The Reserve

by Russell Banks

  “May I direct you to someone?”

  “I need to see Mr. Kendall.”

  “Sorry. He’s with a member.”

  “I can wait.”

  “As you wish.”

  Hubert nodded hello to the other guide.

  “Hubert.” LaCoy rubbed his knuckle across his nose and thumped the cork handles of the fishing rods on the floor in greeting. He was a thick-bodied man, built like a stump with green suspenders.

  “They biting out there today?”

  “Naw. They was only waiting till we left, I guess. We pretty much come up empty. You?”

  “Never wet a line. Just lugging supplies for the Coles.”

  “Figured. So them two ladies staying out there alone awhile.”

  “Awhile, yes.”

  Ambassador Smith and Russell Kendall emerged from the office together, both smiling, their transaction satisfactorily completed. They ignored the guides and kept walking in the direction of the greeting desk, where Smith suddenly stopped, as if remembering something he’d left behind. “Don’t mention who was inquiring, Russell. Not unless she shows genuine interest.”

  “Not to worry, Ambassador,” the manager said. They shook hands and Smith moved on, his faithful guide following behind. The manager hoped Ambassador Smith was right, that if Mrs. Cole received a generous, timely, and discreet offer from an old-time reservist like Ambassador Thomas Smith, she would be willing to sell their camp at the Second Lake. It had to be done before the widow got over Dr. Cole’s death, but not while she was still in deep mourning, or she might feel she was being taken advantage of. It was shrewd of the ambassador to make his move quickly, however, while the place was still associated in the minds of Mrs. Cole and her daughter with the death of Dr. Cole. A year from now their memory of the event will be dimmed somewhat, and by then they would have made new associations with the place, social and otherwise, and Mrs. Cole might not want to sell Rangeview.

  The ambassador and his family would be easier for Kendall to deal with than the Cole women, especially the daughter, Vanessa. He liked the ambassador. Everyone did. And there would be a sizable commission in it for Kendall if he helped facilitate the sale. The ambassador was an extremely wealthy man from very old money who preferred to let others do his business for him, even in trivial matters. He often had his secretary make his clubhouse dining room reservations for him by telephone from New York City, even though he and his wife were right here in residence in one of the Club cottages, she out on the golf course, he out on the Second Lake fishing.

  “Hubert’s waiting to speak with you, Mr. Kendall,” the English girl said, surprising Hubert. He hadn’t thought she’d known his name.

  Kendall turned to Hubert, eyebrows raised. “Yes?”

  “In private, if that’s okay.”

  Kendall nodded and went back into his office. Hubert followed him and stood facing the wide desk like a schoolboy, hat in his hands. Kendall leaned back in his chair and peered out the window behind him at the tennis courts. The window was open, and the soft tympani of the ball and racket and the ball and fine clay played in counterpoint in the background.

  After a few seconds, Hubert cleared his throat and said, “There’s something you ought to know that happened today.”

  “Really? What?” Kendall continued watching the tennis. A pair of tall, blond, long-jawed men in white flannel trousers and white short-sleeved shirts trotted back and forth on the near court like agitated storks.

  “You mind if I sit down?” Hubert suddenly felt that if he didn’t put himself into a chair and trap himself there, he’d turn around and walk out the door.

  Kendall waved him toward the dark green club chair recently vacated by Ambassador Smith and resumed gazing at the tennis. “What happened today that I should know about?”

  “You know Mrs. Cole, Evelyn Cole? Dr. Cole’s wife. His widow, I mean.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Well, this morning I was up to the Second Lake there, at their camp. And she got accidentally shot.”

  Kendall wheeled around in his chair. “Shot! By a gun? Oh, my!”

  “Yes. By a gun. Shotgun. Over-and-under Belgian twenty-eight gauge that belonged to the doctor. I…I got it in my truck. My car. Outside.”

  “Oh, my!” the manager said again. “Is she…is she all right?”

  “Well, no. She’s dead. But it was an accident.”

