THIRTEEN

It took me about three-quarters of an hour to boil a bunch of eggs until they were as hard as I like them and then make them into part of a cook-out supper wrapped in bread-plastic. I thought of taking the fish fillets on the trip but voted the idea down. One look at them in the refrigerator led me to believe they’d been multiplying while I was gone. Oh, for a little leftover turkey!

Before I left Lloyd, he’d sketched a map of how to get into Little Crummock and where at least two people thought Dick Berners’s cabin might be.

There was a new car in the parking lot between the Lamborghini and an OPP cruiser. From the lake I could hear more voices, but these were laughing and squealing with pleasure. Most of the lodge’s population was gathered on the dock: Cissy and the kids belonging to a new couple had just come in from swimming. Aline was working on her tan, and Westmorland and Delia were approaching the shore in a rowboat. They’d had all my cooking time to settle down. I saw no sign of George. Or David Kipp. A stranger with a comfortable paunch and a can of beer in his hand and Joan Harbison’s arm around his shoulders was sitting in a deck chair. He had a chubby face that still managed to look athletic, although I couldn’t see any sign of motion. He was wearing tan shorts and an inverted gob hat pulled low on his brow. Joan stayed close and was apparently telling him the news of the week. Roger Kipp stood to one side watching them. He didn’t know how to deal with the fickleness of women. His brother, Chris, was trying to interest him in taking pictures. I walked down to join the people. Joan made the introductions. Mike Harbison took off his sailor hat to reveal curly grey locks that looked like they had been arranged not by the artistry of nature but rather by the cunning of some Toronto hairdresser. He was wearing a Lacoste T-shirt with a little crocodile nibbling his left nipple.

“I’ve just been catching up on the terrible news,” he said, shaking his ringlets. “It could do the lodge a lot of harm.”

“I see the police have come back. Is it Glover or somebody else?”

“There are five of them. They’ve got string wrapped around trees, sort of roping off the area around the culvert and the old Pearcy site. That’s where Aeneas had his tent. There’s a detective inspector and a sergeant. The others are trying to find Aeneas’s pick-up truck. Glover’s not been back, but I’m not surprised.”

“Why’s that?”

“Well, simply put, Aeneas had a girl, but Harry Glover put a stop to it.”

“Why was that?”

“Aeneas was an Indian, and the girl, well, she wasn’t.”

“And Glover of the OPP broke it up?” Mike nodded, and I could see he didn’t want me to press him any harder.

Dripping kids were running the length of the dock, making Aline sit up quickly. Roger Kipp had taken his brother’s camera and was trying to get everybody bunched together for a picture. He waved his hands like a traffic cop, and we all said “cheese,” and he pushed a button to make us immortal. Westmorland and his girl, just coming up to the group, were also in the picture. The group expanded after the picture, like we’d all been holding our breath. Roger and Chris were talking to Des Westmorland. Delia stood by.

“Come on, Roger,” he said. “You and your brother get in the picture.” Roger was pulling back and shaking his head. “Come on. Show some spirit. We’ll get one of you and your brother. Come along now. Nice big smiles, before the party breaks up.” Roger reluctantly turned the camera over to Des who began examining it from all sides. The two boys jammed into the group between the Pearcys and Harbisons. I could hear Chris muttering, “He’s got his stupid finger over the shutter.” I found my party smile where it was vacationing and paraded it out again. Meanwhile Des had discovered what all the mechanical outcroppings on the camera were for and was squinting seriously through the viewfinder.

“Make sure it’s my good side, Mr. Westmorland,” said Joan.

“What kind of cheese will it be this time?” asked Aline.

“Push together more, please, you in front. Look pleasant, everybody.” With his eye still on the viewfinder, Westmorland began moving backward. Before anybody could say anything, he had backed off the edge of the dock, like a comic in a movie. The camera went back over his head as he suddenly found himself overbalanced and falling.

“Look out!”

“Mr. Westmorland! Look out!”

“Desmond!” We all got a little wet with the splash. As soon as he picked himself up in the four feet of water, with his glasses dangling from one ear and we were sure that he was all right, we broke up laughing. Mike was first. It exploded in loud bursts. Roger and Chris forgot for the moment that it was their camera and split themselves at the sight of the man standing bewildered and surprised up to his belly in Big Crummock Lake.

“Oh, dear,” he said. “I’ll never live this down.” He began to join in on the fun. Lloyd Pearcy went to the edge and offered him his hand, but Westmorland shook his head, and walked ashore first and joined us on the dock looking very red in the face.

“Would you do that again, so we can get a picture of it?”

“You’ve fed my best smile to the minnows,” said Aline. He took the ribbing as well as he could, but finally retreated to get changed. He took the boys with him, probably making his peace with the owner of the camera.

“I don’t know what we can do to top that bit of excitement,” said Mike Harbison, taking a sip from the beer can and wiping his chin with the tanned flat of his hand. “I could invite everybody for hotdogs tonight around the barbecue. How’s that?” The new kids liked that, and began dancing up and down, then ran off to report the news to their parents. Joan rolled with the punches, I thought.

