The Fourth Hand (32 page)

He had not packed
Charlotte’s Web,
because he doubted that Doris’s attention span could accommodate two books in one weekend; after al , Otto junior was not yet walking but he was probably crawling. There wouldn’t be much time for reading aloud.

Why
Stuart Little
instead of
Charlotte’s Web
? one might ask. Only because Patrick Wal ingford considered the ending to be more in tune with his own on-the-roadagain way of life. And maybe the melancholy of it would be persuasive to Mrs. Clausen—it was certainly more romantic than the birth of al those baby spiders. In the waiting area, the other passengers watched Wal ingford unpack and repack his bag. He’d dressed that morning in a pair of jeans and running shoes and a Hawaiian shirt, and he carried a light jacket, a kind of Windbreaker, to drape over his left forearm to conceal the missing hand. But a one-handed man unpacking and repacking a bag would get anyone’s attention. By the time Patrick stopped fussing over what he was bringing to Wisconsin, everyone in the waiting area knew who he was.

They observed the lion guy holding his cel phone in his lap, pinning it against his thigh with the stump of his left forearm while he dialed the number with his one hand; then he picked up the phone and held it to his ear and mouth. When his Windbreaker slipped off the empty seat beside him, his left forearm reached to pick it up, but Wal ingford thought better of it and returned the useless stump to his lap.

His fel ow passengers must have been surprised. After al these years of handlessness, his left arm stil
thinks
it has a hand! But no one ventured to retrieve the fal en Windbreaker until a sympathetic couple, traveling with a young boy, whispered something to their son. The boy, who was perhaps seven or eight, cautiously approached Patrick’s jacket; he picked it up and put it careful y on the empty seat beside Wal ingford’s bag. Patrick smiled and nodded to the boy, who self-consciously hurried back to his parents.

The cel phone rang and rang in Wal ingford’s ear. He had meant to cal his own apartment and either speak to Angie or leave a message on his answering machine, which he hoped she would hear. He wanted to tel her how wonderful and natural she was; he’d thought of saying something that began, “In another life . . .” That kind of thing. But he hadn’t made that cal ; something about the girl’s sheer goodness made him not want to risk hearing her voice. (And what bul shit it was to cal someone you’d spent only one night with “natural.”) He cal ed Mary Shanahan instead. Her phone rang so many times that Wal ingford was composing a message to leave on her answering machine when Mary picked up the receiver.

“It could only be you, you asshole,” she said.

“Mary, we’re not married—we’re not even going steady.

And I’m not trading apartments with you.”

“Didn’t you have a good time with me, Pat?”

“There was a lot you didn’t tel me,” Wal ingford pointed out.

“That’s just the nature of the business.”

“I see,” he said. There was that distant, hol ow sound—the kind of echoing silence Wal ingford associated with transoceanic cal s. “I guess this wouldn’t be a good time to ask you about a new contract,” he added. “You said to ask for five years—”

“We should discuss this after your weekend in Wisconsin,”

Mary replied. “Three years would be more realistic than five, I think.”

“And should I . . . wel , how did you put it? Should I sort of phase myself out of the anchor chair—is that your suggestion?”

“If you want a new, extended contract—yes, that would be one way,” Mary told him.

“I don’t know the history of pregnant anchors,” Wal ingford admitted. “Has there ever been a pregnant anchor? I suppose it could work. Is that the idea? We would watch you get bigger and bigger. Of course there would be some homey commentary, and a shot or two of you in profile. It would be best to have a brief maternity leave, to suggest that having a baby in today’s family-sensitive workplace is no big deal. Then, after what seemed no longer than a standard vacation, you’d be back on-camera, almost as svelte as before.”

That transoceanic silence fol owed, the hol ow sound of the distance between them. It was like his marriage, as Wal ingford remembered it.

“Am I understanding ‘the nature of the business’ yet?”

Patrick asked. “Am I getting it right?”

