 
### Last Exit to Pine Lake

By Lenny Everson

rev 1

Copyright Lenny Everson 2011

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CHAPTER ONE

****

The Cottage, Long Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

Paul put the cat out about three in the morning, after stroking her gently under the chin. Then he blocked the cat doorway so she couldn't get back into the cabin.

There was no point in the cat dying in the fire.

He staggered a bit once, as he shifted some wood around. The cabin was stuffed with wood, mostly dry tree branches. Near the middle, under the big oak table, dry grass was tied in bundles. Moving space was getting tight. He sat down and looked around, rubbing his face, then gripping his the sides of his head for a moment.

It no longer looked much like the place in which he'd spent the last twelve years.

Above the cabin, silvered in the moonlight, the Wounded Woodpecker slept in the tree that had provided shade in summer. Its bill was tucked under its one good wing and perhaps it dreamed little woodpecker dreams of thick insects hidden under the oak bark.

Paul's cat had caught the woodpecker last spring when it had landed on the ground to catch a cricket. Paul had saved the bird, and had since made sure the feeder contained a block of suet even in summer. The bird also ate seeds and berries – downy woodpeckers are not exclusively insect eaters – and so had stayed alive. But it did not wander far from the oak, whose branches offered some protection from owls and hawks. A bird that could barely fly and had only one good eye needed protection by those still strong.

Paul thought of the woodpecker when he lit the match. His hand was steady, but one leg shook.

Over a couple of hills, in the deeper waters of Pine Lake, a large burbot tasted a perch that had been sleeping near the shore, then moved slowly back and down towards the dark heart of the lake.

****

Paul Gottsen. Fire Day. October 2.

Paul took a voice recorder with him on what he meant to be his last day. These note are transcripts from that recorder. I caution you that they are what he wanted the world to know, and may or may not be factual truth.

Call me Ishmael.

Call me anything you want. The world will go on. I won't.

Or call me the old bastard who lives by the lake. Once the highway went by my house but twenty-two years ago they rerouted it and now I live and die on a dead-end road.

It suits. I'm a dead-end man on that dead-end road, in a falling-down house on the shallow end of a filling-in bay. The traffic that goes by is far enough away that I can't hear anything but the trucks, and the bay is shallow enough that motorboats don't get too close.

I've got a five-gallon can of kerosene, a candle, and a box of good wooden matches. Unless my hands shake, I should only need one match.

People turn around in my yard when they've come to the end of the road. If they see me, they wave an apology. For years, I didn't wave back, but now I find myself doing so. There are no more reasons not to, I guess.

But at least the kids that come here in summer will see the ashes and for years they can point out the place "where the old guy burned his house."

One last trip. I guess I owe it to the trees I know out there. God knows I don't owe it to myself.

Okay, so it's not a rational thing, to take a final canoe trip before dying. As if dying were itself a rational thing.

Dying makes all things irrelevant, including reason and hope and life.

[pause]

When I was very young I once saw four angels. They were sitting on branches, among the leaves of the old pine on my uncle's farm. They said nothing, did not smile. Large wings fanned in the August heat.

I ran, of course (we were taught to mistrust strangers).

****

Peter Finer, Journalist

Almost one year after the fire, Peter Finer's book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen, came out. That critical biography placed special emphasis on the last few days and Peter's own part in the events of those days. This is excerpted from that book .

Again, I caution you that the writer's view of the events and the truth are, for reasons unknown, sometimes at variance. His prose, as well, tends toward the overly dramatic, although a few people claim to like it.

It was dawn and the canoe was waiting for him. It was dawn and death was waiting for him.

He had his final odyssey awaiting, and he must have paused after spreading the inflammables around the house he'd lived in for so many years.

We can speculate about what materials he assembled to create the fire and to make sure it would be complete. His last written but unpublished novel, Dark Lake, for sure. He'd have torn the manuscript apart sheet by sheet, crumpled the papers into bundles, and placed carefully them around. Even in preparation for death, he was never a ragged personality.

There would have been a supply of gasoline – he bought some at the store the week before, in a tank normally used by the small outboard motor for his aluminum fishing boat. He put the motor itself onto the table.

There was only one table in the house. It was a small table, and much prose had been written on it. It was on that table that he may have read the bad reviews of his last work, Stolen Rain .

It's one thing to think the critics have missed the point of your work, missed the reach of it, and will someday regret what nasty things they wrote. It's another to think they're right in their disappointment.

So he filled the cabin with combustibles and got the canoe ready.

He may have even kept notes, of course. Egotistical as always, maybe as he always had to be, he may have penned his final writing, the words he wanted to survive him. If so, they're gone, now, except for his last words into his voice recorder.

He lit the candle wick that would start the fire after he was gone, calmly set the box of matches on the table, and walked to the canoe. Dawn was not quite there yet. Death had an appointment with Paul Gottsen on Pine Lake.

****

Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student

Kimberley plays an important part in this narrative, so pay attention. With apologies: The notes from Kimberley are an edited version, compiled from text messages to herself and others, email messages, and phone conversations (as remembered). The originals are no longer available.

I started taking these notes in hopes they would be an accompaniment for a requirement for Contemporary Writers 1209, January assignment. Assuming "contemporary" to mean poets that are currently alive, I decided that Paul Gottsen was a contemporary writer when I started this assignment. What the heck.

By "accompaniment", I wanted to indicate that this document would be secondary to my essay, Paul Gottsen: Misogyny and Redemption, which was due in a month or so. Maybe I was so unsure of my essay-writing skills I thought it needed backup.

In the end, I decided not to submit this narrative to the prof.

Instead, this story describes my attempts to meet with, and talk with, Paul Gottsen, in what were to be the last days of his life.

How It Started

Early in October of last year, my friend, Cindy, and I were discussing the year's assignments, and which contemporary writer we'd choose for January's work. Cindy, like, I suppose, many of the students taking the Contemporary Writers 1209 course, writes poetry herself, as did Harvey, with whom she was living at the time. I declined her offer to do a dissertation her, and refused to do one on Harvey, even if he'd had a couple of poems published in American literary magazines and dozens published on various Web sites. I felt that any criticism might not be taken as constructive and praise might be viewed suspiciously. Besides, Harvey's still stuck in a Leonard Cohen milieu (don't tell him I said so).

In the Commons Cafeteria we were sharing our disappointment that so few of the poets we studied, while still alive, were able to come personally to the university to lecture, or even to read their poetry and meet with the students.

"I guess we should go find one ourselves," she said, laughing, as she put her hand on my arm. [Note: conversations within this paper are approximately correct – I have a good memory for such verbal interplay – but I've learned to my chagrin that my memory sometimes edits. So don't assume the words are exact.]

"That's an idea," I said. My life at the time was a bit mixed up and a distraction promised to be a good remedy.

****

Mad Tom's Diary

Mad Tom took to living in the woods around Long Lake a couple of years before the fire. The first winter was pretty much a disaster and he had to return to civilization, but he made it through his second winter without major damage. This is from his diary, which he started a year before and continued sporadically.

Tom was institutionalized more than once, and lived on the streets quite a bit; you should take his observations with a great deal of skepticism, but he is an important player in this drama, and you will want to be aware of his thoughts and feelings.

When I was born there were ten of me, No, there were ten of us. Nine were me. The tenth, last born, was not.

All our life we've been hungry for life and love and laughter, but we sat quietly, waiting at the table for the tenth to begin.

The eyes of those I meet grow small when they see me coming. They can see Mr. 10th where I cannot, so I should forgive them.

Too many empty streets, too few stranger's coins in the hat. Too many small rooms with peeling paint. So many that talked to us only when they had to.

Teresa, Mother Teresa of the Lost Street Folk was always glad to see us. Another form filled out, another folder in some gray cabinet with a name on it. She came and she left, smiling anyway.

When I die, nine of us will be buried, fading screams within this circus skull. The tenth will not, I think.

Nine of us are clowns, like all the other people I've met. Not the tenth. The Dark Ringmaster of Angels and Clowns demands more respect.

Winter is coming. Nine of us are cold. I will build a new shelter, this time beside Pine Lake. Pine Lake is where I met Paul three times before, and I think of it as Paul's Lake. Today I move my few possessions there. Maybe Paul will come visit.

I think I been diddled

Rousted and fiddled

When I took a jump for the moon.

The people all laughed to see such a sport

And no dish was found in the ruin.

****

Paul Gottsen. Fire Day. October 2.

Notes into an Voice Recorder

I thought I'd have a lot to say right now. Words, it turns out are not only a pale shadow of life, but totally inadequate against death.

The lake is like velvet. The trees silhouetted against the moonlight are like teeth. The lake is surrounded by black teeth, like a giant shark's jaw about to close on me.

I am, of course, my own shark. My writings are remoras, traveling with me but not part of me.

Not all my mind cannot accept it, even now. I look back more easily on the past than the now.

I have seldom been out on a lake after dark since I was a college kid. Maybe twice since, when I misgauged my timeline.

The rest of the time, camping by the shore was camping with a fire, to drive back the darkness. There would be laughter, but the canoe was a dark form by the shore, slightly scary, slightly friendly. The world past the canoe was beyond comprehension.

Night brings different laws to the world; my primal soul knows that. Only we who are about to die cannot be afraid. When the night wind shakes the thin tent material, we shift as if we found a twig or tree root under us. But in our darkened mind, we hear a faint primal scream, and wonder, is it ours?

I camped a lot.

I wrote a lot, but not about night on the lake.

I wrote a lot but avoided facing my own darkness, till I wrote Dark Lake.

The full moon helps.

****

Peter Finer, journalist

From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.

There was no wind as the canoe slipped down the lake. There was no moon, only a thousand stars in the purple deeps of sky.

Paddle, pause, paddle. Nausea and starlight.

The earth was a well of night, and the thin strings of photons touched the water after millions of years of travel. They struck the lake surface without slowing and penetrated less than ten feet before scattering. The starlight fell more softly on the water than any feather, more softly than anything but the despair and determination of the man in the canoe.

Paddle, pause, paddle. The slight wake spread the starlight and, on the water, stars danced.

Along shore the forest was blacker than ebony, blacker than the velvet heart of the deepest mystery a dying man's soul could encompass. It slid by slowly, fraught with nightmares from the sleep of small children who turn and tumble in their beds and reach for the light switch in panic.

Paddle, pause, paddle. A rhythm measuring out the last moments of a human life.

Like the beast from the swamps time stalked the man in the canoe. The forces of common danger might stalk others in this world, too, and might win, or might lose. But with time blowing chills in the marrow of bones, he was lost. Time eats his allotted hours and minutes and must turn them to dust and ashes. He faced the future and it was dust and ashes.

Paddle, pause, paddle.

In the deeps of the lake burbot cruise. They swim from the darkest and deepest holes up into the shallows where they feed on sleeping fish by starlight. They push through the weeds, gulping little fish for whom time has come to an end.

He stopped paddling for a moment to watch the stars. The canoe slid along the surface of two worlds. A pair of bats circled briefly. An owl called death in the old pines.

He hung suspended in this time between courage and despair. The wind picked up. The owl hooted again. He began to paddle once more.

Paddle, pause, paddle.

The gneiss along the shore was half as old as the earth. Mountains and oceans had covered it. Dinosaurs had stumbled over it. It had seen a lot of life, a lot of death. The old shores would not note the death of one old writer.

Angels might notice, but the old shores would not.

****

Paul Gottsen: Misogyny and Redemption in Naked Man with a Bible

by Kimberley Molley

Course: Contemporary Writers 1209

[Note: As part of a university course, Kimberley submitted a paper on Paul Gottsen. This is one page excerpted from that paper. It's a student essay; you can skip it if you want.]

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines "misogyny" as "a hatred of women," although xomba.com moderates this as "a strong prejudice or hatred towards woman."

I feel that the contemporary author Paul Gottsen showed an anti-female prejudice in his novel, Naked Man with a Bible. Although his attitudes don't quite fit the dictionary definition, in today's world "misogyny" is often used to refer to any male attitudes that limit the rightful aspirations of females (I'm sure you'll agree).

Paul Gottsen was born in Welland, Ontario and raised in Sudbury as the youngest of four children. His father remarried before he was born, to a woman with three other children. I feel Gottsen may have resented his father's new marriage, which could explain his attitudes towards women.

It is known that he resented his father, a silent and non-social man, and never got over his father's death, when Gottsen was eight, from lung cancer (his father had smoked for years). His mother was left with seven children to raise on a secretary's salary and this may have made her less loving than before.

The basic cause of misogyny is failure of a man to bond properly with his mother, so this explains some of his attitudes, even if it does not excuse them.

Naked Man with a Bible was Gottsen's fifth novel in his series based upon the medieval seven heavenly virtues. The virtue he expressed in this novel is Chastity. To do this he had to contrast it with the opposite sin, Lust. Chastity is defined as courage and boldness and embracing of moral wholesomeness and achieving purity of thought through education and betterment.

This was deemed to be his most successful novel, winning the Governor-General's Award and selling enough copies to allow him to leave his job as a surveyor to concentrate on writing. Because Naked Man with a Bible was commercially successful, the previous four novels were reprinted and the name of Paul Gottsen was added to this university's list of contemporary Canadian writers.

In discussing this, we need to talk about his next novel, Stolen Rain (which I haven't read yet). Stolen Rain was supposed to be about the heavenly virtue of Humility. Lots of critics expressed their disapproval and confusion, etc. Firstly, it was unclear what the book was about, from a narrative point of view. In terms of characters, it was difficult to figure out who was supposed to be the protagonist and what his or her motives were. Stolen Rain was the sixth in Gottsen's proposed series of seven novels about the seven heavenly virtues.

Gottsen's last and seventh novel, Dark Lake, would have been about the heavenly virtue of Kindness, which is associated with charity, compassion, friendship, and sympathy without prejudice and for its own sake. It's biblical opposite is Envy.

Lots of writers might have just gone on to write that seventh book irregardless of the bad criticism of Stolen Rain, but Paul Gottsen wasn't like that, or so it seemed. Instead he became a hermit and disappeared from public view. There were many people that wanted him to complete the set of seven novels, but there were others who didn't want another book they disliked as much as Stolen Rain.

Naked Man with a Bible, which is the subject of this project, was written about four men hunting rabbits in a small woodlot outside London, Ontario.

****

The Cottage, Long Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

This narration you can trust (have I ever lied to you before?).

Paul lit three candles. One was all he needed, but he didn't want to screw up one of the final acts in his life, so he lit three. He left an open copy of Stolen Rain on the table, with a small silver bell on top.

Each candle was set into shredded paper at its base; paper soaked in kerosene. When the candle burned down to that level, it would ignite the paper. The paper would ignite the cabin he'd lived in for twelve years. He turned towards the window, his hands clenched, then relaxed and headed for the door.

They'd assume he was in the cabin, he thought, and search the ashes for his teeth. The fire would be hot enough to consume anything else. Maybe someone would notice that his canoe wasn't in the shed; maybe not.

It would depend on whether there was an investigation. He supposed, the way he'd filled the cabin with flammables, someone would suspect arson and call someone else. That should take a few days, and by that time he would be beyond caring.

It was dark outside. He looked around: in an hour or so the Naylor pair would be getting up, since Tam had to drive into Peterborough for her job and Rollie into Bancroft for his. At this time of year it would be a slow drive through deer country.

Right now, though, all the other cottages – there were seven in this corner of the bay – were dark, although for a moment he thought he saw a brief flash of light at the Naylor cabin, but that might have been his imagination or some reflection of the moonlight.

He slid the blue canoe out of the shed, got a paddle, then locked the shed.

Oaks are happy to hang onto dead leaves until spring's buds push them away, so he couldn't see into the oak above the cabin to check on the woodpecker. He turned only once towards the cabin and the road, making a chopping gesture with one hand.

****

Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student

October 2, round 5 a.m.

Hi, Cindy.

Remember that talk we had last week about interviewing a living writer for our assignment?

Well, I looked up a few on the net and discovered that Paul Gottsen – he wrote Naked Man with a Bible – I don't know if you remember that one – anyway, he's still alive and actually lives around here.

Actually, he went into hiding after his last book didn't sell, but there was a news article in the Examiner about how he helped save a guy who had fallen out of his boat while fishing last year, and it mentioned that it was on Long Lake, just south of Bancroft. Do you know that lake? If it hadn't been for that, he'd still be lost as far as the world knew

So anyway, I figured, like, how many cottages can there be on Long Lake? We canoed Long Lake this summer, if you remember, Harvey and Fred and you and me.

Anyway, I know the lake and there's only a couple of cottages it could be, I mean his place. I figured, what the hey, I'd just drop in; what's the odds an old guy's going to turn away a young woman if my car happens to show up his laneway? Or maybe my canoe shows up at the end of his dock.

If nothing else, at least I get to meet him as he tells me to get the hell off his property. And who knows, maybe I'll even get an interview, which should help my essay, and maybe impress Professor Jackson with my eagerness if not my writing ability. I brought a copy of Naked Man with a Bible for him to autograph if he's in the mood.

Maybe he did write Dark Lake, the missing seventh novel and will give me an autographed copy! That would impress Jackson.

I can't decide whether to drive up to his house or put in at the launch point at the end of the lake and paddle in, which is where I am now. It's freaking pitch black out there – I slightly (!) miscalculated the time and distance from home, but it'll be light in an hour. I can already see the sky getting a bit lighter. And the moon's pretty low on the horizon – does that mean it's closer to dawn?

I figured I'd bring the canoe and camping stuff, so if I couldn't get to see Paul Gottsen I could spend the night along the shore. The weather's supposed to be good.

I guess I'll launch here and paddle in. That way, if he's not there, I can just continue on and go camping. There's enough light from the moon that I can paddle if I don't hit too many rocks. I can't remember any from last time, but if it gets too hard I'll just come back!

****

Paul Gottsen: Misogyny and Redemption in Naked Man with a Bible

by Kimberley Molley

This is another bit you might want to skip if you haven't read any of Gottsen's novels.

Course: Contemporary Writers 1209

(continued)

In Naked Man with a Bible the four principle characters provide most of the action through conversation and remembering past incidents in their lives.

The online Free Dictionary defines "protagonist" as "the main character in a drama or other literary work," or "the leader of a cause; a champion". I find many modern literary works problematic when it comes to using traditional methods. Naked Man with a Bible, for example, doesn't give the reader a protagonist in the traditional sense.

Instead, the weather, their guilt over past deeds, and their present circumstances drives a wedge between them, and also leads the reader from present, back in time, and then back to the present again. As to whether the characters find a quantum of solace in their stories, each reader will have to decide for herself or himself.

Basically, the stories start out with the characters each expressing the virtue of chastity in his own way, the difference being that each subsequently found himself in circumstances where irregardless of his own deeply-held beliefs, For every moral belief in maintaining courage and moral wholesomeness, the character was challenged by events equally as strong in the opposite direction, which pulled him towards the sin that was the opposite of chastity, which is lust.

Whitestonejournal.com describes lust as "the self-destructive drive for pleasure out of proportion to its worth. Sex, power, or image can be used well, but they tend to go out of control." Due to the fact that the men in this book tend towards seeing women as sexual objects, this necessitates a lot of talk, which would be just "guy talk" if they weren't carrying guns and out to kill animals.

Edgar (the one who was eventually castrated and killed by Bob) in one of those long conversations for which Gottsen became known, defines males (and their function in life) in terms of cats. "My cat is fed, watered, and warms himself by the old stone wall," Edgar says, inscribing men with a passivity that doesn't reflect reality as we know it. For Daigen (op. cit.) this puts men in the same boat as the ancient Greek gods, who were never considered to have had to work.

Edgar also describes the cat as trying to get up enough ambition to go hunt in the field for small mice. He then looks around to see if anybody got the point, but only Cal does. According to him, every woman should own, or at least study, cats as a way of learning about male brain functions.

Is this Gottsen's view? Probably. If so, the assumption really is that women can be providers of warmth, food, and water – while men look for interesting things to do in life. This is "redneck" thought, a hedonistic abrogation of men's responsibilities in a heterosexual relationship. Where is the parallel description of Woman and her needs? This is the misogyny of omission. We can't try and expect, in a group of men, to find a deep discussion of women, but a word of sympathy from one of the four towards an understanding of women's burden would go a long way towards lessening the charge that the novel is anti-women.

If men learned more about cats they'd more deeply appreciate the independence/dependence matrix a woman should inhabit in a good relationship. Instead these guys prefer dogs, like Peg, due to the fact that a dog has nothing to teach any of the four except slavish devotion and servitude.

****

The Cottage, Long Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

He got the canoe out of the shed. It was heavy for him now, and he could see blood behind his eyes when he lifted it. But he set it onto the ground, then began dragging it down to the shore.

He tripped once, on a rock he'd brought back from Tennessee. The moonlight made things vague like ethics in a dying heart. After a moment, he got up and continued dragging the canoe.

Somewhere on the lake a splash told him of life and death. The canoe came after him like the old lizard, time, whose bright orange eyes had followed him and his women all his life.

He put one paddle into the water for support. He slid the canoe into the water, got in, and pushed the paddle against the mud bottom. In moments he was on the lake, a full moon falling slowly into the western hills.

Then he pushed off, his image shimmering in the water and his coat silvered by the moonlight.

For a moment, he again thought he saw the flash of a light in the Naylor cottage, but it was an hour before Tam or Rollie would be up, so he put it down to the reflection of moonlight or starlight on a pane of glass.

Sometimes, departing a shore by canoe is a song in the heart. Sometimes it is an escape. Once, and only once, it can be the departure from a world of things you'll never know again. Raking leaves. Good movies. Potato soup. The sound of kids playing. And chocolate.

Never is a long, long, time, even on a small lake in the darkness. He added pasta and sauce with meatballs to the list of things he was trying not to think of.

He closed his eyes, feeling the canoe move through the water till all momentum was lost. He and the canoe stayed there a moment, dark shadows on moon-water. He made no move to look back and felt no desire to do so.

He hit no rocks, more by luck than design; the lake was full of sunkers and a canoeist never memorizes all of them. Besides, in the darkness, things look different.

A set of noises caught his attention; it sounded like someone unloading a canoe from a car, then getting stuff from the trunk. He saw the tiny gleam of a flashlight at the end of the lake. How bizarre – someone else planning on paddling in the dark.

When he turned back, the pain rose from his abdomen, the night descended, and he passed out. A couple of seconds later, he woke to find himself lying forward across the portage yoke, still hanging onto the paddle. He vomited over the edge of the canoe, but once again, to his disgust, he neither fell from the canoe nor drowned. "Can't win them all, I guess," he said out loud, his anger straining the words.

He stretched out his fingers, which had been holding the paddle too tightly.

The thwump of a paddle accidentally banging a canoe came down the lake and echoed against the old rock cliffs. He paddled a little faster, then paused to take out his recorder.

