by Kirk Landers
“I just want to know if we’ve got a future together or if this is it. A fun week in the park and goodbye, see you in the next life.”
“Am I still invited to stop by when we get to French Lake?”
“Of course, but I’m not begging you. I just want to know if you’re interested.”
“Yes. I am. Scared shitless, but interested.”
“What are you afraid of?”
“What your daughter will think of me. Meeting your old boyfriend, your friends and neighbors. People have found reasons to dislike me all my life, and, generally, I don’t care. But if the people around you don’t like me, that puts us both in a tough position.”
“Deep down inside, Big Chief Warmonger has the heart of a hummingbird. Take a chance, li’l fella.”
“Very funny. Plus, what if everything else is great but I just can’t hack living in a small town that spends four months a year in the dark with below-zero temperatures and the best theater is the annual high school play?”
“We don’t have an annual high school play. Jesus, our sports teams have to travel hundreds of miles to get to games. The nearest movie theater is 150 kilometers away. Our television stinks, too. You make it through the winter by being busy and talking to people.”
“Can we get away with necking in the Fort Frances movie theater?”
“Cute. Let’s shut up and get some sleep now, okay?”
Pender shifted his body against hers, put a hand on her hip, and nuzzled the back of her neck with his lips. Much better than sleeping, he thought. Though he hadn’t slept well in so long he wasn’t sure what that was like.
27
Heavy footsteps outside the tent startled Pender from his shallow half sleep.
“Pender!” Gus called in a stage whisper, trying to be loud and soft at the same time. “C’mon!”
“Just a sec,” Pender whispered back. He threw his clothes out of the tent, then crawled out and began dressing. “What’s up?”
“Let’s go fishing. Maybe we can nail something for breakfast.”
Pender groaned. “Jesus Christ.” But when he thought about it, he had to concede it was a good idea.
They fished the structure off the steep drops west of the peninsula they occupied, then the shores of an island across the bay. For once, Gus was quiet. As the gray essence of predawn crept over the horizon, the only sounds Pender could hear were the drops from his paddle drizzling into the water and the line unwinding from Gus’s reel as he cast. It was enchanting.
Ten minutes after Pender would have given up, Gus caught a chunky northern pike. They filleted it on the rocks of the western shore and paddled back to camp as the hidden sun crept over the horizon and gave birth to a dim, gray morning.
“Are you two going steady now?” Annette teased as they returned.
Pender smiled and placed the foil-wrapped pike filet in her hands. “It was love at first bite,” he said.
Annette and Emily had taken down the tents, rolled the sleeping pads, and stuffed the sleeping bags in their sacks. Everything was ready to throw into packs and go. They were boiling water for coffee and oatmeal. Emily took the filets and promised to have a Quetico breakfast ready in twenty minutes. Her announcement drew murmurs of approval around the camp.
They discussed portage tactics as they ate. Emily and Joe would stay out on the lake to flag any rescue planes that might come by while Annette, Pender and Gus, and the able-bodied base campers would try to carve a trail to Pickerel Lake.
Gus had no doubt they’d make it. “I don’t care how many trees are down or how high they’re stacked, we’re going through. Right, li’l fella?” He playfully poked Pender with his elbow.
“Yay rah, big dude,” Pender responded dryly.
The paddlers from the other two camps were waiting for them at the portage. The injured man sat against an incline like a man in an easy chair, his pain debilitating. Ibuprofen helped a little, but they were saving it for the nights.
“He needs to keep cold compresses on it,” said Pender. “We need to keep the swelling down, and that’s the only thing we can do to help.”
“Can he walk?” Annette asked.
“Not really,” said his paddling partner. “The pain gets worse, and he has problems with balance.”
“We’re going to have to carry him out of here,” Annette said. She instructed the man on how to gather poles for a travois while the first party of able-bodied trippers tried to make the portage to Pickerel Lake.
Pender gestured to the darkening western sky. “Good news,” he said sarcastically. “Looks like we’re going to get wet today.”
