THE ISLAND

Chapter One

The old man poled the johnboat silently across the night black waters of Eckles Lake, the motor shut down and raised out of the water. He was alone, standing on the stern seat, working the pole against a mud bottom just a few inches deep, watching for the darker shadow that would tell him he was where he meant to be. He shoved, listened to the slap-slap of thin water against the squared off flat-bottomed bow, then pushed again. A fingernail of moon showed briefly through scudding clouds as though a door swung idly open just a crack in a night-darkened drafty house, to reveal a flickering candle in the hall. The moon was no use to him, an annoyance of exposure. The lake and the big river that fed it was known to him, lived-in a lifetime, each creak on the stair a comfort, every slap of water as natural as a ticking clock.

He was old, but not insignificant in his years as city people become, the decades ambushing them in the shaving mirror. Certainly not a man you'd pass on the street without notice, notice fairly screamed from his silhouette. Erect and purposeful, a Moses descending.

Alone in the boat, he'd easily pass for just another another duck hunter out in predawn to set a spread of decoys, a common enough event in this far southern Illinois hunting country as opening season approached. As natural to the casual observer as the structure he approached, a duck blind. Not a small hide some local farmer might throw up on a weekend to try his luck after crops were in, but a massive double sided blind, its camouflaged shooting platforms separated by a covered and brushed boat slip large enough to shelter an eighteen foot johnboat. Christ, you couldn't miss it, fingernail moon or not. Seventy some years in these waters and he could have made the trip stone blind.

Would have, too.

A serious piece of work this blind, looking for all the world like a small floating island camouflaged to the water with willow. Room enough for six shooting north, or if the wind were to switch, shooting south with equal ease. A dog ramp trailed down into the water from each corner for the alert Labradors, thick coated Chesepeakes or Water Spaniels shivering with anticipation. Inside, lined against the front walls convenient benches faced racks awaiting steady old Model 12 pump guns, gleaming inlaid Purdy doubles, heirloom Winchester 21's, Berettas from Italy and the less fancy but reliable Remington 1100's.

Ducks were shot seriously in this backwater country along the Illinois River. Millionaires from Chicago missed the opening of the Opera with their bejeweled wives to shoot shoulder to shoulder with college professors, garage mechanics, stockbrokers and plumbers drawn to this shared activity not by social or economic class, but by a migration stronger than either. Equals squinting into dawn skies, their wives and businesses abandoned as they murmured over shared coffee, listening to the sky more than looking, always listening.

But no decoys lay piled in the old man's johnboat, no dog stood alert in the bow. True enough a shotgun lay alongside him, loaded but not for ducks, not this time anyway. For the old man to move across land or water without a gun in his hand or at his side would be out of his character. Where stacked decoys would lie several weeks hence, four five-gallon cans of #2 fuel oil rode heavily ahead of the middle seat, two with proper caps, the others stoppered with flannel torn from a long discarded shirt.

He chuckled to himself and at precisely that moment the moon chose to show itself as two hundred mallards, startled by the gliding apparition wakened and rose ahead of the johnboat in panic. It made him itch. All those birds and no punt gun fastened to the bow, string to trigger. The way it was done by market hunters in sneak boats by the covering darkness of similar nights and he'd taken pleasure and profit in that illegal work until the fancy restaurants in Chicago were made to account for their wild duck l'orange. It made him itch.

There were nights he'd killed two hundred ducks in one pull of the string at a dollar a piece, in times when men worked for a dollar a day and there was no work. Sneaking out before, after, during the season on lakes that might easily hold ten thousand resting ducks rafted up together with heads under wings---pole his way, just as he was doing now, then nearing the edge of a raft make one quick whistle and pull the string. A thousand heads raised, the punt gun strapped down like a small cannon in the prow of the boat, loaded with carpet tacks because they were cheap. Kill two hundred before they even took flight, don't bother with the cripples, just pick up the dead and get out. A farmer waking to the single 2AM blast would recognize it for what it was and merely roll over, figure three more hours 'till milking. A warden would hear and know he'd been snookered once again and try to figure which lake among hundreds the shot came from and where the landing might be. It made him itch.

His johnboat nudged the blind and he could smell the new lumber, rough sawn and recently nailed, tar papered, chicken wired and camouflaged with green willow fresh cut and layered in. Nice job, as nice a piece of work as he could have done himself and he admired the work as he prepared to destroy it, splashing one can, then another over the structure. It took the better part of half an hour, but he had the time and this was a labor of love.

Not an act of revenge against a man, although he'd handled a few of those in his time. Hank was an okay guy for an outsider and he'd stood to buy him a beer from time to time just after ravaging some small or large part of his duck hunting operation. He wasn't quite sure why he did that, the offer of beer that is, maybe because he did like him, liked the way he leaned right into the work and valued the island like he valued the island. He knew why he ravaged. There was a kind of greed in those confrontations over offered beers that went unaccepted, both men knowing the truth and one of them daring the other to put a stop to it. But it didn't matter, not really. There was no stopping a man who won't be stopped.

Took him twenty years to close down the original club. Bastards, they all had money, Chicago money and they paid to rebuild what he burned, replace what he stole and tore up until they all got old and tired of paying, spending more time drinking and playing cards than hunting and finally they all went home for good, all but Hank Edson. Damn the luck, before he could find a backer, the young member stepped in and bought the place. Rightfully his place. It made him itch.