“I do enjoy an old-fashioned hotdog roast,” confided Cissy, looking up at me for confirmation.

“Yeah, they’re a lot of fun. We used to hold them at camp when I was younger. A little sing-song, a story, some marshmallows. Nothing like it. Unfortunately, I won’t be here this evening.”

“Not be here?” She was blinking in disbelief, like I’d said that God was a toaster.

“I’m just getting ready to head off on a fishing expedition. I want to get some big ones in Little Crummock Lake.”

“Oh, I see. But it’s too late to start today. Why don’t you make an early start tomorrow? We’d so like to have you. Especially if there’s going to be singing.”

“Thanks, but I think there’s light enough to see me most of the way. I’ve got a good map. Doesn’t look too difficult. Not for an old camper like me.”

“I see. Well”—she was adjusting to a smaller universe—“you’ll be missed.” She was playing balletic games with her small red hands over the back of her chair. “Did you hear, Lloyd? Benny’s not going to be here for the roast. He’s going in to Little Crummock to camp out.”

“Too late to start today, Benny. I’ll help you pack so you can get an early start in the morning.”

“That’s what I told him.”

“It’s rough going.”

“I’ll only be gone overnight. Besides I’ve got your map.”

“Well, I guess you know your own mind. The worst of the sun is over. Have you got a sleeping bag?”

“I was just going to take a blanket roll.”

“Don’t say another word. Joan has plenty of sleeping bags. Have you gassed up?”

“I’ve got most of a tank. It’ll see me up and back.” Cissy passed the word to Joan, and soon everybody was planning my trip for me. For a minute I thought I was going to get a replay of the conversation with Dalt Rimmer and Lloyd. Joan left the dock to find me a pack sack. Cissy went to wrap a piece of cake. Mike Harbison was beginning to tell me how to make bannock over a fire, when I caught Lloyd off at the end of the dock scanning the clouds for signs of bad weather. I’d just about decided not to go when things started arriving back at the waterfront: a canteen of water, a first-aid kit, a knapsack big enough for a marshal of France to set up a recruiting office in, and a heavy-duty sleeping bag wrapped in a ground sheet. There was no way out.

I watched the way Joan packed. She was efficiently made and didn’t waste a gesture. Meanwhile, Cissy packed the way she talked, full of sudden pauses and second guesses. I didn’t lift a finger; I wasn’t allowed to.

“Do you like sardines, Benny?” Joan slipped in two cans. Mike came back into the picture carrying a box from Switzer’s Delicatessen in Toronto. He took three frankfurters from it and wrapped them in foil. Franks from Switzer’s and I wouldn’t be there to help eat the rest of them. I wondered if there wasn’t a way out of this yet. I walked out to the end of the dock to talk weather with Lloyd.

“You should be all right,” he said, taking his beady eyes off the horizon. His pointed beak of a nose was calling home all the subtle signs of the day to come.

“Think so?”

“Yeah, you’ll be all right.” Lloyd looked down at my feet. “You know where you’re standing?” I looked down to find a clue.

“Nope.”

“That’s where old Trask hit his miserable head. Right on the end of the board you’re standing on. Bashed it in after falling from a ladder where I am.”

“You saw it happen?”

“No, but everybody knows what happened. Probably didn’t even feel himself rolling into the lake.”

I was standing on a very ordinary piece of dock made from two-by-six planks.

“It’s the one that sticks out that did for him,” Lloyd added, as though knowing which plank made all the difference. It was like old people recounting their last meeting with a deceased dear one who’d “had a warning.” To be fair, the plank Lloyd’s toe pointed to did jut out from the others because it held a cleat for tying up boats to; it looked like a place where Trask could have put a bad dent in his skull.

“He was working on the dock, somebody told me,” I said.

“Yeah. That’s right. Dalt Rimmer finished it up before Joan and Mike took over. Old Wayne built her just two boards along from the one he hit. The rest’s Dalt’s. I can always tell Dalt’s work. He’ll never use three nails where one will do. Wayne, now, he never drove two nails the same way, always going around half-cut, if you know what I mean. If his right thumb wasn’t black it was his left. That was a man for accidents, all right.” Here Lloyd shook his head, as though Trask were standing in front of him swearing from a newly banged finger and reaching for a swallow of comfort.

“Well, if I’m going, I’d better be going,” I said. I could feel Lloyd’s eyes on me as I made my way past those left at the shore end of the dock to the cabin for my lunch and supper. I added a few biscuits and oranges to the eggs and other things, then returned to the pile of supplies. A few minutes later they were all gathered on the end of the dock and I was returning their waves as I started to steer a course up the lake past the first and second islands to the river entrance. I heard Lloyd shouting and jumping around on the shore, so I turned to look back. He was holding my fishing rod and box of sinkers. I went back to collect them. I didn’t say anything. There were fewer wavers when I set out on my great adventure the second time.