Whatever Lola Wants

by George Szanto

  She kicked the toe of his wader. “I said stand.”

  “Okay, okay.” He rolled, left arm supporting, and curled himself to his feet. Now in his leg, the older ache again. “For godsake why’d you shoot at me?”

  “I don’t like killers.”

  “Hey, you did the shooting.”

  She gestured to the pool with her head. “You kill trout.”

  He looked. His rod lay by the edge of the water, submerged tip to ferrule, the reel on shore and full of sand. “I take trout with it. When I’m lucky.”

  “That one you had on—”

  “I’d have released it. Like three others today.”

  “Your hands scrape off their scales, they die anyway.”

  “Look, what is this?”

  “You’re on my land.”

  He shook his head. “It belongs to the Magnussens. I’ve got permission to fish it.”

  She stared at him. “Shit.”

  “Theresa Magnussen gave me her map.” He glanced around for his tackle bag.

  “She’s a killer too.”

  “Lady, she hasn’t fished this stream in years.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Look. Here’s how I fish.” He walked to the water, reached for the rod, rinsed off the reel, took in line. The fish was gone but the current had kept the hook from snagging. If the fly was on— Yes. He grabbed the end of the leader, held it toward her.

  She backed off and drew lightly on the slingshot’s elastic.

  “Go on, examine the fly.”

  “Reach it over with the rod.”

  He raised the rod tip her way, line dangling. She looked at the wool-feather-thread-steel mayfly larva. The fly bobbed. She grasped the leader a foot above the hook, wrapped it around her hand, glanced from the fly to him.

  He felt the tug, watched the rod arch, and examined her. Mid-thirties, overalls and heavy-soled boots, brown-blond hair in a clumpy tail poking out the back of her cap. Middlish height. From one shoulder hung a small red backpack.

  She let go and the line went slack. “Okay.”

  “Thank you.” Carney had clipped the barb off his hook. To release his catch he only had to turn the hook without lifting the fish from the water. He lost a lot of fish and it’d be a dumb way to fill a larder but most streams needed fish more than he did.

  “Even barbless hooks torture fish. You still exhaust them.”

  Carney shook his head and again pain cracked along his forearm. He reached for his elbow, the rod whipped about and lashed her right shoulder. She backed away, grabbed for her slingshot, pebble drawn back—

  “Hey, I’m sorry.”

  “Stay there.”

  He set his rod down, shoved up his sleeve, ignored her. Swelling had started, a red glow at the crazy-bone. He looked at her. Rubbing her shoulder she seemed less in control. “You okay?”

  She nodded. “You?”

  “No big deal.” Except his bare forearm was prickling. He glanced down. The mosquitoes, thousands of them, a dozen anyway, syphoning away. He slapped at them.

  “Why the hell don’t you use repellent?”

  “I do. The sleeve covered me there.”

  She found a small clear bottle in her pocket and lobbed it to him. “Smear it on.”

  He slathered the liquid, even more vile-smelling than his, on his arm, checked his elbow and pulled the sleeve down.

  She said, “You need ice on that. Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “Can you walk okay?”

  “Just don’t knee-cap me.” No response. “It’s all right, I’ll head back to the Grange.”

  “Staying there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They must like you.” She glanced at him. “That your Jaguar, up at the bridge?”

  He nodded. “Where it says POSTED, NO FISHING.”

  “That’s over a mile.”

  Working the water, it hadn’t felt that far.

  “Come on.”

  “What did you mean, your land?”

  “My father’s. And my cabin.”

  “You’re Sarah Magnussen?”

  “Magnussen-Yaeger.” She pointed upstream. “Cross-country’s easier. About half a mile.”

  “Well—”

  “I’ll drive you to your car.”

  “What d’you have, one of those all-terrain vehicles?”

  “Let’s go.”

  •

  I enjoy watching Carney. I even flinched a little when the pebble from Sarah’s slingshot got him on the elbow. I don’t think Lola noticed.

  •

  5.

