The Reserve

by Russell Banks

  Vanessa said, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. She’s dead, isn’t she?”

  Hubert knelt down beside the woman and touched her throat. “Yes.”

  “You’re sure?” Jordan said. “She’s really dead?”

  “Yes,” Hubert said. “She took both barrels.” He stood up and looked off at the mountains on the far side of the lake.

  Vanessa turned and started walking toward the house.

  “Where are you going?” Jordan called.

  “To get a shovel!”

  “What the hell for?”

  She stopped and looked back at him, her fists on her hips, and studied him for a second. “To bury her, Jordan,” she said and hurried on.

  “To bury her! My Christ! Will you tell me what on earth has been going on here?” Jordan said to the guide.

  Hubert stood and looked at his hands. His guilty hands. This was an accident that shouldn’t have happened. If he hadn’t tried to take the shotgun away from her, the woman would have had to put it down of her own accord. Or she would have handed it over to the artist. Maybe the artist would have flown her out of here then. And maybe Vanessa Cole would have agreed to do what her mother originally wanted, ship her off to that hospital in Europe. Only first they’d make the mother promise no brain surgery, no lobotomy that can turn you into a vegetable, that would be the deal, and maybe in a few months or a year Vanessa would come out cured of whatever mental sickness she had, and she would return to America, and her mother would have forgiven her by then for all this. For being kidnapped and imprisoned here at the camp by her own daughter. And someday Vanessa Cole would get her inheritance and enjoy the kind of life she was supposed to have.

  “Hubert, for Christ’s sake, answer me! The woman has just been killed! This is goddamned serious. And Vanessa just wants to bury her and forget it? Are you two both crazy, like the old woman said?”

  “No. What she told me made sense. Sort of. Oh, hell, at least yesterday it did.”

  “Who? Who made sense?”

  “Miss Cole. Vanessa. She told me that her mother signed her into a mental hospital in Europe and took away all her inheritance money from her father and her grandparents. It was extreme, maybe, what the mother did, and Vanessa was really scared of going into the hospital. What she did was maybe more extreme than what the mother did, but it was understandable, I guess. Because she was scared of having brain surgery. You know, a lobotomy. I was trying to get them to find some kind of agreement is all. It was wrong, what Vanessa did, tying up her mother and keeping her here against her will. It was wrong what the mother was doing, too. But it was an accident, Jordan, the gun going off.”

  “Yeah, it was an accident. I know that. You know that. But it won’t look like an accident if we let Vanessa bury her out here,” Jordan said. He tossed his jacket on the ground, turned the guide boat over and slid it on its keel toward the water and in. “You’ve got to take the body out and report what happened. I’m not supposed to be here, especially with the airplane, so it’s up to you, Hubert. If we load the woman’s body into the boat now,” he said, “before Vanessa comes back with the damned shovel, you can row it across the lake to the Carry.” From there the guide could get the body of the woman over to the First Lake on the cart the guides used for hauling supplies between the two lakes, row across to the boathouse, leave the woman’s body, and walk in and report what had happened. “And by the way, Hubert, nobody needs to know I was out here this morning. It’ll only complicate things. So c’mon,” he said, “give me a hand with her before Vanessa tries to stop us.”

  The guide didn’t move, except to pick up the fallen shotgun. He broke it open, removed and automatically pocketed the empty shells, and looked down the barrels. “This’s going to hurt me, you know,” he said. “Accident or not. People talk.” He snapped the shotgun shut and hefted it in his hands, noting its balance. It was a custom-made Belgian .28 gauge. Worth at least a thousand dollars, Hubert thought. He said to Jordan, “Word’ll get out. People will know that the wife of one of my best clients got herself killed by her own gun in my presence. In my care. Guides are supposed to make sure things like this don’t happen.”

  “We don’t have a choice. Anyhow, it’ll blow over eventually. People talk, but they forget, too.”

  “I’m a guide, Jordan. Word’ll get out. Someone in my care got herself shot, and it might even look like I shot her myself. Wouldn’t matter that it was an accident. Look, this is a serious problem for me. You don’t understand, Jordan, it’s the only living I got,” he said, then added, almost as an afterthought, “Vanessa says nobody knows her mother is even up here. Except me. And now you. And you, you’re setting up to say you weren’t even here this morning.”

