In the Lake of the Woods. Tim O’Brien
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liked watching his hands in the mirror, imagining how someday he would perform much grander magic, tigers becoming giraffes, beautiful girls levitating like angels in the high yellow spotlights—naked maybe, no wires or strings, just floating there.
At fourteen, when his father died, John did the tricks in his mind. He’d lie in bed at night, imagining a big blue door, and after a time the door would open and his father would walk in, take off his hat, and sit in a rocking chair beside the bed. “Well, I’m back,” his father would say, “but don’t tell your mom, she’d kill me.” He’d wink and grin. “So what’s new?”
And then they’d talk for a while, quietly, catching up on things, like cutting a tie and restoring it whole.
He met Kathy in the autumn of 1966. He was a senior at the University of Minnesota, she was a freshman. The trick then was to make her love him and never stop.
The urgency came from fear, mostly; he didn’t want to lose her. Sometimes he’d jerk awake at night, dreaming she’d left him, but when he tried to explain this to her, Kathy laughed and told him to cut it out, she’d never leave, and in any case thinking that way was destructive, it was negative and unhealthy. “Here I am,” she said, “and I’m not going anywhere.”
John thought it over for several days. “Well, all right,” he said, “but it still worries me. Things go wrong. Things don’t always last.”
“We’re not things,” Kathy said.
“But it can happen.”
“Not with us.”
John shrugged and looked away. He was picturing his father’s big white casket. “Maybe so,” he said, “but how do we know? People lose each other.”
In early November he began spying on her. He felt some guilt at first, which bothered him, but he also found satisfaction in it. Like magic, he thought—a quick, powerful rush. He knew things he shouldn’t know. Intimate little items: what she ate for breakfast, the occasional cigarette she smoked. Finesse and deception, those were his specialties, and the spying came easily. In the evenings he’d station himself outside her dormitory, staring up at the light in her room. Later, when the light went off, he’d track her to the student union or the library or wherever else she went The issue wasn’t trust or distrust. The whole world worked by subterfuge and the will to believe. And so he’d sometimes make dates with her, and then cancel, and then wait to see how she used the time. He looked for signs of betrayal: the way she smiled at people, the way she carried herself around other men. In a way, almost, he loved her best when he was spying; it opened up a hidden world, new angles and new perspectives, new things to admire. On Thursday afternoons he’d stake out women’s basketball practice, watching from under the bleachers, taking note of her energy and enthusiasm and slim brown legs. As an athlete, he decided, Kathy wasn’t much, but he got a kick out of the little dance she’d do whenever a free throw dropped in. She had a competitive spirit that made him proud. She was a knockout in gym shorts.
Down inside, of course, John realized that the spying wasn’t proper, yet he couldn’t bring himself to stop. In part, he thought, Kathy had brought it on herself: she had a personality that lured him on. Fiercely private, fiercely independent. They’d be at a movie together, or at a party, and she’d simply vanish; she’d go out for a pack of gum and forget to return. It wasn’t thoughtlessness, really, but it wasn’t thoughtful either. Without reason, usually without warning, she’d wander away while they were browsing in a shop or bookstore, and then a moment later, when he glanced up, she’d be cleanly and purely gone, as if plucked off the planet. That fast—here, then gone—and he wouldn’t see her again for hours, or until he found her holed up in a back carrel of the library. All this put a sharp chill in his heart. He understood her need to be alone, to reserve time for herself, but too often she carried things to an extreme that made him wonder. The spying helped. No great discoveries, but at least he knew the score.
And it was fun, too—a challenge.
Occasionally he’d spend whole days just tailing her. The trick was to be patient, to stay alert, and he liked the bubbly sensation it gave him to trace her movements from spot to spot. He liked melting into crowds, positioning himself in doorways, anticipating her route as she walked across campus. It was sleight-of-body work, or sleight-of-mind, and over those cool autumn days he was carried along by the powerful, secret thrill of gaining access to a private life. Hershey bars, for instance—Kathy was addicted, she couldn’t resist. He learned about her friends, her teachers, her little habits and routines. He watched her shop for his birthday present. He was there in the drugstore when she bought her first diaphragm.
“It’s weird,” Kathy told him once, “how well you know me.”
To his surprise Kathy kept loving him, she didn’t stop, and over the course of the spring semester they made plans to be married and have children and someday live in a big old house in Minneapolis. For John it was a happy time. Except for rare occasions, he gave up spying. He was able to confide in her about his ambitions and dreams. First law school, he told her, then a job with the party, and then, when all the pieces were in place, he’d go for something big. Lieutenant governor, maybe. The U.S. Senate. He had the sequence mapped out; he knew what he wanted. Kathy listened carefully, nodding at times. Her eyes were green and smart, watchful. “Sounds fine,” she said, “but what’s it all for?”
“For?”
“I mean, why?”
John hesitated. “Because—you know—because it’s what I want.”
“Which is what?”
“Just the usual, I guess. Change things. Make things happen.”
Kathy lay on her back, in bed. It was late April of 1967. She was nineteen years old.
“Well, I still don’t get it,” she said. “The way you talk, it sounds calculating or something. Too cold. Planning every tiny detail.”
“And that’s bad?”
“No. Not exactly.”
“What then?”
She made a shifting motion with her shoulders. “I don’t know, it just seems strange, sort of. How you’ve figured everything out, all the angles, except what it’s for.”
“For us,” he said. “I love you, Kath.”
“But it feels—I shouldn’t say this—it feels manipulating.”
John turned and looked at her. Nineteen years old, yes, but still there was something flat and skeptical in her eyes, something terrifying. She returned his gaze without backing off. She was hard to fool. Again, briefly, he was assailed by the sudden fear of losing her, of bungling things, and for a long while he tried to explain how wrong she was. Nothing sinister, he said. He talked about leading a good life, doing good things for the world. Yet even as he spoke, John realized he was not telling the full truth. Politics was manipulation. Like a magic show: invisible wires and secret trapdoors. He imagined placing a city in the palm of his hand, making his hand into a fist, making the city into a happier place. Manipulation, that was the fun of it.
He graduated in June of 1967. There was a war in progress, which was beyond manipulation, and nine months later he found himself at the bottom of an irrigation ditch. The slime was waist-deep. He couldn’t move. The trick then was to stay sane.
His letters from Kathy were cheerful and newsy, full of spicy details, and he found comfort in her chitchat about family and friends. She told funny stories about her sister Pat, about her teachers and roommates and basketball team. She rarely mentioned the war. Though concerned for his safety, Kathy also had doubts about his motives, his reasons for being there.
“I just hope it’s not part of your political game plan,” she wrote. “All those dead people, John, they don’t vote.”
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