David, the King

By Robert C. Hereth

What name appears throughout the Bible more than any other? David, the king. A millennium after Abraham and a millennium before Jesus, David united the 12 tribes of Israel for a brief moment of history; but more important, he emerges from the mists of ancient times as a person of God of inspiring nobility but also of base venality. In order that we may learn from David and appropriate his great truths for our own faith journey, David, the King recasts the dramatic events of his life into our own profane, secularized time.

The great stories of David posed as many questions as they did answers. How did the love/hate relationship between David and his predecessor King Saul come about? How could David endure the persecution by an increasingly manic Saul? What was it like for Jonathan to be torn between his love for his father, Saul, and his dear friend David? Why would noble David tolerate the murderous Joab? Why would David permit Amnon to get away with his cynical rape of Tamar? What happened to Abigail, Davids sweet love? What kind of God kills Bathshebas baby from Davids rape, then gives them Solomon? In David, the King the events of his life are set in our modern times so that we can more easily consider the greatness and failures of Davids life with and against and through God.

At the end of his life, we read in the Bible that a young woman was brought to him to warm him back to life, though not sexually. In this novel David has a surprise visit from Laurel, a granddaughter he has never met. She desperately wants to know him and learn of his life for reasons which she cannot disclose. He recounts his great story for her, a story set in the novel in the last three-quarters of the 20th century. In the course of his recounting all that happened to him, her critical need becomes apparent. In seeking to understand her grandfathers faith journey, Laurel is launched on her own. And David, in order to help her, is once again aroused to find and put into action the qualities which made him David, the King for posterity.

In the novel Laurel finds David in the forests of the upper Midwest where he grew up in the family of Jesse, the youngest of eight sons. Before the famous encounter with the giant Goliath, there were intimations in the Bible of a brave and precocious child, one who could stand up to wild animals, who grew up to be a brave soldier. There was a secret anointing by Samuel of the lad. Also there were glimpses of early favorable contacts with King Saul--as Sauls spear carrier and as a musician who can sooth the moody monarch. Therefore David, the King fabricates a childhood for David where he can encounter bears and lions and where dauntless courage can be developed. His preliminary involvement with King Saul and his family occurs, and the stage is set for Davids encounter with the Giant.

Saul has been employed as head of Kingdom Advertising Associates to try to pull together into a loose confederation 12 separate agencies scattered about the country. They are threatened by a powerful Eastern enemy, the Phillips Company, which--as David arrives on the scene--has challenged KAA on its home turf with The Giant. A huge, boisterous, arrogant politician, The Giant is determined to embarrass and so destroy KAA. David alone dares to face him. He leads a campaign which in effect cuts off the head of The Giant once and for all.

David, the King challenges us to ourselves risk the leap of faith, to find courage where it is needed, to discover we are Gods choice for our present circumstances, to learn for ourselves we are never alone, and therefore to believe we can always live with hope.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 30, 2001
• ISBN: 9781465320100

Robert C. Hereth

Pastor Robert Hereth writes as one of "little faith" for those who feel the same way. Having entered the ministry after the navy and a career in public relations, he has never fit comfortably in the clerical collar. For 45 years he has struggled for the faith that seems to come so naturally to others. Along the way he learned that his struggles--instead of being a hinderance to his people--were often of great help to them. Emboldened by how Jesus embraced "those of little faith," Hereth aims to lead us of little faith to our Big God. Hereth has published two novels with Xlibris, David the King and Money.

Book preview

PART 1:

„I am . . . a stranger to my relatives and . . . a foreigner to my own family."

Ps. 69:8 (TEV)

CHAPTER 1

With an audible groan, David braced himself, then eased down onto the stump of the great white pine, the pain in his elbows, wrists, and knees causing him to wince. The cut of the stump was fresh; the great pine tree had fallen only that winter. He was next.

During the night the winter ice had pulled a few feet away from the lake shore, except where glassy, jagged skim-ice clung desperately to a few twigs which dipped down into the lake from shoreline alders. The water was black and mysterious. The air was damp and ate at him. David had been cold all winter. He would never be warm again, and he didn’t want to be cold anymore.

Out on the lake blue blotches betrayed huge sections of the ice which had thinned and were primed for break-up with the first fresh wind. When he had dropped the great pine tree onto the ice in January, the ice had measured 14 inches thick in the fishing holes, and the frozen lake absorbed the mighty blow without quivering. Now, a day or two before break-up, Gunner, David’s dog, a Kerry Blue, knew better than to venture out.

Perhaps, if it had been a wet year, the great pine tree would have pulled through, but the drought of the summer and autumn made inevitable what until then seemed impossible. It was as if God was taking no chance that the pine tree would live.

