Annette dropped Pender’s paddles on the beach, threw his pack in her canoe, collected Chaos, and launched before Pender finished the portage. She didn’t look back. She was fifty yards away by the time Pender took his first stroke. She paddled leisurely in a canoe with less hull speed than his, but he still had to paddle like a racer to close the gap between them, and even then it took most of a kilometer to draw abreast of her. He was impressed. She had perfect paddle stroke form, far more efficient than him, and faster. It would be nice if she’d take it easy when they paddled together.
The dog started to stand as Pender came aside, and Annette tapped him with a light but curiously loud thump to the head with her paddle. The dog lay down obediently but kept his head up, looking over the gunnel at Pender.
“I see you use the kindness method of dog training,” Pender called.
“What do you do? Shoot them? Kick them?” Annette refused to look at him. She had seen his pictures on the Internet, and the glimpse of him on the beach confirmed that he was a graying version of the college boy she had known. A little more flesh on the face, the lines and creases of age. Slim. Handsome in a weather-beaten kind of way. But too violent to get involved with.
He started to respond, then shut up. He smiled and nodded. He tried to make the smile seem good-natured. “Good one,” he said.
They paddled in silence, Pender glancing over to her frequently, Annette staring straight ahead. She was trying not to feel sorry for herself, trying not to write off this encounter despite overwhelming evidence that Pender was a testosterone-driven jackass. He kept hoping she’d look at him, establish eye contact, open up to conversation.
“We could talk, you know,” he called to her. “It’s not like there’s anyone else to talk to.”
She continued paddling, eyes straight ahead.
“Come on,” he said. “You can’t hate me already. We just met. If you give me a chance, in a couple of days you’ll know me well enough to really hate me.” He stared at her and thought he saw a suppressed smile. He wanted to say something funny about the dog, but they were reaching the rocky shoals of Annette’s island.
Annette floated into the take-out area, Pender holding just offshore because the take-out area was too small for two boats to land at the same time. Annette stepped out of her canoe into a foot of water and plucked Pender’s pack from her boat. She slung it over one shoulder and then lifted her canoe over the other shoulder and carried it to a nest-like opening in the shore brush, laying it in place, hull up. She hiked up the steep incline to her camp, never looking back at Pender. He watched her ascend the trail. She really was pissed at him.
The dog watched Pender land, but only because he was taking a dump near the trailhead. Pender shook his head. An angry wilderness mama and her shit machine. What a date. And he wondered, as he climbed the trail to her camp, if the pile of poop he stepped in the night before came from her dog.
Annette placed Pender’s pack in her kitchen area, a space created by three log benches forming a rectangle with the fire ring as the fourth side. She had built up the fire ring over the years. The fire pit itself was built atop several layers of rocks to prevent root fires, and she had created counter space on each side of it by placing large, flat rocks on top of walls of smaller ones.
Her food pack sat next to another flat rock that formed a tabletop a few feet in front of the fire pit. She sat on a log in front of the table and began sorting through her food pack.
When Pender entered the camp, Chaos bounded toward him, then skidded to a stop as if remembering his willingness to kick a dog. Chaos eyed him warily, but Annette didn’t look up from her work or acknowledge his presence. He carried his gear pack to the tenting area, parked it next to Annette’s, and mentally noted where he’d pitch his tent.
He meandered up to the kitchen.
Annette was making sandwiches in stony silence, fuming that she had relegated herself to kitchen duty for a violent slob who didn’t have the decency to show up on time.
“I’m making lunch, but I’m not your mother, okay? You can do the dishes.” She didn’t look up when she said it, didn’t look at Pender at all.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll cook dinner. And do the dishes. I’m not your father, but I think you knew that.”
Annette remained silent. She finished the sandwiches and made two cups of soup. “I’ve got enough fresh food for breakfast and lunch tomorrow. Then that’s it,” she said. She didn’t ask him if he had any fresh food. He wouldn’t. He had been in the park for more than a week.
She handed him a plastic cup of soup and his sandwich on a paper towel.
