Chapter Three
Victoria’s Arrival
Victoria drove her Honda Element up 31 North through Traverse City, Elk Rapids, Charlevoix, and Petoskey. Compared to the limited views from the factory windows of her rented flat, a million windows opened before her along the roadway--little shacks and stone cottages, cherry orchards, fruit stands, roadhouse restaurants, white-framed farmhouses and barns, small towns and roadside parks, the infinite glitter and gleam of the Lake Michigan shoreline--scenes of life experienced in far different ways than her own. She looked through her rear view mirror at a farmer riding his tractor in from a field. She thought, “How does he see the world? How does he measure what is going on before his eyes? How does he think the world ought to be? How does he assign guilt or innocence? What does he think of this little burnt orange vehicle passing him by?”
The two-way highway occasionally widened to passing lanes, and along the cinder berm deer lay every so often, dead, hypnotized by headlights then compressed and exploded by the hard rubber of tires and the metallic impact of a car or truck. White crosses marked the spot of human accidents covered over by weeds. Victoria thought, “I have been a slow-to-act person my entire life. I would have stayed working at that mill until I retired had I not been laid off. I tend to under-react. Is that what killed these people and animals, not being fast enough, smart enough to do something about what’s coming at you full speed out of a dazzle of light?”
As she headed north out of Petoskey towards her father’s home on the Crooked River, she saw a marina on the western edge of Crooked Lake. She stopped to see if there was a pontoon boat that she could rent for a week, and that way she could make a “grand entrance”-- arriving at her father’s place by water. She also thought that since she had not visited her father for over a year, she had no idea what she would find. The house boat would give them both their own space.
While she was in the marina office, the afternoon sky darkened, and rain started to pour down. The temperature dropped ten degrees in just a few minutes. She noticed that all the rental boat slips were filled, and asked if the small house boat at the end of the marina docks was available. It was about 25 feet in length with an aqua-colored sliding board at the stern next to a 60-horsepower outboard. On top of the three pontoons, a white squarish cabin sat like a large ice cube--it was a cross between a meat locker and a beer cooler--something that would have burnt her cheeks with embarrassment in her adolescent years. On the outside of the cabin, a large-lettered sign advertised, “Rent Me” with a phone number. It reminded Victoria of her Honda Element that she had affectionately nicknamed, “Lunch Box.” Scratchy saw the boat as a giant litter box. At least they both would be out the weather; neither Victoria nor Scratchy were nuts about baring themselves to the wind and rain.
When the dock boy came up to Victoria with his clipboard, he did not know he was dealing with a former quality inspector. Victoria wanted to make sure her deposit was refunded, so she found scratches, cracks, and other flaws in the boat for the record--a crack in the outboard engine cowling, paint nicks on the gelcoat, gouges in the bumpers, a faulty microwave, and many more notations--the boat had been well-used. Finally, she cast off and followed the channel markers in the lake to the entrance of the Crooked River. After negotiating both a lock and a swing bridge, she was on her way. She had kayaked to her father’s place some years ago, so she knew the bends in the river.
The ancient Inland Waterway was created when the last great ice sheet retreated from what the native people called Lake Algonquin 10,000 years ago. Victoria entered the waterway at its southeastern edge near Lake Michigan at Crooked Lake. The Waterway then connects through the Crooked River to Burt Lake, through the Indian River to Mullett Lake, and finally through the Cheboygan River to the town of Cheboygan on Lake Huron--about 48 miles of woods and marshes across the "Tip of the Mitt" of Northern Michigan. This was a major trade route whereby the early people could travel by canoe and avoid the harsh wind and currents of the the Great Lakes.
Victoria sat in the captain’s chair in the cabin just off of the bow deck. There were no windshield wipers, but she could crane her neck and squint her eyes enough to see where she was going through the rain. Her large round brown eyes worked slowly and methodically over the seascape as she kept looking for the next green channel marker.
She saw a bald eagle with a huge fish in its beak coming in from the big lake, two minks playing in the shore rocks, and a lone fawn in the marsh by the river with its head turned back towards the woods that bordered the marsh.
As she gently turned the wheel from left to right and back again, she said to herself, “What is this that I am doing? I feel primitive moving through this meandering flow of water. I don’t know whether I am floating or sinking, leaving or arriving, and if one or the other, am I floating, sinking, leaving, arriving in a place or a state of being? I feel like I am dreaming and waking inside one of those gray clouds above me. Am I seeing with my eyes or with my imagination?” She cycled in and out of a trance-like state as she progressed, at one moment in full sensory awareness; in another, seeing with her imagination. She was physically and figuratively going around bends in the river. “I’m going through an experiment right now,” she thought, “something like I did with materials in the quality control lab but without the controls in place. Isn’t this interesting? I wonder what’s going to become of me?”
