At Yellow Lake

by Jane Mcloughlin

  The boy clicked the engine into gear, as if he were cocking a gun. Obviously a brown-skinned, long-haired kid from Minneapolis posed a real threat.

  ‘Up by Anoka,’ Jonah lied.

  The gear went into neutral again. Anoka, where was that, the man seemed to be wondering. Anoka – nice name for a town. He’d heard of it, anyway, and he couldn’t remember reading about any gang type of stuff there. Anoka. Yeah, that’d be safe enough.

  ‘Well, you know, this ain’t Anoka, boy. People ain’t always friendly around here. They ain’t used to strangers, so I’d be careful if I was you.’

  Jonah laughed. The guy was joking, right? ‘I think I’ll be OK.’

  But the man didn’t smile back. He shifted his stance, crouching slightly as if, despite his fat belly, he could pounce like a cat. ‘You get your Indian ass back to Anoka before I call the sheriff, and you’ll be just fine.’

  Chipmunk boy revved the engine again, a cue for the man to sit down so they could get back home and make that call. ‘Come on, Charlie. We got things to do.’

  Charlie. Jesus. The name boomed through Jonah’s head like a cannon shot. How many fat guys named Charlie lived around here?

  ‘I mean it, Injun. Sign says no trespassing. Can’t you read?’

  Before Jonah could say anything, before he could take a better look at the fat guy just to make sure, the chipmunk had turned the boat around, and was steering it away from the shore, out onto the lake, into the path of the sun’s punishing rays.

  ETTA

  We turned the three eggs and the last of the Velveeta into an omelette and shared it out equally, with a garnish of shrivelled-up apple chunks that Peter had taken off the plane from England. We ate in the kitchen, leaning against the countertops. The food tasted like a salty, dried-up sponge. I wanted to spit it out in the garbage can, but I knew the cupboards were empty, so I choked down every disgusting mouthful.

  It was still a beautiful morning. Through the living room window the rising sun was making that sparkly dance on the water, but the feelings I’d woken up with – the peace, the calm – were gone.

  Charlie had come back. Next it’d be Kyle.

  Jonah was still shaking from what had happened down on the beach. ‘I thought he was going to pull out a gun and shoot me, man.’

  Peter carried on like nothing had happened. He finished his food, rinsed off our plates and set them carefully in the sink. He strolled over to the kitchen door and opened it wide. He stepped outside, looked around. What was he doing – trying to prove to Jonah and me that he wasn’t scared?

  ‘Who says it’s even the same person?’

  ‘I say, and I’m the one who saw him,’ Jonah said. ‘He was fat, his face was red.’

  Peter came back into the kitchen without locking the door. ‘That could be any one of a hundred blokes around here.’

  ‘Well, this dude was named Charlie, same as the gun guy,’ Jonah said. ‘C’mon, Peter, what more do you want?’

  Peter took a dish-towel out of a drawer and dried the plates he’d rinsed. He opened another cupboard and put them on a shelf.

  ‘It was Charlie,’ I said. ‘Kyle’s Charlie. Come on, Peter, you know it as well as I do.’

  He glanced at me, his face stony, blank. ‘No, I don’t.’

  Jonah pushed past him and dumped his plate into the sink, clattering the silverware onto the metal draining board. He went to the front door and closed it tightly, turning the lock. He looked out the tiny curtained window. His shoulders were heaving up and down. Was he crying? Too angry to talk?

  Finally, he turned around.

  ‘I’m making this shit up, Peter – is that what you think?’

  Peter didn’t answer. His jaw was tight, like he’d turned into stone.

  Jonah came back into the kitchen.

  ‘Why would I do that?’ he said, standing close to Peter, squaring up.

  Peter answered quickly, as if the answer had been with him for days, and he’d been waiting for the right time to say it. ‘So you could come back inside. So you can stay here with us.’

  ‘What?’

  Jonah’s eyes widened like a little kid’s. He backed away from Peter, his face soft, his lips trembling.

  ‘You know that’s bullshit,’ he stammered.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Why would I want to stay here with you, when I’ve got my own place outside?’

