Death on a Small, Dark Lake

  Chapter 5

  Going back to get the canoe, with the geographer trailing behind, was one of the fastest portages I've ever made. It just seemed a lot longer. About an eon longer.

  Once I got the canoe on my head, I tried to get onto the trail before Patrick could get his stuff. But he was younger and quicker and caught up to me after I'd tripped on a pine root. The pulse of blood through the head of someone with a nasty headache is an interesting thing. You don't want to know.

  But I'm stocky and short and slow, so I had to hear his entire analysis of the political infighting, plotting, triumphs, machinations, funding, and disasters of the geography department at the University of Peterborough.

  A play-by-play of a brawl involving a pack of Pekinese dogs would have been more entertaining. A couple of the dogs might have got romantically involved. And been more attractive than some of the members of the geography department, including my Patrick ain’t-my-name-cute Ireland.

  As we did that trail amid the noises of the crickets and birds, skipping over logs and little creeks, I learned more than I wanted to know about every member of the faculty. I was practically running, but he kept up nicely.

  I had this vision of Associate Professor Patrick Ireland floating dead in Thomson Lake and nobody caring. Especially the intimate and surreal world of the Canadian Small University.

  I'd been there, and done that. It might have been one of the reasons I was so content with my feet sore and mosquitoes feeding on my epidermals, happy watching the sun go down all by myself in remote lakes. Eight years of teaching economics had been just over seven years too long.

  There had been enough Patrick Irelands in the Economics department of the university I taught in.

  I'd had no respect for economics at all, which, I understand, made me a good teacher. And I'd often been fascinated by the students. But if you think camping alone is an escape from reality, you ought to try being part of a liberal-arts university staff.

  We arrived at Fox Lake practically at a run, despite the dense brush at the last part. I tried my best to let the branches I pushed aside snap back at him, but he just dodged and kept on yammering.

  We soon got within sight of Fox Lake, with Patrick right beside me explaining how the head of the Geography department was determined to keep working till he died and would probably live forever. But the situation at the lake had changed.

  There were at least three people yelling at each other. We got closer before we could catch the words.

  I grabbed the canteen from my pack and downed a couple more codeine tablets. The conversation continued without me.

  "Not bloody likely you're not going back with me, you stupid bitch! Walk back, for all I care!" Bob was obviously not in tune with his environment. On the other hand, he might well have figured out Belinda's future intentions. He was also trying to haul the rental canoe into the water.

  "Calm down! Calm down! Calm down!" Ned DeVincent's voice went on and on. I wasn't sure his advice was working very well. For some reason he was holding on to Bob's canoe. Not something I would have recommended. Far as I was concerned, letting Bob go away by himself was a heck of a good idea.

  Kele must have thought so, or maybe he was letting the white folks entertain him. He leaned against an oak, holding a paddle and saying exactly nothing.

  As for Belinda, she was red-faced, sitting on someone's pack.

  When the shouting died down a little, she said, more or less calmly, but very clearly, "I could tell them where you were yesterday."

  Bob let go of the canoe, whipped out his knife, and stood up.

  Kele was swinging his paddle almost at once, but Bob merely flung the knife far out into the lake and ducked under the paddle. Then he twisted forward and upended the artist. Kele went face-first into the moss.

  In the silence that followed, Bob stepped over Kele and stomped noisily up the hill, away from the lake, the crackling of dry twigs marking his passage after he was out of sight.

  There was a definite silence, broken by the cry of a bluejay somewhere above us. I helped Kele up.

  "This moss," he said. "It's full of twigs." He spat a couple out.

  "A noble effort, nonetheless," I said.

  "Forgot my throwing tomahawk, you know," Kele added, brushing various natural components off his clothes. "I usually carry one for emergencies."

  When we looked around, the bright red canoe Bob and Belinda had been using was out on the lake. Belinda was in the middle, obviously capable of paddling solo. Maybe, I thought, she should give it a try as a lifestyle.

  Ned put the last of the geobuddies' material possessions into their canoe, and stepped carefully into the stern seat. Patrick looked a bit confused. He looked into the woods, then around at Kele and I, then wordlessly, got into the canoe.

  The canoe grated against a rock, then moved out across the lake.

  That left two artists, two canoes, and a mad Brit, somewhere in the Canadian woods.

  But not for long. Kele slid the aluminum canoe into the water, tossed his pack into it, and kicked it out into the lake. Just before it was too late, he used the paddle as a pole vault, and landed in the canoe. The canoe shook a bit, but didn't roll over.

  He backpaddled for a moment, then said, "Toss me your pack."

  I took the camera equipment out, then threw the pack to Kele. He stowed it just ahead of him, then swung the canoe out into the lake.

  "Let him walk, eh," he yelled from out on the lake. "He can learn to eat moss. I did."

  I sat down and watched him get out of sight around a bend in the lake.

  Then I watched the bluejay make a nuisance of himself in the cedar tree, for reasons known only to bluejays.

  Finally, I closed my eyes and had a brief catnap. At my age, you take naps when you can get them.

  So I don't know how long it was before I was woken up by the sound of footsteps in the debris of the forest floor. I'm always disoriented when I wake. Someday I'll wake up with a bear gnawing on my leg.

