Alone on the Shield Read online

  “It’s Robert now,” she corrected. “He’s a tenured professor. And he’s an American. You can’t call him a three-letter word.”

  “Does he still think we have snakes here?” Dan chuckled.

  Annette smiled. Her ex-husband had found life on the Canadian Shield far more challenging than the Shangri-la they had anticipated in 1970 when they sought shelter from the Vietnam War.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It was the mosquitoes that drove him away, though. Poor guy. That first winter almost killed him. Twenty hours of darkness, minus thirty for a week, frozen pipes. Using the outhouse when ‘freezing your ass off’ wasn’t just an expression. Spring was better until the first big bug hatch. He looked like a teenager with acne he had so many red welts on his skin.

  “That’s what sent him off to grad school,” Annette recalled. “I don’t know what I would have done if we didn’t have the cabins then.”

  “You did a great job with them,” said Dan.

  Annette smiled. She had turned the rickety cabins into a profitable enterprise with guile and grit—helped by a steady influx of customers sent her way by Dan’s father, who recommended Annette’s cabins to clients needing a place to stay the night before they launched into the wilderness.

  “About our arrangement,” Dan said, changing the subject.

  “Yes. That.” Annette smiled.

  “We could buy you out, the outfitting business and the cabins. There’d be enough money to give you some financial security, and we’d pay you a good salary to stay on. Christy too.”

  “Thanks, Dan. But I can’t give up my independence.”

  “You’re not lumping us in with that Williams fellow, are you?”

  Annette laughed. “Never! Where did that, that man come from, anyway?”

  “He used to manage fly-in cabins for a business out of Fort Frances,” said Dan. “Did Christy really haul out a shotgun?”

  “He’s a very unpleasant man.”

  “He left a trail of people saying that. Glad you’re not doing business with him. I don’t think he’d be a good addition to the community.”

  Dan shifted in his chair. “What if we did it as an acquisition and you got shares in Canadian Shield Ventures? You’d be a minority shareholder, but you’d have a vote. We’d merge the canoe businesses, have Christy manage the drive-in cabins as long as she wanted to, and you could sell her your shares when you retire. It could work out for everyone.”

  Annette sat back in her chair, silent for a moment. She hadn’t anticipated that offer. “You know what? I’ll think about it . . . but only because it’s you asking. If it was anyone else, this would’ve ended a while ago.” She smiled a little, deep in thought. “It scarred me, you know. Being alone in the wilderness with two babies. I had to borrow money from my parents. I didn’t really think I’d make it, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I don’t ever want to be dependent on anyone again.”

  “I understand,” said Dan, “Think about the merger idea. You wouldn’t be completely independent anymore, but you’d own a piece of the whole thing—canoes, cabins, planes, the lodge . . .”

  Annette nodded yes. “By the way,” she said. “Don’t forget I’m taking next week for my Quetico holiday.”

  “Got you covered. Where are you going?”

  “My secret island.”

  Dan smiled. Everyone in the outfitting business had their favorite Quetico hideaways, and they often compared notes. But Annette had one favorite place that she kept a secret.

  “Believe it or not, I have a date.” She smiled and blushed lightly. “Not bad for a grandma, eh?”

  “Not bad for anyone,” said Dan. “Are we going to meet this guy?”

  “Probably not. He’s starting in the Boundary Waters on the Minnesota side. In fact, he’s launching this week sometime. He thinks he’s going to spend a month in the Boundary Waters and Quetico. I just hope he lasts long enough to meet me.”

  “Solo trips sound good ’til you do them,” said Dan. “A lot of people give it up after a few days.”

  “Pender says he’s soloed up here for twenty years or so. In fact, he knows you and your dad. He’s used Canadian Shield Outfitters for some of his trips.”

  “Pender? I remember him. Gabe Pender, right?”

  Annette nodded yes.

