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  She wondered whether he had Oriental rugs from Turkey on the floor in his Chicago apartment and oil paintings of Josephine’s family on the wall, a grand piano like the one the Delanos, for whom she was a nanny by day, had in their living room even though nobody played—real china from England, maybe Wedgwood, a complete silver service on the buffet.

  Dr. Irving Grove had said it was a lucky break William had met Josie, who was from a family with money. Or if not with money, then certainly upper-class.

  Upper-class? Whatever that was. Mrs. Delano was upper-class but not the Groves. The Groves were too intelligent for that. Too educated.

  As far as Clementine could tell, being upper-class only held you back in life.

  Mrs. Delano had not been to school at all, so who would want to have a serious conversation with her, since likely she had learned nothing more at home where she had been educated than how to fold her husband’s underwear and crochet the seats for the chairs in her dining room and smile at men in a flirty, submissive kind of way.

  Clementine had been to Spelman College in Georgia and had a Bachelor of Arts degree, which her mother Essie framed and put up above her bed in her own room, where she was a live-in at the Groves.

  James Willow was a strange man, Clementine thought. Did he think she would be pleased to have him sitting there beside her? Did he think he was appealing and she would be flattered to find him inching closer—his arm just barely pressing against her side, one leg resting against her outstretched legs hidden in high fisherman’s boots?

  “William came to this camp as director several years ago,” James was saying. “And then he fixed it up—more or less fixed it up. It’s primitive but nice. You’ll find it nice. And then he hired me maybe in the second summer, and on that first canoe trip headed up the Bone River, it was only me and William. And Josephine in Chicago pregnant with Georgianna,”

  James had a wet stick in his hand and was breaking it carefully in tiny pieces, collecting in his lap.

  “Just us, and from the start I didn’t like Josephine,” he said, clasping his hands together, rubbing his knuckles against his chin. His jaw, sharp-boned, was set.

  Clementine wrapped her arms around her legs, rested her chin on her knees.

  Did she want to know why? went through her mind.

  Don’t get involved, her mother had told her many times. White folks’ secrets can bring you down.

  “I don’t know Josephine,” Clementine said. “This is the first time I’ve met her.”

  “Josephine wants me fired,” James said. “I don’t know that for a fact, but it is true and is going to happen sometime, one summer or the next or the next and I love it here and I love William.” He put his hands to his face as if to stop himself. “I dislike her.”

  He had a handkerchief in his back pocket and pulled it out and blew his nose.

  “I can’t control myself,” he said. “I’m terribly sorry.”

  Clementine took off her hat, shook the rainwater and put it on the back of her head.

  “Sometimes that happens.” Her voice to her surprise was soft. “We just can’t help ourselves.”

  James got up, ran his fingers through his straight blond hair, a nice-looking man, Clementine thought, not handsome exactly, more of a pretty face than a strong one, but he was appealing. Not the man she had expected him to be.

  “I don’t know why I blurted out,” he said. “I’m not that sort of person.”

  He didn’t finish.

  She watched him walk off toward the water, away from the bank where the others were having lunch. She was glad he’d left—the conversation hanging in the air between them. Had he remained sitting next to her, his fists together as if he were about to use them, then what to say?

  Clementine had not spoken with Josephine except Hello when the trip began, but she would not have recognized the beauty now lost in flesh that William’s uncle had described when he came home from their wedding in Ann Arbor.

  Even on the open river, the sky above them, a sense of fluid space, of change, Josephine Grove’s silence was palpable. Fury is what it felt like to Clementine.

  Lucky she’d come on this dreadful trip if for nothing else than to protect Roosevelt from the sense she had of trouble.

  “TONIGHT,” WILLIAM WAS saying to Josie as he stood preparing to leave, “when we get to Missing Lake and after the tents are up and we’ve eaten dinner, let’s put Georgianna in the tent with Adelaide and sleep together in the smaller tent.”

  She didn’t reply.

  “And then when we get to Minnie HaHa, if you still want to go to Ann Arbor, I’ll see that you get there.”

  “I’ll be taking Georgianna with me.”

  “Of course,” William said, a sinking in his stomach.

  CLEMENTINE HAD STOOD UP, her hands in the pockets of her rain slicker, and William could sense even at that distance she had her eyes on him, walking in his direction straight-backed, her head high. Haughty.

  The first time William had visited Clementine McCrary at her house on the corner of V Street and 14th, it was late February, daylight, a Saturday. He had brought cold meat and beer and leftover corn pudding from his uncle’s ice box. Not the last time they shared a meal at her house and talked about their hopes and dreams.

  She had left the front door unlocked, and William walked in without knocking, stepping into the living room where Clem was standing at a window, her back to him, watching the steady fall of snow. Her hair up, off her slender neck, a dark green dress, probably silk, narrow at the waist, articulated the length of her body, the strength of her shoulders, and William was stirred by the sight of her.

  “Welcome,” she said. “I was hoping you’d drop by and make this shabby house of mine a home.”

  Later, at dinner, the baby sitting under the table banging a frying pan with a wooden spoon while they ate, Clem told him about Roosevelt, how his father had left for Texas as soon as she was pregnant.