Oh, he'd maybe never of owned it, but it was rightly his place all the same and if he could never own it, no man would be comfortable on it. Not while he drew breath, while he could pole a johnboat in the pitch dark and come up with the scratch for twenty gallons of fuel oil. So Hank hung in for twenty years as well, but he was losing, you could tell he was losing if you had eyes for it. The old clubhouse leaned a bit more with every season and it was hard to get share croppers to put up with the only access to the island being a hand ferry. Not easy cranking a semi of corn or beans across the cut that formed the island. Yeah, he'd a figured Hank to wear down sooner, but he'd wear out all the same and he reached for the last can. Gonna make a dandy fire.

The cans empty, the old man backed off some and studied the sheen of oil on water. Satisfied, he bent to strike a wooden match, the glare momentarily reflecting his turquoise and silver bracelet. He flipped the match against a side wall, a corner of the willow branches caught, stuttered as if to go out, then spread into fingers of side fire and suddenly woofed into sheeting conflagration. A thousand mallards left the lake, maybe two thousand, it was a little early for the migration.

It made him fucking itch.

________________________

Hank Edson and Dwight Twill sat on the bow of Hank's big eighteen foot johnboat, hip waders cuffed like firemen's boots, legs hanging in the water at what was left of number sixteen blind.

There wasn't much.

She was burned to the waterline, a portion of the west wall still standing and blackened, charred timbers held together by nothing more than chicken wire, most of the pilings merely smoking stubs barely above water. Hank swung his legs in slow circles, ripples on the lake widening to gently rock a scurf of ashes. It was six-thirty and neither had eaten the breakfast begun at the clubhouse, a carton of eggs open on the counter, refrigerator door still hanging wide where Hank rummaged for bacon and orange juice when he heard Dwight's exclamation from the dining room.

"Oh, Jesus."

He'd just emerged from his bedroom off the far corner of the dining room, a cluttered nest he'd occupied since becoming Hank's help, hunting companion and best friend eight years earlier. Sleepy-eyed and half awake, hopping on one sock foot from the doorway, pulling a muddied pair of jeans up his other leg and thinking about coffee, he'd glanced out the dining room window to check the weather. Weather was a heartbeat on the island---every activity and plan depended on it. Far down across the yellowed cornfield, past the boat ditch and out in the direction of Eckles lake, a dwindling pall of smoke rose above the tree line.

"Jesus what, pardner?" Hank's hand hovered over the orange juice.

"Fire on the lake, or what's left of fire."

Hank left the door hanging, forgot the coffee burbling its way through the Mr. Coffee and took a half dozen strides to the dining room window. "Shit." He said it softly and headed for the back door, pulling on hip boots in a half jump, half run to the Jeep. It flashed through his mind that he may as well take his time, but adrenaline left little choice. Whatever had gone up was obviously well beyond saving and the whatever must be number sixteen blind. He knew the island well enough not to be wrong. But he could be wrong and it was the could be that made him fumble with the Jeep key and damn near flood the engine. As he backed out of the shed, spinning gravel, Dwight was swinging in beside him with a grabbed shotgun and one boot still in his hand.

They'd left the dogs, but dogs are good at remembering what masters forget when all hell breaks loose and both Chesepeakes bounded behind, following the Jeep the length of the cornfield to the boat ditch. Hank was already in the small vee-bottom as Dwight and the dogs clambered down the bank, but he hefted the gas can, judged it near empty and with a curse jumped to the big eighteen foot johnboat. That tank was full and Dwight shoved off while Hank pulled the engine to life and pretty near laid him and the two Chessies on the bottom with the careening lurch to full throttle. His own much-enforced rule on the boat ditch was idle speed, but Hank opened her up, throwing a rooster-tail as he stood in the stern and skillfully avoided submerged stumps only he knew were there. The smoke was a thread now, straight up in morning-quiet air and he judged it as they flew across the water, bow down and running flat. Possible that it was someone burning brush on the far shore. Possible, but not bloody likely.

As they roared from the reeds at the mouth of the boat ditch and into mile long Eckles Lake, the evidence no longer supported a could be or a possible and he cut the engine to idle, surveying the total destruction of the blind two hundred yards out. If he'd had any real hope, his heart would have sunk but he'd known what to expect and the most he could muster was a momentary clenching of teeth and then the relaxation of acceptance. Dwight said nothing. The two Chessies looked back to him, questioning the full throttled and now idled engine. They approached the still smoking debris cautiously, like coyotes winding a dead animal and that's how they came to be idling their boots in the water like a couple of fishermen with nothing biting. Dwight was the first to speak.

"Jesus . . . "

Hank reached down and picked a spent shotgun shell off the bottom of the johnboat and tossed it into the floating ashes where it bobbed, brass end down. "Two solid weeks of work on that sucker, the season ten days off and that motherfucker burns me out."

"Gart?"

"You better believe Gart." He flipped another shell to join the first. "Gart Haggard's behind every burnin', breakin' in, low life bit of mischief ever done on this island."

"Could have been kids."

"Bullshit, kids!" He made a wave with his boot that sank one of the low-riding shells. "Kids hot-wire their old man's car, go joy riding, maybe start a bonfire out in the woods, might take someone's privvy and hoist it on the barn roof. Kids don't burn down blinds unless they hate the guy what built the blind and there ain't no kids down here what hate me. Most of 'em fish my lakes an' I ain't never run one off yet."

