Mallard Lake

By Michael W. Burns

Lucas Grundy tires of the larger world hes lived in for over thirty years where he was so successful and has sought relief for a summer in the place he was bornthe Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Its sparse population, woods, wildlife, and lakes provide an escape, a peacefulness to think of what he wants to do with the rest of his life.

To his surprise, he finds that the place offers him surcease from his complicated life, a place to live now in the contemplation he seeks. He moves to the edge of Mallard Lake, a place of solitude, good fishing, and abundant wildlife. It is also a place of violent weather, brutal winters, and long idyllic summer days that provide escape from the aggravations that drive his migraines and the discontent of his second marriage. He finds here too, Annie Fallon, twenty years his junior, the daughter of his late fathers companion, who is as displaced as he is and who, after caring for her dying mother, needs to escape the harsh life and her loneliness on the Upper and get back to the world Lucas has left behind.

Lucas helps her grieve and find a new life in the larger world. While he does, they form an uncommon love for each other. Annies need to leave and Lucass need to stay makes her leaving emotionally difficult and confusing for both.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 25, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546209171

Michael W. Burns

Michael W. Burns served as a Naval Aviator after graduation from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont. He worked in a variety of staff capacities for Committees and Members of the United States Senate for 12 years before joining the Veteran’s Administration Healthcare System in San Diego, California, as an Administrative Assistant to the Director and then to the Chief Medical Officer. Since 2001, he has traveled and written extensively about the United States and Canada. Michael has authored four previous books. His first book was a non-fiction account of the first of his more than 250,000 miles of solo trips in a recreational vehicle across the United States and Canada, He has created three works of fiction. Into the Blue Far Distance, published in 2002, chronicled his trip. Sunset House, his first work of fiction was published in 2010, the second, The Two Worlds of Harry Logan in 2013, and the sequel, The Transformation of Harry Logan in 2014.

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© 2017 Michael W. Burns. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  09/25/2017

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0918-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0917-1 (e)

Print information available on the last page.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Preface

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty One

Twenty Two

Twenty Three

Twenty Four

Twenty Five

Twenty Six

Twenty Seven

Twenty Eight

Twenty Nine

Thirty

Thirty One

Thirty Two

Thirty Three

Thirty Four

Thirty Five

Thirty Six

Thirty Seven

Thirty Eight

For Joanne, as always

AUTHOR’S NOTE

M allard Lake , spent years in my imagination before becoming a book. Three others were written while it took sufficient root to be set down here. It is, as the others, just a story I wanted to tell and did. It took five years to think through and, due to life’s interruptions, another two to publish it.

Writing fiction began as an amusement and became a passion. The stories of the sometimes wonderful and the sometimes strange people and places along the road written about in a travel blog while in my camper in so many campsites on so many journeys over 250,000 miles for eleven years gave me the audacity to believe I could write books. I have done it now five times. I may do it again, but perhaps, having lived the majority of my years, I will not. If not, Mallard Lake will have to do as the last.

Michael W. Burns

August 2017

PREFACE

I should like to apologize to the good and kind people that I met on The Upper during the portions of two years I spent there. I am sure that my perceptions of them and their lives is greatly colored by my lack of roots and understanding of their way of life.

All the town names and landmarks in the book are real, although not necessarily true to their locations or topography. All the charcters are fiction even though some are based loosely on those I was privileged to meet and know when I was there. The story is purely fiction.

The life and climate of the peninsula is much as I have described it so far as I was able to learn. It is truly a rural place, one of wonder for its beauty and its brutal weather. There are hosts of people from down Below who spent winters skiing and snowmobiling and summers camping, fishing, and enjoying those long and glorious days that seem to stretch forever into evening. Yet those who live there are different. Some convey an inevitability in their lives that seems tinged with an undefinable melancholy. Others seem perfectly happy in this harsh place that seems so far removed from the world as we know it.

I hope that the peninsula will, perhaps to the horror of some natives, be discovered by more people as one of beauty and peace. Those that call it home are fortunate. I thank those I met and came to know for their insights, hospitality, and their marvelous stories. They showed much patience with a man so far removed from their lifestyle. For where ever I got it wrong on these pages, it is to them that I apologize.

