JACK McDEVITT
|
T |
HERE WAS A GHOST in Fort Moxie.
Lasker stood beneath a quarter moon, atop the western ridge of the Turtle Mountains, and stared east across the black prairie. Two rings of light, a lesser and a greater, almost touching, floated in the dark, like distant galaxies. The border station and the town.
He seldom went there. A retirement party maybe, for a close friend. Or a funeral. And that was about it.
After all these years, he still feared the place.
The night smelled of oncoming winter. A cold wind chopped across the ridge and bit down on him. Lasker turned back toward the electric lights he’d strung over the work area.
“If that ain’t strange,” said Will, wiping his nose. Midautumn was a bad time for him.
Lasker had held this land out through the last planting season and intended to put wheat in this spring. “What’s that, Will?” he asked, Fort Moxie fading.
“We got some grass growing here. Look at this.” He pointed at a few stalks. Summer green.
“It’s always been good right here,” Lasker said, remembering the potatoes of the last few seasons. “For some reason—”
The wind shook the light bulbs. Down at the bottom of the slope he could see movement in the kitchen. Ginny. She knew how he felt about Fort Moxie, didn’t know why. God knew what she thought. She’d asked questions for a while, sensed the gulf that lay between them, and let it go.
“Deep enough, Dad?”
Lasker peered into the ditch. “A little more,” he said. “Got to get the pipes far enough down where the cold doesn’t affect ‘em.”
They were putting in a system to allow them to pump water uphill from the well. “Be a lot easier next year,” said Will, pushing his spade into the ground. He sneezed, and reached for a handkerchief. Sneezed again.
“Maybe you should go back to the house,” said Lasker.
The boy grinned. “I’m fine.”
Lasker admired the kid. He refused to give in to the allergies that afflicted him every October. Wouldn’t admit there was a problem.
Five minutes later, down about a foot, Will’s spade struck something solid.
It wasn’t a rock. The thing looked like a shark’s fin caught in the act of diving into the rich black North Dakota loam.
“What is it?” Will asked, kneeling, brushing the soil away with gloved fingers. It was bright red, smooth. Hard.
Lasker grunted. “Looks like plastic,” he said, grabbing hold and pulling. It didn’t give.
He stood back, and Will hit it with the spade.
They tried digging around it, under it. The thing was a flared triangle, roughly ten inches on a side, paper thin. “It’s attached to something,” said Will, trying to widen the ditch. “A post, I think.”
Lasker saw the house door open. A small shadow skipped out and started up the hill. Jerry. “That’ll be dinner,” he told Will.
His son was working under the fin now. The post was also red, and angled down at about fifty degrees. It appeared to be made of the same material. He wedged his spade under it, and lifted. Lasker lent his weight. It showed some give, but didn’t come loose. They fell over one another, gave it up for the night, and stumbled laughing down the hill.
* * * *
The Turtle Mountains, behind which Lasker’s sun set each evening, were really little more than a line of low hills. They constituted the only high ground as far as one could see in any direction. Ten thousand years ago, they had formed the western shore of Lake Agassiz, a vast inland sea, larger than the modern Great Lakes combined. Substantial portions of the eastern Dakotas, Minnesota, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan had been beneath blue water then. The lake had lasted only a thousand years, an eyeblink by geological standards, draining off when the glacier blocking its northern side retreated.
Occasionally, when he was a boy, Lasker’s father had flown with him over the Red River Valley, pointing out the ancient coastline. The idea of a lost sea fascinated them both. Long gone, his father was fond of saying, but it influences everything we are. Lasker wondered about the remark at the time, but he came to understand that Dakota wealth grew out of former lake bottom, that the texture of the Red River Valley itself had been dictated by Agassiz.
In a way, Lasker had told his own sons, it’s still out there. Only thing is, you can’t swim in it
Lasker was a big man: awkward, with thinning brown hair and huge shoulders. His features were sharp, raw edged, blasted hard by the Dakota winters. The eyes were difficult to read. Of all the farmers in the area, people would tell you that no one was more clearly designed by nature to play poker than Tom Lasker.
At dawn on the day after they found the object, Lasker and his older boy were back atop the slope. The plain was bleak and cold in the gray light. They had an hour or so before Will had to get ready for school. Ordinarily Will wouldn’t have been here at all on the morning of a school day. But he was curious about the shark’s fin. And, without any more talk, he confronted the object, which now looked like a triangular hand fan mounted on a pole. The pole burrowed down into one side of the ditch. “Let’s do it,” the boy said enthusiastically, sinking his spade into the earth. He turned it over, and the soil, even this late in the season, was heavy and sweet.