"Still . . . "

"Still nothin'. He's got four blinds back over there in the bay, one of 'em not twenty yards from my property line. Got a mind to burn 'em all down to the water, right now, right in broad daylight." He reached out and scratched Lurch's ear and Shorty nuzzled up jealously. "But that ain't my way. Burnin's Gart's way and his ways ain't never been my ways."

"So?"

"So now I build her again, an' if that cocksucker burns her, I'll kill the sonofabitch."

"You don't mean that."

"Don't mean what? That I ain't gonna build her, or I ain't gonna kill Gart?"

"Well, you for sure ain't gonna kill Gart."

"No, I ain't."

"And you'll never get her up again, not in ten days with what all the other stuff you gotta do and me not here to help." Dwight pulled one leg up to the gunwale and watched the water run off his boot. "Damn, Hank. I got two valve jobs and a transmission rebuild waitin' on me. I'd stay . . . you know I'd stay, but I gotta get back to the garage. No one there but Freddie an' he can barely pump gas."

"I know." He swamped the remaining shell. "You get back an' get on top o' what you need to get on top of. Maybe you can get down here Friday night an' let Freddie handle the pumps over the weekend." He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. "I just gotta keep myself out of town. The mood I'm in, if I saw that old fuck sittin' on some barstool, I'd jerk him on the floor an' stomp him. Not a right thing to do to an' old man, so I guess I'll stay put a few days."

"You could call the law."

"The law?" The laugh came again. "Don't tell me about the law . . . I've tried the law. Where was the law when he broke the padlocks off my barn an' stole four thousand decoys? Where was the law when he cut all my power lines two winters ago?---cut 'em in little bitty pieces, none of 'em a yard long. An' the season he drove across my land to get his hunters to those raggedy assed blinds he leased on the south shore. Brought 'em with the headlights on, right past my best blinds an' laughed in my face when I caught him at it. One winter the pickin' shed burned, another the levies was all busted up, so many times I can't count 'em we had small blinds burnt an' one year when I was gone but a day, a whole fifty acre cornfield went up. The law said 'swear out a complaint,' the law said 'show us your witnesses.'" Hank waved a hand across the charred and floating chips. "Find me a witness for this."

"But . . . "

"But! Yeah . . . but. But the the law don't mean shit. Gart's local, been local, growed up local like his grandaddy, supposin' anybody knew his grandaddy. The law in Mason County don't work against local."

"You'll never get her up."

"Hell I won't. Get her up if I have to work nights to do it."

And he did. Rebuilt a blind that took ten days in five, but it took it's toll as well, both on Hank's body and the other chores that piled up ahead of the season and went undone.

When they got back to the clubhouse, the dogs disappointed that nothing more than a sudden trip had been accomplished, he reached into the still open refrigerator door, fried a dozen eggs, frozen hashed browns and a pound of bacon. They ate and wiped the plates with what bread was left over from last night. He waved Dwight off toward the ferry and headed for the barn.

On the back step he pulled on sneakers, then sat down for a smoke before gearing up for what would be a long day, the first of a bunch of long days. The berm just south of the house was overgrown, tractor tracks down its spine and a forties-vintage International Harvester pickup that he'd meant to haul away slumped at the far end, its hood up and wheels long gone. The color at one time had been green and was now faded to that special hue bestowed on old wrecks by forty years exposure, a vehicle with a weathered face, windshield cracked and the rubber molding peeled back, side windows shot out. The stuffing of a seat back, grazed by shotgun pellets gaped like an open wound, helped along in its disintegration by mice. The body was rusted, pimpled with the acne of a hundred idle shots, a blasted and bruised long-dead horse. The weedy slope shored up his major equipment from flood waters and defined itself sharply against a hundred acres of thin corn stretching to the south, shimmering in waves of late September heat. A hundred acres damned near drowned in June, gasping now for water, stalks the sickly green of drought, leaves no longer reaching but bent at half mast like tired flags surrounding the thin, partly kernelled ears. Such was this strange country that mired a truck in mud while crops failed from lack of rain.

He walked toward the barn, past a double disc with a harrow chained behind, crumpled next to the ramp, pulled there in the spring, its discs shiny from work three months back and now tinged with an edgeline of rust. Thin grass, as all the grass was thin, reached slender stems up, through and between the disc blades. To his right lay a scattering of fifty-gallon barrels that he'd planned to move into the south shed, two still standing and one with a greasy barrel pump projecting from its bung. The faded lettering declared Quaker State 30 Wt Premium Oil, but only Hank remembered the various and viscous fluids it had held. Whatever needed storage, that was his way, the way of farm country and no one threw away a good barrel. Insecticide, herbicide, gasoline, kerosene, diesel fuel, the residue of each and every containment quietly sludged in various crankcases, chainsaws and outboards. Behind the barrels stood another long-spent pickup of indeterminate age, but clearly marked Dodge Power Wagon across its toothless grille, a rusting cream-of-tomato soup color, its hood up and doors hanging. One rotting leather work glove with the thumb eaten away lay on the dashboard, surrounded by nails, the top part of a gate hinge, a crumpled empty pack of Lucky Strikes, three keys, the stub end of a carpenter's pencil, the broken off two and a half feet of a six-foot folding rule and mouse shit. One tire remained and raised her right hip in the air like a dog marking territory. The gas cap was missing, as were the headlights, like eyes gouged out, their cable optic-nerves hanging from rusty sockets. But no one had shot her up, at least not yet. This should have been the week to clean up all this shit, but now there was a blind to rebuild.