ONE

L ucas?

Lucas! You in there?

There was only silence from the house, the peculiar mating call of a pair of loons on Mallard Lake, and the wind in the trees. He was here, Annie was sure. His car was in the carport in front of the house. She left the front step, her arms holding her jacket tight against her chest to ward off the wind from the lake in front of her she went around back. Lucas’ boat was at the dock. She shrugged. Maybe he fell asleep reading or was walking in the woods to the east of the house. He often did one or the other this time of day. She looked up and saw only a wisp of smoke from the chimney. It wasn’t like him to have such a small fire on a raw windy day like this, she thought as she walked back to her car. Just then the front door opened.

What? Lucas shouted.

I wanted to see if you were all right.

Why?

I always do on my way home, Lucas. Have you eaten yet?

No. Still afternoon.

Getting to be that time. Were you sleeping? Annie asked as she walked toward him smiling and eyed his rumpled flannel shirt and wrinkled khaki trousers. Is that why you don’t have your shoes on?

Lucas looked down at his feet and feigned surprised at the absence of his shoes. Annie smiled as he wiggled his toes and stared at his socks.

I must have taken’em off in the kitchen.

Why?

Not sure.

Annie smiled, Never mind. Do you want something to eat?

Aw, I’m not hungry yet. Why’d you come anyway?

Annie shrugged, I’m here most everyday Lucas, remember? Just came by to say hello and see if you needed anything.

Yes, yes, I remember, so, no I’m okay then, and hello. You okay?

I’m fine.

Where’s your mother?

Claire’s home in Iron River. Donnie went shopping with her today after work.

Oh.

Like I said Lucas, Annie said patiently, still smiling as she came up on the small front porch now and stood next to him, I’m on my way home from work. You know, over at the State Park.

I guess I knew that. You go on. I’ll eat later when it gets dark.

It doesn’t get dark before dinner. It’s after five now. You sure you don’t want anything?

No. Go on and find…what’s his name? Donnie? Eat with him.

You should eat now Lucas.

Just leave me be. I’ll eat when I get hungry like I always do. You don’t need to drive all this way to make sure I eat.

It’s on my way home.

Go there then. I need to be alone now, Lucas said with some agitation as he waved and turned back to the door, go on home and get your own dinner, he continued as he moved back inside, leaving her standing on the porch as he closed the door.

Annie looked at the door and smiled again. It was the second time this week he’d left her there. She knew he wasn’t angry. It was just the way he was sometimes. She didn’t know why. He was frustrating to talk to when he was like this, yet her mother wanted her to stop on her way home from work to be sure he was all right, so she did. Mostly he was pleasant and they would talk for a bit. She enjoyed him when he was like that but there were days like this too. Finally, she shook back her long streaked blonde hair and shrugged, knowing she’d never understand unless he said why and he wasn’t likely. She went down the path to her car, and drove back down the gravel road to reach the highway and her rented house in Watersmeet.

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Lucas watched the car leave and then left the living room and went down the hall to the kitchen. His boots were under the table and he sat down and put them back on. He stood again. He took them off because his toe hurt when he came back from his walk along the lake and he was examining it when Annie knocked. He didn’t see any reason for her to know that because she’d want to look at it and ask questions. She always asked questions if he told her things were bothering him. His headache was bad today and he didn’t want to answer questions. The conversation on the porch was enough. He picked up the dog’s food dish and rinsed it out. Clover was still out and as he put the food in he wondered why she hadn’t run up to see Annie as she usually did but decided she was probably down near the lake and didn’t hear her voice. He opened the back door, whistled and clapped once and she came running up the slope and went after her food. He wondered idly where she got all the energy. Nice to see you too, Clover, Lucas said as she went by. He ate a bowl of soup and went to the living room and built up the fire. Clover got comfortable on the old throw rug next to it.

