Copper River

5

A hundred yards from where the Copper River spilled into Lake Superior, perched on a small rise among a stand of red maples on the west bank, stood an old stone picnic shelter. The shelter was part of the Big Cascade Wayside, a little park named for the stair step of rocks and churning water it overlooked. The shelter had been built during the Depression as a CCC project but wasn’t used much anymore. The locals and tourists preferred Dunning Park on the lakefront. More often than not, Ren and his friends had the place to themselves.

By the time they reached the river, the sun had set. The water as it dipped and swirled over the rocks was a reflection of a golden sky. Ren parked the ATV and the three kids stepped inside the shelter. The corners were littered with fallen leaves. A blackened fireplace dominated the back wall. The place smelled of old burn, dusty stone, rotting leaves, and faintly of piss. Stash stood on one of the two concrete picnic tables, reached up to a low rafter, and pulled down a cigar box bound with a thick rubber band. He sat down, slipped the band off, and lifted the lid to reveal a dime bag of weed, a package of Zig-Zag rolling papers, and a Bic lighter. His real name was Stuart, but Ren and Charlie had dubbed him Stash because he kept small caches of weed hidden in a number of places around Bodine. A hole in a tree in Dunning Park on the lake. Taped under the bleachers at the ballpark. In a disconnected downspout in the alley behind Linder’s Garage. He didn’t like to carry anything on him. He’d been stopped too many times and ripped off, he claimed, by the deputy constable.

As Stash sat on the table and rolled a joint, Ren eyed the inside of the box lid. Printed in bold magic marker: PROPERTY OF STUART GULLICKSON.

“You’re crazy, man,” he told Stash. “That’ll get you sent to juvie for sure.”

“So I get picked up. The old man springs me, gives me a lecture on disappointment and shame, yells about military school again. Only problem is there aren’t any I haven’t already been kicked out of.” He licked the seam to seal the joint. “Besides, it’s a rush whenever I think somebody might find it and turn me in. Walking the edge. You down with that?”

“Yeah, dude,” Charlie said. “You walk the edge real good. Showed us that back there in town with Greenway and his two turds.”

Ren laughed. “Yeah, man, you were a real Captain America the way you tore into those guys.”

“Hey, I was just about to kick their asses when Johnson showed up.”

Charlie said, “Dude, I’ve seen lawn ornaments move faster than you.”

She and Ren slapped hands.

“Fuck you guys.” Stash stood up and started to leave the shelter.

“We’re just funning with you,” Ren called to him. “Come on back, man, and fire up that doobie.”

Stash returned and sat on the picnic table. He lit the joint, took a hit, passed it to Ren, who took a hit and passed it to Charlie.

“I still think,” Ren said, after he’d held the smoke in his lungs awhile, “that putting your name in the box is a stupid idea.”

“ ‘Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse.’ John Derek. Knock on Any Door.”

“Who?” Charlie asked.

Stints at private schools had taken Stash away from Bodine for long periods of time, and although Ren and Charlie often hung with him, they weren’t what Ren would have called tight. Stash’s family had money. His father was president of a paper company in Marquette. They lived in a restored Victorian home, huge and elegant, that overlooked the lake. Stash’s older brother was an athlete-football, basketball, baseball-but sports held no interest for Stash. In his bedroom, he had a television with a thirty-two-inch screen. He also had an extensive library of DVDs and videotapes. For some reason, he loved gangster movies, especially the old black and whites. When he wasn’t skateboarding, he spent hours in that shaded room, watching a dark world filled with characters Ren didn’t know played by actors he’d never heard of.

“Don’t you watch any good movies?” Stash asked.

“Dude, you don’t watch good movies. You watch, like, ancient history.” Charlie shook her head. “John Dork.”

“Derek.”

“Whatever.”

“It’s called noir, ass wipe. And it isn’t ancient history. When I get sprung from Bodine for good, I’m hitting Hollywood, man. I’m going to be-”

“The next Tarantino,” Ren and Charlie finished in unison.

“The hell with you guys.” Stash pushed off the table again and strode outside.

“Hey, don’t take the joint,” Ren called.

“My weed,” Stash threw back over his shoulder.

“No problem,” Charlie said, grabbing the cigar box. “We’ll roll our own.”

Stash said nothing, just stood on the riverbank getting high by himself.

Charlie rolled a tight number. “Toss me the lighter, dude,” she called to Stash.

“Light it between your legs.”

“Wait, I got a match.” From her pocket, she dug a match-book she’d picked up at Kitty’s Cafe. She lit up and for a few minutes they smoked in silence.

“Dude, know what I heard?”

“What?” Ren said. He was looking out the shelter toward the golden water and the far bank lined with birch trees whose autumn leaves were like drops of the river splashed over the branches. He didn’t know if it was the weed or the moment, but he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen anything as beautiful.

“I heard Amber Kennedy likes you.”

“Right.”

“No shit. And don’t tell me you haven’t looked at those tits of hers when you pass her in the hallway. Dude, the way she pushes them out, it’s totally grotesque. Like Alien, you know. I keep thinking something really scary is going to pop out of there.”

Ren slid off the picnic table, went to the fireplace, and picked up the remains of a burned piece of wood. He walked back and began to doodle in charcoal on the tabletop. Charlie watched him for a while.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Can’t you tell?”

“I don’t know. Looks like mountains or something.”

Ren drew a few more strokes.

“Jesus, that’s Amber Kennedy, and those are her tits.” Charlie laughed and gave Ren a playful shove.

“Hey, guys. Guys. You gotta see this. Quick.” Stash frantically waved them over to the riverbank.

They moved slowly, not just because of the weed but because Stash sometimes got worked up over stupid things.

“Look. See it? Do you see it?”

Stash pointed at something in the water, sweeping downriver in and out of the troughs of the cascades. Ren couldn’t, in fact, see it clearly because the light was so poor now, and the river had become a dark gloss of black and pale silver. Also, the fast water quickly carried away whatever it was that Stash had seen.

“It was a body,” Stash said.

“Bullshit,” Charlie said. “It was just a log or something.”

“I’m telling you it was a body. I saw it when it went by.”

“You mean like a dead person?” Ren said.

“Yeah, man, a dead body.”

Charlie shook her head. “Naw, if it was a body it had to be, like, a deer or something.”

Stash turned on her angrily. “If you weren’t so goddamned slow you’d have seen it.”

“Slow? Me?” Her fist exploded forward and caught Stash hard in the arm.

“Owww. Damn it.”

“That’s from my movie. Charlie Kills Stash.”

Stash rubbed his arm. “I’m telling you guys it was a body.”

“You’ve been watching too many old gangster movies, dude. It’s screwing with your head.”

“That or the weed,” Ren threw in.

“I’m going down there to find it.”

“You do, and you’re walking home, Stash. I’ve got to split for the cabins. You want a ride, you come with me now.”

“It was a body,” Stash said sullenly.

“Yeah, well, now it’s in the lake, and you know what they say about Superior: it never gives up its dead. So whatever it was, it’s gone.”

Stash stood looking downstream where a hundred yards away the pale river water met the deep blue of the great lake. “ ‘Oil and water are the same as wind and air when you’re dead,’ ” he said.

Ren and Charlie stared at him and waited.

“Humphrey Bogart. The Big Sleep, ” Stash said, disappointed. “Let’s go.”