anyone?”
“I married Peg because the sex was good and she didn’t really need me. It took me a long time to figure that out, but it’s true. I was faithful and I did all the stuff I was supposed to do, but I needed some distance in my marriage. Peg was smart and fun and sexy and completely shut off from deep emotional entanglements. We were perfect for each other. Until we weren’t.”
Annette watched Pender cast and retrieve in silence.
“I think it was momentum for me,” she said finally. “I had convinced myself that Rob was one of the gods of the great social revolution. I thought we would create a better society based on love, and Rob and I would be at the center of it. When we started, I thought he was like JFK or Martin Luther King, a man with greatness about him.”
She paused and looked at Pender self-consciously. “No wisecracks?”
He glanced at her. “None.”
“I thought you despised Rob.”
“This isn’t about him.”
“Even before we came up here, I could already see some cracks in his veneer. He liked sleeping with other women, he was vain, and he got jealous of other people who go
t more podium time or more publicity. He’d get furious sometimes, swear he was going to do something else. Then some big shot in the movement would come around, and he’d be all over the guy about how much he wanted to work with him, all the things he could do. He wanted fame and power so bad he was willing to humiliate himself to get it.”
“The universal politician,” said Pender.
Annette shot him a small smile. “I’d be embarrassed for him, but he never seemed to get what a fool he was making of himself. Still, we were in it together, and when his draft notice came, I couldn’t leave him. Not then. It would have been abandonment. He wanted to come to Canada. I suggested Toronto or Ottawa, real cities, close enough to see our families once in a while. Or Vancouver if we wanted to make a clean break. But he wanted the wilderness. He’d been reading back-to-nature stuff. It was very big back then. You know, live off the land, be self-reliant, get away from chemicals and pollution.”
She took a deep breath and watched him cast. He glanced at her. “And?” he said.
“So we end up in a place with no soil and a ninety-day growing season that started with the hatching of the most voracious mosquitoes in North America. There was hunting and fishing, of course, but Rob didn’t like being cold or hot or dirty. He couldn’t stand the stink of a skinned deer or even cleaning fish. He hated the place. I thought we’d move to Toronto, especially when he decided to get his master’s. But he made excuses why it would be better if he went alone and came back on breaks and long weekends. He was done with me—I knew that. But we played the game for a while. I had the girls. He finished one degree, started the PhD, got an assistantship. He made a lame offer for us to join him then, but it was over. I had lost all respect for him. And besides, I had something here. I had found out a lot about myself. I could run a business. I could fish. I could shoot a bear if I had to. I could paddle a canoe. I was already a damn good guide. I had really good friends. I was part of a community. It wasn’t fame and fortune, but it was me. It wasn’t me being someone’s wife or daughter. I had tapped into who I really was. So I stayed. And eventually we called it quits.”
Quiet overtook the boat. Pender kept casting and retrieving.
“Didn’t it get you when he went back to the U.S.? When you told me about that, I wanted to kick his ass into next year.”
“That’s not how I deal with life. As for how I felt, well, I wasn’t surprised. Any idealism he had harbored, it died a long time ago. Probably before we moved to Ontario. His ethics were situational at best. When he went back to the U.S. I guess my main thought was, that’s where he belongs.”
“I agree with you there,” said Pender. “That’s what the whole show is about down there. I got mine and fuck you.”
Pender reeled in a small walleye and released it.
“You sound so easygoing about Rob. Didn’t you get mad? Don’t you think back and wish you had it to do over again? Something?”
“I guess I did get mad, but mostly I was just sad. All my dreams died when he went to Toronto. That’s when it was over. He wasn’t the man I thought he was. By the time we divorced, I had bigger things on my mind than him. I was alone in the wilderness with two babies and a half dozen cabins and a huge old black bear that kept raiding my garbage.”
Pender finished a retrieve and turned to look at her, eyebrows raised.
“I couldn’t do anything about Rob, but the bear was scaring me to death. One night I dreamed that it ate my babies. I went into town the next day and asked the police what could be done. Basically they told me they’d swing by now and then, and if it was there, they’d shoot it for me, but if I really wanted to get rid of it, I should shoot it myself. So I bought a shotgun and a box of slugs they use to shoot bears with and I hired one of the First Nation guides to teach me how to shoot the gun and how to shoot a bear. And a few days later, old black bear waddles into my property, busts open the cover on the garbage, and starts foraging, and I walk out there and shoot the old coot in the back of the head. Rob? I didn’t miss him much. I had things to do.”
Pender raised his hands as if surrendering. “You don’t have to shoot me. I’ll stay out of the garbage.”
“I wish I could believe that,” said Annette.
Pender retrieved a cast in silence.
“Yes,” she said, breaking the quiet. “I thought about it once, what would I do if I had it all to do over again? I’d have to do it all the same way. I couldn’t trade my kids and grandbaby for a better husband and different kids. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.”
