Russell Banks - The Reserve

“I don’t think so. I think this is something you’ll never forget, Jordan. Or regret.” She slid into the cockpit, stripped the tape off the jar, and placed the jar on her lap.

“Miss Von Heidenstamm, I already regret it.”

“You don’t have to call me that.”

“What?”

“It was my married name. And I’m no longer married to him. Call me Vanessa.”

“I’m going to taxi out to the middle of the lake. When I get there, you dump the ashes over the side, and I’ll bring you back. And then, Vanessa Von Heidenstamm, I’ll be on my merry way.”

“That’s really very boring, you know.”

“Yes, I guess it is.”

“Much more interesting to scatter Daddy’s ashes from the sky.”

“True.” Without turning, he instructed her to take off her head scarf and remove the top of the jar and cover the jar with the scarf.

“Why?”

“Because of the wind. I’ll tell you when to empty it. Just be sure you hold the damn thing out to the side as far as you can, and don’t remove the scarf until you upend the jar to dump it, or the wind and the prop wash will blow your daddy’s ashes all over you and inside the plane. I damn sure don’t want to have to clean Dr. Cole’s remains out of my airplane.”

She gave the back of his head a grim smile. He restarted the engine and took the airplane back out toward the middle of the lake, where he hit the throttle, gathered speed, and put it into the air. At about five hundred feet he leveled off and banked the airplane toward the headwaters of the lake. He cut the speed to seventy knots and dropped it down until it was barely a hundred feet above the water, following the axis of the long, narrow lake from south to north. When he spotted the Coles’ camp coming up on his right, he slowed again and dropped another fifty feet, and hollered back, “Go ahead, do it now!”

Vanessa hefted the jar to her shoulder, steadied it there for a few seconds with both hands, and facing it away from the wash, quickly extended it out to the side as far as she could and removed the scarf and emptied it. A gray swash of ash and bits of bone exploded into the air behind the airplane and drifted slowly down to the water, when suddenly Vanessa cried, “Oh, no!”

Jordan jerked his head around and saw the jar drop from the airplane like a green stone. He watched it splash into the lake, where it sank almost at once. Vanessa’s scarf fluttered slowly down to the lake behind it.

“I dropped the damn thing!” Vanessa cried. “I dropped it!”

Jordan brought the airplane around and flew across the spot where the jar had gone in, locating it on a bisected pair of lines running the width and length of the lake. He saw the yellow scarf floating southward on the dark water, like a pale hieroglyph. “Try to memorize the shore points on both sides of the lake and at the ends!” he shouted. “The scarf’ll drift and sink anyhow, so don’t look at it.”

“It’s gone, Jordan!”

“No, it’s not! You can row out and dive for it!”

“You idiot, it’s hundreds of feet deep there!”

He didn’t respond. He brought the airplane in close to shore and splashed down a short ways below the camp, taxied back to where he’d picked her up, and cut the engine. For a moment they sat motionless in the silence, the airplane rocking gently on its pontoons. Finally Jordan said, “Hey, look, Vanessa, I’m sorry about the jar. Seriously. It was very beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“And I never said it to you right. I’m sorry about your father, too.”

“No, it’s probably the best thing. The jar, I mean. Daddy loved that old jar more than any other thing he owned. Except this camp.”

“It’s probably worth a fortune, though. The jar.”

“Mother would never have sold it. No, it’s only right that it’s still with him…and that they’re both at the bottom of the lake.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“Yeah, well, I guess that’s the best way to think about it,” he said gently.

“You’re being so kind. That’s nice.”

“No, that’s normal.”

“Would you come up to the camp with me? I need to talk with somebody.”

“What about your mother?”

She shook her head. “No, no, I can’t talk to her. Mother and I, we’re like…we’re on different planets. Especially about Daddy.” She paused, and noted that he seemed to be waiting for her to continue. “C’mon, I think I owe you a drink, anyhow,” she said. “I owe you a lot more than that, actually,” she said and smiled sadly.

He nodded and got out of the cockpit and extended his hand to her, and she took it and stepped onto the wing beside him. He quickly anchored the airplane, and when it was secured, they came ashore and, still holding hands, walked up the long slope, through the grove of tall pines to the deck of the camp. She liked the feel of his large callused hand around hers. It was a workman’s hand — which was natural, wasn’t it, for he had spent years carving wood-and linoleum blocks and making copper etchings and cutting lithographs. Even drawing and painting required the use of his big hands; and he was probably a builder, too, judging from his house and the outbuildings, which had seemed handmade to her — skillfully done, but not by a firm of architects, engineers, and contractors. And all that firewood stacked so neatly in the open sheds alongside the garage and studio and in the breezeway — he cuts his own firewood to heat his house and studio. His arduous travels to distant, difficult lands — Greenland, Alaska, the Andes — were legendary. He was strong and lean and hardhanded. Many of the men whom she had successfully seduced in the past were cut from the same social cloth as he — rich men; cosmopolitan men; even a few famous writers and artists; and sportsmen like her first husband, the Russian Boris Seversky, men who flew their own airplanes and traveled to exotic parts of the globe on three-month-long treks and safaris. She was rumored to have had affairs with Ernest Hemingway and Max Ernst and Baron von Blixen. But none of them had hands like his. Their bodies had been hardened by sport and exercise, not by physical work.

She knew she had managed to slip through his resistance to her, but wasn’t sure what had done it or how long it would last. He was changeable and unpredictable, a man who could burst into flame one minute and just as quickly turn to ice. She asked him to make himself comfortable on the sofa by the fireplace, then knelt with her back to him and lit the fire she had laid earlier. When it began to crackle and burn, she stood and crossed the room to the bar, aware all the while that he was looking at her.

“What’ll you have?” she asked. “I have rum, but it’s not Cuban, I’m afraid. Jamaican. It’s what I’m having.”

He studied her carefully, more watchful than curious, as if she were more a danger to him than a puzzle. “I don’t know, it’s a little early. Yeah, rum’s fine.”

She poured them each three fingers and returned to the sofa by the fire and sat next to him.

“Where’s your mother?” Jordan asked, looking around the large room. There seemed to be no one else at the camp, no guide or cook, no friends or family members. Which made sense, he decided, given the two women’s private and slightly illicit reasons for being here. “I’m thinking I ought to make your mother some kind of apology, too,” he said. “I should offer her my condolences.”

Vanessa explained that her mother was still overcome by Dr. Cole’s death. Her mother was somewhat frail anyhow, and the long drive up from Manhattan yesterday and then the hike and boat trip in to camp had left her weakened. But he needn’t worry, she would convey his apology and condolences to her mother later.