Crow Lake (24 page)

I went out alone to greet Mrs. Stanovich. She was heaving herself out from behind the wheel of her truck as I came up, and she gave a little cry of joy when she saw me. She is unchanged, I am glad to say, except possibly for the addition of a chin or two.

“Katherine, sweetie! Sweetie, you look so beautiful, you look so like your mother, you look more like her every day.” And she hauled me to her bosom, just as she used to do, just as she always will. It shows the state I was in that for the first time in my life I almost wanted to accept that bosom for what it really is—a pillow to cry into. A great, soft, warm pillow, into which to unload all your grief and pain and regret, in the sure knowledge that Mrs. Stanovich will pass it all directly on to Jesus. But I am me, and I cannot do such things, though I did return her embrace for longer than she was accustomed to.

“Sweetie,” she said, delving around for her eternal handkerchief (Matt once said he bet there were hundreds of them down there somewhere), “just look at the day the Lord has given us! Not a cloud! And here you are, you came all this way to help in the rejoicing. Isn’t Simon the most wonderful boy you ever saw? Somewhere there’s a cake.” She puffed her way around to the back of her truck, mopping herself as she went, and let down the tailgate with a crash. “I couldn’t put it in the front because Gabby’s put a gearbox on the seat. I hope it’s survived—now look at that, it’s just fine. All you need is to trust in the Lord, sweetie. He takes care of everything. Who is the young man with Matt?”

It was Daniel. Matt was bringing him over to be introduced. They were walking slowly, heads down. Matt was gesturing with his hands, explaining something, and Daniel was nodding. As they got closer I heard Matt say, “… only about six months of the year when it’s above forty-two degrees, which is the absolute minimum. So you need to get it in as soon as possible after the snow melts—as soon as the soil dries out enough to drill.” And Daniel said, “Do you use particular strains? You know, more frost-resistant?”

I don’t know why I suddenly saw it then. Maybe because they were both so intent on the subject, so absorbed. Two remarkable men, deep in conversation, walking slowly across the dust of the farmyard. It was not a tragic picture. Definitely not.

I suppose the real question is not why I saw it then, but why I didn’t see it years ago. Great-Grandmother Morrison, I accept that the fault is largely mine, but I do hold you partly to blame. It is you, with your love of learning, who set the standard against which I have judged everyone around me, all of my life. I have pursued your dream single-mindedly; I have become familiar with books and ideas you never even imagined, and somehow, in the process of acquiring all that knowledge, I have managed to learn nothing at all.

Miss Carrington arrived while Daniel was being introduced to Mrs. Stanovich, and right behind her were the Tadworths; and then several cars and battered farm trucks all rolled in together and the party got underway. It was a good party. As Mrs. Stanovich said, we had the weather on our side, and the event quickly took on the air of a large and rather chaotic picnic, with people sitting on the grass in little clusters or milling about near the food tables, talking and laughing and trying to solve the problem of how to eat when you have a plate of food in one hand and a glass of fruit punch in the other.

I would like to be able to say that I threw myself into the spirit of it all, but the truth is, I still felt a bit dazed. A bit abstracted. It’s going to take time, I guess. If you’ve thought in a certain way for many years, if you’ve had a picture in your mind of how things are and that picture is suddenly shown to be faulty, well, it stands to reason that it will take a while to adjust. And during that time, you’re bound to feel … disconnected. Anyway, that was how I felt—and still feel, to some degree. What I would really have liked to do was sit quietly somewhere, preferably under a tree, and watch the goings-on from a distance. In particular, watch Matt. Let my eyes absorb this new view of him, this new perspective on our lives.

That’s what I would have chosen to do that afternoon, rather than help to host a birthday party. But still, it was good to see everyone—very good, in fact. They were all there, apart from Miss Vernon, who sent a message that she was a bit old for parties but wished Simon well. I introduced Daniel to most of them, I think. He was rather subdued himself, no doubt still unsure of my state of mind. But he rose to the occasion—all the Professors Crane are good at occasions. We talked quite a bit with Miss Carrington. She is the principal of the school now—it has expanded to three rooms and she has two teachers working for her. She was looking very well. There is a serenity about her. Possibly there always was and I just hadn’t noticed it before. Anyway, it makes her very restful to be with.

Simon had a good time, I think, which was the object of the exercise, after all.

The evening was the best though. The evening will stay with me. After supper, when the clearing-up was done and Simon had gone off with his friends, Matt and I sprayed Daniel from head to toe with insect repellent and took him back to the ponds. Matt has filled in the one where Laurie’s body was found and planted a small group of silver birches on it. They were just coming into leaf and looked very peaceful.

