Starvation Lake

twelve

An hour later, I saw Boynton again, standing in the back of Enright’s, sipping a Heineken and talking with Darlene Esper. She leaned against the jukebox, smoking. I’d learned since returning to Starvation Lake that she only smoked on Saturday nights when she came to the bar without her useless husband to drink White Russians in her tight jeans and black turtlenecks. I didn’t go to Enright’s every Saturday, but she avoided me when I did. I understood, but it still bothered me. It bothered me more to see her with Teddy.

I kept an eye on them through the smoke and the crowd from the other end of the bar where I stood with Soupy and most of the other Chowder Heads. It was impossible to hear what Boynton was saying over the din of chatter and the blare of “Whipping Post.” He leaned to speak into Darlene’s ear. She folded her arms across her chest. He leaned back, waiting. She shrugged. He said something else. Darlene shook her head no, once, then a second time. She glanced my way and caught my eye briefly, then turned back to Boynton, who was holding up his hands as if to say, OK, I give up.

“Leave it alone,” Soupy said, elbowing me.

“What?”

“She’s married. Let it go.”

“So is Boynton.”

“Fuck Boynton. What the hell were you thinking out there tonight?”

Despite my late-game lapse, we had hung on to win, 2–1. It meant we would play Boynton’s Land Sharks for the league title Monday night.

“It was Brenda’s fault,” I said. “She’s way too hot for her age.”

“Roger that,” Soupy said. “The butt that belongs in the Louvre.” He shouted down the bar, “Hey there, barkeep! Four more Blue Ribbons, please.”

Francis Dufresne turned and glared. He was helping Loob tend bar. Along with his near-constant scowl, he wore an ancient pair of Wallabees with no laces and a bleached-out River Rats sweatshirt. His short, blubbery body shifted around like a sack of rocks as he moved. Old acne scars clefted his pale cheeks, and his nose was like a red rubber ball a dog had used as a chew toy.

His appearance belied his good fortune in life. The story went that Francis had taken five thousand dollars he inherited in the late 1960s and, by investing wisely time and again in real estate, turned it into millions. Maybe the story was no truer than the tales of the underwater tunnels, but the locals believed it because they could see the results in the office buildings and restaurants and subdivisions he’d developed. First with the help of Jack Blackburn, and later Teddy Boynton, Francis had built most of Starvation Lake that had been built in the past twenty years and bought much of the rest of it. He was the first to notice the swelling wave of tourists that Coach and the River Rats were bringing to town, first to recognize how to capitalize on Coach’s status by using him as a pitchman. Francis was smart and tenacious, but he hadn’t the looks or the charisma to charm the locals into letting him and his partners own most of their town. For that he had Coach, and when Coach was gone, he had Teddy.

Francis and Teddy had done well together. Teddy was the outside guy, making the deals, selling them to the public officials, flashing the fridge-magnet smile. Francis, many years older, was the inside man, raising money, huddling with lawyers, making sure the paperwork was right. Between them, they owned just about everything in town. But Teddy, as he had prospered, had begun to chafe at hearing about Francis’s role in his success. There were whispers that Teddy wanted Francis out of the new marina project.

I didn’t know Francis well, but I liked it that he’d called all those people to the rink on the night we beat Griffin. I liked it that he’d hung on to Enright’s, the thing he’d owned longest, and that he still came in on Saturday nights to help sling beers. He’d been close to Coach, and I thought he knew my dad a little as well. He set four beers in front of us.

“Who won?” he said.

“The good guys,” Soupy said.

“I wish I could say the same for the Rats,” Francis said.

“Knocked out again?” I said. As the source of the Rats’ long jinx, I prayed every year that they would snap it.

“Indeed.” Francis spoke with the hint of an Irish brogue, a hand-me-down from his mother, whose maiden name was Enright. “Same old, same old. Pipefitters again. Six to one. We were never in the game.”

“At least it didn’t come down to one guy shitting the bed, huh?” It was Little Timmy Wilford, Brad’s younger brother, trying to be funny. Little Wilf was barely six when we’d lost our last game.

“Eat shit, junior,” Soupy said. “I don’t recall your sorry-ass squad ever getting out of the regional, let alone making a final.”

“Let it go, Alden,” Francis said.

“Lighten up,” Little Wilf said, raising a palm in Soupy’s face. “Just messing with you.”

“Jesus, junior, the hand!” Soupy said. He pinched his nose and made a gagging sound.