Her awareness jolted to full alert as she saw her father’s cottage looming up quickly to her left. She pulled the throttle down in sharp reverse, but not in time to avoid an abrupt landing into the side of the deck. As the boat began to swing stern end out into the current, she saw her father appear just in time to grab the bow line. She turned the propellers in towards the deck, and let the boat come back while Nick quickly tied the bow line to a post. At last, he grabbed the stern line and secured one of the ugliest pieces of watercraft he had ever seen.
“Since your life has to be so ungodly boring up here in the north woods, I thought I would drop in and bring you a bit of excitement,” Victoria yelled over the weather.
“You’re so right, sweet daughter,” he replied, “I have been just so bored, I’ve broken down and started doing charity work.”
“Is she part of your charity work?” Victoria looked at Mindy as she limped out onto the deck. Mindy looked like she had just been jumped on and injured by a large animal. Her hair had come undone, and her blue eyes were watery and wide, bouncing between Nick and Victoria, wild and wary. Her forehead looked cut, and her knees were skinned.
“Your father just jumped on me when your boat hit the deck,” Mindy said.
“He does that once in while when something sudden happens. It’s a left over from Vietnam. He jumped on me once, too, when we were walking along a trail, and he thought woodpeckers were small arms fire,” said Victoria.
Mindy felt like everything was reversed. Here were two truly bat-shit crazy people, and yet, she had to admit that she was the one who appeared to be insane. It was the glitter of humor in Mindy’s eyes from this revelation that endeared Victoria to her at once. She had no idea who this woman was or how she was related to her father, but she seemed okay. As Victoria stepped off the boat, her big eyes blinking a little, she looked Mindy full in the face, gently gripping her arm, and said, “Let’s go inside and get acquainted--I’m shivering to death out here.”
And so these three began to talk into the night, a bit awkwardly at first, like roots reaching to grow into the rich, moist subsoil of the marsh. Other than their quiet voices on the deck by the water, the only sounds were water lapping against the moon-bleached rocks, and the rustle of wind through the reeds and snake grass.
By ten o’clock, Victoria had heard her father tell the story of his life to a woman that he had only known for a few hours. He told the truth as she understood it, but he selected certain things for emphasis, and glided over topics that Victoria knew in much greater depth. For example, in covering his career with the Navy, he described how much he wanted to be a Navy Seal, and how rigorous the program was. He did not tell Mindy that his two tours in Vietnam involved working with the CIA to track down American deserters, and in some cases, kill them. He did not mention that for the last ten years of his career, he wore a pony tail and did sexual harassment training for the Navy and Marines.
When Mindy asked Victoria to tell her story, she opened her window of self-disclosure more widely than usual, and slowly removed the flimsy protective cocoon that she used for self protection. “I was the middle child in our family. We were always moving around when father was in the Navy, and then settled in West Michigan when I was in high school. My parents argued about money a lot. My mother grew up with money, and liked to have a lot of nice things that we couldn’t afford. My father would do most anything for her, but things weren’t all that easy, and I always felt like there was a thin line running through our family--between getting by or not getting by, between getting along or breaking up the family. So when we all could, we left. Ruth Ann got a scholarship, studied drama in college, and then married a cattle rancher in Texas. Jim joined the Navy out of high school and was killed in Afghanistan.”
“So you wanted to be on your own and be independent,” remarked Mindy.
“Yes, so I went to work for this paperboard mill after high school. I got myself a loft apartment in an old factory building, and I would still be there if they hadn’t laid me off.”
By the time it got to Mindy’s turn, it was pushing midnight, and everyone agreed it was time for bed.
Nick said, “Victoria, you don’t need to sleep on that boat. Why don’t you take one of the bedrooms down the hall, and Mindy, I think you should stay over. I’ll set you up in the boat house loft so you have some privacy.” So Nick helped Mindy out of the house and up the boathouse stairs, gave her fresh towels, a flannel shirt, and a chaste kiss on the forehead, an act that pleased Mindy so much, she smiled sweetly back at Nick, and said, “Thank you, handsome.”
Nick then returned to the house, and found Victoria already under a comforter in the smallest bedroom. Nick said, “You probably wondered whether to come up here and visit me. I’m glad you did.” He also bent over to kiss his daughter, but she placed her hand on his arm, and said, “Father, tell me a story like you used to when I was a young girl.”
“What about?” Nick said.
“Tell me about the minks we saw playing in the rocks tonight.”
Without hesitation, Nick began. “Mr. and Mrs. Mink live in a comfortable little den in the rocks by the river. They are very busy because they have over six hundred children and grandchildren, but not so busy as the beavers whom they despise for being over-achievers. Mr. Mink doesn’t work nearly as hard as Mrs. Mink. He likes to hang out at the local Eagles Lodge for Minks, and takes many days off from fishing. Mrs. Mink, on the other hand, is always busy, and only takes time once in a while to paddle her pink paddle boat down the river to visit her friends and relatives.”
Just as when she was a child, Victoria was fast asleep before the end of the story. Nick kissed her and shoved an old stuffed teddy bear under her arm that he had been saving for just such an occasion.