“Somehow I didn’t think I’d be welcome tomorrow,” he said as he sat on one of the logs.
“I’m thinking about it.” Her voice was cold, but she finally looked at him. “Come on,” she said. And she led the way to her overlook on the high bluff. She sat on a small boulder and began eating, ignoring Pender. He sat stiffly on the ground near her. They ate in silence, gazing out on the lake and the forests beyond. The brightness of the midday sun made the lake a pale blue color and bleached the shores into faded pastels of green and yellow. A pair of loons floated near shore, the only things moving in an idyllic landscape. As they ate, the only sound came from a light breeze rustling through the pine needles.
Chaos joined them, lying next to Annette, keeping her between him and Pender.
“Nice dog,” said Pender.
She nodded.
“How old is he?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Okay. How long have you had him?”
“A few days. I found him on the way here.”
Pender waited for her to tell the story, but she went silent.
“Did you find him in the park?” he asked
She nodded.
“Does that happen a lot? Finding dogs in the park?”
“No,” said Annette. “He had been abandoned.”
“Really? Couldn’t he have just wandered off? It’s hard to imagine someone abandoning a dog out here.”
“He was definitely abandoned.”
Pender gradually worked the story of the Stuarts out of her.
“If that guy had charged you, would you have hit him with the paddle?” he asked.
She nodded yes.
He thought about that. “How is that different than me taking down Mr. Football back there?” he asked.
“How is it similar?” Annette hissed her answer. “I didn’t antagonize that man. I saved a dog.”
“I defended myself, just like you would have.”
“You hit that poor man with a hatchet, Pender! You could have killed him.”
“You’re kidding now, right?” He peered at her face, looking for a tell-tale smile. It wasn’t there. Just an angry grimace. “I hit him with the flat side of the hatchet. I didn’t use the blade. I could have. I chose not to.”
Her face tensed in frustration. “It started with you antagonizing those men, stealing their property. What gives you the right?”
“It started with them playing loud rock and roll in the wilderness. It started with them hauling a case or two of beer in cans into the park. Wouldn’t that piss you off?”
“Of course it would. But I wouldn’t go steal their property.”
“What would you do?”
“I’d tell them they were breaking park rules and being discourteous to others.”
“That’s what I told them,” said Pender. “I just used actions instead of words.”
Annette walked back to the fire ring, Chaos at her side. Pender followed, finishing his meal as he walked.
“We need to be able to disagree,” he said when he caught up.
“I’m a Canadian. We can disagree without destroying each other. Try it. Maybe you can learn something new, though I doubt it.”
Pender couldn’t think of anything to say. He picked up the lunch dishes and cleaning materials and made his way down to the beach. He eased his canoe through the shoals and washed dishes about a hundred feet from the island.
When he got back to camp, Annette was sitting on one of the log benches, waiting for him. “You need to understand that what you did to those men is as upsetting to me as what they did was upsetting to you. If you can’t understand that, there’s really no point in staying here.”
“I understand,” Pender said, drying the dishes.
She waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. “You seem like a violent, angry man,” she said. “I don’t feel safe around you.”
He straightened from his labors, and they locked eyes. He shook his head sadly from side to side. “Okay. I’ll go. But if I was what you think I am, it would have been a lot easier to kill that man or break his leg so bad he’d never walk right again.”
Annette seethed. “That’s right. You had all that training. A hundred ways to kill a person. Thank you for your restraint. You’re such a good person.”
Pender stood still, immobilized by her anger. “I thought you were someone else,” he said finally. He walked toward his gear.
She followed him. “You thought I was someone else?” Scorn dripped from her voice. “I thought you were human. I thought you might have a conscience and care about people other than yourself.”
He shouldered his gear pack. “Sorry to disappoint,” he said, and headed for the trail down to the beach.
Annette rushed in front of him, making him stop, her jaws clenched in anger. “You owe me an apology.”
“What?” Pender was shocked. He fumbled for a moment. “Apologize for what? Because I was a day late? I’m sorry. I had an accident that slowed me down.”
“Because you came in like a brute, like a . . . crazy man.”
