Wild Thing: A Novel (29 page)

“What are you doing?” Violet says as I’m looking through my pack. “Did you find Bark?”

“Shh. No. There’s a boat on White Lake.”

“What?” She sits up on her elbows. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t really see it.”

“You’re going back?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I did.”

“I mean intentionally.”

“Because it’s probably just another opportunity to get shot at.”

Violet starts patting around for her clothing. “I’m coming.”

“It’s raining.”

“Who gives a shit?”

“We have to hurry.”

“Fine. I’ll take a shower instead of a bath. What’s wrong with you?”

Something. I watch her unzip her sleeping bag and, still lying down, pull her jeans up over the gooseflesh of her thighs.
They snag for a moment on her mound. She has to pull them free to get them up to her bare stomach.

When I look up at her face, she’s watching me watch her. Not judgmentally, but still.

Not a lot you can say to that one.

I unzip the tent flap. It’s raining heavily now.

The boat’s a big Zodiac, twenty feet long or so with a fixed pedestal in the center for the steering wheel and metal fishing struts that angle up and out over the sides like construction cranes. Even with the binoculars it’s hard to see any more detail than that through the fog. My digital camera, which I also brought, is useless.

“Here,” Violet says, handing me the nightscope. The rain’s loud enough that we’re not worried about talking. “He’s still shoveling powder from the bag into the water.”

The first thing I do with the scope is sweep the beach behind us. I made Violet hold my hand as we snuck out of camp, so that anyone seeing us would think we were going off to fuck. But as she pointed out, some people wouldn’t consider that a deterrent.

In any case, having to talk someone into holding my hand didn’t make me feel like a creep and a six-year-old at all.

I use the scope to look out at the lake. Both the downpour and the fog are more opaque under infrared, but I can see that the boat has one fat, heavily treaded tire drawn up in front of it like the figurehead on the prow of a ship, and identical raised tires on both back corners. Next to the front tire is something that looks a lot like a loaded harpoon gun. On the
fantail there’s a large motor leaned out of the water and a much smaller one with its prop still lowered. That must be the electric one.

“It’s amphibious,” I say.

“Yeah. Sorry, I thought you could see that through the binoculars. What’s he doing?”

“I don’t see him.”

There’s a cloud of glare above the steering structure, possibly from a sonar display, but I don’t see the guy until he stands up from where he was hunched between the wheel and what looks like a large built-in ice chest at the rear. He’s holding something in one hand like a shot put.

“Now I see him,” I say.

“Can you see his face?”

“No. He’s on the far side of the boat with his back to us.” Also, like Violet and me and probably everybody else who’s awake and outdoors right now in Minnesota, he’s wearing a hooded anorak. At least we can guess what he’s hearing: the drone of raindrops on Goretex.

I sweep the nightscope over the beach again and hand it to Violet.

“Now he’s putting something on a big hook that’s on a line on that thing that goes over the side,” she says after a minute. “I think it’s meat.”

A few moments later I can hear the winch motor, even above the downpour. It’s louder than the electric outboard was.

Violet hands back the scope, and I watch the man straighten up and turn toward us.

Where his face should be, there’s a searing spotlight.

“Fuck!” I say, jamming the front end of the scope into my jacket. Too late, though, I know.

“What?”

Without the scope, there’s nothing out there but darkness. The light coming off the guy’s face is invisible.

“He’s wearing active infrared goggles,” I say. “The same technology we’re using. He can see the light our scope’s putting out.”

“But can he…?”

“Yeah. He’s probably looking at us now.” I put the scope back to my eye.

He’s staring right at us, face still shining like a lighthouse. Now, though, he’s also holding a rifle.

Classic Remington 700, with a big scope and a rainguard. I’m not saying it’s the gun used to kill Chris Jr. and Father Podominick, but the two would get along.

So apparently this is the part where we get shot at again. If the rifle has night vision, it’s going to be a long fun run back to the woods silhouetted against the bare face of the cliff. It probably makes more sense for us to dive into the lake and try to swim for the boat.

The man doesn’t aim the rifle, though. He just holds it low across his body, like he’s showing it to me or trying to make up his mind. Then he tosses it into the front of the boat and goes the other direction to tilt the big motor into the water.

“What’s he doing?” Violet says.

I give her the scope. “Getting out of here.”

In the narrowness of the canyon, the gas engine turns over like a Harley. Deep
blat-blat
noises that continue even as other, higher-pitched noises build on top of them. Then the boat turns hard and retreats back into White Lake, trailing its hook line behind it.

It’s gone from sight around the next bend before the
flashlight beams of the people picking their way along the beach reach us.

“What the hell was that?” Reggie says.

“There’s a boat on the lake,” Violet says.

Its wake is still rippling into our shoes.

Lake Garner / White Lake

Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Minnesota

Still Thursday, 20 September

“Bull
shit
,” Violet says.

