The Northwoods Chronicles (7 page)

She began to iron a blouse to wear to jail.

A half hour later, she heard the patrol car
start up, and sure enough, Sheriff Withens drove off. She went to
the shop and acted as if nothing was wrong.

The next morning was a repeat performance. And
the next. And the next.

After about a week, the sheriff began to bring
her a donut and coffee in the morning at the shop. She’d drink the
coffee, and he’d eventually say, “You going to eat that?” eyeing
the donut. She’d shake her head, and he’d take it off her hands.
They wouldn’t say much, just stand around conspiratorially.

Another week went by, and every day the sheriff
took a long wrapped bundle of something over his shoulder to the
bog. And Kimberly began to relax.

And then there was another week of the sheriff’s
early morning visits to the bog, empty-handed. And then no more
visits by the sheriff.

Until one evening, when the sun set late and the
fireflies came winking around. Kimberly was sitting on the back
porch enjoying a late cup of coffee when the patrol car pulled into
the drive. He waved to her, then went on down the lawn and onto the
island.

She waited.

Twenty minutes later, he was back, the bamboo
pole in his hand.

“Coffee, Sheriff?” she asked once he got within
range.

“Thanks, no, Miss Kimberly,” he said. “It’s too
late. I’d be up all night.” He leaned the pole next to the porch,
then climbed the stairs and sat next to her. “Storm coming,” he
said. “Make sure you’ve got firewood and candles and fresh
water.”

She nodded.

“Fine pole,” he said. “Where’d you get such a
thing?”

She pointed at the tall greenhouse with her
chin.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “Well, it did the
trick, that’s for sure. I was running out of places to store them,
if you know what I mean.”

She didn’t know, and she didn’t ask.

“Guess I’ll be going on home now. I’ll bring you
a donut now and then.”

“That’d be nice, Sheriff.”

The wind woke Kimberly at three-forty-six a.m.
It was a strange wind out of the southeast. It rattled things in
her house and greenhouse the way normal winds didn’t, and when a
dark dawn came and she finally got out of bed, Dead Man’s Float was
where it ought to be, out in the middle of the lake.

Margie was just topping off Sadie Katherine’s
coffee cup when the bells on the diner door jangled and Margie
whispered “uh-oh,” softly so only Sadie Katherine could hear.

“Hmm?” she responded, not quite registering. It
was the first of June, and Sadie Katherine always spent the first
morning of the month in the diner, drinking Margie’s strong coffee,
eating something fresh-baked and reading the
Almanac
for the
month. Sunspots were due, she discovered, and that might play havoc
with the cisco spawn. Fish were superstitious by nature, and
therefore easily frightened by irregular forces of nature they
could feel but not see.

“Here he comes,” Margie said, then tapped Sadie
Katherine on the wrist.

“What?” But by the time she looked up, she knew
just exactly what.

Kenneth Cale.

Their eyes locked and he came walking toward
her, wearing his brand-new Eddie Bauer trendsetter outdoor clothes,
looking like the million bucks he had in petty cash. His silvering
hair was neatly trimmed, and his blue eyes sparkled under the brim
of a pink Kitty Hawk ball cap. Kenneth could pull off wearing a
pink ball cap, probably the only man Sadie Katherine knew who
could. Or would.

“There you are,” he said, and breathed mint
across the table as he slid into the booth.

“Coffee?” Margie asked.

“Please,” he said, without taking his eyes off
Sadie Katherine’s.

She felt her stomach tighten. She wanted Doc to
be here with her while she talked with him.

“Doc told me I’d find you here.”

“Oh?” Good. At least Doc knew Kenneth Cale was
in town.

“You look better every year, Sadie
Katherine.”

“Thanks. You’re looking mighty fit yourownself.”
She was amazed her tongue worked. Why did she get so dry-mouthed
when she was around him? She was at least ten years older than he,
not to mention literally rough around the edges with more calluses
than he had domestic employees. Yet she resisted the impulse to pat
her hair, check the corners of her eyes, look at her teeth in the
reflection of the napkin holder. Good lord, she thought, aren’t I
old enough to be able to handle the likes of Kenneth Cale?