  Left for good, she said.

  THE CLOUDS HAD LIFTED, the sun had come into view coming on three in the afternoon, a golden sun, the color of a tangerine, richer than orange and soon to begin its drop from the sky in the west, north of the ambling storm clouds. The wind had died down too, and William walked along the bank, lifting the canoes, pushing them back into the river.

  “We might make it to Missing Lake before dark,” he called, holding Georgie’s hand, his arm tight around Josephine’s waist as they headed down the small embankment.

  The water was dazzling now, striped with light and color, deep blues and a mossy green, pale yellow across the rippling surface.

  Roosevelt was already seated in the bow when William reached the first canoe and lifted Georgie in, Josephine holding tight to his waist for balance.

  “William?” Josie’s voice in his ear was flat. “I don’t like the new cook.”

  AFTER DINNER—late since they had arrived at Missing Lake at dusk—the group dispersed. James to the river. The air was preternaturally still. No stars. A dim trace of crescent moon. Dark except for the remains of the campfire and the shadowy figures of counselors milling about.

  By ten, most everyone had gone to bed except James, standing on the bank with his back to the river, his hands folded behind him. In the darkness, he could make out the figure of William standing next to Josephine in front of the tent where they would sleep.

  Josephine was sitting in a folding camp chair.

  James kept track. He knew that the cook had gone for a walk after dinner, upriver in the direction they were heading, walking along the bank, but he had not seen her come back unless she’d slipped into her tent. That was possible. She was stealthy, that cook. He doubted she could swim.

  He had feelings about Clementine—inaccessible to him, but they may only have had to do with his anger at Josephine. Just the fact of Josie in his private life.

  Careless to have confessed to the cook his feelings about Josephine.

  He thought too much about his emot
ional life—unmanly, his father used to tell him—but he couldn’t help himself. He was bothered by Clementine and wished William had not asked her to come to camp and wondered why he had brought her and what was between them if anything, and then he wondered why in the world would he feel jealousy about a colored cook, a servant, even an educated servant.

  She had no currency in James’ life, so why take an interest?

  But he could not help himself.

  He liked the son. Roosevelt. He was a quiet boy and hardworking, without an attitude. Handsome. He would be handsome—deep brown with hazel eyes and full lips, high color to his cheeks.

  Near midnight and James waited for the chance to speak to William alone, for Josephine to go to sleep or into her tent, inside her sleeping bag. She was a sleeper, Josephine, and wouldn’t be waiting up for William to lie down beside her. She didn’t have an interest in lying with William or she wouldn’t have gotten so heavy. At least that was the way James interpreted her sudden weight gain in the last two years, although he never mentioned anything about it to William.

  Clementine was upon him before James even realized she was walking on the bank, swinging her arms along her hips, long arms, slender like the rest of her.

  “Hello,” she said. “Pretty wet out tonight and the bank’s slippery.”

  “Don’t fall in,” James said.

  “Not my landscape,’ she said. “I like city dirt.”

  James had paid enough attention to women to know that this one had an attitude, a sharp tongue, a beauty that eluded him, but he felt her sexuality in the air and guessed that she had more of a sense of James than he would have liked for her to have.

  “Heading to bed?”

  The question just fell out of his mouth.

  “Don’t think so,” Clementine said, and walked on, stopping by her tent, lifting the flap and checking on Roosevelt.

  “Restless,” she said to no one in particular.

  From the river, James could hear William’s voice. He was speaking to Josephine—on and on, and then he said in a voice carried through the air and clear enough for James to hear:

  I’ll be right back to bed, darling.

  Darling!

  James didn’t move.

  William was coming down the hill with a flashlight, headed in his direction, and for a brief and perfect moment, James believed that William was coming down to speak to him.

  But in the circle of light spreading into the dark, William turned away, headed toward the tents pitched by the river and stopped next to the shadowy figure of the cook, who was standing beside her tent, one hip up, her hand at her waist.

  So Clementine must have been the reason William had come down the hill.

  James would wait. Surely William would see him, wonder why he was on the bank looking at the blackness that was the river and would stop to say something to James, even just goodnight.

  But William did not.

  “I’M SORRY THE weather has been so wretched, Clem,” William said, coming up behind her.

  “The weather isn’t high on my list of sorrys.” Clementine put her hand on a tree, leaning her weight against it. “My own stupidity in coming is a sorry.”

  “The summer will be good,” he said. “Especially for Roosevelt. I’m pretty sure of that.”

  “I doubt I’ll get any pleasure at the camp—in fact, my summer looks grim in this godforsaken geography, but I’m here because of Roosevelt so he won’t drown in the lake or hear a lot of nonsense from your white boys.”

  “I know that.”

  “This wasn’t a good idea.”

  “It might prove to be okay,” William said, folding his arms across his chest—he could feel his heart beating against his wrist. “Things will be different once we get to camp.”

  MISSING LAKE

  June 17, 2008

  From the Memoir of Thomas Davies

  (for publication)

  Everyone at the campsite seems to be sleeping—even Oona, who has squiggled into my sleeping bag and is curled up next to me with her thumb in her mouth. I can feel her puppy breath silky on my shoulder.