****

Paul Gottsen. Fire Day. October 2.

Please, no more stars. No more rainbows, Jesus. Send me just a warmer night than I've known so far.

I have not been an honest man; not even to myself. There is truth in fiction, but I hid truth deep and well. I hid it in masks since that event I refuse to remember. It has been a fire in my heart since then. Not all the whiskey I drank has put it out. All my masks have had clown faces printed onto them.

In my life I stumbled to the campfire that is Truth knowing nothing. I staggered towards the music that filled the forest that lies make, a black dog gripped, long-fanged to my thigh. On my shoulder a crow wiped his beak and guilt on my poor head.

When I got to the Stage of Truth the music wavered; bluegrass turning bad. The audience was gone and half the banjo strings were broken. The players were tired, not knowing when the show should end; not knowing that it should end. In a tree, a figure blocked the starlight, eyes reflecting gold. They told me this guy had the program, rulebook, and scales, but no-one ever got him to come down.

Had I a kazoo, I would have played Amazing Grace. But for the dog, I would have climbed the tree. Had I the schedule, we could all have gone home without those tears.

I could canoe in the tears I have refused to cry.

Now the campfire light is fading and the music is gone. I am in a canoe enjoying the silence and looking forward to the dark. But there is another canoe on this lake and it is coming my way. I expected to meet the grim reaper in my canoe soon, but I never expected to find him in his own damn canoe.

I shall outpaddle him and his gift. He can catch me on the portage trail, or in Samara.

****

Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student.

October 2, round 5 a.m.

Hi Cindy:

Out on the lake in my canoe. Dark but there's good moonlight or I wouldn't try it. I think I see a candle in Gottsen's window, but can't be sure. Going to paddle around a bit more to see if he wakes up in there.

There's somebody else out on the lake! Heard him over by the cliffs. Think somebody was throwing up. Then there was talking. Probably somebody partying too much at one of the campsites. Stupid to go out on the lake when you're drunk. Hope he doesn't drown right when I'm here.

Me again. Had a sudden thought: what if that's Paul Gottsen out in that canoe? (Joke.) Well, they say writers are a bit strange!

Heading in towards Gottsen's cabin. Should be light in a half an hour or so. I'll sit on his dock and surprise him. If I don't report in, I've been kidnapped and am being kept as a sex slave in his basement. I guess cottages don't usually have basements, actually.

****

Peter Finer, Journalist

From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.

What were his thoughts as he took that one-way paddle across the lake in the darkness? Did he think of his unwritten novel, of the critics?

Or did his mind leap back to his teenage years, canoeing when he was young and strong along some western Ontario river with one in a sequence of girlfriends paddling with him? Did he remember the heat of those afternoons, their canoe slipping through riffles, the pastures gold in the sunlight, another summer grew old. He'd have longed for her as young men must, the shadows lengthening and the heat rising, the birds and bees looping across the water.

At some rapids they'd have had to pull the canoe through the high weeds to get to deep water again. Did he, partway through, whisper her name? Did she smile at him, take off her hat, and look around? Did she look him in the eyes, and, almost as if by accident, touch his hand?

Paddling in the dark, feeling older than the rocks, did he remember young desires, warmth among the nodding reeds, the passion hot as the molten core of the earth, and the way the redwing blackbirds in the cattails scolded afterwards?

Did he look back to see the cabin in flames? Did he look back to remember the fires of youth? Did part of his heart die when he saw the ashes of his unpublished novel, Dark Lake, rising into the clean-pre-dawn air?

And so he came to the far shore, by the portage sign tacked to the tree, almost invisible in the starlight. He used no flashlight: this was escape, nothing short of that.

****

Long Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

Part of his mind puzzled at the idea of another canoe on the lake in the night. He wondered if some group from the university had camped along the shore. After a night of partying, someone was apt to wake up hung over and pissed off at some remark made earlier. And just up and leave. Or maybe he'd done that himself long years before.

Nonetheless it was stupid to go out on the lake when you're drunk, unless you were looking forward to a nice drowning. But he wasn't up to effecting another rescue if the other canoe rolled over. A month before, he'd helped rescue a man who fell out of a small fishing boat. The story in the Bancroft Examiner had carried his name, and since then he'd been getting an increasing number of inquiries about whether he was that Paul Gottsen. None of which he'd answered.

He missed the landing for the portage twice in the darkness. It wasn't a regulation portage or there would have been a yellow triangular sign stapled to a tree.

But the portage to Sparkler Lake, (and from there to Pine Lake) wasn't marked, and even in daylight was hard to see. He'd been over it many times, but things in the world of dark don't give up their secrets so easily. It was hard getting out of the canoe – there was no proper landing – but years of practice allowed him to keep his feet dry. Dying was one thing: discomfort was another.

He held onto the branches of white cedar as he carefully stepped onto a rock, testing to be sure it was dry.

He gagged a bit as he hauled his small pack onto the shore, then dragged the canoe up over the shore rocks and logs and onto the forest floor. In his mind the noise of the canoe scraping and banging sounded like an advancing army, but it was over quickly enough.

He pointed one finger at the hill as if his body would follow the intention, but fatigue caught him and like a tree falling he dropped to the ground.

He lay on his back for a few minutes, watching the full moon lower itself behind the cedars towards the western horizon. Then he took a deep drink from one of the two Pepsi bottles he'd brought, and got up. His canoe was Kevlar and light – he'd bought it a dozen years back when portaging his older fiberglass canoe got to be a problem – so he was able to get it up. The trail was faint, but familiar, and he moved slowly, like Frankenstein in old age, trying to get up the hill and away from the shore before daylight.

The sky was getting light as he followed the tiny creek for a bit, then turned onto the rolling waves of bare granite, bones of the planet, speckled with moss and scattered with patches of pine. When he got to the top the world was getting bright. He hurried the canoe down the other side, so as not to be seen. Then he set it down, and turned back.

A bright glow of flame and a rising plume of smoke marked his cottage. He hoped the cat and the Wounded Woodpecker had made it away as safely as he had.

He thought about a goodbye wave, but that life was a stranger to him, now.

Then he somehow remembered Sylvia, a woman he's spent six months with some years before. They'd never liked each other, but had exchanged Christmas cards for a few years after with no more happiness than they'd shared bodily fluids. Abruptly, he realized the deep purple of the sky was colour of the earrings that she always kept on until lovemaking was over.

He covered one tired eye, and watched the smoke. He wished again for whiskey.

****

Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student

Hi Cindy. I'm like here on the dock. Paul Gottsen's dock, that is. I guess you're up by now. Are you there? Okay, you can read this whenever and get back to me if you want.

Paul Gottsen's cottage burned down. No it wasn't me! Honest! I was just paddling in towards the cottage and planning on sitting on this dock until he woke up, but when I was still out on the lake I noticed that the light in the window was getting brighter, and before I even got to the dock there was smoke coming out from under the eaves. I could see it because it was getting light in the sky by that time.

I didn't know what to do so I ran up and hammered on the front door and the side door, but they were both locked and nobody answered. So I ran next door – there's another cottage across the road – it's more like a dirt track – and woke up the family there. The neighbour was already dressed and he ran out but by that time there was no way anybody could possibly get in the other cottage.

Well, there wasn't anything we could do but try throwing buckets of water from the lake but that didn't do any good, and Rollie, that's the neighbour's name, his wife Tam, she already called the fire department. There's some other cottages on the same bay, but there's nobody in them except on weekends.

The fire department I guess is a long ways away and it's all volunteer, so they got here way after it was too late. Even the police got here before the fire department. I talked to a policewoman. She wanted to make sure I didn't start the fire, I guess! I think she's still suspicious. Paul Gottsen's car is still in his laneway.

Can't blame her, I guess. I come here looking for Paul Gottsen and show up in the dark about the time he burns to death in his cottage. I'd be suspicious too, if I were her. There's a fire marshal to judge by the title on the car looking around. He's over talking to Rollie and Tam. Oops, here he comes now. Gotta go.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeh, hi, I'm still here. I'm doing okay. Makes it kind of hard knowing you just watched somebody famous burn to death. Rollie had to go into work, but Tam phoned in and said she'd take the day off wherever she works, at the highways department I think. She fed me breakfast, with cereal and coffee and toast. We talked. Anyway she's more shook up than me because she knew Paul for three years.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I think you're right. I should come home. But I've got everything packed and I'll let you know. No, nobody's saying he killed himself, but Tam said he was seriously ill and she thought the cottage burned faster and hotter than it should have. We'll see, but I don't think the fire marshal's going to tell me anything. Maybe there'll be an inquest some time. I'm going to have a rest. Tam offered me a fold-out bed, and I think I'll rest a bit. I'll let you know by noon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm back again.

Tam's still taking care of me. She made me a sandwich. She says Rollie (that's her husband the neighbour I told you about) is coming home early from his job because the police want him to talk to.

I'll probably go camping anyway. What the heck; I've got the canoe loaded and the weather's fine. I can portage in to Sparkler or Pine Lake for a couple of nights and the police can come after me if they want to. As long as I start by three I should make it by dark. It's been dry and the portage should be good.

Tam says screw the cops. People out on the fringes must not like authority. But she wants me to wait for Rollie before I leave. I guess he said told her he had something to say to me.

****

Peter Finer, Journalist

From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.

We are, as the song says, dust in the wind. The verities of life are that we drift from pillar to post, from the soul's deserts to the soul's gardens on the whims of chance and the odd ideas that percolate in the bizarre brains of people around us.

Three days before the fire I showed my Boss a press clipping. Paul Gottsen, who had disappeared from public view for most of a generation had helped keep some fisherman – probably a drunk fisherman to judge by my in-laws who are unable to separate the two activities – alive for a few more productive years of watching hockey and complaining about the government, the weather, and his in-laws.

Which pinned down the location to Long Lake, south shore.

"I'd like to go interview this guy," I told him.

He read the clipping, raised one eyebrow, then put his hands carefully on the desk making a steeple of them. "Why?"

"He's been missing for years. He was famous. This could be a literary scoop."

"Was?" He held out his hands, palms up.

"Pardon?"

"You said, 'was famous,' if I heard you. Not 'is famous.'"

"I'm going up that way anyway. I could do an interview. We could have a scoop."

"Don't you think that if anyone wanted an interview someone would have gone there by now? Maybe he wants to stay missing. Maybe he pointed a shotgun at them."

"I'd be in the neighbourhood."

"You want to spend another day up there and get paid for it. While avoiding your relatives."

"We could be the literary lions of the country. For a while."

"Like that would get us more subscribers. Or advertisers."

"Oh, well," I said. "I guess I get drunk and go fishing."

"I didn't say that." He scratched his chin. "You get an interview, say five thousand words worth – pump it up if you have to – and I'll pay for the day. If you've got the regular stuff done."

Regular stuff was police reports on break-ins, warnings from the fire marshal on storing open cans of gasoline near the furnace, and plans by town council to tear up the downtown streets once again and turn main street into a zoo or circus or whatever. Usually about 30,000 words a week.

"Done!" I'd have grabbed my hat and left, if I'd had a hat. So I just headed for the door.

"Besides, the owner's thinking his son should get a job here. We'll slot him into your place tomorrow and if he's any good, you don't have to come back." He smiled like Gollum.

****

Long Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

Rollie finished with the police by two, then watched the detective's car bounce away along the cottage road. Head down, he walked past the pile of ashes that marked what had been Paul's home and through the path to his own home. The path was deep in fallen leaves and light ash.

The tree above Paul's cottage had lost most of its leaves and a couple of major branches. Springtime would show how well it had survived. Rollie wondered, too, about the woodpecker.

Kimberly, Rollie, and Tam sat at the table drinking tea and coffee, eating store-bought oatmeal cookies, and looking out the patio doors across the lake. Kimberley crossed and uncrossed her legs a few times. "This is your cat?" she asked, starting a conversation by picking up an orange tabby.

"No," Tam said. "That was Paul's cat, Hank Dayton. That's his name, Hank Dayton. Paul named him after an old friend and insisted that we use his whole name. Cats need dignity, he said." She pointed to the corner, where an old black-and-white cat slept in a wicker cat basket. "That's our cat, Sparky. Used to be a fighter – you have to be out here – but he's old now, mostly deaf and partly blind. We should have him put down, but he's been a friend so long...." She reached over to touch Paul's cat on the paws.

"You must be worse off than I am," Kimberly offered. "I never even met Mr. Gottsen."

Tam started to say something, but Rollie interrupted. "The fire wasn't an accident." Into the silence that followed, he added, "The cottage was torched with kerosene."

"Maybe he was cleaning the outboard," Tam started to say.

"And it was stuffed full of combustible stuff – mostly dry branches – to make it burn better." Rollie looked into the eyes across the table and took another cookie.

"The fire marshal told you this?"

"When I ran over this morning, I could smell the kerosene, and the doors were locked. Paul never locked his doors. But I could see the place was full of branches. Right full." He spread his hands wide.

"He killed himself?" Kimberly whispered.

There was a long pause as Rollie got more coffee and returned to the table. He poured some for Tam. "I was up this morning before dawn to go to the can. There was a full moon, and I looked out the window. I thought I saw a canoe leave Paul's place."

"Oh." Tam looked down at the table.

"I don't think they've found any bones yet, although the investigators are coming tomorrow. The fire marshal thinks the fire was hot enough that they might find nothing but teeth. But I looked where the shed had been, and there were no metal pieces from the canoe there."

"Why would he set a fire and leave?" Kimberly asked.

Tam answered. "He was dying. Is dying. It's going to be painful, and might take a month or more, he told me." She glanced at Rollie. "He's probably gone off to die a little faster out there somewhere."

"Holy shit?" the student said. She looked up at the raised eyebrows around the table, then told them about her encounter on the lake. "That might have been him throwing up out there. Are you going to tell the police?"

"Not yet," Rollie said. "I might be wrong. "And even if I'm right, he was a friend. He wants to go out and die by Pine Lake, I think he should have the chance." He scratched his nose nervously and stared at the table. "He'll get a day or two head start, if he's lucky." He made a two-fingered smoking-a-cigarette gesture to Tam, then went outside, Hank Dayton the cat following.

"Pine Lake? I'm going to Pine Lake." Kimberly looked around as if there were ghosts in the walls. "I mean that's where I was planning to camp tonight."

"I wish you would," Tam said. "If he's out there I'd be happier if he wasn't alone." She turned away and touched both eyes with the tips of her fingers.

They could hear Paul's cat meowing at Rollie.

****

Long Lake. Day after Fire Day. October 3.

The next evening, when Tam returned from work, the fire investigators were still sifting through the ashes. By the time she'd spoken to him and started supper, Rollie got home.

Ten minutes later a green Cavalier edged its way down the road. The man talked to an investigator, then tapped on Tam's door and presented a business card that identified him as Peter Finer, Reporter and Journalist. He stood with his hands on his hips, like the Marlboro man or somebody who'd just won a gunfight.

She hesitated a moment, then invited him in.

****

Summary of the Story to This Point

At this point, it is the day after the fire of October 2nd in which Paul Gottsen, writer, torched his cottage home on Long Lake. He's dying anyway, and would prefer to do so out on Pine Lake (which is just the other side of Sparkler Lake.

He believes (correctly) that people will assume he died in the fire, so nobody's likely to come looking for him. However, his neighbour, Rollie, saw Paul slipping away in the moon light by canoe. Paul's words are as spoken into a recorder at the time.

Kimberly, a university student, arrived to interview Paul, but he was gone before she got to his cottage. Rollie and Tam (Paul's neighbours) sent her after the writer. Her notes are as emailed to herself or texted to a friend. Her essay on Paul's Naked Man with a Bible, however, was written months after these events.

Peter Finer, a newspaper reporter, arrived the next day. His writings are from a book published almost a year after the fire.

A character known to locals as "Mad Tom" has been living in the forest in the area for a couple of years. He's avoided people except for Paul in that time. He writes into his diary every day.

Please note: On October 2, Paul crosses the hills to Pine Lake. Kimberley follows the same day. But Peter Finer, the journalist, doesn't get to the lakes until a day later, October 3. Parts of the story that include Peter are out-of-sequence in this story, so pay attention to the headers, or you may become confused.

****

The Cottage, Long Lake. October 3.

A mound of ashes that once was a home is a hole in the world.

Peter, Tam, and Rollie could not see the former home of Paul Gottsen, but the smell hung in the still late afternoon air. Rollie told Peter all about the fire, including Kimberley's part and the suspicions of the fire marshal.

Peter Finer could see journalism awards sneaking through the woods towards his mantle, but he tilted his head to one side and frowned.

"You think Gottsen – Paul – took his own life? Torched himself like some... Viking chief or something?" The reporter took another couple of cookies and poured himself more coffee. He smiled at Tam.

"I – we – knew Paul pretty well", Tam said. "We liked him. He had a lot of heartaches that he couldn't work out". She paused to look at Rollie.

"Well, the general consensus is that he was so, ah, annoyed at the bad reception that Stolen Rain got, that he took himself away from the literary world – I know them bastards; can't blame him – and now they'll think he finally did the Hemingway thing and killed himself." Peter Finer, who wanted to be more of a writer, leaned back with his eyebrows up.

"I lived beside Paul for over six years," Rollie said, leaning across the table towards Peter, "and I can tell you he was pissed off all that time. But never seriously depressed about it."

"Then why would he kill himself?"

"He didn't have to kill himself." Tam spoke really quietly.

"How so?"

She stared out the door towards the ashes. "His medical diagnosis. He had another couple of weeks, maybe a month, of useful life left. Got that from some doctors in Toronto, Mount Sinai hospital. Then he'd lose control over his body very quickly." She contemplated her tea. "He'd have been a vegetable pretty soon."

"He never sounded like the kind of guy who would take well to being dependent on others."

"He wasn't," Rollie said. "And it was going to be rather painful, too. So they said." He clenched his teeth and looked at the lake, his arms crossed tight.

Peter nodded his head, and took another sandwich. "I might have done the same myself, in that case."

Rollie was looking at Tam. "We liked Paul," he repeated. "He was a friend."

"Tell him, then," Tam said, looking away, and just a bit angry. "Tell him what you think." She got up to run some water into the dish sink, her whole body stiff.

"It's not what he'd want," Rollie said. "We know that." He chopped one hand in the air, changed the gesture to a fist, then stuffed the hand behind him.

"If you're right," Tam said back, "then he shouldn't die alone. No matter what he wants."

"What about the girl?" Rollie asked. "What about her?"

"She might not find him. She doesn't know these lakes. She hasn't lived enough." She stared, trembling, at her husband of three years.

Rollie turned towards a totally confused Peter. His hands moved aimlessly for a moment. "There's a chance Paul wasn't in the cabin. I think he might have gone over to Pine Lake to die. I might have seen him."

Peter Finer was speechless. He could now see himself signing books, sometime in the future. "You did?"

"I might have. They haven't found a body yet. In the ashes. I didn't find any parts of his canoe. I think I saw him leave in the dark. I'm not sure."

"And that girl, what's her name, went that way?"

"We told her. I told her to go to Pine Lake. I think that's where he would have gone to die alone."

"Nobody should die alone," Tam said. "Not even if he wants to."

"That's right," Rollie said. "Paul shouldn't die alone."

"Why are you telling me?" The journalist shook his head and knitted his brows, but didn't stop looking at Rollie.

"She's been gone a since yesterday, and I'm starting to think she was too young to do this."

"Well...." Peter was trying to think of a way to get out there. He concentrated on the cookies and put his hands onto the table to hold them steady.

"If you want to borrow our canoe, we'll lend you some camping gear. Tam can make up some sandwiches."

****

Mad Tom's Diary

I should hear the Old Fart in the winds and in the waters that slap the shore. But He can't exist, He won't exist. He should exist; the universe needs a Great Clown.

I've looked for the truth in the ways of all flesh in the carousels of my years and it seems there can be none. No angels come to call me home; no angels in the morning mist; no angels in the darkest night. On the forest's dark floor I found no footprints but my own and those of the little animals. Could there be a God so small He leaves no footprints when the smallest mouseprints are so clear? No angels call me.

And I become the clown. I fear I am become the clown.

O Jesus let it not be me who made me the clown.

There is no God but vacuum and it sucks. I would kill him for not being, just for that one lonesome fact. He left no sign; he cannot be. The universe is more lonesome than I can stand. Nobody knows the difference between a prophet and a nutcase anymore and I walk the woods alone.

I have stalked His tinsel-towered midway and found only coloured glass surrounding emptiness, the tawdry prize less than the offer from a Nigerian banker. The loneliness is my friend; the emptiness of the universe and the lizard of waiting death are the bells in my hat. I would kick his Holy Golden Balls if I could have but a moment alone with Him. He who does not exist.

I ride his stupid carousel, grinding Hell out of my solitary thought. They say He spoke through the beards of old wise men, but all those are now scoops of dirt and dust in the westerlies and who therefore can believe a single word they said? The words of clowns, dancing on the backs of carousel horses.

I have moved my home in this the third year of my wilderness. There were voices crying in the last place and they were all mine so I could not sleep there.

Last week, I started a new shelter here at Pine Lake. I haven't seen Paul in months. I raise a glass to him. I think I'll kill him. Won't he be surprised!

So many gone and leaving me alone. Winter is coming. The stars are further away and cold as Old Eyes.

I'll be able to fish through the ice, I hope. I can kill Paul. He was friend but I was alone and now he is enemy. I can wait for him. Now I wish I had a boat.

Maybe I'll eat him! I can join his past and my future in a roasted leg.

Maybe Paul doesn't come here any more.

I've pounded on the gates of Paradise when I was young. Not even echoes. And I wanted so little.

That's not His voice in the wind. In the water. That's just the emptiness of His not being.

Paul will understand why he must die for all the sins of his youth, my youth, God's youth. I can offend the Old Fart when I kill my only friend Paul.

****

Clothing and Appearance

There have been a few quests for more descriptions of the characters in this narrative.

Paul Gottsen

Paul's 62, slightly shorter than average, with a shock of gray hair and a small bald patch at the back. He keeps his hair reasonably short. His skin, once ruddy, is now pale. He has a bit of a hook nose, blue eyes, and small eyebrows. He moves with a slight limp and a marked hesitation. He hasn't shaved for a couple of weeks so he has the start of a gray-black beard.

Throughout the story he wears dark green work pants, a shirt with side vertical stripes of blue and brown with a white undershirt peeking at the top of the shirt. He wears a dark blue nylon coat, a brown Tilley hat, and brown leather boots that he got at a yard sale (he liked the idea of them having served in earlier campaigns).

Peter Finer

Peter shows up at the Naylor's place wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt thinly-striped in red and white. He has a good but somewhat worn pair of Nike hiking shoes and red socks. He has a deep voice.