  “Quiet guy, always in good shape,” Dan recalled. “Good paddler. He did long trips. He had us fly him to the far corners of the park, and he’d paddle out.” Canadian Shield Ventures, the parent company of CSO, included an air service with three floatplanes to get clients to their wilderness cabins and, on occasion, to drop canoeists at designated areas on the fringes of Quetico.

  “When you could get him to talk, he told good stories,” Dan said. “One I remember, he had a young bear that kept coming into his camp. He’d chase it away, but it kept coming back. Finally, he hid in the bushes and ambushed the poor thing when it came back. Jumped out of the scrub screaming and banging a couple of pans together. Scared the pee out of it, I guess. I don’t know many people who’d bully a bear. I guess I’d bet he shows up.”

  “That sounds like something the young Gabe Pender might have tried,” said Annette.

  “I got the sense he was well off. Never worried about what things cost. Once he told me he came up here when his wife and daughter did vacations in Paris, Rio, Rome, places like that. I asked him why he didn’t join them, and he said those were business destinations for him. Quetico was where he found peace.”

  Dan looked at Annette and got that twinkle in his eye again. “How do you know him?”

  “We dated in college.”

  “No kidding! I keep forgetting you started out in life as a Yank.”

  “My misspent youth.”

  “So, you were dating people, including Pender, then Rob came along and swept you off your feet . . .?”

  “No. Pender and I were pretty serious, but the war got in the way.”

  “He was for it, you were against?”

  “I was against it. He wasn’t for or against it. He said war wasn’t a moral decision for him, it was a practical one. Your country calls, you go. Drove me crazy.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you were oil and water.”

  “It got personal. It shouldn’t have, but we were young and strong-willed. Do you ever know more about the world than when you’re a twenty-one-year-old college senior? So here we are. I’m the queen of the Quetico wilderness, and he’s a rich American who’s going to spend a month in my backyard.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Dan asked.

  “Forty years ago,” said Annette. “We’ve been e-mailing back and forth for a few months. Meeting seemed like it might be fun.”

  They made small talk for a few more minutes, and then Annette stood to leave.

  “Think about our offer,” said Dan. “We can work on the numbers, but you’d end up with a nest egg for your retirement.”

  Annette smiled and made her goodbye, but Dan’s thought echoed in her mind the rest of the night. Retirement. She was getting up in years, a woman alone in a hard world. What would she do when she couldn’t carry a canoe and a pack on the long, rugged portage trails that connected the lakes and rivers of the Canadian Shield, when she couldn’t paddle a ten-hour day, couldn’t guide? How would she live? Where?

  3

  Pender started feeling better about everything as soon as he headed north. Not giddy or elated but like things were finally starting to happen. After a winter of planning and a spring of training for long, hard paddles and steep, treacherous portages, he was finally moving.

  He would slowly wend his way north to Ely, Minnesota, in the ancient Blazer he bought to replace the BMW. He wanted something that he could abandon when he got to Ely. When he went into the wilderness this time, there would be no strings attached. When he entered the Boundary Waters, he’d leave his old life. He’d paddle across the border into Quetico and explore until he ran out of food or got bored. When he came ou
t of the park, he’d start his new life, whatever that might be.

  It sounded better than it felt. He felt like a man with no place to go, no close ties to anyone, no reason for being.

  Pender stopped for dinner in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the first day out. It was a steak and walleye place he had often patronized on his trips home from Quetico, family-owned, quiet, illuminated by the gentle glow of large aquariums filled with northwoods game fish. It was a casual, relaxing night in the eatery. His meal went down well. He felt mellow for the first time in months. He decided to stay the night and savor the moment.

  “Any vacancies next door?” he asked the waiter.

  “You bet,” the man said. “Want me to reserve you a room?”

  Pender nodded and ordered a second beer. It went down in tiny sips, cold and smooth, laced with soulful hops. He shifted his languid gaze between the setting sun outside and the bright fish tanks inside, finding between them a moment of inner peace marked by glimpses of happy moments from days gone by.