  It was just Bob. I looked up, without saying anything. I figured he could do the conversation bit. After all, it was my canoe.

  He sat down and leaned against the next tree. Handy things, those, trees. Billions of the suckers and hardly any get leaned against. Seems a waste, sometimes. Good thing the squirrels and bluejays use the trees while they're waiting around for people to lean against them.

  I tend to blither a bit when I don't have anything to say.

  I looked at Bob. He looked at me. I'd have traded anything for his youth and health, even my canoe. But I didn't want his hangups.

  "So are you going to kill me?" I asked.

  "Bloody unlikely," he said, his eyes finding a loon far out on the water. "Bloody knife's at the bottom of the bloody lake."

  "There's always the paddle," I said.

  "Sure. We used to use them a lot in bloody Manchester. After the bloody football, we'd ‘ave an argy-bargy on streetcorner and bash each other with canoe paddles. Had a real knees-up, we did."

  "Figured you'd just keep going south," I said.

  He snorted, and said nothing. Too many swamps; too many lakes between here and the nearest road. He either knew the country, or didn't have a compass in his pocket.

  "Shall we go?" I asked.

  "Might as well. Spare me the aggro of walking back." He got up, and got his pack.

  We slid the canoe into the water, loaded his pack and my camera pack into it, and got in. There wasn't much spare room in the boat.

  "This thing safe?" Bob asked, as the boat wobbled its way into the lake. My small canoe has kept the attention of many people who've been in it.

  I was in the stern position, of course. My canoe. The guy in the back gets to steer the canoe. It's like being the captain on a ship. The pilot on a plane. It's the dominant position.

  You might see women driving a car with a man as passenger, but I've yet to see a woman steering a canoe with a man in the fr
ont. Out in the back woods us males show our true colors.

  There's an organization in the States called Women in the Wilderness. It's a women-only organization. I think they do it just so women can get a chance to paddle their own canoes. Make their own fires. Set up their own tents.

  So we paddled down Fox Lake and I didn't ask him why he threw his knife in the water. Or what Belinda had meant when she said, "I could tell them where you were yesterday."

  Astonishingly enough, it was far from a silent trip. As we passed close to the shores of the lake, Bob carried on a non-stop description of the plants we passed. He could, it appeared, identify three separate species of lily pad where I just knew them as "lily pads."

  He also seemed to know most of the trees and even the shrubs, And he could identify almost all of the bird calls we heard.

  I was very impressed, so I asked him.

  "Always loved living things," he said. "Used to have a sketchbook where I'd draw things like the bark of trees and feathers from birds. Then I'd go to the library and identify them, if I could."

  "You surprise me," I said, knowing he expected that. Then I added, "Just where were you yesterday?"

  I didn't expect him to answer, but he did, after a small hesitation. "I’d done a flit. I was gadding about the other end of the lake, fishing and gawping at an otter."

  "That's a problem?" I asked.

  "Think about it," Bob said, as we pulled into the portage to Gull Lake, "Tough bastard convict kid from England threatens to scrag a local wally. Same silly local bastard is found dead a bit later. I just ‘ope to bloody ‘ell they can say he died by accident."

  "But you weren't even on the same lake" I said.

  He tossed me the map as he got out of the canoe. I looked at it. He had a point - Fox Lake wasn't all that far from Thomson Lake, especially if he had been at the west end of Fox Lake. It might be possible.

  I stuck an oratorical pose and said, in voice as deep as a well:

  "Made of kevlar, or carved from a tree

  A canoe is a fine place to be.

  But caution, my friend

  Lest you meet a damp end

  Never, ever, stand up to pee."

  Bob laughed. "Stranger things ‘appen at sea. Everybody stands up in a canoe at some time or other. And I've seen a couple of blokes fall out that way."

  We made the rest of the portage with Bob trying to teach me how to identify the white-throated sparrow by its call, “sweet sweet Canada Canada Canada.”

  Halfway across Gull Lake I asked him if he still loved Belinda.

  He told me the difference between white birch and black birch. We were too far from shore to identify either.

  I'd spent half my life in the forest and knew a pitiful fraction of what he knew.

  We made the portage to Hawk Lake, at the dam, then started on Hawk Lake. It was almost two hours down Hawk Lake, to the lodge. Upwind all the way of course.

  Once we saw one of the canoes ahead of us, just disappearing behind an island. It was a long way ahead. For the rest, there were a few cottages along the shore, mostly uphill a bit, with wooden stairs going down to the docks. Many places had “Peterborough Pelicans”, white bleach bottles tethered and floating, marking shallow spots for motorboats to avoid.

  As I paddled, I reached a sort of a calm within me. A canoe is almost ideal for that. The rhythmic dip and swing of the paddle is the only noise other than the small waves against the hull. The shores move by in silence, bringing rock and pine and oak past. The boat rocks slowly, and the small wake closes behind you. You feel you could paddle this spot forever and let the moments, days, years, and infinities disappear without a trace behind you

  I began to think.

  What bothered me was the possibility that George's death really hadn't been an accident. It's easy to kill yourself in a canoe, but Bob Tucker had been too close for my liking.

  And what had brought the painter on such a run straight to the lake his friend died at? Or had he been there longer than he let on?