He's taller than average, with a slightly knobbly look, and a tendency for his body to settle into odd angles when he's not moving. He has black hair and brown eyes, and tends to look unshaven after half a day.

Rollie lends him a warm and waterproof nylon jacket, dark blue with bright orange markings and a flexible yellow lifejacket to wear over it. As well, Rollie provides him a Blue Jays hat and some orange plastic gloves.

Kimberley Molley

She's 21, currently a slightly overweight redhead with rather short hair and a bit tall. She wears jeans and light brown shirt with a tan sweater over it. She has blue, cotton-lined plastic gloves and an orange baseball cap with the university logo on it. She wears leather boots and red wool socks. She's taken a lightweight green camouflage-coloured raincoat. She wears contact lenses, coloured to change her blue eyes into something with a violet tinge.

Her coat is insulated nylon, with a hood built in, in yellow with blue markings. She uses an orange lifejacket.

Mad Tom

Tom's a big man in his late forties. He lives in a home-built shelter near Pine Lake. He wears a coat that's dark brown with darker stains. His jeans are worn, and his black army boots have a rip along one edge. He often wears a blue, nylon, wool-lined head covering that can be unfolded to cover his ears.

Tam Naylor

Tam's in her mid-forties. She has brown hair with a couple of blonde highlights. She's more overweight than Kimberley. When we first meet her, she's wearing a blue hand-knitted sweater over a cream-coloured blouse, pale blue slacks, and white shoes with black socks.

The next day, when Peter shows up, she's wearing blue jeans, a red sweater (also hand-knitted) over a black sweatshirt.

Rollie Naylor

Rollie's a tall, thin, bald man, with a strong, well-shaved chin, large brown eyes, and a small nose. Whenever you meet him at the cottage, he'll be wearing his deer-patterned (and hand knitted) cardigan over a plaid shirt. In this narrative, he's got on the cardigan, a blue plaid shirt, green cords, brown socks, and Velcro-fastened running shoes.

****
CHAPTER TWO

****

Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student

Thanks, Cindy! I'm glad you vouched for me when they phoned. I figured they'd ask where I went, but I guess they won't do that until they figure out Paul Gottsen didn't die in the fire. That's right! The neighbour thinks he set fire to his own cottage and left in a canoe. I don't know if he's right or not but he might be, so who knows, we might be out in the woods together. Or maybe the neighbour was wrong.

In any case I hope they don't come barging into the woods too fast. I'd like a night or two out on my own. It'll be strange, but I don't think the local sasquatch will get me. Or maybe I'll hook up with him and we'll raise hairy kids underneath the spruce trees!

It'll be nice to be alone out here. It's been a long time since I've been out here alone. There won't be anybody else out here I think, since this is off the main canoe routes. If I don't get in touch by the weekend, I'm probably lost or married to the sasquatch.

Later. I got a portage to do. The first one is a short but steep sucker, over to Sparkler Lake – 125m. Then 700m to Pine Lake. It's not as hilly, but there's a swampy part in the middle. It's been a dry fall, so maybe it won't be so bad. Glad there's no bugs, but I gotta hoof it since it gets dark pretty early now. Gotta camp while I can still see a place to put the tent!

*****

Hi, Self:

Welcome back.

Took the canoe and the pack at the same time! Went over the hill and down to Sparkler Lake. Got to get in better condition. Damn near killed me.

Sparkler's a little shallow lake and I can't imagine anybody would like it. I don't know why; maybe it's too shallow for any mysteries. I'm taking a short break before crossing Sparkler and going into the woods on the other side. It seems a bit strange being out in the woods without Fred or anybody else, but I get to do a bit of thinking if I want to. Night comes early this time of year, so I could have four or five hours alone in front of a campfire before going to sleep. Maybe I can have a couple of long conversations with myself.

It seems even stranger following the trail of a dying man.

Self? Are you listening? Will I ever read this?

How would Paul Gottsen have put the whole thing into one of his novels? As a person with a bad dream?

Once, at a campsite by Gold Lake, Fred had shown her the difference between red oak leaves and white oak leaves. He'd had her feel the texture of each tree's bark and had told her about Tom Dooley hanging from a white oak tree. White oaks like hard, rocky country.

That white oak afternoon she and Fred talked about things. She liked islands, she told him, trying to explain about seabirds and waves and sunsets, but he laughed and said that was a bit slow for his style. He was good with his cars and motors, she had to admit. She talked about her twin nephews, age two, how they were always falling into water or running after squirrels, but he wrinkled his nose and rubbed the back of his head and they talked about Sandi and Kyle's break-up instead.

That night Tom Dooley looked down on their little tent from up on the white oak tree, and the next day they paddled back at the end of summer and lots of other things to Fred's shiny car.

That was then, she thought suddenly. This is now. Better get going; it's a long portage to Pine Lake.

****

News Release: Bancroft Police Service

Fire at Cottage on Long Lake

October 2

For More Information contact Constable Bruce Knight, Bancroft Police Service 705-211-1508

Shortly after 6:15 this morning, Bancroft Police attended a fire on Long Lake, Fire Road 41. When they arrived a cottage was fully engulfed in fire. The Bancroft Fire Department arrived shortly thereafter. Neighbours say they called in the fire before dawn and tried to enter the building to see if the owner, a lone male, was inside.

Police, however, were unable to enter the building because of the intensity of the fire. The Fire Department was unable to save the building, which was reduced to ashes.

The cottage is owned by one Paul Gottsen, who lived there year round. Police are asking for public assistance in locating Mr. Gottsen.

The Fire Marshal from Peterborough County is assisting in the investigation.

****

Portage To Pine Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

Kimberly crossed Sparkler Lake, pulling the canoe through the rushes on the far side where it was shallow and muddy. For the first time she could see that someone had been that way not long before, and suspected Rollie might just be right after all. Then again, people still go to all the lakes, if only to explore or hunt ducks.

It's a six hundred metre portage from Sparkler Lake to Pine Lake, up a gentle slope, then abruptly down near the end. The trail wasn't officially marked nor well-traveled, but there are signs if you watch for them. Trees and branches have ribbons or strings tied to them, most often by duck hunters, or there may be notches cut into trees. Where there's open spaces and granite floor open to the sun, there will be little piles of stones to guide you. These, a map, and a compass, and you'll likely find your way.

Kimberly wasn't strong enough to carry everything at the same time over this longer portage. She took the packsack, paddles, and lifejacket first, memorizing the path tree by tree. About a third of the way she set the gear down and went back for the canoe. Learning the route helped, because with a canoe on your head, you can't see as well.

So she did the trip in stages, finally getting it all down to the shore of Pine Lake among a tangle of berry bushes.

The lake area north of Peterborough is a mix of lakes, woods, and stretches of open granite-floored spaces. Lakes which have a lot of open rock along the shores seem sunnier, even happier than those that don't. Pine Lake was lined with pines, giving it a gloomy aspect, and a sense of many mysteries. Not far out, however, a peninsula – really an island with a swampy link to the west shore – was more open. Drawn up on the rock of the island was a blue canoe. A man lay beside the canoe, face to the sky.

"Well, then," she said. Her heart pounded. She clenched her hands together, then straightened her hair with one hand. She would have asked her mother had she the chance, and her mother would have said she made a promise to Tam, if not to Rollie. She pushed the canoe into Pine Lake.

In the deepest parts of the lake swam a large burbot, tasting the water and waiting for darkness: Burbot like darkness and cold. Looking like a cross between a catfish and an eel, a burbot is in fact a type of freshwater cod. Separated by only a short distance, he lived in a different world than Kimberley, and barely flicked his tail at the noise that travelled to him.

****

Paul Gottsen. Fire Day. October 2. Notes into an MP3 Recorder

Christ, I thought that portage would kill me. Still no luck that way, though. Fell down enough times, but it doesn't look like I'm going to get help doing this. Still got that little bottle in my coat pocket, so there's still a plan in place, even if it's only mine.

Coughing blood, but the pills have kept the pain down somewhat. One eye's gone bad, and the other's a bit fuzzy. If that Grim Reaper comes in a canoe, he'll have to speak up: I can't tell anything by sight.

I'm on a rocky island on Pine Lake. The day's still warm, but it must be getting past mid-afternoon. Going to cool down pretty soon.

I've camped here before and had picnic lunches here in summers past. Jennifer, of the pink hair, and Amy with the granola, for sure. Stephanie, the preacher's daughter and her strange prayers, and Kelly who wouldn't let me catch fish. And others. And lunch with Mad Tom once, right here in the firepit, with a rabbit and some squirrels he'd brought. I miss them all: I don't want any of them here. I wish them sunshine and lilacs in the spring.

Can't decide whether to make a last campfire or not. Or how long to wait. I'm enjoying this, actually. I like the sound of water on the rocks and the wind in the dying leaves of the trees. The birds are quiet at this time of year, except for geese heading one direction or another. They seem to fly everywhere but south at this time of year.

The bass don't rise for insects in the fall. A splashing in the cattails behind me is probably a beaver or muskrat. The bass swim slowly now, in the waters getting cold. Somewhere deeper maybe a pike stirs, pleased by the lower temperatures.

The day is pleasant. The time bomb in me continues ticking. I wish I had brought and could ride a unicycle around this patch of flat rocks.

****

Peter Finer, Journalist

From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.

There was no mark on the shoreline where Paul Gottsen pulled his canoe from the water in the pre-dawn. Determination made him strong enough to get it out of sight behind the spruce that lined the water's edge.

Like a thousand times before, he rolled the canoe onto his head and started along the almost-invisible path that followed the steep, short rise from Long Lake up the portage trail. He knew he had to pass to the left of the old leaning oak and then just to the right of a storm-blasted pine. In a few minutes he walked onto pink and gray granite, mottled like a Holstein's hide with patches of soft green moss.

A portage is a bridge, no matter how difficult or easy it is.

Pretend it's nothing: just a walk with a canoe. That's never true, no matter how often you might say it. A portage is a transition from the world of people to the world of wild. Suddenly you wonder if the wind in the aspen tops has meaning, or if it's only wind; if those are only leaves. If the crows have things to say.

There are silences that seem to have meaning in the woods. There is motion without life, floating in the sky, and you wonder if it will rain, or if there's anything you can do about it by wishing or talking. There is so much the map cannot tell you.

And you say to the silences of the woods and to the noises of the woods, "It is nothing. I know that." But the doubts ride your shoulders like canoe, like packsacks. From your primeval brain, you watch the shadows carefully.

The mysteries of the rising hill before you are very deep on your first portage. They are as deep on your last portage. Gottsen felt the mysteries of the forest that he'd brushed aside for years. Now he knew he would never solve them while he was alive.

The hill was steeper than he remembered; the crest further away. There were darknesses he didn't remember, but he struggled on, upwards suddenly doubting the wisdom of what he was about to do.

The canoe weighed on his shoulders, heavier than it had ever been; its weight less relevant. Did the ground shift under his feet; did the world seem to move a bit for him this time as his disease reached for his consciousness? Was there fear or laughter at the finalness of it all?

Over that portage, across small Sparkler Lake and onto the long portage to the final place, Pine Lake.

There's a difference between being away from your world in the woods, and finding your place in the woods. There's a promise out there that cannot be denied. A glimpse, as you come along the trail, of a lake lined with aspens, and suddenly you're not lost: you're found. Then the portage is no longer an endless trail but a bridge from civil ground to the light, the lost Eden in front of you.

At the top of the crest between Sparkler Lake and Pine Lake he came out of the woods onto an open area of pink granite and moss, with small pines and little twisted oaks scattered rather decoratively around. Small mounds of stones marked directions for hunters. Wherever there was a low place deep, soft, damp moss filled it in. His legs gave out at one point, and he fell again, and though his knees banged themselves on rock and old wood, his face fell into the moss. After a moment, he rolled the canoe off his shoulders and got onto his knees. He looked at his face's imprint in the moss and muttered, "Toro, toro, toro. I am the Veronica of the bullring, and continue on." Five minutes later, he managed to get the canoe back onto his shoulders and started down the hill to the water.

And so he came to Pine Lake in the middle of the day at the end of his life, light dancing on the waters. He paddled to a place where he'd probably camped many times before, a stretch of flat rock where he'd lit fires, watched the stars come out, or engaged in the fluid thump and groan, huff and chuckle of intercourse on a squeaky air mattress with whatever blonde, brunette, or redhead had shared his weekend.

Ten hours behind him Kimberley Molley, a student at Lakefield University, began the portage from Long Lake to Sparkler Lake, unaware that she was following the same route. It's unlikely Gottsen left any mark on his last passage, even if he fell several times with his canoe.

At this time I was still drinking beer and playing cribbage with my brother-in-law. I hadn't heard about the burning of the cottage, even if it was on the news. My in-laws weren't big on news, not when a hockey game was on.

When my sister asked what I was staying another day at the cottage for, I just shrugged and said I was going to explore some of the back roads. It was easier than trying to explain who Paul Gottsen was and why I wanted to interview him.

I drank beer and ate popcorn till supper was served, then resumed the card games. The sun drew out the shadows on the lake as I lost most of the games, Kimberley Molley set up camp on Sparkler Lake and Mad Tom, unseen by either of them, erected a tarp on the shore to sleep under.

It would be a long night for all of us.

****

Mad Tom's Diary

Paul will understand why he must die for all the sins of his youth, my youth, God's youth. I can offend the Old Fart when I kill my only friend Paul.

I have been angry too long and the lack of wind chides me for it. I must be calmer, to see through the lies but they interrupt my thoughts like the birches and beeches interrupt my vision.

I am worthy to baptize Paul in Pine Lake. Five minutes under water to cleanse him; maybe ten to make sure he can't breathe like a fish.

Forgive me, world; I am I.

I am bounded in a nut shell and would be king of this infinite forest were it not that I have bad dreams. Methinks this Elsinore needs some leaves swept from the courtyard.

I came here to Pine Lake three days ago. I stood on the very spot where I first saw Paul Gottsen coming down the portage trail three years ago. He was sweating in the heatness of August and I thought They'd sent him to chase out my thoughts, for They cannot permit free thinkers any more. Everyone must be on city water and/or city food so whatever they put into it can control them.

He was sent for, to find me, I thought that first time, and I watched for a kind of confession in his looks, along the rifle barrel, the little dot of the front sight covering his ear.

I talked with him instead, as he lay down his canoe. I shall speak to this walker in my woods. I was polite, and he was polite, and I didn't know he wasn't one of Them until our third meeting, on snowshoes the following winter. They were out to get him, too, for They cannot allow free thought or free men or free speech, so he was hiding just like me.

Forgive me, for I was born in the moment where tigers are ripped from darkness and crows are painted black.

I am tiger, I am crow. If they feared me enough I'd be back in the zoo. Caw!

On the rocks by Pine Lake I built a shelter yesterday, a lean-to with a canvas top. It'll keep the rain off while I build a little winter cabin. The driven snow and I will howl together, scaring the owls. I love to hear my own echoes.

It was easier when I still had bullets for my little gun.

****

Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student

Hi, self. Here I am at the edge of Pine Lake. I've been to this lake once, but we moved on before dark and camped at Jonas Lake. That was with three canoes. Fred and I in one; Cindy and Paul in the other and some couple named Ian and maybe Collette or something like that. More than a year ago, when life was a bit more of an adventure and I had more options in my future. I remember Cindy and Paul got lost on the portage and we had to go find them. Cripes, I was with Fred for a year. Stupid.

Easy to get lost in the woods, I suppose, but just as easy on the campus!

I've tried to make as much noise as I could so I didn't surprise anybody, because who likes to find someone right close to him when he thinks he's alone. But when I got to the edge of the lake I could see someone out there lying on the open space. There's not many open spaces on this lake: too many pines I guess too close to the shore.

It's got to be Paul Gottsen out there I think. I wish I'd remembered to ask Tam what colour canoe he took, but I didn't so I'll just have to assume that's him.

I don't want to do this. I don't. I don't. Why did I volunteer for this stupid thing? I've got other things to worry about in life. Maybe I can just go up and say hello and give him the bottle of whiskey from Rollie. Then I can go somewhere. There might be a campsite at the other end of the lake by the old snowmobile club shack: I can't remember. I can't remember any other places along the shore, but I wasn't watching then. Seems like a lifetime ago. Maybe it is, but not my lifetime I guess.

If I just pass by and he kills himself or dies, then what do I tell the police and other people? But if I try to camp there I imagine he'll be really pissed off. And if he dies while I'm there what do I tell people after when they ask why I didn't go for help or something?

Self, I don't want to do any of this. Fuck it. Dad said a promise is a promise. As long as I don't have to cremate the bastard like Sam McGee I should survive. Maybe he has a gun? To shoot himself. Cops investigate murder-suicide in back woods. Love pact between college kid and old writer fart or just was she just in the wrong place at the wrong time? Alcohol bottle had her fingerprints on it: did old guy shoot in self defence against drunken student?

A promise made is a debt unpaid.

I've loaded the canoe as noisily as I could. For a moment I thought I saw someone in the woods near a bunch of cedars but it was probably just an animal. I'm starting to get spooked, so I'd better go before I lose my nerve. Will continue if and when I can.

****

Pine Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

Mad Tom's habitation wouldn't yet meet his needs for the coming winter. It wasn't even up to the standard of the shelter at Osprey Lake, fifteen miles to the south. He'd built that place without much plan. A large pine had tumbled onto its side, the widespread roots lifting the base into the air. That had left a space almost Tom's height under the thick end of the tree. He'd made that into the roof beam of his place, clearing out the branches underneath and adding them to the sides. He'd piled branches to make a tent shape, then put rocks and mud as high on the branches as possible. A plastic tarp, stolen from the highway department, capped the works.

And that's how he'd passed the last winter. The shelter had been dark, leaky, and cold. and in every thaw water had run into it. Yet it had an advantage, in Tom's mind; it was pretty well invisible even to a low-flying helicopter.

But Osprey Lake is surrounded by some barren hills and impassable swamp. Swamps never really freeze in winter – the decay of vegetation warms the water – and people trying to cross it soon find themselves knee-deep in cold ooze, even at the beginning of February. Tom had much to learn in his first winter.

But, most importantly in Tom's mind, he'd completely escaped the men who wanted to control his life and edit his mind. No-one had entered that area from the time the duck hunters left in November until the first canoer passed through in late April.

There had been, of course, the distant rumble of airplanes heading into Toronto or Ottawa, but he kept out of sight when they went over. If a plane was leaving contrails, he was sure it included a nasty chemical spray that made people passive and stupid. That, he felt, was how the CIA controlled the world. For an hour afterwards, he'd breathe only through a filter made of several layers of cloth. If it was warm enough, he'd wash his clothes afterwards, too, then changing into a second set that was kept in a plastic garbage bag.

But the fact that no one had come near him made him think he could safely move to a place where there would be more game and less swamp. His explorations in the summer had taken him to Pine Lake, where he'd first met Paul, a year before.

But panic always shared a bed with fear and inertia in Tom, so he waited longer than he should have before committing himself to the move. Selecting a dense tract of pine, he finally began felling trees, with the intent of making a log cabin. It was still unfinished, and he was sleeping under the tarp each night.

While dragging a log from up the hill – he was careful to take trees only from places where their loss wouldn't be seen, from the lake or from the air – he saw Paul's canoe resting on the open space in the lake. Eyes wide, he set the log onto the ground and sat back onto his legs, watching in silence for half an hour or more. Then, slowly, he began to move towards the north end of the lake.

From the air the little island where Paul Gottsen lay face-up to the sun looked like a peninsula, connected to the west shore by a narrow strip of land. This was deceptive: the connection was bog, unstable and soft enough to sink a person waist deep in back muck. Tom, who didn't have a canoe, knew better than to try to get to the island that way.

Tom was almost opposite the island when he saw movement on the portage trail from Sparkler Lake.

He sat on his heels, becoming another rock or old stump on the landscape as Kimberly made her first portage with the pack and second with the canoe. He watched as she paddled out towards Paul.

****

Bancroft OPP. Fire Day. October 2.

At four o'clock the fire marshal for the county had a word or two with the officer in charge of the fire investigation.

"Arson?" asked the constable, sitting at his desk, frowning at some papers.

"For sure," said the fire marshal, standing near the window.

"Burned pretty fast."

"Stuffed with flammables. Burned hotter'n hell."

The constable shook his head, looked up. "Suicide?"

A pause. "Don't know for sure yet, but we didn't find any body parts."

"Hot, though."

"Not that hot. Never that hot, no matter what the movies say." He sat down: his feet hurt.

The constable left, came back with a cup of instant coffee for each of them. "Faked his own death? His car was still there."

"Someone might have picked him up on the highway."

"Or he might have left by boat."

"Boat? There's nowhere to go. Anyway, his boat was still there."

The policeman eyed the coffee like he was going to switch to real stuff someday. "He had a canoe somewhere if I recall. Or he might have stolen one from one of the neighbouring cottages. Most of those people won't be back till spring."

"Gone into the woods?"

"It happens."

"But why burn the cottage?" The fire marshal, old and bald, rubbed his neck.

"People in those cottages aren't always normal."

"You think?"

The policeman shook his head. "I know. Always planned to join them when I retired. Become a nut case. Can't talk the wife into it."

"I'll let you know for sure tomorrow when I check the ashes. Can you get a helicopter if we need one?"

"Probably. You'll need someone who knows the area, though."

"I guess."

****

Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student

Hi, Cindy. Paddling out across Pine Lake. Think Gottsen's on the island in the lake. `Bye for now.

****

Paul Gottsen. Fire Day. October 2.

I wish goodbye and good will to everyone. There are a lot of people out in this world, I mean now, when I'm leaving the planet. Ask them to forgive me; I've tried to forgive all the angels and clowns and bastards I met.

There's only one that I don't seem able to forgive and he's staring at the sky with one eye, watching a hawk circling over Pine Lake. He tried to buy forgiveness but always tried to pay with words. When his currency was rejected he became bitter, but all that's past and I find it doesn't mean anything.

Alone, Odysseus rants and raves in his crumbling kitchen, asking the Cyclops to forget the gift of darkness.

I was young when I did those things. Now I am become the Cyclops and I lie in the warmth of sun and feel the rock with my fingers.

I have been dishonest too long and honest too late. If I were Superman I'd have found one lost and troubled soul and rescued that one. I'd have built a bridge over someone's troubled water, but I was too busy at the keyboard trying to find truth where I could not find honesty.

I close my sore eyes. My head hurts and I'm dizzy. I love the sun up there.

I wanted my name to live on and gave up too much of my life and now it's all gone and here I am in the sunlight and it's all I care about. That and forgiveness and ending this pain.

All that I have ever done is lost in endless river run....

