The Reincarnation of Peter Proud

The Body of B. Franklin

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Like the Cover of an Old Book
,

Its Contents Torn Out

And

Stripped of its Lettering and Gilding
,

Lies Here

Food for Worms
.

But the Work shall not be Lost
,

For it Will as He Believed

Appear Once More

In a New and more Elegant Edition

Revised and Corrected

By the Author
.

—B
ENJAMIN
F
RANKLIN

He walked out of the cottage and into the night.

He was stark naked.

The moon hung low over the mountain at the north end of the lake. Its phase was almost full. It seemed to bounce, lopsided, through the passing clouds. He grinned at it, swaying unsteadily. It double-imaged before his eyes. Now there were two moons instead of one. He concentrated hard and focused them together again.

The lake spread before him, dull gold. A chill breeze, honed with the snap of early autumn, rippled its surface. It sang a small, sad song as it rustled through the pine and oak and maple. It smelled of balsam and wood smoke and dying leaves. Too early, it promised winter. He shivered a little as he caught the first fine cut of the wind. But after that, he hardly felt it. In fact he found it exhilarating.

He laughed aloud exuberantly, thinking, Hey, hey, look at me, Big Chief Two Moons, with my war club flopping in the wind, and here I am in the forest primeval, by the shining waters, on the shores of Gitche Gumee.

He started down the short slope toward the dock. There was a gravel walk lined with whitewashed stones, but since he was in his bare feet, he avoided it. The grass was covered with balsam needles. Underneath, a cool carpet.

He padded onto the dock. He had never felt more marvelous in his life. He did a little war dance on the dock. He cupped his hands to his mouth and sent a wild war whoop echoing across the lake. Nobody out there to hear him. All the cottages were dark and shuttered. Everyone had gone home.

Nobody around but me. Chief Two Moons.

The last of the Mohicans.

He laughed aloud, again.

Crazy. He knew he was drunk. Yet his perception seemed sharper than ever. He saw everything very clearly, as though it were all part of a familiar painting.

The shadow passing behind the curtain of the lighted window in the cottage, back there in the darkness of the trees. The outdoor fireplace, a grotesque shape in the moonlight, its iron grate rusted, blackened by the burned fat of a hundred barbecues. The picnic table, splotched with bird droppings and now almost covered with dead leaves. Every detail was so clear. A pair of swimming trunks hanging stiffly in the crotch of a tree. The Boston whaler, beached and lying on its back, through for the season. Its white hull was partly covered by a tarpaulin. The canoe on the other side of the dock. An old sneaker lying in two feet of water. The toe was caught in a waterlogged interlace of submerged branches. Like some dead fish it swayed gently, looking up at him, reproaching him. The glint of a beer can, a little farther out, shining up through the water like a baleful and sightless eye.

Across the lake itself, on the far shore, he saw the red neon sign rising above a grove of pines. It was still illuminated.

The sign spelled out the word:
Puritan
.

Well
, he thought,
here goes nothing
.

He did not dive in. The water near the dock was too shallow. If he had to go, he didn’t want it to happen that way. Not by breaking his neck. He sat on the edge of the, dock and slid himself gently into the water. It was very cold. He caught his breath as the icy shock hit him in the groin. He could feel his genitals shrivel.

Then he began to swim with long, easy strokes. Straight out toward the center of the lake. Straight toward the neon sign on the far shore.

After the first shock, the cold no longer bothered him. His naked body seemed impervious, insulated. He felt strong and very powerful. He felt that he could go on and on like this forever.

He swam on and on. He had no idea how long it had been. But after a while his rhythm began to falter. Just a little, imperceptibly. But it was only his imagination, of course.

Gradually, the exhilaration he had felt at the beginning began to drain away. He knew he was becoming sober. Cold sober. It was the chill of the water and the exercise, of course. He should have had another drink back there, one for the road.

Not that he was worried. Not really. He was a hell of a good swimmer. He was sure he could make it. He had swum this lake many times before. And no sweat.

But never when the water had been so cold.

His arms seemed to become heavier and heavier. His shoulders began to ache. His body was losing its alcoholic wet suit. He could feel the numbing chill seep through to his bones. He was almost at the center of the lake now.

He turned on his back and floated for a while. He stared at the ugly scar just above his left hip. And at his genitals, shrunken by the cold. Tiny strands from the mat of black hair in his crotch broke free and waved to and fro gently with the swell of the water.

He felt tired, very tired. He tried not to panic.

Somewhere a fish jumped. From the direction of the mountain, far away, he heard the cry of a loon. From this point he had a panoramic view of the entire shoreline. The foliage was almost in full blaze. Autumn colors. Reds; russets, yellows. He could see a patch of smooth-faced stone on the mountain, a bald spot amid the thick growth of trees. Suddenly it disappeared as a cloud obliterated the moon. The shoreline was dark now. Except for the single distant light in the window of the cottage he had left.

He began to swim again. He estimated he was in the middle of the lake now. He could go forward, or he could turn and swim back. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. The distance was the same. He decided to keep going.

Stupid bastard
.

He had forgotten. He was as naked as a crow. He pictured himself stepping out of the water on the far side. Asking people if he could use their telephone. They’d probably call the police.

God, he must have been loaded back there. He turned and started to swim back. The moon, he knew, was gone for good. The cold was getting to him in a way he didn’t like.

It seemed to him now that he’d been swimming forever. It seemed to him that the expanse of lake between him and the shore had grown wider instead of narrower. The light in the cottage window hadn’t come closer. If anything, it had receded. It didn’t make any sense. He should have closed the gap by now.

He was having trouble getting his arms out of the water. They ceased to be flesh and became stone. His legs kept sinking. He began to sob, fighting for each tortured breath.

Now he knew he could never make it.

He knew this was all there was, and there would never be any more, and this was the end of his young life, and what a lousy, stinking way to die. The distant light blurred; his breath was fire in his lungs; and he heard himself crying. He no longer felt the cold. His body was numb and impersonal, a machine, still moving through the water somehow, by instinct, by reflex, no longer by any force of will. Give up, he thought now. Give up, baby, you’ve had it; just stop and rest, and let yourself go, to sleep, to sleep …