Tim O’Brien - In the Lake of the Woods

“We’ll find new stuff to want,” Kathy said. “Brand-new dreams. Isn’t that right?” She waited a moment, watching him. “Isn’t it?”

John Wade tried to nod.

Two days later, when she was gone, he would remember the sound of mice beneath the porch. He would remember the rich forest smells and the fog and the lake and the curious motion Kathy made with her fingers, a slight fluttering, as if to dispel all the things that were wrong in their lives.

“We’ll do it,” she said, and moved closer to him. “We’ll go out and make it happen.”

“Sure,” Wade said. “We’ll get by fine.”

“Better than fine.”

“Right. Better.”

Then he closed his eyes. He watched a huge white mountain collapse and come tumbling down on him.

There was that crushed feeling in his stomach. Yet even then he pretended to smile at her. He said reassuring things, resolutely, as if he believed, and this too was something he would later remember—the pretending. In the darkness he could feel Kathy’s heartbeat, her breath against his cheek. After a time she turned beneath the blankets and kissed him, teasing a little, her tongue in his ear, which was irritating but which meant she cared for him and wanted him to concentrate on everything they still had or someday could have.

“So there,” she said. “We’ll be happy now.”

“Happy us,” he said.

It was a problem of faith. The future seemed intolerable. There was fatigue, too, and anger, but more than anything there was the emptiness of disbelief.

Quietly, lying still, John Wade watched the fog divide itself into clusters over the dock and boathouse, where it paused as if to digest those objects, hovering for a time, then swirling and changing shape and moving heavily up the slope toward their porch.

Landslide, he was thinking.

The thought formed as a picture in his head, an enormous white mountain he had been climbing all his life, and now he watched it come rushing down on him, all that disgrace. He told himself not to think about it, and then he was thinking again. The numbers were hard. He had been beaten nearly three to one within his own party; he had carried a few college towns and Itasca County and almost nothing else.

Lieutenant governor at thirty-seven. Candidate for the United States Senate at forty. Loser by landslide at forty-one.

Winners and losers. That was the risk.

But it was more than a lost election. It was something physical. Humiliation, that was part of it, and the wreckage in his chest and stomach, and then the rage, how it surged up into his throat and how he wanted to scream the most terrible thing he could scream— Kill Jesus! —and how he couldn’t help himself and couldn’t think straight and couldn’t stop screaming it inside his head— Kill Jesus! —because nothing could be done, and because it was so brutal and disgraceful and final. He felt crazy sometimes. Real depravity. Late at night an electric sizzle came into his blood, a tight pumped-up killing rage, and he couldn’t keep it in and he couldn’t let it out. He wanted to hurt things. Grab a knife and start cutting and slashing and never stop. All those years. Climbing like a son of a bitch, clawing his way up inch by fucking inch, and then it all came crashing down at once. Everything, it seemed. His sense of purpose. His pride, his career, his honor and reputation, his belief in the future he had so grandly dreamed for himself.

John Wade shook his head and listened to the fog. There was no wind. A single moth played against the screened window behind him.

Forget it, he thought. Don’t think.

And then later, when he began thinking again, he took Kathy up against him, holding tight. “Verona,” he said firmly, “we’ll do it. Deluxe hotels. The whole tour.”

“That’s a promise?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “A promise.”

Kathy smiled at this. He could not see the smile, but he could hear it passing through her voice when she said, “What about babies?”

“Everything,” Wade said. “Especially that.”

“Maybe I’m too old. I hope not.”

“You’re not.”

“I’m thirty-eight.”

“No sweat, we’ll have thirty-eight babies,” he said. “Hire a bus in Verona.”

“There’s an idea . Then what?”

“I don’t know, just drive and see the sights and be together. You and me and a busload of babies.”

“You think so?”

“For sure. I promised.”

And then for a long while they lay quietly in the dark, waiting for these things to happen, some sudden miracle. All they wanted was for their lives to be good again.

Later, Kathy pushed back the blankets and moved off toward the railing at the far end of the porch. She seemed to vanish into the heavy dark, the fog curling around her, and when she spoke, her voice came from somewhere far away, as if lifted from her body, unattached and not quite authentic.

“I’m not crying,” she said.

“Of course you’re not.”

“It’s just a rotten time, that’s all. This stupid thing we have to get through.”

“Stupid,” he said.

“I didn’t mean—”

“No, you’re right. Damned stupid.”

Things went silent. Just the waves and woods, a delicate in-and-out breathing. The night seemed to wrap itself around them.

“John, listen, I can’t always come up with the right words. All I meant was—you know—I meant there’s this wonderful man I love and I want him to be happy and that’s all I care about. Not elections.”

“Fine, then.”

“And not newspapers.”

“Fine,” he said.

Kathy made a sound in the dark, which wasn’t crying. “You do love me?”

“More than anything.”

“Lots, I mean?”

“Lots,” he said. “A whole busful. Come here now.”

Kathy crossed the porch, knelt down beside him, pressed the palm of her hand against his forehead. There was the steady hum of lake and woods. In the days afterward, when she was gone, he would remember this with perfect clarity, as if it were still happening. He would remember a breathing sound inside the fog. He would remember the feel of her hand against his forehead, its warmth, how purely alive it was.

“Happy,” she said. “Nothing else.”

He was always a secretive boy. I guess you could say he was obsessed by secrets. It was his nature. 1

—Eleanor K. Wade (Mother)

Exhibit One: Iron teakettle

Weight, 2.3 pounds

Capacity, 3 quarts

Exhibit Two: Photograph of boat

12-foot Wakeman Runabout

Aluminum, dark blue

1.6 horsepower Evinrude engine

He didn’t talk much. Even his wife, I don’t think she knew the first damn thing about … well, about any of it. The man just kept everything buried. 2

—Anthony L. (Tony) Carbo

Name: Kathleen Terese Wade

Date of Report: 9 /21/86

Age: 38

Height: 5′6″

Weight: 118 pounds

Hair: blond

Eyes: green

Photograph: attached

Occupation: Director of Admissions, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Medical History: pneumonia (age 16), pregnancy termination (age 34)

Current Medications: Valium, Restoril

Next of Kin: John Herman Wade

Other Relatives: Patricia S. Hood (sister), 1625 Lockwood Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 3

—Extract, Missing Persons Report

After work we used to do laps together over at the Y every night. She’d just swim and swim, like a fish almost, so I’m not worried about … Well, I think she’s fine. You ever hear of a fish drowning? 4