A canoe? Sounded like the thump of paddle. I'll stay here and talk to myself and the politeness of wilderness canoeists will take themselves on down the lake. Tomorrow they may be looking for me, but not today I think.

****

Island: Pine Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

There were the sounds of a canoe meeting rock. The granite of the Canadian Shield may look like smooth bones, but close up, the rocks aren't all that smooth. Any canoe can meet only so many of them in its lifetime, so the more competent and experienced a canoeist is, the gentler the meeting of billion-year-old rock and ten-year-old synthetic.

The object is to be gentle to the canoe but not to get one's feet wet. Wet feet are cold feet, in any season.

"I'm just having a rest!" Paul said, in a loud voice.

"Doctor Gottsen, I presume?" a female voice asked.

"I'll be in Samara tamarra," Paul said, his eyes still closed, panic in his brain.

"Tam and Rollie sent me."

"Did they send any whiskey?"

"A very nice bottle of Forty Creek."

Paul opened his eyes. The figure in front of him was unclear, but was wearing a brightly coloured cap. "Leave it and be gone." He waved one hand randomly.

"Screw you." Kimberley's tongue sometimes acted faster than her mind. "I want an interview for a paper I'm writing." That wasn't why she was on the island, but it popped out anyway.

"For Christ's sake, lady. I'm dying!" He lay his head back onto the rock and closed his eyes. The sunlight made the sky under his eyelids red. He'd written many scenes, but never one this absurd.

"So I hear. You want the whiskey or not? I can pour it into the lake if you want." She stood next to him, her hands on her hips.

"I want you to leave. I'll die sober then. Just as long as I die alone."

"You look like you've got a couple of days left in you." Kimberley stood with her arms on her hips.

"Go. Go away."

"That I can do." Kimberly didn't know what to do, but she needed time to think. Somehow she hadn't expected outright aggression. She started back to her canoe, then stopped. "You want a pillow for your head?"

He considered this a moment. "Yes."

She rolled a spare sweater and said, "Raise your head." When he did, she put it under him. "I might want this back."

"I doubt that I'll care. You think it'll be cold tonight?"

"No, I want to auction it on eBay. Of course it'll be cold tonight; it's October and it's going to be clear."

"Get a good price."

She waited for more, then noisily slid the canoe off the rock, leaving a streak of red, and paddled towards the west shore. She was perfectly aware that she was doing it all wrong. She'd made a promise and she didn't feel in her heart that Gottsen should be alone. But she was angry; angry at life and angry at Gottsen, and needed to work off some of that.

She followed the line of swamp, dodging rotten logs hosting colonies of plant life and plowing through lily-pad beds and pike grass like Godzilla through Tokyo. The odd bass left a swirl in the water as it got out of her way, but the lake was otherwise left to sun and the light autumn wind. One red maple and a couple of yellow birches lit the hills otherwise dark with pine.

The silence followed her; there were lots of small birds flocking in random groupings but this wasn't spring and they had little reason to make noise. A couple of skeins of geese flew out of sight along the far hills without their calls reaching her. The small splashes of her paddle and the rasping of water plants against the hull were all the noise in her world.

At the south end of the lake a thin creek drained the water of the lake, until stopped by a beaver dam a little farther along. She continued following the shore, first east, then north, her anger dissipating.

Not going far there, she tied the canoe to a small poplar and walked across a tall grass-and-thistle clearing to a two-room building clad in rusting metal. A sign identified it as belonging to the Hastings Snowmobile Club. The door was locked with a padlock, and the space under the eaves was strung with wasp nests and one large hornet globe. A few insects flew aimlessly. She retreated to her canoe and started north again, keeping her eyes on the shore and not on the island that grew close.

The hills angled down steeply to the lake for the most part, and for a while she could see that there was no good place to put up a tent. Finding one spot flatter than most and sheltered by pines, she pulled in the canoe, and was about to explore when she stepped just out of the canoe, wondering what she was looking at. Then she realized it was a lean-to, a shelter, and, judging from the branches against it, a work still in progress. It blended into the woods.

She started backing up when she got the feeling someone was watching her. Once on the lake, she looked back. For a second or two she thought she saw a face.

In less than an hour she had circled the lake and was approaching the island again. She found a dead tree and filled the canoe with any branches she could break into sections small enough to move. Back at the island, she ran the canoe onto a soft spot and got out, then dragged it well up onto the land. Then she stacked the branches beside the firepit.

Paul Gottsen made no sound. Kimberley walked over to him. His eyes were closed, but she could see he was still breathing. He was either asleep, playing possum, or unconscious. Clenching her teeth, she sat down on a log then took out her phone to do some texting.

****

Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student

Hi, Cindy:

I'm fine. Have a good camp site on Pine Lake. Yes, I'll be back in a day or two. Nice and peaceful here.

\---------------------------

Hi, Me:

I'm here on the island in Pine Lake and the afternoon's getting on. Paul Gottsen is lying in the sunlight using my sweater as a pillow. He's still breathing, but hasn't opened his eyes. I don't know whether he's sleeping or what.

I don't know what to do. Should I try to wake him up? I don't think he's in any shape to go back over the portage. He doesn't have any sleeping equipment, not even a jacket and it's going to be a cold night, I think.

Worse that that, there's some creepy guy who's built a hidden shelter in the woods on the shore of the lake. I'm glad I'm on an island. Maybe the best thing would be to see if I can get back to the car before dark, but I'm not sure that's going to be possible.

I suppose I could put my sleeping bag and tent over Paul and leave the food and just take the canoe. Go for help, like. But I'd feel creepy hauling the canoe out with that guy in the woods; you can't see who's coming behind you when you're portaging. Life, death, and decisions, like.

But I think I'm going to stay. Right here. Till whenever, I don't know. But at least I can make camp and get the tent up and cook some supper. That much I can do. It'll keep me busy for now. I can't go back to Tam and tell her I just left him there. I can't do that.

****

Peter Finer, Journalist

From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.

I spent the night at my sister's place, contemplating light, and playing my part. It may have been dark on Paul's island, but the house was filled with light.

Sometimes it seems to me that light is all one thing, one big spotlight on a stage of clowns. It bounces and reflects and disappears behind a door like a young woman in a French bedroom farce. The light from the bulbs in the ceiling reflected off the cards I held.

It reflected off a room full of clowns, big smiles painted on their faces. My sister got a phone call. It sounded like it was from someone she wasn't really fond of. She listened a lot, nodding her head and making reflections from her glasses dance around the room, but showed no inclination to return to the card game, which she was winning. Her husband had liquid gold light in his glass, trying to get stupid in a reasonable time. He had a head start.

They had their demons, I know, but they fight the same fight with those demons and with each other again and again, unwilling to admit they can't ever win. I saw a candle in a jar and lit it; and somehow even that annoyed them, but they were to polite to me to say so.

Three hours earlier, on Pine Lake, the light that had bounced off the bow waves of a blue canoe and off a million yellow leaves on the portage, then danced away, came back, and later converged in the flare of a match. Kimberley had discovered Paul on the island, mumbling and sick, and set up camp there.

The match she used undoubtedly reminded the writer of the one he'd used to torch his life. Who, he must have wondered, was this angel in a canoe, carrying fire and warmth against the fall of darkness.

****

Island: Pine Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

Kimberley put her small brown tent up on a suitably flat spot. It was, of course, a self-supporting tent. She'd once seen a couple try to use a tent held up by stakes in this rocky country. They'd given up finally, laying each stake on the rock surface then piling stones on it. Even then, the tent had sagged in the night.

She spread out everything she was going to need, inflated her air mattress, then put the sleeping bag onto it. The food, a book to read, and the other things a civilized person can't do without she spread out on the rock. Then she stood by the writer, watching him. His breath came unevenly, and a late-season deerfly crawled across his forehead without waking him. She fanned it away with her hand, then swatted it when it tried out the back of her neck, as deerflies do.

Gottsen still didn't move, so she cooked up a supper in a small fry pan. She'd brought a block of frozen chili, trusting it to thaw on the journey.

Then she looked at the bottle of Forty Creek whiskey, in its plastic bottle, and thought blank thoughts, sitting with her knees drawn up tight and her arms wrapped around them, watching the dark pines on the shore and the patterns on the water. After a minute, she began to cry.

Abruptly, Paul spoke. "We chased dreams that summer, and waters and Fridays. And ourselves. We pursued ourselves. And when we could find no more dreams, we followed the winds. Do you know about that?" He kept his eyes closed.

"Where are the dreams when you get old?" Kimberley asked. "Do the waters disappear into the sea and the winds merely chill your bones?" She got up to add a couple of twigs to the fire. "But, to answer your question, yes, I lived last summer like that. It was too good."

"We weren't new to it," Paul continued, "but we grew smiles like the trees grow leaves. Blue lakes and green fish under the magic surface, until long shadows scared us off the waters. We owed nothing to anyone but ourselves and we paid each other in what coin we had."

"You talk in poetry and parables and icons and legends, just like one critic said."

"There will be Fridays and winds and warm May afternoons, and couples chasing their dreams and cagey bass hiding under lily pads from your canoe. There will. I think I can promise you that. I can't see you, you know. My eyes. What's your name?"

"Kimberley Molley." She spelled the last part. "You talk like you're writing another novel. Or quoting yourself."

"It insulates me from the truth that burns." He paused. "Same girl that was here before?"

"Same one," she said.

"Can I have a drink of water; I'm awfully dry."

"No problem. Can you sit up?" She poured water from her bottle into a cup.

He sat up. After a long drink, he said, "I forgive you all your sins."

"Thanks." That and a quarter will get me a phone call if I can find Superman's phone booth."

****

News Release: Bancroft Police Service

Fire at Cottage on Long Lake Termed "Suspicious"

October 2:

For More Information contact Constable Bruce Knight, Bancroft Police Service

This afternoon, October 2, the district Fire Marshall determined that there were no human remains in the cottage that burned on Long Lake. The fire was reported this morning when the Bancroft Fire Department was called to the scene. At the time some neighbours believed that the owner, Paul Gottsen, was likely inside at the time of the fire.

Police are asking for public assistance in locating Mr. Gottsen, a white male, aged 62. His car and motorboat were at the scene. Police are checking to see if a canoe was burned in the fire, or if any other boats nearby are missing.

****

Mad Tom's Diary

Across the skies of doom and dawn the angels vend their wares. But all they sell are words, nothing but words on old paper. Yet the people buy; yet the people buy. All Paul ever sold was words; I have read them. Some are better than any the angels sold.

All around the world the prophets danced and sang and still dance and sing. And all those men ever peddled were words, same stuff Paul tried to sell.

I think if there were a God and if he ever came to visit this outhouse planet and watch our little tragicomedy he would be known by this: there would be no words: He would arrive in a thunder of silence.

\-------------

I followed her along the shore. I watched her as she looked at my home. I watch her now. She must be part of the enemy; the odds are too small to be otherwise. Now they know where I am. She must not be allowed to get back over the hill. Or will killing her bring more? I don't know what I want. I don't.

What are women to a raggedy wood buffoon? Nothing any more; but this memory of a girl. Somewhere long ago where the mine drips water and the floor is littered with dead canaries among the diamonds, hiding because I knew they'd come hunting me, frightened of my Frankengenes. I found her, or she found me, and then there was some time we spent face to face and hand in hand, our crooked souls hunkered in that shared darkness, back to back, grasping cudgels, waiting against the frantic coming of torch and yell and the smell of burning fur.

I do not blame her. There are many roads on this planet.

You think I am damned.

Not ever so much as those in Japanese cars driving in the November rain to work, lost souls in lines on the Queen Lizzie Highway at seven in the morning. The stars they promised themselves are down to headlights, and the traffic slows to a crawl to pass some poor bastard changing a tire with no help from God.

They dream now of sleeping in on Saturday and raking leaves off their tiny estates, while someone else sings songs to their car radios, and other souls, lost in their thousands, have no idea that I'll be in the woods again. If they laugh at me I'll cry for them.

I watch her make a fire and set up a tent.

****

Island: Pine Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

"You're planning on staying?" His left eye was working a bit better now, and he could see that she was young. He remembered being at campsites with young women; this was not the same.

"Too late to look for another campsite now."

"What time is it?" He drank more water from her cup. He regretted not being dead.

She pulled out her phone and inspected the dial. "Just after four. I'll be dark in an hour."

"You got that right. And cold." The writer reached into his jacket inner pocket, taking out a small brown bottle of pills. Carefully, he started to open the lid.

"I'll take those," Kimberley said, removing the bottle from his hand and inspecting the label. "Aha. Planning on getting enough sleep with these?"

"Give them back. They're not yours."

"Are now." She stepped back.

"I want them. I came here to die and I need them for that."

"Rollie and Tam figured that."

"And you're going to stop me? That's cruel, you know."

"Oh, I don't intend to stop you." Kimberley looked towards the forest and not at him, and stuffed the bottle into a pocket. "I just haven't got my interview yet, if you remember."

"You," he said, " are a perverse bitch. Let me die."

"Heck, I'll help you. As soon as I've got my information." In truth, she didn't have a clue what she was doing, or why, but something in her didn't want to spend the night with a corpse on this Pine Lake. "Meanwhile, would you like something to eat?"

"You've got spare food?" He got up and moved to his canoe, then sat down using the canoe as a backrest.

"I prepared for a three-day trip, and somehow I don't think I'll be here that long. I've got some chili con carne and bread, if you want."

There was a long pause. "I'd die for some right now. If it's hot: I'm getting cold now."

She turned the lid of a frypan into a plate for him, then put chili on it, with a piece of bread on the side. She opened a couple of his sleeping pills and mixed the contents into the food. "The sun's just starting to go behind the hills. It'll be cold soon, she said." She handed him the food, along with water in a plastic bottle. He said nothing, but ate slowly.

****

Tam Speaks

No, it wasn't the rejection of Stolen Rain that walled him in here. Oh, I mean.... Well, he certainly wasn't pleased with it. I mean, who would be, but he always thought that someday, maybe long after he was gone, that they'd come around to it. I guess that that's happened to lots of books. But he didn't bring it up, often, maybe a remark when he was drunk or something. People liked Paul, though.

The lake's getting cold and clear and dark, isn't it? It gets cold these nights. I wouldn't want to be out there tonight.

He said he was becoming his cat.

What did he mean by that? Probably that were in their own boundaries, eating and sleeping too much, spending too much time watching out the windows. Not much in the cabin but his writing table and his bed. He once told me the restlessness faded after a few years and didn't come back till it was too late. He spent a long time each day with that mouse. I think he had to write not to dry up and blow away.

I agree with him: every woman should own a cat. It's the best way to understand men.

He never forgave himself. I don't know for what. I told him I'd forgive him, but he refused to talk about it, even when drunk; he just clammed up tighter. Maybe something to do with his second wife.

No, don't be silly; we were never close like that. I'm married, you know.

His favourite character? Superman. A guy who does the world only good and has no coffee friendships. Does that make sense? Except me, maybe, and Rollie. I made him cookies sometimes. And he and Rollie would go fishing in the boat, with a bottle of whiskey they didn't tell me about. At first, anyway. Then they stopped doing that a few years ago. Maybe he said something to Rollie. How would I know?

Oh, yeah. It gets kind of... quiet.... out here after the summer people have gone. Me and Rollie, we wanted someplace like this, but if I didn't have my job in Peterborough, I could go bananas. We wanted a place to watch nature. We weren't young and all anymore. Sometimes at four in the morning in the first couple of years, I'd go out and stand at the edge of the drive just beyond the porch light, where the road blends into darkness.

Love is a torch; too bright, you know. It lets you see the road, but not the stars. That's my line, not Paul's.

Rollie and I put our first Christmas tree on the tiny kitchen table. The cottage was small – we added on later – and we needed the bedroom, of course. For three weeks we ate supper sitting on the kitchen floor, cups and dishes spread all around us.

We had a brass bed. They were popular then Paul said brass beds should come with warnings. And a wonderful quilt bought from the Mennonite auction. We watched winter come; I remember it. Peaceful, very peaceful.

No, not then. We were here for three years before Paul bought the cottage next door. He seemed a likeable fellow, but I learned to watch his eyes. There was always too much going on in there, and he really hated the way he always tried to please people when he didn't want to.

Friends. Yes, I'd say Paul and Rollie and I were friends, or as close to friends as he had then. It was easy for a woman to be friends with Paul. He genuinely thought all women were beautiful. I remember once I was supposed to meet him in Peterborough for lunch. He was going in to town for paint or whatever. I was just a bit late, but when he saw me he smiled like his world had been remade, and hugged me till I could hardly breathe. Every woman deserves to be thought beautiful, if only for a few heartbeats.

Paul and I? I told you. Just friends. Of course Rollie didn't trust him very far, but that's Rollie. I'm a bit overweight, at the moment. Paul said that the instant men die, they dream of thin angels, thin beautiful angels, because they know there can be no overweight women in heaven. He said men on earth do not trust overweight women, since these obviously do not know the way to Heaven.

****

Rollie Speaks

He could be a son of a bitch sometimes, but I guess that's true of everybody on this lake, at least the ones who stay here year round. Me, too, I guess. Some days it was best that we just avoided each other; other times we went fishing. A couple of times, near the beginning, when he first got here, we went camping overnight back in the little lakes. But that didn't last. We just didn't have enough we could agree about that we could talk about around a campfire.

Oh, yeah, I liked him well enough, at least at the start. At least most of the time. We'd go out in his boat and fish. Didn't catch a lot, although one time he brought in an eight-pound lake trout on a jig. He wouldn't use worms, which are the best bait in this lake. He didn't like to hurt things, or people, at least physically hurt them.

He wouldn't talk about his books, especially that one that nobody liked. I tried to read it – Tam got a copy, but it was way over my head. I'm a plain and simple guy, strong as concrete and not much brighter some days. If the world ends, concrete remains.

Paul was deeper. You'd look into his eyes and not necessarily like what you thought you saw. And he tried so hard to make people like him. Worked at it, and then they'd see that look in his eyes and not trust him as far as they could throw him.

Trust him? Well, if I were on a lake in winter and fell through the ice, he'd be there. But if I needed somebody to tell me I was a nice guy when the world was about to dump me, I don't know. I guess I'll never know, now.

I taught him about liquid and solid, about water and land. I'm like the rock at the edge of the shore. It doesn't take much to figure it out because it's not going anywhere. He was like the water in the lake. Changed all the time, and there were fast currents in the wind and currents moving too slow to see.

He didn't know much about boats or water before he got here. We'd go out into the lake with a bottle of whiskey Tam wasn't supposed to know about, and fish and talk about things. I told him that people are like clowns in a big circus; most of them just don't know it.

Solid and steady. I work in concrete, you know. Treat it right and it's strong as rock. That's what Tam saw in me, you know. She'd had some pretty miserable excuses for boyfriends, and I guess she liked a bit of stability. With me, what you get is what you're gonna get.

That's not always good, you know. You look at concrete and in the corners there's candy wrappers that skuttle and skitter around in the wind, as Paul might have expressed it, and a weed that waves in that wind. The weed's alive, and the trash just seems alive, and people are both and if you want all that movement you don't want me. Go enjoy the weeds. While they last.

Some of my best friends were just life's clowns. Circus players. The good ones were like trapeze artists on the wire, but they found out you have to be careful then. If you fall, and no one gasps or even hides a smile, you might as well run from the tent before they start applauding the clowns instead.

Do you get what I'm saying? Tam sort of did, at the first, but then she'd heard it all so I stopped saying it before she thought I was a clown, too.

We were in love then, or as much love as we could be. I was a rock, steady and dull. She was more like a long-winged bird. Paul told me that; he said even on a rock on the shore, she'd always be feeling the wind on her feathers, feeling the edge of some hurricane with want and fearing.

I guess I was hoping she'd change. She did, a bit, but she always missed the storms. Even though she learned she couldn't fly above them after all.

****

Island: Pine Lake. Fire Day. October 2.

"They'll come looking for me," he said. "Sooner or later, they'll figure out I wasn't in the cabin when it burned." He turned his best eye towards her. "You know about the cabin?"

She explained how she'd come to the lake.

"Ah," he said. "That was you I heard in the dark. Explains a few things. Got any more chili, by any chance?"

"A bit," she said, scraping some off her plate. "Want bread with that?"

"It would be good. My stomach hurts all the time nowadays, and food helps. Does it bother you to share your food with a guy who doesn't plan to be around to digest it?"

"Not at all," she lied, and they both knew it. She watched the far shore. The writer finished the food, then lay down and closed his eyes.

The shadows from the hills crept across the campsite and the temperature dropped abruptly.

She got into her canoe, then paddled across the lake to the portage site. The wind was gone and the lake was glassy smooth, reflecting the last light falling onto the trees. A loon watched her without comment.

When she got out, there was a very large man sitting on a log. He wore a dark brown coat with darker stains. His jeans were worn, and his black army boots had a rip along one edge. On his head was a blue nylon head covering.

"Paul is on the island," she said. "He's going to kill himself. He's dying." Then she just stood there, waiting. A few golden leaves fell.

Mad Tom thought about this. He wrapped his arms tightly around himself. If it were a trap, it was a pretty ingenious one. Paul had explained his illness, and Tom had agreed that spending the last of your life unable to move, with tubes feeding you while your mind drove itself crazy wasn't all that appealing. Although he still suspected the government had fed Paul some radioactive stuff as a way of getting rid of him. But they were pretty devious, you know. He decided that the whole thing was getting more suspicious every moment.

"I don't know what to do." She looked at the island, deep in shadow.

For Tom, that changed everything. The ones that he was hiding from always knew what to do. And when his father was dying, when Tom was young, those had been among his father's last words. Tom had repeated them much of his life.

"To thine own self be true," Tom looked up at Kimberly. "I don't know what to do, either." His eyes filled with tears. "Don't let him die alone."

"Do you want to be there?"

"I can't. Not in the dark." Tom got up and walked into the long, long shadows.

For a while Kimberley watched the island. Then she gathered more firewood. The lake grew black. The temperature dropped steadily. Then she paddled back across the lake.

Paul was crouched near the remnants of the fire. He had dragged a dry branch close and was feeding the last few twigs into the tiny flame. When she approached, he said, "It's time," without turning his head. "Where are the pills?"

"Tomorrow," she said.

"Why wait?"

She dragged another, larger, branch close to the fire, and began adding pieces of it. The flame grew. "I don't know what to do," she said.

"You don't have to do anything. Just give me the pills and go to bed."

"And listen to you die?"

"I'll try to be quiet," he said.

"I won't sleep. There will be a dead man out in the dark beside my tent."

"I didn't ask for you." He sounded angry. "Go away. I want to die." He poked the fire. "Now."

"Can't you wait till tomorrow morning?" She wanted to put her hand on his back, but rejected the idea.

"I'll freeze here." He shoved an ember deeper into the fires of burning Troy.