Will seemed all right this morning, the air was still, and Lasker felt good about the world.
He measured off a few feet in a straight line from the point where the pole entered the side of the ditch, and began throwing up soil in his own methodical way.
They worked until Will had to leave. Lasker had planned to quit when the boy did (he was only pursuing this to satisfy Will’s curiosity), but by then he’d discovered that the pole was at least eight feet long, and showing no sign of ending. His own steam was up.
Whatever it was, the angle of descent was steep. He was down almost six feet when he quit for lunch.
Ginny came back with him afterward to see what the fuss was about. She was tall, clever, a product of Chicago who had come to North Dakota as a customs inspector, with the primary objective of getting away from urban life. Lasker’s friends and family had warned him that she would quickly tire of solitude and harsh winters. But she’d thrived and seemed to enjoy nothing more than settling down on a snow-driven night with a book in front of a roaring fire.
“It’s blocking the pipe?” she asked, puzzled, standing over the thing.
“Not really.”
“Then why all the fuss? You don’t really have to tear it out of the ground, do you?”
“No.” Most of it was down pretty deep. “But I’d like to know what it is. Wouldn’t you?”
She shrugged. “It’s a pole.”
“How’d it get here?”
Ginny had spotted something. Lasker had dug three ditches down to the descending pole, each deeper than the preceding one by a couple of feet. They now knew it was at least twelve feet long. Ginny was looking into the deepest of the pits. “There’s a wad of some sort buried down there. At the bottom.”
Lasker had set a ladder in the pit. He climbed down, and used his spade to fish at the wad. “It’s cloth,” he said.
She frowned. “I think it used to be attached to the pole.”
He dug around the fabric. Tried to free it. After a few minutes, he gave up. “I’d like to find the other end of the pole,” he said.
“I suggest you forget it. If you can’t drag it out of the ground, it’s going to turn into a big job.” She blinked in the sunlight. “Maybe you should go down to Colmar’s and hire a couple of men.”
“I will,” he said, “if this goes on much longer.” He grinned at her and, constricted by the narrow confines of the pit, worked his spade in around the pole and pulled more dirt loose.
Ginny was reluctant to leave. She was still standing over him, watching, when the spade chunked against something solid.
“What is it?” she asked.
* * * *
A boat.
A sailboat.
A dozen people, Lasker, Will and Jerry, Ginny, the hired men from Colmar’s, several neighbors, stood in the twilight near the top of the slope. They’d hauled it out of its hole and laid it on its side, propping the mainmast with a stack of cinder blocks. Jerry was playing a hose on it. The water washed the clay away, and revealed a bright scarlet hull and creamy white inboard paneling and lush pine-colored decks. A set of canvas sails that had once been white were spread on the ground nearby.
Nobody was saying much.
Betty Kausner touched the keel once or twice, tentatively, as though it might be hot.
“It’s fiberglass, I think,” said her husband Phil.
Jack Wendell stood off to one side, his hands on his hips, just staring. “I don’t think so,” Jack said. He used to work at Morrison’s Marine in Grand Forks and he figured to know about things like that. “Even for fiberglass, it’s pretty light.”
“Tom.” Betty Kausner was staying close to her husband. “You sure you got no idea about this?”
“No.” He glared at the boat as if it were an unwelcome intruder. “None.”
“It looks in good shape,” said Rope Hammond, who owned the land to the east, along Route 11. “You could take her for a spin tomorrow.” He touched the cloth with the tip of his boot. “Even the sails. Tom, these can’t have been in the ground very long.”
Another car pulled into the driveway, and disgorged Ed Patterson and his family. Five kids. Ed owned the Handy Hardware in Cavalier. The kids charged up the hill and began chasing one another around the boat.
Kausner had gone back to his station wagon. He returned with a tape measure. He made marks in the soil at stem and stern, and measured it off. “Nineteen feet, five inches,” he announced.
The hull looked subtly different from anything Lasker had seen before. It was rounded, flared. Something. It had a mainsail and a jib and a staysail. Running lights were set toward the front of the hull. He wondered if they would work.
“Look at this,” said Hammond, poring over the bow. He was pointing at a cluster of black Arabic-looking characters. “What language is that?”
“Looks Iranian to me,” said Jack Wendell, remembering the signs carried by demonstrators back in the days of the Ayatollah.