He dropped into the big chair he favored. He was sorry he’d been so short with Annie. She was a nice woman who wanted to worry about him, had since he lived here because her mother wanted her to worry about him. She was always cheerful, even today when he was agitated because of his headache and didn’t want company or conversation. Her mother believed he was suffering from the early signs of dementia. She believed it because he didn’t remember things and he was agitated and distracted when he had a migraine. What she didn’t know was that many of the things she wanted him to remember he didn’t care about so he didn’t try. She also didn’t know he suffered from migraines. Annie didn’t either. No reason for them to know. Annie was always reminding him to do things that he knew he had to do but so saw no reason to discuss. When he had one of these headaches he didn’t have the patience to put up with instructions from her. The headaches were less frequent since he moved here, but they still came and he needed quiet then. He forgot names and words most of his life so what they thought was dementia was just his headaches and lifelong forgetfulness so far as he knew.

When he drove back to Michigan from New York City three summers ago all the way up here Above the Bridge where he was raised, he thought it still a peaceful if desolate place as unpopulated and rural as anywhere in the lower forty-eight. It reminded him of the Yukon in northern Canada. But the Upper Peninsula of Michigan—known by many euphemisms such as the U.P., the Peninsula, the Upper, Up There, and Above the Bridge to those in southern Michigan—was like a foreign country between Lower Michigan and Canada so far as Lucas was concerned. There are words used by the natives here that resembled English but are easily misunderstood by strangers. His cell phone had no signal and his computer didn’t work when he got to the cabin he was renting near Watersmeet that first summer. It was so quiet he wasn’t sure if it was restful or annoying the first week. Yet the place grew on him. He loved to fish when he was a boy and he did some throughout his working life and as he fell into the habit of going out early every day he relaxed more and more and he began to enjoy the quiet the longer he stayed. His headaches became less frequent and less intense.

By the end of the first month he met other men who fished the many lakes and streams nearby. He and a fellow named Tom Madsen from Beachwood, struck up a friendship mainly because he could be as patient waiting for fish as Lucas and he rarely said anything that wasn’t important or needed more than a few words to convey which suited Lucas fine. One Saturday Tom and his son—known as Young Tom despite nearing thirty now—took him fishing next to the State Forest at Mallard Lake. Lucas loved it. It was quiet and the wildlife amazed him. There are so many species of ducks and birds during the summer on the U.P. it was hard to identify them all. Most had found homes on Mallard Lake. Old Tom appeared to know them all and pointed them out to Lucas and named them whenever he was moved to speak. They fished here for lake trout, whitefish, and walleye. If they weren’t biting they would walk the woods and Tom would point out the nesting birds and identify the sounds of the bird calls. Lucas became fascinated by the bob whites, eagles, grouse, grey jays, and the coots, mallards, loons, cormorants and other species of ducks on the lake, so numerous he couldn’t remember them all. He knew he’d never know the song birds as well as old Tom but he could recognize the noisy song of the indigenous and non-migrating gray jay, so it became a favorite.

Driving back to town one Saturday afternoon, Young Tom told him a land parcel next to the State Park was for sale. It was thirty acres with a meadow and thick woods to the east of an old hunter’s cabin which was about thirty yards from the lake. Ten of the acres bordered Mallard Lake. He and old Tom walked it continuously the next week and didn’t discover any bear dens or anything else bothersome. Lucas learned to walk slowly and quietly and to stand perfectly still until a young doe with a fawn or wild turkey happened by. Lucas thought it was a wonderful place. By now being back on the Upper was becoming comfortable and he discovered that what he wanted more than anything now was to be comfortable and he found it in the quiet here. He was tired of New York. His second marriage, never on very firm ground was breaking apart, and while he knew only Claire Fallon, Annie’s mother, and Annie and her brothers over here on the southwestern part of the peninsula, that suited him, too.