"I have a sleeping bag. You can have it. Need to use the facilities first?" She waved towards a bush.

"I'll be fine. What will you do? If I use your sleeping bag?"

"Sit up all night, maybe. Think a lot." She looked across the lake, but the shoreline was swallowed in the darkness. The moon was coming up over the hills there, to judge by a rim of silver along the tops.

"You'll freeze. There's not enough firewood around, and too dark now to get more."

"You're awful considerate to the bitch who stole your suicide bottle."

"You got a point there." He stood up, shakily, and let her flashlight guide him into the tent. "I have your promise?" he asked, as he slid into the sleeping bag. "This is a rather large bag."

"You can exit this planet at breakfast, if you want. Pills and whiskey should do it. My promise. Cross my heart and hope you die."

"God, I'm tired," he said, closing his eyes. "Tired beyond redemption." She turned out the flashlight, and waited for a few minutes. There was no noise but his breathing.

She made her way to the edge of the lake, and sat, her feet almost to the edge of the liquid dark. There was no spark to mark a fire from Tom's lean-to. A small wind stirred the fire behind her. She put her head down and began to cry, quietly and steadily.

Later she sat beside what was left of the fire, a faint glow, and read a light romance novel by flashlight. She checked her watch a few times, until it was past nine. Fall evenings could be very long. When she discovered that she'd fallen asleep twice, she gave up and went to the tent.

The sleeping bag was large and square. She and Fred had spent the night in it more than once, and she enjoyed the sense of space it gave her, compared to most sleeping bags. She slowly pulled one edge up, rolling Paul's form, breathing unevenly, to one side. Then she slid in.

It was close, but he didn't move, and an eternity later it seemed, she drifted into sleep.

****

Mad Tom's Diary

What if Paul dies before I get a chance to kill him? Do I have to kill the girl? That would make them hunt me like a cougar. Only if they come hunting me. I'll wait. If they find me, they'll have a fight on their hands!

We the damned of earth persist. Some of us under branches and leaves, afraid to light a candle and eating stale bread. Fearing the winter, in case it drives him out, and they say, "There's Mad Tom come staggering out of the woods finally!"

More damned than that by far are those driving to work that winter day in salt-caked cars, their dreams of gathering stars in cupped hands whittled down to dreams of sleeping in on Saturdays.

Who more damned than those waiting for the Jesus and after two thousand years a plastic Jesus for the car is all we can touch. Don't condemn me! I tried. The church was big but the population on the main floor was me and echoes. I skulked down until the doors closed and went to see if this church had any foundations to its theology. Such was my need.

In the crystalline minutes before midnight I was crawling along the west wall of St. Grotesque of the Subway's basement, My hands feeling for hidden panels, loose tiles, for carefully-hidden keyholes.

A priest, flashlight wavering, knelt beside me, startling my seeker heart.

"I've figured it out," I told him. "There's a passageway here, somewhere. It goes through God's orifice, and out His muzzle to streets of gold, pearly gates, platinum wings. The carpenter's son was devious, but I've figured the code."

He turned off the flashlight, sat down. "Go ahead," he said. "It might work. God knows, nothing else has."

I hope there's no helicopters come seeking me in the morning, but I fear the girl and I may have been wrong about Paul all along. They won't take me alive. If she were prettier, I could be more certain.

****

Bancroft OPP. Fire Day. October 2.

Just before eight o'clock the officer in charge of the fire investigation phoned the fire marshal for the county at home.

"No change in your decision that the fire was deliberately set?" the constable asked.

"Can't see any reason to change my mind. You found the owner yet?" The fire marshal's favourite program of the week was coming up in four minutes, and he had a beer and a bucket of popcorn beside him. His wife and kids knew better than to interrupt this ritual, but apparently, this policeman did not. The popcorn was getting cold and the beer was getting warm, and there wasn't going to be any extra pay for this conversation. He regretted having asked the question. Or having answered the phone.

"Nothing yet. We've got a helicopter coming in from Trenton."

"You think he's back in the woods?" The show had started and the fire marshal turned the volume up, low.

"Probably. Word is, he's really sick – terminal, and may have gone out in the bush to do himself in."

"You're not going to let him?"

"We'd have to bring the body in anyway. I hate it when these fuckers do that. Nothing but trouble. You want to be part of the search?"

"Thanks, but no thanks. I'll be back at the fire site again tomorrow but only for a few minutes."

"I'll let you know what happens."

"I'd appreciate that."

****

News Release: Bancroft Police Service

Police Seek "Person of Interest"

October 2

For More Information contact Constable Bruce Knight, Bancroft Police Service 705-211-1508

Police are asking the public's help in locating Mr. Paul Gottsen, 62 owner of a cottage that was destroyed by fire this morning on Long Lake.

Since there is the possibility that Mr. Gottsen may be camping in the interior, campers and cottage owners are asked to watch for him. He may be in a blue canoe.

****

Peter Finer, Journalist

From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.

Sooner or later, most of us will arrive at the place where we will die.

For most of us, there will be at least an element of uncertainty. The hospital may cure us, however old an infirm we are. The Shady Pines Full Care Retirement Home may, at the last minute, ship us off to the hospital, via an ambulance and a couple of medical technicians who are duty-bound to detour us to the hospital and not drive us straight to the cemetery where they might more logically prop our wheezing person up against a tree, break out a case of Bud Light, and phone for a pizza.

Paul Gottsen intended to join literary icons like Hemingway by pre-engineering the moment of his death.

Hemingway, not ready to move his person across the river and into the trees, but knowing for whom this bell tolled, managed his welcome to arms (or at least to his shotgun), and arranged his own death in the afternoon, all in his own room. Handy that, if a bit lazy.

Paul Gottsen, sick and staggering over the hills with a canoe on his back, chose, for some reason, to annoy a number of the nabobs of officialdom (who prefer one to die in a hospital, however long that takes after the terminal diagnosis is made) by getting himself to Pine Lake. Not coincidentally, that was the name of the seventh – and probably never finished – novel in his series.

He probably wished that the critics of Stolen Rain would have to personally haul his ass back over the portage, but you can't have everything.

But, whatever his condition at the time, he dredged up the energy to cross two portages and paddle to an island in Pine Lake itself. When I told his doctor what he'd done, the doctor just shook his head in disbelief, and said Gottsen had been told to show up at a hospital two weeks before.

Some people who have gone camping in the area on a fine autumn day have compared the experience to walking through a church and feeling the presence of God built everywhere in yellow leaf. Something in it – even I found this, a day later – impels belief. Each lake's a chalice, full of time and fish and dreams, and reflects, in stillness, the heavens, renewing a promise that this world is more than what we can see.

The route to Pine Lake passes through one stretch of beech that reminded me of the nave of a great Gothic cathedral. When I set the canoe down for a rest, I thought, all this place lacks is a choir. At that moment a long strand of Canada geese passed over, and I needed nothing more.

Did Paul see this? I doubt it. Maybe several times in the past, but not this time. The colours were a farewell, not a welcome. I would have been more appropriate in a cold autumn rain instead of this blazing colour.

We can imagine his state of mind as he paddled to the island, the last ripples of his canoe, of his life, fading and dying against the shores. He must have seen that as his life, convinced that he would be remembered only as a passing entry, in some list, under "other authors".

Since buying the cottage a few years before, he'd taken to the canoe and the lakelands with a vengeance, turning his back onto the literary world and exploring the hills and waters with his little blue canoe. He should have been writing Dark Lake, but there would have been no peace in his heart from that.

He passed that day sitting with his back against the canoe, watching the movement of leaves in the wind and the sway of reeds. From time to time a skein of geese would pass over, or a few ducks. Once or twice, a flock of a thousand blackbirds would swirl in the skies, then disappear to the south.

He contemplated the bottle of sleeping pills without emotion. Yet he didn't swallow them. That's the amazing part; all day he didn't do what he'd come to do.

Was he waiting for someone? There was only one person he knew of in the area: Tom Barents, known to the locals as "Mad Tom". But, as far as Paul knew, Mad Tom was living some distance away, by the shores of Buzzard Lake.

He didn't know that Kimberley Molley had crossed Long Lake and was setting up camp at Sparkler Lake. Or that she planned to continue on to Pine Lake the next morning.

And so the shadows along the eastern shore shortened then vanished, and the shadows from the trees on the western shore grew longer.

In the evening he was hungry, but had brought no food. He dragged closer a small fallen tree. Breaking off the smallest branches he lit a tiny fire.

Darkness washed in, and he saw the stars come out one by one and begin their slow transit of the sky. The trees along the ridges seemed to sift those stars, to tickle Jupiter, to touch the rising moon.

It's all new wood in the Kawartha forests. A century before there had been log shanties all winter on the lake, and men cutting the tall white pines. Laughter and card-playing, talk and boasting.

But on Paul's last night there was only darkness, the small slap of waves on rock, and the soft hoot of an owl.

I believe that eventually he let the tiny fire die down to ashes, then go out. His own fire was scheduled for extinction, and while a fire stands between you and darkness, it also stands between you and the stars.

There are lots of stars above Pine Lake in the hours before the moon comes up.

Sitting with his back on the upturned canoe hull, time would speed up. He knew the stars didn't move: it was the Earth that turned, with the writer stuck like a rider on a circus wheel. The pine-barbed eastern hills would drop, hell-bent, while the west would rise, climbing the ladder of night towards the stars. It was magic; it was beautiful; it would never be his again.

For him, the whole world cartwheels around a now-hidden sun, pushing up through galactic dust, tilting towards Virgo, in a sandstorm of stars, burning themselves into rust, as he had done.

But perhaps his vision was not that from the dark well of Pine Lake. Perhaps he could look down from above the Earth, from space, and try to see the tiny spark of his fire even before it turned itself to ashes.

He'd see the ragged line of dusk sweeping Pacific islands into the darkness, the stars beyond turning slowly, and dawn creeping over Africa, still hours away. But the dying spark of his little fire is too small to see even in that darkness. Somewhere, a million people watch the television's glow or surf the net. But he sits, hurting, in the dark, watching the galaxies slide by and hearing mysterious splashes in the lake. Eventually, the moon rises and moves slowly across the sky. At last, he has stopped thinking, stopped remembering, and just watches. The shadows move slowly as the moon crosses the sky.

He held the bottle of pills in his hand and watched the world, passive. Finally, after all these years, he didn't think of Willow, his second wife. He no longer felt the guilt, or the pain.

****

How They Met

I have received a number of requests for information on how some of the major characters in this narration met their significant others. Here are such details as I have available.

Mad Tom and Zyla

Tom met Zyla in the basement of a church one cold Thanksgiving evening in Toronto, on Jarvis Street. hey started talking in the line up for the free meal, then sat down together. She explained that she'd taken the name "Zyla" to ensure she would generally be chosen last in most things. She figured God would know better.

Tom, of course, was not a big fan of the Deity, and denied that he would ever be chosen. Being dedicated to non sequiturs, he followed that with something like, "I am the wild pig skulking among lilacs, rooting in the memories you thought you'd forgotten. I am the angel of the strange heart, sitting in mud, covering myself with yellow leaves."

When Zyla looked puzzled – shelter people didn't always make sense, but they were seldom this poetic about it, he added, "I am Adam's son in high leather boots, waltzing alone on a moonless night, under wringing clouds, wondering if anyone will ever speak my true name." Then he shouted, "aieee! aieee! aieee! I am that I am!" to which a few murmured, "Amen!."

"You are many things, then?" Zyla laughed.

He laughed, too, agreeing, "it would take me days, perhaps weeks just to haul all the costumes down to the Sally Ann."

Within eighteen minutes they had agreed to look for God in the churches of Toronto, but only in the basements and attics. Surprisingly, they kept up this quest for over a month before Zyla left him a note that she'd gone to Winnipeg for the winter. Tom found no trace of God in any of the churches.

Paul and Willow

Paul met Willow when he was 25, and divorced. He had a day job behind the counter of a Ministry of Transport outlet, writing his second novel (the first never having been published) at night. Willow came to get her driver's license changed back to her maiden name. Paul whispered that he'd sure like the chance to change his name so his first wife would stop using it. Willow laughed, and Paul, despite the fact that he could have been fired for it, noted her phone number.

During a conversation at a Williams Coffee Pub on Fairway Avenue, she asked him why he wrote novels, an unlikely endeavour for the hours it took.

He told her that he wanted his thoughts to live when his body was cold. He wanted to be more than a shadow at three, and last summer's waves on last summer's shores, fading sound on a gray hill.

She tilted her head and mentioned that most novelists die in obscurity, and perhaps God had other plans for him.

"No," he said. "I will get nothing from the tooth fairy when I spit out my last tooth, no praise from the nurses when they finally diaper me, and nothing when I say my last word. But they'll remember me; I was the one who ate his meals on a TV tray because I would not stop trying to carve my name into the oak dining table. Nobody discards fine oak."

So she asked if she could read the novel he'd finished. He hesitated, because he had major reservations about it (as had a flock of publishers). But he agreed.

Rollie and Tam

Rollie was supervising an early morning project pouring concrete at an interchange just north of Burleigh Falls in deep spring fog when he saw Tam. She'd parked her car down the road and had set up a camera and tripod. He walked over to check out what she was doing; he didn't want to end up on a CBC documentary or something.

Satisfied that she just liked photography, he got her a hard hat and rather large steel boots, then let her onto the work site, after he'd explained the areas where she definitely couldn't go.

A half hour later the fog and the shafts of sunlight no longer danced among the machines and men, and Tam said goodbye, handing back the equipment. Rollie handed her his business card. She hesitated, then wrote her phone number on it, handing it back. "Call me in a week, and I'll give you some prints if any turn out okay," she said.

They met a week later, in a little café in Lakefield. Rollie was pleased at the quality of the prints she gave him, and promised to frame them for his home on the lake. In response to one, Tam said God must have really enjoyed Himself that morning. "He does the work," Tam explained. "I just try to get little pieces of it."

Rollie frowned and shook his head. "I believe in a God that created the universe, I guess, but what I've seen of this planet doesn't make me think it was planned. I think God strides the galaxy to watch his handiwork (which he thinks is really good – he does a great job on planets and stars). I think sometimes he rolls a few comets inward towards a sun because they're so nifty.

"That," said Rollie, "has its hazards." He raised his doughnut: "sometimes a planet is hit by a comet, and becomes infested with life, which is harder than a tar stain to remove." His eyes showed he was making a joke.

"Just an accident, are we?"

"Well, after a while, I think God just gives up trying to clean off his planet, and watches the accidental show, especially if it produces some good clowns."

"Sometimes I wonder," she said, deep into a triple-chocolate cookie. "It's hard to believe some people have any other purpose."

"That's what the moon is for," Rollie said. "Sometimes He wants a night time show as well."

Kimberley and Fred

Kimberley was friends with Cindy because they'd both come to Lakefield U from Cobourg, leaving home for the first time. By the following spring Cindy was spending her time with Paul. Paul's close friend was Fred, so Kimberley got to know Fred around a university cafeteria table.

One day Cindy told Kimberley that she and Paul were going canoeing. Kimberley was a bit hesitant, not having been in a canoe since summer camp eight years before. "Is there anything but bugs out there?" she asked.

It was Fred who supplied his answer first. "It's holy," he said. "It must have been just an accident of history that Jesus got born in a dry Middle Eastern country."

"You think?" Paul asked.

"For sure. Had Jesus canoed around here, in a red canoe, every pope would be paddling out to greet people on Easter."

"They'd have to flood the Vatican," Cindy said.

"Oh, I think a northern Michelangelo would have painted God and man on some cliff face, and the cathedral would be made of tall pines swaying in the wind. It wouldn't be dark and closed in – there would be sunlight and moonlight to bless everyone who came to pray." Fred smiled. "And they could fish in church if they wanted."

In a minute, Kimberley had decided to go canoeing with the group.

****

And yet Peter Finer, reporter with a thesaurus and ambition, sleeping in his in-law's cottage, had it wrong. Paul Gottsen didn't stay up watching the stars; rather, he spent the night in a sleeping bag with Kimberley Molley. At once point he got up to urinate, waking Kimberley. When he got back, she helped him into the sleeping bag, and eventually he slept again. Eventually, so did she.

Peter drifted off to sleep not dreaming of lakes and starlight, but wondering if Paul Gottsen had actually written the last novel of his life, and then burned it in the cottage.

Across the lake from Paul and Kimberley,, Mad Tom tried to figure the best way to get to the island, till the effort put him asleep, scratching at some insect biting his neck.

Tam and Rollie shared a bed back on Long Lake, the smoke from Paul Gottsen's cottage still ruining the cold night air. Rollie slept; Tam didn't.

One day over: one more to go in this story. In the last seconds before sleep took them, each of the characters might have been wise to ask themselves, "Why this day and where has it gone when the ripples settle and the moon comes over the hogback hill?

" _Why a blue canoe that made diamonds on the water surface, the prodigal sun burning overhead and Paul's hand cold with water running down the paddle? And why the marsh, empty of redwings (the woven nests swaying in the wind from the north)?"_

The lakes go clear in fall, and golden birch leaves goldenroad the portage trails, and high clouds write on the sky. This is lesson enough, perhaps.

" _Why this day, you ask again," not comprehending, "and where has it gone when the ripples settle and the moon comes over the hogback hill?"_

The next chapter holds as much or as little answer as there is.

****
CHAPTER THREE

****

Bancroft OPP. Day After Fire Day.

The constable in charge of the investigation said, "Yeah, thanks," into the phone, and hung up, meaning, thanks for nothing, buddy.

He'd been told that there was no helicopter available for at least a day. Someone needed one to look for a small boat stolen by some teens and now missing off Toronto, and the other was in for maintenance. Furthermore, it had been hinted that the constable's request wasn't going to be a high priority. If Gottsen were alive, he probably wasn't lost and therefore wouldn't need a helicopter. If he were dead, he could wait patiently for one.

The constable in charge of the investigation into the fire on Long Lake reached for the phone again. There might be a plane available locally.

Half an hour later the bad station-house coffee was screwing up his digestion, and he had a plane. It wasn't a float plane, so he couldn't land anywhere except back at the Bancroft airport, but at least it was a plane. The pilot had been having a disagreement with his wife over pesticides, weeds, and ecology, so he was glad to get out of the house. The police didn't pay a heck of a lot for such a search, but everything looked better at a few thousand feet.

When the pilot got to the airport, the cop was waiting for him. Twenty-five minutes later they were airborne, heading south to look for a blue canoe with an arsonist inside.

****

Mad Tom's Diary

Got to get to the island. Too cold to swim. Everything depends on getting to the island.

Tried to get around back but it's all swamp as black and cold and oozy as God's love in the morning. I could make a raft, but that would take all day.

Gotta, gotta, gotta.

What will that bitch do to him? What destiny will I not be part of?

This planet's a prison in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Ontario being one o' the worst. The doctor said there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so: therefore to me it is a prison. I could be bounded in a nutshell, habitating a warm room in the Filbert Factory, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

A dream itself is but a shadow. Shall we to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason this morning again, and if I cannot reason, I must be on that island, fighting shadows, defending and killing Paul. Beguiled, I would cut her hair and she would be happy the way I'd done it. Alas, poor Tom, I knew him well.

Jack and Jill went over the hill

Sliding towards the water

One went down, heaven bound

The other, to witness slaughter.

****

Tam Speaks

This morning I could not get warm, although I turned up the furnace and wore a coat in the house. I took a day's holiday owed to me from work. That may have been a mistake. I came to this lake for peace, and this morning I cannot find it. Not here, alone.

Then I dug up the herb garden. No need. I'm no shrink; you tell me.

After coffee I sat on the porch, and I pretended I heard a car door slamming.

I planted that herb garden behind the house, where Rollie wasn't likely to run over it in his car. How hard could it be, I thought. A little garden, a bit of spice for flavoring. This is rocky country, but there are a few places where the soil's black and there's a bit of sun.

It didn't work. Rollie didn't care for most of the spices – he's a pretty plain and straightforward guy and there's an old pine that puts us in shade in mid-afternoon. Just when the sun was needed, it would be behind the pine.

It is peaceful here; don't get me wrong. I guess it'll be even more peaceful, unless someone puts up a new cottage on Paul's lot.

I look at the ashes of the cabin. Paul once told me I made fire, and found fire, and played with fire, in the way that women do. What did he know?

Then Paul said ashes have their own song and ashes are their own wine. He told me that I would keep running from those flames till they caught me. He told me what I really feared was ashes. Whatever that meant. Maybe he was right, anyway.

I had one guy who said he was flame and shadow. The brighter the flames, he'd tell me, the darker the shadow. Come with me to the shady side of life, he wrote in a poem to me, bring whiskey and water, lilacs and worms. and we'll toast our own deaths, celebrate the pitter patter of forgotten years under the old stairs. He said we'd bless the feet of people going by and laugh and play with nails and dream of houses and forest burning. Or something like that: I don't have the poem any more. There are things you have to give up.

When we split up, I would have kept walking, but I figured you can only go as far as China, then you're coming back again. There was nothing to go home to so I went home, sat in a chair by the window, drank milk, and watched snow drift by the streetlight.

And now, even my garden. My little garden of spices.

Once I had a friend, a girl, who listened to me when I had too many words bottled up in me. I believed she was my friend and we'd always be able to talk about men and life and maple walnut ice cream. She would wear wooden beads one day as a surprise and I would show up at the café blonde, with small gold ear-rings.

I never hated Santa, you know; but in my life I've had problems with those that encouraged me to believe. Are there no phones? Does pen not meet paper any more? I guess there is a strange quiet beauty to an ending. There's Sinatra on the fm station, I have a pumpkin pie, all to myself while out there, god will soon pull a fine white cloth over yesterday.

I came to the lake to get away from dreams, but they grow like weeds in a small garden.

That's enough for now. Go away: I have work to do.

****
CHAPTER FOUR

****

Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student

Hi, me.

Morning after a very strange night. Woke up alone, not knowing where the heck I was. Figured it out when I saw his blue canoe outside the tent. Fuck.

Paul still alive. Thank God for that. Cold outside the tent: sun coming over the hills and mists dancing on the lake. Tent and everything probably clammy with dew. Lots of ducks and geese making noise out there. I feel like going back to sleep and sleeping until it's all over. Good idea. Everything's damp out there.

I slept some in the night, I guess. Must have. Didn't think I would. Couldn't have been much. Strange noises out there. Thought it was Mad Tom coming, but no sign of him now. I think maybe I'll just take my stuff and make a run for it! Great idea. Paul doesn't want anyone around and I don't want to be around. Case closed. My hands are starting to shake!

I can hear Paul out there, getting a fire going. Must be doing it for me; he's got no reason to make himself comfortable unless he changed his mind. Better check that. He can go die in some hospital like the rest of us. What's he got against hospitals? Good places to die. Lots of people do it there.

