by Kirk Landers
“Yo, Pender.” Gus’s voice echoed through the fog in Pender’s mind. “What was that with the scout lady, anyway?”
Pender shrugged. “Guess she doesn’t like dogs.”
“Probably afraid she’s gonna get her cute outfit dirty. Jesus Christ, can you imagine being married to that piece of work?”
Pender followed Gus’s gaze back to the beach where the khaki lady’s husband was finishing up. He threw on a pack and hoisted their canoe on his shoulders and set out for the trail.
Gus and Pender exchanged glances again. “That’s confidence, baby,” said Gus. “Doesn’t even have to recon the worst trail I’ve seen in twenty-five years of tripping. Just hit it running with a full load. Hot damn!”
“My money’s on stupidity,” Pender answered, loading the canoe. “I don’t think those two have any idea what they’re in for, especially not that poor bastard doing all the work.”
“Maybe she’s really good in bed.”
“No one’s that good in bed.”
“Spoken like an old man who’s over the hill,” Gus chuckled.
They fanned out along the trail, struggling with their respective loads, Gus chatting happily the whole way, the others quietly enduring the pain and suffering. Pender focused his mind on things away from his body so he wouldn’t think about the ache, wouldn’t worry about failing. He thought about Annette, wondered what set her off with the khaki lady. He thought she might have been jealous but couldn’t really imagine her being jealous. Thought about how he had never understood women and never would. Thought maybe that’s the most knowledge about women he’d ever have.
He thought about the khaki woman, tried to figure where she was coming from. She seemed more like someone who would go bird-watching in Central Park. He could picture her with a butterfly net, standing on the edge of one of the clearings, yelling to her old man, who was shagging butterflies for her, her standing there with a $500 net bought from maybe the Smithsonian catalog or something. What the hell were they doing here? Maybe getting a war story for the next Sierra Club tea party?
Those thoughts got him to the first big pile. Gus arrived a moment later, and the two of them teamed with the base campers to move the canoes over.
28
Gus hollered for everyone to take five and for Pender to come forward.
Pender wove his way through the bodies and canoes to the obstacle. Gus and one of the campers were waiting.
“Thought we’d give you a little break,” Gus explained. “Go ahead and take off your pack. I’ll pass it up to you in a minute. First, I want to tell you a funny story, because I know you like funny stories, right?”
Pender shrugged, too tired to get into it with Gus.
“So I come hauling ass up here, and, lo and behold, Mr. Yuppie Dude is standing here trying to get his canoe over the pile. Asks if I’d help him because he scratched it up on the last pile doing it himself. So John here”—he pointed to the camper up on top of the brush pile—“and I, we say, ‘Sure, we’ll give you a hand.’ And John goes up there and we send Mr. Yuppie Dude up and over, and then we pass his canoe over to him. He tells John to be careful because the hull’s getting scratched. John does his best, the guy takes the canoe, puts it on his shoulders, and walks on down the trail. Not a word of thanks. No offer to help us. Not a fuckin’ word. Just gets on his horse and leaves.
“Most unthankful person I’ve met in, what, four or five days. This guy a relative of yours?”
Pender smiled and shook his head wearily. “Just don’t chase this one around the park for a week, huh?”
“That canoe was near immaculate. You notice that?” Gus asked.
Pender shook his head no. “But their packs and paddles had that first-use look. You don’t suppose they bought a whole rig for this trip instead of using an outfitter?”
“I sure as hell wouldn’t use my own gear the first time up here,” said Gus. “Not unless I knew what I was doing.”
When they got to the next pile, the last one, the tallest of them, the husband of the khaki lady was nowhere to be seen.
“Pretty good work, him getting over this by himself,” Pender commented to Gus.
“Deserves a deep-throat blow job, I’d say.”
“He’ll be lucky to get his owie kissed.” Pender grinned.