Lucas was born and raised in Ste Sault Marie, north and east of here on the Canadian border. He left for college more than thirty years ago. He’d been back only for his mother Cecilia’s funeral up there and again when his father William passed away over here in Iron River. It seemed the same now as it was back then. He didn’t see another car on the road for an hour at a time. There were no interstate highways to interrupt the landscape except the one far east of here that went due north to Ste Sault Marie from the Mackinac Bridge that connected the Peninsula to Lower Michigan below. Many of the people here looked older than they were, tired, overworked, underpaid, and resigned to their fate as they scratched out a living in the lumber mills, tree farms, the spare tourist trade, and the few small copper mines still operating to the north. The towns on this part of the peninsula looked worn out from the weather and the cold. The timber covered landscape was mostly flat. The big iron mines near here petered out long ago. It was the hardy, if not prosperous, three percent of the state population that lived up here on thirty percent of the state’s land.

He and Tom went to Young Tom’s auto and boat repair shop in Beechwood and discussed the land for most of a day at the end of that week. Lucas wanted it but knew he’d have to either build a new house on it or renovate the cabin. Young Tom made sure the crawl space foundation piers were solid and he could add on to it as he wanted. The Madsen’s agreed to contract the work the rest of the summer and fall for him and thought he could be living in it before June the following summer if the winter wasn’t too bad. He went and bought the place that afternoon and they spent the next two weeks designing what could be done with the foot print of the current building with an addition for a bedroom and new bath on the first floor. It was stripped to the foundation and made a most comfortable and habitable place. A new steep metal roof and triple pane windows were installed and it was now well insulated for the wet, brutally cold, and snow filled winters here. He put in a propane furnace and a new wood burning stove/fireplace. They added an unheated back porch that Lucas would do more with one day if he stayed. There was a loft up the steep stairs under the pitched roof that was heated and finished as a very small second bedroom. There was a fiberglass carport out front and Lucas ordered a boat and a small tractor with a scythe attachment to cut the meadow grass. When it was done, it had the look of a small cottage, a style he favored. There were still things to finish that would keep Lucas busy but thanks to the Madsens, father and son, it was ready to be lived in when he came back from down Below–which was what the natives called anyplace south of the bridge–the next May, fully retired now, officially divorced from his second wife Diane, with little more than his clothes, a portable radio and three crates of books. He knew as soon as he moved in that it felt right and he never regretted moving. The solitude of Mallard Lake soothed him. The migraine headaches that bedeviled him those years in New York City came less often now and the quiet of the place lay over him like a soft blanket. He couldn’t adequately articulate why he liked the rural roughness of the peninsula, the ferocious storms, white out gale force winds, and harsh short days in the winter or the long idyllic days of summer with daylight well past ten at night, but the rugged beauty of the place, the abundance of wildlife, and the quiet both awed and continually surprised him. He was at peace here.

Lucas enjoyed being alone. He always did except when he was married to Francis. There were so few people nearby now he needn’t run into anyone unless there was a reason. Beechwood was a self-governing town five miles south with only 200 souls living there while Fuller to the west had a church for the gently religious that fit his beliefs nicely and which he attended regularly. There was little else there now but ten houses and one small notions shop that stubbornly held on despite not having anything essential for sale. Iron River to the south and west, which governed Watersmeet and most of the rest of the county had only three thousand residents but called itself a city. Lucas thought he’d found the perfect place to do what he wanted when he wanted for the rest of his life which was mostly fish, think, write, watch the abundant wildlife, enjoy and understand nature here better than he did when he left at eighteen. By his third year, he couldn’t think of a reason to go back down Below for more than his neurology appointments and brain scans in Ann Arbor.

He’d worked in New York City the last five years, finally using his degrees in finance after retiring from flying commercial airliners on international routes for twenty years, a skill he’d learned and practiced for five years in the Navy after college. He met Diane and married her, years after the sudden death of his beloved Francis. It was, he told himself, perhaps the one bad decision he’d made in his life. He wasn’t ever sure how much love was involved for either of them. He was just happy that she wanted him around. Finally, with his headaches worsening, their relationship meaning less and less, and working in the financial district more pressure than he wanted in his fifties, he left. He came back here and so far didn’t miss any part of it. He rescued an abused two-year-old brown Labrador, named her Clover, and they were both happy on Mallard Lake. Aside from his headaches he still thought of himself as healthy and strong if a bit contrary. He didn’t care about the last, didn’t care much what people thought anymore about how he lived or what he did. He was happy. Whatever they believed was up to them.