“I used to love you,” Mary reminded him; then she hung up. It pleased Wal ingford that at least one phase of the office politics between them was over. He would find his own way to get fired, when he felt like it; if he decided to do it Mary’s way, she would be the last to know when. And, if it turned out Mary was pregnant, he would be as responsible for the baby as she al owed him to be—he just wouldn’t be dicked around by her.

Who was he kidding? If you have a baby with someone, of course you’re going to be dicked around! And he had underestimated Mary Shanahan before. She could find a hundred ways to dick him around.

Yet Wal ingford recognized what had changed in him—he was no longer acquiescing. Possibly he was the new or semi-new Patrick Wal ingford, after al . Moreover, the coldness of Mary Shanahan’s tone of voice had been encouraging; he’d sensed that his prospects for getting fired were improving. On his way to the airport, Patrick had looked at the taxi driver’s newspaper, just the weather page. The forecast for northern Wisconsin was warm and fair. Even the weather boded wel .

Mrs. Clausen had expressed some anxiety about the weather, because they would be flying to the lake up north in a smal plane; it was some kind of seaplane, or what Doris had cal ed a floatplane. Green Bay itself was part of Lake Michigan, but where they were going was roughly between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior—the part of Wisconsin that is near Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Since Wal ingford couldn’t get to Green Bay before Saturday and he had to be back in New York on Monday, Doris had determined they should take the little plane. It was too long a drive from Green Bay for such a short weekend; this way they would have two nights in the boathouse apartment at the cottage on the lake. To get to Green Bay, Patrick had previously tried two different Chicago connections and one connecting flight through Detroit; this time he’d opted for a change of planes in Cincinnati. Sitting in the waiting area, he was overcome by a moment of typical y New York incomprehension. (This happened only seconds before the boarding cal .) Why were so many people going to Cincinnati on a Saturday in July?

Of course Wal ingford knew why
he
was going there—

Cincinnati was simply the first leg of a journey in three parts

—but what could possibly be attracting al these
other
people to the place? It would never have occurred to Patrick Wal ingford that anyone knowing
his
reasons for the trip might have found Mrs. Clausen’s lasting al ure the most improbable excuse of al .

Up North

T
HERE WAS A MOMENTwhen the floatplane banked and Doris Clausen closed her eyes. Patrick Wal ingford, eyes wide open, didn’t want to miss the steep descent to the smal , dark lake. Not even for a new left hand, a keeper, would Wal ingford have blinked or looked away from that sideslipping view of the darkgreen trees and the suddenly tilted horizon. One wingtip must have been pointed at the lake; the window on the seaplane’s downward side revealed nothing but the fast-approaching water.

At such a sharp angle, the pontoons shuddered and the plane shook so violently that Mrs. Clausen clutched little Otto to her breast. Her movement startled the sleeping child, who commenced to cry only seconds before the pilot leveled off and the smal plane landed less than smoothly on the wind-ruffled water. The firs flew by and the white pines were a wal of green, a blur of jade where the blue sky had been.

Doris at last exhaled, but Wal ingford hadn’t been afraid.

Although he’d never been to the lake up north before, nor had he ever flown in a floatplane, the water and the surrounding shore, as wel as every frame of the descent and landing, were as familiar to him as that blue-capsule dream. Al those years since he’d lost his hand the first time seemed shorter than a single night’s sleep to him now; yet, during those years, he had wished continual y for that pain-pil dream to come true. At long last, Patrick Wal ingford had no doubt that he’d touched down in that blue-capsule dream.

Patrick took it as a good sign that the uncountable members of the Clausen family had not descended en masse on the various cabins and outbuildings. Was it out of respect for the delicacy of Doris’s situation—a single parent, a widow with a possible suitor—that Otto senior’s family had left the lakefront property unoccupied for the weekend? Had Mrs. Clausen asked them for this consideration? In which case, did she anticipate that the weekend had romantic potential? If so, Doris gave no indication of it. She had a list of things to do, which she attended to matter-of-factly. Wal ingford watched her start the pilot lights for the propane hot-water heaters, the gas refrigerators, and the stove. He carried the baby.