The trickle of debris in partial use had its headwaters at the toe of the slope and the flow increased by tributary until it became a river at the barn doors. Scattered there, a two row seed drill, its top flapped back and auger rusted tight, the trip lever bent; a six-bottom plow, the moldboards showing spring use, a single-axle ammonia tank with a flat tire and broken tongue; a sickle-bar mower leaning against its power take-off tube, several blades missing from the rusted bar and a pail of extra blades tipped in the weeds. An agricultural war zone, with heavy casualties and more wounded likely at any moment; rivets and cotter pins scattered across the oak ramp, three washtubs of empty outboard-engine oil containers led to the open barn door, flanked by small piles of goose decoys, some with heads missing and some just broken, but all marked Edson on the bottom in black marker. Gotta get after them suckers too.

He paused just inside the slid-back door and the smell turned heavily musty, a combination of odors common to old barns, equal parts heavy grease, spilled oil, leather harness, burlap, shelled corn and dirt. An aggregate aroma that comes only from such places, with no fragrance of earth but the unique smell of dirt lain long under boards that have been peed upon by horses, maybe cattle and surely men. A smell born of other things but nurtured by constant gloom, the prevention of light that determines a well made barn.

Stuff hangs in barns until it rots and falls away and Hank's was no worse than average. Spikes driven into beams suspended a lifetime of gear and for the most part not his lifetime, but someone's. Here a coil of BX, there rusty tractor-chains to fit wheels long gone. As his eyes accustomed to the gloom, coils of rope emerged, ripped raingear and rotting harness, blocks, tackles, gears and a pail half full of old spark plugs. He knew it all by heart. Copper wire in spools, steel wire in coils, extension cords with one or the other plug-ends missing, burlap bags, a tractor tire tube and two-man crosscut saw, the blade carefully greased. Dwight must have put that away. Spools of decoy line and molds for pouring lead anchors. Baling twine, baling wire, barbed wire, electric wire, a spool of solder and a harness of acetylene hoses, the torch hanging head down, a bottle-opener with Coke cast in the metal and spiked at a convenient height. Yeah he thought, things do go better with Coke. He sighed and lit another cigarette.

Walls bore heavier stuff and looking for an axe he stepped gingerly over nail kegs, the fender of a Jeep, wheels and tires, separately and mounted, hammers, scythes, scoops, shovels, spades, picks, mattoxes, hay-forks, garden-forks and manure-forks, some with broken handles, others with their wounds wrapped in black tape. All of them used to a state of shiny wornness against callused hands. Each cross brace between the studs was a treasure of matchbooks, bottle caps, bent nails, burned-out fuses, tube-glue, blades, teeth, bottles, boxes, screws, bolts, shafts, pins, cotters, pins for cotters, grease guns, grease fittings, hinges, pins for hinges, gaskets and clamps. Everything overlaid in a fine mist of chaff, barn swallow shit and dust, webbed against the wall, some of it undisturbed for decades.

The axe lay against the far wall. The floor he walked was planked down the center, dirt on each side under both eaves of the sloped roof. A tall old Farmall single cylinder row-crop tractor faced him, its iron lugged wheels set against the end wall. The huge flywheel and narrow-canted front wheels waited for work like an ancient draft horse, needing neither grain or water. It gazed at him expectantly through dusty headlamps.

The south wall sheltered an engine on a chain hoist, several transmissions or parts thereof, an anvil and six tanks of oxygen and acetylene. Against the wall three outboard engines of various age and horsepower stood on stands, their covers lying nearby, most of a cannibalized Jeep, its hood up and an underwash of small parts and scraps, grist for Dwight's mill. The north side had once been horse stalls and through the barred tops of the old doors decoys were piled floor to ceiling, their anchor ropes wound around the bodies and necks.

Loading an axe, a logging chain and the chain saw onto the old Farmall tricycle tractor, he chugged off into the deep woods behind the clubhouse and after a bit of searching found a grove of young ironwood, the Chessies bounding along in better spirits than his. But the focus of actually being at it helped and he soon lost himself to the work.

If burning was Gart's way, then work was Hank's.

He cut sixteen six-inch diameter ironwood, limbed them with the axe and cut them to length. With the logging chain he dragged the bunch to the edge of Eckles Lake, within sight of Gart's closest blind and the burnt stumps of number sixteen. He walked the poles across two hundred yards of shallow water underlaid by sneaker-sucking mud to the blind, one across each shoulder, the tips dragging behind and every step a struggle. Stumbling to his knees a dozen times, he staggered the load to his feet and kept going. He tied them off to the charred stumps and drove the old tractor in three hours after dark, mindless with fatigue. He ate eggs again because they were quick and they were there, then collapsed into bed.

On Tuesday morning Hank was up at five, breakfasted on pancakes and made himself a half dozen meatloaf sandwiches. He put two thermos bottles of coffee with extra cream and extra sugar in one of the Jeeps, along with a pole driver and the dogs and headed for the boat ditch. Chugging out to sixteen, the false dawn behind him mirrored the levee to his right and the scrub woods to the left. A half dozen mallards rose ahead of him, the big lake a deep violet reflection against a dawn sky. He anchored the johnboat and using the boat as an unsteady platform, began driving piles, narrow end first into the mud bottom. The pile driver consisted of an eight inch galvanized pipe, four feet long and capped at the end, weighing forty pounds. One at a time he slid the driver over the end of a pole, muscled it into an upright position, then climbed into the boat to begin driving. Slide the driver, slam it down. Again. Then again. By nightfall, twelve poles were set and he was too tired to keep going. Five tons raised above his shoulders, five slammed. Hardly able to pull the starter cord on the forty horse Mercury, it caught on the first pull and he motored in at quarter throttle, arching his back and shoulders to ease the stiffness.

