The Major's Daughter (38 page)

Chapter Twenty-nine

M
r. and Mrs. Lepage. That was the couple's name. French Canadian originally, Collie guessed, but now proud Americans. The man wore a plaid shirt tucked into corduroy trousers and was older than Collie had first observed. Seventy at least, she thought. His face was sharp and edged along each cheekbone. He had undergone surgery, she saw, on his neck. A series of stitches ran back and forth down toward his clavicle. Collie wondered what it could have been to demand a second and third visit from the surgeon. She thought to ask, then silenced herself. It was none of her business.

The woman was slightly younger, Collie guessed, but in less robust health. Her back was slightly humped in the way old women's backs sometimes became humped. Her arms were thin, too, and she smoked without any pleasure. Her hands shook when she brought the cigarette to her mouth.

“You're Germans?” the man asked.

He couldn't quite figure out what they were doing there, Collie saw. She could not put herself in their place. How did Germans arrive at their doorstep in this lonely cabin? It was an impossible puzzle for them to solve.

“Not Germans. Not really,” Collie said, though that was nonsense. “How far are we from Canada?”

“Five miles,” the man said, and pointed down the lake.

“What's the border crossing like?”

The man shrugged. The woman answered for him.

“It's a road with a drop-down gate,” she said. “A red and white gate. Is that what you mean?”

“How close can we get by boat?”

“Within a couple miles,” the man said. “It's just a hop over.”

The man kept his arm on his wife's shoulder. They did not look frightened, Collie decided. They looked perplexed and somewhat annoyed. The woman chain-smoked. The man drank his coffee. Light continued to grow on the water. Collie fought the desire to explain herself to these people. She would have to learn such explanations were pointless. It would take too long, involve too much, to make it worthwhile. Better to remain silent, she told herself.

A few minutes later Gerhard and August returned. They carried the shotgun with them. They also brought food tied up in olive cloth. They spread the cloth out on the boat. Collie told them what the Lepages had said about the lake, the guard station at the border, the overall distance. Gerhard made her ask them again. This time they answered with less nervousness. They seemed to want to be helpful. August ate. Collie helped herself to a heel of bread and a sausage. She drank coffee from a tin cup. It tasted delicious.

“Has anyone been through here?” August asked, translating for Gerhard. “Any search teams?”

“You're from Camp Stark,” the woman finally realized.

“Yes,” August said. “We are going to Canada. We wish to hurt no one. We'll be on our way in a moment, so you don't need to worry.”

“Nobody's been through. This is out of the way, this cabin,” the man said. “We fish, that's all.”

“And bird-watch,” the woman added.

Collie ate a MoonPie. The MoonPie tasted better than any food she could ever recall eating. The chocolate frosting burned the roof of her mouth with pleasure. Gerhard turned away from the couple and ate rapidly. Watching him, Collie had a glimpse of how they must appear to the couple. Like traveling dogs, she thought. Like a pack descended on them.

After he ate, Gerhard directed a hundred questions to the couple about the border crossing, the end of the lake, what they might expect to find at each interval. Five miles, that was all. Collie heard it with her own ears. By nightfall, if things went well, they would be in Canada. The man explained it was only one small station in miles and miles of forest. He had never bothered to think much about it, but the border was porous, he said. It wouldn't take much to make it to Canada if one were determined to get there.

“But I would stay to the backcountry,” the woman added. “I wouldn't cross at the border. I doubt you would, but farther north you'll find the border empty. Your biggest problem would be to know when you're in Canada.”

“Just keeping traveling north,” August said, and the man and woman nodded.

Collie went to use the outhouse, and when she returned she found August and Gerhard in a debate about the best course of action. The dispute seemed to be whether it was smarter to travel by boat or to stay on foot. She went to the lake and spent a long time bathing herself. She combed her hair with her fingers. The woman, Mrs. Lepage, came over and stood beside her.

“You're American,” Mrs. Lepage said. “I thought you were pretending when you first said it.”

“No, ma'am, I'm American.”

“Why are you with these men?”

“That man and I are going to be married,” Collie said. “The blond one. The other one is a friend.”

The woman nodded. It seemed absurd when you spoke it aloud, Collie realized. She tried to read the woman's expression, but the woman hid her feelings well.