He knew they were close to Pickerel when Chaos’s wild barks raised him from an imagined conversation he was having with Annette about why she dressed him down for staring at the khaki lady and how that would never happen with him, how it had been Annette from the first time they kissed. And besides, he was sixty years old, and, like Gus said, he was way over the hill for girl-watching.
When he reached the beach, he saw Chaos jumping up and down with that big dog grin on his face, trying to impress the khaki princess. She was as rigid as a statue, not scared but very pissed, her face looking like she had a mouthful of lemon. Pender gritted his teeth. What was it with high-energy dogs picking dog-hating people to roust?
Her husband was trying to shoo Chaos away, but it wasn’t doing any good. You had to scare him or scream like a banshee. The guy didn’t have it in him.
Pender put the canoe down and marched toward Chaos, cursing loudly. The dog dropped into a submissive posture like he’d been beaten with a bullwhip, then sat beside Pender, looked him in the eye, and wagged his tail hesitantly. Pender had to stifle a laugh. Chaos read his body language, let his tongue roll out the side of his mouth, and grinned at him.
The woman approached them and stood directly in front of Pender. “We have a very important meeting in the Twin Cities tomorrow. And the day after that, we have a wedding rehearsal to attend. And the day after that, we have a wedding. And two days after that, we have to be in Chicago for a conservation summit. And the week after that—”
“You lead a rich and full life,” interrupted Pender. “And I have miles to go before I sleep.” He started to move past her, but she stepped into his path.
“My point is,” she said, “I have a very full calendar of obligations, and if your wild dog caused me to break a leg or incur a head injury like the poor man back there”—she gestured toward the lake—“it would make me very mad.”
“No kidding?”
“Mad enough to take legal action.”
Gus had stayed quiet for several minutes, a record that couldn’t last. “Lady,” he said, “this place is home to wolves and bears. If a friendly dog is going to ruin your life, you really should stick to dude ranches. Whatever you do, don’t piss this guy off. He took an ax to me.”
“It’s true,” said Pender. “And if you think I’m bad, I hit him with the ax and he’s still walking and talking. Pretty much nonstop.”
The woman turned and departed. Gus laughed. “I think she likes the dog a little better now.”
They took slugs of water. Pender nodded toward the khaki woman, who was making lunch: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, some kind of gorp, and red-colored water. He eyed the half loaf of bread sitting on a pack. “You suppose they’ll be asking us over for lunch?”
“I think we blew our chance,” said Gus.
One of the campers strode over to the couple, said in a conversational tone that it would be nice if they offered to share, given the circumstances and all.
“If we knew we were getting out of here today, we’d be glad to share,” the woman replied, loud enough for everyone to hear. “But we really can’t be sure of that. Sorry.”
Her husband glared at her. She made a face and then offered the camper the bag of gorp.
“Let’s get out of here before I shove that food pack up her ass,” said Gus.
* * *
As they neared the lake, the distinct sound of an airplane engine droned into earshot. It was coming from in front of them, flying south. They caught a glimpse of it just for a moment and knew it was passing over the lake.
Hopes soared for a moment as they listened for evidence it was coming back to evacuate their injured people. But the e
ngine sound droned ever fainter to the south and then was gone.
“Son of a bitch,” Gus cursed. “You think Emily and Joe signaled them?”
Pender shrugged. “Who knows? Emily’s pretty sharp, but you’ve only got a minute or so from the time you hear the goddam thing to the time it’s gone. If they came in for a bathroom break or had a fish on line or something . . .” he shrugged again.
“You’re a cheerful son of a bitch.”
“I could have said they crashed.”
When they got to the beach, the news was mixed. Emily and Joe had signaled, and the plane had dipped a wing in acknowledgment but had continued south. It had places to go.
There was a brief discussion about whether they should keep going or stay in place and wait for an evacuation.