Little Wilf turned the palm to his face and inhaled deeply. “Ahhhhh,” he said. “Hockey.” Nothing smells worse than the inside of an old sweat-drenched hockey glove, except a hand that just came out of one. And nothing smells more like hockey.

“In my opinion,” Francis interrupted, rapping a finger on the bar for emphasis, “it didn’t matter how well we played this weekend, we weren’t going to win. Not with that snowmobile washing up onshore. You can’t be playing hockey with ghosts flying around in your locker room.”

“Ghosts?” Soupy said. “Come on, Francis. You think those kids give a damn? What the hell’s with everybody? All I’ve been hearing is this shit about Blackburn and his snowmobile. He croaked a million years ago. You ought to let it go.”

Teddy was making his way toward us. He stopped to peer at the photograph of Blackburn, glanced back toward Darlene, then looked again at the photo. Francis turned to me.

“Saw your girl’s article today, Augustus,” he said. “I thought, Good for Augustus, he’s not going to go crazy with this thing just so he can sell a lot of papers. But then, I’ll be damned if your little reporter didn’t come in here today, snooping around.”

“Just doing her job,” I said.

“She wanted pictures off the wall, for God’s sake.”

“She ain’t so little,” Soupy said.

“Did you talk to her, Francis?” I said.

Francis leaned close and put his hands flat on the bar. “Only to tell her that Jack Blackburn was one of the finest men ever to set foot in Starvation Lake. And that it’s out of line to be digging him up like this. It ain’t right, Augustus. Jack’s dead and buried wherever the good Lord wished. Rest in peace.”

“Amen,” Soupy said.

“Well, sorry, Francis,” I said. “The cops are investigating. You’re always bitching about the county pissing away your tax dollars. Don’t you think we ought to find out what the hell they’re doing?”

“Hogwash, Augustus. Your job is to sell as many papers as you can. And for your information, I don’t think Dingus and his bobbies should be poking around in it either. It’s an election year, I know, but this isn’t the way to go about getting attention. I think he ought to let the past stay in the past, just as I think young Mr. Wilford here ought to leave your past in the past, regardless.”

“Regardless of what?” I said.

“Just as nobody needs to be asking whatever happened to you down in Detroit that got you back here, either.”

“Right,” I said. Not even Soupy knew how I’d screwed up in Detroit.

“Think about it.” He clapped me on my hand. “I know you’re a good man.”

“Are we having an argument?” Teddy Boynton set his empty Heineken on the bar. “Give it up, Gus,” he said. “Campbell’s gonna have to pay his bar tab eventually. It must be up there with the federal deficit by now, huh?”

“Evening, Ted,” I said. I looked past him and saw Darlene was gone.

“Theodore,” Francis said, nodding.

“Francis,” Teddy said. They didn’t shake hands. Maybe the rumors of a rift were true. Boynton threw a ten on the bar. “That should cover me.”

Francis shoved it back at him. “Your money’s no good in here, Theodore.”

“Give it to Loob then.”

“No luck with Darlene, eh, Teddy boy?” Soupy said. “Why don’t you try the high school? Maybe there’s a sock hop.”

“You got that hundred you owe me?”

“No, but I got an answer for you: Go to hell.”

That stopped Teddy for a second. It wasn’t just a smart-ass remark. Teddy looked at Francis, whose own look suggested that he, too, took Soupy’s meaning.

“So that’s it?” Teddy said.

“That’s it,” Soupy said.

“There’s time to reconsider,” Teddy said. “Don’t be stupid, Soupy.”

“Excuse me,” Francis said. His eyes met Teddy’s for an instant as he slid away. Now I understood. Soupy was telling Teddy to stuff his settlement offer. That would leave everything up to the zoning board. I wondered if Francis was in on Boynton’s marina or not.

“Nothing to reconsider,” Soupy said.

Teddy yanked his keys out of a coat pocket. “You know,” he said, “you’re a loser. And you make a conscious choice to be a loser every day. But you will come around. In the meantime, I’d appreciate you not winging pucks at my head.”

“In the meantime, kiss my ass,” Soupy said. “If I wanted to hit you, I would’ve.”

“See you on the ice Monday night,” Boynton said. “Want to double down on that hundred?”

“Fucking-ay,” Soupy said.

“We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“No, we won’t.”

Boynton looked at me. “Thanks again for the memories, Carp.”

As he headed for the door I excused myself to take a leak. Instead of going into the men’s room, though, I ducked behind the crowd and slipped out the front door. I found Teddy unlocking his sport utility.