“Exactly how it happened.”

We’re in our sleeping bags, lying on our backs. I’ve just told her about my conversation with Palin.

“She’s fucking nuts,” Violet says.

“Why? Just because she thinks having one set of chromosomes is the same thing as having single-stranded DNA even though her father was a science teacher?”

“Her father used to wait for seals to come up for air and then shoot them in the head.”

“Maybe he thought they were the Antichrist. And how do you know that?”

“How do you know about Westwood Whatever?” she says.

“Westbrook Pegler. He used to be famous.”

“And she’s famous
now
. And rich. If there’s an Antichrist, it’s probably her. She’s a complete opportunist.”

“I think she believes
this
, though.”

“She probably does. The problem with the world isn’t people who are irrational. It’s people who can turn their rationality on and off depending on what’s more likely to get them something.”

“Maybe, but what’s believing in this likely to get her?”

“Besides whatever Reggie’s paying her? Don’t underestimate the appeal of thinking you’re the center of God’s attention. Babies have been digging it for years. Fuck. I wish
I
could be like her.”

I laugh. “No you don’t.”

“Sure I do. Being selectively delusional would
rock
. Why do you think I love being drunk?”

“Being drunk wears off.”

“That’s the problem with it.” She sees me looking at her. “I’m serious. I
hate
reality. Everybody does. People love to say ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts’
now
. But when Laocoön said it during the actual Trojan War, and got ripped apart by snakes, they laughed their fucking asses off. Same with Cassandra.”

“That’s another Trojan horse thing?”

“Yes.”

“So maybe it’s just a bad idea to be rational about the Trojan horse.”

“And maybe someday I’ll figure out why I bother to talk to you.”

“It’s not like you do, very often.”

“Good for me.”

She turns away.

“Chicken Little is another one,” I finally come up with.

“What happened to
him?
”

“I don’t know. But he definitely got referred to as a chicken.”
^*

She rolls, propping up on her elbows. “You know what your problem is?”

“Bring it.”

“You don’t just make doing dangerous shit look fun, you make being informed look fun. Which is another thing that’s not true.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s not a compliment. Good night.”

A few minutes after turning away again, though, she says “How was the kiss?”

“I’ll never tell. It was fun seeing you jealous, though.”

“I wasn’t jealous. I have no interest in kissing Sarah Palin. I didn’t even before I saw you doing it. It looked frightening.”

“It was.”

Outside, a bird starts bitching about something or other. It can’t be that long before dawn.

Violet says “Just so you know, Rec Bill and I only spent one night together.”

“You don’t have to tell me about it.”

“We didn’t even have sex. We mostly stayed up all night talking. We didn’t even kiss until after the sun came up.”

“I said you
don’t
have to tell me about it.”

“Fuck you. We were in Tsarabanjina.”

“Really? I love Tsarabanjina.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course not. Where the fuck is Tsarabanjina?”

“
Who
were you saying was jealous?”

“You. Where is it?”

“It’s part of Madagascar. We were there about six months ago. Rec Bill wanted me to do some rock analysis on a fossil he was thinking of buying.”

“The one in the lobby of his building?”

“Well…”

“What?” I say.

“That’s not the actual fossil. But—not important.”

Not
important?
Small-talk
lifeline
, more like. “What do you mean it’s not the actual fossil?”

“The one in the lobby is a cast, like they use in museums.”

“They don’t use actual fossils in museums?”

“Not to assemble into skeletons. You’d have to drill them, and they’d be too heavy. Real fossils are solid rocks inside other rocks. But will you listen to me, please? It was the most romantic place on earth. We had these balconies overlooking the ocean, and we could see each other from them, so he invited me over. We got drunk and hung out talking.”

Great. My postapocalyptic Violet Hurst fantasy has come true. For Rec Bill.

“In the morning we made out a bit, then I went back to my room and fell asleep. And it hasn’t happened since.”

“Okay,” I say. Even neutral sounds bitter, but what am I supposed to do—high-five her?

“Since then I’ve barely even seen him. We went out for dinner a few times and it was totally awkward. He invites me to foundation events, but if I go he barely even talks to me.”

“Nice.”

“Then he texts me when he gets home, and we talk for like two hours.”

“By text?”

“Yeah.”

“What about? Maybe you should be charging him.”

“Okay: mind out of gutter, please.”

“I meant for therapy.”

“Whatever. We talk about whatever he’s thinking about. Articles he’s forwarded to me at work. I used to actually read them in case he was sending me some kind of message, but I think he just wants someone to communicate with.”

“Are you sure it’s him on the other end?”

“You know, you should work with paranoids. You’d be very calming.”

“So we’ve established that he outsources his conversations with you. Is he dating anyone else?”

“Not that he’s mentioned. But I don’t even feel like I can ask him.”