Bryan Gruley: Starvation lake

“Yeah. He wanted a boat.”

“I’ll get to that. Anyway, first they voted three to two to dredge the lake. But the sheriff made a fuss and then the mayor-excuse me, the mayor pro tem, because the mayor wasn’t there-called the council into a closed session. They came out of that and voted three to two again, this time not to dredge.”

“Who called the session?”

“Mayor Pro Tem A. Campbell.”

“Soupy’s dad? Shit, that’s right, he was on the council. And who switched their vote?”

“You’ll love this,” Joanie said. “X. Perlmutter.”

“Huh? Clayton’s brother?”

“Oh, no, it’s Clayton. His first name is actually Xavier.”

I’d never known Clayton was on the council. But then I had been in Detroit. “What about the boat?”

“The last thing they did was authorize twenty-five thousand dollars for that, with Campbell abstaining since they were buying it from him.”

“What an upstanding guy. What kind of boat?”

“Doesn’t say. Just one ‘appropriate to the tasks of policing the lake and its shoreline.’ Why’s the town buying a boat for the county sheriff anyway?”

A recorded voice was telling me I had to insert more quarters. “Listen,” I said. “Go to my desk, second drawer on the right. Near the top you’ll find a photocopy of a receipt from the marina. Get it. Hurry.”

I waited. She came back on. “Got it. A receipt from the Starvation Lake Marina for twenty-five thousand dollars. Got to be for the boat, huh?”

“What’s the date on it?”

“Let’s see. April twelfth.”

“But the meeting was the thirteenth, right? How could the town give Angus Campbell the money before the council voted?”

“Good question. What does it have to do with anything?”

“I don’t know,” I said. I really didn’t.

The recorded voice said the call was about to end.

“Hey, that reminds me,” she said. “On Perlmutter, I was going over some of the state grant stuff again and-”

“I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’m going to be sending you something overnight. Look for it. And do me a favor and call my mom and tell her I’m OK.”

“Gus, listen, one of the names on-”

The dial tone cut her off.

The Zamboni made its final circuit before the 11:45 a.m. hockey skills session. At the top of the bleachers, I placed the video camera on its tripod, slung the still camera around my neck, got out my pen and notebook. A dozen little skaters burst onto the ice in baggy socks and too-big pants, their faces obscured by cages. They swerved right and skated counterclockwise. I made sure the video camera was recording.

Behind the skaters, the door to their dressing room swung open and their teacher emerged. I tugged my Caps cap lower. Richard Blackstone wore his silver hair in a comb-over swept left to right and then back. My heart skipped a beat. Jack Blackburn never wore his hair that way. Blackstone seemed smaller and paunchier than Blackburn, and his face was obscured in a full silver beard. No, I thought. Is that really him? I zoomed the camera in on his eyes. They were downcast, watching his feet. Of course. Blackburn had just one superstition. Had he left it in Starvation Lake? Just before he reached the threshold, Richard Blackstone took a little hop and a skip to stagger his stride before he stepped out, so that his left blade would hit the ice before his right. A shudder went through me. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, he was circling behind the goalie net to my left and heading up the boards toward me. I took a deep breath and looked into the video camera. I caught a closer glimpse of his face, but he quickly passed. I watched him with my naked eye as he circled again. His black sweatsuit did nothing to hide the bulge at his waist. His stride was still smooth, but his legs had to work harder to move him along. As he turned toward me, I leaned into the video camera and focused on his face. His teeth seemed whiter and more prominent, probably false. They set off the dull yellow that tinged his sagging cheeks and the creases at his deep-set eyes. I pictured him in his house at night, drinking by the arid glow of his television. It made me feel good to think of him as alone and pathetic, a dried-up old man unloved and anonymous. He circled again and as he veered my way a third time he turned toward me and looked straight into the camera. It startled me. Maybe I merely imagined it, but I thought I saw a faint, knowing smile play across his lips before he was gone again. Had he recognized me? Had Tillie gotten to him? I hadn’t expected how hard it would be to see those eyes again as I’d seen them so many times across the Sunday dinner table.

Below me, three mothers in parkas stood along the boards, chatting, paying little attention to what was happening on the ice. As the coach gathered the boys around him, I felt the urge to walk down to those mothers and tell them everything I knew. I imagined myself talking and pointing, and the mothers’ eyes darting between me and the ice, and the disbelief on their faces, followed by horror, either at the truth of the matter or at me for telling it. Twice I yanked my cap lower and coat collar higher and ventured down to the edge of the ice where I could get clearer shots of his face. I snapped shots with the still camera and, when his back was turned, took notes.

He ran some of the same drills the River Rats had run. He took the boys by the shoulders and steered them to specific spots on the ice and showed them where to look for the puck and which way to hold their stick blades. He arranged short stacks of pucks around the ice and made the kids weave between and around them without ever touching them with their sticks. If he told them they had to be hungry for those biscuits, though, I couldn’t hear. Near the end of the session, he gathered the boys around him at center ice. Through the camera I watched their helmeted heads nod in unison as he turned this way and that, telling them they’d done well, patting each of them lightly on the head. I heard them laugh. I heard them shout, “Yeah!” I remembered standing there watching him reach out to the other Rats, waiting for his hand to touch me.

I felt a tap on my shoulder. One of the three mothers was standing next to me, wearing a nervous smile.

“Excuse me,” she said. “May I ask who you are?”

“Oh,” I said, startled again. “Just a second.” I repositioned the video camera so it was pointed at the dressing room door.

“There,” I said. “I’m, uh, I’m with a newspaper.”

“I see,” she said. I saw her friends watching. “You’re doing an article?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Are you with the Post?”

“I wish. I’m just with a little paper.”

“Really? Which?”

Of course I had no idea what papers were in the area. “The Pilot,” I said.

“The Pirate?”

“ Pilot, ma’am.”

“The Pilot,” she repeated. “I haven’t seen that one. But there are so many little papers around here, some days we get four or five on the drive. How could I get a copy of your article?”

“Well, why don’t I send you one? Here.” I handed her my pen and notebook. “Write down your address.”

“I didn’t know newspapers took video.”

“They don’t, usually, but it’s a good visual aid. I don’t take very good notes.” The kids were heading off the ice.

“Mm-hm,” the woman said. She handed the notebook and pen back and stuck out a mittened hand. “Well, I’m Miriam Belzer. If you’d like an interview”-she motioned toward her friends-“we’d be glad to help. What was your name?”

“A.J.,” I said.

“A.J. what?”

I peeked into the camera. The coach was looking up toward us. “Oops,” I said. “This thing is screwing up. Excuse me, ma’am.”