“I think we have to go for it,” said Pender. “We don’t know if anyone is coming back today or what the weather will be. If we portage now, we’ll have enough time to head for French Lake, and we’ll be easy to see on Pickerel. We’ll only be out of sight for thirty or forty minutes while we portage.”
“He’s right,” said Gus. “We need to make time. We don’t know about the weather. They may not be able to fly in an hour or two. Let’s get this done.”
Though some still had reservations, the group reached a consensus to make the portage. Annette made two stretchers, one for the injured camper, the other to lift Joe and Bill over the taller piles and carry whichever one needed it most. She assigned three people to each stretcher so one person could rest while two carried. “Gus and Pender and I will take Bill, and you three”—she pointed to the able-bodied campers—“can take John. Emily will haul their canoe.”
With that, the ten members of the Quetico Survivors Club, as they were calling themselves, got silently to work. Bill was going to try to walk to the first pile that required scaling. They would lift him over and see how he felt.
They negotiated the first climb, the injured camper going first, then Bill getting on the second stretcher and being lifted up and over by Pender and Gus, then Joe. It looked easier than it was for Pender. When he lifted his end of the stretcher, his vision exploded with stars. Pain fired from his lower back as if he’d been shot. His legs felt watery. Bill’s weight felt like a boulder the size of a house. Only the distant, muted rumble of Gus’s voice kept him trying. Gus was spitting out a constant flow of that stupid gung ho locker room bullshit that pissed Pender off but also made him want to get the job done so he could tell the stupid jock motherfucker to just for once shut his mouth.
Pender stabilized the stretcher on top of the pile while Gus clambered over to the other side. As he lowered the stretcher to Gus, Pender summoned extra strength by holding his breath. It sent the hydraulic pressure in his circulatory system skyrocketing, which increased his strength for a moment and caused capillaries in his nasal passages to burst, sending trickles of blood dripping down his face. Gus paused as he grasped the bottom end of the stretcher, caught Pender’s eye, motioned with one hand across his face for Pender to wipe away the blood. “Remember to breathe,” said Gus. One weightlifter to another.
* * *
It was a weary group that straggled onto the beach in the early afternoon. Pender and Gus got right to loading the canoes.
“Stop, guys,” Annette called to them. “Let’s take a twenty-minute break. We need it.”
“Time’s wasting,” said Gus.
“Why twenty minutes?” asked Pender. They both acted a little surly, in a fatigued way.
“Because it’s more than fifteen and less than thirty, okay?”
They looked at her, confused.
“We need a break,” she said. “We’re too tired to just start paddling. Twenty minutes is a good recovery time. And twenty minutes one way or the other isn’t going to matter. So sit down and drink up.”
The two sat against a long, low rock formation, grunting as they squatted down.
“Too bad you assholes squandered those beers you hauled in,” said Pender. “Even that awful piss you drink would taste pretty good about now.”
“Yeah, but some crazy motherfucker tried to steal that beer. We had to send it home for safekeeping.”
Annette listened to their macho man talk, a glib mix of obscenities and insults, which for some insane reason seemed to bond them. This was a side of Pender she had never seen, could not have imagined. She wondered if Rob was like this when he was with just the guys. Of course, Rob was never with just the guys.
She watched Gus and Pender chuckling at each other’s inane remarks, realized they were bonding like long-lost brothers. Realized she felt left out. Lonely, actually. A wilderness granny with the weight of the world on her shoulders, responsible for getting all these people out safely, all these people who were friends with each other but not with her.
She knew she was feeling sorry for herself, but it felt right. Her life was a path that led to a dead end.
Pender asked her to join them. He sat himself up straight and moved to one side to make room for her. It hurt him to do so. He winced and tried to swallow it so she wouldn’t see, but she saw. How could she say no to that? She sat beside him. He took her hand in his and leaned his head to touch against hers. A breeze sent ripples scattering over the surface of the bay in front of them, followed by another small gust, followed by a continuing breeze, cool and free. It was frosting on a Quetico cake kind of moment—sun, blue skies, placid waters.
