“Definitely not. A place is only what you make it. You saw the main building when you came out. It’s livable and will be a fine home eventually. We think we can save three of the cabins for when our kids and…someday… grandkids come to visit. The rest we’re demolishing.”
“By yourselves? Didn’t any of those contractors I referred you to get back with estimates?”
“The roofer, and he’s done already. The others we only need for the septic system, plumbing, and electrical. They’ll be in touch.”
“Your wife…Maggie, is it?”
“Right.”
“She doesn’t seem the type for hard labor. Wasn’t she some kind of artist in the Twin Cities?”
“Interior designer.”
“How does she feel being dragged off to the end of the road here?”
Cal felt his throat tighten up. He took a sip of beer before he said: “She feels just fine. It was her idea, in fact. She found the property.”
“Good for her.” Abel looked up at the TV, reached for the remote, and turned the volume up slightly.
Maggie was painting the floor of the one-room cabin with red enamel when Howie, her black Lab, ran in and stepped on the wet surface.
“Howie!” she yelled, and the dog-perverse creature-began to wag his tail and knocked over the paint can. Maggie stood up, shooed him out the door, and wiped her damp brow with the back of her hand. It must have been ninety-five degrees, and the humidity was trying to match the temperature.
She regarded the mess on the floor, then turned away and went outside. The red paint had seemed a good idea two days ago-it would conceal the poor quality of the wood and the indelible stains from years of a leaking roof, plus lend a cheerful note to a cabin that was perpetually dark because of the overhanging white pines-but now she decided she didn’t really like it. Better brown, or even gray, covered in colorful rag rugs from the White Iron Trading Post.
She stood in the shade of the trees and looked down the gradual slope to what had once been the main building of Sunrise Lodge. A long two-story log structure with many-paned windows and a sagging porch, it sat in a clearing halfway between this cabin and the shore of Lost Wolf Lake. Over the thirty-five years that the property had sat abandoned, pines and scrub vegetation had grown up, so only a sliver of blue water was visible from the porch’s once-excellent vantage point. In time, the trees would be cleared, but first the lodge and three salvageable cabins must be made habitable. Each structure already had a new roof, but that was it. So much to be done before the long winter set in, both by Cal and herself and local skilled laborers, none of whom seemed prone to speedily working up estimates.
Maggie shook her head and trudged downhill, giving the evil eye to Howie, who was rooting around in a thicket of wild raspberries. She mounted the steps of the lodge, avoiding loose boards, and fetched a beer from the small refrigerator beneath a window in the front room, which she and Cal had claimed as their living quarters. Then she went back outside and followed a rutted track down to the lakeshore, stepping gingerly to avoid the poison ivy that grew in abundance there. A rotted wooden dock tilted over the water; she navigated it as she had the lodge steps and sat down at its end.
Lost Wolf Lake was placid today; on the far side a small motorboat moved slowly, and near the rocky beach to her left a family of mallards floated, undisturbed by human intrusion. Maggie shaded her eyes and scanned the water for the black-and-white loons she’d often spotted in late afternoon, but none was in evidence. The sun sparkled gold against the intense blue. Another day in paradise…
Well, she’d found the property, hadn’t she? Up on a visit last July to Sigrid Purvis, an old college friend who operated an outfitter’s business in White Iron-canoe rentals, sportsmen’s gear, guided trips to the Boundary Waters. The talk of the town that month had been about old Janice Mott dying and her estate finally putting Sunrise Lodge on the market. Friends of Sigrid’s had pretended interest in buying it, just to get a look at a local legend, so she and Maggie decided to take a tour, too.
A tour that Maggie now regarded as her undoing.
At the time, the property had seemed the ideal solution-to Cal’s failure to gain tenure and his growing boredom with his work at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis where he was a professor in the English department. To the empty-nest feeling of their spacious home in St. Paul. To the staleness that had fallen upon their marriage. To her having to deal with clients, mostly housewives, who were too uninventive or uninvolved to decorate their own homes.
Some solution. Now she was one of those housewives, who couldn’t even decide on what color to paint a beat-up, water-stained floor in a cabin that one of their two boys-both now in graduate school on the West Coast- might use for a week or so every summer.
But she was not only a housewife, Maggie reminded herself. She was a brush clearer. A de molition expert. A stringer of extension cords. A patcher of chinks between logs. A glazier of broken windows. She could prop up sagging structures. Remove debris from clogged crawl spaces. Empty the chemical toilet. Cook on a propane stove and wash dishes in a cold trickle of water from a five-gallon container.
The house part she could deal with just fine. But the wife part…that was another story. She didn’t feel like a wife at all any more. The deterioration of her relationship with Cal had been gradual since they’d arrived here at Lost Wolf Lake in April. At first he’d seemed excited about their new life. Then he’d become remote and moody. And then, after he’d taken a bad fall through the rotted floor of one of the cabins, he’d barely spoken to her. Barely made eye contact with her. Barely touched her.
And when he did…
Maggie drained her beer and looked out at the center of the lake, where one of the loons had surfaced and was flapping its wings. So free, so joyous. Resembling nothing in her life. Nothing at all.
The ball game ended-ten to three, Twins-and Abel shut off the TV.
Cal signaled for another Leinie, his third, and the bartender set it in front of him. It was warm in the tavern in spite of the air-conditioning. Cal brushed his thick shock of gray-brown hair off his forehead.
Abel frowned. “Nasty cut you’ve got there.”
Cal fingered it; the spot was scabbed and still tender. “Roof beam fell on me while I was taking down one of the cabins.”
“You have it looked at?”
“Not necessary. One of the staples at home is a first-aid kit.”
“You must use it a lot.” Abel motioned to a burn mark on Cal’s right forearm. “Last week it was…what? Twisted ankle? And before that a big shoulder bruise.”
“Accidents happen.”
“You always been accident-prone?”
“No, but I’ve never done this much physical labor before. Stuff around the house in St. Paul, that’s all.”
“Told me you’d built a whole addition yourself.”
“Well, yeah. But I was a lot younger and more fit then.”
“What are you…forty-five? Fifty, tops?”
“Forty-six.”
“And you still look fit. I’d say you’re not keeping your mind on the job at hand. Everything OK out there?”
“What d’you mean?”
“Well, a man who’s got problems…say, financial or marital…can let his concentration slip.”
Cal studied Abel Arneson. The man wasn’t a friend, not exactly, but he was the first resident of White Iron who’d welcomed Maggie and him, driving out to the lake with a cooler full of freshly caught walleye and two six- packs. He’d steered them to contractors-who had shown up, promised estimates, and someday might call. He’d arranged for the purchase of a used skiff and ten-horsepower Evinrude outboard motor, which were to be delivered this week, and he’d promised to go out with Cal and show him all the best fishing sites. He was the logical person for a worried man to confide in…