Three more cars were coming in from Cavalier, and two from Fort Moxie. Lasker sighed. Ginny had set up the coffee maker they used during planting and harvesting. She was passing out cups, and telling people there was Danish inside.
Gradually the sense of vague disquiet that had ruled the early evening lifted, and by ten o’clock the house was filled with noisy, well-oiled guests.
Two hours later they were gone. Lasker helped Ginny clean up. He was setting dishes in the washer. Through the window over the sink he could see the boat. It lay on its side at the top of the slope, its hull curved and inviting in the moonlight.
“Going to bed,” said Ginny, tossing a dishtowel across the back of a chair.
“I’ll be up in a while.” Lasker reached for his jacket.
“It’s cold now,” she said. “Don’t stay out too long.”
* * * *
The ghost’s name was Corey Ames.
He never knew why he took it into his head to drive into Fort Moxie that night. When he went outside, he’d intended simply to go up and take another look at the boat. But as he got near it, the old rush of fever he’d felt whenever he thought of Corey took him, drove him back down the hill, and carried him toward the garage.
His heart was hammering by the time he got into the front seat of his pickup, because by then he knew he was going into town, and he knew why.
Dumb.
But still, he would indulge himself. Give himself over to the old passion for an hour. Let it hurt—
Fort Moxie lends itself to timelessness. There are no major renovation projects, no vast cultural shifts imposed by changing technology, no influxes of families with strange names. The town and surrounding prairie possesses a kind of stasis. It is a place where Eisenhower is still President. Where people still like one another, and crime is virtually unknown. The last felony in Fort Moxie occurred in 1934, when Bugsy Moran shot it out with the customs people.
In all, it is a stable place to live, a good place to rear kids. But it holds memories. Much as the land held the big lake.
Long gone now.
He bounced out onto Route 11 and turned left.
Corey was in Seattle. Or at least she had been last he’d heard. She’d married an insurance salesman and moved out of the Fort Moxie area. Guy by the name of Maury. Corey Maury. Goofy name. She’d come back for her father’s funeral in ‘77, and Lasker had cowered at home. Hoped she’d notice he was not there. The husband had not come along, and Lasker had wondered dismally whether they’d broken up. He was himself married by then, and would not have left Ginny no matter what. Still, he wished Corey ill, and it shamed him to realize it.
There’d been a daughter. Six or seven years old. It felt good to realize that Corey might be a grandmother.
He sucked cold air into his lungs, felt the old emptiness close around him.
Route 11 is a two-lane, unlighted highway except when it curves through the windscreen at the Hammond property. It runs parallel to the Canadian border, about a mile south of the line. Lasker could see the soft illumination of Fort Moxie in the night sky. The moon had set now behind the Turtle Mountains. But the stars were hard and bright. The wind pushed at the pickup and rattled the load of hoes and rakes in the flatbed. It blows all the time across the northern prairie. There’s a kind of channel connecting Hudson’s Bay with Fort Moxie, and the wind builds up over the pole and just charges down the channel. Doesn’t much matter what time of year it is; it’s always cold. The joke in Fort Moxie is that if you leave town over the Fourth, you miss the summer.
The old lake bottom was lush and black in the glow of the headlights. It rushed by, and the pickup’s tires sang against the paving.
Lasker passed the old Milliken spread. The barn and outbuildings were shadows beneath the trees; cheerful light spilled out of the farmhouse. Milliken had added a deck since the last time he’d been by.
The road looped north, banked slightly, turned east again, past the cemetery. His headlights swept across the markers, and then he climbed up over the interstate, and dropped down among the sleepy frame houses and wide tree-lined streets.
His breathing slowed.
Charlie’s Southern Barbecue now marked the edge of town. It was new, had been there four years or so.
The Tastee-Freez still stood at Nineteenth and Bannister.
The lumberyard. And the Prairie Schooner Hotel.
He drifted quietly through the empty streets.
Damn fool. A quiet rage began to build, taking its place beside the ancient passion.
Corey’s town.
Even now, after twenty years, a good marriage, two sons, after Ginny, he could still see Corey’s cool smile. Still recall the gold bracelet on her right wrist, the long white scarf, the soft press of her lips.
My God.
Three months, they’d had. Somehow, Lasker had known from the start that he would not be able to hold her.
In retrospect, he recognized that he knew almost nothing about her. Nothing that mattered. She laughed easily and she had luminous brilliant eyes and dark brown hair cut in bangs. He knew of no book she had read, nor had he any idea of any political opinion she held. She liked rock. But then, almost everyone did. She enjoyed Jets games in Winnipeg and the science museum. (How had he forgotten that?)