* * *
In normal times, the trail to Pickerel was as close to a walk in the park as any trail in Quetico. It was short, wide, and well trodden, one of the most heavily used trails in the park. Though it lacked wilderness solitude, it was a bucolic hike with its green, laid-back ambience and a soft pine scent that hung in the air.
But these were not normal times.
A few steps into the tree line revealed a savaged landscape. Fallen trees crisscrossed the trail like giant railroad ties. In the distance, Pender could see a virtual wall of downed timber. It wasn’t a trail so much as a nightmare.
“This won’t be like any other portage I’ve been on,” Pender mumbled.
Annette nodded and stared ahead. Only Gus was unfazed. “Think positive,” he rumbled.
Pender groaned.
“Aw, c’mon, Pender,” said Gus. “We got this! You and me. Let’s get to it!”
Gus moved confidently to the first blowdown and hacked away branches for a step-over. Pender followed and trimmed the next log, the others taking their turns as the party moved on. They made slow, steady progress until they got to the first great wall, a tangle of tree hulks rising six feet high, crossing the trail like a dam. Gus and the two campers looked for ways around it while Pender scaled it, dropped his pack on the other side, and climbed back.
Twenty minutes later, they knew that the only way past the pile was over it, Pender warning that the pile itself wasn’t especially solid. Gus started scrambling up the pile to test it, Annette demanding that he take his time, test each log before putting his weight on it, admonishing him that if he broke a leg, the party was doomed.
“I believe she’d kick my ass if I objected,” Gus said when they got to the other side.
“Bet on it, big dude,” Pender answered. “And I couldn’t help you. She’s too tough for me.”
“Hey, I thought you were a big brave war hero.”
“Not me.”
“Annette said you won a bunch of medals in ’Nam.” The two men followed Annette through the carnage on the trail, Pender trying not to grunt with each step.
“Everybody got medals,” said Pender. “It was just politics.”
They reached another barrier of downed trees. Pender scaled it and offered Gus a hand up, but the big man scrambled up the pile with the agility of a gymnast. Pender was impressed, even if he didn’t want to be.
“So what did you get? Medals, I mean.” Gus kept talking as they descended the other side.
“It was all bullshit.”
“Did you kill anyone?”
“I tried to.”
“You didn’t keep notches on your rifle or make marks on your helmet or something?”
“Everything happened at night. I never saw anybody I shot at.”
“I never served,” Gus said. “I feel like I missed something.”
“All you missed was a circle jerk.”
“Don’t you feel kind of proud that you served? In a war?”
“The smart guys stayed home. Those people who died there or came home junkies? Their lives were wasted. And no one back here gave a shit except maybe their families.”
“Made you tough, though. Right? How many guys your age go solo up here?”
“Yeah, it made me a mean motherfucker.”
As they moved over, around, and under the fallen trees of a shattered
forest, a light rain started. The sky was dark and low.
“No planes today,” Annette muttered. “We better put on rain gear. We won’t have time to get a fire going if we get wet.”
It took them an hour to get to Pickerel Lake, stopping every few steps to clear branches from downed trees or mark a trail around them. The three-hundred-yard portage doubled in length from the twists and turns, and its physical demands skyrocketed with the constant climbing and scrambling. When they got to Pickerel, they were wet and tired.
Pender’s shoulders felt like they were being sliced from his body by the straps of his pack. His lower back became more painful with each passing hour. Carrying the heaviest packs on the first crossing might not have been the best idea, since they spent a lot of time standing and waiting for the trail to be cleared, multiplying the amount of time everyone had to carry the heaviest packs they had.
Pender tried not to think about the fact that they were going to be doing this all day, that carrying the canoes was going to be a pure bitch and carrying the injured trippers was going to be worse. If he thought about it, he would have wondered how he could possibly make it, since he was seeing stars already. He wondered if he’d still be welcome at Annette’s place if he were seriously injured, unable to help out with things. What would her daughter think of an old crippled guy barely able to get out of bed?
