In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O’Brien Read Free Book Online

iron teakettle.
    Stupidly, he was smiling, but the smile was meaningless. He would not remember it. He would remember only the steam and the heat and the tension in his fists and forearms.
    "Kill Jesus," he said, which encouraged him, and he carried the teakettle out to the living room and switched on a lamp and poured the boiling water over a big flowering geranium near the fireplace. "Jesus, Jesus," he was saying. There was a hissing noise. The geranium seemed to vibrate for an instant, swaying sideways as if caught by a breeze. He watched the
lower leaves blanch and curl downward at the edges. The room acquired a damp exotic stink.
    Wade was humming under his breath. "Well now," he said, and nodded pleasantly.
    He heard himself chuckle.
    "Oh, my," he said.
    He moved to the far end of the living room, steadied himself, and boiled a small spider plant. It wasn't rage. It was necessity. He emptied the teakettle on a dwarf cactus and a philodendron and a caladium and several others he could not name. Then he returned to the kitchen. He refilled the teakettle, watched the water come to a boil, smiled and squared his shoulders and moved down the hallway to their bedroom.
    A prickly heat pressed against his face. The teakettle made its clicking sound in the night.
    Briefly then, he let himself glide away. A ribbon of time went by, which he would not remember, then later he found himself crouched at the side of the bed. He was rocking on his heels, watching Kathy sleep.
    Odd, he thought. That numbness inside him. The way his hands had no meaningful connection to his wrists.
    For some time he crouched there, admiring the tan at Kathy's neck and shoulders, the wrinkles at her eyes. In the dim light she seemed to be smiling at something, or half smiling, a thumb curled alongside her nose. It occurred to him that he should wake her. Yes, a kiss, and then confess to the shame he felt: how defeat had bled into his bones and made him crazy with hurt. He should've done it. He should've told her about the mirrors in his head. He should've talked about the special burden of villainy, the ghosts at Thuan Yen, the strain on his dreams. And then later he should've slipped under the covers and taken her in his arms and explained how
he loved her more than anything, a hard hungry lasting guileless love, and how everything else was trivial and dumb. Just politics, he should've said. He should've talked about coping and enduring, all the clichés, how it was not the end of the world, how they still had each other and their marriage and their lives to live.
    In the days that followed, John Wade would remember all the things he should've done.
    He touched her shoulder.
    Amazing, he thought, what love could do.
    In the dark he heard something twitch and flutter, like wings, and then a low, savage buzzing sound. He squeezed the teakettle's handle. A strange heaviness had come into his arms and wrists. Again, for an indeterminate time, the night seemed to dissolve all around him, and he was somewhere outside himself, awash in despair, watching the mirrors in his head flicker with radical implausibilities. The teakettle and a wooden hoe and a vanishing village and PFC Weatherby and hot white steam.
    He would remember smoothing back her hair.
    He would remember pulling a blanket to her chin and then returning to the living room, where for a long while he lost track of his whereabouts. All around him was that furious buzzing noise. The unities of time and space had unraveled. There were manifold uncertainties, and in the days and weeks to come, memory would play devilish little tricks on him. The mirrors would warp up; there would be odd folds and creases; clarity would be at a premium.
    At one point during the night he stood waist-deep in the lake.
    At another point he found himself completely submerged, lungs like stone, an underwater rush in his ears.
    And then later, in the starwild dark, he sat quietly at the edge of the dock. He was naked. He was