The Northwoods Chronicles Read Online Free PDF

I’ll have to make a casserole for Sunday’s
potluck.”
    Pearce had no answer for that. He not only
missed his baby, but he missed his wife. This sensible creature
next to him reminded him of the woman he had married, but not the
woman he had come to love. He pulled back into the driveway, ran
around the car to open the door and help her out. She took off the
soiled cotton dress and put on a sensible flannel nightie that had
languished in the bottom drawer of her dresser for over a year.
Then she got into bed and asked for a cup of hot tea.
    When Pearce brought it to her, she took his hand
and kissed it. “Perhaps you ought to go fishing one of these days,”
she said. “Make a few friends in this community.”
    With those few words, Pearce’s shattered dreams
began to reassemble. He remembered what it was like to have
friends, buddies, a congregation, the hope for his own church. A
proper clergy wife. Solid standing in the community. The family
part could wait for the next assignment. One of these days the
church would give them their own parish. Maybe the next one would
be the permanent one.
    Whatever had just happened was not necessarily a
tragedy, he decided. Life is long enough for each of us to achieve
our dreams in time, isn’t it?
    “Good idea,” he said. “Now you rest, and I’ll
check in on you a little later.” He kissed her cheek, then closed
the door quietly behind him. As he passed the tinfoiled room, he
wondered if she had been right about that, too.
    Well, he’d get his parish now that he had a
normal wife. And life would be simpler, and much more normal.
    But that didn’t exactly mean better, did it?
    A good topic for next Sunday’s sermon.

The Fisherman
    The old man parked his decrepit old Pinto
nose-in to the weeds. With stiff joints and arthritic fingers, he
gingerly but persistently unloaded the gear—pole, bait bucket,
lunch box, thermos, tackle—then slipped thin shoulders into a
flotation vest and zipped it up the front. Sadie Katherine knew
almost everybody who lived in Vargas County, but she didn’t know
this gent.
    A chill wind blew across the lake. Sadie
Katherine organized her tackle and kept a worried eye on him as he
took small, shuffling, old-man steps down toward the dock, and she
wondered what the missus would do if he failed to return at sunset
with dinner in his creel.
    Would they go hungry?
    Or did they live in that beautiful new home on
the bluff? Maybe he kept that rusted Ford out of sentimentality,
its upholstery stained with fish odor, its sun-rotted visor poked
full of lures and flies, the bumper tied on with thirty-pound-test
line. Maybe the wife drove a nice, new Eldorado, white, with
climate control and no fish smell allowed, thankyouverymuch. Maybe
instead of fishing for survival, their freezer was stocked with
salmon and lamb and their meals were expertly cooked by a woman who
came every day to do the heavy cleaning.
    Or did they live behind that big new
house on the bluff, in the shack with the bright blue tarp for a
roof and frozen mud for a floor in the winter?
    The half-horsepower motor started, and he putted
gently away in his rowboat, still the master of his ship, the
captain of his fate, his wool hat firmly pulled down, earflaps
sensibly warding off his death of a cold.
    Sly fox, Sadie Katherine thought. She bet he
knew all the secret holes in the big lake. She was tempted to turn
around, jump back into her boat and follow for a distance, but if
he were as sly as she gave him credit for, he’d never lead anyone
to his secrets. He’d rather putter around the lake, trying to throw
the interloper off his trail until the sun set and the fish lost
their appetites and then he and his wife would have no dinner. He
would come in, stand his pole in the corner of the shack and shrug
apologetically, the provider defeated. She would put away the
frying pan, desperately trying not to show her disappointment. With
nothing else to do, they would get into their small,