  For the last hours a mean uncertainty had eaten away at John Cochan’s agenda. His distress had brought back his sense of irreplaceable loss. Would Yak’s suspected cavern call for a detonation on the southeast line, where the thick wall there might close down that narrow passageway? To a connected moment when Johnnie had felt Benjie’s presence? Just ask Yak where the blast would be. He picked up his phone, pushed two.

  “Terramac City,” said the voice.

  “Is Yak there?”

  “Sorry, Mr. Cochan. He’s below.”

  “What about Steed?”

  “Sorry, sir. Haven’t seen him all day.”

  “What about Harry?”

  “No, he’s not around either.”

  “Well, track them down for me!”

  “Yes, Mr. Cochan. Oh, and Mr. Cochan, Mr. Boce left a note, to remind you about your meeting here, with Mr. Carney, at two tomorrow.”

  “Yes, yes.” Damn. Boce did say Carney could be useful. Choosing to live in Terramac? But more important matters plagued Cochan. Steed would have reasons for being away. Still.

  Steed, Aristide Boce, son of Alexandre Boce the banker, pure-wool Quebec money, and a nephew of two bishops, Steed knew—as Yak was fond of saying—the value of a retreat. He could disappear to many profitable places just as he might turn up near anywhere. He was as much at home in Montreal’s Societé St. Anselme as at Washington’s Dubbin Club. His breadth of fiscal awareness was as substantial as his girth, as smooth as his lustrous gray mustache. Educated at the École Polytechnique and the London School of Economics, he entered the private sector and became, at twenty-nine, Chief Executive Officer of Québois Fina, the presswood revolutionizing the construction industry. His shares had made him a wealthy man. Québois Fina’s success trickled down a long way, Boce made that clear to many an audience. It brought hundreds of unproductive souls off welfare, scores of the younger ones for the first time in their lives. A recognized leader, Boce was drafted to membership in the team that in the late seventies oversaw the rural revitalization and economic growth of south-eastern Quebec. From there he went to the provincial cabinet, Finance portfolio, and three years ago to Intraterra.

  For the Terramac project, so few miles south of the international border, the bridges to Quebec were essential: cheap building materials, hydroelectric power, lower wage scales, a cheap dollar. No neater way for John Cochan to tie the bond than by borrowing from Quebec banks, implicating Quebec money. And no better man to smooth these relations with the sometime recalcitrant NAFTA neighbor to the north than Aristide Boce. Especially valuable in reducing the many border-crossing hassles, after the disastrous consequences of September 11 nearly two years ago.

  The week before, Yak had guided Johnnie through the cavern past Bobcats and electric shovels to the area that hid the possible chamber. A space like most of the others, large but undistinguished, granite and sandstone, needing massive transformation. Johnnie had left Harry and Yak deep in logarithmic speculation. Small passages everywhere that he knew from blueprints. Suddenly a narrow space on the south side seemed to beckon. It led round one dark corner after another. The machinery faded to a hum. Then, in the gleam of his lamp, something had moved toward him. In doubt he pulled back; what to expect in this nether world but the stony remains of ice-age rumblings long settled to eternal peace? Again the movement, a figure, drawn yet flexible; a head but its angle
askew and arms akimbo. Johnnie stepped closer. “Hello? Is anyone—?” He knew, or felt he did; yet it couldn’t be. He played the lamp to one side, slow. At its beam edge he caught the figure again. It reached to him. He stopped himself then, stood still, breathed silence. He couldn’t move his legs, forgot how to try. His arm shifted, he sent the beam to the side. The figure, a small body, three-quarter face, arms toward him, beseeching.

  “Benjie …?” No sound, no answer. “Do you want—should I—come closer?” Tiny echoes of his words died. The figure stood still, they both stood still. He didn’t dare move. Except as he slid the beam a degree, three, four, farther away, the figure glided in his direction, a foot, two, yet another. Slow, sweating, Johnnie arced his beam from the figure, watching it as it leaned, posture unchanging, closer and closer, closer …closer. The darkness between them near complete, the figure a yard, a foot, inches away. How could he be sure, a touch on his arm, gentle, the least pressure, was it really there? Or not— Without lips, in his mind, he breathed, Benjie …how can I help you? He waited, long, longer, couldn’t tell, how to tell? The sense of touch remained. With infinite slowness he began the beam’s arc back. Would the figure withdraw? He’d give all Terramac, the whole of his place in history, if the figure were—alive. The penumbra of the gleam touched the old dark. Nothing. The darkness pushed aside, and in it, nothing. He flicked the light out, a pleading gesture, and heard, and saw, nothing. He waited. Waited. Nothing at all. Benjie would not take his help.