He ate stew he'd thrown together in the Crock Pot that morning and it brought his spirits up. Not a bad day, twelve posts set and another four tomorrow would get him setting platforms. He'd have to ripsaw the timber lying behind the barn and wasn't keen on using the big saw without anyone on the place, just too damned many ways to get hurt working alone, a thousand small slips from which a lone man wouldn't recover. He lay down on the couch for just a moment before the news and woke at two in the morning, showered and fell into bed until five.

Wednesday he cut and trimmed twenty floor planks from cedar and near fifty side boards from the pile of silver maple logs. He drove the last four piles and bolted in the platform supports by late afternoon, had a couple sandwiches and thought about keeping going. A long haul from the barn to the boat to the blind, but he loaded the cedar planks, brought them out on the lake and floored the two shooting stands by the light of a Coleman gas lantern.

Thursday and Friday everything he turned his hand to seemed a chore, every nail threatened to bend and every board splintered a finger. She was a mite rough, but the emerging structure was workmanlike and he knew he'd make it. He spilled a ten pound box of nails into the lake and cursed himself, salvaged what he could and kept going. Dwight would help him brush it out Saturday. He'd called Thursday evening at midnight and woke him.

"Where the hell you been?"

"Out dancing with pretty women. Where the hell you think I been?"

"I've been callin' since seven. Figured you'd got hurt or something." "Well I hurt plenty, but I ain't been hurt. Just out there with the lantern strung, pounding nails." Hank scratched at the back of his neck and stretched his shoulders. "You got any idea how many nails there are in ol' number sixteen blind?"

"A bunch."

"Yeah, a bunch don't half say it. Think a man's wrist would toughen up, but mine feels like someone ran over it with the Jeep. You get all them little old ladies' transmissions an' such fixed?"

"Yeah." Dwight paused. "Was gonna tell you how hard I worked, but guess I'll just keep a wrap on it."

Hank chuckled. "When you comin' down?"

"Saturday morning. I don't quite have it all tied up here or I'd be down tomorrow. But I'll get her shipshape by Friday late an' be there by seven. How far along are you?" He could hear the smile in Dwight's voice. "Got the piles in yet?"

"The blind ain't the only thing got piles from liftin' that driver, but I'll have her all ready but the brush by the time you're here, if brushin' ain't above your talents."

"No shit. You got her up?" "No shit, but there ain't much left of me."

"Pretty good dancin' girls, huh?"

"Pretty good."

___________________________

Seen from across the street, Washburn's was a local joint, down to the yellow-brown tar paper siding printed in brick pattern. Three times a year the little weathered saloon loaded up with hunters, once during the duck season and twice again when the split deer season brought a different crowd. The other ten months a few local farmers nursed beers. A lighted Pabst Blue Ribbon sign hanging at a disconsolate angle identified it as Washburn's Tavern, but to locals and hunters alike it was simply known as "Wash's." A muddy Chevrolet pickup of uncertain age with a missing tailgate was pulled mostly off the apron of Highway 78 in front and other than that, there were few cars in the small weed covered parking lot.

Inside, to the left of the entry a pool table occupied most of the space between the men's and women's toilets. This particular early evening a half dozen teenagers chalked cues, squinted their shots through cigarettes dangled Paul Newman style and gave pained looks to whoever needed the toilets as a shot was lined up. Four local farmers sat at the bar, the conversation drifting between slaughtered pigs, price supports and the Saturday basketball game against Beardstown. The long room was paneled in smoke darkened pine, a scattered collection of calendars, the schedule of high school home and away games and yellowed tear sheets from HI-LO Sales, all thumbtacked or stapled to the wall. Suspended over the bar, six beat up and tired looking amateur duck mounts hung from wires, turning slowly in the cigarette smoke; two mallard drakes, a hen with part of a wing missing, a wood duck, a canvasback and a bluebill, all of them forlorn and heavy with dust. Alone and apart from the farmers, sat an old man in full gray beard and weathered camouflage at the far end of the bar. He tapped the bottom of his empty beer glass on the bar and the barmaid took her eyes off the boys at the pool table, looked his way and raised her eyebrows, questioning.

"Guess that'll do her, Charla." He pulled a five dollar bill from his wallet and slid it across the bar, a silver and turquoise bracelet on his wrist. "Keep the change."

"See ya Gart."

She folded the five, picked up the glass and wiped the wet rings left on the bar. He brushed wordlessly past the pool players and the screen door banged closed behind him.

Wash's was running in the middle gears at eight o'clock on this early fall evening, the few old men talking crops and kids nursing beers at the pool table was a full house for Wash's. Soon enough duck season would open and the joint would be packed with hunters jostling one another at the bar, filling the long-empty belly of the jukebox with quarters and the air with lies about missed shots and filled limits. Briefly the joint would swing, but the old saloon stood its ground unsteadily, the printed brick nailed over old board sheeting and coming away at the eaves. Charla wiped the bar with a wet rag.

"He don't change much, does he?"