Feeling the sharp edge of the stump dig into his bones, David remembered when the boys made their Dad promise that, if the tree ever came down, he would cut slices for them. They proposed to sand the slices smooth and float layers of clear polyurethane across until the slices looked like the highly polished ringed redwood coffee table which decorated David’s Chicago office looking out over Lake Michigan. That was, until Bobby defiantly ground his cigarette butts out on it, leaving deep black mocking scars in the shiny top. David judged that a slice, sawed close to the ground, would make a small dining table. When stretched out on the ice where they had dropped it, the mighty tree had measured l28 feet. Somehow it had escaped the loggers at the end of the l9th century. It was this majestic pine, reaching above the tree line, which many years before had caught Abby’s attention and attracted them to this spot on the shore. The tree dominated every picture of the cabin taken over the years. Now it was gone, and the boys couldn’t care less about the stump.

David had not dropped the tree by himself, not anymore. A logger in town maintained a horse to snake out logs through the brush to the road. David hired him, and the logger had borrowed a chain saw with a 42-inch blade. Even then the pine had such girth that a cut from each side was required. It had taken a week to saw it into cord lengths, snake them out to the road for the mill to pick up, and clear the brush off the ice. During that week, David decided it was time for him to go, too.

His l2-foot French sloop had been readied, rolled to the water’s edge on balsam rollers which he had freshly cut and peeled. He had stepped the aluminum mast and rigged the lines. The two nylon sails lay in the sail bag on the starboard seat. When the ice went out, certainly before the weekend, he would sail out for the last time. Without leaves on the trees, the nasty unpredictable May winds would slice down the draws between the shoreline bluffs; and he, trying to manage both sails himself, would not be able to adjust to the rapid changes in wind direction and velocity. He would heel over, fill, and capsize. Once, years before when ice fishing, he had gone through the spring ice, and he knew how quickly the frigid water would numb his extremities, shorten his breathing, and dull his reflexes. He would not recover. A horrible accident would occur. The night before last he had given his Rolex to Sven, the bartender at Julie’s. A letter to his lawyer in Chicago, providing the firm’s phone and address, lay handily on his desk top in the cabin. David had only to make a phone call to Sven to look in on Gunner before he pushed off. He had never thought of ending his life before the great pine tree had thudded on the ice. He’d thought of little else since.

Until yesterday morning when Lil at the post office had phoned. King, you got a general delivery letter sitting here. Aren’t you ever coming into town again so you can get it?

He had almost answered, No, never, but stopped himself. Grudgingly he went to town before supper at Julie’s to retrieve the letter. Sitting by himself at the far end of Julie’s bar, the open letter before him, he had growled at Sven, I sure as hell don’t need this right now. A visitor! Can you believe it? A damn visitor after all these years.

Put your plans on hold? Sven asked. Sven had let David know he was suspicious of what David was thinking. Maybe a God-send?

I thought you didn’t believe in God.

But you do, so you might take it that way and save your ass, Bigshot.

Now, sitting on the great pine tree stump, David was waiting. Gunner came chugging up and flopped down next to the stump, tongue wet and panting from tracing a scent through the swamp. David dug at his black, wooly ear. Gunner was a one-person dog, his dog. David didn’t know how he’d take to a visitor.

He removed the letter from his shirt pocket.

Mr. David Gudmanson Dear Sir:

"I am your granddaughter, Laurel, Marlee’s daughter. Your former wife Abigail lived with us until her death two years ago. I say that Grandma raised me. I want to visit you. I will leave New Jersey at the end of April and will drive to the Midwest. I have some questions I want to ask you, and I hope you will accommodate me. Also, I heard a lot about the cabin from Grandma. It will be interesting to see it for myself.

I will phone you at my last stop for final directions. She had signed it, Sincerely, Laurel Schneider. Apparently Marlee was still married to the Kraut, or at least Laurel had retained the last name. David folded the letter, replaced it in his pocket, and—as Gunner stretched up—resumed scratching the dog’s floppy ear. David tried to recall pictures. When Abby had left him and moved East to live with Marlee, he had hired a private investigator to take pictures routinely and keep him informed. After awhile, it seemed futile, and he stopped. He remembered that there had been a little girl. He could not remember what she looked like. If she had only waited until he had taken his sail, she’d have been a very wealthy girl. As it was, at lunch time she had phoned from about 125 miles south, asking for final directions to the cabin.

Firm, determined voice. No asking permission but telling him she would arrive in mid afternoon. Last night he had thought about pushing the sail boat off then and there, but he couldn’t stick her with a mess. Publicity, crap. His sense of family surprised himself, still caring. Blood is thicker than water, his mother would say. So he had told Laurel he’d be waiting.

