Stewart and I both have a story about Sugar Island, except his is funnier because his is rooted in an assault on his aesthetics—his villain is a giant floating flamingo that is anchored dead center in the middle of his view of the Moosehead Lake which goes like this: green trees, gorgeous water, loons, enormous multi-story inflatable pink flamingo directly in front of Sugar Island, gorgeous water, trees.
He says, “It might as well be a cruise ship,” and that it “represents all that is bad in this world.”
My story doesn’t have a cruise ship or a flamingo, but there is something just as impossible to look beyond.
He says, “These teenagers make a flotilla with the flamingo in front of Sugar Island and shoot off fireworks drunk in the middle of the night. They scream as they slide down the neck of the flamingo and splash into the water—naked! They drink on the flamingo and have sex on the flamingo, too—while I’m reading. While I’m trying to sleep. While I am trying to enjoy my peace and quiet.”
When he tells the story, which he often does after a few bourbons, it’s always under the pretense of secrecy. He leans toward the table and says, “You can’t tell anyone,” but I know he aches to be named in the caper.
And when Stewart secretly exposes himself, I look at my husband, and all I can think about is my Sugar Island. The winter version, sparkling white, where the view is interrupted only by the tiny sticks coming up out of the frozen icefishing holes and how the colors of the dawn are purple and coral and my heart is full of anticipation.
And then everyone is laughing because Stewart is now in his sailboat, a plastic dinghy with a postage stamp sail, tacking against the wind with a bowie knife strapped to his thigh. He is bent on plasticine bloodshed in his Crocs and black painted face. He’s taken his glasses off as part of his disguise, but doesn’t bother to disguise the boat, the most distinguishing element of his nighttime tableau. “Justice,” he admits, “clouds his thinking.”
Time clouds mine.
Alcohol clouds my husband’s. He takes another sip and laughs. He loves Stewart’s story.
But Stewart’s story always sends me crunching my way across the ice, pulling the sled with all my icefishing gear—the chipper, my yogurt container of swimming baitfish whose skin I'll break when I thread the hooks to the left of their spines, traps, a thermos of tea, the ice scoop, the tiny pole, the little stool. I chip holes, set traps, drink tea and wait. The first snowmobile goes by, but the second speeds right toward me.
It has taken two hours against the wind in this version, but Stewart has made it to the island and pulled the boat onto the rocks. He puts on his life vest and swims around the flamingo drawing the bowie knife across its flank as he goes. First the pink head drops toward the water like it’s fishing for shrimp, and then the breast of the bird collapses and flattens into a floating skin on the surface. Stewart sails back to his camp on the wind.
If I told it, there would be a full red spinnaker carrying Stewart across the water as an emblem of his victory, but my heart is beating triple time because I know who is on the snowmobile. There is a rooster tail of snow and ice behind it, and the roar of the engine enters my chest before he reaches me.
The man, who is not the man with the empty glass across from me, gets off the snowmachine. He checks my traps and then takes my mittened hand. We walk toward Sugar Island seeking shelter from the wind and eyes around the lake. He pulls me up and over an ice jam onto the island and kisses me beneath a white pine and I know my marriage is over but the people at the table are all laughing.