All things considered, it would be a lot easier if one of these trees fell on him, he thought.
* * *
Annette surveyed the portaging crew as they took a break before heading back for the next load. The base campers were bushed but kind of impressed with themselves. They were middle-aged, overweight men who came here to fish and enjoy kumbaya evenings around a campfire. They had just completed a daunting portage, far more arduous than anything they had tried before. They had acquitted themselves well, and they had a right to feel good about it. But pretty soon they’d realize that they would need to do it again and again and again. Their shoulders would ache, their neck muscles would want to spasm, and their legs would turn to jelly. And with every shaky step they took, they would know that they would somehow have to do it again.
Gus was Gus. Talking constantly, always ready to break trail, haul the heaviest pack. He’d be happy to make this portage five times just to test himself and get some bragging rights. Pender called him fat, but really the man was big. There was a difference. Gus was big and strong. As in very, very strong. Like an ox that could climb. And talk. The man could talk.
Annette watched Gus talking to Pender, the two of them looking out on the bay, Gus gesturing and pointing. She thought it was probably a good thing that Pender had used his hatchet when Gus charged him. It would have been a massacre otherwise. It was also a good thing Pender didn’t cripple the big man, because their only chance of completing this portage today with their injured people depended on Gus.
She worried about Pender. He was quieter than usual, and his eyes looked deeply fatigued. On the trail, the liquid ease of his movement had given way to plodding steps, his left leg dragging a little. He still scrambled over debris piles, but his agility had declined.
Annette herself was somewhere between Gus and Pender on the physical readiness scale. She was in good shape, but she was sixty years old and her body responded to heavy loads much differently than it did when she was thirty or forty. Her legs were burning, and her shoulders were sore. No matter. She would do this portage as many times as she had to. Her worry was time. She wanted to get everyone to Pickerel by early afternoon so they could make a run for French Lake and get the injured people to the hospital.
As they headed back for the next load, the rain stopped, the clouds passed, and the sun emerged. The clear skies brought heat and humidity. The hikers shed their rain gear, then long-sleeved outer layers as they trekked. When they reached the other lake, humid air hung thick and heavy over the lakes and forests. The distant drone of a single-engine airplane made everyone forget the monotony of the morning. Necks craned skyward, eager hands grasped paddles and articles of clothing to wave, but the plane never came into view, passing far to the east on its way south.
Annette tried to ignore her disappointment. It would have been a huge relief to get their injured people evacuated. She made herself focus on their immediate circumstance. Chaos blasted into her deliberations, charging toward the water, barking crazily, jumping up and down. A canoe carrying two paddlers approached the portage. The woman in the bow stopped paddling and stared in horror at the dog’s wild celebration. Pender moved stiffly to the water’s edge and corralled Chaos with a string of curses, followed by a command to sit. Chaos sat sheepishly but couldn’t suppress the urge to wag his tail. His tongue lolled out of one side of his mouth, and his body trembled as the canoeists came to shore.
The woman disembarked with regal dignity, a day pack slung over one arm like a purse. People on the beach stopped what they were doing to watch her. She wore an all-khaki outfit as crisp and clean and perfectly matched as if she were stepping off a page of the L.L. Bean catalog. She was medium height, fortyish, slender, with shapely brown legs shown off nicely by her form-fitting shorts. Tufts of blonde-highlighted hair spiked out just so from under the brim of her khaki hat, which she wore stylishly pushed back from her forehead. She wore hiking boots so sparkling clean they could pass for new. Her hiking socks were folded over neatly. Her khaki blouse looked as though it had just been picked up from the cleaners, every button buttoned, not a wrinkle in sight, not a drop of sweat anywhere.
