dynamite. Chain saws were relatively new then; the Eastman Company used them for their logging operations, but very selectively- they were heavy and cumbersome, not nearly so light and powerful as they are today. In those days, we brought the logs out of the woods by horse and crawler tractor, and the timber was often cut by crosscut saws and axes. We loaded the logs onto the trucks by hand, using peaveys or cant dogs; nowadays, Noah and Simon have shown me, they use self-loading trucks, grapple skidders, and chippers. Even the sawmill has changed; there's no more sawdust! But in ', we debarked the logs at the mill and sawed them into various grades and sizes of lumber, and all that bark and sawdust was wasted; nowadays, Noah and Simon refer to that stuff as 'wood-fired waste' or even 'energy'-they use it to make their own electricity!
'How's that for progress?' Simon is always saying. Now we're the grown-ups we were in such a hurry to become; now we can drink all the beer we want, with no one asking us for proof of our age. Noah and Simon have their own houses-their own wives and children-and they do an admirable job of looking after old Uncle Alfred and my Aunt Martha, who is still a lovely woman, although she's quite gray; she looks much the way Grandmother looked to me in the summer of '. Uncle Alfred's had two bypass operations, but he's doing fine. The Eastman Company has provided him and my Aunt Martha with a good and long life. My aunt manifests only the most occasional vestige of her old interest in who my actual father is or was; last Christmas, in Sawyer Depot, she managed to get me alone for a second and she said, 'Do you still not know? You can tell me. I'll bet you know! How could you not have found out something-in all this time?'
I put my finger to my lips, as if I were going to tell her something that I didn't want Uncle Alfred or Dan or Noah or Simon to hear. Aunt Martha grew very attentive-her eyes sparkling, her smile widening with mischief and conspiracy.
'Dan Needham is the best father a boy could have,' I whispered to her.
'I know-Dan is wonderful,' Aunt Martha said impatiently; this was not what she wanted to hear. And what do Noah and Simon and I still talk about-after all these years? We talk about what Owen 'knew' or thought he
knew; and we talk about Hester. We'll talk about Hester in our graves!
'Hester the Molested' Simon says.
'Who would have thought any of it possibleT' Noah asks. And every Christmas, Uncle Alfred or Aunt Martha will say: 'I believe that Hester will be home for Christmas next year-that's what she says.'
And Noah and Simon will say: 'That's what she always says.'
I suppose that Hester is my aunt and uncle's only unhappi-ness. Even in the summer of ', I felt this was true. They treated her differently from the way they treated Noah and Simon, and she made them pay for it; how angry they made her! She took her anger away from Sawyer Depot and everywhere she went she found other things and people to fuel her colossal anger. I don't think Owen was angry, not exactly. But they shared a sense of some unfairness; there was an atmosphere of injustice that enveloped them both. Owen felt that God had assigned him a role that he was powerless to change; Owen's sense of his own destiny-his belief that he was on a mission-robbed him of his capacity for fun. In the summer of ', he was only twenty; but from the moment he was told that Jack Kennedy was 'diddling' Marilyn Monroe, he stopped doing anything for pleasure. Hester was just plain pissed off; she just didn't give a shit. They were such a depressing couple! But in the summer of ', I thought my Aunt Martha and Uncle Alfred were a perfect couple; and yet they depressed me because of how happy they were. In their happiness they reminded me of the brief time my mother and Dan Needham had been together-and how happy they'd been, too. Meanwhile, that summer, I couldn't manage to have a successful date. Noah and Simon did everything they could for me. They introduced me to every girl on Loveless Lake. It was a summer of wet bathing suits drying from the radio aerial of Noah's car-and the closest I came to sex was the view I had of the crotches of various girls' bathing suits, snapping in the wind that whipped past Noah's car. It was a convertible, a black-and-white ' Chevy, the kind of car that had fins. Noah would let me take it to the drive-in, if and when I managed to get a date.
'How was the movie?' Noah would always ask me-when I brought the car home, always much too early.
'He looks like he saw every minute of it,' Simon would say-and I had. I saw eveiry minute of every movie I took every girl to. And more's the shame: Noah and Simon created countless opportunities for me to be alone with various dates at the Eastman boathouse. At night, that boathouse had the reputation of a cheap motel; but all I ever managed was a long game of darts, or sometimes my date and I would sit on the dock, withholding any comment on the spectacle of the hard and distant stars until (finally) Noah or Simon would arrive to rescue us from our awkward torment. I started feeling afraid-for no reason I could understand. Georgian Bay: July , -it's a shame you can buy The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star in Pointe au Baril Station; but, thank God, they don't carry The New York Times! The island in Georgian Bay that has been in Katherine Reeling's family since -when Ratherine's grandfather reputedly won it in a poker game-is about a fifteen-minute boat ride from Pointe au Baril Station; the island is in the vicinity of Burnt Island and Hearts Content Island and Peesay Point. I think it's called Gibson Island or Ormsby Island- there are both Gibsons and Ormsbys in Ratherine's family; I believe that Gibson was Ratherine's maiden name, but I forget. Anyway, there are a bunch of notched cedarwood cottages on the island, which is not served by electric power but is comfortably and efficiently supplied with propane gas-the