Pender started to answer in anger, stopped himself, and took a moment to regain his composure. “I apologize for appearing that way,” he said. “That’s not who I am.” As he stepped around her, he added, “As for the cruelty, I could never rival you in that particular arena.”
She stopped him again, planting herself in front of him, one hand held to his chest. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Think about it,” he said. He tried to walk around her, but she stepped in front of him again.
“No. You tell me about it. Do you have the guts to tell me to my face?”
He started to speak and stopped. “No,” he said finally.
“You owe me that much. I used my whole summer vacation to see you. You can at least tell me how I’m such a bad person, because, to tell you the truth, before you got here I thought I was okay.”
He nodded his head like he was saying yes. “You don’t remember what you said to me when we broke up?” His eyebrows were raised in question and he searched her eyes for recognition.
She puzzled for a moment. “Nothing specific. I remember I was really frustrated.” She looked at him. “What did I say?”
Pender shook his head again, side to side, a disgusted look on his face. “At least when I hurt someone, I have the decency to remember what I did. No wonder you’re so goddamn righteous.”
“What did I say?” Annette blocked him again so he couldn’t move past her. “Please. I want to know.”
“You said, ‘I hope you get drafted and you go to Vietnam and you get shot and die there.’ Your exact words. It’s like you carved them into my brain. Absolutely the best fuck-you line ever. I’ll never forget it. Congratulations.”
Horror swept over Annette’s face. “Did I really say that? Could I have said that?”
“You know you did,” said Pender. “I can see it on your face.”
He started to move, but she stopped him, gently this time. “You’re right. I said it. And it was a terrible thing to say. I said it in anger. I apologize. I’m sorry. Really. I’m very sorry.”
“Apology accepted.” He stepped around her. “Thanks for lunch.” He started down the trail to the beach.
She followed him. “Gabe, stop. Let’s start over again, okay? Let’s spend the afternoon paddling around the lake and have a nice dinner tonight.”
He paused. “God, I hate to waste a great exit line like that.”
Annette blinked, trying to understand what he said. She broke into a smile, finally. “You never were one for straight answers,” she said.
They returned to camp and tried to start a conversation, but it was awkward. Annette ended the fumbling with a simple declaration: “Let’s go fishing.”
They paddled side by side this time, Annette directing them into the northeast bay, where she had paddled that morning. They tried to fish a little, but when the afternoon breezes picked up, the canoes blew quickly downwind, sometimes banging into one another.
“Next time we should lash our boats together,” said Annette. Pender nodded. He didn’t know what she was talking about—he was strictly a solo guy—but he was glad she was thinking there’d be another time.
They trolled lures for a while, producing a few small fish that they released. Later in the afternoon, they eased into the best walleye waters, a pinch point where the opposing shores of the lake jutted to within a hundred yards or so of each other. They were sheltered from the winds there. Annette talked to Pender as she positioned them between the points.
“There’s a reef beneath us,” she said. “It’s about fifty feet deep in the middle, and it rises gradually to the points we can see. It holds walleye spring through fall. In the spring, they’ll be closer to shore, in ten or fifteen feet of water. This late in the summer, you start looking for them in twenty feet and we keep going deeper until we find them. Of course, this is Quetico. They might be in five feet or fifty feet, and we’ll never know why.” She shrugged as she said it and glanced at Pender. He was staring at her, a small smile on his face.
“What?” she asked.
“You’re almost feral,” he said. “It’s amazing. I’m trying to make that fit with my memory of you. Sophisticated girl from a good family, perfect manners, so . . . beautiful and so comfortable in polite society . . . I’m trying to look at that girl and see this woman.”
“And?”
“And I can’t do it.”
“Well,” she said, “I think of you then and now and I see the same person. The college boy, the man, they both have a way of pissing me off like nobody else I know.”
“I didn’t mean it as an insult. You’ve changed a lot. I like what I see.”
“After two hours you’ve got me figured out, huh?” There was an edge to her voice.