Annette watched the woman move up the beach while her husband plunged into thigh-deep water to pull the canoe ashore and begin unpacking it. The trippers and campers on the beach stared in stunned silence as the woman headed for the portage trail, carrying nothing, leaving the packs and canoe to her husband. As the woman passed near, Annette was jolted by the realization that the woman’s shorts actually had a crease in them, like dress pants. Annette scanned the rest of the group, each person in soiled, sweat-soaked clothes, the product of days in the bush and hard work in a survival situation. Sweet Jesus! she thought. Has anyone ever worn dress khakis in Quetico before? She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen anyone in town wearing dress khakis with a crease in them.
She became aware that Pender had turned to watch the woman, and it pissed her off. It was her nightmare coming true, the male conquest urge being aroused by a city woman with nice clothes, nice hair, and the strut of a fashion model. But before she could get really worked up, Chaos gave in to his baser instincts and bolted from Pender’s side like a rogue missile, bounding for the khaki woman, barking as if a pack of bears had invaded the beach.
The lady froze, and Pender hustled up the slope to restrain the dog. First he tried to just tell the dog to cool it, but that didn’t work. Finally he screamed “Goddamnit!” Chaos stopped barking and sat nervously, his head moving back and forth from Pender to the woman, tail wagging feverishly.
“He’s really friendly.” Pender said it with an apologetic tone that made Annette cringe. Men were so indulgent of pretentious divas like the khaki woman, she thought.
“I’m sure.” The woman had a voice like ice water. She continued on her way without giving Pender or the dog another thought, passed by Annette as if she weren’t there, and disappeared into the trail. The people on the beach slowly resumed their activities.
“Jesus Christ, Pender, why didn’t you just pucker up and kiss her ass?” said Annette.
Pender blinked. “What?”
“You know ‘what.’ You ogled that woman like she was doing a striptease or something. Don’t you have any pride?”
“I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to make trouble for you. This park has a leash law, and Chaos isn’t on a leash. The least you could do is get off my fucking back.”
Annette’s fury evaporated in a flash. Pender had seen what she saw, had been as transfixed by the improbability of it as she had been. Her shoulders slumped.
She moved to the gear. Gus and Pe
nder were sorting the packs by weight and bulk, deciding what to carry with each canoe. They had two tandem canoes to portage and the two solo boats belonging to Annette and Pender. Emily and Joe had the third tandem out in the lake on airplane patrol; it would portage on the last trip.
Like the solo boats, Gus and Bill’s tandem was an ultra-lightweight Kevlar model and relatively easy to carry. The base campers’ tandem would be a challenge; it was a back-breaking seventy-pounder crafted from composite materials—great for paddling in rocks, backbreaking on portages.
“I’m going to haul this beast and a pack,” Gus told Annette. “Pender’s gonna haul a pack and my boat, and these guys”—he gestured to the three healthy campers—“will haul packs and the two solo boats, and they’ll just trade off on the boat carries.”
Annette nodded. She wasn’t sure Pender was going to make it all the way with pack and boat, but they had an extra man for rotations. As a team, they’d make it. The group would still have a few small packs and paddles to carry on a third trip, and Emily and Joe’s canoe, but they should be able to complete the portage in three trips. A minor miracle.
She told Pender and Gus to take charge of the next portage while she constructed the stretchers for the wounded.
“You go right ahead, ma’am,” said Gus. “We got this under control.”
Annette glanced at Pender, hoping to see some sort of approval, but he turned, took a long slug of water, and then shouldered his load and headed down the trail. She couldn’t blame him, but it would have been nice to be forgiven.
* * *
Pender was deep in conversation with himself as he felt the dead, aching weight of the pack cutting into his shoulders. Remembered he was already seeing stars on the last portage. Hoisted the forty-five-pound canoe onto his shoulders and thought he’d pass out then and there but didn’t.
He cursed Gus and his gung ho bullshit under his breath. He was old enough to be Gus’s father, for Christ’s sake. He thought about all the times they’d have to stop and relay the canoes over piles of fallen timber. He couldn’t imagine handling a third trip with a load. Refused to think about it. Refused to give Gus something to rag him about. He’d go until he couldn’t go anymore. Then he’d just curl up and die and be done with it.