Read Dead Water for Free Online Page A

catching trophy fish, whether muskie, walleye, bass, or bluegills. Inviting the younger man to share a couple beers one night when Mary Lee was out playing bridge, the two men reached a détente, based on mutual regard for the trophy fish each had caught over the years. The détente was tested only once, when it was discovered that Ray was piping his sewage illegally, down a gulley that emptied into Mary Lee’s rose garden.
    The morning Mary Lee realized why her roses were flourishing was one of the few times Osborne got in the way of his wife’s ballistic behavior: “You’re winning awards for the damn flowers, woman,” he had said, “so put a lid on it.”
    She was so stunned, her jaw dropped. But Osborne wasn’t finished: “The last thing we need is inspectors over there who might drop by here. You hassle Ray Pradt on his plumbing, and I can guarantee I’ll be tearing down that gazebo you insisted on building ten feet too close to the shoreline.” Mary Lee shut up, though she stomped around the house all day.
    That afternoon she went golfing with her girlfriends. Osborne, extremely pleased with himself, strolled down to Ray’s dock with a six-pack of cold Leinenkugel’s and the news that Mary Lee had been told to back off. Early the next morning, he found a mess of fresh-caught bluegills on the back porch, filleted and ready for the frying pan. Prized catch in hand, he stepped into the kitchen only to be confronted with yet another surprise. During the night, Ray had moved the trailer twenty critical feet, twenty feet that restored Mary Lee’s vista and made her happy for an entire day. She backed off Ray for a few weeks after that, but soon she found other matters to niggle about. Basically, his very presence aggravated her, and she made no effort to hide it.
    That February, a blizzard blew out of the northwest, closing roads and whipping snow so deep into driveways that travel was hopeless. Late on the worst night of the storm, Mary Lee’s viral bronchitis turned deadly. It was four in the morning when Osborne knew he had to get her to the hospital. Desperate, he called the only man with a pickup that could plow through their driveway.
    Ray hitched the heavy blade on in thirty-below-zero temperatures and three feet of blowing snow, plowed them out, then insisted on driving behind them to the hospital. “If you go in the ditch, Doc, it’s all over.” And so the two men did everything they could to save the life of a woman who had made them both miserable.
    When it was over, Ray was there to drive Osborne to Erin’s to deliver the grim news. On the way, Osborne tried to apologize for all the abuse that Mary Lee had heaped on the younger man, but Ray had only shrugged and smiled. “Doesn’t matter, Doc. Never did.”
    That was as much of the story as Osborne chose to share with Lew, though he suspected she knew the rest.
    In spite of the fact that Mary Lee had been a hard woman to live with, her death left a hole in Osborne’s life, a well of loneliness he tried to fill in all the wrong ways. So wrong that some mornings he awoke on his living room floor, never knowing how he got home. He had, in fact, a vague memory of being helped one night by a police officer who closely resembled Lewellyn Ferris. Why he didn’t end up dead, in jail, or without a driver’s license, Osborne never quite knew.
    It was Erin who intervened, demanding he get help or lose his children and grandchildren, too. She drove him to Hazelden for rehab. Weeks later, back in Loon Lake, he drove himself to AA. The Loon Lake chapter met every Tuesday night. On his first visit, he entered to find an unexpected but familiar face.
    “Hey, Doc,” said Ray, “take a seat over here if you’d like.”
    “Thank you, Ray,” Osborne had said, walking past other familiar faces. Several were former patients. Two he knew to be drunks, but the others were a real shock. The room was silent as he took his chair. Then Ray curled his right upper