  “Dead!” Kendall left his chair and hurried across the room and closed the door. “Oh, my. Oh, my, this is terrible.”

  Hubert looked down at his hands, one holding his old fedora by the brim, the other upturned in his lap, as if waiting for a coin from a passerby. What he was doing now did not feel any longer like the right thing. But it was too late to stop it, too late to go back to what he had been doing before. That had felt wrong, too. In little more than twenty-four hours—starting at the moment Vanessa Cole showed up at his cabin door—he had arrived at a place in his life where he could no longer choose between right and wrong. His life no longer felt like it belonged to him. It belonged to Vanessa Cole and Jordan Groves, and to Alicia Groves, and now it belonged to Russell Kendall, too.

  “It was an accident. She…well, she dropped the gun, and it went off, I guess. It was hair triggered, and she had the safety off. I guess you could call it a freak accident. She didn’t have much experience with guns and such.”

  “Oh, dear God, this is terrible! Where were you when this happened? She shouldn’t have been handling the gun! That’s supposed to be your job, for heaven’s sake!”

  “I was right there. Actually, when it happened, I was trying to take the gun away from her,” Hubert said and instantly regretted it. He didn’t have to volunteer that. He wouldn’t lie, he couldn’t now, but he decided to offer no more information than was absolutely required, no matter how dumb he sounded.

  “You were there? You saw it? And you brought the gun in and put it in your car, for reasons I won’t ask into just yet. What about the body, Mrs. Cole’s body? Did you bring that in, too?”

  “No.”

  “No? Where is she? Her body, I mean. At Rangeview?”

  “Well, it’s…it’s back up in the woods a ways.”

  “And Vanessa Cole, where is she? Did she come in from the lake with you?”

  “No.”

  “This is terrible news. Just terrible. The timing couldn’t be worse. When it gets out, it’ll be in all the papers. A thing like this, it’s not the sort of thing the members want the Reserve associated with, you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who knows about this? Other than you, of course. And Vanessa Cole.”

  Hubert hesitated a moment. “I seen Ambassador Smith and Sam LaCoy out fishing when I come in. But I didn’t tell them nothing about it. I just said Mrs. Cole and the daughter didn’t want no company just yet.” Hubert hated the way he was talking. He sounded like a country bumpkin, and he knew it, but couldn’t stop himself. He was glad that Alicia couldn’t see or hear him.

  “So only you and I and Vanessa know about this accident. That’s good. How’s she taking it?”

  “Okay, I guess.”

  Kendall sat back down and clasped his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling a moment. “I’m tempted to do something indiscreet,” he said. “Possibly illegal. But I’ll need your cooperation, Hubert.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It’s still possible to keep this whole thing just between us. You know, bring the body of Mrs. Cole out from the lake after dark tonight, and then you and Vanessa drive it someplace else. Someplace downstate, in the Catskills, maybe, and take the gun with you, and say the accident happened there.”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Kendall. The body’s not—”

  The manager interrupted him. “You would be handsomely paid for the service, believe me. I have a discretionary fund available for…discretion. Do you think Miss Cole would agree to that?”

  “Well, to tell the truth—”

 
“There are favors I could grant in exchange. She wanted her father’s ashes placed in the Reserve. I could allow it. There might be other favors.”

  Hubert shook his head. “She doesn’t want anybody to know what happened, all right. Just like you.”

  Kendall brightened. “Really?”

  “For different reasons she doesn’t want anybody to know what happened. But she doesn’t want her mother’s body brought out, neither.”

  “Why not, for heaven’s sake? We can’t leave it there. She’s dead, Hubert. It’s a human body.” He started to say that Ambassador Thomas Smith was thinking of buying Rangeview and might change his mind if a scandal were associated with the place, but thought better of it. Kendall didn’t want anyone getting between him and the ambassador in this transaction, and who knows whom Hubert might tell? If word got out, one of the other members might cut into line without relying on the manager to act as broker. There was a premium on camps in the Reserve.

