Page 52 of God’s Country

“Untie him,” Ollie said to his brother. “Then I’m gonna hit him. Then he’s gonna make us breakfast.”

Stan kept him from putting a fist in my face but was fully on board with me fixing breakfast, which required that I rebuild the fire from the night before. The rain had let up some, which made that task easier. I suggested that Ollie haul out the BearVault and that they start getting their gear packed. When I had the fire going, I made cowboy coffee, then boiled some water in the skillet and made oatmeal. By then, they’d crammed most of their things into two Duluth packs. Although the rain had finally stopped, the sky was still overcast when we sat on the logs by the fire pit and ate. I’d put dried blueberries and honey in the oatmeal to sweeten things. The two men chowed down like they’d been starved forever. I managed to get some for myself before Ollie grabbed the skillet and scraped it clean.

The men had no idea about taking down their tents. I stood watching them until Ollie said, “You know how to do this?”

“Of course he knows how to do it,” Stan said. “Sixty years in the Boundary Waters, that’s what he said. Right?”

He looked at me as if for confirmation. I didn’t answer.

Ollie said to me, “You take care of this.”

“I’m just your guide, not your lackey.”

Which got me a punch to the side of my head from Ollie’s big fist.

“How about now?” he said. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

With my heart growing darker by the minute, I broke camp. The last thing I saw to before we headed off was dousing the cooking fire completely.

“Where are we going?” Stan asked. “We don’t have a canoe.”

I pointed to the portage that paralleled Devil’s Cascade. “I left my Wenonah up there.”

Ollie, who was still walking crooked because of his back, eyed the incline. “The hell with that. There’s gotta be an easier way.”

“If you want to get to Canada, that’s the way,” I told him.

Ollie didn’t stop complaining about his back, but when we got to my Wenonah, I gave him the Duluth pack I was carrying. He looked at me like he wanted to hit me again.

“I’ll take the canoe up,” I told him. “I can’t do that and carry a pack.”

Which wasn’t true at all. I’d often portaged a canoe while carrying a heavy pack on my back. Ollie gave in, but with every step I heard him utter a satisfying grunt of pain. In the end, Stan and I did a double portage to get the canoe and all the gear to the top. Along with everything else, I’d grabbed Cordell’s hammock, which I’d picked up where I found Crispin’s body. I was hoping I wouldn’t be tied to a tree every night.

We put in on the Otter River, Stan in the bow, Ollie in the center with our gear, me in the stern. With three of us in the canoe and all that gear, we were riding low in the water. The rain over the past days made the current against us pretty strong, so I knew that paddling was going to require a lot of muscle. Which was how I became aware of the fact that while Ollie whined about all the pain he was in, Stan’s physical condition was also nothing to write home about. He had very little upper body strength, and moving the canoe forward in the river was mostly up to me. As I shoved my paddle repeatedly through the water, straining against the current, I couldn’t help wondering how long this uncertain heart of mine would last.

Upstream, the Otter River fed out of a small body of water called Mirror Lake. It was round, the surface smooth and, as its name implied, it reflected the sky, which had begun to clear. I was tiring, and when we pulled up to the opening for our next portage, we took a break at the campsite there. Ollie rummaged in the BearVault for granola bars, then lit up a White Owl.

I studied the two brothers. Physically, they were as different as night and day, Ollie huge, Stan quite modest in his build. Ollie was bald, Stan had a good head of auburn hair. They’d told me they had the same father but different mothers, so there was some similarity in their faces. Both had hawk noses and blue eyes.

“Which one of you is older?” I asked.

“He’s my kid brother,” Ollie said. “My snot-nosed kid brother.”

“By eighteen months,” Stan said. “His mom died giving birth to him.” He paused a moment, as if considering the advisability of his next words. “He was a big fat lummox even then.”

When you’re family, you know exactly where to plunge the knife.

Ollie stopped smoking his cigar, and the look he gave his brother was killing. “And then your whore of a mother weaseled in right away and took her place.”

“Whore of a mother?” Stan didn’t seem particularly offended. “She took pretty good care of you.”

“Called me D.O.” Ollied looked at me. “Dumb Ox. As in ‘Hey, D.O., you’ve got a booger up your nose.’ ”

“She was usually right,” Stan said.

“I was happy when that bitch died,” Ollie said.

“Your father didn’t have much luck with women,” I observed.