"Who, Gart?" Charla glanced up at the kid nursing a Blue Ribbon, emptied his ashtray and swiped at the bar again before setting it down. "Nah, he's just here and always has been, just like this wreck of a tavern. Don't think he looks a damn bit different then when I came to town twenty years ago." She chuckled and retrieved her cigarette from the astray below the bar, tapping off the long ash. "I just get older and more beatup and this joint gets older and more beatup and old Gart, he stays the same. Wonder sometimes if he's human."

"Bought me a beer last week, just like he was my grandaddy or something and sat here and jabbered away. Tonight he don't even know who I am, might just as well be someone who fell in off the highway." The kid glanced over at the worn pool table, listened to the click of balls and thought about taking on the winner for a buck a game. Maybe finance another couple of beers. Maybe go home thirsty. "Can I bum a smoke, Charla?"

"The coach catch you in here, Dickie, poundin' down Blues and smokin' my cigarettes, he'll set your sorry-ass on the bench a week." She reached for the Winstons and shook out a cigarette, leaning across the bar.

"What's he like, Charla? Eighteen years, I been growing up in this godforsaken town and I still can't figure the old man out, what makes him tick. Seems he'll work all day in the sun, helping some fella fix up an old beater truck and the next week damn near kill him over something don't mean shit. One day buy me a beer, the next time don't even seem to know I'm here."

"That's just his way, Dickie. Gart Haggard don't like anybody to know him too well"

"Shit, Charla, that's what everybody always says, it's just his way. The kid took a drag on the cigarette and glanced again at the pool table. "Is it true, that story they tell about Gart and the game warden?"

"Yeah, it's true." She sighed, glanced at the Budweiser clock over the bar and took another drag on her cigarette. "You woulda been still in diapers back then. New fella from the state Department of Conservation took over here in Mason County an' I guess he figured it was his ticket up the line to something bigger in Springfield. Gonna throw his weight around and make a name for himself. Not that old a guy, maybe early forties and all spit 'n polish, all rules and no bullshit. Wore one of them Smoky-Bear hats, set dead level on his head.

"Folks weren't all that crazy about him, they don't like a fella that takes his wardening too serious, partic'lar with the locals and partic'lar on their own land. But there was no getting around this guy, he'd as soon bust a farmer killin' a deer out of season as he would some over-shooter from Chicago. Didn't matter the farmer had kids, maybe a bad year with his crops, just mattered that it was the law. Folks will put up with that shit during the season, when the woods are full of temporary deputies and most of them local kids anyhow, but some ways it just don't seem right to have the law in the woods, off-season. Anyway, he knew about Gart and he knew some of the other old boys who still market hunt every once in a while. Hell, everyone knew about Gart, even in Springfield maybe especially in Springfield. This fella thought he'd build himself a name and put a stop to all that."

"How about another Blue, Charla?"

"You got money, Dickie?"

"Aw c'mon, Charla. I only got these two quarters left and I may just play some pool. I'll pay you Tuesday." She sighed and popped the cap on a wet, cold bottle. "So, then what?"

"Well, he made a bunch of mistakes and one of 'em was comin' on too strong, comin' on like John Wayne, like he was gonna clean up Mason County and make it run the way he had in mind. Even then, might have been all right, some folks are ready for that. Ready to forget the old days and tired of folks runnin' as loose as they were, but he started talkin' about Gart. Talkin' about how the old man wasn't above the law any more'n anyone else and how he was gonna nail him one of these days." She stubbed out the cigarette.

"Not all that smart to shoot your mouth off in this county. Not ever really, but partic'lar not when you're new and should be getting the feel of the place, finding out who's close to who and what really counts. Folks here need to like their warden and if they do, everything goes smooth as glass. This fella wasn't all that likable an' that was one mistake, but shootin' his mouth off about Gart was really dumb. Not everybody down here likes Gart, but he's part of the history in some ways and folks don't take to someone from the outside tellin' 'em how they're going to straighten everythin' out. Partic'lar with a badge, they ain't all that crazy about badges. The next big mistake was going after Gart alone, without any backup. Thought his badge was enough. Thought that pistol he carried and that Smoky-Bear hat was enough." She stepped away to open a beer for one of the farmers, then came back and reached under the bar for cigarettes.

"These are big woods and big swamps down here and he's lucky he ever got out alive, goin' in there after Gart alone."

"From what I heard, he didn't get out. They had to bring him out." Dickie stubbed out the cigarette, eyed Charla's pack of Winstons and decided not to ask.

"Yeah." She stooped to the cooler, pulled two Blues and walked them to the pool table, picking up glasses on her way back.

"It just kept buildin' up between them, the warden tellin' Gart front of folks that he was gonna bust him and Gart just laughing at him or bumpin' him as he left the place. He liked to bump folks, when they got too close, but it wasn't fun and came to be a line drawn 'tween the two of 'em. The warden took to followin' Gart and the old man would lead him all over hell's half-acre, just baitin' him and edgin' the law, never steppin' far enough over."

"And then?"