He realized she thought he was patronizing her. He tried to think of reassuring words, but everything he thought of sounded worse. He shrugged. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”
Their conversation was cut short by a school of feeding walleye. In short order, they landed a half dozen fish, keeping three, releasing the others. Pender rigged the keepers on a makeshift stringer and towed them behind his canoe. They spent the next two hours touring that part of the lake, Annette telling Pender about various landmarks and the flora and geography of the place.
They stopped to clean the fish on a rock outcropping, Annette deferring to Pender to see how much skill he had. He had an odd procedure. He started by turning away from her on the rock and hunching for a moment, his head down, the fish in front of him, out of her view. After a few seconds, he straightened up and stabbed each fish in the head, then filleted and skinned them. Annette hadn’t seen anyone kill the fish first in years; she thought she was the only one, and she never confessed her practice to anyone other than her daughters.
Pender was reasonably efficient, she noted. His filets came off the bones with little waste; his skinning technique was messier, but the filets were clean. “Well done,” she said when he was finished.
“Thanks. I’ve never done it with an audience before.”
They got back in the canoes and headed back to the island.
“Pender?” Annette said on the way, “What were you doing before you killed the fish?”
He shrugged like he had no idea what she was talking about.
“It looked like you were praying,” she said. “Have you found religion in your old age?”
“Uh, no. Not praying,” he said. “Still an atheist.”
“What then?”
He looked embarrassed and didn’t answer right away.
“Come on, you can tell me.”
“It’s a little thing I do. Stupid. I tell the fish I’m sorry for killing them, and, uh, thank them sort of.”
Annette suppressed a laugh.
“I know. It’s stupid. Go ahead and laugh out loud.”
“It’s not stupid. It’s touching, really. Who knew you had First Nation instincts? You don’t seem like the type.”
“What type am I?”
“I don’t know yet. You’re still working up from ax murderer.” She laughed as she said it, some pent-up emotion coming out with the humor. Pender smiled. They got to the island as the early-evening sun began casting deep shadows on the campsite.
“I won’t hold you to cooking tonight,” Annette said as they ascended to the camp.
“You can’t stop me now,” said Pender. “I’ve been talking fish recipes with America’s greatest chefs for months, and I’ve been hauling the seasonings for a week.”
They made small talk while they worked on the meal. Working together seemed to make conversation come easier, and soon they were chatting like old friends. Annette made the fire and took charge of rehydrating the vegetables and dicing the last of her potatoes while Pender rubbed the filets with herbs and spices and prepared the frying pan. He set aside a large portion for Chaos, who became more interested in him when he started handling the food.
They talked about food, Annette asking him about different regional cuisines, his favorite chefs, and Menu’s original recipe awards. Pender was surprised she knew so much about him.
“I Googled your name and got dozens of pages of listings,” said Annette. “Speeches, photos, master of ceremonies. It seems like you’re a star in a glamorous field.”
Pender sighed. “I had a moment in the spotlight. I got to see a lot of places and meet a lot of people, and I had a great time doing it. But it’s over now and, to tell you the truth, that’s okay with me. It’s not bad having my feet on the ground.”
“What does that mean?”
“Just that, I think some of us let what we do for a living define us, and when we do well at it, we start thinking we’re something more than everyone else. Like, I deserve to fly first class, and the people in coach don’t. And when you start thinking like that, pretty soon nothing is enough. No meal is quite good enough, no conversation is stimulating enough, every article and project seems like something you’ve already done. I was well into the ‘Is this all there is?’ phase of life.”
As she listened, Annette was thinking that Pender sounded like the college boy she knew, grown up, a little world-weary, but authentic.
“You’re pretty deep for an ax murderer,” she said.
“I get that a lot,” he replied.
The conversation drifted to the art of fire starting and cooking over campfires, then to Annette’s daughters and granddaughter.
After bending to place the fish over the fire, Pender winced as he straightened to a standing position. “Are you okay?” asked Annette.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m getting better every day. I took a tumble a few days ago and really did a number on my back. I was pretty gimpy for a couple days, but I’m good now.”
Annette made him describe what happened and how it affected him. “Is that why you were late getting here?” she asked.