The other ponds, our pond included, are just as they have always been.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Crow Lake
is a work of fiction. There are so many lakes in northern Ontario that there are bound to be half a dozen named after a crow, but none of them is the Crow Lake in this novel. Likewise, with two exceptions, all the characters in the novel are figments of my imagination. The first exception is my great-grandmother, who did indeed fasten a book rest to her spinning wheel. She had four children rather than fourteen, but she lived on a farm on the Gaspé Peninsula and time for reading was hard to come by. The second exception is my younger sister, Eleanor, whose infant self was the model for Bo. My thanks to her for permitting me to use her infancy, and also for her unceasing support, advice, and encouragement in the writing of the book.

I would like to thank my brothers, George and Bill, not only for their humour, faith, and encouragement over the years, but also for advising on the “natural history” of Crow Lake. They both know the North a thousand times better than I ever will, and their love for it played a part in the inspiration for the book.

There are others to whom I owe a great debt:

—Amanda Milner-Brown, Norah Adams, and Hilary Clark for their insight and their support, and for being honest when it would have been easier and more polite to lie.

—Stephen Smith, poet and teacher, for his encouragement and inspiration.

—Penny Battes, who helped me to get started all those years ago and who never seemed to doubt that I would get there in the end.

—Professor Deborah McLennan and Professor Héléne Cyr of the zoology department at the University of Toronto, for giving me a glimpse into the world of academic research. (It’s a safe bet that I’ve still got it all wrong, but that’s my fault and not theirs.)

—Felicity Rubinstein, Sarah Lutyens, and Susannah Godman, all of Lutyens and Rubinstein, for their skill, tact, energy, and enthusiasm.

—Alison Samuel of Chatto & Windus in London, Susan Kamil of the Dial Press in New York, and Louise Dennys of Knopf Canada in Toronto, for the perceptiveness, sensitivity, and skill with which they steered
Crow Lake
through the editing process.

I would also like to acknowledge the publication
Animals of the Surface Film,
by Marjorie Guthrie, which was an invaluable source of technical information.

Finally, and above all, my thanks to my husband, Richard, and to my sons, Nick and Nathaniel, for years and years of unfaltering faith, comfort, and support.

Be sure not to miss

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BRIDGE

Mary Lawson’s compelling new novel

COMING SOON FROM KNOPF CANADA

Turn the page for a sneak preview …

PROLOGUE

There was a summer back when they were kids, when Arthur Dunn was thirteen or fourteen and his brother, Jake, was eight or nine, when for weeks on end Jake pestered Arthur to play the game he called knives. Jake had a great collection of knives at the time, everything from fancy little Swiss Army jackknives with dozens of attachments to a big sleek hunting knife with a runnel down one side for blood. It was the hunting knife that was to be used in the game because according to Jake it was the best for throwing.

“Just once, okay?” Jake would say, dancing about barefoot in the dust of the farmyard, tossing the knife from hand to hand like a juggler, leaping back quickly if it decided to fall blade-first. “Come on, just once. It’ll only take a
minute.
”

“I’m busy,” Arthur would say, and carry on with whatever task his father had set him to. It was the summer holidays and the list of tasks was unending, but it was better than going to school.

“Come on,” Jake would say. “Come
on.
You’ll
love
it! It’s a really good game. Come
on!”

“I gotta fix this hinge.”

Jake had explained the rules of the knife game to him and it was crazy. You stood at attention facing each other, about four feet apart, and took turns throwing the knife into the ground as close as possible to your opponent’s naked foot. You had to be barefoot, Jake explained, or there would be no point to the game. Wherever the knife landed, your opponent had to move his foot alongside it. The idea was to make him do the splits bit by bit, as slowly as possible. The more throws the better. The smaller the distance between the still-vibrating steel and the outer edge of your brother’s foot, the better. Nuts.

But in the end, as they had both known he would, Jake wore Arthur down. That was Jake’s speciality— wearing people down.

It was a warm evening in July, the end of a long hot day out in the fields, and Arthur was sitting on the back step doing nothing, which was always a mistake. Jake appeared around the corner of the house and saw him, and his eyes started to shine. Jake had dark blue eyes in a pale triangular face and hair the color of wheat. In build he was slight and reedy
(frail
was the word their mother used) and already good-looking, though not as good-looking as he would be later. Arthur, five years older, was big and slow and heavy, with sloping shoulders and a neck like an ox.

Jake had the knife on him, of course. He always did; he carried it around in its own special sheath with its own special belt-loop, so as to be ready for anything. He started badgering Arthur right away and eventually Arthur gave in just to get it over with.

“Once, okay?” Arthur said.
“Once.
I play it once, now, and you never ask me again. Promise.”

“Okay, okay, I promise! Let’s go.”