Pender nodded as he reeled in the line. “I can understand that,” he said. She was silent. He glanced at her. She was lost in thought. And beautiful. Something about her posture rang all the old bells.
“Rob was a disappointment,” she said, finally, “but he got me where I needed to go and he went away when I needed space to grow. So everything worked out just right. No regrets.”
“So when you said you thought about me, that was what? Just idle daydreaming?” Pender asked.
Annette made eye contact with him. “No. That was an ache. I knew you were my big mistake. I didn’t think about it much when we were busy, but up here, in the long winters, alone, a lot of time to myself, I thought about you a lot.”
“But you have no regrets?”
“It’s like you say. Sometimes there’s no right answer. Would we have been happier together? Would we have had kids and grandkids I love just as much? Yes. But I had kids with Rob and I love them and I wouldn’t give them up for a do-over with you. Not for anything.”
Pender was still chewing on her answer when the walleye started biting.
The fishing expedition ended quickly. Pender took meal-sized fish on three consecutive casts. He put them on a stringer, and they started drifting with the breeze, paddling just enough to keep off reefs and away from shore. When they reached the east end of the bay, Annette asked him if he’d like to do some sport fishing.
“Thanks, but no,” he said. “I fish for food. I feel kind of guilty when I mess up some fish’s day just to haul him in and release him. No matter what you do, some of those guys die.”
“You are a strange man,” Annette mused. “Hard on people, soft on fish.” She thought for a moment. “It’s too early to go back to camp. How about helping me clean up the campsite on this lake?”
Pender nodded his assent.
Though lightly used, the established campsite on the lake had seen some abuse. The fire ring had half-burned trail food containers and bag ties in it. Charred wood littered the cooking area. The latrine area had been dug up and picked over by an animal, leaving pockets of undegraded toilet paper peeking out of the green foliage. But the centerpiece of Annette’s attention was an elaborate hut-like structure built from woven tree branches to store packs.
“Wow,” said Pender, examining the craftsmanship. “Someone’s really into wilderness crafts. I wonder how long it took to make this?”
Annette pursed her lips. “It has to come down,” she said. “The park doesn’t allow this kind of stuff, and for good reason.”
“What’s the reason? I think it’s inspirational.”
“It encourages people to abuse the ecosystem. Those branches didn’t come from dead fall. Someone took them off live trees. And even beyond environment damage, if everyone does this, pretty soon you don’t have a wilderness anymore. You have one of those ugly parks you Americans like. Swings and water slides and those hideous RVs.”
“We Americans?” Pender questioned. “Don’t you ever think of yourself as an American anymore?”
“Not ever,” said Annette. “I’m a Canadian. I don’t even know what the U.S. is anymore, and I’m a Canadian because I love being in a country that appreciates the natural state of things. I love being part of a country that puts more value in each other’s welfare than getting rich.”
Pender nodded. “No argument here. I just think I’d always think of myself as an immigrant, you know? Canadian by way of the U.S.”
/> “So you’re going back when this trip is over?”
“No. Maybe someday, but not any time soon. It’s too sad.”
Something in Pender’s voice made Annette look over at him. He was staring wistfully at the lake, arms crossed, not moving. Like the personification of a sad poem. She walked to him, put an arm around his waist, and squeezed. He kept staring at the lake. She could feel sadness radiating from him and put both arms around him. He buried his face in the warm place between her shoulder and her neck. His tears warmed her skin like sad kisses.
“I’ve got nothing,” he said.
When the moment passed, she took his hand, and they waded in the shallows. She turned them slowly in a circle, taking in the pristine lake and its forested shores the way the devout might experience the Sistine Chapel. “You have this,” she said.
Pender was nodding when Chaos ended their reverie, crashing out from the forest. He ran to them in the shallows, stopped to drink, and then shook himself vigorously, coating them with water.
Pender bent to pet him and clap his hand on his ribs. He straightened and smelled his hand. “Your dog has found a friend, I think.”
Annette looked at them, first Chaos, then Pender, a confused expression on her face. “What kind of friend?”
“Well, I’d guess this comes from an herbivore. It has that earthy, mild aroma that makes horse shit so pleasant. I’d expect a carnivore’s stool to have a sharper, nose-curdling odor. But I’ll defer to your judgment.”
“He’s been rolling in shit?”
“It’s a favorite of many canines,” said Pender.
“He can’t come in the tent like that,” said Annette, finally catching a whiff of him.
“I’ll wash him out when we get back to camp. What the heck. I need a bath too.”
“Okay. Let’s clean up this campsite and dismantle that shelter.”
* * *
Annette cooked dinner, instructing Pender on the fine art of the Canadian-guide-style shore lunch: a single-pan meal of chunked fish, chunked potatoes and onions, vegetables, and proprietary seasonings, heavy on pepper. After a long day outdoors, it was, Pender told her, better than any restaurant meal he’d ever had.