“How was the fishing this morning, Ted?” I said.

He was peering at a bar napkin he’d pulled from inside his coat. He put it back in his pocket. “You gonna do that story or not?” he said.

“Which?”

“The one about your loser friend we’re gonna give to Channel Eight.”

I’d forgotten all about it. “We’re working on it.”

“You’ll hear from my lawyer.”

“How was the fishing?”

“Fishing?” he said. He slammed the vehicle’s door shut. His engine growled to life. He rolled his window down. “You know, Carpie,” he said. “You’re a sucker.”

I figured if I went back inside, I’d be there till close, then Soupy would want to come up to my place for more drinks. Better to escape while I could. But my truck wasn’t where I thought I’d parked. I hiked down Main to Estelle and around to the Pilot lot. There was the truck. Memory’s going, I thought.

At my stairway I looked up and noticed a dull glow in my apartment window. Had I left a light on? Four steps up, I noticed my door was open a crack. I stopped and looked around. Break-ins almost never happened in Starvation Lake. Had I left the door open too? I crept to the top of the stairs and tried to peek inside. I couldn’t see anything unusual but I smelled something. Cigar smoke. Cheap cigar smoke. I eased the door open with a boot, reached in, and flicked the wall switch. “Hello?”

Sheriff Dingus Aho sat in my recliner, biting a Tiparillo beneath his handlebar mustache. “Gus,” he said, smiling. “You were parked illegally. I took the liberty of moving you before you got a ticket.” He tossed my keys on the plywood table. “You know, you shouldn’t just leave them in the ignition, son.”

“And you shouldn’t just let yourself into my house. Do you have a warrant?”

“A warrant? No. But I have this.” He leaned forward and set down a thin blue file folder. “Please. Sit down.”

I dropped into my sofa and picked up the folder. Before I could open it, Dingus reached over and lightly grasped my wrist. “Yesterday, you made a request for a report,” he said. “You’ll get a formal response from the county attorney in, oh, six weeks, maybe eight. So we need to agree that I was never here.”

“All right.”

“And you can’t be putting any of this in your paper, at least not yet.”

He let go of my wrist.

Inside the folder were four pages stapled together. The top three were a photocopy of a Pine County Sheriff accident investigation report dated March 13, 1988. Parts were smudged and barely legible. Scanning the spare description of Coach’s accident, I learned little I didn’t already know, although it noted that Leo Redpath “became visibly upset and approached a hysterical state.” He kept repeating, “What’s done is done. What’s done is done…” The report was signed by Sheriff’s Deputy Dingus Aho.

The fourth page was a photocopy of a receipt for $25,000 paid to the Starvation Lake Marina, “Angus Campbell, proprietor.” It was dated April 12, 1988. Across the page someone had scribbled PAID FULL, CK 5261, FIRST DETR BANK. Nothing was listed under the purchases column. A signature near the bottom of the page was badly smudged. Beneath it I read something slightly more legible: “Ferryboat.” The F on “Ferryboat” had a little tail on it like a fishhook.

I tried to look indifferent, but my mind was buzzing. What had upset Leo so? Was it simply losing a friend to foolish behavior, or was there something else? What did this receipt or Soupy’s late father have to do with anything? Why would somebody in Starvation Lake want a ferryboat? I couldn’t remember ever seeing one at the marina, though I suppose Soupy’s dad could’ve gotten his hands on one if he had a buyer. What was Dingus after?

“Thanks, Dingus,” I said. “But I have no idea what to make of this.”

He blew out a plume of Tiparillo smoke. “There are some additional materials our attorney might give you,” he said, “but I can tell you they’re not terribly revealing.”

“None of this is. You wrote this report. Help me out here.”

Dingus stared at the pages in my hands. “I have an idea, Gus, but it’s a little worn from age. I doubt you’d believe it. Nobody did way back when. And it cost me, let me tell you.”

“Try me.”

He stood. “I’m confident you’ll figure it all out.”

“Come on. Why’d you bother coming here if you’re not going to tell me?”

He moved toward the door. “You know, Gus, I heard the rumors about how you had to leave Detroit. I hope you don’t mind, but I made a few calls down there. You’re a pretty enterprising guy.”

“What’s the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Pretty gutsy guy, too. Anyway, I’m thinking you’ll figure this out and shine a little light on this subject. Also, next time you park on Main, remember we changed the signs a few weeks ago. You had a front-page story on it.”

“Dingus.”

He closed the door softly behind him.