He didn’t know exactly what time it was. Sven had his Rolex. The shadows the first day of May were surprisingly short considering how chilled the air was. Only mid-afternoon. If only the ice break-up had not been a week late. David figured her well north of Highway Eight. He, himself, had returned only once to Chicago that winter, and then he had chartered a plane. He’d spent a weekend in his penthouse on Lakeshore Drive, which a couple kept ready for him. He no longer made the 375-mile drive, but there wasn’t a mile he couldn’t picture if he tried. There was a time when he and Abby loved the drive; they relished how the rolling Wisconsin moraines decompressed their high-powered city stress and readied them for the woods.

David wondered who Laurel would look like. Like Abby? What would he look like to her? Most of all, why had she come? l500 miles! Gunner stiffened, stood abruptly, a deep rumble in his chest. Gunner always heard a car before David did.

CHAPTER 2

She missed the turn. David refused to hang a sign, and he had perversely set the fire number as far down the driveway as was legally possible. As he pushed up from the stump, he saw through the trees a red Saturn flash past. Great, probably one of those young blonds in a little red car who drove like hell. He heard her skid on the gravel as she braked, then back slowly. As she turned in, Gunner ran dangerously alongside, barking wildly and leaping at the side window. She drove up to David, turned off the engine, contemplated the leaping dog, and pushed the door deliberately into him, shoving him aside. She got out. David walked toward her.

You’re so old, she said.

David stopped. How do I answer that?

I mean, Grandma always spoke of you as so big, so powerful. ‘The King!’

Your Grandma was small. But you’re right, although no one has said it to me before this, I am old. He realized his once-red hair now stood out in grey tufts around his ears. Suspenders dangled his flannel-lined trousers over his squared frame which had for years exuded health and energy. Now bony wrists stuck from the cuffs of his flannel shirt. Suspenders make any man look older, he said, challenging her with eyes as acute as ever. I don’t need glasses outside.

What do I call you? she asked.

What do you want to call me?

Grandma always called you ‘King.’ Mother called you ‘snake,’ or even more, ‘bastard,’ or ‘son of a bitch.’

David had expected a generation gap , but he was not braced for the familiar way the invective tripped from her sweet mouth. So this is the way it’s going to be?

What’s the matter? I’ll just call you ‘King’ like Grandma. She pointed at the dog who had positioned himself defiantly between herself and David. What’s his name?

He’s Gunner. Don’t ask why. Probably from how you gun a car before spinning off. He charges into anything. Except people. He takes his time with people, so don’t be offended.

Don’t let him bite me.

"Right now, I’m not sure who has the worse bite. Want to come in?

Do you mind if we walk around for a few minutes. I’ve heard so much about this place—’The Cabin.’ I want to see it with my own eyes instead of through someone else’s.

He followed her as she strode around the stand of red pine which sheltered the cabin from north winds. She can’t have driven 1500 miles to see the Cabin, he thought. She stepped confidently. She wasn’t a child. She was a woman, but very thin. That surprised him. Marlee had his strong, square frame. Laurel’s beige slacks drooped loose over her backside. No rear end at all. Was this anorexia, or the other thing, bulimia? Her hair from the back looked phoney. What a shame to mess with your hair color when you’re so young.

Grandma never stopped talking about this place. Even Mom. It was like the one good thing which she remembered. They chose my name from up here, did you know that? Laurel is a plant which grows here somewhere.

What we call ‘laurel’ grows over there along the side of the cabin. If you had come in the summer, you’d smell it.

The laurel’s still here?

Abby—your Grandmother—once said that things don’t change here as much as you think. A big tree will go—she’d call them soldiers—but a clump of grass will look the same year after year, not smaller or bigger, just the way it is. I suspect the laurel is about how it was when she last saw it.

No snow remaining on this side, she remarked. David explained how carefully they had planned the location, with the big red pines protecting from the north, and the deciduous birch and maple in the south to let the sun melt the snow in the winter and provide shade in the summer. Can I go down to the lake? she asked.

Lead the way.

Oh, the great pine tree is gone! Her hand went to her mouth. Oh no. What happened?

It’s been showing its age for many years, but we’ve had a bad drought. We’ve had drought before, of course, and it survived. This time it didn’t make it.

She was inordinately upset. It was in all the pictures. I had hoped to draw strength from that tree. Everyone talked as if just seeing it, you stood taller yourself. You straightened up. You felt you could go on and face anything. They walked and stood next to the wide-spreading stump. You tell me a little drought killed this?

I could simply say it was God’s will. But that might be saying the same thing. He thought of his own despondency since it had crashed down. It’s a shock, all right. It makes any of us face the fact that here we have no abiding city. Carefully he added, We turn to the one that is to come.

She looked at him. She had her grandma’s expressive grey eyes. They were fearful. It’s not so bad, he felt compelled to say.