  ‘Come on, Jonah.’ Peter’s face had changed, too. It got red, like he was embarrassed or angry or ashamed. He looked at me, then back at Jonah. ‘Don’t make me say it.’

  What was Peter talking about? Was he accusing Jonah of being a coward? Did he know about what had happened out in the wigwam? Was he rubbing it in?

  Then it was Jonah’s turn – he looked at Peter, then me. I felt like the pointless female in a movie, only in the scene so the men could fight over her.

  Peter took a big breath, and let the words tumble out. ‘You were happy enough outside until she came along.’

  She.

  Boom. There it was.

  She. Not a person, not Etta, just a she. One notch up from an it.

  ‘I’m still here,’ I said. I had to force the words out, over the balled-up knot of anger and hurt that thickened my tongue.

  This was Peter talking. My Peter.

  ‘So please don’t talk like—’

  The phone rang – a harsh, high-pitched jangle, stopping me in mid-sentence, shutting me up.

  It rang again – twice, three times.

  Kyle.

  ‘Don’t answer it,’ Jonah said.

  Peter sighed, put his hand on the receiver. He looked at Jonah and raised his eyebrows, like a sicko holding a loaded gun.

  ‘Please,’ Jonah pleaded. ‘It’ll be them.’

  Peter shrugged. ‘So what’ – that’s what his body said.

  He looked at Jonah, tapping his fingers on the side of the phone while it rang and rang – five times, six.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Jonah said. ‘Leave it.’

  The dried food churned in my stomach suddenly, like a heavy weight that was trying to lift itself out. I stumbled out of the kitchen, went through the living room, the bedroom – there was my unmade bed – and into the bathroom. I stood over the toilet, gagging and sputtering. My teeth chattered, my eyes watered and something burned in the back of my throat. My stomach heaved but no food came out – just a line of thin, sour-tasting drool.

  In the kitchen, the rings seemed to be getting louder. It was like an alarm was sounding, with each sharp clang scraping away the fog in my head, sending out the warning, ‘You’re on your own here, girl. Jonah will leave you again if you give him the chance. Peter doesn’t care any more, if he ever did at all.’

  PETER

  Peter picked up on the tenth ring, while Jonah stood in the doorway.

  ‘Hello?’

  Peter waited, dreading his father’s clipped, icy tones.

  ‘Say, gee, is that . . . is Ken there? Ken Robinson?’

  Who was this? Not his dad. Not Uncle Kenneth. And from the confused drawl, not some gun-toting low life either.

  ‘I’m sorry, but my uncle’s not here at the moment.’ Peter laid on the accent, poshing up the vowels, clipping the cononsants. ‘This is his nephew. From England. May I be of help?’

  ‘Oh, no. I’m from the sheriff’s office. Deputy Ed Johnson. Just doing some checking.’

  ‘What seems to be the problem, Deputy Johnson?’

  In the doorway, Jonah’s eyes widened.

  ‘We got a call from somebody who saw some suspicious types walking around by your uncle’s cabin. You ain’t seen anybody who fits that description?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Peter was proud of himself – he remembered that Americans liked to be called ‘sir’.

  ‘Well.’ The man at the other end had run out of words. He’d been doing his duty, that was all. To him the phone call was something to tick off on his to-do list. It was nothing worth getting worked up about.
r />   ‘OK then. It was pro’ly you they saw, but if you notice anything funny-looking, give us a shout.’

  Peter hung up. In spite of his bravado, his hands were shaking. He hoped Jonah hadn’t noticed. He was glad Etta couldn’t see.

  Etta. He’d have to grovel an apology, make things right again.

  Meanwhile, Jonah’s dark eyes were still flashing anger and fear.

  ‘It was nothing,’ Peter said casually. ‘Somebody from the sheriff’s office, asking if we’d seen ourselves.’

  He shoved past Jonah, barely resisting the temptation to give him a sharp dig in the ribs with his elbow. He went into the alcove bedroom, wishing that there was a door for him to slam or kick, not just a curtain to rustle.