Collie stood and found the sunlight. She turned her face up to it. She felt better. Her stomach felt calmer and her skin felt cleaner. She wondered, as she let the sun warm her, what she had imagined the journey would be like. Had she ever conceived of it? she asked herself. She had been too in love with August, too trapped in her own head to contemplate what the step-by-step journey would entail. Her ignorance fascinated her. She had more in common with Marie than she might ever have imagined.

“Take what you need. We won't stop you. We have no one to report things to, so you will be in Canada before we can say anything to anyone. We'll need to go out in our son's boat, but he won't arrive until evening and we won't cross the water at night. You have until tomorrow. I give you my word on that.”

“Thank you,” Collie said.

“You're tired of the war,” the woman said. “I understand.”

“Yes.”

In the end, they decided on the boat. The man told them they should keep to this shoreline, the western shoreline, and follow it north. The lake went three and a half miles in that direction. He doubted anyone would bother them or even see them. Near the border, he said, pull over and tie up the boat and do the rest of the trip on foot. When they crossed a stream they would be in Canada. The stream was called the Kangatooweet, not that it mattered.

“It's a broad stream this time of year,” the man added. “Spring runoff. You can wade it but it's fairly wide. Later in the summer it's nothing at all. You can step across it.”

Collie watched the couple for signs of treachery, but she couldn't detect any. What did they care anyway? They were at the other end of their lives and the war; up here, next to a lake in northern New Hampshire, must seem worlds away.

“We're sorry,” August said as they packed up and prepared to leave, “to have interrupted your morning.”

“It's the most excitement we've had in years,” the woman said. “Keep north.”

“You can't miss it,” the man said, which was meant to be a joke, Collie realized too late to laugh.

“We'll leave your canoe tied up and we'll leave the shotgun in it,” August said. “Thank you for the food.”

When they were ready, the man pushed them off in the canoe. Gerhard sat in back, August in the bow. Collie sat in the middle. The cabin disappeared in no time. The men paddled well. It was pleasant, Collie mused, to be paddled across a northern lake by two stout young men. She felt herself dozing. The sun grew stronger. It was not until they were halfway down the shoreline, halfway to where they planned to leave the boat, that they heard the insect whine of an outboard motor cutting across the lake on an angle to intercept them.

Chapter Thirty

C
ollie watched the motorboat cross the lake toward them, its wake spread out behind it. She was able to make out the figure of a man standing at the steering console. He aimed directly at them, which was unsettling. She squinted to see if the man wore a uniform, but it was impossible to tell at such a distance.

“How do we play it?” August asked in German.

“We are visitors who have borrowed a canoe, that's all,” August said. “Say no more than necessary.”

“Let me speak,” Collie said, watching the motorboat begin to come into focus. This was why she had accompanied them, she realized. Exactly for this moment.

“Damn him,” Gerhard said. “Damn our luck.”

Collie felt better when she made out that the man did not wear a uniform. He was gray-haired and dressed for the outdoors, his head sporting a large, floppy hat with fishing flies tucked in the brim. He cut the engine when he was a little ways off and let the boat glide closer. He was heavyset and smiled broadly. He had nothing to do, Collie realized, and had simply brought the boat out to say hello.

“Sorry, thought you were the Lepages,” the man called in the new silence created by the disappearance of the motor. The wake caught up to the boat and to the canoe and lifted them both several times.

“Good morning,” Collie called back. “We borrowed their canoe. We thought we'd do a little bird-watching.”

“They back at the cabin?”

“Yes,” Collie said. “Having breakfast.”

“Johnny Delacrois had a heck of a night fishing up around Cutter's Point. I was going to tell them. He was trolling but he had five or six good-size togue.”

“We're just out for a paddle,” Collie said, trying to fit her words and tone to his. “No fishing this morning.”

“You visiting?”

Collie wasn't sure how to answer that one. She nodded. Let him think whatever he liked, she decided. The man studied them for a long moment. He was proud of his boat, she realized. That was a large part of it. He liked having a boat that could speed across a wide expanse and catch them. His face looked juvenile and at the same time canny and suspicious. She found herself detesting the man and his idle curiosity.

“All right then,” the man said, “maybe I'll swing down and have a cup of coffee with the Lepages. I may see you back there. Sorry to come up on you this way.”

“We won't be long.”

The man started the engine. It was obscenely loud on the quiet lake. He puttered around in a half circle, then gradually opened the throttle as he headed toward the Lepage cabin.