  “What about Kendall? He must know.”

  “Yes, but he thinks it was of her own free will that she came in to the camp. He wouldn’t check on whether she’s still here or left already for New York City. Vanessa could drive off and say she took her mother with her, and nobody’d be the wiser.”

  Jordan held the boat by the gunnel and looked back at the man. Was he serious? Was he really going along with her? Had that been their plan all along? It slowly dawned on Jordan that Vanessa and Hubert might have been working together from the beginning, and not only had they been sleeping together, they had also been trying to scare Mrs. Cole into releasing Vanessa’s inheritance—and when she agreed to that, they would murder the woman. Maybe they planned to make it look as if she’d died of natural causes, smother her with a pillow or something, or drown her in the lake and just say she went swimming and never came back. Vanessa probably promised Hubert more money than he’d ever imagined making in a lifetime. The artist’s unexpected arrival this morning had stymied their plan, or at least complicated it. And then Mrs. Cole found her husband’s shotgun. And now she was dead, but not of natural causes. Explainable, though. An accidental shooting.

  Jordan looked up the slope toward the house and saw Vanessa coming from the toolshed carrying a long-handled spade and a pickax. “C’mon, Hubert,” the artist said, “help me put the body in the boat and shove off. For Christ’s sake, hurry!”

  “No. We can’t do that. Not without Vanessa’s permission. It’s her mother.”

  “I don’t know what kind of spell she’s put on you, man, but I’m not waiting for her permission.” Jordan let the boat float a few feet from shore. Moving fast, he got his arms under the woman’s body and lifted it and carried it to the boat and gently laid it in the bow. He put the oars into the boat and looked down and saw blood smeared across the front of his shirt. “Damn!” he said.

  He grabbed the guide by the shoulder and shoved him in the direction of the boat. The man didn’t move. “Hubert, get in the goddamned boat, and start rowing!” Again Jordan shoved him, but Hubert stood rooted to the ground, still holding the shotgun loosely in one hand.

  From fifty yards off, Vanessa saw the boat bobbing in the water and her mother’s body in the boat, saw the bloodstains on Jordan’s white shirt and Hubert with the gun, and started to run toward them. “Stop! You can’t take her, Jordan! You can’t!” she cried. Dropping the tools at the shore, she ran knee deep into the water. She pushed Jordan aside, grabbed the boat, and drew it halfway back onto dry land.

  Jordan said, “Let Hubert take her in and report it. It was an accident, Vanessa. That’s all. You’ve got to report it, Vanessa.”

  “No! No one will believe me! Don’t you understand? People will think I did it! The police, everyone, they’ll all blame me. Because of…because of what she was doing to me. And what I’ve done to her.” Vanessa was panting, her eyes darting from one man to the other. “She was sending me away, back to that mental hospital, Jordan. And my grandparents’ trust and my inheritance from Daddy, she took them, Jordan. So not only am I certified crazy, I’ve got a motive. Motive, opportunity, and means, Jordan. Plus crazy.”

  “No one has to know about that,” he said.

  “It’s all documented, Jordan. They made me
sign the papers, my mother and her lawyer.”

  “I meant, what you were doing to her. Out here. No one has to know that. It takes away motive, at least. And craziness.”

  “We can swear it was an accident,” Hubert said. “Because it’s the truth. We’ll swear we were here and we saw it.”

  Jordan turned to him in surprise. “You can say you were here and you saw it. Not me. As soon as I can, I’m flying out of here. You and Vanessa can claim it happened any damned way you want.”

  Vanessa looked at the two men as if they were boys and simply did not understand the ways of adults. “If they don’t believe me, and they won’t, what makes you think they’ll believe you, Hubert? Or you, Jordan? If I have to, to protect myself, I’ll say you both were witnesses. But it won’t matter, no one will believe you, either. They’ll just think you’re both covering for me. The famously philandering artist and the lonely widower of the woods, they’ll think you’re both in love with me. Or at least were sleeping with me. They’ll say I worked my wiles on you. Oh, and will you tell the sheriff why Mother had the gun in the first place, Hubert? Will you say she got the drop on you when you went to make sure she was still safely locked away in the bedroom? You could go to jail for that alone, you know. Aiding and abetting a kidnapper. Or maybe I’ll just claim you did it, Hubert. All on your own. You shot her because you’re so in love with me, you big hunk of a man, and in your own love-struck way were only trying to free me from my mother’s nefarious intention of tossing me in the loony bin and spending all my money. Which would be better spent on you, right? I mean, look, your fingerprints are all over Daddy’s gun! And poor little me, I don’t even know how to shoot a gun. Or maybe I’ll say you two were out here early in the morning, fighting, because Hubert’s been sleeping with your sweet wife, Jordan, and Mother tried to stop you—”