  He woke the next morning with no agenda. There was no place he had to be, nothing he had to do. He was no longer a clocks and calendars kind of person. At breakfast he heard two fishermen talking about the Chippewa Flowage just down the highway. The name stirred memories. He’d often thought about stopping on the way to or from Quetico to paddle and fish Wisconsin’s great rivers, the Chippewa especially.

  And further back in time, Chippewa Falls was a name that evoked images of the old Wisconsin, laid-back, green and lush, friendly. Pender’s mind filled with a memory from that time.

  Spring 1975.

  “Jesus, Pender! We’re late! Get John! We’re really, really late!” Pender had never seen Peg so panic-stricken. “The wedding’s at 4, not 4:30!” She stared at the card that had been on their refrigerator for a month and on the motel room dresser for two days. Their best friends’ wedding. Evelyn and John tying the knot. Pender, John’s best man. Pender wanted with all his heart to look at the card and find that, no, the wedding was at 4:30 like they’d been thinking all day. But Peg never got stuff like that wrong, and it pissed her off when he doubted her.

  They shook John from his nap, threw on their formal clothing, and dashed to church in Pender’s car, a gas-guzzling Camaro with a roaring V-8 engine that shook the pines as they shot through the hills and careened through curves, Peg praying out loud that they wouldn’t hit a deer, John praying Evelyn would still be at the church when they arrived, Pender wishing to Christ he’d read shit like that card once in a while instead of trusting his memory, which sucked.

  They skidded to a stop in front of the little church snuggled in the woods, a cloud of dust settling to the earth in their wake. Evelyn stood at the front door looking down at them, a princess bride with a white smile and blonde hair, wearing her mother’s wedding dress.

  “You better get him here on time, Pender!” she called. “This is shotgun country.”

  “You have a shotgun?” Pender yelled back as they scrambled up the steps.

  “No, honey,” she said. “I have big tits and a lot of ex-boyfriends who have shotguns.” It was a joke, and they laughed with her. She was the kind of woman who could say things like that and you’d laugh with her.

  Pender drove out toward the river, found a cheap motel, and spent the next couple days paddling the Chippewa. He’d get out early and fish, stop around nine for granola and coffee, then paddle upstream. He’d stop somewhere in the early afternoon to read and nap and laze in the sun. In the late afternoon he started drifting with the current back to his put-in place.

  His leisure thoughts bounced from one thing to the next: his fall from grace in the publishing world, his failed marriage, what it would be like to see Annette again. When he thought about the proximity of Chippewa Falls, he thought about Evelyn.

  “Want to know a secret?” Evelyn’s eyes were too bright, her smile too wide. They had all consumed too much wine, and Pender could see Evelyn was at that dangerous stage of giddy inebriation where things got said that shouldn’t be said.

  “Maybe not, Ev.”

  She stood closer to him, looking up, flashing her toothpaste-commercial smile, her hands on her hips in a stance that was both defiant and seductive.

  “I’m going to tell you anyway. I used to think if it didn’t work out between John and me, you know, I’d like to be with you.”

  “I’m glad things worked out between you two. You were made for each other.”

  “I still think about you.” She waited for him to respond, but Pender couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “I’m flattered,” he said finally.

  Peg and John returned to the bar, saving him from further floundering. Pender and Evelyn never spoke of that moment again.

  That was back when friends were about laughter and discovering new things, Pender thought as he drove back to the motel. Before friends became business. Before life became full-time serious. He couldn’t remember a particular point in time when it changed, but it did. Everything changed. Him, Peg, John, Evelyn. They all stopped loving each other and went their separate ways.

  Pender sat in his sterile motel room thinking about where to eat. The silence was interrupted only by tires crunching over gravel as cars came and went outside. In between cars, there was just the ever-present tinnitus ringing in his ears. It should have been relaxing, but it was more like a song about loneliness. Pender made himself focus on where to eat. He detested chains and fast-food places but didn’t know many alternatives in Chippewa Falls. Just one, really. He sighed. What the hell. He’d never pass this way again. He fired up the ancient Blazer and pointed it in the direction of the northwoods diner that had been in Evelyn’s family for fifty years. He didn’t think she’d be there. Hoped she wouldn’t be there. But he had to stop in. This was the last time he’d ever come this way, the last contact with his youth.