It ended suddenly. Without warning. There’s someone else. Is there any phrase in the language that plunges a more painful shaft into the ribs?
Her town.
Harley’s Deli.
The post office at the corner of Stutzman and Main, where she’d held a clerk’s job. (He’d picked her up here one evening during a whiteout, after she’d worked late.)
Chip Leonard’s place off Twelfth, where they’d celebrated her nineteenth birthday.
The walking trail along the Red.
The high school. The tennis court. The old Roxie Theater (still there, but long closed).
Her house.
(The house number, 1621, was still mounted beside the front door on a plaque that featured a Victorian carriage.)
He floored the pedal, and hurried away, scattering leaves.
* * * *
He dreamt of her that night.
It had been a long time. She rarely appeared now. But the pattern was similar: Corey was young, dazzling, the way he remembered her. They were on the front porch at her house. It was a summer night. (He had never known her in summer,) And she told him how happy she was to see him again.
When he woke, the gray early morning light leaking through the blinds, he lay a long time without moving.
* * * *
Hal Riordan, who owned the Fort Moxie lumberyard, was waiting for him beside the boat. Hal had been old when Lasker was in school: his hair, gray in those days, had gone completely white. He was tall and glacially slow, a man who would not go to the bathroom without due consideration. “Something really odd here, Tom,” he said.
“Hello yourself, Hal.” Lasker grinned. “What’s the matter?”
“Take a look where the mast is joined to the cabin roof.”
Lasker did. He saw nothing unusual. “What about it?”
“It’s all of a piece. The mast should have been manufactured separately, I would think. And then bolted down. Everything here looks as if it came out of a single mold.”
Lasker looked again. Riordan was right: there were no fittings, no screws, nothing.
“It’s a joke of some kind,” Lasker said. “Has to be.”
“I suppose.” Riordan pushed his hands into his pockets and pressed the toe of his shoe against the hull. “Pretty expensive one.”
* * * *
By 8 a.m., there was a yardful of people again. More than the day before. “You ought to charge admission,” suggested Frank Hall. “You got people coming in from Drayton now. By tomorrow, they’ll be here from Winnipeg and Grand Forks.”
Hall was an import specialist with the Customs Service. He was easygoing, bearded, wide shouldered. His wife, Peg, had arrived with him and was helping Gin set out coffee again. Ginny caught his eye and shook her head. This was costing too much, her eyes said. We’re going to have to do something.
“What do you make of it, Frank?” Lasker asked.
Hall looked at him, looked at the boat. “You really don’t know how this got here, Tom?”
“No.” With some exasperation: “I really don’t.”
“Okay, then: this boat is some sort of homebuilt job.”
“How do you know?”
“Easy.” He pointed toward the stern. “No hull identification number. It should be in raised lettering, like the VIN on your car. It’s not there.”
“Maybe this was built before a hull number was required.”
Hall shook his head. “They’ve been requiring them for twenty years.”
Lasker spent the morning cleaning out the boat’s cabin. Several of his visitors offered to help him, but Lasker was beginning to suspect he might have something valuable, and wanted to be careful. Anyway, there wasn’t room for more than one at a time to work inside the cabin.
Padded benches were set along both bulkheads. Lasker was surprised to discover they were still soft, although the seats were located uncomfortably close to the deck.
The bulkheads themselves were the color of winter wheat. There were shelves and cabinets, all empty. The upper part of the forward panel was glass. A set of gauges was installed beneath it. He wiped them off cautiously: none of the symbols was familiar. The characters bore a family resemblance to the inscription on the bow.
At noon, Ginny cornered him. “Where are they all coming from?”
Lasker shrugged. “It is getting worse, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said. “We can’t afford to pump coffee and set out snacks for everyone in the Red River Valley.”
“I thought some of the local folks were bringing their own.”
“Some. Anyhow, we’re out of business. Thought you’d want to know. Maybe we should set up a turnstile.”
More cars were pulling in while they talked.
* * * *
The cure apparently occurred on the late morning of the third day after the excavation. It was a Saturday.
Mark Watkin had come with several of his friends to see the boat. Mark limped noticeably, a result of a basketball injury that had ruined his left knee almost a year earlier. Doctors had recommended he use a cane, but the boy steadfastly refused.