"How do you know?" she challenged him, and turned to walk along the shore. He told her the ice was late going out, how opening day for the fishing season was Saturday, that she’d probably see the ice dissolve before her eyes in the next few days.

Early spring is very bleak here, he said. It takes a long time for the sun to warm the water and thaw the ground, and therefore there’s always a chill. But look, the buds are poised on the alders here and up there on the birches. Have been since fall. God’s provided everything we need for Spring. That’s also for certain. It’ll come.

You’re right about the chill part. Can we go in?

With neither talking, they wound their way up the half-log stairs David had laid decades before to the sprawling, low cabin running the length of the ridge. It’s planks were stained a chocolate brown marked by a wet line almost four-feet above the ground where the snow had lain all winter. The windows and doors were outlined with thick layers of white paint. Green moss globes dotted the gray roof shingles.

You have a suitcase? he asked.

I didn’t know if I would be invited to stay over. I saw Julie’s motel back along the road. I don’t know if this is going to work or not.

Inside, her arms folded over her chest, she strode back and forth across the great room as if she were pacing it off, now and then pausing to peer out the sliding doors which looked down on the lake. The dimmer light inside softened her cheek bones, and David could see more of Abby. Her eyebrows, even though sharply shaped, looked auburn; something of him too. She lifted a carved decoy of a wood duck from the fireplace mantel.

This is in every picture taken here. You and Grandma and Mom as a little girl and Uncle Bobby—she looked up at David—and Uncle Charles. She set it down and resumed moving about the room, touching the black metal bear trap, lifting up the Indian basket from the end table. I suppose the same things are in the pictures of your other family as well.

Maybe that’s the point of being up here. Here things remain the same, while everywhere else things change all the time.

But they don’t remain the same. They pass away forever, like the great pine tree.

Can I make us a cup of coffee? David asked. Or tea? Or get us a drink? I don’t have any soda pop but there’s beer and brandy.

Tea sounds good. She sat down where she could look out on the lake, and he retreated gratefully into the kitchen to fill the tea kettle. He took his time, feeling like he was trying to catch his breath. From the sound of things, it might be some time before he learned why she had come. She seemed to be feeling her way, but she was very rough-handed. He smiled. Such a regal bearing, like she were the granddaughter of a king. No wonder she irritated him so—bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. Recomposed, he returned carrying two mugs with winter scenes on them. She was seated as before, staring out the window. Gunner was lying next to her having a wooly ear massaged. The warm knotty-pine planking on the walls gave color to her skin. With her head tilted and her chin uplifted, she was quite pretty in her own cool way.

I let him in. Do you mind? she said. Then she turned her body to David and asked, Do you know how Grandma died?

David had been notified by a phone call from his attorney about Abby’s death. Marlee had handled it through the lawyers; she had waited a week after the funeral so there could be no question of his attending. He in turn had requested his lawyer to find out what had happened; and from her doctor and pastor the investigator had pieced together a story of an older woman in reasonably good health who was found dead in the chair of her room. Because she was David, the King’s, former wife, a post-mortem examination was deemed necessary, and it had revealed an aneurism. Her death had been as sudden as it had appeared.

Laurel launched off into describing her life with Grandma. Abby had moved in with Marlee the year Laurel was born, so Laurel knew no time without her. As he listened, David noted how graphic were her memories—who had worn what dress, which table cloth in the restaurant was used. Along the way he refilled their tea cups.

Marlee evidently worked every day with Schneider in the family business—window treatments—and Grandma Abby was the nurturing person in Laurel’s life. Laurel treasured the years without analyzing their relationship. As she talked, she became more animated and less brittle. Hearing how much Abby meant to her, David had the brief thought that even the worst of situations could be turned to some good. At one point when she told how in her early teens she had invited Abby to accompany her on a weekend field trip to New York. David asked, Did your Mother feel left out?

Laurel tried to recall the incident and agreed that as she grew up, she learned to be sensitive when she talked to her mother about Grandma. I remember one time, like a little snot, I told Mother, ‘You don’t know how to braid my hair like Grandma does.’ I remember Mom cried. Maybe, without realizing it, after that I was more careful of telling her all that went on between Grandma and me.

Then she added , Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to talk about these things here. This is Grandma’s territory—this chair, looking out this window. I guess even you’re part of the picture she so often described.

You couldn’t write the final line until you came here? David offered. Perhaps to explain the mystery of her trip? She did not pick up on his suggestion.

I was the one who found her.

Oh, oh. That had to be rough.

"Yes, but I eventually understood it was also right. That it should be me. Of course when I touched her and realized what had happened, I flipped out. I called Mom instead of 911, although it wouldn’t have made any difference. Mom called the paramedics; I was so distraught. I couldn’t watch them remove the body. I was a mess at the funeral. But eventually I sorted it out. By God, she had no one but me. That wasn’t true of course, but it was true for me. I was her closest friend. By the time I left for Princeton, it had grown into that. She was not only my Nana. We’d become friends. What a woman she was.

