Page 68 of God’s Country

We broke camp, Stan and I doing all the work. We loaded our canoe and shoved off. As we paddled past the stranger’s canoe, I studied him. He was a good twenty years younger than me. Nobody shaves in the Boundary Waters, and the dark stubble across his cheeks and jaw indicated he’d been in the wilderness several days. In death, his face looked calm. I tried to tell myself that if you had to die, God’s country was as good a place as any. It was a useless thought.

I’d stayed with the Kennedy brothers in the hope of preventing what had just happened. I’d utterly failed. If I had tied them up and gone for help, maybe things would have been different, this man still alive. We make our choices and have to live with the consequences. I felt the weight of this man’s death on my heart, a heavy debt to be paid. I made a solemn promise to myself. If anyone else was going to die, it would be me or the Kennedys. And if it was me, I was going to do my damnedest to take those two brothers with me.

CHAPTER 37

We stopped a couple of times for Ollie to hit the woods while his system continued to clear out the toxin from the raw morels. Even so, he was eventually ready to eat again. We drew up for lunch at a rocky point on a lake called Hunter.

Using tortillas and the peanut butter and honey in the bear canister, Stan made PBJ rollups. Ollie wolfed down three, along with a Snickers bar and some dried apricots. The man was a human garbage can. Then he lay in the shade of a birch tree for a quick snooze, the gun in his hand at his side.

As we’d paddled that morning, Stan kept checking the sky, noting whenever we didn’t seem to be heading north.

“You’re stalling,” he said. “That man told us we could be in Canada tonight.”

“If we paddled hard and went due north, maybe. But like I told you before, I’m trying to keep us away from the lakes where the search for you two will most likely be conducted. And the lakes don’t lie in a straight line anyway. We go east a little and west a little, but each time we go north some, too. We’ve crossed the Laurentian Divide. Water flows north now, toward Hudson Bay. Everything takes us eventually toward the border.”

It was true that we’d crossed the divide, but the rest was bullshit. I could have led them to Canada by nightfall, but if what I had in mind worked, crossing the border would be off the table.

I wasn’t hungry. Despite the hard work of paddling, I had no stomach for food. Stan ate more slowly than his brother. He still seemed reluctant to look me in the eye.

“I’m sorry about the man back there,” he finally said, staring at the lake.

“Tell that to his family.”

“My brother’s always been reckless. Never thinks.”

“He’s not reckless. He’s sadistic.”

“We are what we’ve been shaped to be.”

“That’s a load of crap. But I’m sure it helps you feel better.”

“I’ve done a lot of things I regret, but I’ve never killed a man.”

“You just stand by and watch your brother do it for you.”

He was quiet again, then said, “I’ve told you that I have two boys.”

“And how are you shaping them?”

“When I see them, I try to do a better job than my father did with me or my brother.”

“And how is what’s gone on here in the woods going to help with that?”

“This is about giving them what they’ll need in life, so they won’t have to do the kinds of things our father did or we’ve sometimes had to do. I’m not proud of who I am. I want my sons to be better than me.”

“What about the sons of the man who’s dead back there?”

“You don’t know that he had sons.”

“I don’t know that he didn’t and neither do you.”

“I told you I’m sorry.”

He may have been sincere, but I was in no place to hear his confession. Ollie was snoring at our backs. I turned and looked at him and eyed the Glock. Stan must have understood my thinking because he said, “He’ll shoot you before you go two steps.”

“How will you get out of this wilderness then?” I asked.

“Like my brother said, someone will come along. If you stay alive, we don’t have to hurt anyone else.”