  Would he ever sense Benjie again?

  In the black air the buzz, far distant, had been like silence in Johnnie’s ears. Till from its midst came a voice too familiar, a friend’s voice: “Johnnie? Hey, Handyman! You there?”

  •

  “Poor man,” said Lola.

  I wondered at her sympathy.

  •

  6.

  For fifteen minutes Carney let himself be led along a dim trail, through brambles, ferns, blueberry thickets, over a rise, along a ridge. Only the low sun gave him a sense of direction. His leg ached, his elbow throbbed. Felt like she’d chipped the bone. Ice?

  She said, “So who are you?”

  “Carney.”

  “Carney what?”

  “That’s enough.”

  Her brow wrinkled. She turned and walked on.

  They arrived at a clearing. A small pond lay dark, mute, opaque. A cottage sat back from the water on a grassy spread, dark green, dappled with more hawkweed and daisies. Beyond, trees and brush sloped upward to a sheen of high crag. Minutes earlier the hillside would have been washed with the dipping sun; now only the upper granite glowed. Under thick branches where cleared land met the pond stood a second structure, a tiny log cabin, no windows visible. Thin gurgles of water, close by, heightened the stillness.

  The peace spread with the shadows. “Beautiful,” said Carney. But she knew this. Likely the trees and rocks themselves knew.

  She nodded and again led the way.

  Ice? He searched overhead. No electric lines. Just the dim sparkle of a small spring. He glanced at Sarah. A blink of fancy, and the woman’s poised face became a deception. In her cottage she’d turn into the witch, she’d stuff him into the oven.

  They reached the stairs. “Step into my parlor.”

  A sense of humor? “You do have ice?”

  She gave him a weary glance and walked up the steps.

  He joined her on four square feet of stoop in front of a porch. The big screens would transform to storm windows at a slide of glass plate.

  “In, quick.”

  He slipped through the doorway. She followed. The porch was a jumble of chairs, wicker tables, boxes, a half-dozen nets hanging from nails, yellow, green, various sizes, small mesh. For butterflies? A saggy brown couch. A table. Shelving that held seven kerosene lamps. On the wall, four watercolors of insects. Through a front door, the house. Carney wasn’t invited farther.

  She tossed her slingshot and pack onto the couch, lit a couple of lamps, hooked one by the door, one on the wall. “Sit there. I’ll get the ice. A beer?”

  “That’d be great.”

  She disappeared inside. Did she patrol the hills daily, sling in hand, looking for so-called killers? And when she found one, invite him home?

  A darker silence. The screening filtered the water’s lilt. Carney, no air moving about him, stuck to his sweaty clothes. A porch that gets evening light holds the day’s heat. He pulled at the heel of his wader— His elbow screamed. He waited. For the other wader he used his left hand, for the socks, his feet.

  He heard a back door slam. A moment later he saw her march toward the little log house. A generator? She disappeared inside. He stared across the pond. His elbow pounded down his forearm in time with his heart. He closed his eyes and tried to think the pain away.

  “You grimace well.” She stood next to him, in one hand a towel and an eight-inch wedge of ice traced with sawdust, in the other two frosted bottles. “Roll up your sleeve. Sit over there.”

  He shifted to the armchair. An ice house. In the twenty-first century. On the broad wicker arm she set the wrapped ice. He touched his elbow to the ice, the towel cool and damp. “Thanks.”

  She opened the beers. Without looking at him she said, “Santé.”

  The beer washed smooth across his tongue and down his throat. She observed him.

  “You shoot stones at everybody on Milton’s land?”

  “When I drove in I saw your car at the bridge. I thought you were with the development.”