  “Jesus, Vanessa,” Jordan said. “Stop.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I wouldn’t do it.” She smiled wanly at Hubert, then at Jordan. “But seriously, whatever you say or I say happened, no one’s going to believe us. Unless I confess that, yes, I shot my mother, and you’re only covering up for me. People will believe that story easily enough. But no matter what story they believe, someone’s going to jail for this mess. Me, for sure. But maybe you, too, Hubert St. Germain. Possibly even you, Jordan Groves. Because no one’s going to believe it was an accident. And in a way, it wasn’t, was it?” She looked down at her mother’s body in the boat. “Oh, God, she’s really dead, isn’t she? This isn’t a dream, is it?”

  “No,” Jordan said. “It’s real, Vanessa. That’s why we can’t lie about it. Regardless of the consequences.”

  Vanessa said, “You don’t mind lying about your being out here, though. Do you?”

  “That’s…that’s different.”

  “The main difference being you can get away with it.”

  “I’m thinking maybe we should take the body in and report it,” Hubert said. “I’m thinking maybe Jordan’s right.”

  “You’re not listening to me,” Vanessa said. “Either of you. If you take my mother’s body in and report her death, no matter how you tell it, I am definitely going to jail for a long, long time. Or I’ll spend the rest of my life in a mental hospital. There’s no way around it. Please, you two, help me with this. I need you both. Please help me. We can bury her in the woods, and then you both can leave, and tonight after it gets dark I’ll take the guide boat and go back to the Club and drive away. No one will see me leave. That’ll be the end of it. Nothing will happen to either of you. Nothing will happen to me.”

  “How will you explain her disappearance?” Jordan asked.

  “I won’t.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll just say she was fine when I dropped her off in Tuxedo Park after our trip to the Adirondacks with Daddy’s ashes.”

  “There’ll be a search. Up here, especially. Where she was last seen alive.”

  “The only people who’ll know where to look will be you two. And me. And I’ll never tell anyone. If you never tell anyone, Mother’s disappearance will remain a mystery, pure and simple. Of course, I’ll stay under suspicion for years, maybe forever. But I can live with that. I’ve lived with worse.”

  Hubert said, “No one would think to ask Jordan about it, probably. Nobody knows he’s been here. Me, though, they would ask. Since it’s known I brought supplies in yesterday.”

  “You’d have to lie, then. You’d have to say she was fine when you last saw her,” Vanessa said.

  “I don’t like lying. I’m not much good at it.”

  Jordan gave a short, hard laugh. “I’d say you’re damned good at it.”

  The three stood with their backs to the lake and the boat and Vanessa’s mother, and were silent for a long moment. Jordan put his jacket on, took his tobacco and papers from the pocket and rolled a cigarette and lighted it and smoked.

  Finally, Hubert sighed and said, “She wouldn’t be the first person who’s buried in these woods and nobody knows it.”

  “I expect not,” Jordan said.

  “There’s always been stories about hunters going into the Reserve alone and not coming out and no body ever found.”

  “That right?”

  “Yes. Some of it might’ve been funny business, some of it not. When it’s local people, of course, everybody pretty much knows what’s what.”

  “But you wouldn’t call Mrs. Cole local people.”

  “No. Not really.”

  “She’d have to be buried deep, with rocks on her,” Jordan said. “To keep the animals from digging her up. You understand I’m just speculating here.”

  Vanessa looked at the ground and was silent.

  Hubert said, “You’d need someplace high, where there’s no brook or stream. Snowmelt moves the banks around a lot in spring and washes out any low places.”

  Jordan said, “You’d have to replace the sod, make it look natural again. No tracks.”

  “Yes,” Hubert said. “You would.”