“I’m here to do some fishing,” he said.

“Found yourself a guide yet?” Sadie Katherine
almost bit her tongue as those traitorous words fell out of her
mouth. This was the same game they’d played every year since the
first time they laid eyes on each other, what . . . seven, eight
years ago? And every year he hired her exclusively, and took all
her time for two weeks. For which, of course, he paid well enough
for her and Doc to go to Florida for a little bonefishing every
year. But after last year, she swore she’d not guide him again. He
was dangerous to her. Dangerous to her and Doc, and she had talked
with Doc about it, and hoped that Kenneth wouldn’t come back again
this year. But here he was, and she was as helpless under his
charms as she had been last year and the year before that. It was
his eyes. The blue of his eyes. The deep, fathomless, sky blue that
made Sadie Katherine crazy. Nobody else had eyes like that.

“There’s only one guide for me.”

Margie interrupted the strange intimacy he wove
between them by slamming a coffee cup on the table and sloshing hot
coffee into it, spilling some on the table and not bothering to
clean it up.

Margie was Sadie Katherine’s closest friend, and
so of course she knew. And her contempt for the hopeful homewrecker
spilled over into her professional duties.

Kenneth didn’t even seem to notice.

Sadie Katherine gave Margie a thin-lipped smile
of gratitude, then he sucked her attention back to his tanned face
and those sky-blue eyes with the snowflakes that floated in them.
They whispered promises to her. Promises of a different life of
wealth and city lights, of society and manicured nails, of facials
and gold jewelry. No, not really. Those were the promises that
Margie and Doc thought she saw, and they were there all right, but
Sadie Katherine thought she could have all that junk if she wanted
it, and she wouldn’t need Kenneth Cale to find it.

No, Kenneth Cale illustrated something far more
insidious. Something blue, like his eyes. Something deep and
precious, something longed for yet unrecognized. He activated a
yearning in Sadie Katherine’s soul that she didn’t have when he
wasn’t around. Or if she did, she didn’t know about it.

“Let’s go fishing,” he whispered, and, like an
automaton, she slid out of the booth, stuck her
Almanac
into
her black nylon backpack and followed him out of the diner, not
daring to look back at Margie, whose intense and disapproving brown
eyes stared holes in the small of her back.

Outside, the spell lessened, and Sadie Katherine
was all business. She readied the tackle while he readied his gear.
They walked down to the dock together, Kenneth with bundles, Sadie
Katherine with buckets and poles, and they arranged them in the
bottom of the boat in a dance they had done dozens of times before.
“Fish won’t be biting until late this afternoon,” Sadie Katherine
said, looking at the morning sun sparkling on the lake. She tested
the pressure in her sinuses, looked at the way the birds flew over
the water, looked at the ripples. “If at all. This isn’t the type
of weather that makes them bite. Tomorrow will be a better
day.”

“That’s all right. I’m ready to get on the
water,” Kenneth said.

They got in the boat, Kenneth untied the line,
Sadie Katherine started her little outboard and they motored out
onto the lake. She knew exactly where the fish were this time of
day, this time of year, and she’d be damned if she’d take him to
them, even if they wouldn’t take a second look at his stupid
designer fishing line.

The summer heat would burn right through their
clothes with no shade, but even though the heat came on with a
vengeance, goose bumps kept rippling over Sadie Katherine’s arms.
She hunched in her shoulders, steering the boat by bumping the
handle with her knee. She hit the kill switch as they reached the
spot, and the boat settled into the silent water with a soft surge
from its own wake.

Kenneth chose a pole and picked carefully
through the tangle of barbed hooks in a white bucket. He held up a
purple plastic worm and Sadie Katherine nodded at him, although she
knew that no self-respecting fish would ever want to eat that. For
some reason, she wanted to punish Kenneth. She wanted to hurt him,
because she was afraid he was going to hurt her. She was afraid of
him, and that made her angry. Her anger made her want to bite
him.

Baits in the water, Sadie Katherine tried not to
look at him, and they fished in what she hoped was companionable
silence, but, inside, she was churning. She didn’t want to be out
here with him, didn’t want to be alone with him, was mentally
kicking herself for being so stupid to just come out here with him
at the crook of his little finger.

