Envy the Night

request to Dan: Could he head up to this place, this Willow Flowage, for just a few months, until he figured something else out?

You’re shit-brained, Dan had said. It’s going to be winter, man. Three feet of snow on the ground, you want a cabin with no electricity?

Snow doesn’t sound so bad right now, Ezra answered.

Dan had agreed to it. He headed south for Miami while Ezra went north, Frank Temple taking his job with the marshals and landing in St. Louis at the time, right in the middle.

Miami ruined Dan. The Willow saved Ezra. Absolutely saved Ezra. It was hard living but clean living, where you invested your strength and sweat into clearing snow and starting fires, not breaking legs and wielding guns. And there were certain moments, when the evening sun cast a pale red stain across silent snow or when an early spring wind blew up out of the lake with a surprising touch of warmth, that made you want to drop to your knees and thank whatever God you believed in—or maybe one you hadn’t believed in—for putting you in that place at that time.

Ezra had been on the island five months when he learned his brother’s body had been found in the trunk of a Caprice off Lafayette in Detroit. He skipped the funeral. That summer, Dan and Frank came up for a visit, and Ezra made his pitch. He and Frank should pool resources and buy the additional parcel Dan owned on the point, build a cabin there and create a camp that they could share and pass down to their families. It was the sort of grand plan you can only have when you’re young and friendships seem guaranteed to last forever.

Go on, Dan had laughed. I’ll sell you the land, man. But I’m not spending much time out on that damn island, middle of nowhere and nothing to do.

Then sell it to me, Ezra suggested, the island already sacred ground to him.

Dan shook his head. Slow, with some of the mocking humor gone from his face.

Nah, he said. I can’t sell that one. Not the island. It’s in a trust, a legacy deal, to keep the state from taking it. The island goes way back in my family, you know that. I’ve got a son, and it’ll be his someday. I want it to be his.

So he’d kept his island but rarely appeared there, and Ezra and Frank built a cabin on the smaller parcel around the point and shared some summers and memories. Now, with a few decades of separation, Ezra could look back on it and see that it had been the bellwether, Dan’s life moving in a different direction, to a place hidden from Ezra and Frank. The real shame was that it hadn’t stayed that way for Frank.

Ezra had lived in the lake cabin for a time, but as soon as he could afford to he bought more land a few miles up the road and built his own house. Eventually Frank Temple bought the lake property in full, put it in a legacy trust for his son. Now it had been years since anyone spent a night in either the lake cabin or the one on the island. So much for the legacies.

As he reached the top of the hill he left the road and moved toward the waterline, reentered the trees near where he imagined the car to be, and found it easily. Driven right up to the last tree, all those boughs mashed against it, bleeding sap onto the roof. He ducked beneath the branches, his jeans soaking in moisture when his knee touched the grass, and then came out at the back of the car. Reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew his lighter, flicked the wheel, and held the flame close to the bumper, so he could read the license plate.

It was local. Wisconsin and Lincoln County. That was a surprise. He memorized the numbers and then took his thumb off the lighter and let the flame go out. He hadn’t expected a local vehicle. The only people he believed should have access to the island cabin were some thousand miles away. The Lexus had carried a Florida plate, as expected, but now it was gone, and this old heap with a local plate had taken its place. Why?

He left the car and returned the way he’d come through the silent woods. When he reached his truck he decided to go the Willow Wood Lodge instead of home, have a drink and do some thinking before calling it a night. No tourists, this time of year. There were six cars in the parking lot when he arrived, laughter carrying outside. He walked in and found an empty stool at the far end of the bar, had hardly settled onto it before a glass of Wild Turkey and an ice water were placed in front of him. Carolyn, the bartender, didn’t need to wait on an order.

“Glad you came in,” she said. “Been meaning to give you a call.”

“Yeah?”

“Dwight Simonton came in about an hour ago. You know Dwight.”

“Sure. He’s a good man.”

“He said somebody’s down at the Temple place. Said there was a fire going outside, somebody sitting there.”

“Right idea, wrong owner. Somebody showed up at the island cabin.”

Carolyn shook her head. “Dwight said it was the Temple place.”

Ezra frowned. “I don’t think so. I was just out there today, had a look at it from the water. Nobody’s staying there. Been so long since anyone visited either one of those cabins, Dwight probably was confused. Heard something about the island cabin, got it mixed up.”

Now Carolyn leaned back and raised her eyebrows. “Come on. Not a soul who lives on this lake doesn’t know the Temple place, after the way that crazy guy went out. Dwight told me the fire was right down on the point. You think Dwight can’t tell a fire on the island from one on the shore two miles away?”

She was right; Dwight Simonton wouldn’t have made that mistake. He and his wife, Fran, had owned a place up here for more than a decade and were the closest things to neighbors the Temple cabin had. If Dwight said it was the Temple cabin, then it was the Temple cabin.

“You don’t think,” she said, lowering her voice and leaning closer, “it’s his kid?”

Of course it was his kid, responding to the message Ezra himself had left, but rather than confirm it, Ezra simply shrugged.

“That’d be something,” Carolyn said.

Yeah. That’d be something, all right. Ezra finished his bourbon without a word, tossed some money on the bar, and got to his feet.

“You going down there?” Carolyn asked, her face alight with curiosity.

“Figure I ought to.”

She was ready with another question, but Ezra turned away and went to the door, stepped out into a night that now seemed electric. First there’d been the beautiful woman and her gray-haired companion in the Lexus. Then the Lexus was gone and the man hid a new car in the trees. Now someone, probably Frank’s son, was back at the Temple cabin. Ezra didn’t like the feel of it, the way this group was gathering on his lake. He was responsible for them, he knew. A generation later, maybe, but he’d brought them here all the same.

11

__________

The letter was right where it belonged, framed on the wall beside the corresponding Silver Star. Frank read it while he drank his first beer, read from the date right down to President Harry S. Truman’s signature.

In grateful memory of Major Frank Temple, who died in the service of his country in the military operations of Korea, on August 22, 1950. He stands in the unbroken line of patriots who have dared to die, that freedom might live, and grow, and increase its blessings. Freedom lives, and through it he lives, in a way that humbles the undertakings of most men.

The letter had hung above his father’s childhood bed, the only tie Frank Temple II ever had to the soldier who’d died in Korea, leaving a wife six months pregnant with the son who would bear his name. Frank Temple II grew up without knowing a father but knowing plenty about his legacy—his name was a hero’s name. During D- Day, on beaches filled with heroic acts, the first Frank Temple and his comrades still stood out. Using grappling hooks and ropes, his Army Ranger battalion scaled the cliffs at Point du Hoc, stone towers looming a hundred feet over the sea and protected by German soldiers with clear lines of fire. Into the teeth of that rain of bullets climbed Temple and his fellow Rangers. Casualties were heavy, but the mission was accomplished.

A tough act to follow, but Frank Temple II had done it for forty-five years. He had his war, Vietnam, where he served as a member of a specialized group so covert and so celebrated that it was still the subject of speculation decades later. MACV-SOG they’d been called: the Special Operations Group, elite soldiers whose chain of command