Chapter Seventeen

(1)

After Rima had cried for a good long while, she took a shower. She stood under the hot water, washing her hair with a shampoo that smelled of melon. She turned off the water, reached for a towel, and then froze. She was thinking about Constance’s letter, the last one she’d read. The letter had been about Average Mean; it had talked about Average Mean as if that book had only just been published. And also mentioned Bim. What was it Bim used to say? Nothing to see here. Move along.

Rima didn’t remember the year Average Mean had come out, but she did know it was before 1982, which was the publication date of Ice City. There’d been at least three books in between, enough time for Maxwell to send the wrong man to death row in one of those and realize it in the nick of time in another.

Rima wrapped herself in the towel and went to look for the letter again. If it had been written before 1982, as Rima felt sure it must have, then the Bim that Constance had mentioned could not have been Addison’s character. The Bim that Constance had mentioned must have been Rima’s father.

(2)

Brother Isaiah told Bim to take Mr. Lane and me fishing for bluegills. This got Mr. Lane out of the trailer park for a few hours at least, while making sure I was never left alone.

The air stank of algae. The water was green. An empty beer can floated past. My father used to say if you dropped a can into one of the shafts in Mount Konocti you would never hear it hit bottom. But a day or two later, it would show up on the lake.

Bim sat back by the motor. I was in the prow, Mr. Lane in the middle. There were already several boats out. Bim liked to make lists of things that would last forever. Tourists and cockroaches. He didn’t see a difference between one-time tourists and the summer regulars. They were all cockroaches to him.

We found a spot on the south shore and Bim cut the motor. A flock of mallards made soft, unhappy noises. Water slapped on the gunwale. There was a radio somewhere off in the distance. I had a headache from getting up so early.

“This is the life,” said Bim. “This is all I ever want to do.”

I took a waxworm from the pail, put the hook through, and rinsed the worm guts from my fingers in the lake. The sun was only now rising.

“Shame your time isn’t your own, since you have so much of it,” Mr. Lane said in a pleasant voice. He cast his line as he spoke. I heard it sing out. “Brother Isaiah seems to run a pretty tight operation.”

“He takes every dollar we earn,” Bim said.

Before I could stop myself, I’d made a little startled motion. We don’t talk to outsiders about money. I don’t think Mr. Lane saw. He didn’t say anything.

“Your wife, whom you love, tells you she’s found a way to live forever. She wants it. Can you say no to that?” Bim asked. The boat rocked. The radio played, tinny and far away. Mr. Lane said nothing.

I think Bim knew he’d gone too far. He made a joke of it. “I’m not the kind of man who will deny a woman every little thing.”

It was Mr. Lane’s method to find a crack somewhere and work it till it widened. That morning in the boat I saw for the first time what was coming. To figure out my father’s death, Mr. Lane was going to pull us all apart. He was going to bring Camp Forever down. And I was the one who’d hired him to do it.