It’s not just what Mother has always said about you, she stammered. It’s from knowing her so well that I can’t understand it. Did you just use her up and throw her away?

That she was pleading, not accusing, buried the question deep into his hide. It must look that way. For what it’s worth, she was about as perfect as you make her out to be. I can only thank you for taking such good care of her.

You didn’t come to the funeral. Everyone was speculating whether you’d show up. They said you came to Uncle Bobby’s funeral.

This is very painful for me, Laurel. Don’t forget, Bobby was my son. And his funeral was the last time I saw your Grandma. She came back to Chicago for the burial. She practically raised the boy, much like she did you. But I wasn’t notified about your Grandma’s death until it was too late for me to attend.

Sometime before, Grandma found a plot in a cemetery near a big pine tree. She really wanted her ashes brought up here and scattered, but Mom said ‘no-way’. One of the few violent arguments I ever heard Grandma have with anyone. But after she found the plot with the pine tree, she seemed reconciled. I thought I would go there more often, but I really haven’t.

When the lawyer phoned about Abby’s death, the attorney had been upset because David had never changed a major portion of his will but, unknown to anyone, had continued to leave the business, the cabin, and the penthouse to Abby. The attorney insisted on setting up trusts for the remaining family immediately. Then David had flown to Newark and rented a car and driven to the cemetery where Abby was buried. He had noted the pine tree. He had stood there by the grave, trying to be conscious of the ground through the bottoms of his shoes to sense her with him one more time. He had always assumed they would see each other again. He found himself saying aloud the things he had planned to say when at last they met again. When he had dropped the great pine tree onto the ice, he had thought of the pine over Abby’s grave.

As I said, all I can do is thank you for taking such good care of your Grandma, he said.

But she took care of me.

I know her well enough to be sure it went both ways. She was so blessed because she could receive as well as give. Tell me more. This means as much to me listening as I think it does to you telling.

They talked until the payne’s gray shadows on the lake began to deepen. This must be the ‘blue time’ Grandma recalled so often, she said.

This time she agreed to his suggestion to bring in her suitcases. She had two large pieces of matching luggage and a carry-on. He invited her to dinner. You won’t find anything in the ice box except milk for cereal in the morning, he said. I’ve been eating at Julie’s.

She offered to drive, which, to his relief, she did quite sensibly. She teased him that she had never heard the term ice box. He explained how as late as the ‘50’s they would cut ice from the lake and store it under saw dust for use in the ice boxes in the summer, and the word refrigerator had never taken hold in his vocabulary.

About five miles down the road they began to catch glimpses of

Julie’s tall roadside sign glinting through the woods, the only lights in the deepening darkness. You don’t know what darkness is until there are no street lights, Laurel remarked. When she turned into the driveway, she pulled over to a gas pump, but David explained that the electricity to the pump was shut off at 6 p.m. She noted the grocery store in the single, stretched-out building also had a Closed sign tipping across its door. Lights shown only from the far end under the word, Cafe.

Inside six sturdy square tables, each with four wooden kitchen chairs, were arranged in two rows before a bar which extended across one wall between a door to the kitchen on one side and a door marked rest room on the other. The remaining three walls were decorated with mounted deer heads and fish of various species. Above the bar hung a trophy musky marked 48 1/2 pounds. As they seated themselves, Laurel said that she preferred to keep on her light jacket. There were no other customers.

Sven—small, wiry, a bushy moustache over his lip, came around the bar with a sly grin on his face. Do you have a reservation? He was not deterred by David’s groan nor Laurel’s sigh. May I get his Majesty the usual? he asked with mock obeisance.

What’s the usual? Laurel said.

His Majesty prefers a brandy Manhattan made with dry vermouth and the special brandy which I, a loyal subject, keep hidden only for him under the bar.

Brandy?

More brandy is served in Wisconsin than all other states combined, Sven pontificated.

A dry white wine, please.

Of course. As long as you realize the northwoods dry white wine is Inglenook Rhine, of unknown year.

She made a face. Excuse me please . . . the ladies’ room?

Don’t mind Sven, David said. He can’t help it. Too much intermarriage in families up here.

Sven pointed at the rest room sign. One for all and all for one. When she left, he leered at David. Still so cold?

As a matter of fact, I haven’t had time to think about it.

Well, that, and he tipped his head toward the rest room, ought to warm you up.

She’s my granddaughter, you jackass.

Undeterred, Sven continued, Probably at your age and condition, just as well.

I don’t know how long she’s going to stay. She may be here for awhile.

I guess then you will be too. Here for awhile, that is. You weren’t fooling anyone, you know. Here’s your watch back. Having an expensive watch was cutting into my tips, anyway. As he was returning the watch, Laurel returned.