At least Margie saw them leave the diner
together. Boats were everywhere on the lake, people enjoying the
summer by fishing, waterskiing, swimming. They were in public. And
Doc knew they were together. Maybe Doc would close up the tackle
shop, jump in his boat and motor on out to check on her. If he did,
she might just tell Kenneth to find his own way home, step over
into Doc’s boat and go home with him, cook him a nice dinner, get
naked, wrap herself around him and hold him tightly to her all
night long.

“I’ve missed you,” Kenneth said.

“I’m married.”

“I’m sorry, I know you are, but I can’t help my
feelings.”

She looked over at him, and he was tending his
line, not looking at her. She knew the feeling. He was confessing
his soul to the water, something she had done daily for years,
only, in this instance, he made sure she was there to listen to
him. It was easier to talk to someone if you didn’t have to look at
them. She let him talk, and vowed not to interrupt.

He continued. “I get home and look at my
calendar and it’s a whole blasted year before I can get back to see
you and it makes me want to blow out my brains. I have a photograph
of us on my desk, and every day I have to will my hand to not dial
your phone number. Every day of my life is torture, just going
through the motions until I can get back up here and be next to you
in your little boat, fishing. Talking. Laughing. You understand me,
Sadie Katherine, in a way that nobody ever has before.”

There was a long pause, and Sadie Katherine
squirmed in the silence like a worm in her bait can. “I’m married,”
she said again.

“The last thing I want to do is ruin your life.
I can see you’ve got a life here, fishing, guiding, making a living
with Doc in the shop. I don’t know why I have to tell you all of
this, but I just have to get it out in the open. It’s blowing me
apart.”

“Once said, then, it doesn’t need to be brought
up again, is that right?” Sadie Katherine felt like he had
transferred his explosive feelings to her gut, and she resented
it.

The boat dipped under his weight shift, and then
he touched her shoulder. Reflexively, she looked at him and there
were those eyes. Blue like the depths of the sky.

“I look at you and I see you in silks and
pearls. Gold jewelry and diamonds on your fingers.” He picked up
her left hand and they both looked at it. Weathered and slightly
spotted, it was the hand of a rugged, sixty-year-old outdoorswoman,
not the pampered hand of a society lady. The nails were trimmed
close, but they were ridged and unpolished, and there were scars
and scabs from fish teeth, fishhooks, fish knives and recalcitrant
boat gear.

She looked at that hand and envisioned it with
long, painted nails and diamonds instead of Doc’s plain gold band.
Instead of the threadbare denim at her wrist that partially covered
her steel Swiss Army watch, she thought of a sky-blue silk sleeve
that gently caressed a slim gold watch. She’d have her hair
professionally colored, instead of letting it grow gray and cropped
short at her ears. She’d wear earrings, and makeup, and slacks and
drive a Mercedes instead of Doc’s old truck. She’d have facials and
massages.

But where? New York. Ugh. No fish, no trees, no
country. No friendly dogs running loose, no cats and raccoons
hanging around the fish-cleaning shed. No steady seasonal
customers, no Margie, no Uncle Bun, none of the community she had
enjoyed here for so many years. Sixty was too old to make another
new start—she didn’t even know what language they spoke in New
York.

And what about Doc?

“What about Doc?” She couldn’t believe those
words came out into the open.

Kenneth took those words as a finger hold and
began to work them. “I don’t know about Doc,” he said. “It would be
a terrible thing to hurt him, but everybody has to follow their
bliss, Sadie Katherine. You are mine, and my world is a good one.
It lacks only one thing, and that’s you.”

She turned from him and reeled in her line. “I
have a good life right here.”

“I know you do, and that’s one of the most
attractive things about you. You’re not running from anything. You
have the ability to be satisfied wherever you are.”

That’s a laugh,
she thought. “Don’t
assume that. You don’t know my history.”

“And I don’t care. You’re the woman for me. I
knew it the moment I laid eyes on you and there isn’t anything
anyone can do or say to make me change my mind.”

He touched her again, and, despite her will, she
turned to look at him. The shadow from the brim of his ball cap
took the power from his eyes.