The visit to Frank’s cabin troubled me so much that the following day, I drove to town to see about buying a shotgun and a couple of boxes of shells at the hardware store. The entire “Frank experience” reminded me of how vulnerable I was. Living in New York, every woman is on alert all the time about her surroundings, and where she is after dark, and who’s in the elevator with her. When the fast-food woman was pushed in front of the subway train, while none of us could stop it, people were there to take immediate action. In the woods, you’re lulled into a sense of tranquility, and when something happens, no one’s around. There was certainly no one in my cabin I could run to for help, not even a dog. So a gun seemed logical.
The rifles and shotguns were lined up on the wall behind the clerk, their stocks seated in wooden cradles and their barrels pointing skyward like steel soldiers. I asked a few questions about how hard they kicked, having heard the recoil of some guns can bruise your shoulder, and which gun in particular would be best suited for a woman my size.
“What are you intending to shoot?” The clerk, a wiry lady in her fifties with frizzy hair and an infectious grin, asked me point-blank.
“Whatever comes at me in the night.”
“I should tell my husband that.” We both laughed, and she introduced herself as Gladys Williamson. “You know a ‘blast and scatter’ is going to be your best bet, if you’re just warding off animals. I’d say this 12-gauge, and it’s got a padded stock that would probably be more comfortable for you.”
“I’m sure I won’t have to fire it.” I took the shotgun from her and ran my hand over the sleek polished wood, keeping my fingerprints off the steel that had a beautiful scene of deer in the woods etched into it. “This will be fine,” I said. “I took a tour of the lake with this Frank fellow. You know him?”
“Sure do,” she said emphatically, and immediately busied herself writing up my ticket and then straightening the boxes of bullets on the back counter, signaling conversation closed.
“Who’s the local sheriff?” I asked as I wrote a check.
“Sam Lindhurst. And his office is right across the street and down a block.”
I thanked her, left the store, locked the gun in my car, turned around, and there she was.
“You bought a gun. Do you know how to use it?” Levade asked calmly, and her blue eyes completely captivated me.
“Hello! Every idiot in the woods has one, so it can’t be that hard. Anyway, I’m on the way to the sheriff’s office to see if he’ll give me a lesson, so I can avoid shooting myself in the foot.” My God, she is strange, and so gorgeous.
“I think you’re smarter than that.” She gave me her beautiful smile. “Just remember that a few hours at a shooting range is fine if you’re thinking of scaring off animals, but if you’re thinking it will scare people away, it takes a lot more. Please be careful. Don’t take any more tours of the lake, okay?” She seemed genuinely concerned yet didn’t wait for my answer. She merely walked away and got in her Jeep. How did she know I toured the lake with Frank? I’d just told Gladys, but she’d had little time to inform her. Frank must have let her know himself, and why would he do that? I watched her drive off wondering if she was crazy, or eccentric, or prescient, or just simply unnerving.
I headed for Sam’s office. He sat behind a battered metal school desk that held his name plate and an old telephone. I liked him right away. He had a nice gray handlebar mustache and twinkly eyes, reminding me of Sam Waterston, if Sam Waterston were ten years younger and fifty pounds heavier.
“I wondered if I could pay you to give me a couple of shooting lessons.”
He took his feet down off the desk and rose to greet me with a mannerly handshake. “Someone in particular you’d like to shoot?”
“No. I divorced him.”
Sam grinned and agreed to meet me at a practice spot out in the woods in half an hour.
“How big’s the sheriff’s department?”
“You’re looking at it. Me and maybe two ole boys who volunteer. When I leave, I just put a note on the door telling people where they can find me. Most of the time they don’t want to find me.”
* * *
Sam gave me directions to the wooded area north of town known to hunters as a target-practice zone; the trees could bear witness to that, each sporting dozens of holes and lacerations. Sam picked up a few rusty cans off the ground, set them on a stump, and we started in.
I got the hang of loading and shooting and learned the safety tips pretty quick. Sam was a friendly, no-nonsense guy, and we worked for only about an hour.
“We hardly ever have tourists buy guns and practice shooting as part of their vacation.” He let the remark hang.
“To tell you the truth, I’m on the lake alone, and it’s just an insurance policy.”
“Well, a lot of things look dangerous at first, but they’re not always, so the secret is to think before you shoot, but don’t think so long that you wish you’d shot.” We both laughed. I tried to pay him, but he said “protect and serve” was part of his job, and it seemed like that’s what he’d just done.
I felt secure now with my training and my new friend, Sam the sheriff. In fact, I was feeling so good that I headed back to town to Gus’s tavern. I’d been told that bars up North were more family oriented than drinking establishments in the South. People gathered in a tavern to talk and watch football and gossip.
