The Northwoods Chronicles (24 page)

The next morning, Fred was awakened by a
pounding on the cabin door, and, when he opened it, wearing
T-shirt, boxers and his brother’s plaid robe, big Tryg Svensen
filled the doorway.

“You fucking pervert,” Tryg said quietly. “I
would expect something like that from Charlie, because he’s not
right, but not from the likes of you.”

Fred held up a hand, as if that was going to
keep Tryg from ripping his head off. Tryg didn’t even notice it. He
took a step across the threshold and into the kitchen.

“I have one suggestion for you, Freddie boy.
Pack your shit and get out of town, and I won’t have to call the
cops or tell your brother about what you do when you come up here
to use his place.”

“Listen—” Fred said, but Tryg took another step
toward him, and he was forced two steps back.

“You best save your breath,” Tryg said, his
voice still horribly quiet amid the anger that tightened his face,
“and just do as I suggest.”

Fred nodded.

“And if I ever see you within shouting distance
of my daughter again, I’ll feed you to the crabs.” He took another
step forward. “Do you for
one instant
doubt what I’m telling
you?”

Fred shook his head. He felt like a child. He
felt like a fool. He felt like a guilty pervert.

Tryg turned and stepped out the door. “Have a
nice drive home,” he said.

Fred closed the door and locked it. He took a
deep, ragged breath, then started to pack.

But the more he packed, the more indignant he
got. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d never touched Katarina. He
didn’t hang out at the schoolyard, he didn’t offer the kids dope or
booze. He hadn’t done anything wrong, besides walk through the
neighbors’ yard when they weren’t home and avail himself of the eye
candy that happened to present itself through her window. She
should pull the goddamn blinds, he thought.

Still, he packed.

On his way home, he stopped at Gordie Van Rank’s
taxidermy shop to pick up his mounted walleye. He hoped it was
ready. He didn’t really want to see Gordie, but it was
unavoidable.

A tasteful little bell rang when Fred pushed
open the door, and Gordie’s weird low voice called out from the
back room. “Be right with you,” he said.

Fred nervously looked at the rack of brochures
by the front door. He didn’t know what he was going to say.

“Fred?”

Fred turned, and there was Gordie, looking the
same as always.

“Heard about Babs,” Fred blurted out. “Came by
to see you. And pick up my mount.”

A soft smile crossed Gordie’s face. “Thanks,
Fred. That means a lot. They got the folks who killed her, you
know. They killed her and Cara Trenton and a bunch of tourists. I
did a couple of days in jail before they found the scum who did it,
but it’s all behind us now.”

“Bummer,” Fred said.

“I’m still kind of numb, actually. Funeral was
just Saturday. Can’t believe it. Still expect her to come walking
through the door.” Gordie lifted Fred’s beautiful walleye down off
its peg and handed it to him.

“Wow,” Fred said. “Nice work, Gordie.”

“Thanks. It came out real nice.”

Fred paid him, collected his receipt and made
ready to leave. “Well, take care.”

“Thanks, Fred,” Gordie said with sincerity.
“Next time you come up, let’s have a beer together.”

“Yeah, okay,” Fred said, and escaped.

As he left, he saw a dark-haired man escorting a
beautiful woman across the street into Margie’s diner. They were
both dressed nicely, and Fred was slammed with an envy that tumbled
out of his guts and threatened to overcome him. Everybody else had
the good stuff. Fred Kramer had nothing.

Tryg Svensen had his beautiful daughter. Fred’s
own brother had all that love, all those kids, all that money, that
beautiful summer home at the lake. Gordie had his amazing talents,
memories of his lovely wife, two shops to run. Gordie even had his
grief and a widower’s respect. Doc had his big laugh and spotlessly
tidy tackle shop. Even Mooseface had the lord, or some such, and a
queer gleam in his eye. All Fred had was a nice mounted fish that
he’d put up over his phony fireplace in a tacky little apartment in
the bad side of town, a dead-end job and a lot of lonely nights.
Why couldn’t he catch a break? Why couldn’t he get the good stuff?
A nice place to live, a nice woman, a nice faith, a nice little
business to run?

Because you’re a fucking pervert, that’s
why.

