The Northwoods Chronicles by Elizabeth Engstrom Read Free Book Online Page B

and push
him under. It was a chore she added to her daily routine, like
watering the growing bamboo and ordering new stock for the
shop.
    But it took its toll.
    Every day she was surprised, all over again, to
see the island outside, nudging her broken pier. Each day she
walked down the lawn, stepped onto the reedy mass and walked
through the swampy undergrowth, and each day she saw Cousins’ stark
white shoulders floating still, like bleached bones on black
macadam. Each day she picked up the bamboo pole and shoved him,
each day with more and more vehemence, until his sorry carcass was
out of sight. Then she’d slog home, crying more often than not, to
her little cottage and her other life.
    Why weren’t the turtles eating him? Or the
crawfish? Why wasn’t he decomposing? Too ornery, she supposed. He
probably tastes bad.
    And then one day, at least three weeks after the
storm, long after Cousins should have been completely recycled,
Sheriff Withens paid another call on her at the store.
    At closing, like before.
    “See you’ve got yourself a permanent resident,”
he said.
    Kimberly, nerves strung to the shrieking point,
reacted too fast. “Resident?”
    “The island,” Sheriff Withens said. “You’ve got
yourself some additional real estate there, free of charge.” He
smiled, and Kimberly wasn’t sure if he was being nice or toying
with her like a cat with a mouse.
    “Wrecked my pier,” she said.
    “Know what we call that island? Dead Man’s
Float. It’s been around for a hundred years, probably. Broke off
Castle Point long before my daddy used to take me fishing out on
that lake. Sometimes it floats free, sometimes it takes up
residence for a time, until another wind storm blows it off to a
new locale.”
    “Dead Man’s Float?” Kimberly divided store
receipts into nonsensical piles and kept clipping them together
with paper clips in nonsensical order.
    “Don’t know how it got that name. Funny, how
things are named around here. Anyway, you okay? Heard from
Cousins?”
    “ Cousins? Is this a joke?” She’d had
enough of the sheriff’s games. If he had something to say, he
needed to come right out and say it.
    “No, darlin’, not at all. I just figured he’d be
coming up here to see you, is all. I’m wondering if it isn’t a
little strange that he hasn’t showed.”
    “He’s got no business with me. We’ve got nothing
to do with each other. I never want to see him again and I think I
made that quite clear to him, and to you. I’m not expecting to see
him up here. I don’t want to see him up here, and if he comes up
here, I will not see him.”
    The sheriff cocked his head and looked at
her.
    “Is that clear?”
    “Yes indeedy, Miss Kimberly. You’re doing okay,
living out there by yourself?”
    “Yes.”
    “And the store?”
    “Fine.”
    “Keeping up with your, you know, your
chores?”
    “Okay.” She threw down her receipts in angry
exasperation. “Okay! Come and look. I’m sick of it. I’m sick
of it all. I’m sick of the work, I’m sick of the worry, I’m sick of
. . . I’m just fucking sick and tired of it all!” She
grabbed her jacket and headed out the back door. “C’mon, then,” she
said to him, impatient, suddenly, to have the whole thing done
with, get her butt in jail, and begin the rotting process. One of
them was going to rot in jail. If it wasn’t going to be Cousins,
then it might as well be her.
    The sheriff followed her out, then got into his
own car and they proceeded the half mile to her little house. She
left the car door open when she got out, and kicked off her
high-heeled pumps halfway down the back lawn. She didn’t even stop
to take off her panty hose or worry about her expensive dress. She
didn’t look behind her to see if the sheriff was following. She
just stomped down the lawn, stepped onto the island, and sloshed
her way across it to the bog.
    The sheriff was behind her, she could hear
him.
    The bog was empty. No body floating. No