Russell Banks - The Reserve

ACCORDING TO LATER REPORTS, PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED, but generally conceded to be accurate by those who were present, by the time the firefighters arrived at the site, the main building of the camp called Rangeview had burned nearly to the ground, with only the large brook-stone fireplace chimney left standing. The nationally known artist James Heldon managed to retrieve from the wreckage of the house one of what he claimed were twelve high-priced paintings that he had placed on loan to the late Dr. Cole. The artist was confident that the appraised value of the eleven destroyed paintings would be covered by the late doctor’s fire insurance. However, most of the rest of the furniture, household goods, and personal possessions were destroyed or so badly damaged by smoke and by water tossed onto the dying fire by the bucket brigade as to be unsalvageable. The firefighters with great effort managed to confine the fire to the nearby grounds and, with the exception of several large pine trees located next to the main building, saved the surrounding trees and outbuildings and kept the fire from spreading to the adjacent forest. They were aided in this by the heavy rain that began to fall within minutes of their arrival at the site.

On the basis of pale green pieces of shattered glass found in the fireplace and certain other evidence, Essex County sheriff Dan Peters stated that the fire appeared to have been started by a kerosene lantern either thrown or, much less likely, accidentally dropped into an already lit fire in the fireplace. It was assumed by all that the person who threw — or dropped — the lamp was Vanessa Cole. Vanessa’s mother, Evelyn Cole, was at first thought to have been in residence at Rangeview at the time of the fire. But the region’s other well-known artist, Jordan Groves, said that he had flown Mrs. Cole from the Second Lake over to Westport on Lake Champlain the previous evening. Presumably, she had made her way to the Westport rail station and later returned by train to her home in Tuxedo Park, New York. It therefore appeared that at the time of the fire Vanessa Cole was alone at Rangeview. Russell Kendall, the manager at the Tamarack Wilderness Reserve Club, and the guide Hubert St. Germain confirmed this.

When the firefighters first arrived at the camp, Vanessa Cole was nowhere to be found, and it was feared that she had perished in the fire. The firefighters, once they had succeeded in keeping the fire from spreading to nearby trees and the outbuildings, searched in vain through the still smouldering rubble for the remains of the woman. Meanwhile, the artist Jordan Groves, guided by intuition and a more thorough and intimate knowledge of Vanessa Cole’s mind than that available to the others present, left the group and bushwhacked his way uphill through the dense woods behind the camp and discovered the poor woman in a clearing about a quarter mile away. As he did not bring Vanessa in until sometime later, many of those present did not learn firsthand what had happened to her or even that she had been found by Jordan Groves. It was raining very heavily by then, and many of the firefighters and most of the volunteers from the clubhouse had started making their way back, either along the shoreline trail or across the lake by guide boat to the Carry and from there on to the First Tamarack Lake, where a second flotilla of guide boats awaited the brave, exhausted men and boys of the Adirondacks and the loyal members and guests of the Tamarack Wilderness Reserve.

JORDAN GROVES STRODE QUICKLY UPHILL FROM THE CHARRED remains of the house and after a few moments of climbing through the stand of red pines saw Vanessa Cole in the clearing a short ways beyond. She was seated on the ground at the grave of her mother. She was still wrapped in the sheet, sopping wet from the rain, and was visibly trembling from the cold, and as he entered the clearing and drew near her, he saw that beside her on the ground lay a shovel — the same shovel that he and Hubert had used to bury Vanessa’s mother. Next to the shovel was a thick, brown, cardboard file folder tied with a black ribbon.

Vanessa was speaking, at least her lips were moving, but all Jordan heard was a low murmur cut with static and broken hisses, the same sound she had breathed into his ear that morning at Rangeview, the day they’d dropped Dr. Cole’s ashes into the lake. It had seemed intimate and erotic then, a teasing invitation. But it sounded like madness now. She stared straight at the grave of her mother and seemed to be addressing her — addressing the woman’s ghost, perhaps, or Vanessa’s memory of her mother from long ago, because there was a childlike tone to her voice, making sentences that ended with an upturn, a question mark. For a moment Jordan thought that she was mocking her mother in a little girl’s voice — he heard her say a great fall , or perhaps it was grateful , and together again , or maybe it was never again , and on a wall —words that emerged from a running stream of words in a grammar other than English. Or maybe it was a childhood nonsense song he was hearing, or a nursery rhyme.

He knelt beside her and realized that she was still naked under the cold wet sheet. He shucked his heavy waxed fireman’s coat and draped it over her shoulders. She stopped speaking then — it was more a noise that had stopped than speech, but a noise filled with feelings he’d never before heard articulated by her, nor by anyone else he’d known. Feelings he had no name for.

“Can you stand?” He held her by the elbows, ready to lift her to her feet.

“Yes, of course,” she said, and without his help moved gracefully to a standing position.

He backed away, surprised, once again unable to distinguish between authenticity and performance, unable to know for certain if she was mad in actual fact or was acting mad, was lost to herself in pain or merely imitating it — and if imitating pain, then what was she really feeling? For she had to be feeling something , didn’t she? No one could be alive and conscious and not feel something .

“Did you set the fire, Vanessa?”

“Yes.”

“Was it an accident?”

“Not really.”

“‘Not really.’ Why did you come up here, Vanessa?”

She pointed at the file folder. “To bury that. I could have let it burn in the fire. Maybe I should have let it burn. Turn it into ashes, like Daddy. I was going to. But then I wanted to bury it with my mother. Put it in the ground with her,” she said. “But I couldn’t.”

“Why? What is it? What’s inside the folder?”

“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let them burn up in the fire, and I couldn’t bury them, either. Isn’t that ridiculous, Jordan? Can’t live with ’em, and can’t live without ’em,” she said and abruptly smiled, then was serious again. “Will you do it for me?”

“What’s inside the folder, Vanessa?” he demanded. He reached for the folder, but she shoved his hand away.

“Something that should never have existed! Something that, once it did exist, should have been burned or buried long ago.” Vanessa spoke rapidly now, with more anger than agony. “Something that, if it wasn’t burned long ago, should be buried with my mother. I can’t bury them with him, it’s too late for that now. Besides, she’s the one who allowed them to come into existence in the first place.”

Vanessa was smiling, and Jordan took a step back and tried to see her more clearly, more objectively, as he thought of it, so that he could somehow gain purchase on what she was feeling. He couldn’t know what she was talking about, what she was referring to, unless he had some idea of what she was feeling. Otherwise, she was simply raving. Otherwise, her words had no connection to reality, not even a tangled, mad connection. Unless, of course, she was acting. And if indeed she was only acting, then it was something other than madness, something maybe worse than madness.