Page 79 of God’s Country

“Take the vest off and sit.”

He removed the life vest, dropped it on the ground, and sat on the log near the fire pit. He was soaked to the bone. The wind out of the west was still blowing hard, and he wrapped his arms around himself for warmth. I wasn’t ready to feel any compassion, so I let him shiver.

“You didn’t mean any harm?” I said. “Then why the hell are you here?”

“To steal your canoe, that’s all. We just want to get across the border. We have someone waiting for us there.”

“Who?”

“My wife, Jeanette. My ex-wife, actually,” he corrected himself.

“Was she in on your plan? Did she know about the pack?”

“She had nothing to do with this.”

“She’ll have a hell of a time convincing a jury of that.”

“Look, we’re still… we still… we care about each other, okay? The divorce was about other things. I swear she knows nothing about why we’re here. She thinks it’s something my brother and me are doing to be closer as brothers. I pitched it as a way to come to terms with my father’s death. Knowing how I really felt about my old man, well, that made her a little suspicious, but she came around. She’s waiting at a lodge at the edge of the Quetico.”

“Then what? I’m sure the authorities here will be in touch with the RCMP. They’ll be looking for you.”

“We have a private plane chartered to take us to—” He stopped. “I’ve said enough.”

“You’re not going to make it now, wherever you were going.”

He leaned toward the fire as if trying to soak up the heat of the flames. “It’s not over till the fat lady sings.”

“It’s over for you, I guarantee. There’s no way you’re getting the canoe. You’re both stuck here until you’re arrested. If I don’t miss my guess, that’ll be sometime tomorrow.”

“My brother’s not as dumb as he seems. And he’s a survivor.”

“I’m going to make sure no one blunders into him. He won’t be killing anybody else and stealing their canoe.”

“I don’t know how, but if there’s a way in hell to get us out of here, he’ll find it, mark my words.” Stan shoved his hands toward the fire. “Damn, I’m freezing.”

“Everything you’re wearing is cotton, sucking all the heat out of you.” I grabbed the blanket Lou and Johanna had left me. “Take those wet clothes off and spread them out beside you on the log. Then put this around you.”

He stripped and set his wet clothes out to dry, then wrapped himself in the blanket. From where he sat, he looked up at me, eyeing me strangely, as if I was some kind of exotic animal he’d never seen before. “Why are you so kind to me?”

“Make no mistake,” I warned him. “You try anything I’ll split your head open with this hatchet.”

“You could have let me drown out there.”

“Believe me, I thought about it.”

“You didn’t have to give me this blanket. You could have just let me sit here freezing. It’s probably what I would have done if I were you. And my brother, he’d have taken great delight in seeing you suffer. So, why?”

There was a sawed-off section of log across the fire pit from where Stan sat. I eased myself down on it, hatchet still in hand. The wind swept through the pines around us and the sound was like the rush of water in a fast stream. It shifted and shaped the smoke that rose up from the flames and carried embers like little fireflies toward the lake. For a long time, I said nothing, and Stan simply waited.

Finally I said, “Up here, we call this God’s country. I come into the Boundary Waters as often as I can because it feels to me like a sanctuary. It’s been this way forever, a place you can feel the presence of the Creator all around you. I’m sure there are other places like this, other sanctuaries of the Divine, but this is the place for me.” I stopped and gathered my thoughts again. “You and your brother, you violated the spirit of this place. You brought hate and anger with you. You killed. And you know something just as bad as that? You made me want to kill, too. In this place where the Creator dwells, you put murder in my heart.” Then I shook my head. “No, you didn’t put it there. It’s always there. The wolf of hate. You just helped me feed that beast.”

“The wolf of hate,” he said, mulling over the words. “Most of my life, that’s all I’ve known. My brother, too. What else is there?”

“You have boys you love. And there still seems to be something between you and your wife.”

“There is. Or there could be.”

“Well, there you go. And despite the fact that to me he’s an asshole of the highest magnitude, you seem to care about that jackass across the water there.”