“In a way,” he said. “But really, I was late because I was afraid to be early. I should have planned to get here a day early. It would have been easy. But I thought waiting here for a day by myself would drive me even crazier, wondering if you’d show up, what you’d be like.” He shrugged self-consciously.
She smiled. “I know what you mean. I got so restless I left a day early and came out of French Lake, just to be doing something so I wouldn’t constantly be thinking about this. And I didn’t want to be the first one here because of just what you said. And we were both right—I’ve been going stir-crazy knocking around this place. Thank goodness for Chaos.”
Lying near them, the dog’s ears picked up at the mention of his name.
“Which gets us back to your little drama with Mr. Chaos. Just out of curiosity, what were you going to do with the paddle if he rushed you?” Pender asked.
“I don’t know,” said Annette. “Try to stick him in the face with it, I guess.”
“That would work.” Pender smiled wryly. “I’m more of a hatchet man myself, but if you thrust the paddle like they teach in bayonet training, you could stop someone in their tracks, especially if you nailed them in the nose or throat. Thing is, it’s easy to parry something like that unless you’re quick and you surprise them.”
“You learned a lot in the army, sounds like.” She said it with a mix of sadness and accusation.
“They drill some things into your head so well you never forget them.” Pender assumed a military command voice and proclaimed, “There’s only two kinds of bayonet fighters, Bravo—the quick and the dead.” He smiled self-consciously. “It’s like you learning how to make fires and find fish. I learned what I had to learn to survive.”
“Did you ever wish you weren’t there, killing people?”
“I don’t think there was ever a time when I didn’t wish I could be somewhere else, getting laid, living easy, all that.” Pender looked up from the skillet, made eye contact with Annette. “But it wasn’t the killing. It was everything. The hardship. Fear. Being treated like a fucking serf by morons who had the power of God over me and were too stupid to know what stupid was. Being hated by people like you back home. Being bored out of my skull except when I was scared out of my wits.”
He stared at her for a moment, trying to will himself to shut up, but he couldn’t.
“You know, we were doing something we didn’t want to do, and everybody hated us for it. Even our own side. The officers hated you because you were a low-life enlisted man. The NCOs hated you because they were lifers and you were a transient who hated their army and thought they were stupid. Back home, the doves hated you because you were a baby-killing maniac, and the hawks because you were a drug addict and a loser.”
“At least you had each other,” Annette offered. “Band of brothers and all that.”
“No,” said Pender. “We were all temps. We were on different timetables, so you only knew a guy for a short time before he moved on. Or got shot.”
“You’re angry about it.”
“I’m fucking seething. I’ve been seething for forty years.”
“What would make it better?” She tried not to sound like a mom when she said it.
Pender laughed, a bitter, ironic laugh. “Amnesia. All those ‘make love not war’ people who were so idealistic in 1969? Most of them are small-government neocons today. They went from free love to free war. They got really brave when the draft went away. And really stingy when it was their money in the pot. If I could forget all that, I’d still have a country and maybe a life. But I can’t forget.”
He removed the food from the fire, trying to shed the anger.
“Which is how I came to fuck with four fat fishermen for being loud and obnoxious, though truthfully, if I had known how well they paddled and how strong they were, I think I would have kept my indignation to myself.”
Pender smiled self-consciously as they took their plates to Annette’s promontory to eat.
“I’m sorry for that rant,” he said. “It’s been building up for a long time, and I haven’t talked to anyone in quite a while. Anyone.”
“No apology needed,” said Annette. “I’m just kind of stunned. I always pictured you as a sort of high-flying deacon of capitalism—eating at fancy places, making big money, living in a sumptuous house. I never thought the war would hit you and stick like that.”
“It’s a kind of cancer. There are worse kinds.”
They ate quietly on the high rocks overlooking Annette’s lake. They did dishes together, wading out to a flat rock in knee-deep water. Annette washing, Pender drying and stacking the dishes on the rock. Then they sipped wine by the campfire, swapping dog stories and kid stories until the sun set and Quetico was left in the dark shadows of late evening.