The teenagers had not stayed long. And in fact they had come and gone without being seen at all by Lasker, who was now actively avoiding the crowds. But the following day, Mark was back. This time he went to the front door of the farmhouse. And the limp was gone.
“I don’t know whether it had anything to do with your boat or not,” he told Gin. “But my knee got warm while I was standing up on the ridge.” He shifted his weight forward onto his left leg. “It feels like it used to.”
Ginny looked scared when she relayed the story to Lasker. “Have you noticed,” she added, “that Will’s allergies have disappeared too?”
* * * *
They had hosed off the sails, which now hung just inside the barn door. They were white. The kind of white that hurts the eyes when the sun hits it. They did not look as if they’d ever been buried.
Lasker stood inside, out of the wind, his hands in his pockets, thinking how good they looked. And it struck him for the first time that he had a serviceable boat. He’d assumed all along that someone was going to step forward and claim the craft. But on that quiet, bleak, cold Sunday, he understood that, for better or worse, it was his.
He pictured himself at its wheel, sails billowing, slicing across the polished surface of the Red River. No: make that Lake Winnipeg.
Lasker had never done any sailing, except once or twice with someone else at the tiller. But the prospect of taking that bright vessel into the wind overwhelmed him. He squeezed his eyes and pictured himself and Ginny sliding past the low hills of Winnipeg’s shoreline, the dying sun streaking the sky.
Or Corey. If he’d had the boat when he knew Corey—
He shook the thought away. Ridiculous. It would have made no difference.
Call her. The thought exploded at the back of his mind.
Lasker no longer kept livestock. He was alone in the barn. A gust of wind caught the door. It creaked, and the sails moved.
Call her.
His pulse rose in his ears. She lives in Seattle.
Call. Talk to her.
Lasker pushed it out of his mind.
Settle it.
The best cure for an old romance was to see her ten years later. Where had he read that?
It was colder inside the barn than out. A combine and a tractor were stored at the far end, under tarpaulins. The place smelled of hay and gasoline.
Do it.
* * * *
The taffrail was supported by a series of stanchions. These also seemed not to be bolted or joined to the deck, but were rather an integral part of the whole. Therefore, when a vandal stole one, he’d had to break it off. Nobody saw it happen, but Lasker responded by moving the boat into the barn, and padlocking the door. That same afternoon a television crew arrived from Grand Forks.
They walked around with Minicams, interviewed Lasker and Ginny and the kids and half a dozen people who were still hanging about. (Most of the crowd had gone home after Lasker locked the boat away.)
* * * *
Needless to say, Lasker made no attempt to call Corey. He never seriously considered it. That’s a closed compartment, he told himself. Fini.
Been over a long time.
* * * *
People kept coming. They got angry when confronted with a locked barn. Lasker tried to order them off the property. That tactic was met with a lot of grumbling about traveling a long way just to see his goddamn boat, now open up or they’ll open it up themselves.
Lasker took the path of least resistance. And promised himself he’d start selling tickets. Hell, if he couldn’t turn it off, he might as well profit from it.
* * * *
That night:
“And from Fort Moxie.” (Chuckles.) “You just never know what you might find lying around these days. A farmer out on Route 11 dug up a sailboat. The boat’s apparently in good condition, and nobody knows who put it there. Debbie Baker is on the scene—” (Smiles.)
* * * *
At sunrise Monday, Lasker noticed that the missing stanchion was back, and the damaged section was repaired. No: restored. There was no sign whatever that anything had been torn loose.
Lasker glanced nervously around the empty barn, went back outside, and replaced the padlock.
He phoned Frank Hall. “Need a favor, Frank,” he said.
“At this hour?” Hall sounded half-asleep and not pleased.
“When you get a chance. Is there a way we can find out how old the boat is?”
“We looked for a plate.”
“No. I mean, break off a piece and have someone analyze it.”
“Tom, you can do that with stuff that’s old. But I don’t think there’s a process for dealing with material that’s been made recently. Maybe thirty, forty thousand years. But not 1988. You understand what I mean?”
“Yeah,” said Lasker. “Let’s try it. Would you look into it? Find out how we can do it, and let’s see what we get.”
* * * *
“Tom.”
The voice drifted in off the dark prairie, insinuated itself into the chatter from the television.
He glanced over at Gin, who was reading the Herald, half-watching the TV.
“Tom.”
The wind blew against the side of the house. A sliver of moonlight fell against a storage shed. The other utility buildings bulked heavy and black. He realized that the outside lights were not on.
