Free Foursome by Jeremiah Healy Page B

out toward the center of the lake.
    I said, “Isn’t that kind of littering?”
    “No.” He hopped back up to me. “Punching holes in its innards and stuffing that stone down its throat means it’ll sink to the bottom, where the crayfish and other things’ll get a good meal. You saw the size of some of the crayfish in this pond, John, you wouldn’t wiggle your toes in her. Come on up to the house.”
    As he gathered the fillets from his table, I followed him up the gentle incline. Gates—or somebody for him—had cut a winding path like Ma Judson’s. His house seemed newer by far than hers, however. A small, one-story bungalow, the wood was a soft, natural yellow that blended into the shade from his tall trees. There was one picture window with a small deck only two feet off the ground in front of it, a screened porch next to it. The porch was more rustic than the bungalow, with logs as posts; and beams and lintel above the door, two Adirondack chairs and a small, slatted table between them as furniture.
    Gates got up the three deep steps to his deck and held the screen door with a shoulder for me as Runty went off running after something. This close to the house, I could hear the noise of chickens out behind it. Inside the porch was a door leading to a cozy living room. The walls of the living room were lined with books, here and there pewter beer mugs, hunting knives, and driftwood as whatnots on the shelves. A sturdy black wood stove occupied the center of the room, two easy chairs on a sisal rug facing it. Kitchen and bathroom finished the downstairs, a small sleeping loft shoehorned under the peaked roof.
    Gates disappeared into the kitchen. I looked at the books. Alpha by author, but a wide range of subjects, from engineering to art history. A more than representative sampling seemed to deal with the environment. A shelf under a side window held a small laptop computer, a straight-back caned chair in front of it. Next to one easy chair was a New York Times , three days old.
    From the kitchen, Gates said, “You care for a beer, John?”
    “I would, thanks.”
    “Catch.”
    I turned. From the doorway he tossed a can of Miller’s Genuine Draft to me.
    Gates hopped out with one for himself. “Hope you don’t mind the can.”
    “It’s fine.”
    “The pop-top is just a lot easier for me than a bottle cap. Let’s sit on the porch.”
    I let him take one Adirondack chair before I took the other. He had an Audubon Society guidebook on birds on the slatted table, some binoculars and a pad next to it. From the lake, you really couldn’t see his house. From his house, though, you could see the lake and the Shea house through the trees, the limbs crossing the view in a natural but not obstructing way.
    I said, “How can you have this kind of view without cutting down the trees?”
    Gates took a swig of beer, licking the foam off his mustache. “Not so hard, really. You just sit where you want the view from, then tell a couple of the boys to climb the trees and take a limb here, a limb there. Bingo, you’ve got a window through the woods without the people on the water being able to see you.”
    I studied the trees. “I don’t see where they cut the limbs.”
    “I had the boys put black paint over the wounds. Covers them cosmetically as well as protects the tree from insects and other critters using the wounds to get inside her.”
    “Pity Steven Shea didn’t do that.”
    Gates rested his can on the arm of his chair. “You’ve met him, too?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Brace yourself.”
    “He comes on strong?”
    “Kind of … single-minded. When he got started on his building, I went over to introduce myself, feel him out a bit on what he planned on doing. I made every suggestion I could think of to help him protect his land and the pond with it. He just nodded and smiled and then clear-cut to his heart’s content. All so legal, all so stupid. You’ve seen the erosion over there?”
    “The gully with