  “Well, for one thing, she’s scared,” Hubert said.

  “Scared! Why? She didn’t do it, did she? Shoot her mother. I thought it was an accident. Mrs. Cole dropped the gun, and it went off accidentally, you told me.”

  “Well, that’s more or less how it happened.”

  “More or less?”

  “Yes.”

  Kendall narrowed his eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “Nothing important.”

  “Whatever happens in the Reserve has to be reported to me. Especially when it’s something…untoward. As this certainly appears to be.”

  “I know.”

  “Hubert, I could make it so you’d never work in the Reserve again.”

  “I know.”

  “You’d starve without the Reserve. You and half the people in this town,” he added.

  “I know,” Hubert said, and sighed. He leaned forward in the chair and looked at the floor and without raising his eyes proceeded to tell the manager the rest. Or most of the rest. He did not tell him about Jordan Groves’s being at the Second Lake, and he did not tell him that Vanessa Cole had kidnapped her mother and kept her a prisoner in the camp for days.

  The manager heard him out in silence. When Hubert had finished, Kendall sat up straight in his chair and brushed invisible crumbs from his shirt and straightened papers and pencils on his desk for a few seconds. The thunk of the tennis ball and an occasional hearty male laugh drifted through the open window.

  The manager inhaled sharply through his nose. “You are a fucking idiot,” he declared. “You’re a fucking idiot twice over! First, for going along with the Cole girl and burying the mother on the Reserve, when you should have simply come here immediately and told me about the accident. We could have handled the matter discreetly, with no one the wiser. So you’re an idiot for having gone along with her, and God only knows why you did that, and second, you’re an idiot for coming here now and telling me what you’ve done with the woman’s body. And God only knows why you did that!”

  “What should I have done, then?” Hubert asked. He genuinely wanted to know. “I’m not an idiot, Mr. Kendall.” He sat back in the chair and gave the manager a hard look.

  “Really?” The manager laughed without smiling and shook his head. “What you should have done is refuse to cooperate with that girl and instead come to me right away so I could do the thinking for both of us. Now I’ve got no choice but to play it by the book. The Reserve rule book. I’ll have to call in the sheriff and tomorrow send a crew out there to dig up Mrs. Cole’s body and bring it in. The county will probably want an autopsy before issuing a proper death certificate. It’ll be in all the papers. Oh, they’ll love it. And not just the local papers, either. Kaltenborn will have it on the radio. It’ll make the newsreels. And the Cole estate, that’ll be tied up for years. Or else in the hands of that crazy girl. And who knows what she’ll do with the property.”

  “The property?”

  “Yes. Rangeview. Certain parties have expressed an interest in purchasing Rangeview from Mrs. Cole. It could have been a quiet, private transaction, handled by me. These are socially prominent people, Hubert. They don’t like their names or activities or their financial affairs in the newspapers or associated with people like Vanessa Cole, who does want her name in the newspapers and her pretty face up on the ‘March of Time’ screen. I don’t expect you to understand that. But I do expect you to act rationally. Or at least I did. And to leave the business of being discreet to me. That’s supposed to be my business, Hubert. That’s my special skill. It’s why I have this job. Your business, your skill, is to guide and protect your clients here on the Reserve and take care of their property for them. Your employer, don’t forget, is the Reserve. Your clients pay the Reserve for your services, and the Reserve pays you. Your allegiance, therefore, is first and foremost to the Reserve and only indirectly to your clients. The rules we follow here, all of us, you as well as I, are the Reserve’s rules, written into law years ago, generations ago, by men like Dr. Cole’s father, when they first created the Reserve as a private sanctuary for themselves and their families and friends. Remember that. And when you obeyed Vanessa Cole and helped her bury her mother on the Reserve, which is practically sacred ground to these people, especially those members like Ambassador Smith whose parents and grandparents created it, when you did that, Hubert, you broke the Reserve’s rules. There shall be no grave sites anywhere in the Reserve. None. That’s the rule that applies here, Hubert. While I might have bent that rule a little for Vanessa Cole regarding Dr. Cole’s ashes, in exchange for her agreeing to move the site of her mother’s unfortunate accident to someplace else, now, thanks to you, it’s too late for that. We’ll have to go up there tomorrow with a crew and dig up the body in daylight. How deep did you bury her?”

