William Krueger - Northwest Angle

The moon was directly above them, and they walked in puddles of their own shadows. Crickets chirped all around now, a hopeful sound, Cork thought, as he led the way to the cove.

When Jenny saw the raft he’d built, she said, “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Dad, that won’t hold us.”

“Not us, but it will hold him and the other things. You and I are going to swim.” He pointed across the channel to the little island with the stand of trees still intact. “I figure it’s maybe a couple of hundred yards, that’s all.”

He made it sound like no big deal, though he knew there was great potential for danger. If the baby got fussy or restless and kicked around a lot and ended up in the lake. If another storm whipped up out of the blue and caught them in open water. If the cigarette boat returned while they were making their passage.

Jenny said, “And if he falls in? Or if that guy comes back in the boat while we’re crossing?”

He laughed, despite himself and their precarious situation, because Jenny, in her own thinking, was right there with him, neck and neck.

“All right,” he said. “I admit it’s got its risks, but I don’t have a better offering at the moment. Are you game, or do we stay here and wait it out and hope cigarette boat man doesn’t come back looking for us? You have an equal vote in this.”

She rocked back and forth as she held the baby. He’d fallen asleep again, cradled in her arms. Cork was a little disturbed at how natural it seemed to see them both this way.

“Okay,” she finally said. “But we swim on either side of him. Everything else can go to the bottom of the lake, but we make sure he’s safe.”

“Of course,” Cork said. “Give me the basket.”

He’d left a few branches in the center of the raft as a kind of cradle. He placed the wicker basket there. Ahead of it, he put the stove and Jenny’s knapsack and, behind it, the blanket bundle and the jug of distilled water. He stripped to his swimsuit and laid his dry clothes on top of the blanket. He held the baby while Jenny did the same, then handed the little guy back. She took him, waded into the lake, and carefully laid him down in the basket. He didn’t wake.

“You ready?” Cork asked.

“Let’s go,” she answered.

They shoved off, carefully guiding the raft between them. The lake was cool but calm. Each held to the makeshift float with one hand and with the other pulled through the water. As they swam, they pushed away the debris that clogged the channel. Their movements created a profound disturbance. Undulations crawled away in all directions, and the surface of the water became mercurial in the moonlight, silver along the crests and black in the troughs.

Cork had grown up on Iron Lake, the crown jewel of Tamarack County, and he’d been a swimmer all his life. He’d taught his children to swim almost before they could walk. So he didn’t worry about Jenny. A couple of hundred yards was nothing. Unless the baby gave them trouble. But the child was quiet, riding comfortably as young Moses might have in his basket of woven reeds. Cork wondered just a little at the child’s apparent complacency, which all things considered, seemed unusual, maybe even a little unnatural. His own children, as he recalled, had all been light sleepers, and he and Jo had spent long hours at night walking them. On the other hand, his children, when they were babies, had never been left alone for a full day without food or liquid, had never cried hour after hour until sleep came only with complete exhaustion. Which was how he imagined it had been for this baby boy. The child was still recovering, still bone weary, Cork decided. When he regained his strength, maybe he wouldn’t be so placid.

They were a little over halfway across when Cork heard the distant sound of powerful outboards.

Jenny heard it, too. “Dad,” she said quietly, but with a trace of panic.

“Just keep moving.”

“Maybe it’s not him,” she said.

“It’s him.”

They kept stroking, kept the same measured pace, which helped maintain the stability of the thrown-together raft and avoided jostling the sleeping baby too dramatically. Cork was concerned that very soon it wouldn’t be the motion of the raft that would waken the infant but the sound of the big outboards as the cigarette boat made its way through the debris of the channel. He tried to formulate a plan, some way of heading off the disaster that was approaching. When the boat swept past, the roar of the engines might be loud enough to drown out any noise the child would make. But once the engines cut out, it would be a different story. The baby’s crying would carry forever in the calm of that night. Cork thought that if he were the man in the cigarette boat, he’d come back slowly, perplexed by the child’s presence in the middle of the channel. He’d use his searchlight to sweep the water. And what would happen then?

Cork decided, and he knew he was getting a little desperate here, that when the light snapped on, he and Jenny would loose their hold and go under and swim away. They would resurface at a distance, perhaps using some of the debris as a shield, and maybe, just maybe, when the boat eased up to the raft, Cork could somehow surprise the man at the wheel.

All this thinking took place in the course of less than a minute. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Jenny whispered from the other side of the raft, “If he comes, you swim away. I’ll try to keep him focused on me and the baby, and maybe if he’s distracted you’ll have a chance of surprising him.”

Which, except for the obvious danger in which it put his daughter, wasn’t a bad idea. Better, probably, than his own. Because if Jenny stayed with the raft, she would make sure that the baby, in his flailing, didn’t tumble into the lake.

He said, “All right.”

They both kept swimming.

The boat didn’t come, not then anyway. Cork heard it veer southwest, somewhere beyond the little island toward which he and Jenny were swimming. In another minute, the engines died. He wondered if maybe he’d been wrong. Maybe it wasn’t the man in the cigarette boat, although all his sensibilities told him otherwise. And it was safest, he knew absolutely, to proceed as if it was that man and he was someone to be avoided.

As they approached the island they hoped would provided sanctuary, Cork’s feet touched rock. He found footing, and he and Jenny eased the raft to shore.

“I’ll hold,” Cork whispered. “You take the baby.”

Jenny grasped the wicker basket and lifted it. Cork watched for the small eyes to blink open, but they didn’t. He grabbed the stove and the bundled blanket and led the way into the trees.

Moonlight fell between the boughs and lay on the ground in bright, shattered pieces. In this helpful glow, Cork picked his way carefully through the underbrush. He went until he reached the place where the trees met the protective rise of rock. He found a fold in the formation, a kind of alcove where the underbrush gave way to coarse grass and was walled by rock on either side. The baby had awakened and begun to make fussing noises, turning his mouth toward Jenny’s breast. Cork quickly set up the stove, unbundled the blanket, and pulled out a bottle Jenny had prepared earlier. He grabbed the pan and said, “I’ll be right back.”

At the lake, he dipped water and heard clearly the hungry baby beginning to cry. Cork wondered just how far such a sound would carry, and he was angry with the child. An irrational anger, he knew. The baby was just being a baby, but he was putting them all in danger. He hurried back and set the pan on the stove and the bottle in the pan. Jenny had laid out the blanket on the wild grass and was doing her best to soothe the infant, to no avail. Cork slipped his knife from his belt and held it up near the baby’s face. The polished blade caught the moonlight, and Cork played the silvery reflection across the baby’s face. The child stopped fussing, captured by the sudden glittering. He reached for the blade, curious and intent. Cork moved it away, then near, then away again in a kind of game. In this manner, he kept the baby quiet until the bottle was warm enough to feed him.