River. Richie saying, “Now let me get this straight. This guy’s Indian, but used to be an ironworker. Same as the guy you’re trying to tell me isn’t the real estate man.”
“Believe me,” Armand said.
“Well, what was he doing there?”
“I don’t care,” Armand said, “long as you know what we have to do. There’s the house. Good, his wife’s gone.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he’s right there—you see him? And the truck’s gone that was there.”
“That’s him, huh? Not a bad-looking house—I mean for an Indian. Shit. What’s he doing?”
It was a little white-frame place set among willows: a window, a door, a window. A bike in the yard. Lionel was on the front stoop, taking the screen out of the aluminum door and putting in the storm pane for winter. Armand didn’t see anyone else around. Lionel had a couple of grown kids, gone, and one that was a baby when Armand was here last. He turned into the worn tire tracks that extended past the house to a shed where Lionel kept his muskrat traps and decoys, fishnets hanging from the roof. Lionel was looking this way now. Hands on his hips, not very anxious to see company. Beyond the house was the wooden dock on the river, where Lionel’s outboard was tied. Lionel was coming across the yard now, swinging his leg.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“Get him to tell you.”
“He looks more Indian than you, Bird.”
They got out of the car. Armand said, “Lionel, this guy wants to do some duck hunting.” He didn’t bother to introduce them. Lionel had stopped, hands beneath his folded arms in a sweat shirt, not ready to shake hands anyway. Not too happy to see them.
Though he said, “Wants to knock down some ducks, ’ey?”
Armand said, “You see this guy’s chin? He was putting up his storm windows and fell off the ladder, cut himself up so he can’t work. I said, ‘Well, let’s go duck hunting.’ How does it look? You free tomorrow?”
Lionel acted as if he had to think about it. “I don’t know, maybe. I can go out later, see if it’s gonna be any good, any ducks landing.”
“Where, down the marsh?”
Lionel turned, looking off at layers of clouds with dark undersides. “I go down by St. Anne’s, see how it is. Maybe, I don’t know.”
“We could go now,” Armand said, “take a ride in your boat. Richie hasn’t ever seen a marsh.”
“I’ve seen one. Shit, I’ve even seen this one.” Armand gave him a look, staring hard, and Richie said, “But I’ve never been like
“You guys,” Lionel said, smiling a little, “you want to go like that?”
Armand buttoned his suit coat and held his hands out. “What’s the matter? I always wear this when I go duck hunting. How about him?” Armand hooked a thumb at Richie, blood all over his sport coat. “Couple of dudes, ’ey?” He moved toward Lionel saying, “Come on, let’s go,” extending his hand to touch Lionel’s arm. Lionel turned away, swinging his leg out to walk off. Following him around back and along a path to the river, Armand said, “Tell this guy—Lionel? Tell him how you fell and hurt yourself.”
“That’s what happened,” Lionel said.
“Tell him how high up you were.”
“Seventy feet.”
Richie, following Armand, said, “Shit, and it didn’t kill him?”
“Tell him what you landed on. What do you call those things? They stick out of concrete.”
“Retaining rods,” Lionel said.
“Retaining rods,” Armand said over his shoulder, “they put in concrete. He landed on one of those things, sticking straight up.”
“Jesus Christ,” Richie said.
“Like he sat down in it.”
“Jesus Christ—it went up his ass?”
“It hit him under his butt,” Armand said over his shoulder as they came to the boat dock: a plank walk that extended out into the river, Lionel’s aluminum boat with its forty-horse Johnson tied alongside.
Lionel turned to them, saying, “The rod went through me and came out my back here, at my kidney. Where it used to be.”
“Jesus Christ,” Richie said.
“He only has one kidney,” Armand said.
“I lost the kidney, I broke both my feet and my legs and had to get a new plastic kneecap, this one,” Lionel said. “But I was lucky, ’cause if I didn’t land on that retaining rod I’d be dead. It slowed me down.” He moved toward the boat saying, “What else you want to know?” and began to free the line.
Armand said, “Ten, twelve years ago, ’ey?”
“More than that. It was when we were building the Renaissance Center, over in Detroit. More like fourteen years now.” He was holding the boat for them, offering a hand. Armand, stepping aboard, gripped Lionel’s hand. Richie ignored it.
“You were talking to a guy yesterday,” Armand said, “I notice was an ironworker.”
“Yeah, he was on that job too,” Lionel said. “I think it was the first time I met him. He was a punk then.”
“But not now, ’ey?”
“A punk,” Lionel said, coiling the line, “is what ironworkers call an apprentice. No, believe me, he’s no punk now.”
“What’s his name?”
Armand waited. Lionel was looking toward the house and was thinking about something or maybe didn’t hear him.
“I should have left my wife a note,” Lionel said. “She drove our girl to go ice-skating, over the sports arena.”
Armand looked toward the house, then up at Lionel on the dock. “This won’t take long.”
A lake freighter appeared, a small one but towering over them as it passed, Lionel saying it was going up to Hazzard Grain in Wallaceburg, Lionel now telling them things without being asked.
At first it was like any river with land on both sides, tree lines and thickets Lionel called “the bush.” But as they moved south the banks of the Snye changed to marshland, reeds and cattails as far as Armand could see from low in the boat. Now it was like a river that ran through weeds growing out of the water. He said, “Where’s the land? There’s no place you can get out.”
Lionel seemed to smile. He was not so serious now guiding his boat, the forty-horse Johnson grumbling in the water. Pointing then to an opening in the marsh bank he said, “That swale there— when the water’s up you punch your boat through there, find some muskrat.”
Richie, in the bow, said, “Where? I don’t see any muskrats.”
“They seen you first,” Lionel said. “I had a trap I’d stick it in there. That’s where they crawl up.”
“You eat ’em?”
“If you want,” Lionel said. “You can barbecue muskrat, the way I like it, or make a stew. See, but they’re bottom feeders so a lot of people won’t eat them, afraid they gonna get some toxic-waste dressing in their meat.”
Richie said, then what good were they? Lionel told him a nice pelt was worth six-fifty and Richie said, shit, was that all?
“Watch the sky,” Lionel said. “You want ducks, we have to see where they land.”
“My jaw hurts,” Richie said, “and I’m cold.”
It made Armand think of summer, being here a long time ago when it was hot. “It looks different— all this water.”
“Maybe you never came down this far,” Lionel said, “you and your brothers. There aren’t no cats or dogs here to shoot.”
“Keep talking like that,” Armand said, “I’ll turn you into a muskrat.” He looked over his shoulder at Lionel in