He looked out across the meadow at the now darkening woods through the stiff white curtains. He wondered about those curtains, always did when he noticed them. They’d been there a since he remembered but he hadn’t put them there. They wouldn’t have been that nice if he’d done it, he was sure of that. Maybe he’d ask Annie. Her mother might know something about them. Finally, he reached for the book that was turned over on the table where he left it that morning, lit the lamp, and started to read.

TWO

A nn Fallon parked in the carport at the end of the drive behind the house she shared in Watersmeet with Donnie Westin. Donnie was paying half the rent for the small house, which was more than the others who shared it before him ever did. Donnie’s car pulled up to the curb as she walked around to the front door.

You just gettin’ home? Late, aren’t ya? he said as he came up the walk.

I stopped on the way.

See old Luke, did ya?

His name is Lucas. Yes, just for a few minutes.

I swear you care more about him than our dinner.

You just got here.

He grunted and pushed past her through the door and said over his shoulder as he went up the stairs, Be nice if it was ready before I did once in a while.

Annie said nothing. If she answered it would become one of those stupid arguments married people have that lead only to anger and no conclusion and aren’t really about dinner at all. They weren’t married and she resented it when he told her what he thought of what she did and how she did it. She was heating what was left of the stew she’d made Sunday when he reappeared, barefoot with his long brown hair wet.

You workin’ tomorrow? He asked as he brushed past her in the tiny kitchen to the refrigerator.

Uh huh, and the next day too. They asked me to do the payroll.

Don’t know why you don’t push harder to get on full time. They seem to want you most days now. Be good to get benefits.

She looked up as he slouched into a chair, opened his beer, and put his feet up on the kitchen table, That would mean giving up the work at the restaurant in the winter. I like it there and Alvin pays better. The state isn’t hiring anyway. Will you get your dirty feet off there?

They ain’t dirty, I just showered. Not gonna hurt your precious table here.

I don’t care, put them on the floor, she replied in that flat tone she reserved for trying to end conversations before they went places she didn’t want to go.

You really have a problem with my feet, or are you just being a pain in the ass?

She brought the two bowls of stew to the table and sat down across from him before she answered quietly, I don’t care about your feet Donnie, I truly don’t. Look at them while you eat if it makes you happy. Just get them off the table.

Why are you mad at me anyway?

I’m not mad. I’d just rather look at something besides your feet. I had a long day too. How many hours you get in at the mill?

Wasn’t at the mill. Out cuttin’ trees. ’Bout five hours of pure torture before I took your mother shopping.

I thought you were in the mill full time.

I was. Or thought I was. They sent me and Earl out ’cause there wasn’t enough work for four of us, is what they said. It’s slow and gettin’ slower as it gets to summer. I either go out in the woods or I get laid off. I’m not workn’ out there, I can tell ya. I ain’t happy.

Will you be out long?

Who the hell knows? They aren’t tellin’ nobody. Why? Ya worried about your rent money?

Just wondering what you’ll do.

I’ll find something, he said and then looked up at her and gave her one of those grins she once found charming, Maybe I’ll go fishin’ with ol’ Luke for a month or two.

It’s Lucas and he might enjoy company.

It was a joke. I ain’t gonna waste my time herding that old man around while he tries to remember where he left his boat.

If it was a joke, it should be funny. It wasn’t.

Oh hell, get over it.

If you collect unemployment, you’ll probably go down to The Tramp and shoot pool and drink beer anyway. Then there’s all that baseball on TV you can watch before you take a nap.

Just leave it be will ya? Donnie replied raising his voice as he did, I don’t need to hear all that again. That was last summer anyway and you keep reminding me of it like it was yesterday afternoon.

She finished eating in silence, stood, and took her bowl to wash it, By the way, how was my mother? She seem all right today?

Yeah, she’s about the same. Gettin’ slower but still steady, he said as he handed her the bowl, Says you don’t come down enough, but she always says that. He stretched, took two more beers from the refrigerator and went into the living room. The television came on very loud and she knew what passed for conversation between them was over.

