“So what is it you write about, anyway?” Broker asked.
“The Four Great American W’s: Women, Whiskey, Work, and War. And of course, sex and death.”
Broker was smiling now. He asked, “How’s your side feeling?”
“I’m good,” Sommer said, appearing to be more relaxed. Unlike Milt and Allen who looked around frequently to find the source of an invisible irritation, Sommer was momentarily at ease with the silence of the north.
“So how old are you, anyway?” Broker asked.
“I was born a week after the Battle of Midway.”
Broker rested his paddle. “June, 1942.” He’s fifty-seven, ten years older than me. Looking closer, Broker noticed the faint webbing at his throat and in his cheeks. He saw the dapple of dark pigment on his bare wrist between the cuff of his parka and his glove. Ten years, he thought.
“Not bad,” Sommer said.
“I read military history to go to sleep, like some people read mysteries,” Broker said. He shook his head. “Up until now the only writers I’ve met were newspaper reporters. They don’t sound much like you.”
Sommer acted indignant. “Hey, I’m a thief, not a fucking vampire.”
Broker grinned at the remark and a few minutes later the frosted woods opened and they squirted from the last tight passage into a long, open stretch of lake.
“Life vest,” Broker reminded Sommer who had neglected to put his on. Sommer pulled on the vest and snapped it tight. Their paddles dipped and swished in and out of the glassy, motionless water and, except for the chill air, the distant treelines could have been a blur of steam. They were well into the open water when a feather of breeze drifted down. Long, dark ripples began to gouge Lake Fraser as if an invisible giant was dragging his feet.
“What the hell?” Sommer looked up as the feeble light drained from the sky and left the day in shadow. There was no warning.
The air and water puckered as the wind set its cleats. The treetops bent, the forest dulled from white eye candy to dirty ash. The straight-line gale just smashed down through the clouds.
“Get serious, people. .” Broker rose in his seat and yelled to warn the other canoe. The blast tore the words from his mouth and threw them away.
Chapter Three
“Ahhouuu.”
Milt gave a dare-danger howl as he and Allen sculled in place until Broker and Sommer pulled abreast of them. Then Milt brandished his paddle at the storm. This show of bravado rankled Broker who was gauging the power of the onrushing wind in the way the pines were cranking at the north end of the lake.
“Cinch those vests tight,” he shouted.
Milt sat up abruptly as the full might of the squall exploded around them and the lake erupted into something like a horizontal rapids. Wide-eyed, chastised, he turned to Broker. Ten yards away across the bucking water, there was no mistaking his sober assessment: This is some serious shit we’re in.
“No mistakes, no mistakes,” Allen shouted.
“Dig it,” Sommer yelled. Half turned, with one hazel eye flaring over his shoulder, he raised his paddle to drive it into the gray slope swelling up to his front. The stiff wave-three feet high-crashed over the bow and showered him in ice water. The next wave reared, coiled, and Broker leaned into his paddle and watched it come. It had never been warm. Even in summer. For thousands of years that gray water had cherished a geologic memory of its glacier mama.
“Paddle,” Broker yelled. “Stay into the wind.”
“No shit,” Sommer yelled back, his voice giddy with excitement, and they met the wave head on, riding a choppy boost of adrenalin.
Milt swung in so close the canoes bumped gunwales. His powerful twelve-inch wrists drove his paddle in a foaming sculling motion and, freed from his landlubber plodding, he danced on the water. His face clenched in a diagram of practical fear under taut control and formed a question: What do you think? His eyes measured Sommer and Allen, who wore braced but game expressions.
Broker looked from Allen to Sommer, back to Allen: What about Sommer’s guts?
Allen shrugged: Have to.
“Fuck you guys,” Sommer snarled, digging in with his paddle.
They sailed on the plume of a wave, dropped into the trough, and the plunge set them all paddling furiously to keep pointed up wind.
They had less than ten inches of freeboard on the heavily loaded canoes. One slipup abeam of these waves and they’d take a boatful of water. If they capsized, the wind would batter them back down the lake. The life jackets would keep them afloat but hypothermia would do them in before they washed up on the far shore.
One look into Milt’s eyes confirmed it: dumping a canoe in these conditions, this far out, was a death sentence.
“Can’t take a chance on turning back,” Broker shouted. He stabbed his finger toward a blur in the distance where a rocky point jutted into the lake, about a quarter mile to the left front. Milt nodded, concurring. He could see the waves peter out on the lee side.
“Tricky. We’ll have to quarter. .”
“What?”
“Quarter. Off the wind,” Milt shouted again.
“Understand,” Broker nodded vigorously. Then he braced himself and paddled into the freak storm as sleeting rain slashed at his Goretex parka and threatened to freeze, turn white, and blot out his vision.
Jesus. The plunging winds split sideways, sheared off, and scissored slapdash patterns through the water-moguls here, herringbone there. Broker tried to line up Sommer’s green parka with the end of the point that appeared, then disappeared, playing peek-a-boo. This practical exercise in dead reckoning did nothing to mitigate the swooping ant-on-a-twig sensation as the tiny canoe rode the big water.
Abruptly the wind shifted and they found themselves in an eerie acoustic shadow. Sommer threw a look over his shoulder and his expression was vital, happy almost; danger had peeled years from his face. “Hey, Broker, tell me. .” his voice boomed in the lull.
“What?”
“You voted for Ventura?”
“You’re fuckin’ nuts.”
Sommer’s wild eyes flashed and his reaction to a world that was determined to kill them was to grin, as they wobbled in the belly of a wave with the next crest coming at eye level. Tons of gray-green lake water slid an arm’s length from their faces and they were. . laughing.
“Stephen Crane. Great line. End of Red Badge of Courage,” Sommer shouted sentence fragments in the gusty wind.
“Huh?” Broker strained to hear.
“They met the Great Death. .”
“Hey, fuck your Great Death.”
“. . and found that. .”
“Found?”
“. . was just the great death,” Sommer roared.
“Fuck him, the horse he rode in on, and the colonel who sent him,” Broker shouted.
“See, it goes easier when you lighten up,” Sommer shouted back.
Which was true. They fell into a powerful slot, pulling together, riding rather than fighting the water. The wind shifted back full force, plugging their ears; but a hot fear now greased their muscles and they were gaining distance. Broker saw the point much clearer now. “Hey, we’re almost. .”
Sommer answered with a wild bray of pain. Teeth bared, he braced his arms on his paddle athwart the gunwales and trembled.
Fear flipped in Broker’s chest from tonic to paralytic. “You gotta. .”
“Jesus,” Sommer bellowed.
“Paddle. .” Broker screamed.
Sommer’s eyes revolved, immobilized by the pain. The bow started to swing. The next wave. .
“Don’t quit on me, goddammit!” Broker roared.
Sommer gritted his teeth, straightened up, bent stiffly to the work, and powered them into the wave.
Broker hollered, “You okay?”
Teeth clenched, Sommer swore, “Fuck you, paddle.”
“We have to. . quarter. Off the wind,” Broker yelled.