And so it was that on that warm July evening when he was thirteen or fourteen years old—at any rate plenty old enough to know better—Arthur found himself standing behind the line his little brother had drawn in the dust, waiting to have a knife thrown at his bare and vulnerable feet. The dust felt hot, warmer than the air, and soft as talcum powder. It puffed up between his toes every time he took a step and turned them a pale and ghostly gray. Arthur’s feet were broad and meaty with red raw patches from his heavy farm boots. Jake’s feet were long and thin, delicate and blue-veined. Jake didn’t wear farm boots much. He was considered by their mother to be too young for farm labor, though Arthur hadn’t been too young at the same age.

Jake had first throw, by virtue of it being his game and his knife. “Stand at attention,” he said. His eyes were fixed on Arthur’s left foot and he spoke in a hushed voice. He had a great feeling for the drama of the moment, had Jake. “Keep your feet together. Don’t move them, no matter what.”

He took the knife by the blade and began swinging it loosely between finger and thumb. His forefinger rested easily in the blood runnel. He seemed scarcely to be holding the knife at all. Arthur watched the blade. In spite of himself, he felt his left foot curl inwards.

“Keep it still,” Jake said. “I’m warning you.”

Arthur forced his foot to lie flat. The thought came into his mind—not drifting gently in but appearing suddenly, fully formed, like a cold hard round little pebble—that Jake hated him. The thought had never occurred to him before but suddenly, there it was. Though he couldn’t imagine a reason. Surely he was the one who should have done the hating.

The knife swung for a minute more, and then, in one swift graceful movement, Jake lifted his arm and threw, and the blade circled, drawing swift shining arcs in the air, and then buried itself deeply in the ground a couple of inches from the outside edge of Arthur’s foot. A beautiful throw.

Jake’s eyes left the ground and he grinned at Arthur. “That’s one,” he said. “Your turn. Move your foot out to the knife.”

Arthur moved his foot outwards to the edge of the knife and drew the blade from the ground. The skin on the top of his left foot was stinging, though nothing had touched it. He straightened up. Jake stood facing him, still grinning, arms at his sides, feet together. Eyes bright. Excited, but without fear. Without fear because— and Arthur saw this suddenly too—Jake knew that Arthur would never risk throwing really close.

Arthur imagined his mother’s face if he were to prove Jake wrong and slice off his toe. He imagined what his father would do to him if he were even to catch him playing this stupid game. He couldn’t think how he’d allowed Jake to persuade him. He must have been mad.

“Come
on,”
Jake said. “Come on come on come
on!
Close as you can!”

Arthur held the knife by the blade, as Jake had done, but it was hard to relax his fingers enough to let it swing. He’d thrown a knife before and he wasn’t too bad a shot—in fact a few years back he and his friend Carl Luntz from the next farm had painted a target on the wall of the Luntzes’ hay barn and held competitions, which Arthur usually won—but the outcome had never mattered. Now, the chance that he would hit that narrow blue-veined foot seemed overwhelmingly high. And then, all at once, he saw the answer—so obvious that only someone as dim-witted as he must surely be wouldn’t have seen it earlier. Throw wide. Not so wide that Jake would guess he was doing it deliberately, but wide enough to bring the game to a safe and rapid close. Make Jake do the splits in three or four steps. Jake would jeer but he was going to jeer anyway, and the game would be over, and Jake would have to leave him alone.

Arthur felt his muscles start to relax. The knife swung more easily. He took a deep breath and threw.

The knife circled clumsily once in the air and then landed on its side eighteen inches or so from Jake’s foot.

Jake said, “That’s pathetic. Take it again. It’s gotta stick in the ground or it doesn’t count.”

Arthur picked up the knife, swung again, and threw, more confident now, and this time the knife embedded itself in the ground ten inches from Jake’s little toe.

Jake made a sound of disgust. He moved his foot out to the blade and picked it up. He looked disappointed and pitying, which was fine by Arthur.

“Okay,” Jake said. “My turn.”

He took the knife by the blade and swung it back and forth, looking briefly at Arthur, and when their eyes met there was a slight pause—just a fraction of a second—during which the knife hesitated in its lazy swing and then picked up its rhythm again. Thinking back on it afterward, Arthur was never able to decide whether there was any significance in that pause—whether in that instant of eye contact Jake had seen into his mind and guessed what he intended to do.

At the time he didn’t think anything, because there was no time to think. Jake lifted the knife with the same swift movement as before and threw it, but harder than before, and faster, so that it was only a shining blur as it spun through the air. Arthur found himself staring down at the knife embedded in his foot. There was a surreal split second before the blood started to well up and then up it came, dark and thick as syrup.

Arthur looked at Jake and saw that he was staring at the knife. His expression was one of surprise, and this was something that Arthur wondered about later too. Was Jake surprised because he had never considered the possibility that he might be a less-than-perfect shot? Did he have that much confidence in himself, that little self-doubt?

Or was he merely surprised at how easy it was to give in to an impulse, and carry through the thought that lay in your mind? Simply to do whatever you wanted to do, and damn the consequences.