Maybe I'll make breakfast in a few minutes. Give him that whiskey bottle. Then when he tells me to leave, I'll just go, and tell Tam I tried to stay but got thrown out. Voted off the island, like.

I've got enough problems of my own: I don't need this. Could put me right off camping.

Note to me: go camping without men. They begin life or end life and neither is going to be top of my list of events.

****

Island: Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.

Kimberley crawled out of the sleeping bag and came out of the small tent on her hands and knees. She could see Paul sitting beside a small, almost smokeless, fire. He was breaking off small sticks of dry wood and putting them into the flames. He watched her. "Morning is my good time of day," he said. "You're kind of cute, now that I can see you."

"You probably say that to all the girls you spent a night in the sack with," she said, straightening up slowly.

He contemplated that. "That's probably true."

She gathered some toilet items from her packsack, and headed for the nearest cedar bush. The sun was fully clear of the hills and the mist was dissipating on the lake. She looked for signs of Mad Tom, but saw none.

When she came back, and had rinsed her hands in the lake water, she almost emptied the packsack, putting the items onto the flat rock. She took out an expandable metal grate and arranged a couple of rocks to hold it above the flames. Then she got a coffee pot, scooped some of Pine Lake into it, and set it onto the grate. Drops from the outside of the pot sizzled into the flames. She broke off a larger dead branch from an oak (white oak) and dragged it closer.

Finally, she set in front of Paul the whiskey bottle. She held on to the bottle of pills she'd taken from him in the evening.

He eyed both items with his one good eye.

"Tell me what these pills are for," she said. "In case someone asks, later."

He smiled, understanding. "They're to help blood circulation in my legs." He rubbed his nose.

"They look like sleeping pills."

"Of course they aren't. They're just for circulation." They both understood that maybe there might be an official inquiry, and she'd need to tell them what Paul had told her.

She handed the pills, then said, "I'm making breakfast after the coffee. Want some?" She refused to look at him.

"Within a month I'll have no control over most of my body," he said. "I'll just lie there thinking thoughts I can't speak and regretting things I can't do anything about. If I'm not tormented by bed sores and things like that. Or an itch I can't scratch. A vegetable with a brain and feelings."

She started making a breakfast of eggs and bacon, keeping her eye away from him.

"If I'm lucky, I'll catch pneumonia and die soon. Or after a year or two. Nobody lasts longer than that, except one guy who holds the record at fifteen years." He poked at the fire. "No cure."

An owl called once and some geese settled into the water not far out. A mink raised its head at the other end of the island, then went back to looking for crayfish along the shore. The burbot, which had scouted out the shoreline in the night, drifted back to the deeps.

"Breakfast?" she asked.

He looked at her a long time. "You have enough for two? Enough for a guy that isn't planning to be around long enough to digest it?"

"Goddamn right."

"I'd be proud to have some."

He set the pill bottle onto a rock, then picked up the whiskey. He looked at it and nodded. She assumed he approved of the brand. Actually, he approved of the plastic bottle, since he dropped things constantly. "Want some?"

"No." But she wanted all of it and looked away.

"Good. I can drink from the bottle." He took a swallow and grimaced.

"Don't like it?"

"Stomach hurts when I drink nowadays. Don't worry: it won't kill me." He ate his breakfast in a hurry, then took another sip. "You should go home now."

"I know."

"You won't get much of an interview."

"I know."

"Then why?"

"Promised Tam."

He laughed, coughed, then laughed some more. "What, she doesn't want me to die alone?"

"So she said."

"She's a good person, but if I'd wanted to have company, I'd have arranged some. Why do you think I snuck out of there?"

"I'm here now," Kimberley said.

"So you might as well stay?"

"I dunno. It's not looking like such a good idea any more. I'll leave as soon as I get packed up."

He thought a bit. "Wait till ten. I'll answer a few questions if you want. How's that?"

"Okay," she said, and regretted it at once, angry at herself.

Returning to the tent, she pulled the sleeping bag out, unzipped it, and stretched it out on his canoe. The tent, she turned upside down and laid it against the canoe, too, to let the bottom moisture evaporate.

That's when the plane came over the lake, low.

****

Peter Finer, Journalist

From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.

For one reason or another, Peter's biography has Kimberley arriving at the island in the morning after the fire, rather than the afternoon before. His book was such a success that the real story is little known.

The October morning was long in coming to Pine Lake. The hills to the east block the sun, so Paul Gottsen spent a long time in the dark chalice that was the lake before the first rays cut between the beach trees on the hill crest and reached down to touch the writer by his small fire.

He didn't really know why he hadn't killed himself the day before. He'd brought a bottle of sleeping pills to do the job, and there was the danger that if he waited, someone might come to prevent him. It would be a real piss-off to find himself, after all, in a hospital bed, in pain and thinking of a new novel he'd write if he could communicate.

But there is an explanation, if you want it. Gottsen had burned his past and reduced his existence to himself, his canoe, and the universe. He had spent his last day of life, ridden by his hurting mind, portaging over to Pine Lake and watching the sun cross the sky for his last time. Why would he not want to clutch one last night to his heart as well?

Night in the wilderness is not like night in "civilized" locales. But, if there's someone with you, you can ignore that. If you're all alone, you can't.

Most people can't sleep for much of the night when alone in the wilderness. Something primeval takes over the human spirit. You watch the dark creep across the landscape, and try to think of it as just the same, only dark.

It's not, and your brain knows it. The trees, like the ones in Disney's Snow White, stop being inanimate objects and become a crowd of strangers wondering what you're doing there. The waters are home to depths unknown as fish – and who knows what else – move out of the deeps towards the shore. There will be splashes, and your mind will say, "Oh, yes. A bass taking a bug." But there will be noises on the water and in the swamps along the shore that defy explanation. You know that people don't disappear without explanation out there, but you have to repeat that to yourself, often. Some ancestor of yours, deep in the ganglion cells of your brain, stays awake, and nervous.

And, eventually, you fall asleep.

We can assume Paul fell asleep several times, woken by the cold as his fire died down, or by the growing pain winding along his spine. It's cold on a clear night in October, and pain makes for poor sleeping, but he was exhausted by disease and a long trek.

It was his last night, and he, among few others, felt no fear of the dark.

At some point he woke up, cold, the fire down to a glow. He went to the water's edge for a drink from the darkness. Behind him, the faint glow of coals. Earth, air, fire, water, on a little island. It was death and magic: it was an incantation to things he had given up on some time before. A large splash came from the shore at the other end of the island, and from the swamp near the shore came three strange sounds. Then the silence came back.

Above him the stars stretched away, unfeeling and unwarming and uncaring, to infinity.

He put a few more twigs on the fire, blowing it into flame again like Prometheus, then watched the darkness until the hills to the east began to form silhouettes against the coming light.

He was lying beside the remnants of the fire, the sun finally bringing warmth, when Kimberly Molley's red canoe appeared on the lake.

The student had got up early on Sparkler Lake, restless and unwilling to stay beside a lake so small that it held no mysteries. She'd packed up quickly, making breakfast of some energy bars, then made the crossing to Pine Lake as soon as it was light enough to see.

As she paddled from the portage site down the lake, she noted the canoe on the rocky little island. Normally, she'd have paddled past silently, not wanting to awake other campers. But there was no tent on the island, just an overturned canoe, a smouldering fire, and a man lying on his back, unmoving. Concerned, she gave the paddle a twist and let the canoe drift closer.

****

Rollie Speaks

Goddam it, man, that's a rough way to go. I mean everybody's gotta die some time, but some ways are better than others. I mean, we were neighbours and went fishing together, and maybe we didn't see eye to eye on all things, but I respected his opinions and at the end I respected his wishes, too, hard as it was.

He learned to love water maybe as much as me. It's always changing, water. Fascinates me. He got a boat, then a canoe. Later he traded the canoe in for a lighter one – I helped him pick one out – and after that we didn't go out on the lake as much any more. He liked to go off to other lakes and all that. I just liked being on the lake, fishing. Actually, he caught as many fish as me, because he'd go out there in the dead of night and fish. Caught a few lunkers that way, on worms and gold lures.

Call me a realist in this life. He was a writer and his world was fiction. I don't read fiction. The people around me do, but we're all different, so I let it go.

He was famous for a while, in his own way, and I guess that's an attractive lure. I respected him, in my own way, but I never convinced him people are clowns and society is a circus and you're better off not caring about it. He cared, even if he didn't say he did. We made him cookies and sandwiches for a while after he moved in; a kitchen is creation, too, but that didn't seem useful after a while; just caused problems. Some people should be left alone until they want company. He took his canoe and went out over the hills to the little lakes.

Sometimes you'd see him coming or going with a girlfriend, paddling across the lake. Maybe they brought sandwiches. Would be gone for a couple of days at most. Hope he had fun out there, but he never looked much happier when he got back.

It's all like last year's water, I guess, now that he's gone. I understood him, but Tam doesn't think I did. But I never understood the appeal of kittens, so maybe she's right. Was right. Hope he found the God he never believed in. We have copies of all his books. I read part of one, once, just to find out what Tam found in there.

****

Bancroft OPP. Day After Fire Day.

The plane took off west, into a light wind, then turned south, towards Long Lake. "Just point at what you want to see," the pilot said in a loud voice, to be heard over the motor, "and tell me which way you want to go."

"That's Long Lake"? the constable asked. It was long, but so were a lot of lakes in the area. Some of the early explorers didn't have a lot of imagination when it came to naming landscape features. When it came time to name more lakes in the north of the province, the cartographers used the names of airmen who'd died in the second world war, but here in the more southern areas there was a ready duplication of names such as long, round, loon, dark, and pine.

The constable figured out where he was by spotting the remains of the burned cottage, then said, "Follow the shoreline." He had to repeat it with more volume, but the pilot was good enough to keep the edge of the lake out the policeman's window, tilting the plane and flying as slowly as was safe.

The constable was looking for an abandoned blue canoe, but no such luck. He figured he'd have to repeat the search with a motorboat in a day or two, but he wasn't optimistic; if a guy didn't want to be found, it was easy enough to hide beneath a canopy of pines or hemlock. It wasn't likely he'd be out in plain view.

After they came back over the ashes of Gottsen's cabin, with Tam raising her arm to wave hello at them as she got into her car, the constable pointed the way to Sparkler Lake, easily visible even from this height. It was, however, the least used of three known portages out of Long Lake.

They passed Sparkler within seconds, not seeing Peter Finer carrying a yellow canoe up through a stand of birches, their leaves putting human paint jobs to shame. The constable asked for a loop over Pine Lake. Again, the little red airplane did a slow shoreline search. The constable waved at the couple on the island. One tent, one red canoe, two people, and sleeping bags stretched out to dry. Not what they were looking for. They followed the creek and marsh to Osprey Lake, then circled back to Long Lake to follow the portage trail to Turtle Lake and its twin, Triangle Lake.

****

Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.

Both Paul and Kimberley remained still for a very long time, watching the airplane disappear and waiting for it to return. It had taken them by surprise; the sound a single-engine plane makes in the distance is almost identical to that of a large outboard motor on some lake not far away.

Paul was close to panic, but Kimberley felt a shocking sense of relief, like an elephant moving off her soul.

"Not a float plane." Paul said, loudly, turning his head to get focus.

Kimberley looked at him blankly.

"No pontoons."

Kimberley blinked but said nothing, still rigid.

"They couldn't land. Not here."

"Maybe they weren't looking for us. For you."

"They were flying as slow as they could, and watching. Looking at everything." Paul set the pills in front of him.

"They'll come back?"

"Maybe not," the writer said. "If they knew I was gone, they'd know I was in a blue canoe." He nodded at his canoe. "You covered it with the sleeping bag and the tent. I think if they'd thought it was me, they'd have been back to double check. Listen – you can hear them still checking the other lakes." They both listened to the faraway drone, like escapees hearing the sound of bloodhounds far away, getting closer, then disappearing.

"But don't they have to keep looking?" Kimberley wanted to pack up and be halfway back to Sparkler before anyone else came.

Paul shrugged. "They'll think I filled the canoe full of rocks and paddled out to the deep hole and went down like I should have done." He closed his eyes. "I hurt, Miss Kimberley. I hurt beyond hope and I'm ready to die."

"Alone?"

"Fuckin' A. Rollie says people are clowns who don't know it and humanity's a cancer that doesn't know it, but I think you know you've been an angel." He sat, head pointed towards the morning sun and his eyes closed. "A better angel that I ever deserved. Go, now. Be gone. Vamoose. There must be fifty ways to leave your writer."

"So much for the interview that you promised me." she said.

"Oh, yeah." It came out as a whisper.

"Well?" She couldn't go; she couldn't stay. There were no good options, including sitting on her canoe and crying.

"It doesn't seem relevant." He waited into the silence. "How many of my books have you read?"

"One."

"Did you like it?"

"It impressed me."

After another long silence, broken only by the sound of more geese going by, he said, "I'll tell you a story or two. You can make of them what you want."

"Okay." She sat beside him.

"Fucking right."

"Have any pain pills?"

He shook his head, but she didn't know if that was a "no" or a refusal to answer. "Can I start my story?" he said.

"Sorry."

"They met," he said, "in a lighthouse on a weekday, in the rain. It was in the off season, so there weren't many other people around. There was only one other car, a rental, like his, in the gravel lot. He parked his car paid an entrance fee at the tourist shop, then entered the lighthouse.

"He shook the rain off his umbrella, and set it by the door. As he began to climb the circular stairs, he heard footsteps above him. He looked up. The footsteps stopped, and a woman's face appeared over the railing, far above, then disappeared. He continued up."

"Is this a true story, or a mythological one?" Kimberley looked at him sideways.

"There are several paths to the truth. When he reached the top, she was watching the nothing that was visible in the rain. There was the muted sound of surf and the noise the rain made on the roof and windows. The rain had increased suddenly in intensity. Without a word, she turned and left. Young, he noted, with glasses.

"After a couple of minutes he started to retrace his steps down. He'd made only a couple of cycles when he looked down and saw her face looking up at him. Before he could do anything, the face again disappeared. He made his way steadily to the ground level, wondering if, like flying crows, it meant anything or nothing."

"Sounds like a story from high school," Kimberley said.

"Things change so little as one ages. She was waiting at the bottom. 'Can I get you to shelter me?' she asked. 'Back to my car, I mean.'

But when they got to the car, he pointed to a seafood restaurant across the street. 'Chowder?' he asked.

"'I've heard clams can dangerous,' she said. 'Things happen in restaurants, my mother said.'

"'That's oysters, you're thinking of,' he said.

"They had scallops sautéed in drawn butter with the soup, in a restaurant where they were the only customers. He paid, over her objections. They talked about the weather and lighthouses, nothing more. Both loved the sound of rain against the glass, and the way the world seemed to come to an end there, with no way to see further than that.

"Back at her car, he paused.

"'We have gone round and round,' she said, 'at the end of the world. We have tasted pleasure on a blue checked tablecloth together. Fate may bring us together again. Or not.' And she drove away."

Gottsen stopped, closing his eyes. There was a long silence.

"You never saw her again," Kimberley said.

"Nope."

"I don't know," Kimberley said, finally. "I think so too, but sometimes there are coincidences too strange to accept, and I wonder if there is some plan, after all. You've had other women."

"Or they had me. Women avoided me until the Globe called Four Wanton Valleys" a work of genius."

"Poor you. Having to fight them off like that. Did any come here, to this island."

"When the sun goes down," he said, "the day is done and it gone forever. Memory is an illusion."

"So someday I can tell myself this has been all a hallucination?" Kimberley got the fire going again. When there's nothing to say at a campsite, you can always get a fire going.

"I do feel sorry for you. You're in a bind. Of course, from your point of view, the best outcome would be for someone to come and haul me off alive to the hospital."

"You think?" Kimberley flipped the sleeping bag and tent to let the other side dry. A beaver swam by, then disappeared with a tail splash.

"That was my conclusion." His head finally hurt enough to take away the pain in his body. He had another drink, sipping slowly.

"That stuff hurt your stomach, you said?" Kimberley watched the expressions on his face.

"Like a knife. It makes me want to vomit.:

Kimberley reached into her pack. "Here's some antacid pills and Gravol. Might help."

"Actually, they'd be perfect." He swallowed two. "Now you can tell me a story."

"Pardon?"

"Increases your odds of a helicopter coming in and bringing this writer back alive, doesn't it?"

"What story?" Kimberley could see his logic, but didn't think that fast.

"I don't care. You're young; tell me lies if you want. Tell me in the person of someone you know well, if you don't want to include yourself, don't. There must be a fairy tale you remember." He took another sip. "Better. Want some?"

"Not right now."

"Interesting. College kid; doesn't drink. Strange."

"Once upon a time, in a faraway land," Kimberley began, poking at the fire, "there was a woman so constructed that no part of her leaned into darkness."

"I knew her once," he said.

"Shut up. Deal with your own darkness. You want me to go on, or not?"

"Sorry. I really am a smartass some times."

"She went into the darkest forest but found only shade. Peter Pan had no shadow once; she had no darkness. It's not natural to go without darkness in your soul." She paused.

He opened his good eye, saw her watching him, and asked, "Was she happy, then?"

"No. She always knew she was different, and wanted friends. But who would share secrets with a woman who had no darkness in her? She paged through the biggest catalogues, but there was no darkness for sale.

"Those who knew her said she must be a pure being, and that maybe she'd accidentally had an immaculate conception or something.

"But what will happen if God comes back," she asked. "How will I know which way to look?"

"Eventually, she married a man whose soul was like the underside of a log. She was much happier. When he was drinking his morning coffee, she had only to turn away to know she was facing toward God."

"That's it," she added, after a silence.

"Did this woman have a daughter?"

"In her second marriage. Why do you ask?"

"Just wondering." He looked at the bottle, angry that it was doing so little. "We get to ask questions of these stories?"

"You started it," she said.

"Would we tell different stories if we didn't tell them in retrospect? If we imagined them into the future."

"For sure. But only by looking back can we mix truth in with fantasy, like vinegar with oil."

"The future would be all oil?"

"Not for you," she said. "I do believe your future's all used up. But for me, when the future got here and it wasn't like I imagined it, I'd be bitter, I expect."

"More bitter than the stories we just told?"

She thought about that. "I don't know."

****

Bancroft OPP. Day After Fire Day.

The constable parked the black and white car in the gravel lot at the end of Long Lake. Like all good cops he surveyed the area once from his car, and once more as he got out. The only thing happening was a smallish houseboat being put onto blocks for the winter. "Season's over, I guess," he said to the woman supervising, as much to see if anyone wanted to talk to the police as to make conversation.

The woman looked him over, then nodded at the boat. "It is a sanctuary," she said, "from all responsibility and mind chatter. It is a floating balm to earth-weary. The water laps, the loons call, the work is trifling to maintain and privacy stokes the creative fire. All else becomes frivolous in the union of sky, water, and hungry spirit." She eyed him to see if he objected, then added, "Nice clean boat too." He had to agree. Nice boat; nice lake. But winter was coming even to poets and boats.

He walked across the parking lot and into the lodge The operator, a middle-aged woman, came out from a back room. She didn't hesitate when she saw him. Ninety-eight times out of a hundred a cop would be needing help. A canoer overdue and missing or a cottage looted and was any suspicious car seen?

The other two percent was trouble, but you just faced up to it and knew that the cop would need your help someday, and you were paying local taxes, which visitors weren't.

The constable was friendly. "'Morning, Lois."

"Mornin' Ted. What can I do for you today."

"We're still looking for Paul Gottsen; you know that."

"That's what everybody says."

"We're just checking out who else is on the lake. Do you have a list we can see?"

Lois hauled out the clipboard, then craned her neck to look out the window at the cars parked in the lot. She pulled a couple of forms out and put them into the recycle bin. "These came in last night," she said. She spread out three forms onto the counter top. "They're still out there, according to the forms, but I see the blue van's missing, so I think the party boys came back early."

"Party boys?"

"Two older gentlemen. Big orange canoe. Portage into Buzzard Lake every fall, get drunk, start yelling at each other around midnight – you can hear them quite a ways, I gather – then come back before dawn and drive away. One told me it's the sort of honesty he doesn't get from his wife or kids. But they're gone, assuming one didn't murder the other one this year."

"So who's still out there."

"Well, they have to pay to park, but the launch is free. When they pay, we make them fill out the form as to where they're going and for how long, and they have to take a garbage bag. But if someone dropped them off with their canoe and left with the car, we might not see them leave. BILLY!" A teenage kid poked his head around a door. "Go see what garbage bags came back."

The cop bought a Coke while they waited. After a minute, the kid came back. "Number 233 is in the can."

Lois thanked him, then moved one form to the bin. "That leaves the one pair in a white canoe, supposedly going to Triangle Lake. Not," she noted, dipping her head and looking over her glasses, "that they all tell the truth or don't change their minds if the portages are bad."

"No others?"

She pointed to the parking lot. "That white Civic came in before dawn. Someone left a note and a ten-dollar bill under the door." She unclipped it, then read it. "Kimberley Molley. Pine Lake. Red Canoe." She looked up at the cop. "I remember her: came here with another girl and two guys in two canoes in August. Looks like she's back here alone now."

"Nobody else out there?" The constable remembered the two people he'd seen on Pine Lake.

"Any of the cottagers may have taken a canoe back in to the lakes. We don't keep track of them. Or their kids. The teenagers don't mind getting away from their parents for a few hours. She nodded in the direction of the door Billy had escaped through. Hope they take enough condoms." A thump from the next room probably indicated that Billy had heard that.

The constable thanked her, noting that she hadn't mentioned Mad Tom. Now he had to figure out who was with the Molley woman on Pine Lake. He got into the cruiser and called the station.

****

Mad Tom's Diary

Have I lived too long on the shady side of life? Am I no longer Prometheus, hiding from the punishment of the hollowness of a godless universe, but become the dark shadow myself, the dark creature in the forest?

O come with me young woman. I would fain put my hand inside your blouse, feel your shadow heart, show you the flame I have inside me. I am not what you see! The brighter the flames, the darker the shadow seems, you know.

Come with me to the shady side of life. Bring whiskey and water, lilacs and worms. We'll toast our own deaths, We'll celebrate the pitter patter of forgotten years under some old stairs.

I'll put my hand inside your blouse, feel your shadow heart.

We will watch the feet of glowing people go by, the saved soles gliding under heavenlight. Bless them, all, every one. In the darkness we will sit on old crossed planks laugh, play with nails, and dream of forests ablaze.

I am fire, and the shadow of fire.

Some people see ashes, shadows and ashes, but the can be no ashes unless there was flame; there can be no shadow unless there is light. When cloudshadow falls on the forest and water, remember Tom. When the campfire is lit by the shelter, remember Tom. You made him flame; now he is the shadow on the dark trees.