"Well, Gart's never owned up to any of it, so you just have to piece together what comes of the story and court records. As near as anyone can tell, he finally caught up with Gart and a couple of his buddies, somewhere below Chicago Island with a couple boats full of ducks 'fore the season. But he'd gone alone, as I said and there wasn't no way old Gart was comin' in at the end of nothing but a badge, not when they were all out there with shotguns. I guess they went along with him, from what was said said later in court, until they got on dry ground and then jumped him. Beat him unconscious and stripped him naked. Cuffed him 'round a tree with his own handcuffs and left him there in the middle of the night. He'd a never been found, not in that deep country, but someone must have tipped off the law. Maybe even old Gart himself, who knows? It'd be just like him. Anyway, they found him two days later, conscious but near dead an' a lot of accusations were made, the three of them arrested and a trial down to Havana, but nothin' ever come of it.

"The warden didn't have no one but himself for a witness and the three of 'em had alibis a foot deep. That warden never put on a uniform again. They retired him out of the department an' his nerves an' health were too shot to ever work at anythin'. I hear tell he moved back upstate somewheres. Don't know if he's even alive now. A few people had guts enough to ask Gart, usually when they've had a few too many beers. He just looks mournful, says he don't know a thing, but that wardenin' is a tough job and a man ought not to do it alone."

"Is it true about that bracelet he wears, that it won't come off, that his arm's just growed around it?"

"Well, Dickie, he claims he killed an Indian when he was just a kid. Claims he took that bracelet off'n him and had the GH put on it down to Havana. Slipped it on his wrist and then just growed up to the point where it wouldn't come off no longer."

"No shit."

"Aw hell, Dickie. It's just mostly one of them stories he likes to tell, but he's awful partial to it. Likes to show how it won't come off over his wrist. Says he's wore it over sixty years an' never had it off, but I reckon it's somethin' he bought or just found someplace. Didn't kill no Indian, that's just Gart's mouth runnin' off again. Solid silver though and got some pretty turquoise stones in it. That bracelet's as much a part of Gart as what teeth he's got left, but you don't want to smart-off about it, he's kinda keen on that story about the Indian and all."

"What about that story about him and his wife?"

"Dickie, I got other things to do than stand here and tell you stories about old Gart."

"Guess I'll shoot a game or two of pool."

"Well then, get on with it an' if you get lucky and win a few games, don't forget that beer ain't paid for." Charla moved down the bar to pick up some empty glasses and thought about Gart and his wife. She guessed it was true enough that Gart had come home after three days gone and found no dinner ready. Cornered her in the broken-down trailer they lived in and beat her black and blue, then ripped her clothes off and threw her out into the snow. They say she cried and pounded on the door for near two hours 'fore he let her in. The old man must have a thing about strippin' people and puttin' 'em out. She was over fifty when he done that. A hard man, old Gart. Ran by the only rules he had and they were all his rules. An' yet, when she'd pretty near lost Wash's, near ten years ago Gart had somehow found out about it and came in near closin' time one night. Shoved an envelope with two thousand dollars in it across the bar an' mumbled "here, Charla, you need this." Seemed embarrassed an' wouldn't let her refuse, wouldn't even take a note. Took her most of two years to pay him back, fifty or a hundred at a time. Gart always nodded, stuffed the bills into his shirt pocket, never counted ‘em an' never even took a free beer.

It didn't make them friends. He didn't expect that, wouldn' allow that, but she reckoned it made them something, if not friends.

Strange man.

______________________________

Hank looked up and scanned the lake, searching for the whistle of bluebills. They came low across Wilson point, bunched in a knot with the quick wing beat of diver ducks. He mouth called them, rolling his tongue in a buzzing, high pitched shriek and they turned like blackbirds, all in a single flash of wings to tilt past him not ten feet off the water. Locals, he thought. Too early for migrants, not yet time for the masses of divers, the bluebills and canvasbacks and scaup that would sweep down and across the Great Lakes, then follow the Illinois and Mississippi rivers in a great funneling cloud to Louisiana, to the Gulf and on to Mexico. He pushed the cap to the back of his head and watched them beat a path down the middle of Eckles Lake.

Too soon for migrant ducks, but for sure the early teal season was just a week away, then a three-week closing until the regular duck season opened and, Jesus, there was still so much to do. Yeah well, that's the way its always gone, always will go. Even with Dwight's weekend help, rebuilding the torched blind took a week he didn't have right before the opening. Won't get anything done on the Woodie Swail blinds this year, just have to make do and brush 'em out, hope for the best. Eighty yards of levee needs repacking and topping too, pardner. You won't get to that either, have to keep your fingers crossed she holds through the spring floods.

Man, it just never stops . . . need the water, got to have the water and then it always comes at the wrong time. Too goddamn much when it does come or else nothing, drying the island, testing your patience and experience, teasing you into an early planting. Then a rush of water, all the water clear north to Chicago slides into this country and if a levee fails, two months farming wiped out, washed away and nothing to do but start over, start late, plant ninety-day corn and hope it works. Hope, that's the ever present tantalizing state of mind that carries you from season to season like a man marrying for the third time in a triumph of expectation over experience. Foolish to try and carry this place alone. The boy will never want it. He glanced back across the lake, watching an outboard near Windy City Gun Club tow a small floating blind to anchor.

Connie's right, you're out here carrying it all on your back, doing the work of ten men and losing ground. Yeah, but Connie doesn't realize that when it works, it works. When it all comes together, then the sweat and the worry and the bills and the endless mud don't mean a thing and it carries like a feather, works like a perfect reflection of what was here hundreds of years ago, the feed and water and wood lots in a harmony of wings. Every day in balance and it's better than sex, better than your lifeblood, better than anything you'll ever know again and it does come together. Maybe not as often as you'd like, but often enough, it does come together.

