CHAPTER XX
I went home and began my minimal packing. I was giving up the cabin the next day, after nearly three months, for an elderly couple who had spent their anniversary week there for the past forty years. Being a resolute sentimentalist about such matters, how could I interfere with this precedent? My mother's comment about how unfavorably I compared to a dancing woodcock came back to me. If nothing else, the summer had made me fifteen pounds closer to flight. The heat had returned so I reread Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces for the umpteenth time. Mythology is a soothing hobby. There aren't any old myths, just new people.
In the evening I fished for a while without success, then went to the tavern for my last all-you-can-eat whitefish special. I took the precaution of carrying a bottle of Pickapepper sauce and waded through five pieces, which would serve as a sleeping pill. Home to the cabin and a single nightcap while reading an interview with a porn star named Rhonda in one of the magazines I bought the first evening in town. And hence to sleep with a vision of a buttocks as big as the Ritz.
There was Evelyn, beside the bed at first light, her hiss rising to a shout. “He's gone. Where is he, goddamn you! He's gone.”
I followed her to Strang's cabin, half wishing that the old pickup she pushed to sixty would go into one of those endless cinematic tumbles. Sure enough, there at the riverbank were Strang's clothes and leg braces.
“He's gone,” I said with purposeful vengeance.
“Oh god, he's dead. It's your fault. He fixed me the rum drink we used to have and made love to me. He put something in my drink. I finally woke up before dawn and he wasn't there.”
She began weeping and I couldn't help but put my arm around her. She got control of herself, then ran to my car, swerving out of the yard. I stooped beside Strang's clothes and petted the dog, who was lying there looking disgruntled that she hadn't been taken along down river. I looked in the door of the pumphouse and saw that the wet suit was still hanging on the wall. This depressed me for a moment, but then I noticed the can of grease Strang used before the wet suit arrived looked recently opened. For some reason I closed the can and stuck it behind some paint cans on the shelf. Then I made my way with the dog through the swamp down to the log jam. The dog scrambled out on the pile of half-submerged logs wagging her tail excitedly at the scent. She looked at me to see if I understood. I walked back up to the cabin, poured a drink, and looked at a topographical Strang had showed me of the area. It was an extremely unfriendly stretch of water, but not impossible for a man of his capabilities.
TAPE 9 : I am in the motel now with a soundless television on for comfort, my first viewing in nearly three months. I had pretty much forgotten television existed and now it has all of the charm, but none of the color, of a city dump. Evelyn returned with two squad cars in tow, one was a county sheriff, and the other was from the Michigan state police, a stunning title if you think about it, but an efficient group of professionals. I was questioned for an hour, then sent on my way.
The town was abuzz with excitement the next few days. Drownings are not uncommon in the area but no one had ever seen, including me, this kind of search. By late afternoon a private jet made several passes down the river and over the town. I properly guessed it to be Marshall, who had flown in from a horse sale in Saratoga, New York. By dark Marshall had managed to summon in three helicopters, which swept up and down the river and bay with spotlights before landing on the beach for the night. There were state police divers and a diving club from Marquette. Marshall's efforts reminded me of the news stories of Nelson Rockefeller combing New Guinea's beaches in a chartered 707 looking for his lost son.
Not surprisingly I was cast as the villain. I waited to be summoned or questioned again, and when nothing happened, I drove out to the cabin in the middle of the next afternoon. I was met by what is called unbridled hostility from Evelyn, Emmeline, and Bobby, though I noted that Bobby was a little less than convincing. There was the Slightest tinge of the soap opera to his anger.
I walked over to the picnic table where Marshall was having a pow-wow with the police and a detective brought up from Lansing. Marshall somehow had managed to wear one of those Orvis outfits, viyella shirt and pressed khaki trousers, not to be cynical. His aide was in the usual MBA, not quite tailored, suit. The detective was saying that there were tire tracks on the two-track going to the river about a half a dozen miles downstream, the next access below the cabin. This was inconclusive as it could easily been a trout fisherman. Again, I was surprised that no one bothered asking me any more questions though I suspected Evelyn had poisoned that well. The police accorded me the respect given to a cub reporter with a bad complexion, though Marshall gave me a seemingly friendly nod.
I drove to the bar but left immediately when it was full of diver, pilots, and onlookers, one of whom said to me, “This beats the shit out of the Fourth of July.”
Back at the motel I had my own, private victorious wake. Of course I couldn't be absolutely sure that strang hadn't been swept by the current out into Lake Superior, where he rested cold and intact in two hundred feet of water. I doubted it. I constructed a scenario where Eulia got on the bus in Engadine and got off in Manistique, where she was met by Bobby. I could see Bobby standing there in the glare of headlights at the end of the two-track waiting for his father to come down the river. I didn't in the least feel bad about being made the villain. I felt quite calm, in fact. It had happened frequently: You write about something that happens and, for various reasons, people are so forgetful they confuse you with the cause.
Marshall stopped by the next morning after I had bribed the lovely desk clerk into going out for coffee. He had brought the dog for me and wanted to say good-bye. The dog seemed content in her new surroundings, jumping on the bed for a quick nap.
“You don't think he's dead, do you?”
“No, not really.”
“Would you share your reasons?”
“No. You're too powerful and that would tip you off. It's obvious that he wanted to get away from all of us and this is the only way he could manage it.” I was looking out the window at a police car that held the driver, Doctor Evelyn, and the spiffy aide.
“That's true. You must know him as well as anyone by now. If you hear from him, we can send his checks through you. I looked at his account books last night and he's given everything away to wives, children, students, organizations. He wasn't very worldly.”
“I think he probably was.”
Marshall laughed then, and began to leave. “I'm the only one who doesn't think it's your fault. Give me a ring in Florida.”
“I will.”
Driving south out of town that evening I tried to imagine what it would be like to swim down a large river at night, but couldn't quite make it. You had to see the dam or work on it yourself to really understand it: There was less than a half-moon and dew on the grass. You would shiver involuntarily when you took off your clothes. The water would be cold, but not the bitter cold of June, and the grease would insulate you for the first few miles. Then the scramble over the log-jam, and back into the current. Since you couldn't see what you were doing, you would seek the strongest part of the current for speed of travel, guiding yourself with strokes of your arms, your legs, twin rudders. You would aim by sight into versions of black. On corners you would run the inside banks in the chutes, then strike across where the power of the river made its swirling turn. You might hear the wolves a trapper said lived in the delta. You would see trout rise, perhaps disturb a family of otters, hear an owl's call above the rush of water. The fatigue would be sweet when you saw the light diffused upward in a bright haze downstream. Your son and Eulia would help you from the water.