There is only one portage into Pine Lake. If I wait by it, maybe someone will be drawn to it; come carrying a canoe, moth to my flame. I have played the madman too long. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have their own fates but I must be there for the last act, the last scene. I must.

****

Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.

"Your turn," Kimberley said.

The sun warmed the rock nicely. More geese flew by. On the far shore a mink nosed among the logs by the shore, looking for crayfish and frogs. The wind picked up a bit, making the treetops sway and lightly brushing the reeds behind the island.

"Fair is fair," Paul said. He inspected his liquor supply. He'd finished up half the bottle of whisky Kimberley had given him, but Kimberley noted he didn't seem particularly changed. It seemed, to her that older men tried to minimize the effect of alcohol whereas younger men liked to exaggerate the consequences, perhaps so as to lessen their responsibility for any events that followed. Young women, too, she thought.

"You talk like your books," she added.

"It provides the distance I need."

"Your wife? I read something about that."

"I prefer to be found drunk and relaxed," he said, "not drunk and crying in my last minutes, although that might yet happen. This story is about a man."

"Most of your stories are pretty male-centered. At least I read one critic that said so."

"Crogyn? She was right. Women devastate me. Always have. Men like to keep themselves as cartoons or icons to avoid the evil they were born with. Makes for easier stories."

"Or just lazy?"

"Like all writers I've met."

"Old, bitter, disillusioned by the creative act?" She debated pulling the sleeping bag off Paul's canoe and rolling it up but then worried that the plane might be back again. The day was warming nicely, and although there had been warning of a chance of rain in the afternoon, there were few clouds in the sky.

"Next story," Paul said. There was a pause, then: "He remembered each spring of his childhood, the land gold, and the orchards green with figs and olives, before it the world became too warm and people took to the shade. He remembered the way the wild mustard covered the slopes that rolled like waves of sunlight down to the bay." The writer paused and they both contemplated the gold forest across the lake, comparing it to a drier, more storied landscape.

"No women in this story?" Kimberley asked.

"Yes. No. Be patient and we'll see." He moved to a new spot, facing the sunlight. "Childhood is temporary, of course. The rough and tumble of old ones and young ones teaching each other things ages one inexorably. Past yellow flowers came the road, dry and hard, turning through the desert, past the well, past the temple, and up to the hill."

"He could easily see eternity from the hill but it was spring again, so he strained, trying to see if he'd left even the faintest trail in his life through the wild mustard."

"Going for the icon instead of the cartoon, I see", Kimberley said. "However unlikely, it probably makes a man feel better on his last day. I think you've left a path, even so. Always pays, I guess, to reach a bit higher."

"I could never see eternity. Only the calloused feet of those who could."

"Religious, then? I wouldn't have thought so from the stuff I've read." She got out a bag of chocolate-chip cookies and handed him a couple. "You can continue."

"That was it. Now your turn again."

"Getting briefer, aren't we. Okay, let me think a moment." Long pause to listen to a flock of ducks settle on the water. "In the dream," the student started, slowly, "she sat at the small table by an open window. It was in the small, dark hours of the morning. She wanted no more alcohol, but neither did she want sleep."

"Was the night silent as death?"

Kimberley shook her head. "Far away a train whistle broke the night like a hammer shatters glass."

"Wherever that train was going, she wanted to go, too. She tried to get up, but something dark held her down and wouldn't let her go running out of the house to the train.

"She woke up, sweating, wondering why she hadn't bought a ticket on that train. 'Well, then,' she said, shifting the sheets to the side and sitting on the edge of the bed. She stepped to the bedroom window, but there was nothing outside but dark white oak leaves tapping the pane. She thought there really was a vanishing sound, but it might have been only her youth. It might have been her whole previous life. She touched the cold glass with her forehead. 'Well, then,' she said again, watching the falling leaves, backlit by the streetlight."

"You've been reading too much of that Gottsen guy,"

"Only _Naked Man with a Bible_."

"One too many, nonetheless. I'm last summer's waves on last summer's shore."

"You have no way of knowing for sure. Tell me another bible story. It suits this place."

"Sure. From the other point of view. 'Hey!' I said, reaching up to tickle the feet just above me. 'You're not dead yet, are you?' The feet didn't even wiggle but I continued anyway. 'What's the matter, fella? No spidey-silk to immobilize the Enemy? No Super-Powers to vanquish legions?'"

"Now you are going to Hell," Kimberley laughed.

The writer continued. "I squinted in the dry light to the sparse crowd below. The city stank, and not just the smoke from Gehenna. Soldiers, bored as plowhorses watched the clouds. I continued, eating a sandwich: 'The Hulk could have slaughtered a few Romans with a timber that size, you know. Batman, even, would be standing on Herod's palace, right now, scowling,' I told him.

"A drop of red blood just missed me: I could sell this stuff for a bundle, I thought, but what the hell. 'You still up there?' I asked. 'Fine way to spend a Saturday morning, eh?' I scratched my own ribs. Looked around: the other two guys were thoroughly dead. Crows picked at their eyes. 'You won't be forgotten,' I added. But even a demo of X-ray vision might have made a difference. Don't die on me yet: I'm not finished.'

"But there was nothing I could add. A Superhero either is, or isn't. You fight nasty monsters from other galaxies, or you don't. This fellow didn't. Two paths diverged on the dusty road to Jerusalem. Superjew took the one, and that has made all the difference." The writer threw a stone into the lake, where the ripples died away quickly. "Your turn again," he said.

"Can I portray myself as a saint?"

"Mary, if you want."

"Which one?"

"Either, in your own mind, I suspect."

"Touché," she said.

"I couldn't imagine a college kid not having a drink under circumstances like these. You must be going nuts. A story?"

"Sure, but I'm not into icons and cartoons. We women don't like to climb so high or sink so low. It hasn't served us well in the past."

Paul grunted. There was little left in the bottle.

After a long silence, Kimberley said, "I saw him standing under a streetlight, once. It was spring, and he was watching the water flow down the street. I was going to speak to him, but I noticed that he was crying." She looked at Paul, but he said nothing.

She waited. "Why?" he asked.

"Because, somewhere, someone was walking a remote beach, looking for strange seashells to add to his collection, or remarkable flotsam in the line of high tide."

She waited, again, for a question.

"This guy – he doesn't sound young."

"Middle aged, I guess."

"He wanted to collect sea shells?" But he knew the answer.

"No." She tried skipping a chunk of rock on the water. It didn't work. "He just wanted to be able to."

"Did it affect his marriage?"

"There were silences in the kitchen. His wife had one bad dream. In the dream, he was asleep, curled up on one pan of the scales, but slowly sliding off. Frantically, she would throw things onto the opposite pan. Tables and pies, and a shopping bag full of bright clothes."

"Won't work," Paul said. "I know. Won't work for men or women."

"Nothing worked, not even Timbits. At last she crawled onto the rising pan herself but it made no difference. She always saw him slide, still sleeping off the other side. She usually woke up almost in time to call his name before he began that long, long fall."

"Did she see him landing on a sandy beach, full of seashells?"

"She couldn't. It would not have been her."

"Sad."

"A lot of life is. Shall I roll you into the lake and stand on your head?" Kimberley stared at him a moment.

"Oh! Would you? I'd appreciate that. I'd forgive you for everything."

"Would you forgive yourself?"

"Doubt it."

They watched a beaver cross the lake for reasons known only to beavers.

****

Mad Tom's Diary

I was into poetry.

I found, after a while, though, that my words were like butterflies, painted by a blinded old man, trying to remember by touching the canvas, an old woman trying to remember by feeling the ashes.

****

Peter Finer, Journalist

From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.

Finer continues his Biography Of Paul Gottsen by describing his version of how he and Kimberley met Paul on the island in Pine Lake.

Gottsen, at this point, was near death. The doctors had told him, "no stress and no strenuous exercise". But he'd hauled that canoe over two portages and crossed Sparkler Lake, much of it in the darkness. Nobody knows how often he fell, but when Kimberley Molley slid her lightweight red canoe against the island, he was unconscious. She walked up to him and tried to get him to wake, but for a moment, she thought he was dead.

She would have wondered how he got there, with no tent, sleeping bag, or other equipment. But she did the only thing she could think of: she opened a small bottle of brandy and poured a bit into his mouth. Amazingly, he coughed and opened his eyes. Bewildered, he asked, "Who are you?"

I myself, at this point, was carrying Rollie's bright yellow canoe and a packsack of goods on the root-scrambled slope down to Sparkler Lake. A grouse took off in a drum of wings, startling me, but reminding me where I was, when my mind kept running ahead. So I stopped, and looked around. Nature was preparing for a winter that I at least expected to see. Somewhere out Alberta way winter walked the land in feet of freezing rain. Out in Flin Flon a man was examining his frost-killed plants, rescuing a few tomatoes to make into spaghetti sauce for the evening's meal. But here in southern Ontario it was bright sunshine with the steady falling of leaves onto the waters as I started the paddle across Sparkler.

Up at Thunder Bay, that day, it was raining steadily, and paddlers were storing canoes in the garage, tracing with gentle fingers the lines that rocks had left on the hull. In Wawa people were putting camping equipment onto shelves with rain drumming onto their roofs.. The rain would get to me sometime, but not yet. Here I felt yellow birch leaves and yellow beach leaves falling on me and my borrowed canoe. There was a hymn to the land and a promise of resurrection.

I paddled across Sparkler Lake and spent a few minutes looking for the portage to Pine Lake. This wasn't a common route, so there was no paper sign attached to a tree. But Rollie had described it well, and, on a rock along the shore, I saw a bit of blue paint a rock had scraped off a canoe. I looked at the steep hill and the dense brush, and decided to take my pack and the canoe in separate trips.

There was little but a few old strings tied around trees to mark the way, but when I got to the top of the ridge, I set the pack down, then went back to get the canoe, thinking that the morning was a work of art that should be saved somehow. Maybe God recycles such days in other universes, taking them from a tall green filing cabinet if the local beings deserve them.

When I got to the top carrying the canoe, I paused to let my cardiovascular system catch up with me, and leaned the canoe against a tree. Then I continued on downhill with the pack, watching the lake get closer in small glimpses through the trees. As I descended, the forest opened up into a stand of tall beach scattered with pines. At one point I could see Pine Lake, and was happy knowing I was on the right track, that Gottsen was on this lake. I left the pack at the edge of the shore, watched the two people on the island for a minute, then went back for the canoe.

It seemed faster the second time down the slope even with the canoe on my head. When I got to the shore, I rolled it off my shoulders and onto the ground.

Then a man stepped from behind a young spruce and pointed a gun at my head.

****

Mad Tom's Diary

The man locally known as "Mad Tom" kept a diary for almost four years. This is taken from a portion of the diary written in the first year.

During the day, the ashes in the fireplace bother me, but I can't tell you why.

Maybe the ashes tell me that there were fires, once, sucking oxygen from the room, consuming it in a frenzied ballroom of light, then pouring the residue, black, up the chimney and into the night sky.

There are stars up there, in the night sky, wavering in the smoke from the chimney. They burn, too, like sparks in a galactic fire, trailing planets and comets like dust in their wakes.

Everything burns out, eventually. The stars will, too. Don't tell me love is eternal; even the stars burn out.

The hotter a fire is, the faster it burns.

Let's not be sentimental about this; there are many ashes you'd like taken away from your fireplace, chucked into the backyard, and left to vanish slowly into the ground, making the grass greener and letting future fires burn a little more brightly.

Fires can be choked by too much ash, you know.

There's too much ash in the fireplace. I should get a shovel and a bucket and take the ashes out. I look at the fireplace and know this and see the ghosts of old fires looking back at me.

Can you have too much wine, too much song, too much ice cream on a Friday night? I think not, but the ashes have their own music and their own demands.

Ashes are trees that have given their souls to the fire and to the wind. This after a lifetime of being in one place, out in all sorts of weather, and not allowed to run to shelter. Chopped and torched and part of the night sky spreading over the dark Atlantic Ocean by this time.

Not that they were asked about it.

Not that anyone asked me. Or asked the bugs sleeping in the firewood, the eggs, the microbes. No one asks, you know.

Like they asked me? Like anyone ever asked me?

Some days I fear fires. I don't believe what the priest told me, but there's lots of fuel walking the sidewalks and hunching in old rooms.

The mirrors I've broken over the years, the lessons I've burned. If only they'd asked me. My fires burned in the daylight, down among the willows. At night I watch the fire and accumulate ashes there too.

Yes it would; it would have made a difference to me if they'd asked.

I could stare into the fireplace for hours. If I wanted to; if I wanted to make sure my life was in there, burning among the oak and the cherry wood and the chopped walnut limbs.

Does it surprise you that I burn cherry and walnut? It depends where your values are, I suppose. Heartwood, limbs, cheap spruce, or fine dark walnut- it all burns when you've chopped it up fine enough.

I like burning the best woods. Sometimes I buy old oak chairs at auctions, just to burn them. Sometimes a chest of drawers. Often a maple bed frame, if only for the kindling.

I open the glass doors to the fireplace. I pull back the wire mesh. The ashes wait for me, like the crematorium of all my yesterdays.

I have made fire, and found fire, and played with fire. I have touched the passions hidden in dead things and brought the shine out of them. Things that would die and rot and molder without me, but I cried, "Let there be light!" and there was, and heat, too.

I like a hot fire. A hot fire consumes.

I've had enough things in my life that aren't consumed or gone. They haunt my waking life, like roots from a tree I thought I'd cut down. I trip over them from time to time, and flail away at them with the axes of my mind, but they regrow down in the dark, like arms on a starfish.

I look at the ashes in the early afternoon, when the light from the window crawls across the silent walls. This room's a tomb, I think. There's only one chair left in the room. Maybe tonight.

There are tongs in the fireplace tool set, and a shovel, and a poker, and a brush.

Another fire tonight. One more on this planet. One more day gone.

It'll be fine, on a Friday night, after the ashes are gone. You can't let ashes accumulate anywhere, fireplace or in your life. Got to get rid of them.

The tongs are for the big pieces, maybe a thighbone or an unburned limb. The shovel picks up the smaller pieces, and the powder.

The broom is for memories. It takes out the finest dust.

I have to do the cleaning now, in the daylight.

****

Bancroft OPP. Day After Fire Day.

The constable had a long morning. First there was an accident out south of Apsley where a cottager's trailer had come loose, narrowly missing an oncoming bread-delivery van. The man behind the wheel was willing to swear on a stack of bibles that he'd attached the safety chain. Then it turned out he didn't own or have a license for the trailer. He explained that it was his neighbour's trailer and boat but his own 70-horsepower outboard motor. That took a couple of phone calls to confirm. Since the trailer and boat had rolled around a bit in the ditch before contacting a large piece of rock had left over from the last ice age, and the motor looked like it was going to need a lot of work, the cop figured the driver had learned a lesson, so he let the guy off with a warning.

Then someone had seen a stranger peeking into the windows of some closed-for-the-season cottages on Jack Lake, and that took some time to investigate. He didn't find anyone doing that, and none of the cottages had been broken into, but he took the licence-plate numbers of the three cars parked there and left. Jack Lake was a long way from Long Lake, but Gottsen might have got a ride there and be trying to hole up –it was something to be considered.

It was past noon before he got word that the air force base in Trenton had better things to do with its helicopters than rescue a man who didn't want to be rescued and might not even be the man they were looking for.

It was less than half an hour after that when he got a call from the receptionist, Courtney, that she'd arranged for a float plane. Good for her: she had more gumption than anybody else in the place. The constable turned toward the airport for the second time that day.

****

Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.

"What should I tell you now?" he asked.

Kimberley thought a minute. "It should have a seashore in it."

"Not a lake?" Paul sat with his eyes closed watching the red of the sun against his eyelids.

"Not a lake. Lakes don't have big enough edges to them."

"Seashore. I could do that. Wish I had more liquor."

"Will there be a girl in this story?"

"I can do that too. Of course."

"What would be her name? Her real name."

"Pamela. Pam."

"Go ahead, then."

He started hesitantly. "She found herself on slippery rocks passionately embraced by green weed. She trembled at the suck and spew of waves. She could see red markers for lobster pots, and beyond, the sea that refused to talk to her.

"I watched her from the cabin as she found an empty orange shampoo bottle, and wondered what she was thinking. We'd met a month before, and I talked her into a week at the seashore. She was a writer, like me, but only when she was inland, far from the ocean. At the shore she couldn't write, so she wouldn't share my bed any more. I slept on the couch.

"I asked her. She held up a seashell and the empty Pert shampoo bottle. She said she was a writer on dry soil, but here by the sea she was an empty shell. By the sea, she was a nun. I told her I didn't understand." Paul opened his eyes and measured Kimberley. "She said I was the sea."

"You understood that?"

"No, but here's another story with the sea in it.

"Andrew, Jesus' disciple, came home. After five years away, he returned to his wife and the small hut by the Sea of Galilee. 'I've told everyone who will listen,' he said to his wife, 'and many, many more.'

"Occasionally, just before dawn she would hear him get up take his wool coat and slip out the door. From the window she watched him walk to the shore, step carefully into the water. When it got to his knees, he'd look up to the stars a moment, then walk slowly back to his house." Paul coughed and rubbed his head. "You understand?"

"Not me. I'll never get that close to the edge. I'm not a writer."

"Life can do it, if you can see it. Life, birth. Death – now there's an edge."

"Did you ever understand Pamela?"

"I never understand women. Not enough."

"Not even me?"

"No. I don't know why you came. I don't know why you stay. I don't know why you're talking to me."

****

Pamela's Story

We decided to go to the coast one clear autumn day when the sun was out and winter was coming down the trans-Canada blowing the last dandelion seed into the air.

I'd never seen the ocean: I'm not a traveller. Paul was always after new experiences. No, I said. No. Why should I go? But there were the last yellow leaves of poplar dancing around my feet and a sadness in his eyes and I said no once again but it hurt him. He thought I didn't understand him, but the problem was, I did.

I tried to tell him what I knew, that laughter is made of kite strings and you can't stretch them too far. They've paved Florida anyway, I said, my hands in my pockets. Strip malls and condos. Like I knew. But by then I was just being stubborn.

Can't pave warm, he said, knowing I didn't like winter as much any more. He kicked the leaves as if they were bad memories. He had problems with his memories of Willow, his second wife. Well, who wouldn't, given what happened, but he had to deal with that, not run away from it. We'll sit on the beach, he told me, and watch the kids flying kites.

I lost a kite like that, once, the string snapping, the kite soon gone, me wailing after it. I don't believe it flies forever, but the kite never listened to me, either.

We went to the beach and lived for a while, just the two of us, in a large upstairs room with windows most of the way around. In the night I could hear the wind in the palms, the rustling of dry shards and I'd leave the bed to sit by the window and watch the waves.

After a week, he took my hand and we walked through the darkness past the palms then out on the pier in the dark to watch the moon rise and I realized he had reached an ending long ago. It came to me that I needed beginnings, like Easter eggs and lilacs, and he was always feeling the edges of things that ended. What would I ever be to him?

I remember the cold feel of the night sand on my bare feet and the warmth of his arms around me, but not much else. He was all endings and I needed a new beginning. Not as much as he did, but there would be no use explaining that to him. He would just repeat his endings till his own ran up to him and put him out of the light.

I told him he was the sea, meaning he was beyond anything anyone could do, but he thought I was admiring his depths I guess. I left for home that night although it took three days to get out of the room with the seagulls crying all day. It was snowing when the plane landed in Montreal but people there were making plans for the rest of their lives and when I got a place in the north end I began to write again.

****

A Poem from Mad Tom

For Paul, a year before the fire, after a meeting and a long talk.

I left no track

Not a Trace

On the landscape's

Random face

A moment's motion

A minute's wake

I was gone

From another lake

Down the hill

On the portage track

A blue canoe

And a smallish pack

A fading memory

For a crying loon

Gone by the rising

Of the moon

Oh! To have left no mark

No faintest trace

On this planet's

Rolling face.

************************
Chapter Four

************************

Fred Speaks

Yes, I know Kimberley We were together for a few months near the end of term in the spring. I guess she dumped me, if you can call it that. I mean, it was never all that serious between us. We simply liked the same things and more or less hung out with the same crowd until we sort of drifted apart.

I met her through a friend, and invited her to a movie one night. We were going together after that right up till we separated in summer. We live a long way apart, so we didn't see each other except for the canoe trip.

She's a smart girl. She gets better grades than me, but then I suppose she works for it. I figure on putting most of my efforts into the courses I really need and I can get through the others even if I'm late with the assignments sometimes. I have my hobbies – I'm big on quantum theory and that. But you're only this age once, my father told me, and like to mix partying and studying more than some people – like Kimberley – do.

But before we left for summer, we arranged to go as a group, with Cindy and Paul and Ian and Colleen in Agate Lake with the canoes. I had my dad's canoe and I have the Cougar (my own as long as I keep paying the bank). We were supposed to go with another canoe, with Ian and Colleen, but they had to go to a wedding or something.

It worked out okay. We both had summer jobs, but we got an extra day on the long weekend and Kimberley made up some food to take. Me, I've have taken instant foods but I certainly appreciated her effort. The weather was good the whole four days, except raining on the way home, but you can't argue with that.

She'd been canoeing with the Wilderness Club and at the camp she went to when she was younger (I don't remember the name) but I could still teach her a few things about the outdoors she didn't know. We portaged into Agate Lake with a few bottles of red wine. Plastic bottles, so we could burn them in the fireplace when we were done. Spent the days walking around the hills and paddling into other lakes and generally enjoying ourselves. Cindy can get a bit uptight.

And Kimberley, she gets quiet sometimes. I guess she had a rough home life when she was growing up or something. She didn't want to talk about it. I figured she'd find someone a bit more bookish or nerdy than me (more serious, anyway). But it was three good nights around the campfire and our tent was good enough to keep out the mosquitoes, unlike the one Cindy and Paul were using.

I hear she's signed herself out for this term. She didn't tell me why, but then, we haven't spoken much since last summer. I wish her luck and happiness. Tell her I said hello.

****

Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.

Mad Tom held the rifle in front of his face, pointing it in the general direction of Peter Finer's nose. There was a long moment of silence, Tom's mouth moving but no words coming out. Then he said to the reporter, "A canoe will be necessary."

Peter waited unmoving, mouth slightly open. No more words came, so he asked, "To get to the island?"

"A canoe will be quite necessary to get to the island where Paul is." Tom began blinking rapidly and his arms shook.

"Well, don't shoot," Peter said. "How about I'll sit in the front and paddle and you keep the gun pointed at me. To make sure I go to the right place." His knees shook a bit, but he tried to keep them still.