Jesus Hank, you're getting crazy as hell, in love with a place, with a damned piece of land. Yeah, but men die for land, always have. They hunger for wealth and argue philosophy but they die for land. Call it what you want, but crazy's not the word. Maybe not, but God knows Connie thinks you've lost it. You're all but moved out of the farm for half the year, then rattling back a day or two at a time in that old truck, always bringing something broken to fix and hauling it out the next day with a wave and a grin and a quick kiss. She laughs at you, but you know it hurts her. She'd probably even understand better if you had a babe on the side somewhere. But a place? Being left for a place? She'd cut your balls off if it was a woman and be done with it, maybe done with you too. Someday she'll have had enough of this as well, and then what will you do?

Like you've always done, you'll make it. Made it with Dad's business when it just dropped on you, not knowing shit because he'd never really taught you anything except how to do the work and the seasoning, the working with clients and architects and banks were all lessons to come when school was suddenly let out and he died in your arms on a perfectly ordinary morning duck shoot. You did it because there was no way not to do it, kept Mom together as best you could while she drank herself to death out of lonliness, met the bank notes, kept it from sinking while you struggled and worried and kept that confident grin on your face, no matter that your stomach was an ice cube. But you knew it would work out, knew you could do it. That lesson learned in a rice paddy in three hot, stinking days of confusion and death and two endless nights of fear, came to know that nothing would ever be that bad again and if you lived to get back to base the rest of life would be a joke by comparison. It hasn't been a joke, it's been what it is but you always knew you would make it work and making it work brought you Connie and the kids and a life ninety-nine percent of the world hasn't the faintest chance of even conceiving, much less living. It's been good, but you made it good and she helped you every goddamned step of the way.

Remember talking about buying the island? Remember that long winter, when you knew the place could be bought and you kept bringing it up to her like a dog who just keeps dragging a bone back inside the house? You wore her down just like a dog wagging your tail and insisting you could handle it, keep both places and the business running. Told her you needed it, fucking needed it, like a cokehead begging another line. You wouldn't give it up, kept dragging it back in and dropping it at her feet.

Well, you got it, pardner. Got it and had it for twenty years now and where are you? Standing here whistling at bluebills and trying to keep ahead of it. Yeah, the business is okay, but it's just okay and you know it, nothing to what it could be if you were teaching the boy like your father should have taught you. A fair distance short of what you'd promised yourself and promised her. And the farm is okay, in fact the farm is probably the most okay of all, but half of that, better than half of that is because Connie's there. Because Connie makes sure it's okay. Fertile and productive, never floods, never blows away, every fence painted, every building perfect. The house perfect, Connie perfect too because she keeps it that way. Keeps it for you to come back to when you've gotten your fill of the season and yearn for the smell of clean sheets and the feel of her next to you. The look in her eyes when you come rattling into the yard for a night's sleep, then fidget around 'till you leave again is always the same. Is it over yet? Have you had enough yet? Are you through with that other woman yet, done with her smell and tired of her body, ready to come back to me?

Your eyes hardly ever meet anymore when you get packed up to leave. You've gotta have a talk with her and you know it, a long talk, a meaningful talk that doesn't turn into a shouting match, that recognizes her point of view. Gotta settle this all out somehow and make her understand, give her what she needs and keep what you need. Gotta spend more time with the business and the boy too, while there's still a business and a boy to spend time with. Remember, pardner, how this all works, what the machine is that keeps it all going. Don't lose yourself down here, don't lose it all and don't lose Connie.

Hell, the kids are okay, grown or mostly grown. Young Hank keeps the business patched but you're too hard on him, expect too much and are never there. Only twenty-one and you expect him to be tough, tough with the crews and tough with the clients. Well shit, he can handle it. You handled it at his age, he'll be okay. You just gotta spend a little more time with him, pat him on the back every once in a while and let him grow with it. Jeanne gets married next summer and that's all she ever wanted, all Connie ever wanted for her. Get married and have kids and bring them over on Sundays, pray they don't grow up to be duck hunters. You can be home on Sundays, most of them anyway except during the season. The rest of the year you can make sure your ass is home on Sundays. You and Connie need to talk that's all, need to get it out on the table again.

It'll work, it just needs talk.

Maybe after the season. After you've closed up, picked up five thousand decoys or chopped them out of the ice, if there's ice. After everything is packed away and moved to high ground. After goose season down at Crab Orchard or Rend Lake, a couple weeks in Arkansas hunting someone else's land and not worrying about breakfast for twenty hunters, not thinking about busted blinds and lost decoys and frozen-in johnboats. Someone else's Jeep with the transmission locked up. Yeah, talk it out with Connie.

Maybe then, after the season.

Right now, pardner, you deal with what you deal with. Get it ready, as ready as you can and take it from there. Only twelve hours of daylight, another six in the barn to patch things that need patching.

That's all there is. Deal with it.

If Dwight makes it down again on Friday night, that'll be a help. Somehow, you'll get it in shape and like every other season, the members will come down and need to be picked up at the ferry. They'll kid each other through pancakes and eggs at 5AM, stumble out to the blinds and have a good morning or a bad morning or lots of ducks or no ducks and come dragging in again for dinner. Expecting dinner, expecting it to be pulled together and wonderful. And it will be pulled together and wonderful, just like it's always been, because they know it will be and that's the magic. That's why the island exists and that's why you make it happen and that's why you and Connie need to talk, because of the magic.