“Do you do night paddles?” asked Annette.
“Not for a long time, but let me set up my tent and we’ll go.”
“Why set up another tent? Mine’s big enough for the three of us. Just throw your bag in there and whatever else and we’ll take off.”
He hesitated.
“I’m not offering sex,” she said. “It just makes no sense to have two tents when there’s plenty of room in one.”
“Okay,” he said, finally. “Good.”
Annette hiked down to the canoes while Pender set up his gear. She tried not to be bothered by him saying “Good” when she made the sex thing clear. It wasn’t that she wanted to have sex. It was that he obviously didn’t find her attractive. She tried to rationalize his reaction; she was, after all, sixty years old. If he wanted sex, he’d have stayed home and played with the bunnies in his photos.
By the time Pender got down to the lake, Annette had already launched both canoes and strapped them together in shallow water just offshore. Chaos sat in Annette’s canoe, tail wagging, tongue lolling, waiting.
“How did you do that?” he asked, impressed. Mostly he wondered how she did it so fast. He inspected her work in the dim light of the moon and the first stars.
Two poles, each about five feet long and as thick as a fist, lay across the canoes, one in front, the other in back. They were lashed to each canoe’s crossbeam supports with bungee cords, essentially converting the canoes into the twin hulls of a catamaran.
“It’s not very strong,” said Annette, “But it’ll get the job done for tonight.” She stepped into her canoe, carefully letting the water drip from each sandal before putting her foot in the boat. Pender did the same. There was something behind his seat. As he reached for it, Annette said, “That’s a poncho I carry for whatever. I thought it would make a good pillow for you if you want to lie in the canoe and look at stars.”
“Really?” said Pender.
“Well, it takes some agility. And you probably wouldn’t want to fall asleep in that position. But yeah, when you get that rare clear night out here, lying down in the middle of the lake and looking at the sky is like seeing creation. I never realized how many stars we had in the sky until I did that.”
“Billions,” said Pender as they paddled slowly out to deep water. “Maybe hundreds of billions. I read somewhere that astronomers say there are billions of galaxies, or maybe that was solar systems. Either way, it really blows the notion of an interactive god watching over us right out of the water.”
“Not for me,” said Annette. “When I see all those stars and think about all those galaxies and planets and all of that coming from one big bang that started everything, it makes me realize there is a greater power.”
Pender laughed softly. They had debated God in college. It was like old times.
“Okay,” he said, “but why would whoever touched off the big bang be hovering around churches and bedrooms on one stinking little planet to hear what each cosmic nit wants for Christmas or listen to someone beg for help to win a football game?”
“You’re such a cheerful son of a bitch, Pender,” said Annette. “Anyone ever tell you that?”
“Alas, yes. I don’t usually talk so much, though. It’s been close to a week since I talked to another person, so I kind of lost control of my mouth there. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I always loved your bullshit. It was one of the things I missed about you.”
“You missed me? When?”
Annette stopped paddling and turned to Pender, paused, put her hand on his wrist. “Let’s not get into that right now. Let’s take in the stars.” She squeezed his wrist affectionately.
They drifted like weightless leaves floating on water as serene as a baby’s lullaby. As the moon rose higher in the sky, they lay face up in their canoes and watched millions of stars come to life, like lights coming on in a giant arena.
“Can you believe this?” Annette asked, her voice strangely muffled as it came from the bottom of her canoe.
“It’s amazing,” answered Pender.
“As long as I’ve lived here, the night skies just take my breath away. How could you go back to Chicago all those years after seeing this?”
“Well, I didn’t see this very often. I usually had overcast skies at night, and I slept through most of the clear sky nights. I sure as hell don’t have that problem anymore.”
“You have trouble sleeping?” Annette asked.
“Mostly I have trouble staying asleep, but I have trouble getting to sleep, too. Other than that, no problem.”
“You make a joke out of everything. I’m starting to remember that about you.”
“And you take everything seriously,” said Pender. He paused for a beat, thinking. “You were always very thoughtful, but you hardly ever got mad. Except with me.”
