on china, chair legs scraping the floor-transcribing it black-and-white in his mind.
N: You never told me what a shit he is.
F: Didn’t I?
N: No. Why the hell did you marry him? Or is that out of bounds?
F: You can ask me anything. He was different then.
N: No one changes that much.
F: And maybe I misjudged him. He seemed so… original to me then.
N: Original? He’s a throwback, Francie.
F: It’s not that simple. And please, don’t bring out your tool bag. It’s been a long, slow decline, maybe worse since he lost his job, which you knew about, if I’m not mistaken.
N: I was just making conversation.
F: Were you?
N: No.
F: A long, slow decline. I didn’t realize the extent of it, until …
N: Until what?
F: Till you came in your kayak.
N: I want you.
PAUSE: laughter, cutlery on china, scraping chairs.
N (cont’d): Monday night. At the cottage.
F: Monday?
N: There’s no show-they’re broadcasting the Pops Christmas concert. Six-thirty?
LONG PAUSE: more laughter, cutlery, scraping.
R: So. What’s the plan?
Peter Abrahams
A Perfect Crime
21
Late Saturday afternoon, the sky glowing orange through the grillwork of bare black trees-oak, maple, poplar-around Little Joe Lake. Riding in his own car, a ten-year-old Bronco with 124, 000 miles on the odometer- many of the taxpayers knew Saturday was his day off, and wouldn’t care to see him swanning around at their expense in the cruiser with CHIEF on the side-Joe Savard followed the lane that ran up the east side of the lake. With snow on the ground he preferred the Bronco anyway, at least until the town came through with new tires for the cruiser. His request had been tabled till the April meeting, along with the school textbooks, the cable TV contract, and the landfill amendment. And of course the streetlight question, he added to himself, nosing over to the side to let a white pickup go by; the streetlight question, a hopeless perennial, like mud in the spring. The driver raised his hand in thanks, perhaps flashing the peace sign, although with the pickup’s windows so dirty, Savard couldn’t be sure. The body, too, although not so dirty he couldn’t read the words on the side panel: LITTLE WHITE CHURCH OF THE REDEEMER. Savard pulled back into the lane and kept going.
At one time, there’d been many Savards in the area and they’d owned the whole lake. It was probably named after a Savard: in a box somewhere lay a family Bible signed by generations of them, and they seemed to have restricted themselves to three male names, Joseph, Lucien, and Hiram; so he could have done worse. Now he was the last one, and all he owned was the single cabin built on what wasn’t much more than a big rock a few yards from shore at the north end, reached by the lop-sided little footbridge that might not last another winter. That rock being the last of the land, him being the last of the people: probably the reason he hadn’t sold the cabin back when he should have, after Sue.
Not that he’d done much reasoning during that period. He’d just left the cabin unattended for a few years, unwilling to see it or even think about it. But after his second marriage, he’d started renting the cabin out in summer, hoping to raise extra cash for some of the little things his second wife seemed to like. Later came the divorce, another good time for selling out. But it was around that time that he’d discovered his hobby, and now he drove out to the cabin almost every day off.
Savard parked at the end of the turnout that led from the lake road to the footbridge. Lifting his chain saw off the passenger seat, he stepped down and noticed that someone else had parked there, not long before. He could tell from the way the tires had pressed four deep prints in the snow after tracking in from the south, as he had-old tires with hardly any tread left at all. He followed their route with his eyes, backing out, returning to the south, through the long shadows of the trees on the snow, snow turning red-black in the dying light.
The footbridge creaked once or twice as Savard walked across. He wasn’t especially tall-six feet if he stood his straightest-but he had the broad and powerful family build. Many Savards had anchored the Dartmouth line, going back to the early years of football, although not him-he’d gone to Vietnam instead. Not by choice; he just hadn’t been able to get the kind of math scores Dartmouth required. Algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2: a maze he’d wandered through in high school without finding his way, despite never missing class, sitting in the front row, staying after for extra help, puzzling over the homework problems every night, but too often failing to solve for x. SAT math score: 470. He still remembered that goddamned number, probably the only number that had ever been solid in his mind. Four seventy led to war; war led to law enforcement, which became a profession after Sue. End of story. The truth, which had come to him years later the way truths did in his case, if at all, was that he hadn’t liked school anyway, except for sports, and would probably have disliked Dartmouth, too.
Savard opened the cabin door, went inside. It was no longer the kind of cabin anyone would want to rent. Savard had gutted it, sledgehammering all the partitions on both floors-some emotions had got loose that day, the room where it had happened, all the rooms, were now gone-ripping out the second floor itself as well, down to the structural beams. He’d left one toilet, one sink, both unusable now with the water turned off and the pipes drained for winter. The rest was space, high and open, mostly shadows at this hour, except for the red glare on the lakeside windows, a color reflected dully on the unpolished surfaces of the bears.
Savard still thought of them as bears because that was what he’d been after at the start, life-size bears carved-if cutting with a chain saw could be called carving-from the biggest cedar trunks he could find, dead standing and naturally dried when he could get it. After the divorce, those days off had gotten a little too long, and he’d gone to work once a week for a woodlot across the Maine line, not far from Kezar Falls. The work was hard; he’d been handy with a chain saw since boyhood; he got to wander around in the woods; they paid him: a good job. One evening, while he was walking back toward the logging road and his ride out, a big bear had reared up at him through the trees. He did what you were supposed to do, which was nothing. He wasn’t afraid, not with that chain saw in his hands-the noise alone would do the trick. The bear didn’t move either, as if following the same guidelines, and after watching for a minute or so, Savard realized it wasn’t a bear, but a tall tree stump that looked like a bear.
Savard went closer, circled the stump, then without thinking, pulled the cord and raised his saw-a heavy Black amp; Decker four-footer-and gave it a little more definition between the head and shoulder. Almost too much: he went at the snout with more finesse, narrowing it, then rounded off that big muscle pad behind the neck. He stepped back for a better look-terrible.
But he’d gotten the bug, and the next Saturday he drove home with ten foot of cedar, most of it sticking out the back of the Bronco. White cedar, specifically: he’d always liked the soft, sunny glow hiding under its sappy skin. Savard had floated his log across the water to the cabin, dragged it up to the door with the ATV he’d had then-one of those little things he’d thought would please his second wife; she’d ridden it once-and humped it through the door.
The carving had taken a year. By the end of that time he’d settled on the right tool-an electric Stihl 14, only four pounds or so, delicate enough for eyes, claws, nostrils-and had learned the most important lesson: to let the wood guide the saw. His first bear was man-size and stood by itself on its hind legs, but he didn’t fool himself into thinking it was anything but crude. There was just one good thing about bear number one: it had that poker face that makes bears so dangerous. Savard brought back a new tree trunk the next week to see if the poker face had been an accident.
