I whispered into the phone, though no one could hear me but Ramona, “Ralph came by one night unannounced and scratched on my screen like a rutting stag. He fell on the porch steps and hit his head and then refused to let me call Marney, because I don’t think she knew he was on the prowl.”
“Ralph on the prowl?” Ramona laughed.
“Then that woman, Levade, the one you think is Angelique’s niece, floated up on shore like an angel on a white horse and then floated off.”
“What did you say to her?”
“I said, don’t you have a boat?”
“No wonder she left. That was just damned weird. You don’t know her. She probably thought you were making fun of her. People up North are different. Maybe she can’t afford a boat.”
“You’re overthinking it. It’s been a week, and I’ve gotten jack done. It’s the same as New York—people doing weird shit, talking too much. It’s like everyone here just has their mind on getting laid.” And, it’s starting to rub off on me with all my sex dreams of late. “In fact, Marney and Ralph had screaming-ass sex with their windows open, and I had to hear all of it, including, the ‘Ooooh, baby’ aria.”
Ramona laughed loudly. “Good for Marney! The woods will do that to you. It’s as if you’re on another planet and you’ll never see these people again, so why not take off your clothes and fuck like fish. Are you writing?”
“Yes,” I said, which was true, despite it being only one new sentence.
“Do I need to come see you? I miss the cabin. Great times, and very studly men, if memory serves.”
“God, no. That’s all I need is you here. I’m busy writing.”
* * *
Around noon, I heard a polite knock at the back door, and, as if Ramona had conjured him, a handsome, muscular man, in his early forties, with piercing blue eyes, who was small in stature by Viking standards, introduced himself as Frank, the Muskie Champion. He wondered out loud if I’d like to pay him to take me on a guided tour of the area by boat, see some of the wildlife and his taxidermy shop. He was dark-haired, and he moved with the physical confidence of a man who knew he’d accomplished something in life.
“Most people see only the part of the lake they live on. Muskie Lake is eight miles long, with more than a hundred coves and all kinds of beautiful wildlife back off the shore.” I glanced at his shirt, and the ball cap he was wearing that proclaimed him Muskie Champion three years running. He noticed I was checking out his clothing billboard. “I’ve caught the largest muskies in Minnesota. One was over five feet long and weighed more than sixty-five pounds, a monster for a freshwater fish. I’d be happy to show it to you. A lot of men want me to take them on muskie expeditions. I charge them and make them travel blindfolded in the boat, so they can’t steal my fishing spots.” He cracked his knuckles for emphasis and gave me a winning grin.
“How much?” I asked.
“A hundred dollars for the day.”
“Can we go now?” I was sold when he mentioned getting to see animals back in the woods. Further, I was making it a point not to delay any new experience. He seemed delighted we were going immediately—instant income, I assumed.
Frank’s big, yellow, fiberglass boat was the cabin cruiser of lake boats, with sonar and radar equipment and big, leather armchair seats. He put the motor in full throttle, and we thrashed across the open waters, then suddenly slowed as he hit a lever and the motor quickly tilted, lifting the propeller into the air as we coasted over a wide stretch of sand only a foot below the surface.
“Lot of guys come out here, don’t know where the sandbars are, sheer a pin on their first time out, and have to be towed. Kind of puts a kink in their macho.” He grinned and I laughed. He waved me over to look at his elaborate dashboard and tapped the cover of the dial, focusing me. “Spot we’re on now is about 160-feet deep.” He showed me how the depth meter worked and how he could use it, not only to navigate but to find the best fishing grounds.
“Only the sheriff’s boat has equipment even close to this. Sam uses it to rescue tourists. A few have drowned out here because they don’t understand drop-offs. You can be walking along sure-footed for a hundred yards off the shoreline, chatting away, and the next step you’re in Beijing.” He grinned at me again. “You take in water and drown.”
“So where are these little animals you were going to show me?” I changed the subject, not wanting to think I was sailing across the surface of bloated tourist bodies.