  Why was Jonah still here, anyway, he wondered as he hurled himself onto the bed. Why didn’t he just piss off back to Minneapolis or Chicago or wherever he was from? If he was too much of a wuss to stay in that hut that he’d built with his bare hands, that ‘wigwam’ that supposedly meant so much to him, then why didn’t he just give up and go home?

  That sounded like a good idea.

  Give up and go home.

  This had all been a big mistake, he could see that now, coming here in the first place, then dragging Etta along. She would’ve been better off if he’d just left her there on the side of the road.

  He turned over on the bed and faced the pine ceiling. How many times had he stared at this when he was little, thinking the knots were part of some elaborate treasure map when they were nothing but resin flaws in discoloured wood? And this bedroom wasn’t the secret cave of his childhood imagination. It was more like a tomb – claustrophobic and stuffy.

  The truth was, he didn’t belong here. This was no more his spiritual home than it was Jonah’s or even Etta’s. It was just an old, broken-down shack that his uncle would do well to offload onto somebody who’d tear it down and build something nicer, more solid, with proper foundations. And the three of them – Jonah, Etta, himself – they were nothing more than a trio of self-pitying whingers.

  So Etta’s mother was a selfish, neglectful slag and her stepfather was dodgy? Not exactly a groundbreaking case. And poor Jonah felt torn between two cultures? Join the bleeding queue. Everybody’s mixed up in some way. Nobody cares.

  And his own problem? Mother. Cancer. Dead.

  Not fair.

  Oh really? Think you’re the only kid this has happened to?

  Not fair.

  Tell me something I haven’t heard before, sunshine.

  Not. Fucking. Fair.

  Oooh, now we’re getting somewhere, mate.

  Not fucking fair, I said.

  Peter curled himself into a tiny, hedgehogged ball. He clutched the nubby bedspread, twisted the tiny bumps between his thumbs and forefingers. His stomach burned as though he’d been stabbed by a rusty knife. The pain spread through his body like a slow, black, bleed.

  God, he missed her. She was the one he needed, not his father, not these new so-called friends – not even Etta.

  Mum. She was the only one who had ever loved him and now she was gone.

  Self-pity rolled over him. It crashed against him like a wave, keeping him nailed to the bed, his arms wrapped round his head as if for protection, a relentless rush of grief and anger, of hatred for every person who wasn’t his mother, who was still alive, who was still left in his life like a useless appendage – his father, his mates in England and, most of all, Etta and Jonah for bringing him nothing but trouble and a brand new form of misery and heartache.

  He lay there as though he were in a coma, a coma in which he was unable to move, but could still sob like a baby. How long was he like that – a minute? An hour? Gradually, he felt something else wash over him – smooth water, warm and calm. He could breathe properly, slow and easy. He could turn over onto his back, stretch out his body.

  Then, finally, he slept.

  ETTA

  I was almost ready to go.

  I’d taken an old backpack that was hanging on a hook in the bedroom closet. It had tiny holes in the bottom from where a mouse had been chewing but it was sturdy enough to hold what I was taking – my old, dirty clothes, another clean T-shirt from the chest of drawers, a washcloth, a pillowcase, a green stripy towel, a thin polyester blanket.

  I went into the bathroom. I opened the door of the medicine cabinet, trying not to look at my face in the mirror. I took out the things I needed – a sliver of soap, a half-empty tube of toothpaste, an old toothbrush with flattened bristles. Nobody would miss them, would they? There were shampoo miniatures on the side of the bathtub, too. I picked up one that was from a Las Vegas casino. I picked up another one from the North Pines Lodge, where Mom worked. We had a whole cupboard full of those tiny bottles back at the trailer – shampoo, conditioner, body lotion. I held the bottle, tempted to take a big sniff and remind myself of home.

  No. There wasn’t time now. I’d do it later, once I was on the road, maybe at some gas station, washing in a sink.

  I slipped the pack over my shoulders, adjusted the straps until it fit just right. There. All ready. All set to hit the open road.

  I went back into the bedroom and looked out the windows, first onto the front lawn – the driveway, the woods, the road. I listened for traffic but there was nothing out there. Nobody. Just me and the breeze sifting through the trees. I crossed the room and looked out at the lake. The high sun bleached out the colour so it was a light blue grey. The water was glassy, calm.