Donnie grew up next door to the Fallons. He’d been doing things for her mother since he was a teenager. Back then she remembered him as a seemingly bright boy, about ten years younger than she was. Yet he had strange friends and trouble followed them wherever they went. He played football in high school and said he was going down Below to play in college and find a good job in the auto industry. He never left Iron River for a lot of reasons to hear him tell it: People let him down, he hurt his back, his knee, or the recruiters lied to him. Annie was never sure any of it was true. He still lived with his father years later when she left medical school a month short of graduation and came home to care for Claire when she had her first surgery. After she decided her mother could get along by herself most of the time she moved here to get away, hoping to find way to enjoy some sort of life Up Here. She didn’t go back down Below because her mother might need her again. Besides, she decided a career as a surgeon wasn’t what she wanted after all despite how sure she was when she went.

Her brother Charlie found her this tiny run down house. The rent was higher than she wanted to pay and a year ago when she ran into Donnie at The Tramp they somehow ended up dating. He was tired of living so far from the mill and she let him move in when he promised to pay half the rent. Donnie was happy enough then despite drinking more than he should, and if she could keep from moving back to Iron River, she was willing to try to make the arrangement work.

They got along well enough except when he was drunk which was more often now. Annie could never say she had real feelings for him. He was someone to keep her warm at night. There was certainly no magic between them, yet she hung on to him for reasons she couldn’t explain. He turned surly whenever the mill slowed and he found he needed to do work he didn’t want to do to pay the bills. They argued and went their separate ways more and more now. Annie was surprised it lasted this long. His plan to go down Below, go to school, or look for a better job was never mentioned now.

His father was a CPA and lived alone in the same house in Iron River next to her mother after his wife’s death and Donnie still took Claire shopping when he went down to see him. Donnie resented being here. He had such big dreams once, but she’d had big dreams when she went to nursing school and then on to medical school too and now she was working part time jobs and taking care of her mother at least some of the time and didn’t see much of a future these days either no matter how much she dreamt of one.

Donnie didn’t like Lucas or the fact that she was stopping there even if it was just to be sure he was all right. Lucas Grundy left the Soo—the local name for Ste Sault Marie—years ago and done many of the things Donnie dreamt of doing and more. She understood that. She just didn’t understand why he was so nasty when he talked about him. If he was jealous, she thought it was stupid and as she finished wiping the table off now, she shrugged and dismissed it. There wasn’t, she’d learned, anything she could say to Donnie that would change him. If it wasn’t for the rent, she’d ask him to leave and didn’t like herself very much for just hanging on to him for that. But that was her life for now so she dismissed all that too and went in the living room. He was watching a kick boxing match and laughing.

Isn’t there anything else we can watch? Annie said loud enough to be heard over the sound coming from the set.

‘Course there is, but I want to see this. The guy in red is from over to Duluth. He’s good. Why? Somethin’ you wanted to see?

Anything but this.

It’s only on an hour, he replied distractedly.

Then I’ll take a shower. She picked up a book Lucas had given her and started upstairs, What time are you going in tomorrow?

Not goin’.

Why not?

I told you, there’s no work in the mill. You ever listen to what I say? I ain’t going back out there to cut those damn trees, he said, angry now, Done enough of that when I was younger. I hate cuttin’ trees. You can get killed doin’ that. Might go back down and see my Dad again and spend a day or two down there. Not sure, see how I feel in the morning. He never took his eyes off the television the whole time he was talking and now he gave it his full attention again.

She went silently up the stairs.