A short and battered ship’s door led into a room so dark I had to stop and let my eyes adjust. Several men were at the bar, and two big-boned women were seated at a small table. I sat on a barstool and ordered a cabernet, while everyone in the bar visually examined me. No matter where I went, people stopped to take a look, like dogs sniffing the butt of a new arrival. I assumed they were checking me out to decide if it was okay for me to stay.
Gus, the owner, swabbed the bar top with his left hand and plopped my wine down with his right. The size of the wineglass was reminiscent of a medieval goblet. A big, athletic-looking, young woman in jeans and a dark-blue T-shirt with a navy insignia was serving other patrons.
Leaning into one wiry-looking guy, she warned, “He’ll get you in trouble, Tony.” She seemed to be referencing someone not in attendance.
The bald-headed man replied, “I’ve been in so much trouble all my life, it doesn’t feel good if I’m not! Skol!” He lifted his glass in a toast to his apparently troubled life.
Other men chimed in. “Skol!”
She moved on, obviously tired of trying to teach pigs to sing.
With the tourist season, they were pretty busy, and I assumed they made most of their money in the summer. The men were raucous and joking with one another. One thin, gristly old man talked about a fish that got away. “She was so big she just broke my line and spit the hook back at me, then flipped that big sleek body in the air and took off. She would’ve broken all records.”
“You sure you’re not talking about a woman?” Gus, his big belly bouncing, injected himself into the conversation, apparently believing it was his job to keep people talking so they’d keep drinking. They both laughed.
The woman in the navy T-shirt had moved behind the bar, and she put a second glass of wine in front of me. “On me. Name’s Kay. Welcome to the woods.” I thanked her. “I live on the opposite side of the lake from you, but I can see the lights along the cove from my place, and it’s nice to have so many cabins lit up this summer.”
Gus immediately jumped in. “You the lady from New York? We don’t get fancy New Yorkers often.” I explained I used to come up to this lake as a kid, but he was already working on his not-from-here descriptor. “Another drink, Fancy Pants?”
“I just put one in front of her, Gus.” Kay gave me an eye-roll as if to say men are clueless.
“So you know everybody around here,” I said to Gus.
“Oh, ya.”
“What’s the story about the woman on the Point?” I asked.
“Well, let’s see if I got all the names right. Psycho Psychic, Lady of the Loons, Horse’s ass, A roll in the bay—”
Another man seated at the bar, clearly three sheets to the wind, guffawed and slurred his words. “Better watch what yer sayin’, or she run you over with that horse!”
Kay shot me a look that seemed to say she could function as the bouncer if things got out of hand.
“Her name is Levade,” I said, irritated at Gus’s disparaging her and aware that I was feeling the buzz from the second glass of wine.
“Knew it started with an L.” Gus paused. “Don’t matter. You can call her anything, and she’ll come.” He laughed, and a couple of men joined in.
The anger shot up into my head like an ice cream headache. A scruffy, pot-bellied bar owner trashing a woman’s reputation for a few laughs from a bunch of locals.
“Well, thanks for being a protector of the female gender,” I said, raising my glass in a mock toast. “To Mr. Bar Wiper, who smells like a diaper, so much in demand he dates his right hand.”
The men at the bar whooped and hollered and slapped the scarred, lacquered bar top. I tossed my money down on the counter and stalked out, as Kay gave me a thumbs-up.
Admittedly, had I not been a little high, I wouldn’t have said that. In fact, I had no idea why I was defending a woman I barely knew. Maybe I was defending all women.
Maynard stepped out of the bar behind me, and I hadn’t even realized he was in there.
“Gus ain’t a bad fella, ya know. Yust been in the dark too long.” He chuckled as he guided me to the curb, took a thermos of coffee out of his truck, and poured me a cup, while I leaned up against the hood. He didn’t even mention I was mildly drunk or that I’d insulted Muskie citizen number 574. He just picked up where we’d left off.
“Ever since we had coffee, I thought about those days. Used to fish off the Point, and sometimes I’d watch Angelique work those white horses out on the beach. Seems like there was different ones. I was fishin’ the old log bed for bass right off her dock, and I could see your auntie over there sometimes by moonlight, the two of ’em yust playin’ with the horses like two young girls. That Angelique, she could make a horse tap-dance and sing the ‘Star Spangled Banner.’ Said she took her horses to this place where only white horses can go. Don’t know if that’s true, but it sounds real pretty.”
I drank the coffee. “Tell me about this Frank guy. Seems like he’s the star of the town, with all his fishing trophies.”
“He’s got skills and he’s got demons. After his wife died, he left town for a while, but this was her home, and their home together, so he’s come back. Don’t think ya have any need of him.” Maynard made me drink a second cup of coffee and patted my arm with his big, gnarled hand. “Ya drive slow home, ya?”
“Oh, ya,” I said, thinking, my God, I’ve become a drunken Norwegian.