The Snowfly (56 page)

Raina moved through the piles, picking a few things, then motioned for me to follow her.

We went back to her cabin.

“You must have a lot on your mind,” she said when we got inside.

“Situational paranoia.”

She looked at me and smiled. “They're not what you think.”

“Vets?” I asked, this a desperate guess. I had heard rumors of communities of Vietnam vets, so-called bush vets. Feeling betrayed by society and their country, they supposedly fled into the country's forests and wildernesses to live as they wanted to, making their own laws. The rumors struck me as myth, but now I was not so sure.

“Some undoubtedly are vets, but as usual you're groping,” she said. “You're not even close. They just want to live their way. There have never been that many of them and there aren't that many of them left. They live in the bush and rarely go out into the world. There used to be more of them and new ones came along every so often, but this is a hard life and it takes its toll. They live free and die the same way.”

“The authorities allow it?”

“There have been confrontations. You were right about the Au Sable, but the government always gives up. America is no good at trapping shadows and it isn't worth the effort or expense to drive them off. They just move to another place and settle in.”

“This is no way to live,” I said.

“As bad as yours?”

The question took me by surprise. “You don't know anything about me.”

“Don't I?”

“You're psychic?”

“Something like that,” she said softly.

We had filleted northern pike fried in a pan, flatbread, and thin slices of potato cooked with the fish. She poured tea.

“It's made from bark,” she said. “It tastes putrid, but there's vitamin C in it. Out here you sacrifice taste for efficiency.”

“It would take a while to develop vitamin deficiency.”

“You'd be surprised how quickly a body falls apart if you don't take care of it.”

“You make it sound like I'm going to be here a while.”

She looked across the table and fixed her eyes on me. “Are you?”

“I didn't choose to remain here. Remember?”

“If you say so.” Obstinate as a child, obstinate as an adult. And still beautiful. Having thought this, I immediately thought of Ingrid and was ashamed.

“That's the reality,” I told her.

“Reality is much overrated,” she said. “You were tracking me. Not just here. For years. Why?”

“You cut me off from Key at every opportunity.” I pushed my plate away, but she pushed it back. “When there's food, eat. There'll be times when there's nothing.”

“I'm not going to be here that long.”

“You say,” she said.

 

•••

 

That next afternoon I split wood with a sledge and steel wedge and lugged it back to the cabin. I was sore, achy, and hungry beyond description.

Raina Chickerman watched me work, making no effort to help.

“Tell me about M. J. Key,” I told her. “You owe me that.”

“Do I?” she asked.

I had nothing to lose. To encourage her, I told her how I had learned of the snowfly and followed it over the years. She listened raptly and when I had finished, she craned her neck and stretched.

“Have you ever gone all the way in anything, Bowie? Just once? When we were kids, you always held back. You had so much fire inside you, but you never gave it air. You were good at everything, but did you ever want to be the best? Did you ever feel the fire get so hot that you thought you'd die if it went away? I think you've always been afraid of falling short.”

I said, “M. J. Key.” I wasn't in the mood for one of her lectures.

Raina gave me a cold stare. “You think life's hard? It can be a lot harder.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“You haven't earned the answer.”

The rest of the day I worked in silence, driving the wedge with all the muscle I could summon, and by the time I was done my only thought was for food.

When we got back to the cabin, Raina said, “You cook.”

A small hunk of red meat and several carrots and onions were by the woodstove. “Venison?” I asked.

She nodded.

“They don't grow the carrots and onions out here.”

She looked amused. “They have outside help.”

Meaning they either went out from time to time, or someone came to them. Buzz, for example.

“There are no answers in mere logistics,” Raina said. “You want to be here.” Stated with the certainty that had always been in her voice when we were children.

My cooking skills were marginal, but so were the circumstances and the food. I worked slowly. This was the first time Raina had seemed willing to talk and I wanted to make it last.

“How do you fit in here?” The men seemed to accept her, albeit grudgingly, but she didn't seem to be a full member of the peculiar community.

Raina grinned. “I expect opinions of how I fit would differ.”

“Answered like a politician.”

“We're all politicians,” she said. “Let's leave it at I choose to be here, same as the others. Why did you follow me?”

“I've already told you. To find out why you keep dogging me. And to find out about Key. Val says you call yourself Key here.”

“Are you sure that's all?”

“I've looked for you for a long time. A post office box in Rhinecliff, New York. You were on the Fox River a few weeks ago. You've been using the name M. J. Key.”

“A few facts strung together don't amount to much, do they? Perhaps Key isn't your only reason for being here.”

“What other reason could there be?”

“You brought your rods,” she said. “Maybe you want to know something you think Key knew. Perhaps he wrote something about it.”

The manuscript. “I won't deny that,” I said cautiously. “I've been interested for a long time.” Raina had always operated on a different plane than the rest of us. I needed to go lightly. “Remember when you told me that white flies were
Ephorons?
You lied to me back then.”

“It wasn't a lie,” she said indignantly. “
Ephorons are
white flies.”

“But not snowflies.”

She shrugged. “Semantics.”

“I had the manuscript in my hands,” I told her.

Her smile disappeared and her skin seemed to turn pale. “What manuscript?”

“
The Legend of the Snowfly.
I found it in Vietnam. It had once been in Oxley's collection. Apparently he had two copies.”

Her eyes turned hard. “Then you already know what's in it.”

I knew then that she had the surviving copy of the manuscript, but I realized that, until this moment, she had thought hers was the only one. I didn't have the acuity to use my new edge. “I was talking literally. It was in my hands, but I never got a chance to read it. It got blown up.”

She exhaled with relief.

“Of course, you could always loan yours to me,” I said.