Am I interrupting something? she asked.

Sven said to her, Just a little game His Majesty was playing.

Just postponing matters, David snapped.

Now you’ll also have to get a fishing license for Saturday, Sven said. I’ll bet you hadn’t planned to do that

Will you get us our drinks and lay off, David sighed.

What am I missing? Laurel said. Did my coming mess up something?

Nothing that can’t be finished later, David said.

Sven returned with the drinks, both on the rocks in water tumblers, and pulled up a third chair and sat down. A granddaughter! He doesn’t get to see many of those. Where from?

She told him of her drive from New Jersey, and they discussed a Saturn as a road car, and he asked if she had a favorite brand of Chablis which he would keep only for her under the bar with King’s brandy and what made her choose English literature at Princeton and was she planning on graduate school?

That’s out of the question now, she said. Both of the men leaned forward, but she left the expectant silence hang.

A bell rang, and Sven left to return with a basket of bread and two plates which he held with a dish cloth. Be careful, they’re very hot, he said.

What is this? she asked. Did you order this, King?

This is Julie’s Thursday night dinner. You don’t order. You just eat, said David.

Sven sat down with them again. Don’t look at me. I have to eat it too.

I was not aware ham had gravy, she said. A slab of ham covered one-half of a beige oval plate. Two mounds of soft white potatoes floated in brown gravy. A square of red jello was melting and running into the gravy.

Ham does not have gravy, but Julie’s dinners all have gravy, David said. The same brown gravy whether it is chicken, beef, turkey, or pork. I don’t know what can he gets it from, but it’s been the same can for years.

Julie is a he? she asked.

Sure, don’t you know all the best chefs are men, Sven said.

That’s why the pump gets turned off and the grocery store is closed at 6:00, David explained. So Julie can begin to make his gravy.

Please pass the bread basket. She broke off a corner of a bun and unwrapped a gold tinfoil butter pat tossed in the basket with the buns.

Laurel was raised by Abby, David told Sven.

Abigail! Now there was a woman. You two were some pair. I remember those summers at the cabin when lots of us kids from town would hang out there with Marlee and Charles, under Abby’s all-seeing eye. Hey, the kids—Charlie and Marlee. Which one do you belong to?

Uncle Charlie never married.

That’s right. King showed me a very beautiful Christmas Card from Europe which Charlie sent him. He’s into music and dance over there. Now I remember.

Uncle Charlie writes to you? she asked David, astounded.

Once in awhile. I didn’t do a very good job with my kids, but I hear from him at Christmas. He remembers my birthday.

Wait a minute, said Laurel. I’m positive Mother thinks that Uncle Charles shuns you like she does. She hates your guts so much that if she thought Charley were writing to you, I think that she’d put him on her hate list too.

Well, I hope you don’t tell her then. Listen, Laurel, he put down his fork. I’ve been listening to you tell me about Marlee’s hatred all afternoon. I don’t know if she hates me for what I did to Grandma or to her . . .

Try both. Bet on it, Laurel said.

Maybe I’m having a little trouble with the word ‘hate’ from my daughter.

Oh, then you could try ‘betrayed,’ or ‘repulsed,’ or ‘loathes’ or put them together if you want to round things out.

Damn it. That was many years ago. David smashed down his fist. The uneaten gravy on Laurel’s plate splashed over on the table, and Sven quickly lifted his white apron to sop it up. It’s her choice if she wants to continue to wear her ‘I am a victim’ sweatshirt. She can be free of me anytime she wants—just let go of her hatred. Get on with her life.

You don’t know anything about my Mother. You’ve no right to say anything about us.

I’ll tell you this. She never returned a check uncashed.

I can’t eat this. I’m cold, and I’m tired, and I’m not feeling well. Take me back.

Sven said, You two run along. I’ll clean up here. I’ll keep the check until next time, King. Laurel sprang up; and, before he could get his jacket on, she was out the door.

He followed her out, deliberately not rushing, and squeezed down into the seat; the automatic seat belt snapped over his face. Damn it, he said. Now, I know you’re angry, but you have to watch for deer this time of night, so don’t go tearing down the road.

In response, she whipped out of Julie’s parking lot, throwing him back against the seat, and gunned down the road. Pardon the hell out of me, but you’re going in the opposite direction, he said. She hit the brake, bent over the steering wheel, and began to cry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, he said, more in exasperation than apology. They sat there in the middle of the dark road while she wept.

Excuse me, she said. I’m trying not to be a crier. I’m just very confused, in many ways. I’m also tired from the long drive here. Finally, she backed to Julie’s and turned around. In silence they drove back to the cabin.