Fred turned away from the handsome couple, got
into his car and headed down the road toward the interstate. He
gripped the steering wheel tighter and tighter, as an airless,
breathless feeling grew in his chest. Why them? They’re not so
much. There was nothing,
nothing
that Fred could see that
made any one of them more special than he, yet they seemed to have
it all, while Fred had squat.

Oh god, his chest felt like an elephant was
sitting on it. A tingling went down his left arm and a fiery pain
began to crawl up his jawbone.

He pulled to the side of the road, turned on the
emergency flashers and cut the engine. He concentrated on
breathing. Just breathe, he said to himself. Just breathe.

He spent the hour or so bargaining with God. If
God would just let him live through this, he wouldn’t be jealous
anymore of other people’s stuff. What was the sin? Covetousness? He
had it, and he’d get rid of it. He’d be nicer to his brother’s
wife, he’d be more tolerant of their kids, he’d be more grateful
for the things that he had. He’d be nicer to people. He’d give to
charity. He’d go to church—well, maybe not. He waited it out,
praying hard and fast and with uncommon earnestness. The pressure
in his chest eventually eased, the fire slid down his jaw bone and
extinguished somewhere around his clavicle. His left arm remained
detached in a strange way, but he wiped the chilled perspiration
from his forehead, muttered a heartfelt thank-you to the universe
power controllers, turned the key and pointed his truck back onto
the highway toward home or the hospital—he’d decide once he got
back to civilization.

He decided on home.

When he opened the door to his apartment, he
felt as if his eyes had been opened for the first time. It was a
messy hole. How could he ever bring a nice-looking lady like the
one he saw with that dark-haired guy to a place like this?

You clean up your act, he told himself, and
perhaps a woman like that might come along. You live like a
pig.

Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow he’d get to work
on his life, cleaning up all the messy areas, but now he thought it
might be best to go to bed. His heart was upset, and he being
fifty-two and not in the best shape or having the best of
nutritional habits, thought he ought to give it a little rest.

No sleep came to him, and he lay in bed
tormented all night long about the things he’d done, things he’d
said, things he’d thought about other people, when he himself had
never held to any great moral or ethical standard. Looking over his
life with his new perspective, he remembered things that made him
cringe, made him moan out loud. All in the past. All history. All
things he could not change, could not take back. He lay in the
night, smelling the stink of his dirty clothes in the overflowing
hamper, the overflowing garbage sack, and the mildewed towels in a
heap on the bathroom floor. He lay there, thinking of how he
criticized Mooseface Tyler, how he looked down upon Gordie. The
shame he felt when he got caught peeping at lithe, supple little
Katarina Svensen.