“What do we do now?” August asked.

“Keep paddling,” Gerhard said. “He can report us as soon as he gets back across the lake.”

“He'll contact the border patrol and tell them our plan,” Collie said.

“We need to hurry,” August said.

They paddled with more determination. Collie felt her stomach knotting into a ball. She listened for the sound of the outboard, but it didn't come for a long time. That surprised her. She imagined the Lepages would tell the man in the motorboat what had happened and the man would skim across the lake immediately. But that didn't occur. She waited for the sound and felt grateful for every second that passed in silence.

Not far from the end of the lake they beached the canoe and pulled it up beyond the tree line. Clouds had filled the sky behind them and a light rain began to sprinkle and turn the white lake rocks dull gray. Gerhard told them to wait while he made a short scouting foray. He wanted to gain height and look around. He disappeared into the woods, moving west. Collie watched him go. August came to her and took her in his arms.

“It will be all right,” he said. “We are almost there.”

“It feels like too much right now.”

“A few more miles and then it will be over. We'll be free. Are you sorry you came?”

She shook her head. It did no good to think what one should or shouldn't do. One acted, fumbled blindly, and then accepted the consequences. One could only pretend to have a plan, a purpose, a design. Life was far more random and chaotic than she had given it credit for being before. She understood that now. She leaned closer to him. She loved him. She loved him down in her core and she realized she had always been traveling toward this moment. Toward this instant.

She opened her mouth to tell him, to say what was in her heart, when Gerhard reappeared through the forest. He came quickly, jumping down the hill in places, his voice tight when he reported what he saw.

“He's hunting us,” Gerhard said.

“Which one?” August asked.

“The man in the motorboat.”

“Did you see him?” Collie asked. “I don't understand.”

“No, but that's why he hasn't gone across the lake again. He must have had a rifle in the boat with him.”

“But you don't know for certain,” August said.

“No, but we can't wait. There is a road up ahead. When we cross it we will be near the stream.”

It felt, Collie realized, like a childhood game. Like hide-and-seek, only now the stakes were life-and-death. Maybe Gerhard was wrong, maybe the man simply had trouble starting his motorboat, but she did not believe that. She thought back to the man's ugly face, his floppy hat. He would see their escape as a chance for bravery, as a chance to become a hero of some sort. If he had a rifle, yes, he would come after them. She knew that. It fit too many parts to be incorrect.

They kept to the shoreline and hurried forward. Gerhard led them. The undergrowth along the shoreline was formidable. Twice they had to stop and wade into the water, then out again in order to continue. It felt like walking beside a jungle, and the rain falling did nothing to make the going easier. The rain came more stiffly now, filling everything with a soft patter. It turned the ground to mud and made the footing treacherous.

Collie did her best to keep up, but she felt she slowed them down. She thought about telling them to go ahead. They could move faster without her. But then, even as she thought it, they came to the small, two-lane road at the head of the lake. It was not paved. It passed over a culvert that permitted the stream water to flow into the lake. Beyond the road, beyond the stream, lay Canada.

Gerhard would not let them move forward. He held out his hand and then pushed it earthward, telling them to get down. A car passed. A second one followed. Collie could not see the vehicles for fear of showing her face when she looked for them. The cars did not slow or give any indication that they had been discovered. The cars continued forward, and then no sound reached them at all except the steady drone of rain on the new green growth.

She put her head on August's shoulder and turned and looked up at the sky.

“I love you,” she said. “I've loved you from our first moment.”

“And I you.”

“
Ich auch,
”
he said in German.
I also.

Before she could speak again, Gerhard hissed them to their feet. She scrambled up and ran and in an instant she crossed the road. Her eyes, she thought, rested now on Canada. August took her hand when they came to the stream and she half fell, half staggered into the water. Then the water pressed against her and she felt the strain of it trying to drag her downstream, back toward the lake. She heard a third car, this one more urgent, suddenly come across the culvert. They were exposed, she knew, now that they were in the water. It was all confusing, all a mad dash, and she wondered, with surprising clarity, if they had made it to Canada after all. She wondered if crossing the streambed by half made them free, and she turned to August, and she smiled, and he smiled back, and then she heard the sound of the car doors snap open and the rain knitted them to the surface of the stream and she smelled lush green growth and the sky that had broken and fallen on them all.