  “About five feet, I guess.”

  “Oh, my. Five feet deep. Well, there you are. There’s really no way this can be done quickly, unofficially, off the record. Discreetly.” Kendall reached for the standing phone with one hand and dismissed the guide with a backhanded wave of the other. “It’s too late to do anything today, it’ll be dark in a few hours. Be here tomorrow morning at eight o’clock. I’ll have two or three men who’ll go in with you. And probably the sheriff.”

  Hubert nodded and pulled away from the sticky embrace of the chair. When he stood, he felt strangely tall, as if he were outside his body and looking down on it from above. The man he saw below was a small man, shrunken and frail, prematurely aged—a man who used to be an Adirondack guide.

  THE SUN PASSED BEYOND THE RANGE, AND THE BROAD SHADOW of the mountains spread across the lake from west to east, and the light in Cinderella’s Suite quickly faded. Jordan Groves and Vanessa Von Heidenstamm did not notice the approaching darkness. They were still immersed in their lovemaking. It had begun slowly, tenderly, face-to-face, with long, lingering looks at each other, like devoted siblings at the start of a long absence taking their last leave of each other, gathering in all the details they had neglected to notice up to now. They removed their clothes, their own and each other’s, delicately, precisely, as if preparing to model for an artist, and once naked, seated side by side on the bed, they turned to face each other, and with their hands on each other’s bare shoulders, they kissed—sweetly, as if in relief and gratitude for having come to the peaceful end of a painfully protracted argument. And then they embraced and with their hands caressed each other’s breasts and backs and arms—her skin smooth and creamy and soft as fine silk, his alabaster white and tautly drawn over muscle and bone—and their separate bodies gradually lost their boundaries and merged into a third body, one that contained all their female and male differences and erased all their anatomical contrasts and inversions.

  Their passion rose slowly. His because he had never made love like this before, delicately, teasingly, fully aware of each slow turning, and though it frightened him a little, it excited him in a fresh way. Hers rising slowly also, but with her it was because she had made love in this fashi
on many times before and knew very well its effect on a man who was used to having his way with a woman quickly and efficiently without being conscious of having lost awareness of his body. Men like Jordan Groves, egocentric sensualists, men whose lovemaking left them with a sense of accomplishment, were rarely truly satisfied by a woman, unless she managed to slow him in his headlong rush. He had to be brought, bit by bit, cell by cell, to complete awareness of his body, moving, as if he were a woman, from the outside in, rather than from the inside out, so that when he did lose his body, he lost everything. Men like Jordan Groves had to be braked and slowed. They were the only men capable of exciting Vanessa’s passion. Slowing them almost to a stopping point gave her a power over them that she otherwise lacked. It brought her out of herself and forward toward another human being and through that other into the shuddering void beyond, and when that happened she cried out in joy. Afterward, with no memory of having cried out, she had to be told of it by her lover, as if she had been elsewhere at the time. For she had been elsewhere—she had left the locked and guarded, dark room of her body for the blinding light of self-forgetfulness, where there was no one to be courted or seduced, where there was no one to affirm her reality by means of his or her gaze, and no one to fail at it over and over again. Making love with men like Jordan Groves let Vanessa Cole believe for a few seconds in the sustained reality of her essential being, even though afterward she could not remember ever having experienced it as such. Even though afterward it was as if self-awareness had been surgically removed and all she had to go on, all she was capable of experiencing, was its phantom. But her belief in its existence, like a Christian’s belief in a god she’s never met, gave Vanessa strength and a small, transient portion of equanimity, and for many years that belief had kept her from annihilating herself.