Frank whipped the boat into a cove in dramatic fashion, sending a spray of water into the air. He shut down the motor in an instant, and the water dragging behind us made a huge whooosh before slapping up on the shore “Beer?” he asked, pulling one from the ice chest, his eyes focused on the land. We sat in total silence for about ten minutes.
A rotund skunk waddled through the woods. Then along the water’s edge, I spotted a creature that looked like a beaver, and it caught Frank’s eye too.
“Beavers burrow in the lake banks because the water’s too deep for dam-building. They build their dams in ponds where the water’s shallow.”
Around sundown, Frank lifted the motor, and we drifted through the narrows, a shallow, skinny part of the lake known to have patches of quicksand beneath the surface. Along the banks, the narrows were home to six-foot-tall stands of cattails with their brown, fuzzy, hot-dog shaped tops. Giant water lilies covered the lake’s surface, and here and there remaining stalks of wild rice protruded from the water, having obviously missed the harvest.
“You ever find yourself in quicksand, don’t struggle,” Frank said. “Look around and try to find even the tiniest cattails or twigs, something you can get hold of, and slowly, no matter how long it takes, try to get your feet up and parallel with the water’s surface. Getting dark, so I’ll take you by my shop before we call it a day.”
We navigated out of the narrows and blew through the water, then slowed for the occasional fishing boat. “If you have to cross in front of them, slow down and do it as far away as you can, and at a ninety-degree angle, because a small boat can cross that angle of chop, but a big parallel wake will rock them side to side and tip them over.” I was impressed with all the things Frank knew.
We pulled into his dock where the shoreline ran right up to the back steps of his cabin. From the boat, I could see an array of taxidermy animals through the picture windows, the bears with their paws in the air as if waving to us. They stood like frozen sentinels watching for him to come home.
His door was unlocked, and we walked into his cabin that could have been a museum exhibit on north-woods animals and their habitat. I pivoted 360 degrees. I’d never seen so many dead, but preserved, animals. It’s Country Bear Jamboree purgatory, I thought, but I couldn’t help but walk around and touch their fur. Every animal was placed in a staging area with tree branches, logs, and rocks surrounding them, giving the sense that they were still alive in the woods. And this is the guy’s house? It would be like sleeping in a pet cemetery.
“Deer, bear, wolf, fox, muskies, of course—there’s my sixty-five-pounder. And otters, muskrat, beaver, porcupine, wild hog—anything that ever lived up here.” Frank was still in tour-guide mode.
I glanced at three fluffy, foxlike creatures. “They’re so darling and so lifelike, I can’t stand to see them dead. What are they?”
“You sound like my wife.” He chuckled good-naturedly. “Taxidermy wasn’t her thing either. She died a year ago, and I really miss her. I don’t like being alone.”
“I’m so sorry. How did she die?”
“No one really knows.” He gave me an ironic grin. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
“I understand.” I was feeling uncomfortable for no particular reason. “Well, it’s been a great day. Thank you.” I instinctively checked for a door that would take me out of the cabin and onto the road.
“I didn’t mean to cut you off when you asked about her. I’m sure I’ll marry again. You know, I bought her a lot of expensive clothes, and I saved them all. I want to marry someone her size so they don’t go to waste. You’re about her size.”
My body went cold, the way any woman’s body temperature shifts dramatically when she senses danger.
“Well, it takes more than a pant size to make a marriage work. I’m still getting over my divorce. I need to get back home. I’m waiting for a business call. Mind if we drive?” I paid him in cash, not wanting him to have a check with my name and New York address on it.
“It’s your day.”
We walked to his truck and climbed in. I clutched the door handle and made note of every twist in the road on the drive to the cabin. Just beneath that veneer of politeness, something about him was chilling. I mentally moved him to that column of people who “aren’t quite right” and should be avoided.
When he pulled into the drive at my cabin, the sun was about to set. I hopped out, thanking him as I moved quickly to the cabin door.
“Let’s do it again!” he sang out, and I didn’t answer but just waved good-bye.
What had possessed me to go out on the lake with a man I didn’t know anything about, simply because he’d shown up at my door wearing a freaking logo shirt that said he catches big fish? No one even knew I was out there with him. He could have thrown me in the fricking quicksand bog!