William Kennedy - Roscoe

“They’re gone,” Gilby said.

“When did you last see them?”

“In the summer. They were brown, four of them.”

“What were they doing?”

“Nothing.”

“That explains it,” Roscoe said. “They got bored and went looking for action.”

They walked to Seneca Rock, where Veronica said she found the large deer horns that were now mounted in the Trophy House, Veronica’s deer that got away. They walked north along the shore of the lake and along the dead sumac with the carmine fruit, still on some branches, that the game birds would eat in the winter. Ferns surrounded the small, clear pool coming up from the well that served the Trophy House, and overflowed into the lake. The forest they walked through came almost to the shore of the lake, tall white pines whose needles had created a carpet through which nothing grew, and the only green was the moss on the rocks and the fallen trees. Gilby said, We’re not seeing anything. And Roscoe said, You’re not looking. You can see everything there is, the secret life of blue jays and pheasant and owls and petrels if you’re careful and don’t intrude. They sat awhile in silence and watched and listened. They heard a bird, a few high and squeaky musical notes, and then heard it again, and Roscoe said, That sounds like a starling, one of those little black devils. They travel in huge flocks, like Albany Democrats. Just keep watching and maybe we’ll see some ducks that haven’t gone to Cuba for the winter. They stared across at the vast mountain range that rose up beyond the far side of the lake.

“I don’t see anything,” Gilby said.

Roscoe led the way up an incline to a plateau of rock that gave a view into the forest, and to a swampy area bordered by elms and maples and birch, and a vagrant pattern of dead trees that had fallen, or tried to fall, in the directions of greatest rot or strongest wind. A few frogs found reason to utter a few croaks, and you could find silken webs intact in the standing trees, signs of life. So many rotting stumps and fallen trees: bark gone, branches gone, their punky selves good for nothing. You could suffocate here in decay and death. What dry ground they could see was solid with dead brown leaves. At the edge of the plateau they could look down at the dark, quiet water of the lake.

“Keep watching the shore,” Roscoe said. “We sat like this one day and saw a fox and her four cubs come out and fool around for ten minutes. It was like being at the movies. Another time we saw a doe, and two fawns on the beach cavorting like puppies, and the mother very watchful, wasn’t she, Vee?”

“Mothers are usually watchful,” Veronica said. “But I don’t think I was with you.”

“Of course you weren’t. I admit sometimes you can’t find the hidden life, but you keep looking. You know where you find monster largemouth bass in this lake?”

“Where?”

“Anyplace you’re not. Once we saw a school of perch swimming right off this rock, out there, as far as we could see. You wouldn’t believe there were that many perch in the universe. But we saw them. Didn’t we, Vee?”

“I don’t think I was with you.”

“Of course you weren’t. It was Elisha. He said to me, ‘What do we do with all these perch?’ And I said we should invite them to dinner. We always invited the fish to dinner. But you were definitely there the day you caught that famous bass, nobody could believe how big it was.”

“Especially me,” Veronica said.

“You put up a great fight.”

“How big?” Gilby asked.

“So big it’s still a world record for Tristano. The previous record was three pounds twelve ounces. But your mother’s was four eight. We put it on the scales and showed everybody. We had it mounted with the names of all the witnesses. You can see it at the Trophy House, on the wall near the big table. You remember that day, Vee?”

“Oh yes. A special day.”

“Fantastic day. That was a trophy and a half. I caught a silver trout on a fly that afternoon. We both had a good day.”

“You have a good memory,” she said.

“I never forget anything,” Roscoe said. “Do you remember the day you met the beaver on the mill stream?”

“Yes, and I remember the partridge with her chicks that we found at a fork in the road,” Veronica said. “One chick was the size of your thumb.”

“Elisha found a loon egg in a nest on Adler’s Island,” Roscoe said. “We kept looking and we found a loon. Elisha talked to it for ten minutes to find out who owned the egg.”

“What did the loon say?” Gilby asked.

“Nothing. It just laughed at Elisha for trying to talk to a bird.”

They walked on and passed what Roscoe called the deer highway and sat awhile to wait for traffic, but none came. Then two birds soared into view over the edge of the lake, and Roscoe said, Don’t move, don’t talk, and they watched the larger bird fly low and dive into shallow water and come up with a dead eel. Both birds flew to an outcropping of flat shale, where the bird dropped the eel and held it with a talon while the smaller bird ate into the eel carcass, and then the big bird also ate.

“They’re eagles,” Veronica said. “You ever see an eagle, Gilby?”

“I saw a duck hawk, but not an eagle.”

“They’re bald eagles, father and son, probably,” Roscoe said. “The national emblems of our democracy, having a late lunch. Anybody hungry?”

After dinner Roscoe tried to tune in WGY on the shortwave radio to hear Alex’s speech, but all he could get was Canadians speaking French and a station somewhere in Scandinavia. “We are outside civilization,” Roscoe said. “We could be in the nineteenth century. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lyman walked through the door.”

Veronica and Gilby had exhausted checkers, and the 1903 books on planting trees and perennials, and Audubon on hawks and eagles. Veronica read Gilby from a 1908 volume of Arabian Nights, the story of the fisherman who finds a vase in the sea and when he opens its cover he releases a genie. The genie, not at all grateful for being freed, is so angry at having been a prisoner he says he must kill the fisherman. But he grants him one wish: he may choose the manner of his death. Since he cannot escape death, the fisherman conjures the genie, in the name of Allah, to answer one question truly: Were you really inside that vase? The genie, compelled to speak the truth, says he was. The fisherman doesn’t believe him and says, That vase wouldn’t even hold your foot. So, to prove the truth, the genie changes into smoke, and re-enters the vase. The fisherman claps the cover on, throws the vase into the sea; so long, genie.

“That fisherman was smart,” Gilby said.

“I’m glad you think so,” Roscoe said.

“Let’s play cards, Roscoe,” said Gilby, and Roscoe then lost eighteen thousand dollars to Gilby playing blackjack with five-hundred-dollar chips. Veronica found the notebook in which records were kept of the great catches and sightings of birds, fish, and game. “‘Tried to shoot giant turtle near dock,’ ” she read. “‘Fired at one deer but no luck. Killed two hundred pound black bear, female, behind Swiss Cottage.’ That’s her there on the floor, Gil.” The bear, twenty-two years dead and now a rug, black, tan, mottled gray, lay in front of the fireplace, nose, teeth, and nails intact, but her hide cracked, frazzled, balding, a sad case.

“Who shot her?” Gilby asked.

“Roscoe,” Veronica said.

“You’re making that up,” Gilby said.

“Roscoe is a great shot, aren’t you, Ros?”

“I used to be. Don’t shoot much anymore. I don’t want to kill anything. Killed the bear because she was dangerous. She came out of the woods behind the lodge and attacked Wilbur, an Irish wolfhound your father owned, Gilby. I shot her before she did more damage.”