Lasker eased himself out of his chair. “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said.
Her eyes found him over the top of the newspaper. She nodded.
He walked into the kitchen, thumbed the switch.
No lights.
They were on out front; he could see them. But not in back. Near the barn.
He caught a swirl of movement in the dark. Beside the storage shed.
Odd.
“Tom.”
The voice was clearer this time.
He opened the door and squinted into the night. “Who’s there?”
Gravel crunched. “It’s me, Tom.”
His limbs went cold. He knew the voice. “Who are you?”
She stepped out of the gloom. Out of a time long past. “Corey?”
She nodded. “Hello,” she said.
He stared. “What are you doing here?” His voice was thick, and he had to make several attempts to get the question out.
She was as he remembered her. The years had left her untouched.
“I’ve always been here,” she said. She smiled and took a tentative step toward him. “You’re letting the cold into the house.”
Lasker came out onto the porch. Closed the door. Moonlight fell across her shoulders, shadowed her eyes. “I don’t understand this,” he said. The porch railing was solid under one hand. The night air was cold, and a car droned by, throwing its lights briefly across the top of the barn.
“I don’t either,” she said. “I think we’re getting a second chance.” She pushed her hands down into her pockets.
Lasker came cautiously down the steps, not trusting his sense of balance. For the first time since his fortieth birthday, he felt acutely conscious of his age. He murmured her name and she watched him and his heart beat so loudly he could hear nothing else.
They stood facing each other briefly, and then Lasker reached for her, touched one shoulder and gently drew her forward. She looked up at him, and a tear rolled through her smile.
The old emotional storm froze his soul. The wind, the trees, the stars fell silent. He wanted to ask questions, but could only hold on. The world seemed rickety underfoot. In Lasker’s long existence it was a place constructed of splintered wood and solid earth, laid out in precise mathematical juxtapositions. No room for the supernatural.
“It has to do with the boat, doesn’t it?”
“It fixes things,” she said. “I don’t know how.”
The sound of the television leaked out into the night air. Trembling, Lasker traced the line of her jaw with his fingertips. She lifted her face and their eyes locked and she gripped his shoulders. He placed his lips against hers, without pressure, so that he could feel her breath whisper in and out. “Corey, are you real?”
“Do you need to ask?”
They kissed. Warmth poured through him: adolescent passion, first love reignited. Whatever.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know.” She pushed against him. “I’m sorry. I was young.”
“You’re still young,” Lasker said. He was having trouble catching his breath.
Her hand curled round the nape of his neck and drew him back for another long kiss.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
She backed off a step, looked up at him. My God, she was beautiful. “Just go in and pack,” she said. “I’ll wait in the pickup.”
Lasker shook his head. “If you know anything about me at all, you know I can’t do that. Twenty years ago maybe.” The maybe tasted delicious on his tongue. “It’s not that simple anymore.”
“It is that simple, Tom. If you really want me.”
More than you could ever know. “Listen: we need some time to talk about this. Figure out what’s happening—”
“There is no time, Tom. I’m sorry, but you have to make up your mind now.”
Lasker shook his head. A burst of laughter issued from inside the house. Ginny.
Ginny.
“Tom: I love you. I always did.” Her eyes widened. “You never knew, did you?”
“No,” he said. “I never did.”
“I didn’t think you would give up so easily.”
Lasker backed away. The stars burned fiercely. “What did you expect?” He looked away from her. “Anyway it doesn’t matter now. You’re far too late.”
She nodded. “I understand. In a way, I’m part of you. But you can make it up to her later. You loved me long before you knew her. You love me still—”
He stood silent.
“Your decision,” she said quietly. “But be right. I can’t come back.”
Lasker discovered he still had hold of her hand. He hung onto it and looked into her face. And let go. “You’re right, Corey,” he said. “You’ve always been here. I suspect you always will.” Like the lake, he thought: a lingering image, an impact. But long gone.
He turned away from her and strode back up onto the porch.
“I’m sorry, Tom.”
He stopped with his hand on the door. “I’m not.”
* * * *
If Ginny recognized the change in the tone of her marriage, she never said anything to Lasker. But she must have noticed that he no longer hesitated to drive over to Fort Moxie when occasion arose.
For him, the dreams stopped.
And when, several weeks later, the dating report came in, it indicated that the materials from which the boat was constructed were new. No age could be assigned.
But late the following Saturday night, at the Prairie Schooner Bar, Lasker told Frank Hall that he had expected no less. “It fixes things,” he said.