“It’s true. You had a way of irritating me and fascinating me at the same time. I guess it was an opposites attract thing.”
Their conversation waned as they soaked in the night lights. After a long silence, Annette scuffled about in her canoe to sit herself upright again. Pender followed suit. “Ready to go back in?” she asked.
“Yeah. But first, I don’t think we were opposites. I think we were very similar people, just living in parallel universes.”
“Eh?” A bemused smile played at Annette’s lips. Pender could see her face clearly in the light pouring from the sky.
“You were in the antiwar movement and I wasn’t, and you think that’s what defined us, but it wasn’t. What defined us was we both felt a sense of responsibility. I was taught that service to my country is a sacred duty. Country first, then family, then self. I had an obligation to fulfill and I fulfilled it. That’s what defined me.”
Annette pondered this for a while. “Okay, what defined me?”
“A sense of duty. Giving up everything to go to Canada with that shit-for-brains husband you took. And staying loyal to him even when he betrayed you . . .” Pender’s voice tapered off for a moment. “And you didn’t just hide here. You came to be a part of the place.”
“I take it you mean that as a compliment. I’ll try to control my beating heart.”
“Don’t try to kid me. You feel it too. It’s what bonds us. We sacrificed. We fulfilled our responsibilities even when those around us didn’t. And after forty years, we’re in the same place. We’re on an island in the wilderness. All those people who were so righteous about this cause or that one, all the philosophies, all the fad beliefs, all the phony bullshit of a lifetime, it’s all over there on the mainland somewhere, rotting away, becoming fertilizer for the next wave of bullshit. And we’re here on an island in the wilderness because we lived the same life in parallel universes and forty years later we have more in common with each other than we do with any of the causes or people or institutions we passed along the way.”
“You make it sound like a nightmare.”
“You worry too much.”
They smiled and began the slow paddle back to the island, quiet, Annette still worried about Pender’s anguish.
It was nearly 3 AM when they got back to camp and stumbled through the shadows to Annette’s tent, so tired that even Chaos was dragging.
“Do you need privacy to change?” Pender asked as Annette unzipped the entry to the tent.
“Will the sight of me in a bra and panties drive you to acts of depravity?”
He started to answer, then stopped. “You put that in a way there’s no right answer. Let’s just say I understand you are not inviting me in for sex. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I’m somewhat civilized and fully housebroken.”
“I bet if someone made you just answer yes or no to a question, it would drive you stark raving mad,” Annette snickered as she entered the tent and flipped on a small battery-powered lantern hanging from the top of the tent.
Pender followed and set to inflating his sleeping pad and setting up his sleeping bag even as Chaos tried to lie on them. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of her just as she was getting ready to put on her sleeping clothes. Even in a quick glance in the vague light of the lantern, even trying not to invade her privacy, trying not to see her as a woman, Pender saw the plump fullness of her breasts, the curve of her waist, the feminine roundness of her hips and butt. The sight aroused him. He tried to erase the vision from his mind. It wasn’t fair to invade her privacy like that, he thought. But it was nice to be so fully aroused again. It had been a long time.
Pender slipped into a pair of swimming trunks, then reached up bare chested to snap off the lantern. Annette watched, lying on her side, noting his well-defined abs. “You’ve taken good care of your body,” she said.
“So have you.”
“No, I really mean it. You look good.”
“I really mean it too.”
“You don’t have to patronize me. I’m not some Rush Street bimbo.”
“Well, how about that. I didn’t think this was Rush Street. How about just accepting what I say at face value. Have I ever lied to you? When did I ever patronize you?”
After a moment of silence, Annette answered sheepishly. “Okay. Sorry. But I’m, you know, a grandma. Gray hair. Wrinkles.”
“You’re still beautiful,” he said quietly. “Seriously beautiful.”
“Thanks,” she said. She waited to see if he’d make a pass, thinking a kiss would be nice, see where it leads. But he didn’t.
“Thanks for giving me a chance today,” he said.
“Don’t mention it,” said Annette.
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Chaos, you dog-breath cur.”