The Lake

They talked about themselves: the high school where Mike taught English and Jenny taught music; their cabin on Lake Wahconda; the new Cris Craft they’d bought two weeks ago; a drowning the previous summer when a fisherman’s boat capsized in a sudden storm; a legendary muskie named Old Duke that was said to inhabit the lake.

By the time they’d been on the road for an hour, Leigh felt completely at ease. Her aunt and uncle seemed easygoing and good-humored. They didn’t talk down to her. They treated her like an adult, a friend.

“Are you getting hungry?” Mike asked.

“I’m okay,” Leigh said.

“Thought I heard your stomach growl.”

“Not mine.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure there’s a McDonald’s around the next bend.”

Leigh doubted it. They were traveling along a two-lane road deep in the woods. The Big Bass Bait & Tackle Shop was the last business establishment Leigh had seen. That was ten minutes ago.

Mike steered around the bend. “Guess I was wrong. I remember I was wrong once before.”

“You can remember that far back?” Jenny asked. “Admirable.”

“You’d better break out the provisions, Tink.”

Jenny turned around. Kneeling, she reached down behind the seat. She handed back three cold bottles of Hamms to Leigh.

Mike started to sing the Hamms beer commercial about lakes and sunset breezes. Leigh pictured a cartoon bear playing a log like a tom-tom.

“We thought you might appreciate an authentic native snack,” Jenny said, twisting around and sitting down again. She had a box of Ritz crackers in one hand, a pottery crock in the other.

The crock contained smoked cheddar, which she spread on crackers while Leigh broke open the beers with a can opener from the glove compartment.

“Now, we know we’re corrupting you here,” Mike said, “but we rely on your good judgment to keep your folks ignorant about this.”

“Mum’s the word,” Leigh promised.

“Don’t tell your mum, either,” Jenny warned.

The beer was cold and good. Maybe it was her hunger, but Leigh thought she had never eaten cheese and crackers half as delicious as these. She drank, ate crackers, passed some from Jenny to Mike, and later took over the cheese-spreading chores when Jenny knelt on the seat again to get three more bottles of beer.

She already felt light-headed, a little numb behind her cheekbones. So she watched herself, being careful to hold her giddiness in check and pronounce her words correctly when she talked. It wouldn’t do at all for them to think that the beer was getting to her. During the second beer, the numbness spread to her cheeks. The cheese and crackers tasted better all the time.

“I’ve about had it,” Jenny finally said.

“More for the rest of us,” said Mike, clamping his beer between his legs and taking another cheese-mounded cracker from Leigh.

Soon, the knife was coming out of the pottery crock with no more than a thread of cheese along its edge.

“Better swoop up the rest of it with your finger,” Mike advised.

“That would be gross,” Leigh said.

“You’re among friends.”

So she cleaned out the remaining cheese, licking it off her finger.

When her beer was finished, she folded her hands on her lap, sighed, and settled down in the seat. “That really hit the spot,” she mumbled. Soon, her eyes drifted shut.

When she woke up, the car was passing a lake. A boy standing in a motorboat was handing a tackle box to a man reaching down from the dock.

“We’re not there yet,” Mike said.

“A couple more hours,” Jenny told her.

“You guys must really live far out.”

“Far from the madding crowd,” Mike said.

Later, they stopped for gas at a place called Jody’s with two pumps in front and neon beer signs in the windows. A thin, red-haired man in bib overalls stared down at them from a rocker on the porch. “Mary Jo,” he called in a flat voice.

The door swung open. A girl wandered out and squinted toward the car as if she couldn’t quite puzzle out where it might have come from. “Don’t just stand there collecting dust.”

With a shrug, she trotted down the porch steps. She didn’t look older than twelve. Leigh took an immediate dislike for the man—sitting on his butt and ordering the kid to do the work.

“Help you?” she asked at Mike’s window.

“Fill her up with ethyl.”

The girl went around to the rear. “I don’t know about you guys,” Mike said, “but I’m going to make a pit stop while I’ve got the chance.”

The man watched them in silence as they left the car and climbed the porch stairs. Leigh was glad to get inside, away from him.

“A real charmer,” Jenny whispered.

“His kid’s no prize, either,” Mike said.

They walked past a deserted lunch counter. At the far end were two doors, one marked “Pointers,” the other “Setters.”

“Well, I’ll be doggone,” Mike said. He smirked and opened the Pointers door.

Jenny motioned for Leigh to go first. Inside the rest room, Leigh bolted the door. The window was open. She looked through the screen to make sure the man wasn’t skulking around. Behind the building was a jumble of weeds, then the forest.