  But I am too excited to sleep.

  On this night, sixty-seven years ago, maybe with the same stars, the same shape of moon, a silver crescent cookie in the sky tonight, Josephine Grove was murdered.

  Someone had a rope and slipped up beside her in the dark and strangled her.

  I know it’s creepy, my interest in all this, and I can imagine my father saying, not in his usual gentle tone of voice: Cut the crap, Thomas.

  But I cannot help it.

  It’s unlikely but possible that Josephine was killed in her tent and then the killer carried her up the hill. But what a lot of trouble that would have been! According to Georgie, she was found away from the rest of the travelers, halfway up the hill where we were sitting tonight, so either the killer carried her with a rope already around her neck or she had left the tent, in the middle of the night, maybe to pee, and the killer’s plan was in place so he did it there to be efficient.

  I’m inclined to believe it was my great-grandfather who killed her. Why would he choose to go to prison for the rest of his life and leave his only child to be raised by her grandparents if it wasn’t necessary. It could not have been Roosevelt, even though that’s what my uncle Nicolas has in mind. Uncle Nicolas spends a lot of time thinking about conspiracy ever since he took this job with the almost President Obama, but a seventy-seven-year-old man called Roosevelt whom we’d never heard of until this Christmas—dangerous?

  I don’t think so.

  Besides, Roosevelt is not related to me. If he were the murderer, it would be a less interesting story to tell when I go back to school in the fall.

  I have had troubles at school more than I care to mention. Not that people make fun of me because of the way I speak, chopping off my sentences at the end, something that is going to get better when I play Malvolio. Or the fact that I’m the boy I am, which is different.

  I’m kind of an untouchable. People are attracted to me in spite of themselves, but that doesn’t change my situation.

  What would change things is for me to have a better story than I have. I’d tell my story to the kids at school and in no time at all I’d be well known all over the place. Or at least well known at Alice Deal Junior High.

  The story that I do have is of a boy—smart enough but a poor student, not a bad athlete, a slight speech problem, a boy whose father died of a brain tumor, who lives with his grand-mother and mother and a ton of long-term visitors at the Home for the Incurables.

  I don’t exactly fit in. I don’t actually want to fit in, but I don’t like fitting out either.

  Before he got sick, my father told me that I needed to find something I could do well. Better than others. Maybe even the best.

  Something in athletics is what he suggested since sports is the normal thing for a boy to want to do.

  “You’re fast,” he said. “And you have excellent eye-hand coordination.”

  My father was not at all athletic. He was a research physician and worked in a lab—day and night, sitting on a stool looking at cells under a microscope, and when he came home, he read.

  Some nights after dinner he pulled the table back in the dining room, turned on the music and danced with my mother. Those were the favorite nights of my childhood. I especially loved it when he had his arm lightly around her waist, his fingers spread wide on her back and dipped her so her long hair brushed the floor.

  And then he’d spin her across the room and, leaning against the yellow wall of our dining room, he would kiss her on the lips.

  I hope I will find a girl with whom to dance, although I am afraid I have bad breath.

  I told my father that my best sport would be baseball and that my best position would be pitcher.

  “Good,” he said. “Perfect for eye-hand coordination.”

  It was the year I was nine, and my father began to come home a little early from the lab and prac
tice pitching with me in the grassy field between our apartment building and the next one. Hours we practiced. In the beginning it was not what I wanted to do after school, but I did it because I knew practicing pitching wasn’t something my father wanted to do either and he was doing it for me.

  Not that I understood what good it would do me to learn to pitch a baseball, but I got good at it. Better than good.

  When my father was in the hospital off and on for a year, I would visit him and he’d want to know about baseball since I had joined a team that I was good enough to join but not good enough to be a star. He’d ask how my pitching was going and I would say it was great although it was not great because I wasn’t pitching. I was playing second base, but it pleased him to hear about my pitching— I suppose because he had put so much time into it himself—so I’d go on and on, play by play.

  Out at first, I’d say, two strikeouts, bases loaded, up by one run in the final inning. And I didn’t let in another run.

  Then I’d go home actually excited, believing I had told him some of the truth, maybe exaggerated, but it was possible in the future for me to be that good.

  He was never going to get to see me play, so I had told him a story of what might be true.

  MY MOTHER THOUGHT it would be a swell idea if I joined a group of kids who had a dead parent and we got to talk about it together. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings because I knew she was trying to help me out, but I couldn’t imagine anything worse. So I went once—she dropped me off at the Methodist Church where the group was meeting at seven on a Thursday night, and I went in the front of the building and out the side door to a coffeehouse, where I ordered a latte and a cupcake and read the Personals on the bulletin board near the front of the shop. When my mother came to pick me up, I was sitting on the steps of the church and told her that I had been a failure in the group and would not be going back. Which seemed as fine with her as it had seemed to have me meet with the group in the first place. Go figure!

  I WONDER WHAT a person who is not a killer—not an ordinary sort of criminal wanting to kill for the sake of killing—would need in order to do something that savage. Would he think about it for days, imagine it from the beginning to the end, the way I sometimes imagine with a baseball game, sometimes with a girl.