THREE

A hard rain came sometime in the night. Lucas wasn’t sure what time it was now as he looked out the window hours later but he judged it to be mid-morning and the sheets of rain hadn’t let up at all. There was no wind just a steady downpour and rivulets of water forming miniature streams outside the window gushing down to the lake everywhere he looked in the meadow and yard. Clover was sprawled on the floor at his feet watchful, hoping they were going out every time Lucas stood up. There was nothing she would rather do than run around outside, rain or no rain. He went back to the chess board and peered closely at black’s defense and then checked the old Charles Goren book he was playing against to be sure the pieces were in the right place. Something seemed wrong. Finally, he realized he’d moved a white pawn two squares instead of one and then checked the picture again. His heart wasn’t in the game this morning. His headache was nearly gone and he, like Clover, was restless. He nodded his head to her and went out on the unheated porch in the back. He pulled on his rubber rain suit and boots and opened the door and the dog was far out in front of him giving off happy yips in the downpour before he got down the porch steps. He pulled the hood up over his cap and slogged through his muddy back yard and entered the woods to the west. It was a small, healthy stand of birch, cedar, and pines that ran down to the water’s edge on this side of the house. After about a mile, he turned north and then east again until he reached the edge of the lake. He sat on the stump he’d put here last year under the umbrella of a pine branch. It kept the water off his face and was a place he often came on rainy days. It looked out over the part of Mallard Lake he liked to fish the most. He pulled some bark from two different trees and studied it for a few minutes wondering why they were so different if the trees were the same species. He put them in his pocket. He needed to look that up. He turned his attention to the ripples the fish made when they rose to break the lake surface. There were lake trout, pike, and walleye in Mallard Lake and these could be any of them. He sighed and enjoyed the day for what it was, rain soaked and unique. Clover sat by him now and he pulled his hood tight, and leaned back against the pine, and rubbed Clover’s neck and enjoyed the fresh air. His head felt fine now that he was out here despite the heavy downpour.

Later—perhaps it was ten minutes, perhaps more—Clover whimpered as she stood in front of him. Had he slept? He didn’t know. Probably. Clover was itching to go and there was a pool of water where the long rubber coat formed his lap. He felt refreshed and guessed he nodded off but really didn’t care. He pulled a dog cookie from his pocket and fed it to her and they walked along the shore in the ceaseless rain until he reached the boat at the dock a mile off. The boat looked fine but he tightened the tarp and loosened the lines a bit in case the rain stayed a few days and the lake rose or the wind came up. No sense straining the tie down cleats or the portable dock. Then he and Clover headed back to the house for lunch, she by her own route and he by the well-worn path.

He doubted he could get the car down the muddy, puddle filled gravel and dirt track that led off his property now but figured he probably could by Sunday if it let up tomorrow. There’d be no Annie coming out here in this weather today. The phone rang this morning but he didn’t answer it. His answering machine was set on mute so he didn’t hear who it was. If it was important it would ring again. Annie brought the machine one day. She said he needed a way for people to get messages to him since he spent so much time away from the house. That made sense although he recalled it took her a few visits to convince him she wasn’t doing it because of his memory. It took her a few more to get him to listen to the messages.

He thought he might turn on the radio and find out if more rain was coming before Sunday because he wanted to drive to church. He dismissed the idea deciding that there was time for that tomorrow. He’d learned that tomorrow was generally soon enough to know most anything here. Time really wasn’t important, hadn’t really been since his first wife Francis died all those years ago. Yet before he came here, he’d lived by the clock, the needs of other people and, of course, Diane in those last years. There was a moment of regret in him now as he wished that Francis could be here. She would have loved Mallard Lake.

FOUR

A s Annie turned off U.S. 42 onto the road to Fuller, she wondered why she let her mother talk her into driving up here to church. She’d spent the rainy weekend with her. Donnie went to his father’s as he said he would and then went off somewhere and she hadn’t been able to find him since. It puzzled her why she still needed him, but she’d gone down there this weekend because he did and not because of her mother and he wasn’t there and it made her angry.

Sunday was a clear bright day and the gravel and partially paved road to Fuller was empty and reasonably dry. Claire told her only that she must talk to Lucas today and that he’d be at church and they would have breakfast afterward and invite him to dinner. Annie knew it was a big outing for her so she agreed even though she wasn’t sure of several things: Whether Lucas knew it was Sunday, would come to church, and whether the road out of his place to the east, being more dirt than gravel, was passable after all the rain. She called and left two messages yesterday but he never called her back. He hadn’t called her since she gave him the machine. He said her calls only gave him information so there was no need to call back. She swore once again at the fact that the machine she gave him allowed him the