David had set her bags in the front bedroom, overlooking the lake. A double bed was covered with a colorful Afghan of granny squares. He had previously laid out sheets and pillow cases on the chair next to the bed, and he had told her the large chiffonnier with the mirror was empty for her use. He had emptied the closet but left several hangers.

How come your mother let you come to see me if she feels so strongly?

Circumstances are different now.

You know, you’re being pretty cryptic. When am I going to hear why you came here?

I don’t know. I’m sorry, but I have to feel my way along. If it’s not going to work out, I’d just as soon not go into it.

We should unpack some warmer things for you.

We’ll see. I don’t want to unpack if I’m only going to turn around and go back.

With a shrug he turned to leave. By the way, she said, Mother never touched a dime of the money you send. Dad puts it into accounts for me and my brothers. She and Dad have a good business and take care of everything themselves. I’ve used your money for school, for the car, for coming here, thank you. But Mother never touched any of your money.

CHAPTER 3

David leaned back onto the stump of the great pine tree. He could hear Gun-ner looping back and forth through the swamp, tracing the smells of whatever critters had wandered through during the night. David lifted his chin to fill his nostrils with the warm southern breeze. It had blown all night, and large areas of blue water lapped at the remaining islands of floating ice. The ice appeared to diminish every time he looked up.

He heard Laurel come down the hill. She sat down beside him. She was wearing stone-washed jeans and had pulled on a white-speckled Norwegian sweater over a blouse, the collar of which framed her face. She’d done some unpacking. That breeze feels warm, she said. You were right; spring is going to make it. Oh, look at all the water. The ice is half gone.

The lake should be free for opening day tomorrow. First warm breeze we’ve had. Unless it’s you who brought warmth to this cold place.

I was cold last night, so I used that Afghan you had over the bed. Did you know we have an identical one at home?

You do? Of course. Abby’s hands were never quiet. She’d crochet those squares day and night. The one in your room is my favorite. When you’re not feeling well, that’s guaranteed to keep you warm. Except for this last winter.

I’ll remember that. Gunner, hearing them talking, came bounding out of the swamp and shoved his head into Laurel’s hand. He’s sure a friendly dog.

He’s an old crab, usually. Like I am.

Look. I apologize for yesterday. It wasn’t fair for me to haul Mother’s nastiness across the country and dump it on you. I’m so torn. All of my life, Mom would talk one way about you and Grandma, another. I never knew what to make of you, whom to believe.

Maybe both. They’re both right, in their own way. But don’t misunderstand—I’m glad that, apart from me, things are so well with Marlee. Evidently Schneider has been good for her. Your brothers are off to a good start. She’s got a lovely daughter—strange and mysterious but lovely. She had Abby with her those years, and on balance that had to be good. At least the suffering I caused didn’t destroy her life. David reached across her to ruffle Gunner’s ear.

As far as Charles writing me, he said, he’s going to do his own thing. He was different from the get-go. He never had the slightest interest in the business. Up here, he’d play records and read. Bobby and I would strike out through the woods to find fishing holes. We’d wade the rivers. We’d canoe the flowage and camp on the islands. Charles was indifferent to our closeness. He had a different agenda. Music, finally dance became his whole life. As far as his living away now, he’s lived in a world apart since he was a child.

But being up here has always been a big part of your life.

I was born and raised on the Range north of here, but I left when I was l7. It was when I brought Abby up here on our honeymoon, and she fell in love with the woods that I came back. She spotted early on how the seductive glamour and glitz were exploding exponentially for us, and she believed this place put the brakes on and shrunk us back to size. Just look across the lake, he pointed. The physical act of fixing your eye on the long view is therapeutic. It gives you a perspective on our significance. Look around us today. The wind is blowing out months of deadly cold and blowing in life, but all this is inattentive to the issues which claim you and me. It goes on before we arrive and after we leave. This life is not here only for us, and Abby believed that undercut our self-serving pre-occupation with ourselves She hoped that as we shrunk a little, so would our problems.

Do you think it still works?

David looked at the sailboat, ready to use. Then he remembered Laurel knew nothing of his intentions. For your problems? he asked.

She shrugged. I can’t get this old stump out of my mind, she said. It escaped the loggers, and yet it all comes to this, anyway.

I often wondered myself how—of all the trees which must have stood here—why was this one spared? It was not so much the lumbering. It was the iron mines on the Range 25 miles north of here that opened up this area. Much of the tree cutting was done to shore up the mine shafts as they were dug ever deeper. That’s why my family—which is your family too, of course—came here.

Your father, Jesse, he was the one? Laurel asked.