Patrick held little Otto in his left arm, without a hand, because at times he needed to shine the flashlight for Mrs.

Clausen. The key to the main cabin was nailed to a beam under the sundeck; the key to the finished rooms above the boathouse was nailed to a two-by-four under the big dock.

It wasn’t necessary to unlock and open al the cabins and outbuildings—they wouldn’t be using them. The smal er shed, now used for tools, had been an outhouse before there was plumbing, before they pumped water from the lake. Mrs. Clausen expertly primed the pump and pul ed the cord to start the gasoline engine that ran the pump.

Doris asked Patrick to dispose of a dead mouse. She held little Otto while Wal ingford removed the mouse from the trap and loosely buried it under some leaves and pine needles. The mousetrap had been set in a kitchen cupboard; Mrs. Clausen discovered the dead rodent while she was putting the groceries away. Doris didn’t like mice

—they were dirty. She was revolted by the turds they left in what she cal ed “surprise places” throughout the kitchen.

She asked Patrick to dispose of the mouse turds, too. And she disliked, even more than their turds, the suddenness with which mice moved. (Maybe I should have brought
Charlotte’s
Web
instead of
Stuart
Little,
Wal ingford

worried.) Al the food in paper or plastic bags, or in cardboard boxes, had to be stored in tin containers because of the mice; over the winter, not even the canned food could be left unprotected. One winter something had gnawed through the cans—probably a rat, but maybe a mink or a weasel. Another winter, what was almost certainly a wolverine had broken into the main cabin and made the kitchen its lair; the animal had left a terrible mess.

Patrick understood that this was part of the summer-camp lore of the cottage. He could easily envision the life lived here, even without the other Clausens present. In the main cabin, where the kitchen and dining room were—also the biggest of the bathrooms—he saw the board games and puzzles stacked on shelves. There were no books to speak of, save a dictionary (doubtless for settling arguments in Scrabble) and the usual field guides that identify snakes and amphibians, insects and spiders, wildflowers, mammals, and birds.

In the main cabin, too, were the visualizations of the ghosts that had passed through or stil visited there. These took the form of artless snapshots, curled at the edges. Some of these photos were badly faded from long exposure to sunlight; others were rust-spotted from the old tacks pinning them to the rough pine wal s. And there were other mementos that spoke of ghosts. The mounted heads of deer, or just their antlers; a crow’s skul that revealed the perfect hole made by a .22caliber bul et; some undistinguished fish, home-mounted on plaques of shel acked pine boards. (The fish looked as if they’d been crudely varnished, too.) Most outstanding was a single talon of a large bird of prey. Mrs. Clausen told Wal ingford it was an eagle’s talon; it was not a trophy but a record of shame, displayed in a jewelry box as a warning to other Clausens. It was awful to shoot an eagle, yet one of the less disciplined Clausens had done the deed, for which he was harshly punished. He’d been a young boy at the time, and he’d been “grounded,”

Doris said—meaning he had missed two hunting seasons, back-to-back. If that wasn’t lesson enough, the murdered eagle’s talon remained as further evidence against him.

“Donny,” Doris said, shaking her head as she uttered the eagle-kil er’s name. Attached to the plush lining of the jewelry box (by a safety pin) was a photo of Donny—he looked crazed. He was a grown man now, with children of his own; when his kids saw the talon, they were probably ashamed of their father al over again.

Mrs. Clausen’s tel ing of the tale was sobering, and she related it in the manner that it had been told to her—a cautionary tale, a moral warning. DON’T SHOOT

EAGLES!

“Donny was always a wild hair,” Mrs. Clausen reported.

In his mind’s eye, Wal ingford could see them interacting—

the ghosts in the photographs, the fishermen who had caught the shel acked fish, the hunters who’d shot the deer and the crow and the eagle. He imagined the men standing around the barbecue, which was covered with a tarp and stowed on the sundeck under an eave of the roof.