Dagger Key and Other Stories

“How about some coffee?” he asked. “I was going to make another pot.”

Once again she surprised him by accepting the invitation. As he fixed the coffee, she moved about the cabin, keeping away from the center of the room, touching things and stopping suddenly, like a cat exploring new territory. Now and then she would glance at him and flash a nervous smile, as if to assure him she meant no harm. She possessed a jittery vitality that drew his eye, alerted him to her every gesture. He set a cup of coffee on the table and she sat on the edge of her chair, ready to take flight.

“I didn’t really want coffee,” she said. “It’s just living out here, I don’t get to meet many people.”

“You’re not renting, then?”

“No, I…no.”

Her mouth thinned, as if she was keeping something back.

“What are you doing up here?” she asked. “Vacation?”

He told his retirement story. Her attention wandered, and he had the idea that she knew he was lying. He asked what she did.

“I…Nothing, really. I take a lot of walks.” She came to her feet. “I should go.”

Maybe, he thought, paranoia just took a while to develop in the Upper Peninsula. He followed her to the door, watched her start toward the lake. She turned, walking backwards, and said brightly, “I’m sure we’ll run into each other again.”

“Hope so,” he said.

He stood in the doorway until she was out of sight, sorting through his impressions of her, trying to distinguish the real from the imagined. “Trouble,” he said, addressing himself to the shadows along the shore, and went back inside.

That night Shellane had an unusual dream. Unusual both as to its particulars, which bore no obvious relation to the materials of his life, and to the fact that he rarely remembered dreams. He was walking in a roiling gray fog so thick it seemed like flimsy tissue, scraps of the stuff clinging to his clothing. Visibility was severely limited and he was afraid, yet determined. As if on an important errand. Soon a rambling building with a gabled second story partially materialized from the fog. It was fashioned of black boards and had a look of false antiquity redolent of the Gas ’n Guzzle, suggesting that it, too, was a quaint facade housing some less savory enterprise than might be expected. The windows were shuttered; no light escaped from within, and yet there was light enough to see. Except for the weeds that sprang up here and there, the surrounding land was devoid of vegetation. Jutting from the side of the house was an architectural feature he couldn’t quite make out, but seemed curious in some way…At this point the dream had faded. He recalled fragments. Shapes in the fog. Someone running. And that was all.

As though the dream were made of the same clingy stuff as the fog, its imagery stayed with him all the following day, as did his brief encounter with Grace. She had, he believed, been interested in him. Because he was interested in her, he questioned whether he might be flattering himself; but he was not given to assuming that every woman with whom he spoke was attracted to him. He trusted his instincts. She had to be fifteen years younger than he. It would be foolish to get involved with her—under the best of circumstances she would be a problem, and these were far from the best of circumstances.

That evening, however, he went for a walk along the dirt road that followed the shore, half in hopes of running into her. Her cabin, set among the trees high on the bank, was more a house than cabin. A deck out back. Satellite dish on the roof. Light sprayed from a picture window, and Grace was standing at it, wearing jeans and a cable-knit white sweater. Curious about her, wanting to get closer, he climbed the bank to the right of the window. Her head was down, arms folded. She looked miserable. He had an urge to knock, to say he was passing by and had spotted her, but before he could debate the wisdom of obeying this urge, headlights slashed across the front of the house. Rattling and grumbling, a big blue Cadillac at least thirty-five years old pulled up beside the house and the reason—Shellane suspected—for Grace’s misery climbed out. Avery Broillard. He clumped to the door, knocked his boots clean, and went inside. Grace had apparently retreated into the rear of the house. Broillard stood in the front room, hands on hips. “Fuck!” he shouted, and made a flailing gesture. Then he stomped off along a corridor.