The conditions were hypnotic, and the two dozed off, only to be wakened ten minutes later by Gus’s voice.
“Yo, sports fans, this is your official weather bulletin. Conditions are changing here in the great northwoods.”
Pender noticed the wind first. The stillness of just a minute ago was gone. The breeze was building, enough to cool his wet shirt and bring a chill on a still-pleasant day. He and Annette got to their feet and turned upwind. Low clouds were coming over the ridges west of them.
“What do you think?” Gus asked Annette.
“Impossible to say, but it doesn’t look terrible. I’m a little worried about the wind. It’s picking up. I think we should go for it, have everyone keep their rain gear handy. If it gets bad, there are a million places to camp on Pickerel, so we should be okay.”
Gus nodded. “Be nice to have this wind at our backs, too.”
Amen, Pender thought. They had maybe thirty kilometers of paddling ahead of them, with two people who couldn’t paddle and two who were close to eighty years old and three others who had already pushed themselves to the max. Pender made the calculations. Thirty kilometers, eighteen miles. Six hours? Five or less if it was just him and Annette and Gus. Yeah, a tailwind would be nice. Hell, one of those derecho blasts would be okay.
The base campers wanted to make for Stanton Bay. “It’s much closer,” said their leader. “We can be there in two or three hours.”
“It’s closer,” Annette agreed. “But there’s no phone there, the trail is going to be as bad as this one was, and the service road to the highway might not be passable for days.”
“We could at least check it out. It’s only a few miles out of our way.”
“It’s five or six miles out of our way,” Annette corrected the man. “It’s three miles in and three miles out, not counting the time to hike up to the parking lot, check the road, then come back down. You’re talking three or four hours out of our way.”
“What makes you think it’s not open?” the camper continued.
“We’d see people out here if it was open. There would be a crew working on this portage right now. It’s a busy portage and a main evacuation route. We can make French Lake by nightfall. There’s a phone there. We can call for help. If the roads aren’t open, we can call for a medevac.”
Gus was getting impatient. “We’re going to French Lake,” he said. “That’s it. If you want to go to Stanton, get to it. We’re going to French Lake, and we’re leaving now.”
The campers looked to Pender for help. He shrugged. “When the
beauty and the beast say French Lake, it’s French Lake.”
They put into Pickerel Lake a little after two o’clock.
29
They paddled through the portage bay and then through a spectacular narrows. Annette put Pender in the lead, followed by the campers and Emily and Joe. She and Gus brought up the rear, watching the paddlers in front of them for signs of faltering.
Massive Emerald Island greeted the band at the end of the narrows. Its shores rose like green walls, its towering forests now a tangle of broken and fallen trees on the windward side, but mostly intact on the leeward side.
Pender led the group east, across the south end of Emerald Island, took them slowly through the reef connecting Emerald to another island a hundred yards off its coast. He was tempted to continue due east into one of Pickerel’s sprawling archipelagos. They could save a kilometer or so by going through the mass of islands, reefs, and jagged points, but it was easy to become disoriented in the archipelagos, and they would lose more time than they gained if that happened.
Also, the wind was picking up and blowing constantly east-northeast. The long route would get them in the jet stream faster. With the wind at their backs, they would gain a lot of hull speed. Even an additional one or two miles per hour in a canoe made a huge difference—the difference between pulling into French Lake in the late afternoon or in the dark.
Pender took the group due north into the lee of Emerald Island. He wanted to stay in sheltered waters until they could run with the wind. There was already a choppy surf, and the advancing clouds warned that the wind and surf could get worse.
A half kilometer from the island’s north end, Pender pivoted his canoe to get a look back at the little flotilla, mainly to see if Annette wanted him to wait. He could see some whitecaps beyond the protection of Emerald Island, and he knew that this could be a fast ride home or a disaster. He wasn’t sure if Annette would want them to bunch up for the run or stay spread out.