  * * *

  The Chippewa Diner was the kind of place that made Pender love crossing the border into Wisconsin back in the sixties and seventies. It had anything you wanted, fresh and fried. The smell of cooking oil and French fries thick in the air. Friendly waitresses, friendly short-order cooks. Lively conversations all over the room, none of them serious. The Wisconsin of that era had been a great place to be a tourist or a kid. Or both. No one had airs. You were always welcome.

  What a difference time can make, thought Pender as he entered the place. From the outside it looked more weather-beaten than it had back when the world was young. Inside, the aromas of fried foods and the buzz of conversation still filled the air, but it felt different. A sign above the cash register read, THIS IS A CHRISTIAN RESTAURANT. “Christian” was underlined. The wall art included a portrait of Jesus, light skinned and immaculately groomed, and photos of people at a church.

  A teenage girl greeted Pender. She was maybe seventeen, too much eye makeup, a barbed wire tattoo around her ankle. Neither friendly nor unfriendly, she just told him to follow her. As he sat, she said something that started with “Today’s special” and continued in a staccato burst of unintelligible consonants separated by indistinguishable vowels. Small-town Wisconsin had caught up to the big city, thought Pender. Maybe broiled food would be next.

  The menu on his table shared its holder with a brochure for a church. Probably the one whose parishioners graced the walls, he figured. He scanned the menu. Standard diner fare, everything homemade.

  Pender ordered and took a long look around. A dinner crowd of couples and families, all ages. Everyone seemed to know each other.

  He spotted Evelyn. She stood at the cash register, ringing up payments, helping the waitresses seat customers and shuttle food. She had put on a few pounds, but she was still a looker. Her Scandinavian blonde hair was still light, though age had taken some of its brightness. Her strong facial features still made her a handsome woman, her eyes a shade of blue so bright he could see it from thirty feet away.

  Watching her work, Pender figured the cook must be her husband. The one who came
after John. They chatted sometimes, not about orders. Evelyn wouldn’t have a lover. Had to be her husband.

  Pender’s mind wandered back in time again, to when it came apart for Evelyn and John. When the babysitter from across the street got their daughter naked and fondled her, when the law said it was powerless to act because there were no physical signs of molestation and no witnesses. When sex became a filthy, dirty thing to Evelyn. When she found she couldn’t stand men anymore, at least, not the men she knew.

  Pender gave the molester a blanket party one night, a night when John and Evelyn were at a social function with lots of witnesses. He roughed up the kid a little, no broken bones, and left him tied up and gagged at his own back door. The family got the message. Packed up and moved out lickety-split.

  It helped John but not Evelyn. Nothing helped Evelyn until she found Jesus. Jesus gave her direction but couldn’t restore her faith in humanity. She homeschooled the kids to protect their purity, then put them in Christian schools. Did church stuff daily. Made John quit drinking. Made John take up the Bible. Told John nothing he could do would ever make her want to have sex with him again.

  And asked Pender to never again come to their home, not unless he accepted Jesus as his lord and savior. This from a woman who just a moment ago was one of his closest friends, who was once on the brink of telling him she wanted to sleep with him.

  He lost them both. Evelyn divorced John and moved back to Wisconsin. He and John managed to keep up a friendship for a few more years, then an acquaintanceship, then nothing. They stayed in touch long enough for John to share the news that Evelyn had remarried. John said he hoped the guy wasn’t expecting to get laid.

  Toward the end of his meal, Evelyn noticed him from her command perch. Her face went through the stages of recognition: Do I know him? Yes I do. What’s he doing here? After Pender’s table had been cleared and his coffee served, she sat down across from him, her face humorless.