In the Lake of the Woods. Tim O’Brien

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       9

       Hypothesis

      Maybe it was something simple.

      Maybe Kathy woke up scared that night. Maybe she panicked, just walked away.

      It’s conjecture—maybe this, maybe that—but conjecture is all we have.

      So something simple:

      He was yelling bad things in the dark, and she must’ve heard him, and maybe later she smelled the steam and wet soil. Almost certainly, she would’ve slipped out of bed. She would’ve moved down the hallway to the living room and stopped there and watched him empty the teakettle on a geranium and a philodendron and a small young spider plant. “Kill Jesus,” he was saying, which would’ve caused her to back away.

      The rest must have been automatic. She would’ve turned and moved to the kitchen door and stepped out into the night.

      Why? she thought.

      Kill Jesus. That brutal voice. It wasn’t his.

      And then for a long while she stood in the windy dark outside the cottage, afraid to move, afraid not to. She was barefoot. She had on a pair of underpants and a flannel nightgown, nothing else.

      A good man. So why?

      Clutching herself, leaning forward against the cold, Kathy watched him pad into the kitchen, refill the teakettle, put it on the stove to boil. His movements seemed stiff and mechanical. Like a sleepwalker, she thought, and it occurred to her that she should step back inside and shake him awake. Her own husband. And she loved him. Which was the essential truth, all that time together, all the years, and there was nothing to be afraid about.

      Except it wasn’t right. He wasn’t right. Filtered through the screen door, his face looked worn and bruised, the skin deeply lined as if a knife had been taken to it. He’d lost weight and hair. His shoulders had the stooped curvature of an old man’s. After a moment he lay down near the stove, sunburnt and naked, conversing with the kitchen ceiling. Not the man she’d known, or thought she’d known. She had loved him extravagantly—the kind of love she’d always wanted—but more and more it was like living with a stranger. Too many mysteries. Too much walled-up history. And now the fury in his face. Even through the screen, she could make out a new darkness in his eyes.

      “Well, sure,” he was saying. “Shitfuck Jesus.”

      Then he said, “You!”

      He chuckled at this.

      He jerked sideways and clawed at his face with both hands, deep, raking the skin, digging in hard with his fingernails, then laughed again and muttered something indistinct.

      A bit later he said, “Beautiful.”

      Again, Kathy felt a little gust of panic. She turned and looked up the narrow dirt road. The Rasmussen cottage was barely a mile away, a twenty-minute walk. Find a doctor, maybe; something to settle him down. Then she shook her head. Better just to wait and see.

      What she mostly felt now was a kind of pity. Everything important to him had turned to wreckage. His career, his reputation, his self-esteem. More than anyone she’d ever known, John needed the conspicuous display of human love—absolute, unconditional love. Love without limit. Like a hunger, she thought. Some vast emptiness seemed to drive him on, a craving for warmth and reassurance. Politics was just a love thermometer. The polls quantified it, the elections made it official.

      Except nothing ever satisfied him. Certainly not public office. And not their marriage, either.

      For a time Kathy stood gazing at the night sky. It surprised her to see a nearly full moon, a stack of fast-moving clouds passing northward. She tried to inventory the events unfolding in her stomach. Not only pity. Frustration. The fatigue of defeat. The whole election seemed to have occurred in another century, and now she had only the vaguest memory of those last miserable weeks on the road. All through August and early September, after the newspapers broke things wide open, it was a matter of waiting for the end to come exactly as it had to come. No hope. No pretense of hope. Over the final week they’d worked a string of towns up on the Iron Range, going through the motions, waving at crowds that weren’t crowds anymore. Accusing eyes, perfunctory applause. A freak show. On primary day they’d made the short flight back to Minneapolis, arriving just before dark, and even now, in memory, the whole scene had the feel of a dreary Hollywood script—the steady rain, the threadbare little crowd gathered under umbrellas at the airport. She remembered John moving off to shake hands along a chain fence, his face rigid in the gray drizzle. At one point, as he stepped back, a lone voice rose up from the crowd—a woman’s voice—not loud but extraordinarily pure and clear, like a small well-made bell. “Not true!” the woman cried, and for an instant the planes of John’s face seemed to slacken. He didn’t speak. He didn’t turn or acknowledge her. There was a short quiet before he glanced up at the clouds and smiled. The haggard look in his eyes was gone; a kind of rapture burned there. “Not true!” the woman yelled again, and this time John raised his shoulders, a kind of plea, or maybe an apology, a gesture vague enough to be denied yet emphatic enough to carry secret meaning.

      In the hotel that night she found the courage to ask about it. The early returns had come in, all dismal, and she remembered John’s eyes locked tight to the television.

      “Is what true?”

      “The things they’re saying. About you.”

      “Things?”

      “You know.”

      He switched channels with the remote, clasped his hands behind his head. Even then he wouldn’t look at her. “Everything’s true. Everything’s not true.”

      “I’m your wife.”

      “Right,” he said.

      “So?”

      “So nothing.” His voice was quiet, a monotone. He turned up the volume on the TV “It’s history, Kath. If you want to trot out the skeletons, let’s talk about your dentist.”

      She remembered staring down at the remote control.

      “Am I right?” he said.

      She nodded.

      “Fine,” he said, “I’m right.”

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