She leaned back. “You want the secret of the snowfly?”

“Is there a secret?”

“The secret is that you have to do it on your own. You've gone to a lot of trouble to find out what you should've known all along.”

“How can I know what I don't know?”

Raina said, “Perhaps we'll have the chance one day to discuss theories of ignorance as forms of knowledge.”

This was vintage Raina Chickerman and I started to laugh but saw she was dead serious. “You're expecting a snowfly hatch here.”

“There was always a pathetic side to you,” she said, getting up and commencing to ignore me.

After we had eaten, she fetched a jar with clear liquid inside and filled two chipped teacups.

The liquid seared my throat and ignited a burgeoning fire in my belly.

“ 'Shine,” she said.

“They've been here long enough to set up a still?”

“Does it matter?” she answered. “Why are you obsessed with facts? Is this a result of your career choice?”

“What I see is a bunch of people who look like they're on their last legs and they screw around making hooch? It looks to me like a doctor could help these people.”

“It's not their way.”

“They just live like this until they drop?”

“Exactly.”

“That's nutty.”

She said solemnly, “If evolution is the law that governs all life, then doctors and medicine are unwittingly destroying the human species by allowing people to live who genetically should not. I mean, the whole point of natural selection is to select for strength. Medical intervention dilutes this. These men live naturally to the full extent of their natural allowance.”

I shook my head. “The power of evolution requires reproduction. There are no women here. They can't pass their genes along, so what's the point?”

She looked over at me again. “You might look more at effort than outcome.”

I rubbed my eyes and finished the drink. “You're the wizard behind the curtain in Oz,” I said.

“You're making progress,” Raina said with a sly smile. “But you still don't get it.”

 

•••

 

It was the horse latitudes at sidereal passage, long past last light and a long way until the new one. We had separate beds, Raina and I. A statistician once told me that two data points would guarantee a straight-line plot; more, and there was a serious risk of disorder. Well, we were here, just the two of us, and I was enmeshed in more disorder than I could ­tolerate.

“Why couldn't you leave me alone?” Raina said, turning to face me. “Or act like a man and decide earlier?”

Decide what? Her voice was distant, contemplative. “You were butting into my life.”

“Don't play stupid,” she said.

In this instance I was not playing. I tried to check my frustration. “You sent Nick Adams.”

She rolled her eyes. “You are an idiot. I didn't send anyone anywhere. Hemingway sent him.”

“Huh?”

“Hemingway knows about Key. He doesn't want others to follow him. And Gentry wanted his books back. Actually, Hemingway was pissed at the grandson for drugging the old man in Key West.”

“What about what Gentry did to me?”

She said, “What are you talking about?”

“Gentry attacked me. I nearly ended up in the hospital.”

“I was with him. He only bumped you a little bit.”

“Not then. Before that. I was fishing on this river and he came into my camp at night and beat the hell out of me.”

“An old geezer like that against a big virile man like you?” She smiled, disbelieving.

The old man had struck me hard enough with his shoulder to feel like an all-world linebacker. And he had hoisted me out of the hole like I weighed nothing. “Gentry's crazy,” I said. “And dangerous.”

“He's only protecting Hemingway. They both believe in loyalty and they've seen little enough of it in their lives. I can understand them.”

I must've blinked. “I still don't understand the Key West thing. The kid took all references to the manuscript and to Key's books.”

She moaned. “God, you are thick. He wants to spare others what he has gone through. He knows what it is to go all the way for something and he knows that it crushes most people.”

“If he knows this, why does he stay?”

“Because he's committed. I swear, Bowie.”

“All right, let's assume you're telling me the truth about Hemingway and what happened in Key West. Explain to me why the U.S. government is methodically removing all references to Key's works.”

She leaned forward. “What are you talking about?”

I told her about my experience at Michigan Tech and the New York City Public Library.

“The materials are not listed in the Library of Congress?”

I knew I had her interest. “It looks that way.”

She said, “Give me a smoke.”

I tossed her the pack. She struck a wooden match on the table, lit the cigarette, and stared at the flame until it was nearly burned down to her fingertip.

Raina was quiet for a long time. “Eubanks said you were trouble,” she finally said.

I elected to remain silent.

“There's nothing in the manuscript,” she said. “Don Quixote. If the government is doing what you say, it's misguided and acting foolishly.”

“You should know,” I said.

She smiled. “You haven't figured it out yet.”

Why did she keep saying this? “I know that Gus was Key.”

“Gus wrote the manuscript,” she said. “The government has never been able to break his ciphers. They're afraid that the manuscript contains some sort of key and they want it.”

“They haven't approached you?” If I knew she had the manuscript, the government would surely know.

“Oh, they've tried,” she said. “Through Eubanks, but the manuscript is mine, not theirs, and Gus swore to me there's no key to any code in it.”

“But they think there is.”

“And you think it contains the secret to the snowfly. People believe what they want to believe.”

Or they're led to believe in a certain way, I thought. Before I could say anything, she began to talk. “My father was a scientist, a biologist and a physicist. He and my mother were Russian Jews who fled the Reds in the early nineteen-twenties. The Russians hated the Germans and my father figured Germany would be a safe place. But he had not counted on a Hitler. Who had?” she asked. “When it began to look like National Socialism would grab the reins of power, he took my mother and left Germany.” She paused and inhaled, her cigarette glowing. “They were Jews by birth, but their records were buried somewhere in the chaos of Russia and they were not practicing Jews. Gus doubted the Nazis would ever find out, but he couldn't take the chance. My father was a prominent scientist for the Germans and might have stuck it out safely, but he had my mother to think about. They came to the U.S. and my father got a job teaching in East Lansing.”