  “You shoot development people?”

  “Somebody was trespassing and I went looking. You were fishing so maybe you weren’t Terramac. But you were killing fish.”

  No he wasn’t. He waited. She wasn’t pushing it. “What do you do here?”

  “I live here.”

  “And?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  Carney shrugged.

  “Sometimes I think here.” She took off the baseball cap. Her hair lay scrambled down her back and sweat blackened her shirt but she looked cool as the bottle she touched to her cheek.

  “What do you think about?”

  “You know me well enough to ask that?”

  He took a swallow of beer. “You drink with people, you ask questions.”

  A puff of a laugh. “I think about my trees, my pond.” She stared out at the fading light.

  “Does the ice keep all summer?”

  “Pretty near.”

  He adjusted the cold to the other side of his elbow. “How much d’you take out?”

  “Couple of tons.”

  “Hard work.”

  “Yep.”

  They lapsed to silence, thick as the air, till Carney said, “You work for pay too?”

  “I work in a lab.”

  “Around here?”

  She took some time to answer. “At the County Hospital.”

  Saying nothing was difficult. “Interesting work?”

  “It can be.”

  The ice helped. And the alcohol, beer to blood to brain, had softened his irritation. He should go. He sat, eyes half closed. The earth vibrated lightly.

  “Bastards.”

  Not a rush of movement, more like the trembling he’d felt after her second shot with his head lying flat on the ground. The tremor passed. “What was that?”

  “Goddamn Cochan. That Terramac development.”

  A known type. What Carney in his book had called an environmental paladin on a previous generation’s estate. He didn’t oppose development out of hand. All kinds of people buy themselves some peaceful country air, Carney included. Can’t do that without going where other people, country people, live. “What? This land is mine, go build your retreat someplace else?”

  She shook her head. “There’s one huge reason for this Terramac thing, just one. To make lots of money for Handy Johnnie Cochan. Don’t nimby me.”

  “Look, people have to live somewhere.”

  “Wait till you feel it.” />
  “What?”

  “It may happen. Wait.”

  Carney tested his elbow. The ice was working.

  “Another beer?”

  He should leave. He shrugged. “Great.”

  She went out, by the front door this time, into the dim light. His glance followed her to the ice house. Pleasant to watch, the unknown woman’s walk: good stride or pretty amble or inadvertent shift of hips. The overalls gave Sarah Magnussen-Yaeger the sensuality of a grizzly. But no, anyone getting him another beer has to be appreciated.

  His sweat had dried. He looked around as if an accuser stood behind him. He waited.

  Sarah came back. As she closed the door a mosquito flew in, a tiny shape against the lamplight. Carney felt sudden relief, unconscious till then, at their recent absence. She opened the beers. He watched the pest’s flight. In his direction. A whine past his ear and he jerked away. It hovered, lowered its flight pattern, made an approach toward his repellent-thin elbow. He cupped his hand. It arced, his fingers stalked—

  “Don’t.” She flicked at his fingers with the rim of a net.

  Like getting his knuckles rapped.

  A flit in mid-air caught the mosquito in the skein. She drew a string. Webbing closed over the net top. She stepped outside, closed the door, loosened the cover, released it. Came back, picked up his beer, handed it to him. “Around here, killing isn’t on.”

  “House rules?”

  “My rules.”

  “Ah.” He raised the bottle in salute.

  Her right eyebrow curved up. “You know it.”

  This Magnussen daughter, thought Carney, is weird.

  •

  “Damn right,” said Lola.

  “You judge quickly,” I said.

  “She used to be kinda terrific. What got into her?”

  In truth, I wasn’t sure yet. “Hang on, hang on.”

  •

  Sarah took down another lamp, lit it, trimmed the wick, set it on a low table. She looked at Carney’s face, shoulders, arms, in open appraisal.

  He drank down half his beer. Her stare felt full of questions.

  “You met Feasie and Ti-Jean at the Grange.”

  “And your parents. Ti-Jean was away.” Carney finished his warming beer. “Ms. Magnussen-Yaeger, thanks for the hospitality. Now could you take me to my car?” He stood.