  For a long moment neither man said anything.

  “You know the land hereabouts,” Jordan said to Hubert. “Any good ground high up that’s not covered with trees, where there’s rocks close by?”

  Again, neither man spoke. Then, as if he’d had the spot in mind for a long time, Hubert said, “There’s a bluff about a quarter mile east of the house.”

  The three of them looked from one to the other, each to each. Jordan picked up the shovel and pickax and passed the shovel to Hubert. With the shotgun in one hand, the shovel in the other, Hubert led Jordan and Vanessa up the slope toward the tall pines and into the woods beyond. Behind them, the guide boat, half in the water, half out, rocked gently on its keel, and Evelyn Cole’s cold dry eyes stared at the morning sun.

  The American woman sat alone in the dining saloon on Level A of the airship. She was dressed in the same brown tweed jacket and skirt as when she’d first boarded, except that the wide-brimmed hat and veil had been replaced by a green chenille head scarf knotted in back and worn low on the forehead, like a flapper of a decade ago. Not having eaten dinner the night before, she was evidently hungry and ordered a full breakfast off the menu. She looked with mild interest at the silk-covered wall opposite her. Twenty-one panels were painted with scenes illustrating last year’s flights of the Graf Zeppelin, the Hindenburg’s sister ship, to South America. She looked at the pictures in sequence from left to right, one at a time, as if they were sections of a mural, instead of a collection of individual pictures. During the night the Hindenburg had passed over England, and at a nearby table three middle-aged men in business suits and an elderly, silver-haired lady, Americans, were discussing the coronation next week of George VI. One of the men had gotten the news of the day early this morning from the airship’s radio operator. They agreed that the abdicated king’s forthcoming marriage to Mrs. Simpson, whose divorce from her previous husband had been granted a day ago, was scandalous. Imagine an American president behaving like
that, said the lady with the silver hair. She spoke with a crisp Connecticut accent. Seated at a banquette in the corner of the dining room, a German woman with two small blond boys waited to be served. The younger boy got down on the carpeted floor to play with his windup toy, a tin car driven by Mickey Mouse. He wound the key and set the car on the floor. It ran under the table and came out the other side, making a whirring noise and giving off metallic sparks. Quickly, the steward crossed the room, grabbed the toy, and stopped the wheels from spinning. In German he said to the mother, I’m sorry, Frau Imhoff, but I must confiscate this. We take no chances with sparks. The Americans, meanwhile, continued to discuss the news of the day. Franco’s advance against the republic is going swimmingly, said the man who had visited the ship’s radio operator. His air force destroyed a Basque town called Guernica, near Bilbao. The man next to him said, That’s only thanks to the Germans, of course. Who the heck do you think was flying those airplanes? Certainly not Spaniards or Italians. The third man said, In the future the main use of airplanes will be in war. As airborne artillery. And all the casualties of war will be civilians. Mark my words, it won’t be like the last one. The lady from Connecticut said, Oh, dear, I do hope you’re wrong. This is so depressing a subject. Can’t we talk about something else? She turned then and smiled at the young woman seated alone by the window. Would you like to join us? she asked. Do you speak English? I’m afraid none of us speaks German. Before the woman could answer, the waiter arrived with her breakfast. He set the plate before her, and she began to eat at once. For a few seconds the silver-haired lady and her three companions watched her, waiting for a response. Finally, they turned away. The lady raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. No speaka da English, one of the men said, and the others smiled uneasily and quickly resumed their discussion of the news of the day.

  THE SITE WAS A FLATTENED PATCH OF AN ANCIENT GLACIAL esker where tall red pines grew straight as masts and there wasn’t much ground cover, other than a warm, fragrant bed of pine needles. A spill of boulders from a shifted brook lay close by, and while the men dug the hole, Vanessa busied herself lugging rocks and piling them at what she felt was the foot of her mother’s grave. Then she sat down on the ground a few feet away to watch, her arms across her knees, her chin resting on her arms. Jordan, in shirtsleeves, his leather jacket on the ground nearby, swung the pick and loosened the gravelly soil, and Hubert shoveled the dirt into a neat, conical pile. Vanessa was silent and dreamy seeming. While they worked the men spoke to each other in low voices, as if to keep from waking her.