  I needed to go outside one more time. It would only take a few minutes. Just long enough to take a picture in my head of the tiny waves on the beach, the tufty grass growing up out of the sand, the sound of birds singing in the tree-tops and squirrels jumping from branch to branch.

  I crept out of the bedroom, feeling like a thief with my stolen bag full of used toiletries. I unlocked the door and stepped onto the porch, not daring to turn around in case Peter was watching.

  I went halfway down the hill and sat down. Jonah was on the beach, standing over a pile of wood. His body was covered in sweat and dirt as he walked in a circle around the wood, his arms held high. There were bits of colour – his decorated club was sticking out from the top of the woodpile, one of the pictures from the wigwam dangled from a piece of bark.

  He bent over and in a few minutes smoke rose up.

  What was he burning? I saw a big square of birch, some pointed sticks.

  It was the wigwam! What had he done – torn it down? Dragged it to the beach?

  For a second I wanted to run to the bottom of the hill and put out the fire. What was Jonah doing, destroying something he’d built with his own hands, burning something he loved so much?

  But as the flames leapt higher, I understood. Better him than somebody else.

  Better to hurt yourself than be hurt by others.

  The smoke rose up the hill like a cloud of incense. It smelled sweet – he must have been burning something else, too, the plants and herbs I’d seen, drying on the floor. The scent reminded me of fall and the things I’d normally be doing by now – getting ready for school, making last-minute shopping trips with my friends, going down to stay with Grandpa and the Duchess for a few days.

  But I wouldn’t be doing any of those things, not this fall, probably not ever again.

  I couldn’t go home, so none of the other things would happen either. Seeing Grandpa was out of the question and so was going to school. And my friends? They were a long way from Welmer, and even further from here.

  So where did that leave me? On my own, with no one to worry about me or care what I did.

  Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. I could go north, hitch a ride to Duluth, get on a Lake Superior ferry or one of those big ships, hide in the back of somebody’s car or truck and sneak into Canada. Nobody’d ever think to look for me there.

  Jonah threw on another piece of wood. The fire spat and crackled as the flame leapt higher. All the while he was saying something, words I couldn’t make out,
humming them in a deep, droning voice. Then he crouched down facing the lake, away from the cabin, away from me. All I could see was his bare back and the bony ribcage that poked through his skin like giant fingers. He looked starving – it was time for him to go home.

  He was scared, too. Even from here, he looked twitchy. He kept looking up and out to the lake, twisting his head round, like he was hearing voices or feeling some mysterious presence. I knew what I was scared of – Kyle and those gun guys – but what was Jonah’s problem? Was it what he’d done in the wigwam, the way he’d run and left me alone? Maybe he had seen those horror movies after all, and knew the fate that was coming to him – being chopped up by an axe-murderer and fed to the wolves, falling into a pit full of brain-sucking zombies, getting his leg caught in a bear trap and slowly bleeding to death.

  He stood up, turned his head to the sky, raised his arms. He put his hands into the smoke, then touched his body all over, like he was washing himself. The smoke got darker, stronger. It blew up the hill straight into my eyes, making them tear up. The smell was like a weird perfume. It made me feel dizzy, but in a good way, like being a little drunk. The lake seemed to dance in front of my eyes, the trees looked bendy. The smoke made me want to smile, to laugh.

  The smell made me want to stay at Yellow Lake forever.

  PETER

  The smoke wafted up from Jonah’s fire on the beach, and infused Peter’s dreams, intensifying the pictures in his mind. His mother’s spirit was with him – although he couldn’t see her any more – lying on the bed, holding him, rubbing his hair, keeping him safe. And he didn’t mind. He didn’t duck her hugs, or flinch away from her touch as he had when she was still alive. He didn’t close his eyes in terror the way he had when she was dying. He let himself melt into her comforting arms, like a baby.

  She was murmuring voiceless words – shapeless sounds – that he couldn’t make out. They were peaceful and soothing, nothing like the noises he remembered her making when she was alive.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Listen.’