WILSON LAKE, read a tall green sign posted on redwood beams, surrounded by the emblems of clubs and lodges and churches of the town. Then another mile of jacketed pines.
Then a hill and a dip and the lake showed itself: just patches between the trees, a blur, the blue a murmur below the noon-white glare. The houses that appeared were not the bins of siding they’d seen for the last day, but triangles of stone and brown wood, frames of wood, walls of wood, jutting up like cabins, or in A shapes, from clearings in the pines. Names on signs out front by the driveways: WEE SLEEP, GREASY LAKE. And the mailboxes were fancy too: not just plain black U.S. Mail, but barns or jolly men with mail holes in their stomachs or monster animals whose heads hid the box.
“What the fuck is that one?” said East.
“It’s a badger,” said Walter.
Ty said, “A what?”
“A badger. It’s the state animal. You ain’t heard of badgers?”
They zigzagged quietly, getting the layout. There wasn’t much. Big old houses. The lake was mostly round—half a mile across, maybe. Two beaches, three ramps, and a little strip of quiet stores. Three streets running parallel, a handful of connectors, and one road that looped around the far side of the lake. The address, Walter figured out off his page of scratchings, was 445 Lake Shore Drive. That turned out to be the road that circled the lake.
There on the far side, the houses were new, cabins and party houses, with skylights and roof decks thrust high like helipads, gas grills left out in their weather shrouds, flags East had never seen flying everywhere, in driveways, over doorways. He wondered at them as they drove by. People here were gonna know each other. Wedges of pines curtained the lots off, but next door could be a yard of noisy dogs, or a single nosy lady. It was a neighborhood. You never knew.
Some squirrel or small creature zipped in front, and Walter pumped the brakes: East looked up. Nobody watching them.
They were so tired.
“This is it,” Walter announced.
The driveway forked. Two mailboxes at the foot, 435 and 445. Quietly the van crawled past: no other cars on the road right then. No one near, no one to mark the van cruising slowly. The house was an A-frame with bedrooms popped out on either side of the base. Two stories. Jagged corners with log-cabin beams, a grayish mortar holding them together.
Big windows cut either side of the door, and no flag.
“Big house,” East said. One little sport truck out in front, black.
“These are vacation homes,” said Walter. “Big and empty. By the way, shouldn’t you wake your brother up? He might want to see it.”
East peered back, tried to see Ty. “Naw. Let him sleep.”
Two women approached, jogging down the road. In their fifties, wearing thin fleeces and mittens with reflectors. They raised hands at the crawling van, and Walter raised two fingers back. A natural.
No yards full of dogs. No high decks nearby with neighbors looking out over the trees. East’s eyes ran a check automatically.
“Phone wires come in there,” said Walter. “Pole behind the house, lines in on the back to both houses. We could take them out.”
“Why? They got cells.”
“But do they get a signal out here? Negative bars,” Walter giggled.
East grunted, eyes on the woods. A tire-track path led back into the woods behind the row of houses that included 445. “You could park the van and walk up on that, get in from the back.”
“Watch out for badgers,” Walter said.
They looped back around the lake and headed into town. Found the police station, small, tucked behind the firehouse. Two black-and-whites in the lot and one unmarked, a little white SUV with good cop tires and a winch. Good to know.
“I got to sleep, man,” said Walter. “I keep thinking I’m gonna throw up.”
“All right,” East said. His exhaustion had begun crashing down.
Walter put them back on the highway, the pines ever closer and closer around them, and cruised up until they found the next little village with its lake. It was smaller, this lake, the banks rough and muddy, the public lot an old reach of concrete leading down to some crumbling boat ramps. The homes along the shore had once been vacation homes, but the people living in them were no longer vacation people. Broken chairs and propane tanks in the yard, small sedans turning the color of dirt.
“We found the ghetto lake,” East remarked.
“The people’s lake,” insisted Walter. “You think it’s safe?”
“We got guns.”
Walter laughed and set the parking brake. The whole lot banked downward to the shallow, dark beach.
“Your brother,” said Walter, “that boy can sleep through anything.”
“I’m full awake, son,” Ty spoke up.
“Better sleep,” admonished East. “We gonna need to be awake and available later on.”
“Oh, I will be.”
They closed their eyes on the bright, final day.
11.