Actually my grandfather. The Gudmanson’s go back to the Swedes who were looking for the promised land and settled in Delaware shortly after the pilgrim’s arrived. There was only one outsider as far as I ever heard—Great Grandma Ruth, who married Bo before the civil war. She was Italian, a foreigner to the Swedes. It was their son Ole, my Grandfather, who brought his family to the Range when word spread about the ore discoveries in 1885. Before that there was only a trading post on the river where it empties into Lake Superior. The town increased l0-fold, from 300 to 3,000 in 6 months. Our family was part of that increase.

Did you ever know your grandpa? Like I did Grandma Abby?

He went off to the Spanish American War with a contingent from up here. They were gone for only a few months, but when they returned, his health was never good again. He died young. I never knew any of my grandparents. Grandma remarried, and she went off with her new husband to prospect in Alaska and was never heard from again.

But obviously not before she had your Dad.

He was born in l893. Dad boasted it was the year the Range sent the largest load of logs ever pulled by a single team to the Chicago World’s Fair. I’ve seen pictures of it, several stories high. But Mom said Dad was born the year of the panic, when people were out of work and pay was cut from $l.50 a day to $l. With her Finnish fatalism, she said that was why Dad never had steady work which paid well.

He wasn’t a miner then?

Oh sure, everyone worked the mines at some time. In the winter Dad would cut timber for shoring. In the spring when the Lake was navigable again, he’d load the winter’s stockpile of ore onto railroad cars for shipment to the docks. He’d poach deer to get meat, run a trap line, work for a wealthy Finnish farmer in Henry township. He did anything he could. I’m pretty sure he drove truck for a bootlegger supplying the whore houses in town during prohibition.

I like to hear the stories about your family. Being up here, some of what Grandma described comes to life for me. Are the mines still there? Can we visit them?

Only empty gullies with smelly ground water and piles of red stone around the edges. For 50 years the mines were the major supplier of iron ore for our country. Millions of tons a year. Now there’s not a marker. He looked at her. You’re not planning on writing a book about me, are you? There’re already too many of those.

But none get inside your head. They only know the things you did. They reveal very little about you.

That’s because I won’t talk to anyone. Is that what this is all about?

I promise you, no book. It’s not why I came. But I am interested in everything. Can we go to the flowage today, walk around? Grandma loved it there.

For the time being, apparently, talking about Abby and seeing the woods were what she required. Want to go now, before we get groceries? he asked as he stood up.

David backed his Lincoln Navigator out of the attached garage. When she opened the passenger door, Gunner leaped in and sprang over the front seat to the back. She followed. Nice wheels!

Yeah, he said as he pulled down the driveway. The Company leases it for me. I take it for granted. That’s also part of our being up here. Your Grandma had the theory that as our wealth and conveniences removed struggle and conflict from one side of the scale, boredom and stress strangely grew heavier on the other. Up here we push ourselves—cut back the raspberry bushes before they reclaim the badminton court, chop out the alders before they poison the beach with leaves and leeches, crawl on our knees to find the first tiny wild strawberries with a tang no cultivated berry can imitate. She believed that because it was harder to live up here, it helped us fight the meaninglessness which was insinuating itself into our plush life.

He drove slowly along the road toward the flowage. Along here you can see the natural progression of the forest. After the cutting of the great pines, the first generation of new growth were the birches and firs. With their pointed tops and thin crown, sunlight can penetrate here to the forest floor, and a great variety of plants revive and thrive. But look here . . .

It’s like a Disney movie forest; you can see forever through the woods, she exclaimed.

This is the second stage. Here the firs and birch have run their course, their dying has changed the soil composition, and maple and basswood and hemlock are growing. Their heavy, leafy crowns shade out the sunlight, and eliminate the underbrush. These are the hardwood flats.

I bet they’re beautiful in the fall.

There are peak days when the color glows like it’s alive. Finally, botanists say, in a few hundred years, as the hardwood leaves and trees fall, the ground is prepared for the return of the great white pines, which is the climax for these parts.

Laurel leaned back in the leather seat and closed her eyes. David glanced over at her, waiting, sensing that her mind had drifted from what he had been trying to explain. Finally, she spoke. You said yesterday about the great pine tree, that it was killed by the drought. Then you said, ‘Or maybe it was God’s will. Or maybe they’re the same.’

Forgive me. As I’ve gotten older, I tend to preach. At least Sven accuses me of that. But I’ve learned it’s usually not either/or. It’s both/ and. When I look ahead, everything depends on us. When I look backwards, it seems as if it were in God’s hands all along. My mind would like to grab one or the other. It would make it a lot easier, but then I lose the reality of life.

But when you’re younger like I am, King, you haven’t much time to look back upon.

Then you must live long, he laughed. If for no other reason than to find out that your strange old Grandpa was right about one thing.

They approached a single rustic sign announcing, The Flow-age, stained the same Van Dyke brown as the cabin. With the drought, the water level should be low, so it will be easy to walk. You’ll want to hunt for drift wood.

For over an hour he watched