Heartache on Sable Lake – Part 1

Dear blog friends, I’m working on a book of short stories about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This is the beginning of one of those stories (Part 1 of 5). I hope you’ll read and comment – anything you say will help me make this a better story. Thank you!

Sable Lake had that look. The one that said maybe it’s calm now but the wind will probably kick up later and you’ll be sorry you thought it was a good day to canoe.

            They put in anyway. Backed up the truck to the top of the boat ramp and unloaded their forest green Old Town canoe. They’d bought it after their old red canoe melted in a fire that also destroyed their summer home and every thought they’d had about Lake Superior being a restful and safe place.

            Diane and Max had canoed Sable Lake for twenty-five years, first in an old aluminum canoe that took three people to carry, then in their beloved red one, the loss of which seemed almost sadder than the house itself burning to the ground, and then their new, well, relatively new, fifteen-year old, wide-bottom canoe with wooden seats. It was a very seaworthy little boat, so steady and sleek. They used the wooden paddles from the old canoe. They’d been stored in a shed that had escaped the fire. Diane’s was the one with blue painted on the handle. Max’s was the long one. He sat in the back and steered.

            The old guy from town was at the boat ramp. He’d parked his station wagon next to the picnic table and was smoking a cigarette, leaning on his car door. His car was a woody – wood panels on the doors – an antique car really but what set him and his car apart was the canoe rack made out of birch logs and branches. His canoe was lashed on to the rack with rope, old rope that had probably dragged logs he’d illegally chopped down for firewood. Diane and Max had seen him there before, smiled and said hi, but never got into much of a conversation. Birchie was his name. Fitting they always thought.

            “Looks like you got yourselves a nice day,” Birchie rubbed out his cigarette in the sand and put the butt in his pocket. He wore a grey flannel shirt that flapped below his green Michigan State hoodie. If he was a graduate, it had to have been decades ago.

            “Yep, think so. But, hey, you never know around here.” Max did the talking with Birchie. Diane just smiled and nodded. She always felt talking to Birchie too much could go weird places. There was a limit to how much she wanted to know about a guy who built a canoe rack out of birch branches.

They carried the canoe down the boat ramp. It could get slippery so they both wore sneakers. The sneakers would get wet when they waded into the lake but that was better than slipping on flip flops or risking going barefoot. Settled in after a few precarious moments, Max gave the word to shove off and they paddled with short quick strokes to get away from the dock. Then they paddled out and around the dock to go up the eastern side of the lake. It was their normal route, leading almost right away to a cove where, in the summer, there were lily pads and sometimes tiny turtles sunning themselves.

            It was late October now and this was probably their last paddle of the season. After this, Diane and Max would close up the summer house and go back home to Milwaukee. Superior in the winter was too much for them now. When they were younger and stronger and not so nervous about getting snowed in or having a heart attack trudging through drifts to get to their door, winter was wonderful. The lake was fierce and beautiful, the mountains of ice that formed by mid-January both astonishing and so, so scary. They never let their two dogs run loose on the beach then. Too risky.

            Diane settled into her seat in the front of the canoe. It always took a while to get adjusted, make sure her sweatshirt wasn’t bunched up under her life preserver, fix her hat so it wouldn’t blow off in a sudden gust, and, for sure, smooth out her jeans. There was nothing worse than trying to adjust anything after they were underway. She also wanted the water bottle and binoculars where she could reach them. They had a bald eagle friend on their route, and she wanted to see him one last time this season.

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Watch for Part 2 tomorrow!