This seemed to puzzle Tom, as if he hadn't contemplated that option. Finally, he nodded. But as Peter started to put his pack into the canoe, Tom said, "An inspection will be necessary. Quite essential." He looked like he wanted to say more, but couldn't, so the reporter got emptied the pack, one item at a time, into the bottom of the canoe. Finally, Tom nodded. Peter just left the items in the bottom of the canoe. He slid the canoe halfway into the lake, then climbed into the front, holding his paddle. Tom slide the canoe the rest of the way into the lake, getting in at the same time.

Out on the island, Paul and Kimberley stopped what they were doing and watched. "There's a canoe coming. Two guys. Do you know them?" Kimberley asked. For a moment she could see herself escaping, paddling madly back to the shore, leaving Paul to die with somebody else.

"My eyes aren't very good. Do you want to give me a description?"

Kimberley did her best.

"The guy in the back sounds like Mad Tom," Paul said in a low voice. He lives in the woods and probably is totally nuts. But I don't know the other guy. It's not Rollie, from your description."

"I had the pleasure of meeting Mad Tom yesterday," Kimberley said. But I don't know the other guy either." She reached into a jacket pocket and handed Paul the bottle of pills.

****

Notes from Kimberley Molley, Student

Hi, me.

I'm still on the island in Pine Lake with Paul. He's still alive and I'm looking for a chance to hide the pills he wants to use to off himself, but he keeps them close to him.

The real news is there's a couple of guys in a yellow canoe coming from the portage. Paul says the guy in the back is called Tom. He looks like the creepy guy I met at the portage yesterday. He must be the one Paul says lives in the woods around here.

The one in the front is doing all the paddling, so they're not moving too fast.

Oh fuck. The guy in the back has a gun and he's pointing it at the one in the front! What do I do now? Paul's saying something into a recorder, I think.

Remember us if we don't get home. I'm thinking of rushing my canoe and making a break for it, or something. Not going to just sit here any more.

****

Paul Gottsen. Pine Lake.

Paul here. Interesting day, I think. Still can't see very well, but from what Kimberley says, Tom and somebody else are coming here in a canoe. Wish I'd taken the pills and woke up dead this morning. Isn't that right, Kimberley?

Oh, she's busy, texting or something. This all seems irrelevant. I thought I'd have something to say to the world in my last hours, but somehow, what I haven't already said seems pretty stupid and obvious. Goodbye forever.

****

Peter Finer, Journalist

From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.

A person can be rather tired after a long portage, but there's nothing like a rifle pointed at one to keep one paddling anyway. With Tom not steering, the canoe meandered across the lake towards the island, with my neck hairs on end and my brain contemplating rolling the canoe and swimming for it.

Aside from that, it was a truly glorious autumn day. A couple of wispy clouds, a skein of geese (why do they always fly in skeins?) heading north for some reason, the forest dark with pines along the shore but glowing on the hilltops in maple and beech, the water clear and dark with mysteries.

There was a silence and a promise in the world, and a call of distances. The canoe became the passage and the paddle was love beyond knowledge. Somewhere, beyond the hills, the lake became a river and flowed like silver to the far-off sea. You wanted to take someone and sing a song and find where the rivers ended and where hearts no longer needed to speak. It was a bit harder under the circumstances, I guess, but there was still the sunshine and the geese.

And, of course, an island with Paul Gottsen and a university student waiting for me. Except for the rifle, it was working out nicely. And except for the guy holding the rifle, big enough to stomp me into mush, and not, perhaps playing Mozart with a complete keyboard.

A journalist never knows what's ahead, but it seemed wiser to keep going than to take the chance the guy behind me would get off one lucky shot as me, and my little camera, and my cell phone, and my recorder, could roll the canoe, especially with his weight acting as a ballast.

****

Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.

"I don't think Tom can swim," Paul said. "Otherwise he'd have been over here by now."

"I bet." Kimberley moved closer to Paul, then tentatively put a hand on his shoulder.

"And he doesn't have a canoe."

"Strange, around here." Kimberley tilted her head towards the water.

"Oh, you can walk around the lakes, and he was sure the satellites and airplane going overhead kept track of canoes."

"The thinks so?"

"We've had three – no, four – conversations back in the woods. Not here, though, until now. The first one hardly counted. He had a gun and can't make himself understood very well when he's uptight."

She turned to look at the writer. "Didn't the gun make it awkward?"

"Rather. Until I found out he doesn't have any bullets for it. I guess he ran out and I figured it wasn't a good idea to give him any more."

"I'm with you on that one. What do you think he'll do?"

"Who knows? If he thinks this is a conspiracy to get him, he could do anything to any of us. If not.... I just don't know. He's a frightened man."

"How deep's the water right offshore here?" Kimberley got to her feet as the canoe got closer.

"Falls off real quick; goes down really deep."

The canoe approached the island steadily. As it did, Peter carefully set his paddle down and took out a camera from an inside jacket pocket. Keeping it hidden from Tom, he took his first picture as the island neared.

Kimberley stepped up to the water. Paul was right: other than a small underwater ledge, the edge of the island was an underwater cliff. She could see Peter taking another picture as she reached toward the canoe. Then she stepped onto the ledge, grabbed the gunnel of the canoe, and pushed down. Even then, the canoe would have rolled back upright if Tom had not panicked and stood up.

The yellow canoe went over far enough to roll Tom, little rifle and all, into the water. Peter grabbed onto the gunnels with a death grip, and bent over until his face touched the prow of the canoe, a manoeuvre that kept him in the boat when it rolled back upright, the way a good canoe should. He then leapt out onto the shore and helped Kimberley drag the canoe partly out of the water. It had a lot of water in it, and was too heavy to haul out completely.

Tom himself might have drowned, but he caught one end of a rope that had fallen out of the canoe, and holding onto that was hauled landward until his feet found the ledge and he could crawl onto the land like a wet cat. The rifle was nowhere to be seen. He found a warm part of the rock and began taking his soaked clothes off, turning to Paul and saying, "People can be wet and cold."

"You, at least, old friend," Paul said. "Glad to see you."

"People bother people?" Tom asked, still fighting buttons.

"Kimberley's on our side. Don't know about this other dude, though."

"People will see about people," Tom said.

Kimberley was taking her wet shoes off when Peter, who was dry except for one foot, started emptying the canoe of his stuff, keeping a wary eye on Tom. Barefoot, Kimberley walked over and began bailing water out of the canoe with an empty Blue Bonnet Margarine container that was floating among the other goods. In a couple of minutes, they hauled the canoe further onto shore, so they could reach more of Peter's floating camping equipment.

Peter checked his jacket. From the inside pocket, he pulled out the camera and the recorder, and set them on a flat section of shore. When he turned back to the canoe, Kimberley walked over, took both items, and tossed them, one after the other, well out into the lake. Peter stood up in time to see them hit the water. When he turned to Kimberley, she just shrugged. "Sorry about that," she said. He, however, was at a loss for words.

Paul, who had been about to say something to Tom, turned. "What was that?" he asked.

"I seem to have inadvertently tossed this dude's camera and recorder into the lake."

Paul laughed. "Now I think I'm getting to like you.

"Great," Kimberley said. "Just adopt me or marry me in the next few minutes so I can inherit your cabin." She turned to Peter. "You a reporter, or something."

"A reporter or something," Peter agreed, after a minute. "And hostage till you rescued me. I guess I owe you that."

"Well," Paul said, "I've been saving my final comments into a voice recorder myself, in the last day. I'll give it to you before you leave.

"I'd like that!" Peter was sounding more cheerful. He began getting the items that had been removed from his backpack and were now floating inside the canoe. After he'd got most of them out, he and Kimberley tipped the canoe over to let the water pour out.

"Paul," Kimberley said, "we have more whiskey." She held up a large plastic bottle of Seagram's VO.

"Ah, Rollie asked me to give this to you," Peter said.

"Good old Rollie. Always willing to help me out." He took the bottle from Kimberley, then removed the cap. "Anybody else want some."

"There will be drunks!" Tom shouted, by now buck naked, having removed his wet clothes, all of them.

"You're right, my friend," Paul said. "Kimberley, can you find a cup for my friend here?" When she did, he handed Tom a half cupful, telling him, "Drink it slowly. If you get drunk you'll be helpless when they come for you."

"There will be comings?" Tom said. "There will be comings? There will be comings?" He began to bob up and down doing knee bends and looking along the far shores."

"I don't know," Paul said, "but I believe it's likely someone will be along this afternoon. He turned to the others. "Tom's really quite articulate and intelligent when he's relaxed, but not when he's uptight about things. I think he'll be like this as long as you're here."

Peter turned to Kimberley. "Who are you and what are you doing here."

****

Peter Finer, Journalist

From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen. This is a Rejected Section of the Manuscript.

So they came, one by one, and each with his or her own motives, to Pine Lake. They came over the portage bearing their colourful canoes each on his or her own head, as the short shining autumn day sang to them in colours they tried to ignore.

They came through the yellow beech and through the maples of heart-stopping orange. Stumbling on rocks, they passed even under a grove of hemlock, walking like supplicants between the pillars and under the canopy that spread above them. Then they walked downhill into the pine forest that circled the little lake, home to a big, strange man, who wanted only to stay hidden, and sweep the spotlight away if it came near him.

They had, each, a different motive in their hearts and wore different shoes on their feet, but they came like clowns into the circus ring to the dark mystery of water, stone, and tree. The geese sang of miles awaiting them and sunny shores, but the chickadees told them winter was coming, and they should beware.

They crossed water in boats so small even a sick old man or a young woman could carry them on their shoulders. They put the boats into the water and, like boats should, they floated on the surface. It was, as always, a commonplace and a miracle. The boat and the human hung between high blue sky and unseeable depths, depths in which whole life forces could live and die and lost canoeists could roll and be nuzzled by silent creatures should they make just one mistake of gravity. Somewhere at the base of their spines a coiled and primeval serpent knew that the bottom of the lake was the darkness on a bright day.

But they crossed the water anyway, like acolytes to the god of pain, each wondering if they'd made a mistake.

Then the man who played the dying novelist in this theatre met the girl who played the essence of youth and together they faced the man with questions. And the only one who could touch on the truth of it all was the Caliban, the Wild Man, who kept the deeps of human fears from a thousand centuries aching in his bones and, for a long moment, couldn't speak.

They faced each other and looked for truth, and redemption, and pity and light. The water sparkled underneath a cooling sky, so they reached for the whiskey bottle because it was all too much for them.

And the geese sang above them and the white-throated sparrow in the cedar called O sweet Canada Canada Canada, but in the deep water the burbot swam slowly along the bottom, tasting the mud and waiting for night.

****

Peter Finer, Journalist

From his book, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen.

There we were, four people on an island. My voice recorder and camera were in the mud on the dark bottom of Pine Lake. I'd figured there was an even chance I'd get to Gottsen after he'd killed himself. I still had a pen and a notepad, so I started interviewing the other inhabitants of the island.

That was a mistake.

The student, Kimberley Molley merely told me what to do with myself when I merely asked for her name. I gathered she had had a bad experience sometime with the media, or else she'd developed a bond with Gottsen rather quickly and didn't want to see him answer questions before he died. I waited a moment, hoping some modicum of guilt from having destroyed my property might temper her disenthusiasm. There was what would have been a long silence, except for Gottsen talking to the Naked Hulk, Tom.

Not for a moment did I consider interviewing Tom. Even if I had know his diaries would eventually be discovered in his "habitation" under the hemlocks, it was obvious that he wasn't able to communicate much. And, besides, he seemed to consider me an enemy of some sort. Paranoiacs are hard to deal with, naked or not, but when they outweigh you by a lot of muscle and there's no place to run to in a hurry, it's better to just let them alone, I figured.

That left Gottsen himself. The media, which I represented in his eyes, may not have generated the bad reviews he got for Stolen Rain, but they certainly disseminated those reviews. I was heartened when he offered me his voice recorder, but not inclined to try to get it from him at that moment.

That left me standing on the island, one foot wet, and nothing to do. So I did the only reasonable thing: I found a plastic cup among the goods Rollie had sent with me, and went over to ask for some whiskey. After a moment's reflection, Paul half filled my cup. I thanked him, considered the universe, and chugged it in one gulp. After I'd danced a bit, Paul noted that Rollie had sent him overstrength liquor brought in from the States.

"Oh, God!" I noted, a bit shaky.

"Is no god!" Tom yelled capturing everyone's attention. "Cannot be! Must not be!

We all looked at each other. Then Paul, his eyes closed, spoke. "Every evening God opens a fold-down desk before She pulls her comforter over Her head and sleeps the sleep of the damned. She writes the whole events of the day in a radiant book." He opened one eye for a moment, and looked at us. "It helps to keep her warm. Lucifer, you see, stole Light and scattered Her power across the gray planet.

"God cannot be caught, but if you're quick, you can see Her in the strange reflection from a whiskey bottle, if it is topped with a half-burned candle and if it is full of tears." If he'd aggravated the naked man next to him, he didn't seem worried.

But Tom began to shout. It was obviously a sensitive topic in his life. Suddenly I really, really hated Kimberley for the loss of my voice recorder. Tom ranted about God for a while. When he paused, Kimberley turned to Paul. "Any stories about mythical heroes as comment?" she asked.

Paul was obviously in pain. But he answered, "I came across Odysseus out in a field by the edge of an open grave, drunk and loud, stomping on grasshoppers and crying (he always was a sensitive man).

"Well, I asked, and Odysseus roared, 'Gods! You have no gods in your bloody cold country!'

"I offered to show him channel 27 on weekdays on the one-eyed Cyclops or almost anything on a Sunday morning, but he would not be comforted. 'Fuck you," he ranted at the sky positively begging for thunderbolts (or even a small rain).

"It was a brave performance from an old man; he got my sympathy, and the lovely sweet song of a meadowlark bravely singing over the grave of all his dreams, fears, and hiccups." Paul stopped suddenly.

Well, I didn't know what it meant, but it stopped Tom in his rant. He looked at Paul, who was holding a bottle of pills. He looked around at us and the lake. Then he looked up. In the bright blue sky an airplane, probably on its way into Toronto, was leaving a bright contrail that passed directly above us. Coming in from the northwest, another plane, somewhat higher, was leaving another contrail. We watched as they slowly crossed our sky, crossing directly above us. It turned out to be a particularly unfortunate coincidence.

Paul spoke up. "He thinks the government spreads special chemicals by adding them to jet fuel. The chemicals make us stupid and amenable to government propaganda."

"Speaks for itself!" Tom yelled.

"Even me?" Paul asked him.

Tom stared at Paul, then yelled, "Who's got the antidote? Who among us had the prevention?" He stepped between myself and Kimberley, over to the writer, and snatched the bottle of pills from Paul's hand. "Who always wondered? Who always suspected?" Tom yelled. He took the whiskey bottle from the rock, and backed away, toward the swamp.

At that point, he poured the entire bottle of pills into his mouth, and began chewing and swallowing, helped by slugging back the whiskey at the same time.

Kimberley seemed frozen, but I stepped forward. Tom scooped up a baseball-size rock and held it over his head. When he'd got the pills down he set down the whiskey carefully, saying, "Why do they listen? Why don't they fight? How do I know?" Then he began a long quote from Leviticus, mixed in with a bit of Hamlet. I looked briefly back at Paul. He was filling my packsack with stones. "Might be a good idea," I thought, assuming he was reducing the available ammunition supply, before I turned back to Tom.

Kimberley and I didn't move; we just stood there, watching Mad Tom being mad. He came close to accusing us of being part of a conspiracy to capture him, drug him into subservience, then release him. At the time it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. I'd have edged away if I weren't afraid it would provoke him.

Then, abruptly, Tom stopped ranting. His voice went up an octave and the rock fell out of his hand, hitting him on the shoulder. He didn't seem to notice. He stopped talking, and fell to the ground, one arm under him, and his head sideways.

We waited a moment, then I stepped slowly up to Tom. Kimberley, still standing there, said, "Can we do anything?"

"He's still breathing," I said, "but not well. He'll die unless we can get that shit our of him. Do you have a stomach pump handy?"

"Can we make him throw up?"

"Probably not. And if he did, he'd probably choke on his own vomit." That comment was followed by silence as we watched Tom lie there. The silence was followed by the sound of a small airplane getting louder. A yellow float plane came in over the hills, dipped till it was treetop height, and flew over the lake. "Inspecting the lake for a landing," I shouted above the noise at Kimberley. "So they know where the rocks are."

"Where's Paul?" Kimberley asked. "Where's Paul?"

She had a point there. I couldn't see any sign of him. All three canoes were still there, and I ran towards the clump of trees we'd been using as a toilet, although they were short enough that a guy would really have to lie down to hide. There was no sign of the writer.

"No. Not there. Out there," Kimberley yelled.

I turned to look. She was pointing towards the lake surface. From deep in the lake a large bubble rose to the surface, followed by a couple more. "Holy shit," I said, walking to the edge of the lake. There wasn't a sign of anyone or anything.

The plane came in from the same direction as before, but landed this time, throwing up waves until it was close to the island. The pilot turned it towards us, then killed the engine. A man in a police uniform got out onto the pontoon with a rope. I admit I was a bit stunned at this point, so Kimberley caught the rope and looped it around a boulder the size of a dog. The cop pulled at the rope, and the plane moved to the shore.

When he'd stepped onto the shore, he looked at both of us, then nodded in the direction of Tom. "What's the situation with that individual?"

"He swallowed a bottle of pills. Sleeping pills, I think." Peter handed over the empty bottle with Gottsen's name on it.

"And he washed them down with half a bottle of whiskey," Kimberley said.

The cop examined Tom. "We'll have to get him to hospital as quick as soon as possible. Can you help get him onto the plane?" By this time the pilot had brought a nylon stretcher with aluminum poles.

Well, I could, and we did, the cop, the pilot, Kimberley, and I rolling Tom onto the stretcher, then getting it onto the plane. Tom was heavy and the last part, between the water's edge and the door took some chunks of skin from Tom's arms and legs, but we managed it. The last thing the cop said was, "I want both of you to show up at the OPP office in Bancroft tomorrow.

Then he untied the rope, got into the plane, and in a minute or two they were gone into the sky.

****

Pine Lake. Day After Fire Day.

For a moment after the plane was gone Peter and Kimberley watched the empty sky. The echoes seemed to die slowly, and it was only when a heron abruptly flew in and landed just down the shoreline that a proper silence returned to Pine Lake.

Both people turned and walked back to the centre of the island. The journalist began writing into a little white notepad. Kimberley rolled up her tent and sleeping bag, packing them into the one large pack. The heron changed its mind and flew away. Neither of them more than glanced at the lake where Paul had disappeared.

"Can I get your phone number?" Peter tried. Kimberley continued packing without comment. "I'll be spending the night here. That met with similar lack of response. "At least," Peter asked, "can you spare something to put some of my stuff into? Paul took my big pack."

Without comment, the student walked over and deposited one green garbage bag in front of Peter. Then she held out her hand with an object in it. Peter took it; it was a voice recorder smaller than the one he'd lost in the lake. "Thanks," he said.

When her canoe was loaded, Kimberley pushed into Pine Lake without at look back, and within ten minutes had disappeared up the portage trail, the entrance barely visible among the shore shrubs in the late afternoon sunlight. She took her pack and paddles to the top of the hill, then came back for the canoe. She could see Peter still sitting on the island, making notes in his little notebook.

She had time to work on it as she climbed uphill with the red canoe on her shoulders. She decided she was angry, numb, and determined to get home in that order. No one had the right, she decided, to do that to her.

By the time she was crossing Sparkler Lake, she decided she'd brought most of it on herself: Paul hadn't asked for company. But the anger remained.

****

The World and Afterwords

What did you expect?

Rivers of time still sweep people away, unforgiving and unforgiven and the wind still blows in the pines where Tom started to make a cabin. You can deal with that any way you want: for many people, each autumn is a tragedy beyond imagining. For others, it's just leaves falling, steadily, on the portage trails.

The moon shone down on Peter Finer, onetime reporter and future biographer, as he sat all night by the lake, his back against his canoe. Whether he was now the centre of a tragedy or just another clown under the big tent is up to you to decide. In his narration, he merely says, "I spent the night on the island. In the morning I returned to Long Lake, leaving Paul in the water and Paul's canoe on the rocky island."

Sometimes you can find answers in the moonlight; sometimes you can't.

In the night, under the lake, the large burbot edged in towards shore and discovered Paul on the bottom. Carefully, it circled the body, tasting the water. Eventually the barbells on its chin touched Paul's nose. Then the fish felt the man's face with the leading edges of his fins, which were covered with taste buds. However, there was, the fish sensed, nothing he could get out of a dead writer, and he moved in towards the shore.

Kimberley showed up at the OPP office in the morning, and was still there when Peter's car drove in. Between them, they eventually convinced a very irritated officialdom that they'd done nothing to mislead anybody. A helicopter carrying a couple of divers landed on Pine Lake the following day, and hauled the corpse, in a dark plastic bag, off for autopsy. They also took Paul's canoe; it was sold at the next spring's police auction to a couple of duck hunters.

Tom got his stomach pumped and within a few days was well enough to be institutionalized. Once back on his medications, he was released into the world. After a few days on the streets of Toronto, he began skipping his medications because they made him stupid and shaky. He talked to everyone about the joys of being in the woods, but, a couple of years afterwards, was still talking about it.

Paul Gottsen's sister inherited the cottage site, along with all his known writings and royalties for them, not that that amounted to much for a year or two, after which all his works went into reprint. The cottage site was bought by a couple with three young children; they put up a rather large place a bit further from the water. The Wounded Woodpecker still shows up at the feeder.

The first step in Gottsen's rehabilitation was the publication, six months after his death, of Peter Finer's biography, Dark Waters: A Life of Paul Gottsen. The biography sold a small but respectable number of copies before Dark Lake appeared.

It was two days after getting home that Kimberley unzipped her sleeping bag and threw it over a line to air out. A bright red USB drive and a piece of paper fell out. The paper held a signed, handwritten note, "I Paul Gottsen assign the novel Pine Lake and all associated rights to Kimberley Molley to do with as she wishes."

It took Kimberley a month before she even checked the drive, and found the entire draft of Dark Lake on it. It took another six months before she placed a call to the publisher of Gottsen's last three novels. The publisher brought Dark Lake out by surprise, two months after Finer's biography hit the shelves. Despite the discrepancies between his narrative and the one Kimberley told the media, sales of the biography increased dramatically, especially with the run of very positive reviews for the book.

Kimberley eventually decided to keep her baby, dropping out of university. She had no talent for writing adult novels, but with a bit of pull at the publisher's, got started in a career writing teen fiction. That, and royalties from Dark Lake, made her enough money to keep going and to home-school her daughter, whom she named Paula.

*** END ***