Fred Kramer’s chest tightened with grief and
remorse, and the tears spilled out of the corners of his eyes and
trickled down into his ears. He wished he could turn back the
clock. He wished he could take it all back. He wished, he wished,
he wished. . . .

~~~

Fred Kramer tied his brother’s boat up to the
little dock and pulled in his basket of panfish. He loved the long
days of summer, and especially loved it when his brother and family
couldn’t make it up north to take advantage of their vacation home.
Fred was all too happy to run up north to take a look at the place
and make sure it was secure.

He didn’t recognize the boat he tied up next to,
but he recognized the man in the fish-cleaning shack. Mooseface
Tyler.

The shack had two cutting boards and two basins,
and Fred hoisted his basket to the countertop and began to sharpen
his knife on the honing stone that was tethered to the cabinet.
“Hey, Moose,” he said.

“Hey.” Mooseface stopped cutting fish long
enough to wipe a bloody, scaly, slimy hand across his forehead,
then lift his beer to his fleshy lips. Fred noticed the stringer of
fish he was working from, and he noticed the number of fish heads
in the basin, and, by quick reckoning, he realized that Moose was
about double his limit.

“Nice catch,” Fred said.

Mooseface fixed him with an ugly stare, took
another swig from his beer without taking his eyes off Fred, and
then scowled and went back to work.

Fred spent the next thirty minutes working side
by side with the man in silence, and eventually, Moose picked up
his empty stringer and his bucket of cleaned fish, left all the
fish guts in the sink, and walked away.

And then, because Fred was never one to hold a
grudge and liked to think of himself as filled to the brim with
Christian charity, he promptly forgave Mooseface and his
transgressions, finished his work, threw a few fish scraps to the
cats that circled the shack like sharks, wrapped all his mess along
with Moose’s mess in newspapers and threw it into the garbage can.
He threw buckets of lake water onto the counters, cleaned up the
shack, took his fillets and headed back to the house. He carefully
bagged them and tucked them in the freezer. No telling when he was
going to get back up here; he might as well take a little bit of
heaven home with him.

Fred felt amazingly fortunate to have a place
like this cabin to visit whenever he could. It had a great kitchen,
and Fred liked to cook.

Right now—he checked his watch—he needed to pack
up and get back to the city. And he needed to do it before the sun
went down.

It was a month before he again got back up to
the lake. Fred stopped at Doc’s to find out where the fish were
biting and found out three important things. First, that the
crappies were biting on orange cheese balls; second, that Babs Van
Rank had died; and third, that Mooseface Tyler had turned over a
new leaf, come to Jesus, perhaps, and had taken it upon himself to
start picking up litter around town.

Fred bought a jar of the cheese balls, made a
mental note to say a few kinds words to both Mooseface and Gordie
Van Rank, and went fishing.

Fred sat for the rest of the day with Babs’s
death worrying him. He felt so bad for Gordie, and hoped that
Babs’s last minutes were peaceful and not full of fear.

The news he got at dinner was more disturbing
than even the fact that Babs had been murdered. Mooseface Tyler had
caught the famed albino pike, killed it, and taken it to Gordie to
be mounted. That news made Fred kind of sick to his stomach. He’d
heard the legend of the albino pike ever since he’d been coming up
north. Everybody had, but nobody Fred knew had ever seen one. That
made it all the more magical in the imagination. That there
actually was one was wonderful; that the only place to see it was
dead and hanging on Mooseface’s wall was disgusting. He mourned the
loss of the magic.

Fred lost his appetite and went on home to his
brother’s place. Tomorrow he’d try worms. They were almost a sure
thing.

Fred sat on his brother’s couch and watched the
blazing color of the sunset out the picture window. He felt the
need for the perversion building in him, and he spent the evening
praying for it to go away.

Eventually, it did. He stir-fried tofu and
vegetables, then later popped popcorn, watched television for a
while, then went to bed, happy to have beat the demon back one more
time.

On his way home, Fred stopped at Gordie Van
Rank’s taxidermy shop to pick up his mounted walleye. A tasteful
little bell rang when Fred pushed open the door, and Gordie called
out from the back room. “Be right with you,” he said.

Fred admired the mounts on the walls as he
waited.

“Fred?”

Fred turned, and there was Gordie, looking the
same as always.

“Heard about Babs,” Fred said, his heart filled
with compassion. “Came by to see you.”

A soft smile crossed Gordie’s face. “Thanks,
Fred. That means a lot. They got the folks who killed her, you
know. They killed her and Cara Trenton and a bunch of tourists. I
did a couple of days in jail before they found the scum who did it,
but it’s all behind us now.”

“I can’t imagine what you’re feeling,” Fred
said.

“Still kind of numb, actually. Funeral was just
Saturday. Can’t believe it. Still expect her to come walking
through the door.”

“Keeping busy?”

“Got more work than I know what to do with. I’m
having to ship some of it out of town. And I’m also trying to deal
with The Tickled Bear. That’s a lot to keep me occupied.” Gordie
looked toward the wall. “Speaking of which,” he said, and pulled
Fred’s beautiful walleye down and handed it to him.

“Wow,” Fred said. “Nice work, Gordie.”

“Came out real nice.”

Fred paid him, collected his receipt and made
ready to leave. “Well, don’t be alone too much. Maybe the next time
I come up, we can grab a beer or something.”

“Thanks, Fred,” Gordie said with sincerity.
“I’ll look forward to that.”

As he left, he saw a dark-haired man escorting a
beautiful woman across the street into Margie’s diner. They were
both dressed nicely, and Fred felt happy for their happiness.

When he got home, he put the frozen fillets
directly into the freezer, called his brother to report that the
cabin was in good repair and all was well. Then he hung his walleye
over the fireplace and admired it.